Hazel

When Hazel awoke the next morning her grandmother was up and dressed, and moving about the room. The child watched her unobserved.

Here was someone quite different from any of the people Hazel had known. Until she moved to Hammond Street she had met only the small class of business and professional colored people of her city. These men and women dressed and acted like the cultivated white people about them. Their view-point was that of their New England white neighbors; and their children, who were educated with white children, were staunch little New Englanders, with the same speech, the same dress, the same ambitions as their white schoolmates. On Hammond Street colored people were different. But then, they were poor, and did not have time for the niceties of life. But no one she had known in Jamaica Plains or in the South End was in the least like this grandmother.

The first thing Hazel noted was her strength. She had felt it the night before when she had snuggled up against the old woman’s breast, and she felt it this morning as she watched her move about the room lifting the full kettle as though it were made of tin, not of iron. And yet the hair that the child could see under the turban was grey, and the face bore many wrinkles.

She was dressed as though she had come out of a story book. On her head was a turban of a rich, deep red, and about her neck was a gay bandanna; her calico dress, faded now, still showed its red stripes on a grey background. Her dark brown face with its big features was alight with expression. She was looking toward the bed and Hazel shut her eyes.

She opened them in a few seconds and began to study the room. Here again was something quite outside her experience. It was large and the walls were of wood, but partly covered with pictures, photographs in frames, postal cards, illustrations cut from newspapers. On the bureau was her picture, taken when she was a baby.

One end of the room was the kitchen, where there were shelves with pots and pans and glasses filled with delicious-looking jelly. There was a sideboard full of china, and a table which Granny was setting for breakfast. And last, the room was full of a delicious fragrance, the odor of wood smoke.

Granny looked over again, and nodded.

“I see you’s awake, sugar,” she said, “Getting acquainted with the new room and them as is in it. Run and dress now or the breakfast will spoil.”

Hazel scampered into her room where everything was in readiness for her. The little trunk had been moved in, the pitcher was filled with water, and the roses she had brought were in a glass on the bureau. She dressed carefully, putting on the blue gingham that showed her slender prettiness. Granny looked approval as she came in to breakfast.

After breakfast the trunk was unpacked. Granny was full of praise of the photograph that brought her daughter home to her, and wanted to see again and again the pretty gifts that Hazel had received from her friends. Then everything was put in place, the trunk was stowed under the bed and Hazel put on her pink sun-bonnet and went out-of-doors.

The morning was warm, and though it was December she had no need of a coat. Granny’s house was fenced in and within the enclosure was her garden and a little outhouse in which was a small cooking-stove and a loom. The garden showed a few late vegetables and in the front of the house roses climbed upon the porch, and grew in tall bushes by the fence.

The landscape dipped at the back of the cabin, and Hazel looked over fields of corn and stubble and dry cotton stalks. A number of cabins were dotted about among the fields. In front, across the road, was a hill, half covered with pines. No house was visible from the road, but among the pines, to the left, was a chimney from which smoke issued. Hazel felt that she was a long way from trolley and library, from rattling carts and loud-voiced children, from school and playground.

Dinner-time came; and after dinner there was a long letter to write to Mother who had learned of the journey only on hurriedly written post-cards. But while the child kept busy, the day was tedious to her and she was glad with the coming of the night to seek her little room, grown familiar now. What, she wondered, would she do in the many days that stretched before her? How could she ever occupy herself until the summer came?

The week that followed was the longest that Hazel had ever known. Accustomed as she was to regular hours for school and play and home-work she now found the time from breakfast to supper very hard to fill. And Granny did not help her much. She was watching the little girl, “studying” she would have said. So Hazel wandered about somewhat aimlessly, and yet gradually learned to enjoy her new surroundings.

Her first acquaintances were the hens.

“Look, Granny,” she cried one morning. “I’ve found an egg!” and she held up her treasure.

“You has, sugar, sure enough. I just naturally overlooked that egg this morning. That white hen always done find a new place to hide from me.”

“Perhaps I can find more eggs,” Hazel thought, and hunted assiduously, but without success. She grew fond, however, of the clucking creatures, and often fed them from the food left on her plate.

Her grandmother had a flock of turkeys, and their wanderings lead Hazel on many a pleasant walk. She did not like to go out of sight of her home, but when the turkeys turned to the pines across the road she loved to follow them over the pine-cones among the trees. Here she would sit and watch the smoke as it curled from Granny’s chimney, and would listen to the monotonous soughing of the wind among the pines.

But there was a serpent in this garden; it went on four legs and grunted and was dirty and disgusting. Hazel had seen pigs in a pig-pen in Massachusetts, but here in Alabama they had the freedom of the road. She soon realized why the garden was fenced in. In the North you imprisoned your live stock; but in the South you let them loose and enclosed with picket-fence your house and garden. This was very nice for the animals but not so nice for timid little girls. Hens, turkeys, cows, pigs, all roamed at will. The few cows that Hazel met were thin and spiritless, and she did not fear them much; but when the inquisitive pig came near to where she sat, she jumped up and scurried away. Such great ugly creatures, rightly called hogs! So out-of-doors, save in the narrow garden enclosure, had its drawbacks.

Granny, Hazel found, was an important person in the neighborhood. No one went by her porch without a word of welcome. If she were about, Granny would call to her, and ask her to come and meet Uncle Silas, or Aunt Harriet, or whoever the visitor might be. She was not especially attracted by these people who took a long time to say that the weather was fine, or to ask how Granny’s hens were laying. She answered their questions, but she did not volunteer any information.

One day two white ladies, for whom Granny sometimes did laundry work, stopped as they drove by in their buggy. They saw Hazel, and at once began to question her. They wanted to know why she had come to Alabama, how she got there, and asked her many details of her life at home. When they left Hazel turned somewhat excitedly to her grandmother.

“Why do they say such things to me?” she asked. “My mother, if she went to see them, wouldn’t ask about every teenty thing they did.

“‘Is your pa living?’

“‘What does your ma do?’

“‘How is she buying you such clothes?’

“‘How long have you been to school?’

“‘Are you reckoning to stay here this winter?’

“‘Are you working for Aunt Ellen?’

“Just like that, Granny.”

Granny gave one of her big laughs, and sat down with Hazel on the steps.

“These people here are just naturally curious, sugar. Don’t you get put out at ’em. I knows the proper city manners. If old man Lee above here should drink himself to death with whiskey, or old mammy Smith down below should burn up in her house, you city folks ’ud just inquire, polite-like, the next time you met one of the family, ‘I heard you-all met with an accident, I’m so sorry. I hope you-all is doing well now.’ But we hasn’t city manners down here. Nothing much happens except the hoeing of the corn and the picking of the cotton; and when a little girl with soft eyes and a pretty dress and sweet ways comes among us, we’s just naturally curious. We wants to see her and learn all about it.”

Hazel laughed, but she still criticized the visitors. “They weren’t pretty or well-dressed and they made mistakes the teacher corrects us for at school. Were they first families?”

Granny looked mystified.

She still picked her cotton in the autumn and planted it in the spring

“Charity, you know I’ve told you about Charity, said all the nice white people in the South were first families. She said there were lots of them in Virginia but she guessed there weren’t any in Alabama.”

Granny answered more gravely than before, “There’s first families everywhere, child, but its like the Scriptures, some of them as thinks they’re first will be last; and the last, as thinks they’re no account, will be first. By their fruits you shall know them; by their charity and kindness. And it’s soon, dearie, for you to be judging them by their fruits.”

If Hazel had little to busy herself with, she saw that Granny was rarely idle. The old woman never hurried, and was ready to stop and speak to the passing neighbor, but when the day was done she had accomplished a great deal. She still picked her cotton in the autumn and planted it in the spring; but now she was busy about her house, her laundry, her poultry, her spinning-wheel and loom. For she was one of the very few old people left who spun and wove, and travelers from many parts of the country had bits of her handiwork. Hazel watched her spinning with wide eyes. One day she asked timidly if she might learn.

“I’s right glad to teach you, honey,” was the answer. “The children about here thinks they’s above learning to spin.”

“I don’t,” said Hazel, and took her place at the wheel.

And now the days grew less long and were full of pleasant anticipation. In the morning, before breakfast, she hunted eggs. After breakfast was over, she put her room in order and helped Granny with the dishes, and then she turned to her spinning. She soon became expert at twisting the thread, and grew so interested that Granny sometimes had to send her away to play. Before dinner, she went among the pines and practised gymnastic exercises that she had learned at school. She was a conscientious little body; and having come South to get well, did all that she knew to bring about the desired result.

“If I am to get home,” she would argue to herself, “I must grow stronger every day;” and swinging wide her arms, she would take deep breaths of the delicious air.

In the afternoon she would write to her mother, and later she and Granny would often take a walk across the bare fields, occasionally stopping at a neighbor’s cottage. Hazel would look shyly at the barefooted, barelegged little black children, but she could not think of anything to say to them, and they in their turn only stared.

When dusk came she would watch the turkeys as they went to roost in the trees. One tree seemed almost full of these strange birds, half wild, half domesticated. In the evening Granny and she would sit before the open fire and tell one another stories. Hazel loved to recite poetry, and Granny never tired of the “Village Blacksmith” and “The little Shadow that goes in and out with me.” Hazel had an odd assortment of poems, among them Whittier’s “Slave Ship” which she recited with great feeling. “Those were dark days,” Granny would say, and then perhaps, to Hazel’s unending delight, would sing, “Let my people go,” or “Oh, freedom over me!” The strange music in the quiet house by the open fire, stirred the child’s heart. Then, when she was safe in bed, Granny would stand near the candle and would make funny figures upon the wall—Brer Rabbit and his numerous family. And with a laugh and a good-night, Hazel would turn over and fall asleep.

So the quiet days went by and brought in the New Year.