He understood then why many old Negroes said: “Take all this world and give me Jesus!” It was because they couldn’t get this world anyway—it belonged to the white folks. They alone had the power to give or withhold at their back doors. Always back doors—even for Tempy and Dr. Mitchell if they chose to go into Wright’s Hotel or the New Albert Restaurant. And no door at all for Negroes if they wanted to attend the Rialto Theatre, or join the Stanton Y.M.C.A., or work behind the grilling at the National Bank.

The Doors of Life.... God damn that simpleminded book that Tempy had given him! What did an old white minister know about the doors of life for him and Pansetta and Jimmy Lane, for Willie-Mae and Buster and Jap Logan and all the black and brown and yellow youngsters standing on the threshold of the great beginning in a Western town called Stanton? What did an old white minister know about the doors of life anywhere? And, least of all, the doors to a Negro’s life? . . . Black youth.... Dark hands knocking, knocking! Pansetta’s little brown hands knocking on the doors of life! Baby-doll hands, tiny autumn-leaf girl-hands! . . . Gee, Pansetta! . . . The Doors of Life . . . the great big doors.... Sandy was asleep . . . of life.

XXVII. BEWARE OF WOMEN

“I won’t permit it,” said Tempy. “I won’t stand for it. You’ll have to mend your ways, young man! Spending your evenings in Windsor’s pool parlor and running the streets with a gang of common boys that have had no raising, that Jimmy Lane among them. I won’t stand for it while you stay in my house.... But that’s not the worst of it. Mr. Prentiss tells me you’ve been getting to work late after school three times this week. And what have you been doing? O, don’t think I don’t know! I saw you with my own eyes yesterday walking home with that girl Pansetta Young! . . . Well, I want you to understand that I won’t have it!”

“I didn’t walk home with her,” said Sandy. “I only go part way with her every day. She’s in my class in high school and we have to talk over our lessons. She’s the only colored kid in my class I have to talk to.”

“Lessons! Yes, I know it’s lessons,” said Tempy sarcastically. “If she were a girl of our own kind, it would be all right. I don’t see why you don’t associate more with the young people of the church. Marie Steward or Grace Mitchell are both nice girls and you don’t notice them. No, you have to take up with this Pansetta, whose mother works out all day, leaving her daughter to do as she chooses. Well, she’s not going to ruin you, after all I’ve done to try to make something out of you.”

“Beware of women, son,” said Mr. Siles pontifically from his deep morris-chair. It was one of his few evenings home and Tempy had asked him to talk to her nephew, who had gotten beyond her control, for Sandy no longer remained in at night even when she expressly commanded it; and he no longer attended church regularly, but slept on Sunday mornings instead. He kept up his school-work, it was true, but he seemed to have lost all interest in acquiring the respectable bearing and attitude towards life that Tempy thought he should have. She bought him fine clothes and he went about with ruffians.