So spring was coming and Annjee worked diligently at Mrs. Rice’s day after day. Often she did something extra for Mrs. Rice’s sister and her children—pressed a shirtwaist or ironed some stockings—and so added a few quarters or maybe even a dollar to her weekly wages, all of which she saved to help carry her to Jimboy in Detroit.

For ten years she had been cooking, washing, ironing, scrubbing—and for what? For only the few weeks in a year, or a half-year, when Jimboy would come home from some strange place and take her in his strong arms and kiss her and murmur: “Annjee, baby!” That’s what she had been working for—then the dreary months were as nothing, and the hard years faded away. But now he had been gone all winter, and, from his letter, he might not come back soon, because he said Detroit was a fine place for colored folks.... But Stanton—well, Annjee thought there must surely be better towns, where a woman wouldn’t have to work so hard to live.... And where Jimboy was.

So before the first buds opened on the apple-tree in the back yard, Annjee had gone to Detroit, leaving Sandy behind with his grandmother. And when the apple blossoms came in full bloom, there was no one living in the little house but a grey-headed old woman and her grandchild.

“One by one they leaves you,” Hager said slowly. “One by one yo’ chillen goes.”

XVI. NOTHING BUT LOVE

“A year ago tonight was de storm what blowed ma porch away! You ’members, honey? . . . Done seem like this year took more’n ma porch, too. My baby chile’s left home an’ gone to stay down yonder in de Bottoms with them triflin’ Smothers family, where de piano’s goin’ night an’ day. An’ yo’ mammy’s done gone a-trapesin’ after Jimboy. . . . Well, I thanks de Lawd you ain’t gone too. You’s mighty little an’ knee-high to a duck, but you’s ma stand-by. You’s all I got, an’ you ain’t gwine leave yo’ old grandma, is you?”

Hager had turned to Sandy in these lonely days for comfort and companionship. Through the long summer evenings they sat together on the front porch and she told her grandchild stories. Sometimes Sister Johnson came over and sat with them for a while smoking. Sometimes Madam de Carter, full of chatter and big words about the lodge and the race, would be there. But more often the two were alone—the black washwoman with the grey hair and the little brown boy. Slavery-time stories, myths, folk-tales like the Rabbit and the Tar Baby; the war, Abe Lincoln, freedom; visions of the Lord; years of faith and labor, love and struggle filled Aunt Hager’s talk of a summer night, while the lightning-bugs glowed and glimmered and the katydids chirruped, and the stars sparkled in the far-off heavens.

Sandy was getting to be too big a boy to sit in his grandmother’s lap and be rocked to sleep as in summers gone by; now he sat on a little stool beside her, leaning his head on her legs when he was tired. Or else he lay flat on the floor of the porch listening, and looking up at the stars. Tonight Hager talked about love.