HARLEM
II
HARLEM
Emma Lou turned her face away from the wall, and quizzically squinted
her dark, pea-like eyes at the recently closed door. Then, sitting
upright, she strained her ears, trying to hear the familiar squeak of
the impudent floor boards, as John tiptoed down the narrow hallway
toward the outside door. Finally, after she had heard the closing
click of the double-barrelled police lock, she climbed out of the
bed, picked up a brush from the bureau and attempted to smooth the
sensuous disorder of her hair. She had just recently had it bobbed,
boyishly bobbed, because she thought this style narrowed and enhanced
the fulsome lines of her facial features. She was always trying to
emphasize those things about her that seemed, somehow, to atone for her
despised darkness, and she never faced the mirror without speculating
upon how good-looking she might have been had she not been so black.
Mechanically, she continued the brushing of her hair, stopping every
once in a while to give it an affectionate caress. She was intensely
in love with her hair, in love with its electric vibrancy and its
unruly buoyance. Yet, this morning, she was irritated because it seemed
so determined to remain disordered, so determined to remain a stubborn
and unnecessary reminder of the night before. Why, she wondered,
should one’s physical properties always insist upon appearing awry
after a night of stolen or forbidden pleasure? But not being anxious
to find an answer, she dismissed the question from her mind, put on a
stocking-cap, and jumped back into the bed.
She began to think about John, poor John who felt so hurt because she
had told him that he could not spend any more days or nights with her.
She wondered if she should pity him, for she was certain that he would
miss the nights more than he would the days. Yet, she must not be too
harsh in her conclusions, for, after all, there had only been two
nights, which, she smiled to herself, was a pretty good record for a
newcomer to Harlem. She had been in New York now for five weeks, and
it seemed like, well, just a few days. Five weeks--thirty-five days
and thirty-five nights, and of these nights John had had two. And now
he sulked because she would not promise him another; because she had,
in fact, boldly told him that there could be no more between them.
Mischievously, she wished now that she could have seen the expression
on his face, when, after seeming moments of mutual ecstasy, she had
made this cold, manifesto-like announcement. But the room had been
dark, and so was John. Ugh!
She had only written home twice. This, of course, seemed quite all
right to her. She was not concerned about any one there except her
Uncle Joe, and she reasoned that since he was preparing to marry again,
he would be far too busy to think much about her. All that worried her
was the pitiful spectacle of her mother, her uncle, and her cousin
trying to make up lies to tell inquiring friends. Well, she would write
today, that is, if she did not start to work, and she must get up at
eight o’clock--was the alarm set?--and hie herself to an employment
agency. She had only thirty-five dollars left in the bank, and, unless
it was replenished, she might have to rescind her avowals to John in
order to get her room rent paid.
She must go to sleep for another hour, for she wished to look “pert”
when she applied for a job, especially the kind of job she wanted, and
she must get the kind of job she wanted in order to show those people
in Boise and Los Angeles that she had been perfectly justified in
leaving school, home, and all, to come to New York. They all wondered
why she had come. So did she, now that she was here. But at the moment
of leaving she would have gone any place to escape having to remain in
that hateful Southern California college, or having to face the more
dreaded alternative of returning home. Home? It had never been a home.
It did seem strange, this being in Harlem when only a few weeks before
she had been over three thousand miles away. Time and distance--strange
things, immutable, yet conquerable. But was time conquerable? Hadn’t
she read or heard somewhere that all things were subject to time,
even God? Yet, once she was there and now she was here. But even at
that she hadn’t conquered time. What was that line in Cullen’s verse,
“I run, but Time’s abreast with me?” She had only traversed space
and defied distance. This suggested a more banal, if a less arduous
thought tangent. She had defied more than distance, she had defied
parental restraint--still there hadn’t been much of that--friendly
concern--there had been still less of that, and malicious, meddlesome
gossip, of which there had been plenty. And she still found herself
unable to understand why two sets of people in two entirely different
communities should seemingly become almost hysterically excited because
she, a woman of twenty-one, with three years’ college training and
ample sophistication in the ways of sex and self-support, had decided
to take a job as an actress’ maid in order to get to New York. They
had never seemed interested in her before.
Now she wondered why had she been so painfully anxious to come to New
York. She had given as a consoling reason to inquisitive friends and
relatives, school. But she knew too well that she had no intentions
of ever re-entering school. She had had enough of _that_ school in
Los Angeles, and her experiences there, more than anything else, had
caused this foolhardy hegira to Harlem. She had been desperately driven
to escape, and had she not escaped in this manner she might have done
something else much more mad.
Emma Lou closed her eyes once more, and tried to sublimate her mental
reverie into a sleep-inducing lullaby. Most of all, she wanted to
sleep. One had to look “pert” when one sought a job, and she wondered
if eight o’clock would find her looking any more “pert” than she did at
this present moment. What had caused her to urge John to spend what she
knew would be his last night with her when she was so determined to be
at her best the following morning! O, what the hell was the use? She
was going to sleep.
* * * * *
The alarm had not yet rung, but Emma Lou was awakened gradually by the
sizzling and smell of fried and warmed-over breakfast, by the raucous
early morning wranglings and window to window greetings, and by the
almost constant squeak of those impudent hall floor boards as the
various people in her apartment raced one another to the kitchen or to
the bathroom or to the front door. How could Harlem be so happily busy,
so alive and merry at eight o’clock. Eight o’clock? The alarm rang.
Emma Lou scuttled out of the bed and put on her clothes.
An hour later, looking as “pert” as possible, she entered the first
employment agency she came to on 135th Street, between Lenox and
Seventh Avenues. It was her first visit to such an establishment and
she was particularly eager to experience this phase of a working girl’s
life. Her first four weeks in Harlem had convinced her that jobs
were easy to find, for she had noticed that there were three or four
employment agencies to every block in business Harlem. Assuring herself
in this way that she would experience little difficulty in obtaining a
permanent and tasty position, Emma Lou had abruptly informed Mazelle
Lindsay that she was leaving her employ.
“But, child,” her employer had objected, “I feel responsible for you.
Your--your mother! Don’t be preposterous. How can you remain in New
York alone?”
Emma Lou had smiled, asked for her money once more, closed her ears to
all protest, bid the chagrined woman good-bye, and joyously loafed for
a week.
Now, with only thirty-five dollars left in the bank, she thought that
she had best find a job--find a job and then finish seeing New York. Of
course she had seen much already. She had seen John--and he--oh, damn
John, she wanted a job.
“What can I do for you?” the harassed woman at the desk was trying to
be polite.
“I--I want a job.” R-r-ring. The telephone insistently petitioned for
attention, giving Emma Lou a moment of respite, while the machine-like
woman wearily shouted monosyllabic answers into the instrument, and, at
the same time, tried to hush the many loud-mouthed men and women in the
room, all, it seemed, trying to out-talk one another. While waiting,
Emma Lou surveyed her fellow job-seekers. Seedy lot, was her verdict.
Perhaps I should have gone to a more high-toned place. Well, this will
do for the moment.
“What kinda job d’ye want?”
“I prefer,” Emma Lou had rehearsed these lines for a week, “a
stenographic position in some colored business or professional office.”
“’Ny experience?”
“No, but I took two courses in business college, during school
vacations. I have a certificate of competency.”
“’Ny reference?”
“No New York ones.”
“Where’d ya work before?”
“I--I just came to the city.”
“Where’d ya come...?” R-r-ring. The telephone mercifully reiterated its
insistent blare, and, for a moment, kept that pesky woman from droning
out more insulting queries.
“Now,” she had finished again, “where’d ya come from?”
“Los Angeles.”
“Ummm. What other kind of work would ya take?”
“Anything congenial.”
“Waal, what is that, dishwashing, day work, nurse girl?”
Didn’t this damn woman know what congenial meant? And why should a
Jewish woman be in charge of a Negro employment agency in Harlem?
“Waal, girlie, others waiting.”
“I’ll consider anything you may have on hand, if stenographic work is
not available.”
“Wanta work part-time?”
“I’d rather not.”
“Awright. Sit down. I’ll call you in a moment.”
“What can I do for you, young man?” Emma Lou was dismissed.
She looked for a place to sit down, and, finding none, walked across
the narrow room to the window, hoping to get a breath of fresh air, and
at the same time an advantageous position from which to watch the drama
of some one else playing the rôle of a job-seeker.
“R-r-ring.”
“Whadda want? Wait a minute. Oh, Sadie.”
A heavy set, dark-brown-skinned woman, with full, flopping breasts, and
extra wide buttocks, squirmed off a too narrow chair, and bashfully
wobbled up to the desk.
“Wanta’ go to a place on West End Avenue? Part-time cleaning, fifty
cents an hour, nine rooms, yeah? All right? Hello, gotta girl on the
way. ’Bye. Two and a half, Sadie. Here’s the address. Run along now,
don’t idle.”
R-r-ring. “’Lo, yes. What? Come down to the office. I can’t sell jobs
over the wire.”
Emma Lou began to see the humor in this sordid situation, began to see
something extremely comic in all these plaintive, pitiful-appearing
colored folk, some greasy, some neat, some fat, some slim, some brown,
some black (why was there only one mulatto in this crowd?), boys and
men, girls and women, all single-filing up to the desk, laconically
answering laconic questions, impertinently put, showing thanks or
sorrow or indifference, as their cases warranted, paying off promptly,
or else seeking credit, the while the Jewish overseer of the dirty,
dingy office asserted and reasserted her superiority.
Some one on the outside pushed hard on the warped door. Protestingly
it came open, and the small stuffy room was filled with the odor and
presence of a stout, black lady dressed in a greasy gingham housedress,
still damp in the front from splashing dishwater. On her head was a
tight turban, too round for the rather long outlines of her head.
Beneath this turban could be seen short and wiry strands of recently
straightened hair. And her face! Emma Lou sought to observe it more
closely, sought to fathom how so much grease could gather on one
woman’s face. But her head reeled. The room was vile with noise and
heat and body-smells, and this woman----
“Hy, Rosie. Yer late. Got a job for ya.”
The greasy-faced black woman grinned broadly, licked her pork chop lips
and, with a flourish, sat down in an empty chair beside the desk. Emma
Lou stumbled over three pairs of number ten shoes, pulled open the door
and fled into the street.
She walked hurriedly for about twenty-five yards, then slowed down and
tried to collect her wits. Telephone bells echoed in her ears. Sour
smells infested her nostrils. She looked up and discovered that she had
paused in front of two garbage cans, waiting on the curbstone for the
scavenger’s truck.
Irritated, she turned around and retraced her steps. There were few
people on the street. The early morning work crowds had already been
swallowed by the subway kiosks on Lenox Avenue, and it was too early
for the afternoon idlers. Yet there was much activity, much passing
to and fro. One Hundred and Thirty-Fifth Street, Emma Lou mumbled to
herself as she strolled along. How she had longed to see it, and what
a different thoroughfare she had imagined it to be! Her eyes sought
the opposite side of the street and blinked at a line of monotonously
regular fire-escape decorated tenement buildings. She thanked whoever
might be responsible for the architectural difference of the Y. M.
C. A., for the streaming bit of Seventh Avenue near by, and for the
arresting corner of the newly constructed teachers’ college building,
which dominated the hill three blocks away, and cast its shadows on the
verdure of the terraced park beneath.
But she was looking for a job. Sour smells assailed her nostrils once
more. Rasping voices. Pleading voices. Tired voices. Domineering
voices. And the insistent ring of the telephone bell all re-echoed in
her head and beat against her eardrums. She must have staggered, for a
passing youth eyed her curiously, and shouted to no one in particular,
“oh, _no_, now.” Some one else laughed. They thought she was drunk.
Tears blurred her eyes. She wanted to run, but resolutely she kept her
steady, slow pace, lifted her head a little higher, and, seeing another
employment agency, faltered for a moment, then went in.
This agency, like the first, occupied the ground floor front of a
tenement house, three-quarters of the way between Lenox and Seventh
Avenue. It was cagey and crowded, and there was a great conversational
hubbub as Emma Lou entered. In the rear of the room was a door marked
“private,” to the left of this door was a desk, littered with papers
and index cards, before which was a swivel chair. The rest of the
room was lined with a miscellaneous assortment of chairs, three rows
of them, tied together and trying to be precise despite their varying
sizes and shapes. A single window looked out upon the street, and the
Y. M. C. A. building opposite.
All of the chairs were occupied and three people stood lined up by the
desk. Emma Lou fell in at the end of this line. There was nothing else
to do. In fact, it was all she could do after entering. Not another
person could have been squeezed into that room from the outside. This
office too was noisy and hot and pregnant with clashing body smells.
The buzzing electric fan, in a corner over the desk, with all its
whirring, could not stir up a breeze.
The rear door opened. A slender, light-brown-skinned boy, his high
cheekbones decorated with blackheads, his slender form accentuated
by a tight fitting jazz suit of the high-waistline, one-button coat,
bell-bottom trouser variety, emerged smiling broadly, cap in one hand,
a slip of pink paper in the other. He elbowed his way to the outside
door and was gone.
“Musta got a job,” somebody commented. “It’s about time,” came from
some one else, “he said he’d been sittin’ here a week.”
The rear door opened again and a lady with a youthful brown face and
iron-gray hair sauntered in and sat down in the swivel chair before
the desk. Immediately all talk in the outer office ceased. An air of
anticipation seemed to pervade the room. All eyes were turned toward
her.
For a moment she fingered a pack of red index cards, then, as if
remembering something, turned around in her chair and called out:
“Mrs. Blake says for all elevator men to stick around.”
There was a shuffling of feet and a settling back into chairs. Noticing
this, Emma Lou counted six elevator men and wondered if she was right.
Again the brown aristocrat with the tired voice spoke up:
“Day workers come back at one-thirty. Won’t be nothing doin’ ’til then.”
Four women, all carrying newspaper packages, got out of their chairs,
and edged their way toward the door, murmuring to one another as they
went, “I ain’t fixin’ to come back.”
“Ah, she keeps you hyar.”
They were gone.
Two of the people standing in line sat down, the third approached the
desk, Emma Lou close behind.
“I wantsa--”
“What kind of job do you want?”
Couldn’t people ever finish what they had to say?
“Porter or dishwashing, lady.”
“Are you registered with us?”
“No’m.”
“Have a seat. I’ll call you in a moment.”
The boy looked frightened, but he found a seat and slid into it
gratefully. Emma Lou approached the desk. The woman’s cold eyes
appraised her. She must have been pleased with what she saw for her
eyes softened and her smile reappeared. Emma Lou smiled, too. Maybe she
was “pert” after all. The tailored blue suit----
“What can I do for you?”
The voice with the smile wins. Emma Lou was encouraged.
“I would like stenographic work.”
“Experienced?”
“Yes.” It was so much easier to say than “no.”
“Good.”
Emma Lou held tightly to her under-arm bag.
“We have something that would just about suit you. Just a minute, and
I’ll let you see Mrs. Blake.”
The chair squeaked and was eased of its burden. Emma Lou thought she
heard a telephone ringing somewhere in the distance, or perhaps it was
the clang of the street car that had just passed, heading for Seventh
Avenue. The people in the room began talking again.
“Dat last job.” “Boy, she was dressed right down to the bricks.”
“And I told him....” “Yeah, we went to see ‘Flesh and the Devil’.”
“Some parteee.” “I just been here a week.”
Emma Lou’s mind became jumbled with incoherent wisps of thought. Her
left foot beat a nervous tattoo upon a sagging floor board. The door
opened. The gray-haired lady with the smile in her voice beckoned, and
Emma Lou walked into the private office of Mrs. Blake.
Four people in the room. The only window facing a brick wall on the
outside. Two telephones, both busy. A good-looking young man, fingering
papers in a filing cabinet, while he talked over one of the telephones.
The lady from the outer office. Another lady, short and brown, like
butterscotch, talking over a desk telephone and motioning for Emma
Lou to sit down. Blur of high powered electric lights, brighter than
daylight. The butterscotch lady hanging up the receiver.
“I’m through with you young man.” Crisp tones. Metal, warm in spite of
itself.
“Well, I ain’t through with you.” The fourth person was speaking. Emma
Lou had hardly noticed him before. Sullen face. Dull black eyes in
watery sockets. The nose flat, the lips thick and pouting. One hand
clutching a derby, the other clenched, bearing down on the corner of
the desk.
“I have no intention of arguing with you. I’ve said my say. Go on
outside. When a cook’s job comes in, you can have it. That’s all I can
do.”
“No, it ain’t all you can do.”
“Well, I’m not going to give you your fee back.”
The lady from the outside office returns to her post. The good-looking
young man is at the telephone again.
“Why not, I’m entitled to it.”
“No, you’re not. I send you on a job, the man asks you to do
something, you walk out, Mister Big I-am. Then, show up here two days
later and want your fee back. No siree.”
“I didn’t walk out.”
“The man says you did.”
“Aw, sure, he’d say anything. I told him I came there to be a cook, not
a waiter. I----”
“It was your place to do as he said, then, if not satisfied, to come
here and tell me so.”
“I am here.”
“All right now. I’m tired of this. Take either of two courses--go on
outside and wait until a job comes in or else go down to the license
bureau and tell them your story. They’ll investigate. If I’m right----”
“You know you ain’t right.”
“Not according to you, no, but by law, yes. That’s all.”
Telephone ringing. Warm metal whipping words into it. The good-looking
young man yawning. He looks like a Y. M. C. A. secretary. The
butterscotch woman speaking to Emma Lou:
“You’re a stenographer?”
“Yes.”
“I have a job in a real estate office, nice firm, nice people. Fill out
this card. Here’s a pen.”
“Mrs. Blake, you know you ain’t doin’ right.”
Why didn’t this man either shut up or get out?
“I told you what to do. Now please do one or the other. You’ve taken up
enough of my time. The license bureau----”
“You know I ain’t goin’ down there. I’d rather you keep the fee, if you
think it will do you any good.”
“I only keep what belongs to me. I’ve found out that’s the best policy.”
Why should they want three people for reference? Where had she worked
before? Lies. Los Angeles was far away.
“Then, if a job comes in you’ll give it to me?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“Awright.” And finally he went out.
Mrs. Blake grinned across the desk at Emma Lou. “Your folks won’t do,
honey.”
“Do you have many like that?”
The card was made out. Mrs. Blake had it in her hand. Telephones
ringing, both at once. Loud talking in the outer office. Lies. Los
Angeles was far away. I can bluff. Mrs. Blake had finished reading over
the card.
“Just came to New York, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Like it better than Los Angeles?”
The good-looking young man turned around and stared at her coldly.
Now he did resemble a Y. M. C. A. secretary. The lady from the outer
office came in again. There was a triple criss-cross conversation
carried on. It ended. The short bob-haired butterscotch boss gave Emma
Lou instructions and information about her prospective position. She
was half heard. Sixteen dollars a week. Is that all? Work from nine to
five. Address on card. Corner of 139th Street, left side of the avenue.
Dismissal. Smiles and good luck. Pay the lady outside five dollars.
Awkward, flustered moments. Then the entrance door and 135th Street
once more. Emma Lou was on her way to get a job.
* * * * *
She walked briskly to the corner, crossed the street and turned north
on Seventh Avenue. Her hopes were high, her mind a medley of pleasing
mental images. She visualized herself trim and pert in her blue
tailored suit being secretary to some well-groomed Negro business man.
There had not been many such in the West, and she was eager to know and
admire one. There would be other girls in the office, too, girls who,
like herself, were college trained and reared in cultured homes, and
through these fellow workers she would meet still other girls and men,
get in with the right sort of people.
She continued day-dreaming as she went her way, being practical only
at such fleeting moments when she would wonder,--would she be able
to take dictation at the required rate of speed?--would her fingers
be nimble enough on the keyboard of the typewriter? Oh, bother. It
wouldn’t take her over one day to adapt herself to her new job.
A street crossing. Traffic delayed her and she was conscious of a man,
a blurred tan image, speaking to her. He was ignored. Everything was
to be ignored save the address digits on the buildings. Everything was
secondary to the business at hand. Let traffic pass, let men aching
for flirtations speak, let Seventh Avenue be spangled with forenoon
sunshine and shadow, and polka-dotted with still or moving human forms.
She was going to have a job. The rest of the world could go to hell.
Emma Lou turned into a four-story brick building and sped up one flight
of stairs. The rooms were not numbered and directing signs in the
hallway only served to confuse. But Emma Lou was not to be delayed. She
rushed back and forth from door to door on the first floor, then to the
second, until she finally found the office she was looking for.
Angus and Brown were an old Harlem real estate firm. They had begun
business during the first decade of the century, handling property for
a while in New York’s far-famed San Juan Hill district. When the Negro
population had begun to need more and better homes, Angus and Brown had
led the way in buying real estate in what was to be Negro Harlem. They
had been fighters, unscrupulous and canny. They had revealed a perverse
delight in seeing white people rush pell-mell from the neighborhood in
which they obtained homes for their colored clients. They had bought
three six-story tenement buildings on 140th Street, and, when the white
tenants had been slow in moving, had personally dispossessed them,
and, in addition, had helped their incoming Negro tenants fight fistic
battles in the streets and hallways, and legal battles in the court.
Now they were a substantial firm, grown fat and satisfied. Junior real
estate men got their business for them. They held the whip. Their
activities were many and varied. Politics and fraternal activities
occupied more of their time than did real estate. They had had their
hectic days. Now they sat back and took it easy.
Emma Lou opened the door to their office, consisting of one
medium-sized outer room overlooking 139th Street and two cubby holes
overlooking Seventh Avenue. There were two girls in the outer office.
One was busy at a typewriter; the other was gazing over her desk
through a window into the aristocratic tree-lined city lane of 139th
Street. Both looked up expectantly. Emma Lou noticed the powdered
smoothness of their fair skins and the marcelled waviness of their
shingled brown hair. Were they sisters? Hardly, for their features were
in no way similar. Yet that skin color and that brown hair----.
“Can I do something for you?” The idle one spoke, and the other ceased
her peck-peck-pecking on the typewriter keys. Emma Lou was buoyant.
“I’m from Mrs. Blake’s employment agency.”
“Oh,” from both. And they exchanged glances. Emma Lou thought she saw
a quickly suppressed smile from the fairer of the two as she hastily
resumed her typing. Then----
“Sit down a moment, won’t you, please? Mr. Angus is out but I’ll inform
Mr. Brown that you are here.” She picked a powder puff from an open
side drawer in her desk, patted her nose and cheeks, then got up and
crossed the office to enter cubby hole number one. Emma Lou observed
that she, too, looked “pert” in a trim, blue suit and high-heeled
patent leather oxfords----
“Mr. Brown?” She had opened the door.
“Come in Grace. What is it?” The door was closed.
Emma Lou felt nervous. Something in the pit of her stomach seemed to
flutter. Her pulse raced. Her eyes gleamed and a smile of anticipation
spread over her face, despite her efforts to appear dignified and
suave. The typist continued her work. From the cubby hole came a
murmur of voices, one feminine and affected, the other masculine and
coarse. Through the open window came direct sounds and vagrant echoes
of traffic noises from Seventh Avenue. Now the two in the cubby hole
were laughing, and the girl at the typewriter seemed to be smiling to
herself as she worked.
What did this mean? Nothing, silly. Don’t be so sensitive. Emma Lou’s
eyes sought the pictures on the wall. There was an early twentieth
century photographic bust-portrait, encased in a bevelled glass frame,
of a heavy-set good-looking, brown-skinned man. She admired his
mustache. Men didn’t seem to take pride in such hirsute embellishments
now. Mustaches these days were abbreviated and limp. They no longer
were virile enough to dominate and make a man’s face appear more
strong. Rather, they were only insignificant patches weakly keeping the
nostrils from merging with the upper lip.
Emma Lou wondered if that was Mr. Brown. He had a brown face and wore
a brown suit. No, maybe that was Mr. Angus, and perhaps that was Mr.
Brown on the other side of the room, in the square, enlarged kodak
print, a slender yellow man, standing beside a motor car, looking as
if he wished to say, “Yeah, this is me and this is my car.” She hoped
he was Mr. Angus. She didn’t like his name and since she was to see Mr.
Brown first, she hoped he was the more flatteringly portrayed.
The door to the cubby hole opened and the girl Mr. Brown had called
Grace, came out. The expression on her face was too business-like to be
natural. It seemed as if it had been placed there for a purpose.
She walked toward Emma Lou, who got up and stood like a child, waiting
for punishment and hoping all the while that it will dissipate itself
in threats. The typewriter was stilled and Emma Lou could feel an extra
pair of eyes looking at her. The girl drew close then spoke:
“I’m sorry, Miss. Mr. Brown says he has some one else in view for the
job. We’ll call the agency. Thank you for coming in.”
Thank her for coming in? What could she say? What should she say? The
girl was smiling at her, but Emma Lou noticed that her fair skin was
flushed and that her eyes danced nervously. Could she be hoping that
Emma Lou would hurry and depart? The door was near. It opened easily.
The steps were steep. One went down slowly. Seventh Avenue was still
spangled with forenoon sunshine and shadow. Its pavement was hard and
hot. The windows in the buildings facing it, gleaming reflectors of the
mounting sun.
* * * * *
Emma Lou returned to the employment agency. It was still crowded and
more stuffy than ever. The sun had advanced high into the sky and it
seemed to be centering its rays on that solitary defenseless window.
There was still much conversation. There were still people crowded
around the desk, still people in all the chairs, people and talk and
heat and smells.
“Mrs. Blake is waiting for you,” the gray-haired lady with the young
face was unflustered and cool. Emma Lou went into the inner office.
Mrs. Blake looked up quickly and forced a smile. The good-looking young
man, more than ever resembling a Y. M. C. A. secretary, turned his back
and fumbled with the card files. Mrs. Blake suggested that he leave the
room. He did, beaming benevolently at Emma Lou as he went.
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Blake was very kind and womanly. “Mr. Brown called
me. I didn’t know he had some one else in mind. He hadn’t told me.”
“That’s all right,” replied Emma Lou briskly. “Have you something else?”
“Not now. Er-er. Have you had luncheon? It’s early yet, I know, but I
generally go about this time. Come along, won’t you. I’d like to talk
to you. I’ll be ready in about thirty minutes if you don’t mind the
wait.”
Emma Lou warmed to the idea. At that moment, she would have warmed
toward any suggestion of friendliness. Here, perhaps, was a chance
to make a welcome contact. She was lonesome and disappointed, so she
readily assented and felt elated and superior as she walked out of the
office with the “boss.”
They went to Eddie’s for luncheon. Eddie’s was an elbow-shaped
combination lunch-counter and dining room that embraced a United Cigar
Store on the northeast corner of 135th Street and Seventh Avenue.
Following Mrs. Blake’s lead, Emma Lou ordered a full noontime dinner,
and, flattered by Mrs. Blake’s interest and congeniality, began to talk
about herself. She told of her birthplace and her home life. She told
of her high school days, spoke proudly of the fact that she had been
the only Negro student and how she had graduated cum laude. Asked about
her college years, she talked less freely. Mrs. Blake sensed a cue.
“Didn’t you like college?”
“For a little while, yes.”
“What made you dislike it? Surely not the studies?”
“No.” She didn’t care to discuss this. “I was lonesome, I guess.”
“Weren’t there any other colored boys and girls? I thought....”
Emma Lou spoke curtly. “Oh, yes, quite a number, but I suppose I didn’t
mix well.”
The waiter came to take the order for dessert, and Emma Lou seized
upon the fact that Mrs. Blake ordered sliced oranges to talk about
California’s orange groves, California’s sunshine--anything but the
California college she had attended and from which she had fled. In
vain did Mrs. Blake try to maneuver the conversation back to Emma Lou’s
college experiences. She would have none of it and Mrs. Blake was
finally forced to give it up.
When they were finished, Mrs. Blake insisted upon taking the check.
This done, she began to talk about jobs.
“You know, Miss Morgan, good jobs are rare. It is seldom I have
anything to offer outside of the domestic field. Most Negro business
offices are family affairs. They either get their help from within
their own family group or from among their friends. Then, too,” Emma
Lou noticed that Mrs. Blake did not look directly at her, “lots of our
Negro business men have a definite type of girl in mind and will not
hire any other.”
Emma Lou wondered what it was Mrs. Blake seemed to be holding back. She
began again:
“My advice to you is that you enter Teachers’ College and if you _will_
stay in New York, get a job in the public school system. You can easily
take a light job of some kind to support you through your course. Maybe
with three years’ college you won’t need to go to training school.
Why don’t you find out about that? Now, if I were you....” Mrs. Blake
talked on, putting much emphasis on every “If I were you.”
Emma Lou grew listless and antagonistic. She didn’t like this little
sawed-off woman as she was now, being business like and giving advice.
She was glad when they finally left Eddie’s, and more than glad to
escape after having been admonished not to oversleep, “But be in my
office, and I’ll see what I can do for you, dearie, early in the
morning. There’s sure to be something.”
Left to herself, Emma Lou strolled south on the west side of Seventh
Avenue to 134th Street, then crossed over to the east side and turned
north. She didn’t know what to do. It was too late to consider visiting
another employment agency, and, furthermore, she didn’t have enough
money left to pay another fee. Let jobs go until tomorrow, then she
would return to Mrs. Blake’s, ask for a return of her fee, and find
some other employment agency, a more imposing one, if possible. She had
had enough of those on 135th Street.
She didn’t want to go home, either. Her room had no outside vista. If
she sat in the solitary chair by the solitary window, all she could
see were other windows and brick walls and people either mysteriously
or brazenly moving about in the apartments across the court. There was
no privacy there, little fresh air, and no natural light after the sun
began its downward course. Then the apartment always smelled of frying
fish or of boiling cabbage. Her landlady seemed to alternate daily
between these two foods. Fish smells and cabbage smells pervaded the
long, dark hallway, swirled into the room when the door was opened and
perfumed one’s clothes disagreeably. Moreover, urinal and foecal smells
surged upward from the garbage-littered bottom of the court which her
window faced.
If she went home, the landlady would eye her suspiciously and ask,
“Ain’t you got a job yet?” then move away, shaking her head and dipping
into her snuff box. Occasionally, in moments of excitement, she spat on
the floor. And the little fat man who had the room next to Emma Lou’s
could be heard coughing suggestively--tapping on the wall, and talking
to himself in terms of her. He had seen her slip John in last night.
He might be more bold now. He might even try--oh no he wouldn’t.
She was crossing 137th Street. She remembered this corner. John had
told her that he could always be found there after work any spring or
summer evening.
Emma Lou had met John on her first day in New York. He was employed as
a porter in the theatre where Mazelle Lindsay was scheduled to perform,
and, seeing a new maid on the premises, had decided to “make” her. He
had. Emma Lou had not liked him particularly, but he had seemed New
Yorkish and genial. It was John who had found her her room. It was
John who had taught her how to find her way up and down town on the
subway and on the elevated. He had also conducted her on a Cook’s tour
of Harlem, had strolled up and down Seventh Avenue with her evenings
after they had come uptown from the theater. He had pointed out for her
the Y. W. C. A. with its imposing annex, the Emma Ranson House, and
suggested that she get a room there later on. He had taken her on a
Sunday to several of the Harlem motion picture and vaudeville theaters,
and he had been as painstaking in pointing out the churches as he had
been lax in pointing out the cabarets. Moreover, as they strolled
Seventh Avenue, he had attempted to give her all the “inside dope” on
Harlem, had told her of the “rent parties,” of the “numbers,” of “hot”
men, of “sweetbacks,” and other local phenomena.
Emma Lou was now passing a barber shop near 140th Street. A group of
men were standing there beneath a huge white and black sign announcing,
“Bobbing’s, fifty cents; haircuts, twenty-five cents.” They were
whistling at three school girls, about fourteen or fifteen years of
age, who were passing, doing much switching and giggling. Emma Lou
curled her lips. Harlem streets presented many such scenes. She looked
at the men significantly, forgetting for the moment that it was none of
her business what they or the girls did. But they didn’t notice her.
They were too busy having fun with those fresh little chippies.
Emma Lou experienced a feeling of resentment, then, realizing how
ridiculous it all was, smiled it away and began to think of John
once more. She wondered why she had submitted herself to him. Was it
cold-blooded payment for his kind chaperoning? Something like that.
John wasn’t her type. He was too pudgy and dark, too obviously an
ex-cotton-picker from Georgia. He was unlettered and she couldn’t
stand for that, for she liked intelligent-looking, slender,
light-brown-skinned men, like, well ... like the one who was just
passing. She admired him boldly. He looked at her, then over her, and
passed on.
Seventh Avenue was becoming more crowded now. School children were
out for their lunch hour, corner loafers and pool-hall loiterers were
beginning to collect on their chosen spots. Knots of people, of no
particular designation, also stood around talking, or just looking, and
there were many pedestrians, either impressing one as being in a great
hurry, or else seeming to have no place at all to go. Emma Lou was in
this latter class. By now she had reached 142nd Street and had decided
to cross over to the opposite side and walk south once more. Seventh
Avenue was a wide, well-paved, busy thoroughfare, with a long, narrow,
iron fenced-in parkway dividing the east side from the west. Emma Lou
liked Seventh Avenue. It was so active and alive, so different from
Central Avenue, the dingy main street of the black belt of Los Angeles.
At night it was glorious! Where else could one see so many different
types of Negroes? Where else would one view such a heterogeneous
ensemble of mellow colors, glorified by the night?
People passing by. Children playing. Dogs on leashes. Stray cats
crouching by the sides of buildings. Men standing in groups or alone.
Black men. Yellow men. Brown men. Emma Lou eyed them. They eyed her.
There were a few remarks passed. She thought she got their import even
though she could not hear what they were saying. She quickened her step
and held her head higher. Be yourself, Emma Lou. Do you want to start
picking men up off of the street?
The heat became more intense. Brisk walking made her perspire. Her
underclothes grew sticky. Harlem heat was so muggy. She could feel the
shine on her nose and it made her self-conscious. She remembered how
the “Grace” in the office of Angus and Brown had so carefully powdered
her skin before confronting her employer, and, as she remembered this,
she looked up, and sure enough, here she was in front of the building
she had sought so eagerly earlier that morning. Emma Lou drew closer
to the building. She must get that shine off of her nose. It was bad
enough to be black, too black, without having a shiny face to boot.
She stopped in front of the tailor shop directly beneath the office
of Angus and Brown, and, turning her back to the street, proceeded to
powder her shiny member. Three noisy lads passed by. They saw Emma
Lou and her reflection in the sunlit show window. The one closest to
her cleared his throat and crooned out, loud enough for her to hear,
“There’s a girl for you, ‘Fats.’” “Fats” was the one in the middle.
He had a rotund form and a coffee-colored face. He was in his shirt
sleeves and carried his coat on his arm. Bell bottom trousers hid all
save the tips of his shiny tan shoes. “Fats” was looking at Emma Lou,
too, but as he passed, he turned his eyes from her and broadcast a
withering look at the lad who had spoken:
“Man, you know I don’t haul no coal.” There was loud laughter and
the trio merrily clicked their metal-cornered heels on the sun-baked
pavement as they moved away.