Hazel

“Granny, it was as cold as Boston in my room this morning. It doesn’t seem as though it would ever be warm again. It’s freezing cold!”

“It’s freezing, indeed, honey, but eat breakfast and you’ll be warmer.”

The first winter weather had come when, by the calendar, winter should have been nearly over. Hazel had so long enjoyed the mild air that she had begun to believe nothing else was possible in Alabama. Now she was to learn that in a warm climate one most keenly feels the cold.

“I wonder if Mother is freezing up in Boston,” she mused, as she and Granny together did the housework. “She goes out to work a good deal now. I hope she isn’t taking cold.”

“Don’t borrow trouble, honey.”

“But if she should take cold Charity would take care of her. Charity gets her supper sometimes now, Mother says, when she’s tired. And then Mother reads to her out of the Blue Fairy Book. I couldn’t bring many books, Granny, in just one little trunk, but I do wish I could read to you in the Blue Fairy Book. You would like it so much.”

“Then I done rob Charity of her good time.”

“But in Boston,” Hazel explained, “you have a library where you can get any book in the world.”

“Telephone for it, I suppose,” said Granny sceptically.

“Yes,” answered Hazel absently.

“It will be too cold for Scip to come to play house this afternoon,” the little girl declared somewhat petulantly as they sat at dinner after a morning indoors; “his father’s sure to be cross. But I’ll go up, Granny, because I never miss, you know.”

She put on her hat and her warm coat and climbed the little hill.

The wind was high, but crouched in her enclosure, Hazel scarcely felt it. But she could hear it though, soughing through the pines—she believed the trees were never silent. To-day their singing leaves trumpeted the winter and called for action.

“I believe I’ll go to the top of the hill,” she said to herself. “Scip isn’t coming and it’s a good day to explore.”

She climbed up the hillside, striking once with her trusty stick at a stray pig, and soon reached the top. Below on one side was her home and the cabins with which she was familiar; on the other side stretched an unknown country, a land where she had been told the white folks lived.

“I’ll go just a little further,” Hazel decided.

The cold air made her feel like exercising. She was in much better health than when she had come to Alabama; in better health, her mother would have seen, than she had ever been in her life. The tingling air gave her courage, and she raced unconcernedly past cows and pigs down the hill on the other side.

It seemed remarkably like the side she had left. There were the same log cabins, the same stretches of land filled with dry cotton stalks, the same hens, the same hogs. If she came upon a clapboarded house it was devoid of paint. She met an occasional lean, ragged white child, dull of complexion, who stared at her but had no word of greeting. But the cold kept the people indoors.

Hazel walked a little way along the road, when she was startled by a dog, which ran out from under a house and barked furiously at her. She held her stick tight, determined to use it if necessary, though Scip had said nothing about hitting dogs. But the animal only barked and she passed by it in safety. This incident, however, made her apprehensive, and after a little more investigation without interesting results she turned to go home.

What had become of the hill down which she had run?

It seemed to have melted into the landscape. Striving to retrace her steps she ran up one acclivity after another, wearying herself in the hunt, but from none did she see the Lees’ cabin and Granny’s home. And the more she ran, the more she became completely turned around.

The sun was low in the west. It was bitter cold and she felt tired. Worst of all, she was in the land of the unknown white folk who called you “nigger,” and who went their way and wanted you to go yours. How could she ask her way of them?

She walked briskly along the road again, searching for a house where a colored family lived. Indeed, there were such houses, but their occupants were snuggled over their fires, and did not come out and show their friendly dark faces to the little colored girl. Only a dog rushed at her. She thought at first it was the one that had barked when she came over the hill, but this was an ugly cur that snapped at her heels, and caused her to run, it mattered not in what direction, so that she left it behind.

When she took note again of her surroundings the sun was dropping into a dark cloud near the horizon. She was familiar now with the short twilight of the South, and she knew that night would soon be upon her. She must be brave and knock at one of these houses to ask the way.

Her training led her to choose the most pretentious one in sight, a large, square, unpainted, frame house. And again her training sent her to the front door where she knocked timidly.

The door was opened almost immediately, as though someone had been passing through the hall, and a high-pitched voice bade her enter.

“Whose child are you?” the voice said.

“I’m Aunt Ellen’s granddaughter,” answered Hazel, knowing enough to call her grandmother by that familiar title, “and I’ve lost my way. Can you please tell me how to get back to her house?”

“Sister,” the white woman called shrilly, and another woman appeared at an open door at Hazel’s left, “here’s Aunt Ellen’s child come to ask her way, and if the little nigger didn’t knock at the front door!”

“You don’t say so, Jane,” said Sister.

Hazel recognized the two white ladies who had stopped at Granny’s house on their drive, and had asked her so many questions. She pressed her lips tightly together at the word “nigger,” but then she had expected it, and anyway they knew where Granny lived. “I don’t want to be any trouble,” she said in her most dignified manner, “and if you will please explain to me how to get to Granny’s, I will go. I came over the hill, but it is getting so dark I am afraid I couldn’t return that way.”

If she imagined she would be permitted to leave so easily she was mistaken.

“Come by the kitchen,” Miss Jane said, and led her to the rear of the house.

Hazel went unwillingly, but the bright fire in the stove made her give a little cry of pleasure.

“Warm yourself, child,” Miss Jane said kindly. “Rest your hat and coat, and sit by the fire. How much might that coat cost now?” she asked, examining the garment that Hazel obediently took off.

“I don’t know,” Hazel replied. “It was given to me.”

“Who might give you a coat like that?” the other sister queried.

“A friend of my father’s. You know my father is dead,” Hazel added.

“Yes, I know, honey,” Miss Jane said sympathetically. “He was a right nice boy. He used to come here to sell my mother vegetables. He’d fix everything to sell as neat and nice, and he’d tell about the doings around his way until we’d almost die laughing. I’ve often wondered if he took to gardening up North.”

“We had a tiny garden where we lived,” Hazel answered eagerly, “and father worked in it in the early morning before he went to business. He was a lawyer, you know.”

“A lawyer?”

“Yes, ma’am, a lawyer.”

“A nigger lawyer! That beats all. Marty,” calling into the darkness, “did you know Aunt Ellen’s son, George, used to be a nigger lawyer?”

“Yes, Miss Jane; I sure knowed.”

“This is his child. Make her a cup of warm coffee and give her some biscuits. She’s come a long way.”

The coffee, an unfamiliar but delectable drink, warmed not only Hazel’s body, but her heart. The two sisters did not leave the kitchen, but plied her with questions which she answered, trying to remember what Granny had told her. Here were two women living alone in a big house with few neighbors; they were giving her food and she ought to talk if they wanted her to. So she told them about her former home, and the flat in Hammond Street, and her mother’s present work.

“Seems to me your father ought to have left something if he had a practice,” the younger sister, whose name was Laura, remarked.

“He did,” Hazel answered quickly; “but mother won’t touch anything but the interest, and you know what seems a good deal of money makes a very little interest. She spent some to send me down here, and she’s planning to spend more to send me to college.”

“What will you do with all your learning?” Miss Jane asked.

“I’ll teach.”

“Niggers?”

Hazel did not want to answer; but sitting very erect, with a precision that would have done any teacher credit, she replied: “Everybody goes to school in Boston, every single child. And the teachers don’t ask whether they are black or white, or rich or poor. There are Turks, and Arabians, and (switching to the map of Europe as safer ground) Hungarians, and Bulgarians, and Norwegians, and Swedians, (doubtfully) and Greeks, and Spaniards, and Romans, and Germans and Irish.”

“You don’t say,” exclaimed Miss Laura, “all those heathen!”

There was a moment’s silence.

“When are you going home?” asked Miss Jane.

“In May, I think, if anyone can be found to take me. I came down with Mrs. Graham, but she doesn’t return until July.”

“A white lady?”

“No, Miss Fairmount.”

Hazel had heard the name in the course of their conversation, and felt pleased to be able to use it.

But Miss Fairmount felt differently.

“My name is Jane,” she said. “You should call me Miss Jane.”

“Not Miss Fairmount?”

“Certainly not. It is impertinent in a nigger.”

The blood rushed to Hazel’s face. She felt as though someone had struck her. Rising from her chair she said in an unsteady voice, “I must go home now. Granny will be anxious. Please tell me what road to take?”

Night had come on and the lamps were lighted.

“You don’t suppose we’d let you go home alone, child,” Miss Jane said. “Marty ’ll take you. Marty, you get on your shawl and take Hazel to Aunt Ellen’s. It’s not far beyond your house. Laura, show Hazel the birds in the parlor. Maybe she’d like to look at them.”

Miss Laura took up a lamp, and led the child into the parlor, where she had been sitting when Hazel entered the house. The walls were bare of pictures and the furniture was heavy and decayed. In one corner was a table on which was a glass case containing three stuffed birds, a mocker, a humming bird and a cardinal. Hazel admired appreciatively, but her eyes would wander across the room where stood a huge four-poster, covered with an elaborate spread.

“They’re very pretty,” she said politely. “Granny tells me I must hear the mocking birds in the spring. We don’t have mocking birds in Massachusetts.”

“The North and the South are very different,” Miss Laura said, looking perplexedly at the child.

Hazel called them Miss Jane and Miss Laura when she said good-bye. She held out her hand a little shyly to Miss Jane, fearing that might be impertinent in the South. But Miss Jane took it, and stroked her coat, and told her to come again, and Miss Laura shook hands too, and sent a message to Aunt Ellen. Then, the good-bye over, in proper southern fashion the little colored girl went out the back door.

Marty was not communicative, like her mistress, and scarcely spoke as they walked along the dark road. When they had gone a short distance past her cabin a boy appeared ahead of them.

“Hazel,” he called.

“Scip,” she answered, and ran to him.

He caught her roughly. “Where you been?” he asked.

“I was lost, Scip, and I asked Miss Jane and Miss Laura the way home, and I had to wait until Marty could come home with me.”

“Reckon I can leave you now,” Marty said, and with an interchange of good-nights she turned back.

“Was Granny worried, Scip?” Hazel asked. “Did she send you for me?”

“In course she were worried. You hadn’t ought to be out at night alone.”

Hazel explained what had happened. They hurried over the road, and once she stumbled and caught Scip’s hand.

“How cold you are!” she exclaimed; and noticed that he had only a ragged jacket and that his feet were bare.

“It was kind of you to come, Scip,” she began, and then she saw Granny on the road in front of her cabin, and ran into her arms.

“Won’t you come in and get warm?” she called to the boy; but he answered “No,” and went on his way.

Granny heard the whole story that night before the fire.

“I tried to remember what you said about knowing them by their fruits,” Hazel explained seriously, “and they were kind to me and gave me food and sent me home with Marty. But they hurt my feelings dreadfully. They said I was impertinent when I said ‘Miss Fairmount,’ instead of ‘Miss Jane,’ and at home, really truly, it would have been impertinent to have said Miss Jane; and,” the child hung her head, “they called me ‘nigger.’”

Granny’s strong, kindly face grew sad.

“You’s a hard road to travel, dearie, as you goes through life with your pretty face and your gentle ways. I’s feared the stones will often bruise your feet and the briars tear your hands. Shall I give you a token to keep in your heart as you go down the road? I learned it to your father when he was a boy and he never forgot it.”

“Please tell me, Granny, and I will not forget.”

“Watch how folks says things, and not what they says. Now, Miss Jane, she didn’t do that to-day, and she hurt my baby girl. She ain’t quality and that’s a fact. She were thinking of the words when you said ‘Miss Jane’ and not the feeling in your heart and voice. Don’t you make the mistake she made.”

Hazel was silent for a few seconds. When she answered her voice was unsteady.

“Nobody knows how angry I am, right through, when anyone calls me a nigger.”

“And yet, honey, I’s heard a forlorn, ignorant mammy say it to her baby when it sounded like she were whispering to the Lord. It’s an ugly word. I hates it, too. But there’s white folks as don’t mean any harm by it. You fell in good hands to-day, and I thank the Lord for it. There’s those as might have spoken slick enough but as would have been rough in their hearts.”

Hazel gave Granny a hug.

“I do love you, Granny,” she said with a little sob, “and I’ll forget all the horrid things to-day, and remember the coffee and the fire and Miss Laura showing me those three poor little stuffed birds. But Granny;” brightening, “what do you think was in their parlor? Why, right there in the company room in that great big house they had a bed!”