Once, when she had worked for a Mrs. Leonard Baker on Martin Avenue, she accidentally broke a precious cut-glass pitcher used to serve some out-of-town guests. And when she tried to apologize for the accident, Mrs. Baker screamed in a rage: “Shut up, you impudent little black wench! Talking back to me after breaking up my dishes. All you darkies are alike—careless sluts—and I wouldn’t have a one of you in my house if I could get anybody else to work for me without paying a fortune. You’re all impossible.”

“So that’s the way white people feel,” Harriett said to Aunt Hager and Sister Johnson and Jimboy, while the two children listened. “They wouldn’t have a single one of us around if they could help it. It don’t matter to them if we’re shut out of a job. It don’t matter to them if niggers have only the back row at the movies. It don’t matter to them when they hurt our feelings without caring and treat us like slaves down South and like beggars up North. No, it don’t matter to them.... White folks run the world, and the only thing colored folks are expected to do is work and grin and take off their hats as though it don’t matter. . . . O, I hate ’em!” Harriett cried, so fiercely that Sandy was afraid. “I hate white folks!” she said to everybody on the porch in the darkness. “You can pray for ’em if you want to, mama, but I hate ’em! . . . I hate white folks! . . . I hate ’em all!”

VIII. DANCE

Mrs. J. J. Rice and family usually spent ten days during the August heat at Lake Dale, and thither they had gone now, giving Annjee a forced vacation with no pay. Jimboy was not working, and so his wife found ten days of rest without income not especially agreeable. Nevertheless, she decided that she might as well enjoy the time; so she and Jimboy went to the country for a week with Cousin Jessie, who had married one of the colored farmers of the district. Besides, Annjee thought that Jimboy might help on the farm and so make a little money. Anyway, they would get plenty to eat, because Jessie kept a good table. And since Jessie had eight children of her own, they did not take Sandy with them—eight were enough for a woman to be worried with at one time!

Aunt Hager had been ironing all day on the Reinharts’ clothes—it was Friday. At seven o’clock Harriett came home, but she had already eaten her supper at the restaurant where she worked.

“Hello, mama! Hy, Sandy!” she said, but that was all, because she and her mother were not on the best of terms. Aunt Hager was attempting to punish her youngest daughter by not allowing her to leave the house after dark, since Harriett, on Tuesday night, had been out until one o’clock in the morning with no better excuse than a party at Maudel’s. Aunt Hager had threatened to whip her then and there that night.