Not Without Laughter

Sandy is stricken with mumps shortly after moving in with Tempy, so he has to stay home for three weeks. During this time, he reads the many books and magazines in the house, including The Crisis (the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, an early civil rights organization).

For the first time, Sandy is exposed to the writing of W. E. B. DuBois, the magazine's editor and an eloquent writer whose work about African Americans' aspirations stirs something in Sandy. Tempy tells Sandy that DuBois is a great man. When Sandy asks if he is a great man like Booker T. Washington, Tempy dismisses Washington as a "white folks' nigger" whose emphasis on labor as the path to African-American uplift was cowardly (175). DuBois, a well-traveled intellectual who studied in Europe, is a better model for greatness, she tells Sandy.

While Sandy's initial impulse is to explain that Aunt Hager thought Washington was a great man, he stops himself. Perhaps, he thinks, Aunt Tempy is right. DuBois's writing is so stirring that Sandy can't help but admire DuBois. Months later, after reading Washington's autobiography Up from Slavery, he decides that Hager had been right after all about the man's greatness.

Sandy gains access to even more material after taking a job in a gift and printing shop run by Mr. Prentiss. He is exposed to the work of modern poets like Carl Sandburg, whose poetry shocked the older generation but is the subject of study by the young people of the town. Mr. Prentiss's daughter, a college student, lets Sandy borrow cutting edge work despite the fact that most of it is too mature for a boy of fourteen.

At school, Sandy takes the more challenging classical curriculum and is exposed to the work of Shakespeare. He even becomes the first African-American student to win a scholarly prize when his freshman essay takes second place.

Sandy is growing rapidly. Tempy usually keeps him at home during this period, although Sandy is sometimes able to see his old friends Willie Mae and Jimmy Lane, both of whom are now working. Hager's house, left to Tempy, is now rented out to a strange family. Sandy also develops a crush on Pansetta Young, a pretty young woman whose is frequently alone because her mother works and she has no siblings. Despite his protests when Buster teases him about her, Sandy’s relationship with her develops as the two walk home from school together and exchange gifts on holidays. 

After Buster teases Sandy about being under Tempy’s thumb, Sandy agrees to go to Cudge Windsor’s pool hall and lunchroom, the only social spaces for African-American teens in the segregated town. Although it is on Pearl Street just on the edge of the Bottoms, the pool hall, in particular, has a reputation for being a disreputable place avoided by Tempy’s social circle.

After months of a quiet, restricted life at Tempy’s house, Sandy enjoys the easy ways of people at Cudge’s. Part of the reason the place is so lively is that out-of- town travelers frequently stop there, bringing stories and songs of their lives on the road with them. Although the interactions among patrons sometimes seem to threaten an outbreak of violence, the fights never come. Instead, "these black men laughed. That must be the reason, thought Sandy, why poverty-stricken old Negroes like Uncle Dan Givens lived so long—because to them, no matter how hard life might be, it was not without laughter" (180).

Uncle Dan’s unbelievable tales are so enjoyed at Cudge’s that the old man is frequently able to earn a free lunch or a drink there with his stories. Old Dan tells them one afternoon, for example, that during slavery, his owners used him to father slave children. Before the Civil War, he fathered forty-nine children, with thirty-three of them being boys, and outlived all of the ones he kept track of after Emancipation.

He also tells the boys about riding his master’s horse to death one night when he and a friend sneak off to go to a dance. He claims they carried the dead horse all the way back to the master’s barn so as not to be punished. A gambler on a winning streak buys Old Dan a meal after hearing his story.

Sandy reads the Chicago Defender. There is a story about the lynching of an African-American boy, a race riot, and (to his surprise) the success of a Chicago musical act that includes Harriet and Stanton local Billy Sanderlee on the piano. Buster remembers how well Harriet sings when he sees the article, but the gambler who bought Old Dan’s lunch makes a sexually suggestive remark about her.

During Sandy’s second year of high school, Aunt Tempy is busy supporting the war effort by volunteering. She believes that African Americans’ support for the war effort will gain African Americans a greater degree of respect from whites. The war hits close to home when they receive a letter from Annjee. She writes that Jimboy, who enlisted, has been deployed to France; she has not heard from Jimboy for a while and is so worried that she wants Sandy by her side in Chicago.

Aunt Tempy ends discussion about the letter by scolding Sandy for not reading as much as he used to and for staying out late. She believes he is lying to her about going to the movies on all those nights. Mr. Siles interjects by reminding her that boys need to get out more than when the two of them were young, but she reminds him that she is raising her nephew. Sandy tells his aunt that he still manages to get his studying done. He does so by staying up late.

Buster and Jimmy Lane frequently tease him about thinking too much and being too smart. If he doesn’t stop, they warn, he will turn into a sickly college boy or be like the Episcopalian rector, a smart but physically unimpressive African-American man.

Buster tells them he is not worried about being smart because his plan is to pass for white; Sandy takes him seriously because he knows about Buster’s single mindedness and certainty. Sandy, for his part, feels uncertain about most things, including the movement of his country into World War I, the separation between the races, and the apparent immorality of desiring women. He even thinks about marrying Pansetta or (more frequently) being with her physically.

Tempy had introduced him to the Christian perspective on sex (don’t have it) by giving him The Doors of Life, a book about life and sex for teens, written by an older white minister. Sandy has a hard time reconciling the advice in the book with what little he knows of sex, love, marriage, and morality. Even the people who are supposed to be examples—people like Tempy’s friends—are not much fun when compared to the people he knows from Cudge’s. Sandy wonders if the great men like Washington and DuBois were like Tempy’s friends.

Sandy also questions whether being smart and going to school is even worth it since all opportunities are reserved for whites. Perhaps Buster’s desire to pass for white makes sense after all. At times, Sandy hates white people, although he has encountered some good white people such as his teachers and Mr. Prentiss. As Sandy thinks about the lack of opportunity for African Americans, he feels so angry that he curses The Doors of Life. The author knows nothing of what people like Sandy face. The doors of life are different for African Americans.

Tempy gives Sandy a tongue-lashing when she discovers that he has been hanging out at the pool hall and getting to work late at Mr. Prentiss’s shop. Even worse from her perspective is that he has been seen out walking with Pansetta, whom Tempy considers to be not worthy of Tempy's social circle because her mother, who works, leaves her unchaperoned all day. Mr. Siles tells Sandy to "beware of women," while Tempy accuses Sandy of "acting just like a nigger" by socializing with Pansetta (190). If he doesn't correct his behavior, Tempy predicts, Pansetta will get in trouble and name Sandy as the father of her child since girls like her like to trap young men who seem to be on their way up in the world.

Sandy is angered and confused by these accusations. He doesn't understand why Tempy believes such negative things about Pansetta or what Tempy means by getting into trouble with Pansetta. Because of the scanty information in The Doors of Life, Sandy is not even sure how getting into trouble could lead to having a baby. All he has done so far with her is to walk with her and kiss her (she is a good kisser, in fact). Sandy enjoys his time with Pansetta and his friends, but he finds the company of respectable African Americans, people who do things like listen to opera records in languages they don't event speak, boring.

For just a moment, Sandy allows himself to believe Tempy's ugly accusations about Pansetta. Sandy knows that he wants to go to Chicago where his mother is and even travel the world before he settles down, so there is no way he will allow himself to be trapped in the way Tempy predicts. Sandy remembers that Buster has also said that Pansetta might be promiscuous. Maybe, Sandy thinks, he should stop walking with her.

Sandy decides to stop socializing in the pool hall as much, to study more, and to save up money so he can go to his mother next summer. One of his last thoughts that night is that he wishes he had a brother to talk to so he wouldn't be inside of his own head so much. He plans to have lots of children one day so they won't grow up as he did—an only child.

The next day, Sandy walks Pansetta home but (as usual) won't go home with her. She tells him that she passed up walking with Jimmy (who is a bellhop and makes more money than Sandy) because Sandy was supposed to be taking her home; Jimmy has no idea, she says, that Sandy never actually goes into her house, though.

After that, the two teens stop walking even part of the way to Pansetta's house, and Pansetta is the center of many boys' attention. Sandy is saddened and angered by this change. Pansetta is still kind to him when they meet, but their interactions are cool and "impersonal"(194). Sandy begins to regret listening to Tempy and allowing himself to be swayed by her snobbishness.

One day at work, he is so overcome with regret that he drops what he is doing and rushes over to Pansetta's house. When he arrives, however, Jimmy Lane is there, and it is clear that Jimmy and Pansetta have been making out. Jimmy is late for work and walks out with Sandy after kissing Pansetta goodbye. As they walk, Jimmy talks freely with Sandy about how much he enjoys sex with Pansetta. When a surprised Sandy says he was never with Pansetta in that way, Jimmy accuses him of lying since he knows how promiscuous Pansetta is.