LEAVE TAKING
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.