Several days later, when Sandy took out of his pocket the piece of paper that his Aunt Harriett had given him that day in front of the hotel, he noticed that the address written on it was somewhere in the Bottoms. He felt vaguely worried, so he did not show it to his grandmother, because he had often heard her say that the Bottoms was a bad place. And when he was working at the barbershop, he had heard the men talking about what went on there⁠—and in a sense he knew what they meant.

It was a gay place⁠—people did what they wanted to, or what they had to do, and didn’t care⁠—for in the Bottoms folks ceased to struggle against the boundaries between good and bad, or white and black, and surrendered amiably to immorality. Beyond Pearl Street, across the tracks, people of all colors came together for the sake of joy, the curtains being drawn only between themselves and the opposite side of the railroad, where the churches were and the big white Y.M.C.A.

At night in the Bottoms victrolas moaned and banjos cried ecstatically in the darkness. Summer evenings little yellow and brown and black girls in pink or blue bungalow aprons laughed invitingly in doorways, and dice rattled with the staccato gaiety of jazz music on long tables in rear rooms. Pimps played pool; bootleggers lounged in big red cars; children ran in the streets until midnight, with no voice of parental authority forcing them to an early sleep; young blacks fought like cocks and enjoyed it; white boys walked through the streets winking at colored girls; men came in autos; old women ate pigs’ feet and watermelon and drank beer; whisky flowed; gin was like water; soft indolent laughter didn’t care about anything; and deep nigger-throated voices that had long ago stopped rebelling against the ways of this world rose in song.

To those who lived on the other side of the railroad and never realized the utter stupidity of the word “sin,” the Bottoms was vile and wicked. But to the girls who lived there, and the boys who pimped and fought and sold licker there, “sin” was a silly word that did not enter their heads. They had never looked at life through the spectacles of the Sunday School. The glasses good people wore wouldn’t have fitted their eyes, for they hung no curtain of words between themselves and reality. To them, things were⁠—what they were.

Ma bed is hard, but I’m layin’ in it jest de same!

sang the raucous-throated blues-singer in her song;

Hey!⁠ ⁠… Hey! Who wants to lay with me?

It was to one of these streets in the Bottoms that Sandy came breathlessly one bright morning with a note in his hand. He knocked at the door of a big grey house.

“Is this where Harriett Williams lives?” he panted.

“You means Harrietta?” said a large, sleek yellow woman in a blue silk kimono who opened the door. “Come in, baby, and sit down. I’ll see if she’s up yet.” Then the woman left Sandy in the parlor while she went up the stairs calling his aunt in a clear, lazy voice.

There were heavy velvet draperies at the windows and doors in this front room where Sandy sat, and a thick, well-worn rug on the floor. There was a divan, a davenport covered with pillows, a center table, and several chairs. Through the curtains at the double door leading into the next room, Sandy saw a piano, more sofas and chairs, and a cleared oiled floor that might be used for dancing. Both rooms were in great disorder, and the air in the house smelled stale and beerish. Licker-bottles and ginger-ale bottles were underneath the center table, underneath the sofas, and on top of the piano. Ashtrays were everywhere, overflowing with cigar-butts and cigarette-ends⁠—on the floor, under chairs, overturned among the sofa-pillows. A small brass tray under one of the sofas held a half-dozen small glasses, some of them still partly full of whisky or gin.

Sandy sat down to wait for his aunt. It was very quiet in the house, although it was almost ten o’clock. A man came down the stairs with his coat on his arm, blinking sleepily. He passed through the hall and out into the street. Bedroom-slippered feet shuffled to the head of the steps on the second floor, and the lazy woman’s voice called: “She’ll be down in a minute, darling. Just wait there.”

Sandy waited. He heard the splash of water above and the hoarse gurgling of a bathtub being emptied. Presently Harriett appeared in a little pink wash dress such as a child wears, the skirt striking her just above the knees. She smelled like cashmere-bouquet soap, and her face was not yet powdered, nor her hair done up, but she was smiling broadly, happy to see her nephew, as her arms went round his neck.

“My! I’m glad to see you, honey! How’d you happen to come? How’d you find me?”

“Grandma’s sick,” said Sandy. “She’s awful sick and Aunt Tempy sent you this note.”

The girl opened the letter. It read:

Your mother is not expected to live. You better come to see her since she has asked for you. Tempy.

“O!⁠ ⁠… Wait a minute,” said Harriett softly. “I’ll hurry.”

Sandy sat down again in the room full of ashtrays and licker-bottles. Many feet pattered upstairs, and, as doors opened and closed, women’s voices were heard: “Can I help you, girlie? Can I lend you anything? Does you need a veil?”

When Harriett came down she was wearing a tan coat-suit and a white turban pulled tight on her head. Her face was powdered and her lips rouged ever so slightly. The bag she carried was beaded, blue and gold.

“Come on, Sandy,” she said. “I guess I’m ready.”

As they went out, they heard a man’s voice in a shabby house across the street singing softly to a two-finger piano accompaniment:

Sugar babe, I’m leavin’
An’ it won’t be long.⁠ ⁠…

While outside, on his front doorstep, two nappy-headed little yellow kids were solemnly balling-the-jack.

Two days before, Sandy had come home from school and found his grandmother lying across the bed, the full tubs still standing in the kitchen, her clothes not yet hung out to dry.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“I’s washed down, chile,” said the old woman, panting. “I feels kinder tired-like, that’s all.”

But Sandy knew that there must be something else wrong with Aunt Hager, because he had never seen her lying on the bed in broad daylight, with her clothes still in the tubs.

“Does your back ache?” asked the child.

“I does feel a little misery,” sighed Aunt Hager. “But seems to be mo’ ma side an’ not ma back this time. But ’tain’t nothin’. I’s just tired.”

But Sandy was scared. “You want some soda and water, grandma?”

“No, honey.” Then, in her usual tones of assumed anger: “Go on away from here an’ let a body rest. Ain’t I told you they ain’t nothin’ the matter ’ceptin’ I’s all washed out an’ just got to lay down a minute? Go on an’ fetch in yo’ wood⁠ ⁠… an’ spin yo’ top out yonder with Buster and them. Go on!”

It was nearly five o’clock when the boy came in again. Aunt Hager was sitting in the rocker near the stove then, her face drawn and ashy. She had been trying to finish her washing.

“Chile, go get Sister Johnson an’ ask her if she can’t wring out ma clothes fo’ me⁠—Mis’ Dunset ain’t sent much washin’ this week, an’ you can help her hang ’em up. I reckon it ain’t gonna rain tonight, so’s they can dry befo’ mawnin’.”

Sandy ran towards the door.

“Now, don’t butt your brains out!” said the old lady. “Ain’t no need o’ runnin’.”

Not only did Sister Johnson come at once and hang out the washing, but she made Hager get in bed, with a hot-water bottle on her paining side. And she gave her a big dose of peppermint and water.

“I ’spects it’s from yo’ stomick,” she said. “I knows you et cabbage fo’ dinner!”

“Maybe ’tis,” said Hager.

Sister Johnson took Sandy to her house for supper that evening and he and Willie-Mae ate five sweet potatoes each.

“You-all gwine bust!” said Tom Johnson.

About nine o’clock the boy went to bed with his grandmother, and all that night Hager tossed and groaned, in spite of her efforts to lie quiet and not keep Sandy awake. In the morning she said: “Son, I reckon you better stay home from school, ’cause I’s feelin’ mighty po’ly. Seems like that cabbage ain’t digested yet. Feels like I done et a stone.⁠ ⁠… Go see if you can’t make de fire up an’ heat me a cup o’ hot water.”

About eleven o’clock Madam de Carter came over. “I thought I didn’t perceive you nowhere in the yard this morning and the sun ’luminating so bright and cheerful. You ain’t indispensed, are you? Sandy said you was kinder ill.” She chattered away. “You know it don’t look natural not to see you hanging out clothes long before the noon comes.”

“I ain’t well a-tall this mawnin’,” said Hager when she got a chance to speak. “I’s feelin’ right bad. I suffers with a pain in ma side; seems like it ain’t gettin’ no better. Sister Johnson just left here from rubbin’ it, but I still suffers terrible an’ can’t eat nothin’.⁠ ⁠… You can use de phone, can’t you, Sister Carter?”

“Why, yes! Yes indeedy! I oftens phones from over to Mis’ Petit’s. You think you needs a physicianer?”

In spite of herself a groan came from the old woman’s lips as she tried to turn towards her friend. Aunt Hager, who had never moaned for lesser hurts, did not intend to complain over this one⁠—but the pain!

“It’s cuttin’ me in two.” She gasped. “Send fo’ old Doc McDillors an’ he’ll come.”

Madam de Carter, proud and important at the prospect of using her white neighbor’s phone, rushed away.

“I didn’t know you were so sick, grandma!” Sandy’s eyes were wide with fright and sympathy. “I’m gonna get Mis’ Johnson to come rub you again.”

“O!⁠ ⁠… O, ma Lawd, help!” Alone for a moment with no one to hear her, she couldn’t hold back the moans any longer. A cold sweat stood on her forehead.

The doctor came⁠—the kind old white man who had known Hager for years and in whom she had faith.

“Well,” he said, “it’s quite a surprise to see you in bed, Aunty.” Then, looking very serious and professional, he took her pulse.

“Go out and close the door,” he said gently to Madam de Carter and Sister Johnson, Willie-Mae and Sandy, all of whom had gathered around the bed in the little room. “Somebody heat some water.” He turned back the quilts from the woman’s body and unbuttoned her gown.

Ten minutes later he said frankly, but with great kindness in his tones: “You’re a sick woman, Hager, a very sick woman.”

That afternoon Tempy came, like a stranger to the house, and took charge of things. Sandy felt uncomfortable and shy in her presence. This aunt of his had a hard, cold, correct way of talking that resembled Mrs. Rice’s manner of speaking to his mother when Annjee used to work there. But Tempy quickly put the house in order, bathed her mother, and spread the bed with clean sheets and a white counterpane. Before evening, members of Hager’s lodge began to drop in bringing soups and custards. White people of the neighborhood stopped, too, to inquire if there was anything they could do for the old woman who had so often waited on them in their illnesses. About six o’clock old man Logan drove up the alley and tied his white mule to the back fence.

The sun was setting when Tempy called Sandy in from the backyard, where he was chopping wood for the stove. She said: “James”⁠—how queerly his correct name struck his ears as it fell from the lips of this cold aunt!⁠—“James, you had better send this telegram to your mother. Now, here is a dollar bill and you can bring back the change. Look on her last letter and get the correct address.”

Sandy took the written sheet of paper and the money that his aunt gave him. Then he looked through the various drawers in the house for his mother’s last letter. It had been nearly a month since they had heard from her, but finally the boy found the letter in the cupboard, under a jelly-glass full of small coins that his grandmother kept there. He carried the envelope with him to the telegraph office, and there he paid for a message to Annjee in Detroit:

Mother very sick, come at once. Tempy.

As the boy walked home in the gathering dusk, he felt strangely alone in the world, as though Aunt Hager had already gone away, and when he reached the house, it was full of lodge members who had come to keep watch. Tempy went home, but Sister Johnson remained in the sickroom, changing the hot-water bottles and administering, every three hours, the medicine the doctor had left.

There were so many people in the house that Sandy came out into the backyard and sat down on the edge of the well. It was cool and clear, and a slit of moon rode in a light-blue sky spangled with stars. Soon the apple-trees would bud and the grass would be growing. Sandy was a big boy. When his next birthday came, he would be fourteen, and he had begun to grow tall and heavy. Aunt Hager said she was going to buy him a pair of long pants this coming summer. And his mother would hardly know him when she saw him again, if she ever came home.

Tonight inside, there were so many old sisters from the lodge that Sandy couldn’t even talk to his grandmother while she lay in bed. They were constantly going in and out of the sickroom, drinking coffee in the kitchen, or gossiping in the parlor. He wished they would all go away. He could take care of his grandmother himself until she got well⁠—he and Sister Johnson. They didn’t even need Tempy, who, he felt, shouldn’t be there, because he didn’t like her.

“They callin’ you inside,” Willie-Mae came out to tell him as he sat by himself in the cold on the edge of the well. She was taller than Sandy now and had a regular job taking care of a white lady’s baby. She no longer wore her hair in braids. She did it up, and she had a big leather pocketbook that she carried on her arm like a woman. Boys came to take her to the movies on Saturday nights. “They want you inside.”

Sandy got up, his legs stiff and numb, and went into the kitchen. An elderly brown woman, dressed in black silk that swished as she moved, opened the door to Hager’s bedroom and whispered to him loudly: “Be quiet, chile.”

Sandy entered between a lane of old women. Hager looked up at him and smiled⁠—so grave and solemn he appeared.

“Is they takin’ care o’ you?” she asked weakly. “Ain’t it bedtime, honey? Is you had something to eat? Come on an’ kiss yo’ old grandma befo’ you go to sleep. She’ll be better in de mawnin’.”

She couldn’t seem to lift her head, so Sandy sat down on the bed and kissed her. All he said was: “I’m all right, grandma,” because there were so many old women in there that he couldn’t talk. Then he went out into the other room.

The air in the house was close and stuffy and the boy soon became groggy with sleep. He fell across the bed that had been Annjee’s, and later Dogberry’s, with all his clothes on. One of the lodge women in the room said: “You better take off yo’ things, chile, an’ go to sleep right.” Then she said to the other sisters: “Come on in de kitchen, you-all, an’ let this chile go to bed.”

In the morning Tempy woke him. “Are you sure you had Annjee’s address correct last night?” she demanded. “The telegraph office says she couldn’t be found, so the message was not delivered. Let me see the letter.”

Sandy found the letter again, and the address was verified.

“Well, that’s strange,” said Tempy. “I suppose, as careless and irresponsible as Jimboy is, they’ve got it wrong, or else moved.⁠ ⁠… Do you know where Harriett can be? I don’t suppose you do, but mother has been calling for her all night. I suppose we’ll have to try to get her, wherever she is.”

“I got her address,” said Sandy. “She wrote it down for me when I was working at the hotel this winter. I can find her.”

“Then I’ll give you a note,” said Tempy. “Take it to her.”

So Sandy went to the big grey house in the Bottoms that morning to deliver Tempy’s message, before the girls there had risen from their beds.