Not Without Laughter by Langston Hughes

Throw yo' arms around me, baby.

Like de circle round de sun!

Baby, throw yo' arms around me Like de circle round de sun, An' tell yo' pretty papa How you want yo' lovin' done!

Jimboy was home. All the neighborhood could hear his rich low baritone voice giving birth to the blues. On Saturday night he and Annjee went to bed early. On Sunday night Aunt Hager said: "Put that guitar right up, less'n it's hymns you plans on playin'. An' I don't want too much o' them, 'larmin' de white neighbors."

But this was Monday, and the sun had scarcely fallen below the horizon before the music had begun to float down the alley, over back fences and into kitchen-windows where nice white ladies sedately washed their supper dishes.

Did you ever see peaches Growin' on a watermelon vine?

Says did you ever see peaches On a watermelon vine?

Did you ever see a woman That I couldn't get for mine?

Long, lazy length resting on the kitchen-door-sill, back against the jamb, feet in the yard, fingers picking his sweet guitar, left hand holding against its fingerboard the back of an old pocketknife, sliding the knife upward, downward, getting thus weird croons and sighs from the vibrating strings:

O, I left ma mother An' I cert'ly can leave you.

Indeed I left ma mother An' I cert'ly can leave you, For I'd leave any woman That mistreats me like you do.

Jimboy, remembering brown-skin mamas in Natchez, Shreveport, Dallas; remembering Creole women in Baton Rouge, Louisiana:

O, yo' windin' an' yo' grindin'

Don't have no effect on me, Babe, yo' windin' an' yo' grindin'

Don't have no 'fect on me, 'Cause I can wind an' grind Like a monkey round a coconut-tree!

Then Harriett, standing under the ripening apple-tree, in the backyard, chiming in:

Now I see that you don't want me, So it's fare thee, fare thee well!

Lawd, I see that you don't want me, So it's fare -- thee -- well!

I can still get plenty lovin'.

An' you can go to -- Kansas City!