Hazel

When Hazel first learned that she was to go away from her mother, she cried bitterly. But as the preparations for her departure began, she regained her spirits. Who could grieve for long in the midst of such excitement?

In the first place, there was the new trunk, very small and shining.

“Look at it, Charity,” she said, the afternoon it came home “See my initials on the side, H. T. That stands for Hazel Tyler.”

Charity looked, and envy entered her heart. When she visited her granny in Virginia her clothes were stuffed into a shabby, collapsible bag.

“Folks ’ll think you stuck up,” she said.

“Well, let them,” answered Hazel. “This is a steamer trunk, Charity,” she went on, opening it, “see the cunning tray. When it’s shut you push it under your berth on the steamer. I’m going to have a warm shawl in it to wear on deck.”

“Bet you’ll be sick,” said Charity.

Nevertheless, she was deeply impressed with the little trunk, and watched Hazel as day after day she packed and repacked it.

“I’m putting all my clothes in the bottom, Charity. Mother says for me to take my summer and my winter clothes both. Here is my blue gingham, and Mother has let down my white muslin dress again. Isn’t it pretty with the lace and embroidery?”

Charity sniffed. “Bet you won’t wear your white dress. Folks wear calico down there. Who’s going to spend the time washing and ironing for you?”

Hazel looked a little troubled. “Why, Granny, I suppose.”

“Humph, your Granny ’ll be too busy to wait on you.”

Hazel patted the white dress better in place. “I can keep it clean quite a while,” she said.

“See, Charity, the pretty present Mrs. Perkins gave me,” she said later, taking a dainty box from the tray and opening it. “Six handkerchiefs and each marked with an ‘H.’ Nobody can take them, can they, because the ‘H’ shows they belong to me.”

Charity deliberately took one from the box. “Guess I’ve got one now,” she declared.

But while she refused to show enthusiasm regarding Hazel’s preparations she was really greatly interested and appeared one day with something, new to Hazel, in her hand.

“It’s a sun-bonnet,” she explained, holding it out. “Everyone wears them down there; the sun is so hot. Mother and I made it for you.”

“Oh, it’s such a pretty pink,” cried Hazel, turning it about on her hand. “Thank you and your mother so much, Charity,” and she kissed her companion.

Charity’s eyes shone. “Put it on,” she commanded.

The brown face with the soft hair looked very attractive set in the pink muslin frill. Hazel viewed herself in the glass and jumped up and down with pleasure.

“It’s like a play to be wearing a sun-bonnet.”

“Take it off and I’ll show you how to pack it.” And together they put it in the tray.

“I’ve another present, Charity,” Hazel confided, taking out a small package, and showing a long, black hair-ribbon. “It’s from Miss Gray, my teacher. Mother says I must count these presents for Christmas, because I’ll be away at Christmas. Perhaps I’ll put them in my stocking Christmas eve.”

“Pooh! Folks don’t hang up stockings South.”

“Why, Charity, you’d think they didn’t do anything down there.”

Charity cogitated. “They don’t do much,” she decided, and added a little wistfully, “it’s lots more fun on Hammond Street.”

Hazel slipped her hand in her friend’s. “I wish you were going with me,” she whispered.

“I wish you weren’t going away,” Charity whispered back.

Hazel and her mother had a long discussion regarding a suitable present to take to Granny. Hazel wanted to buy a black and white gingham dress she saw at Jordan, Marsh’s; but did Granny wear a thirty-six like her mother, or a forty-four, like Charity’s mamma? Such uncertainty made the dress impracticable. A pretty black and white kitten strayed into the Tyler flat and when Hazel had fed it, and become attached to it, she felt that it would be a better present even than the dress. No arguments concerning the difficulty of carrying a kitten to Alabama could make her forsake her plan; only when her mother asked that it be left to keep her company did Hazel at once give it up.

“Yes, do keep it, Mother dear,” she said.

But still Granny’s present was unsettled. Mrs. Perkins unconsciously determined what it should be.

“Lucy,” she said, one day, “here is a card that entitles you to six photographs. You have a good picture of Hazel, but she has none of you. Please have them taken immediately and give the child one.”

“Yes, and give one to Granny,” Hazel said. And although Mrs. Tyler protested, Granny’s present, carefully packed in many rolls of tissue paper, was her daughter-in-law’s picture tastefully framed.

Hazel could not decide, even to the day of departure, whether she should give it to Granny on her arrival or should wait until Christmas.

One day her minister climbed the tenement stairs and called upon her and her mother. The trunk was in the parlor and he examined with deep interest the contents that Hazel showed him. Especially he admired the pink sun-bonnet.

“You must wear it to church next summer,” he said. “Only I should look at it so much I might forget to preach my sermon.”

He encouraged Mrs. Tyler in what she was doing. “It will be the making of the child,” he assured her. “I’ve lived a little in that country and I know how healthful it is.”

At parting he placed a package shaped like a book in Hazel’s hands. “This is for Christmas,” he said; and taking a pencil from his pocket, he wrote in big letters, “Not to be opened until Christmas.”

Hazel gave him a kiss, and holding the book declared, “I will keep it sacredly until Christmas.”

She walked down the stairs with him. “You’ll take good care of my mother at the church, won’t you?” she asked, squeezing his hand, “She works so hard. She says she’s saving to send me to college, and now I’ll lose a whole year at school. It troubles me.”

“Why, it mustn’t trouble you, little girl,” said the minister. They reached the street and he looked down at her anxious face. “We will look after your mother. The ladies will see that she gets work. That is the only way that we can help her, for she will take nothing that she does not earn.”

Then he raised his hat and bade the child good-bye.

It was nearing the time of departure—Thursday, and the ship sailed Saturday. The trunk was packed for the last time, with Mrs. Tyler’s gifts, a box of writing-paper and a dictionary, on top.

“I hope you will write me a little every day, Hazel,” her mother said. “It will be good practice for you. Mail the letters once or twice a week, but write a little every day.”

“It will be like a diary,” said Hazel.

“Yes, dear.”

“And you’ll write often to me, Mother, won’t you?”

“I’ll write often, but you will write without waiting for an answer. That will be your gift to me.”

The days were so full that Hazel had not much time to think of the Southland to which she was going; but at odd minutes she questioned what it might be like. She had traveled no further from Boston than neighboring seashore resorts, and until her father’s death she had seen little of any but refined people, white or colored.

“Charity,” she said, Friday night, “I’ve been saying good-bye to the McGinnis’s baby. He is so dear and dimpled and rosy. Are there many white babies South?”

“Sure,” answered Charity. “But don’t you have nothing to do with white folks. There’s two kinds of white folks down there: those that hates you and those that calls you ‘a cute little nigger.’ My mother says that ain’t so, for she knows the first families of Virginia, but I ain’t acquainted with ’em.”

“My father used to tell about white people near his home who were nice,” said Hazel reflectively.

“Poor white trash, I guess. There ain’t any first families in Alabama.”

That night, before they went to bed, Hazel questioned her mother about the white folks.

“Won’t they like me?” she said. “Will they call out ‘Nigger,’ the way the boys on Shawmut Avenue do to Charity?”

“I don’t know, dear, I don’t know. Granny can help you about that, not I. But I would not bother with them, Hazel. They go their way and you go yours. On the steamer, in the train, at the church and at school—everywhere you will be separated. Their world will not be your world. Leave them alone.”

“I will remember,” Hazel said softly.

The kind world that she had known seemed slipping away from her. She held her mother’s hand tight.

“I will be with the colored people,” she said, “and I will love Granny.”

“And when night comes, Hazel, remember we shall both be saying our prayers to the same Father in Heaven. I shall ask him to bless you.”

“And I to bless you, Mother dear.”

“And when I look at the stars at night I shall know that the same stars shine on you, only you will see the huge heavens and I shall only see a piece from my city window.”

“And the stars shine on Father, too,” said Hazel. “I think he sees the stars.”

With this thought she went to bed and, after a little, fell asleep, but her mother lay awake the night long.

The last present came as they stood on the steamer. Mr. Perkins brought it to her and demanded and received six hugs in thanks. It was a soft woolen coat, blue outside and red within, finer than anything Hazel had ever owned.

“It’s to keep your heart warm for your old friend,” Mr. Perkins said, as he buttoned it about her. “Take very good care of her, Mrs. Graham;” he spoke earnestly to the woman at Hazel’s side. “Don’t let her from your sight.”

“I’ll be mighty careful,” Mrs. Graham answered.

Then the bell rang and visitors were ordered ashore.

Hazel gave her mother one more kiss. “I’ll be back soon,” she whispered.

Mrs. Tyler did not try to answer; but her last look was at a shy, brave little girl in a new blue coat, going out into an unknown, untried world.