Hager rose to put some water on the stove to heat for the dishes.

“One by one you leaves me—Tempy, then Harriett, then you,” she said. “But Sandy’s gonna stick by me, ain’t you, son? He ain’t gwine leave his grandma.”

The youngster looked at Hager, moving slowly about the kitchen putting away the supper things.

“And I’s gwine to make a fine man out o’ you, Sandy. I’s gwine raise one chile right yet, if de Lawd lets me live—just one chile right!” she murmured.

That night the March wind began to blow and the windowpanes rattled. Sandy woke up in the dark, lying close and warm beside his mother. When he went back to sleep again, he dreamed that his Aunt Tempy’s Christmas book had been turned into a chariot, and that he was riding through the sky with Tempy standing very dignifiedly beside him as he drove. And he couldn’t see anybody down on earth, not even Hager.

When his mother rolled out at six o’clock to go to work, he woke up again, and while she dressed, he lay watching his breath curl mistily upwards in the cold room. Outside the window it was bleak and grey and the March wind, humming through the leafless branches of the trees, blew terrifically. He heard Aunt Hager in the kitchen poking at the stove, making up a blaze to start the coffee boiling. Then the front door closed when his mother went out and, as the door slammed, the wind howled fiercely. It was nice and warm in bed, so he lay under the heavy quilts half dreaming, half thinking, until his grandmother shook him to get up. And many were the queer, dream-drowsy thoughts that floated through his mind—not only that morning, but almost every morning while he lay beneath the warm quilts until Hager had called him three or four times to get ready for school.

He wondered sometimes whether if he washed and washed his face and hands, he would ever be white. Someone had told him once that blackness was only skin-deep.... And would he ever have a big house with electric lights in it, like his Aunt Tempy—but it was mostly white people who had such fine things, and they were mean to colored.... Some white folks were nice, though. Earl was nice at school, but not the little boys across the street, who called him “nigger” every day . . . and not Mrs. Rice, who scolded his mother.... Aunt Harrie didn’t like any white folks at all.... But Jesus was white and wore a long, white robe, like a woman’s, on the Sunday-school cards.... Once Jimmie Lane said: “God damn Jesus” when the teacher scolded him for not knowing his Bible lesson. He said it out loud in church, too, and the church didn’t fall down on him, as Sandy thought it might.... Grandma said it was a sin to cuss and swear, but all the fellows at school swore—and Jimboy did, too. But every time Sandy said “God damn,” he felt bad, because Aunt Hager said God was mighty good and it was wrong to take His name in vain. But he would like to learn to say “God damn” without feeling anything like most boys said it—just “God damn! . . . God damn! . . . God damn!” without being ashamed of himself.... The Lord never seemed to notice, anyhow.... And when he got big, he wanted to travel like Jimboy. He wanted to be a railroad engineer, but Harriett had said there weren’t any colored engineers on trains.... What would he be, then? Maybe a doctor; but it was more fun being an engineer and travelling far away.