RENT PARTY
IV
RENT PARTY
Saturday evening. Alva had urged her to hurry uptown from work. He
was going to take her on a party with some friends of his. This was
the first time he had ever asked her to go to any sort of social
affair with him. She had never met any of his friends save Braxton,
who scarcely spoke to her, and never before had Alva suggested taking
her to any sort of social gathering either public or semi-public. He
often took her to various motion picture theaters, both downtown and in
Harlem, and at least three nights a week he would call for her at the
theater and escort her to Harlem. On these occasions they often went
to Chinese restaurants or to ice cream parlors before going home. But
usually they would go to City College Park, find an empty bench in a
dark corner where they could sit and spoon before retiring either to
her room or to Alva’s.
Emma Lou had, long before this, suggested going to a dance or to a
party, but Alva had always countered that he never attended such
affairs during the summer months, that he stayed away from them for
precisely the same reason that he stayed away from work, namely,
because it was too hot. Dancing, said he, was a matter of calisthenics,
and calisthenics were work. Therefore it, like any sort of physical
exercise, was taboo during hot weather.
Alva sensed that sooner or later Emma Lou would become aware of his
real reason for not taking her out among his friends. He realized that
one as color-conscious as she appeared to be would, at some not so
distant date, jump to what for him would be uncomfortable conclusions.
He did not wish to risk losing her before the end of summer, but
neither could he risk taking her out among his friends, for he knew too
well that he would be derided for his unseemly preference for “dark
meat,” and told publicly without regard for her feelings, that “black
cats must go.”
Furthermore he always took Geraldine to parties and dances. Geraldine
with her olive colored skin and straight black hair. Geraldine, who of
all the people he pretended to love, really inspired him emotionally
as well as physically, the one person he conquested without thought of
monetary gain. Yet he had to do something with Emma Lou, and release
from the quandary presented itself from most unexpected quarters.
Quite accidentally, as things of the sort happen in Harlem with its
complex but interdependable social structure, he had become acquainted
with a young Negro writer, who had asked him to escort a group of young
writers and artists to a house-rent party. Though they had heard much
of this phenomenon, none had been on the inside of one, and because
of their rather polished manners and exteriors, were afraid that they
might not be admitted. Proletarian Negroes are as suspicious of their
more sophisticated brethren as they are of white men, and resent as
keenly their intrusions into their social world. Alva had consented
to act as cicerone, and, realizing that these people would be more or
less free from the color prejudice exhibited by his other friends,
had decided to take Emma Lou along too. He was also aware of her
intellectual pretensions, and felt that she would be especially pleased
to meet recognized talents and outstanding personalities. She did not
have to know that these were not his regular companions, and from then
on she would have no reason to feel that he was ashamed to have her
meet his friends.
Emma Lou could hardly attend to Arline’s change of complexion and
clothes between acts and scenes, so anxious was she to get to Alva’s
house and to the promised party. Her happiness was complete. She was
certain now that Alva loved her, certain that he was not ashamed or
even aware of her dusky complexion. She had felt from the first that he
was superior to such inane truck, now she knew it. Alva loved her for
herself alone, and loved her so much that he didn’t mind her being a
coal scuttle blond.
Sensing something unusual, Arline told Emma Lou that she would remove
her own make-up after the performance, and let her have time to get
dressed for the party. This she proceeded to do all through the
evening, spending much time in front of the mirror at Arline’s dressing
table, manicuring her nails, marcelling her hair, and applying various
creams and cosmetics to her face in order to make her despised darkness
less obvious. Finally, she put on one of Arline’s less pretentious
afternoon frocks, and set out for Alva’s house.
As she approached his room door, she heard much talk and laughter,
moving her to halt and speculate whether or not she should go in. Even
her unusual and high-tensioned jubilance was not powerful enough to
overcome immediately her shyness and fears. Suppose these friends of
Alva’s would not take kindly to her? Suppose they were like Braxton,
who invariably curled his lip when he saw her, and seldom spoke even
as much as a word of greeting? Suppose they were like the people who
used to attend her mother’s and grandmother’s teas, club meetings and
receptions, dismissing her with--“It beats me how this child of yours
looks so unlike the rest of you.... Are you sure it isn’t adopted.”
Or suppose they were like the college youth she had known in Southern
California? No, that couldn’t be. Alva would never invite her where
she would not be welcome. These were his friends. And so was Braxton,
but Alva said he was peculiar. There was no danger. Alva had invited
her. She was here. Anyway she wasn’t so black. Hadn’t she artificially
lightened her skin about four or five shades until she was almost
brown? Certainly it was all right. She needn’t be a foolish ninny all
her life. Thus, reassured, she knocked on the door, and felt herself
trembling with excitement and internal uncertainty as Alva let her in,
took her hat and coat, and proceeded to introduce her to the people in
the room.
“Miss Morgan, meet Mr. Tony Crews. You’ve probably seen his book of
poems. He’s the little jazz boy, you know.”
Emma Lou bashfully touched the extended hand of the curly-headed poet.
She had not seen or read his book, but she had often noticed his name
in the newspapers and magazines. He was all that she had expected him
to be except that he had pimples on his face. These didn’t fit in with
her mental picture.
“Miss Morgan, this is Cora Thurston. Maybe I should’a introduced you
ladies first.”
“I’m no lady, and I hope you’re not either, Miss Morgan.” She smiled,
shook Emma Lou’s hand, then turned away to continue her interrupted
conversation with Tony Crews.
“Miss Morgan, meet ...,” he paused, and addressed a tall, dark yellow
youth stretched out on the floor, “What name you going by now?”
The boy looked up and smiled.
“Why, Paul, of course.”
“All right then, Miss Morgan, this is Mr. Paul, he changes his name
every season.”
Emma Lou sought to observe this person more closely, and was shocked to
see that his shirt was open at the neck and that he was sadly in need
of a haircut and shave.
“Miss Morgan, meet Mr. Walter.” A small slender dark youth with an
infectious smile and small features. His face was familiar. Where had
she seen him before?
“Now that you’ve met every one, sit down on the bed there beside Truman
and have a drink. Go on with your talk folks,” he urged as he went
over to the dresser to fill a glass with a milk colored liquid. Cora
Thurston spoke up in answer to Alva’s adjuration:
“Guess there ain’t much more to say. Makes me mad to discuss it anyhow.”
“No need of getting mad at people like that,” said Tony Crews simply
and softly. “I think one should laugh at such stupidity.”
“And ridicule it, too,” came from the luxurious person sprawled over
the floor, for he did impress Emma Lou as being luxurious, despite the
fact that his suit was unpressed, and that he wore neither socks nor
necktie. She noticed the many graceful gestures he made with his hands,
but wondered why he kept twisting his lips to one side when he talked.
Perhaps he was trying to mask the size of his mouth.
Truman was speaking now, “Ridicule will do no good, nor mere laughing
at them. I admit those weapons are about the only ones an intelligent
person would use, but one must also admit that they are rather futile.”
“Why futile?” Paul queried indolently.
“They are futile,” Truman continued, “because, well, those people
cannot help being like they are--their environment has made them that
way.”
Miss Thurston muttered something. It sounded like “hooey,” then held
out an empty glass. “Give me some more firewater, Alva.” Alva hastened
across the room and refilled her glass. Emma Lou wondered what they
were talking about. Again Cora broke the silence, “You can’t tell me
they can’t help it. They kick about white people, then commit the same
crime.”
There was a knock on the door, interrupting something Tony Crews was
about to say. Alva went to the door.
“Hello, Ray.” A tall, blond, fair-skinned youth entered. Emma Lou
gasped, and was more bewildered than ever. All of this silly talk and
drinking, and now--here was a white man!
“Hy, everybody. Jusas Chraust, I hope you saved me some liquor.” Tony
Crews held out his empty glass and said quietly, “We’ve had about
umpteen already, so I doubt if there’s any more left.”
“You can’t kid me, bo. I know Alva would save me a dram or two.” Having
taken off his hat and coat he squatted down on the floor beside Paul.
Truman turned to Emma Lou. “Oh, Ray, meet Miss Morgan. Mr. Jorgenson,
Miss Morgan.”
“Glad to know you; pardon my not getting up, won’t you?” Emma Lou
didn’t know what to say, and couldn’t think of anything appropriate,
but since he was smiling, she tried to smile too, and nodded her head.
“What’s the big powwow?” he asked. “All of you look so serious. Haven’t
you had enough liquor, or are you just trying to settle the ills of the
universe?”
“Neither,” said Paul. “They’re just damning our ‘pink niggers’.”
Emma Lou was aghast. Such extraordinary people--saying “nigger” in
front of a white man! Didn’t they have any race pride or proper
bringing up? Didn’t they have any common sense?
“What’ve they done now?” Ray asked, reaching out to accept the glass
Alva was handing him.
“No more than they’ve always done,” Tony Crews answered. “Cora here
just felt like being indignant, because she heard of a forthcoming
wedding in Brooklyn to which the prospective bride and groom have
announced they will _not_ invite any dark people.”
“Seriously now,” Truman began. Ray interrupted him.
“Who in the hell wants to be serious?”
“As I was saying,” Truman continued, “you can’t blame light Negroes for
being prejudiced against dark ones. All of you know that white is the
symbol of everything pure and good, whether that everything be concrete
or abstract. Ivory Soap is advertised as being ninety-nine and some
fraction per cent pure, and Ivory Soap is white. Moreover, virtue and
virginity are always represented as being clothed in white garments.
Then, too, the God we, or rather most Negroes worship is a patriarchal
white man, seated on a white throne, in a spotless white Heaven,
radiant with white streets and white-apparelled angels eating white
honey and drinking white milk.”
“Listen to the boy rave. Give him another drink,” Ray shouted, but
Truman ignored him and went on, becoming more and more animated.
“We are all living in a totally white world, where all standards are
the standards of the white man, and where almost invariably what the
white man does is right, and what the black man does is wrong, unless
it is precedented by something a white man has done.”
“Which,” Cora added scornfully, “makes it all right for light Negroes
to discriminate against dark ones?”
“Not at all,” Truman objected. “It merely explains, not justifies, the
evil--or rather, the fact of intra-racial segregation. Mulattoes have
always been accorded more consideration by white people than their
darker brethren. They were made to feel superior even during slave
days ... made to feel proud, as Bud Fisher would say, that they were
bastards. It was for the mulatto offspring of white masters and Negro
slaves that the first schools for Negroes were organized, and say what
you will, it is generally the Negro with a quantity of mixed blood
in his veins who finds adaptation to a Nordic environment more easy
than one of pure blood, which, of course, you will admit, is, to an
American Negro, convenient if not virtuous.”
“Does that justify their snobbishness and self-evaluated superiority?”
“No, Cora, it doesn’t,” returned Truman. “I’m not trying to excuse
them. I’m merely trying to give what I believe to be an explanation of
this thing. I have never been to Washington and only know what Paul and
you have told me about conditions there, but they seem to be just about
the same as conditions in Los Angeles, Omaha, Chicago, and other cities
in which I have lived or visited. You see, people have to feel superior
to something, and there is scant satisfaction in feeling superior to
domestic animals or steel machines that one can train or utilize. It
is much more pleasing to pick out some individual or some group of
individuals on the same plane to feel superior to. This is almost
necessary when one is a member of a supposedly despised, mistreated
minority group. Then consider that the mulatto is much nearer white
than he is black, and is therefore more liable to act like a white man
than like a black one, although I cannot say that I see a great deal
of difference in any of their actions. They are human beings first and
only white or black incidentally.”
Ray pursed up his lips and whistled.
“But you seem to forget,” Tony Crews insisted, “that because a man is
dark, it doesn’t necessarily mean he is not of mixed blood. Now look
at....”
“Yeah, let him look at you or at himself or at Cora,” Paul interrupted.
“There ain’t no unmixed Negroes.”
“But I haven’t forgotten that,” Truman said, ignoring the note of
finality in Paul’s voice. “I merely took it for granted that we were
talking only about those Negroes who were light-skinned.”
“But all light-skinned Negroes aren’t color struck or color
prejudiced,” interjected Alva, who, up to this time, like Emma Lou,
had remained silent. This was, he thought, a strategic moment for him
to say something. He hoped Emma Lou would get the full significance of
this statement.
“True enough,” Truman began again. “But I also took it for granted
that we were only talking about those who were. As I said before,
Negroes are, after all, human beings, and they are subject to be
influenced and controlled by the same forces and factors that influence
and control other human beings. In an environment where there are
so many color-prejudiced whites, there are bound to be a number of
color-prejudiced blacks. Color prejudice and religion are akin in
one respect. Some folks have it and some don’t, and the kernel that
is responsible for it is present in us all, which is to say, that
potentially we are all color-prejudiced as long as we remain in
this environment. For, as you know, prejudices are always caused by
differences, and the majority group sets the standard. Then, too, since
black is the favorite color of vaudeville comedians and jokesters, and,
conversely, as intimately associated with tragedy, it is no wonder that
even the blackest individual will seek out some one more black than
himself to laugh at.”
“So saith the Lord,” Tony answered soberly.
“And the Holy Ghost saith, let’s have another drink.”
“Happy thought, Ray,” returned Cora. “Give us some more ice cream and
gin, Alva.”
Alva went into the alcove to prepare another concoction. Tony started
the victrola. Truman turned to Emma Lou, who, all this while, had been
sitting there with Alva’s arm around her, every muscle in her body
feeling as if it wanted to twitch, not knowing whether to be sad or
to be angry. She couldn’t comprehend all of this talk. She couldn’t
see how these people could sit down and so dispassionately discuss
something that seemed particularly tragic to her. This fellow Truman,
whom she was certain she knew, with all his hi-faluting talk, disgusted
her immeasurably. She wasn’t sure that they weren’t all poking fun at
her. Truman was speaking:
“Miss Morgan, didn’t you attend school in Southern California?” Emma
Lou at last realized where she had seen him before. So _this_ was
Truman Walter, the little “cock o’ the walk,” as they had called him
on the campus. She answered him with difficulty, for there was a sob
in her throat. “Yes, I did.” Before Truman could say more to her, Ray
called to him:
“Say, Bozo, what time are we going to the party? It’s almost one
o’clock now.”
“Is it?” Alva seemed surprised. “But Aaron and Alta aren’t here yet.”
“They’ve been married just long enough to be late to everything.”
“What do you say we go by and ring their bell?” Tony suggested,
ignoring Paul’s Greenwich Village wit.
“’Sall right with me.” Truman lifted his glass to his lips. “Then on to
the house-rent party ... on to the bawdy bowels of Beale Street!”
They drained their glasses and prepared to leave.
* * * * *
“Ahhhh, sock it.”... “Ummmm”.... Piano playing--slow, loud, and
discordant, accompanied by the rhythmic sound of shuffling feet. Down
a long, dark hallway to an inside room, lit by a solitary red bulb.
“Oh, play it you dirty no-gooder.”... A room full of dancing couples,
scarcely moving their feet, arms completely encircling one another’s
bodies ... cheeks being warmed by one another’s breath ... eyes closed
... animal ecstasy agitating their perspiring faces. There was much
panting, much hip movement, much shaking of the buttocks.... “Do it
twice in the same place.”... “Git off that dime.” Now somebody was
singing, “I ask you very confidentially....” “Sing it man, sing it.”...
Piano treble moaning, bass rumbling like thunder. A swarm of people,
motivating their bodies to express in suggestive movements the ultimate
consummation of desire.
The music stopped, the room was suffocatingly hot, and Emma Lou was
disturbingly dizzy. She clung fast to Alva, and let the room and its
occupants whirl around her. Bodies and faces glided by. Leering faces
and lewd bodies. Anxious faces and angular bodies. Sad faces and obese
bodies. All mixed up together. She began to wonder how such a small
room could hold so many people. “Oh, play it again....” She saw the
pianist now, silhouetted against the dark mahogany piano, saw him bend
his long, slick-haired head, until it hung low on his chest, then lift
his hands high in the air, and as quickly let them descend upon the
keyboard. There was one moment of cacophony, then the long, supple
fingers evolved a slow, tantalizing melody out of the deafening chaos.
Every one began to dance again. Body called to body, and cemented
themselves together, limbs lewdly intertwined. A couple there kissing,
another couple dipping to the floor, and slowly shimmying, belly
to belly, as they came back to an upright position. A slender dark
girl with wild eyes and wilder hair stood in the center of the room,
supported by the strong, lithe arms of a longshoreman. She bent her
trunk backward, until her head hung below her waistline, and all the
while she kept the lower portion of her body quivering like jello.
“She whips it to a jelly,” the piano player was singing now, and
banging on the keys with such might that an empty gin bottle on top of
the piano seemed to be seized with the ague. “Oh, play it Mr. Charlie.”
Emma Lou grew limp in Alva’s arms.
“What’s the matter, honey, drunk?” She couldn’t answer. The music
augmented by the general atmosphere of the room and the liquor she had
drunk had presumably created another person in her stead. She felt like
flying into an emotional frenzy--felt like flinging her arms and legs
in insane unison. She had become very fluid, very elastic, and all the
while she was giving in more and more to the music and to the liquor
and to the physical madness of the moment.
When the music finally stopped, Alva led Emma Lou to a settee by the
window which his crowd had appropriated. Every one was exceedingly
animated, but they all talked in hushed, almost reverential tones.
“Isn’t this marvelous?” Truman’s eyes were ablaze with interest and
excitement. Even Tony Crews seemed unusually alert.
“It’s the greatest I’ve seen yet,” he exclaimed.
Alva seemed the most unemotional one in the crowd. Paul the most
detached. “Look at ’em all watching Ray.”
“Remember, Bo,” Truman counselled him. “Tonight you’re ‘passing.’
Here’s a new wrinkle, white man ‘passes’ for Negro.”
“Why not? Enough of you pass for white.” They all laughed, then
transferred their interest back to the party. Cora was speaking:
“Didya see that little girl in pink--the one with the scar on her
face--dancing with that tall, lanky, one-armed man? Wasn’t she throwing
it up to him?”
“Yeah,” Tony admitted, “but she didn’t have anything on that little
Mexican-looking girl. She musta been born in Cairo.”
“Saay, but isn’t that one bad looking darkey over there, two chairs to
the left; is he gonna smother that woman?” Truman asked excitedly.
“I’d say she kinda liked it,” Paul answered, then lit another cigarette.
“Do you know they have corn liquor in the kitchen? They serve it from a
coffee pot.” Aaron seemed proud of his discovery.
“Yes,” said Alva, “and they got hoppin’-john out there too.”
“What the hell is hoppin’-john?”
“Ray, I’m ashamed of you. Here you are passing for colored and don’t
know what hoppin’-john is!”
“Tell him, Cora, I don’t know either.”
“Another one of these foreigners.” Cora looked at Truman disdainfully.
“Hoppin’-john is black-eyed peas and rice. Didn’t they ever have any
out in Salt Lake City?”
“Have they any chitterlings?” Alta asked eagerly.
“No, Alta,” Alva replied, dryly. “This isn’t Kansas. They have got
pig’s feet though.”
“Lead me to ’em,” Aaron and Alta shouted in unison, and led the way to
the kitchen. Emma Lou clung to Alva’s arm and tried to remain behind.
“Alva, I’m afraid.”
“Afraid of what? Come on, snap out of it! You need another drink.” He
pulled her up from the settee and led her through the crowded room down
the long narrow dark hallway to the more crowded kitchen.
When they returned to the room, the pianist was just preparing to play
again. He was tall and slender, with extra long legs and arms, giving
him the appearance of a scarecrow. His pants were tight in the waist
and full in the legs. He wore no coat, and a blue silk shirt hung
damply to his body. He acted as if he were king of the occasion, ruling
all from his piano stool throne. He talked familiarly to every one in
the room, called women from other men’s arms, demanded drinks from any
bottle he happened to see being passed around, laughed uproariously,
and made many grotesque and ofttimes obscene gestures.
There were sounds of a scuffle in an adjoining room, and an excited
voice exclaimed, “You goddam son-of-a-bitch, don’t you catch my dice no
more.” The piano player banged on the keys and drowned out the reply,
if there was one.
Emma Lou could not keep her eyes off the piano player. He was acting
like a maniac, occasionally turning completely around on his stool,
grimacing like a witch doctor, and letting his hands dawdle over the
keyboard of the piano with an agonizing indolence, when compared to
the extreme exertion to which he put the rest of his body. He was
improvising. The melody of the piece he had started to play was merely
a base for more bawdy variations. His left foot thumped on the floor in
time with the music, while his right punished the piano’s loud-pedal.
Beads of perspiration gathered grease from his slicked-down hair, and
rolled oleagenously down his face and neck, spotting the already damp
baby-blue shirt, and streaking his already greasy black face with more
shiny lanes.
A sailor lad suddenly ceased his impassioned hip movement and strode
out of the room, pulling his partner behind him, pushing people out
of the way as he went. The spontaneous moans and slangy ejaculations
of the piano player and of the more articulate dancers became more
regular, more like a chanted obligato to the music. This lasted for
a couple of hours interrupted only by hectic intermissions. Then the
dancers grew less violent in their movements, and though the piano
player seemed never to tire there were fewer couples on the floor, and
those left seemed less loathe to move their legs.
Eventually, the music stopped for a long interval, and there was a
more concerted drive on the kitchen’s corn liquor supply. Most of the
private flasks and bottles were empty. There were more calls for food,
too, and the crap game in the side room annexed more players and more
kibitzers. Various men and women had disappeared altogether. Those who
remained seemed worn and tired. There was much petty person to person
badinage and many whispered consultations in corners. There was an
argument in the hallway between the landlord and two couples, who
wished to share one room without paying him more than the regulation
three dollars required of one couple. Finally, Alva suggested that they
leave. Emma Lou had drifted off into a state of semi-consciousness and
was too near asleep or drunk to distinguish people or voices. All she
knew was that she was being led out of that dreadful place, that the
perturbing “pilgrimage to the proletariat’s parlor social,” as Truman
had called it, was ended, and that she was in a taxicab, cuddled up in
Alva’s arms.
* * * * *
Emma Lou awoke with a headache. Some one was knocking at her door, but
when she first awakened it had seemed as if the knocking was inside of
her head. She pressed her fingers to her throbbing temples, and tried
to become more conscious. The knock persisted and she finally realized
that it was at her door rather than in her head. She called out, “Who
is it?”
“It’s me.” Emma Lou was not far enough out of the fog to recognize
who “me” was. It didn’t seem important anyway, so without any more
thought or action, she allowed herself to doze off again. Whoever was
on the outside of the door banged the louder, and finally Emma Lou
distinguished the voice of her landlady, calling, “Let me in, Miss
Morgan, let me in.” The voice grew more sharp.... “Let me in,” and
then in an undertone, “Must have some one in there.” This last served
to awaken Emma Lou more fully, and though every muscle in her body
protested, she finally got out of the bed and went to the door. The
lady entered precipitously, and pushing Emma Lou aside sniffed the
air and looked around as if she expected to surprise some one, either
squeezing under the bed or leaping through the window. After she had
satisfied herself that there was no one else in the room, she turned on
Emma Lou furiously:
“Miss Morgan, I wish to talk to you.” Emma Lou closed the door and
wearily sat down upon the bed. The wrinkled faced old woman glared
at her and shifted the position of her snuff so she could talk more
easily. “I won’t have it, I tell you, I won’t have it.” Emma Lou tried
hard to realize what it was she wouldn’t have, and failing, she said
nothing, just screwed up her eyes and tried to look sober.
“Do you hear me?” Emma Lou nodded. “I won’t have it. When you moved
in here I thought I made it clear that I was a respectable woman and
that I kept a respectable house. Do you understand that now?” Emma Lou
nodded again. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do. “I’m glad
you do. Then it won’t be necessary for me to explain why I want my
room.”
Emma Lou unscrewed her eyes and opened her mouth. What was this woman
talking about? “I don’t think I understand.”
The old lady was quick with her answer. “There ain’t nothin’ for you to
understand, but that I want you to get out of my house. I don’t have no
such carryings-on around here. A drunken woman in my house at all hours
in the morning, being carried in by a man! Well, you coulda knocked me
over with a feather.”
At last Emma Lou began to understand. Evidently the landlady had seen
her when she had come in, no doubt had seen Alva carry her to her room,
and perhaps had listened outside the door. She was talking again:
“You must get out. Your week is up Wednesday. That gives you three days
to find another room, and I want you to act like a lady the rest of
that time, too. The idea!” she sputtered, and stalked out of the room.
This is a pretty mess, thought Emma Lou. Yet she found herself unable
to think or do anything about it. Her lethargic state worried her.
Here she was about to be dispossessed by an irate landlady, and all
she could do about it was sit on the side of her bed and think--maybe
I ought to take a dose of salts. Momentarily, she had forgotten it
was Sunday, and began to wonder how near time it was for her to go
to work. She was surprised to discover that it was still early in the
forenoon. She couldn’t possibly have gone to bed before four-thirty or
five, yet it seemed as if she had slept for hours. She felt like some
one who had been under the influence of some sinister potion for a long
period of time. Had she been drugged? Her head still throbbed, her
insides burned, her tongue was swollen, her lips chapped and feverish.
She began to deplore her physical condition, and even to berate herself
and Alva for last night’s debauchery.
Funny people, his friends. Come to think of it they were all very much
different from any one else she had ever known. They were all so,
so--she sought for a descriptive word, but could think of nothing save
that revolting, “Oh, sock it,” she had heard on first entering the
apartment where the house-rent party had been held.
Then she began to wonder about her landlady’s charges. There was no
need arguing about the matter. She had wanted to move anyway. Maybe
now she could go ahead and find a decent place in which to live. She
had never had the nerve to begin another room hunting expedition after
the last one. She shuddered as she thought about it, then climbed back
into the bed. She could see no need in staying up so long as her head
ached as it did. She wondered if Alva had made much noise in bringing
her in, wondered how long he had stayed, and if he had had any trouble
manipulating the double-barrelled police lock on the outside door.
Harlem people were so careful about barricading themselves in. They all
seemed to fortify themselves, not only against strangers, but against
neighbors and friends as well.
And Alva? She had to admit that she was a trifle disappointed in
him and in his friends. They certainly weren’t what she could have
called either intellectuals or respectable people. Whoever heard of
decent folk attending such a lascivious festival? She remembered their
enthusiastic comments and tried to comprehend just what it was that
had intrigued and interested them. Looking for material, they had
said. More than likely they were looking for liquor and a chance to be
licentious.
Alva himself worried her a bit. She couldn’t understand why gin seemed
so indispensable to him. He always insisted that he had to have at
least three drinks a day. Once she had urged him not to follow this
program. Unprotestingly, he had come to her the following evening
without the usual juniper berry smell on his breath, but he had been
so disagreeable and had seemed so much like a worn out and dissipated
person that she had never again suggested that he not have his usual
quota of drinks. Then, too, she had discovered that he was much too
lovable after having had his “evening drams” to be discouraged from
taking them. Emma Lou had never met any one in her life who was as
loving and kind to her as Alva. He seemed to anticipate her every
mood and desire, and he was the most soothing and satisfying person
with whom she had ever come into contact. He seldom riled her--seldom
ruffled her feelings. He seemed to give in to her on every occasion,
and was the most chivalrous escort imaginable. He was always courteous,
polite and thoughtful of her comfort.
As yet she had been unable to become angry with him. Alva never argued
or protested unduly. Although Emma Lou didn’t realize it, he used more
subtle methods. His means of remaining master of all situations were
both tactful and sophisticated; for example, Emma Lou never realized
just how she had first begun giving him money. Surely he hadn’t asked
her for it. It had just seemed the natural thing to do after a while,
and she had done it, willingly and without question. The ethical side
of their relationship never worried her. She was content and she was
happy--at least she was in possession of something that seemed to bring
her happiness. She seldom worried about Alva not being true to her, and
if she questioned him about such matters, he would pretend not to hear
her and change the conversation. The only visible physical reaction
would be a slight narrowing of the eyes, as if he were trying not to
wince from the pain of some inner hurt.
Once she had suggested marriage, and had been shocked when Alva
told her that to him the marriage ceremony seemed a waste of time.
He had already been married twice, and he hadn’t even bothered to
obtain a divorce from his first wife before acquiring number two. On
hearing this, Emma Lou had urged him to tell her more about these
marital experiments, and after a little coaxing, he had done so, very
impassively and very sketchily, as if he were relating the experiences
of another. He told her that he had really loved his first wife, but
that she was such an essential polygamous female that he had been
forced to abdicate and hand her over to the multitudes. According to
Alva, she had been as vain as Braxton, and as fundamentally dependent
upon flattery. She could do without three square meals a day, but she
couldn’t do without her contingent of mealy-mouthed admirers, all eager
to outdo one another in the matter of compliments. One man could never
have satisfied her, not that she was a nymphomaniac with abnormal
physical appetites, but because she wanted attention, and the more men
she had around her, the more attention she could receive. She hadn’t
been able to convince Alva, though, that her battalion of admirers
were all of the platonic variety. “I know niggers too well,” Alva had
summed it up to Emma Lou, “so I told her she just must go, and she
went.”
“But,” Emma Lou had queried when he had started to talk about something
else, “what about your second wife?”
“Oh,” he laughed, “well, I married her when I was drunk. She was an
old woman about fifty. She kept me drunk from Sunday to Sunday. When I
finally got sober she showed me the marriage license and I well nigh
passed out again.”
“But where is she?” Emma Lou had asked, “and how did they let you get
married while you were drunk and already had a wife?”
Alva had shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know where she is. I ain’t
seen her since I left her room that day. I sent Braxton up there to
talk to her. Seems like she’d been drunk too. So, it really didn’t
matter. And as for a divorce, I know plenty spades right here in Harlem
get married any time they want to. Who in the hell’s gonna take the
trouble getting a divorce, when, if you must marry and already have a
wife, you can get another without going through all that red tape?”
Emma Lou had had to admit that this sounded logical, if illegal. Yet
she hadn’t been convinced. “But,” she had insisted, “don’t they look
you up and convict you of bigamy?”
“Hell, no. The only thing the law bothers niggers about is for
stealing, murdering, or chasing white women, and as long as they don’t
steal from or murder ofays, the law ain’t none too particular about
bothering them. The only time they act about bigamy is when one of the
wives squawk, and they hardly ever do that. They’re only too glad to
see the old man get married again--then they can do likewise, without
spending lots of time on lawyers and courthouse red tape.”
This, and other things which Emma Lou had elicited from Alva, had
convinced her that he was undoubtedly the most interesting person she
had ever met. What added to this was the strange fact that he seemed
somewhat cultured despite his admitted unorganized and haphazard early
training. On being questioned, he advanced the theory that perhaps this
was due to his long period of service as waiter and valet to socially
prominent white people. Many Negroes, he had explained, even of the
“dicty” variety, had obtained their _savoir faire_ and knowledge of the
social niceties in this manner.
Emma Lou lay abed, remembering the many different conversations they
had had together, most of which had taken place on a bench in City
College Park, or in Alva’s room. With enough gin for stimulation,
Alva could tell many tales of his life and hold her spellbound with
vivid descriptions of the various situations he had found himself in.
He loved to reminisce, when he found a good listener, and Emma Lou
loved to listen when she found a good talker. Alva often said that he
wished some one would write a story of his life. Maybe that was why
he cultivated an acquaintance with these writer people.... Then it
seemed as if this one-sided conversational communion strengthened their
physical bond. It made Emma Lou more palatable to Alva, and it made
Alva a more glamorous figure to Emma Lou.
But here she was day dreaming, when she should be wondering where she
was going to move. She couldn’t possibly remain in this place, even
if the old lady relented and decided to give her another chance to be
respectable. Somehow or other she felt that she had been insulted, and
for the first time, began to feel angry with the old snuff-chewing
termagant.
Her head ached no longer, but her body was still lethargic. Alva, Alva,
Alva. Could she think of nothing else? Supposing she sat upright in
the bed--supposing she and Alva were to live together. They might get
a small apartment and be with one another entirely. Immediately she
was all activity. The headache was forgotten. Out of bed, into her
bathrobe, and down the hall to the bathroom. Even the quick shower
seemed to be a slow, tedious process, and she was in such a hurry to
hasten into the street and telephone Alva, in order to tell him of her
new plans, that she almost forgot to make the very necessary and very
customary application of bleaching cream to her face. As it was, she
forgot to rinse her face and hands in lemon juice.
* * * * *
Alva had lost all patience with Braxton, and profanely told him so. No
matter what his condition, Braxton would not work. He seemed to believe
that because he was handsome, and because he was Braxton, he shouldn’t
have to work. He graced the world with his presence. Therefore, it
should pay him. “A thing of beauty is joy forever,” and should be
sustained by a communal larder. Alva tried to show him that such a
larder didn’t exist, that one either worked or hustled.
But as Alva had explained to Emma Lou, Braxton wouldn’t work, and as
a hustler he was a distinct failure. He couldn’t gamble successfully,
he never had a chance to steal, and he always allowed his egotism
to defeat his own ends when he tried to get money from women. He
assumed that at a word from him, anybody’s pocketbook should be
at his disposal, and that his handsomeness and personality were a
combination none could withstand. It is a platitude among sundry sects
and individuals that as a person thinketh, so he is, but it was not
within the power of Braxton’s mortal body to become the being his
imagination sought to create. He insisted, for instance, that he was a
golden brown replica of Rudolph Valentino. Every picture he could find
of the late lamented cinema sheik he pasted either on the wall or on
some of his belongings. The only reason that likenesses of his idol
did not decorate all the wall space was because Alva objected to this
flapperish ritual. Braxton emulated his silver screen mentor in every
way, watched his every gesture on the screen, then would stand in front
of his mirror at home and practice Rudy’s poses and facial expressions.
Strange as it may seem, there was a certain likeness between the two,
especially at such moments when Braxton would suddenly stand in the
center of the floor and give a spontaneous impersonation of his Rudy
making love or conquering enemies. Then, at all times, Braxton held his
head as Rudy held his, and had even learned how to smile and how to
use his eyes in the same captivating manner. But his charms were too
obviously cultivated, and his technique too clumsy. He would attract
almost any one to him, but they were sure to bolt away as suddenly as
they had come. He could have, but he could not hold.
Now, as Alva told Emma Lou, this was a distinct handicap to one who
wished to be a hustler, and live by one’s wits off the bounty of
others. And the competition was too keen in a place like Harlem, where
the adaptability to city ways sometimes took strange and devious turns,
for a bungler to have much success. Alva realized this, if Braxton
didn’t, and tried to tell him so, but Braxton wouldn’t listen. He felt
that Alva was merely being envious--the fact that Alva had more suits
than he, and that Alva always had clean shirts, liquor money and room
rent, and that Alva could continue to have these things, despite the
fact that he had decided to quit work during the hot weather, meant
nothing to Braxton at all. He had facial and physical perfection, a
magnetic body and much sex appeal. Ergo, he was a master.
However, lean days were upon him. His mother and aunt had unexpectedly
come to New York to help him celebrate the closing day of his freshman
year at Columbia. His surprise at seeing them was nothing in comparison
to their surprise in finding that their darling had not even started
his freshman year. The aunt was stoic--“What could you expect of a
child with all that wild Indian blood in him? Now, our people....” She
hadn’t liked Braxton’s father. His mother simply could not comprehend
his duplicity. Such an unnecessarily cruel and deceptive performance
was beyond her understanding. Had she been told that he was guilty of
thievery, murder, or rape, she could have borne up and smiled through
her tears in true maternal fashion, but that he could so completely
fool her for nine months--incredible; preposterous! it just couldn’t be!
She and her sister returned to Boston, telling every one there what a
successful year their darling had had at Columbia, and telling Braxton
before they left that he could not have another cent of their money
that summer, that if he didn’t enter Columbia in the fall ... well, he
was not yet of age. They made many vague threats; none so alarming,
however, as the threat of a temporary, if not permanent, suspension of
his allowance.
By pawning some of his suits, his watch, and diamond ring, he amassed a
small stake and took to gambling. Unlucky at love, he should, so Alva
said, have been lucky at cards, and was. But even a lucky man will
suffer from lack of skill and foolhardiness. Braxton would gamble only
with mature men who gathered in the police-protected clubs, rather
than with young chaps like himself, who gathered in private places. He
couldn’t classify himself with the cheap or the lowly. If he was to
gamble, he must gamble in a professional manner, with professional
men. As in all other affairs, he had luck, but no skill and little
sense. His little gambling stake lasted but a moment, flitted from him
feverishly, and left him holding an empty purse.
Then he took to playing the “numbers,” placing quarters and half
dollars on a number compounded of three digits and anxiously perusing
the daily clearing house reports to see whether or not he had chosen
correctly. Alva, too, played the numbers consistently and somehow or
other, managed to remain ahead of the game, but Braxton, as was to be
expected, “hit” two or three times, then grew excited over his winnings
and began to play two or three or even five dollars daily on one
number. Such plunging, unattended by scientific observation or close
calculation, put him so far behind the game that his winnings were soon
dissipated and he had to stop playing altogether.
Alva had quit work for the summer. He contended that it was far too hot
to stand over a steam pressing machine during the sultry summer months,
and there was no other congenial work available. Being a bellhop in
one of the few New York hotels where colored boys were used, called
for too long hours and broken shifts. Then they didn’t pay much money
and he hated to work for tips. He certainly would not take an elevator
job, paying only sixty or sixty-five dollars a month at the most, and
making it necessary for him to work nights one week from six to eight,
and days the next week, vice versa. Being an elevator operator in a
loft building required too much skill, patience, and muscular activity.
The same could be said of the shipping clerk positions, open in the
various wholesale houses. He couldn’t, of course, be expected to be a
porter, and swing a mop. Bootblacking was not even to be considered.
There was nothing left. He was unskilled, save as a presser. Once he
had been apprenticed to a journeyman tailor, but he preferred to forget
that.
No, there was nothing he could do, and there was no sense in working
in the summer. He never had done it; at least, not since he had
been living in New York--so he didn’t see why he should do it now.
Furthermore, his salary hardly paid his saloon bill, and since his
board and room and laundry and clothes came from other sources, why
not quit work altogether and develop these sources to their capacity
output? Things looked much brighter this year than ever before. He
had more clothes, he had “hit” the numbers more than ever, he had won
a baseball pool of no mean value, and, in addition to Emma Lou, he
had made many other profitable contacts during the spring and winter
months. It was safe for him to loaf, but he couldn’t carry Braxton, or
rather, he wouldn’t. Yet he liked him well enough not to kick him into
the streets. Something, he told Emma Lou, should be done for him first,
so Alva started doing things.
First, he got him a girl, or rather steered him in the direction of one
who seemed to be a good bet. She was. And as usual, Braxton had little
trouble in attracting her to him. She was a simple-minded over-sexed
little being from a small town in Central Virginia, new to Harlem, and
had hitherto always lived in her home town where she had been employed
since her twelfth year as maid-of-all-work to a wealthy white family.
For four years, she had been her master’s concubine, and probably would
have continued in that capacity for an unspecified length of time,
had not the mistress of the house decided that after all it might not
be good for her two adolescent sons to become aware of their father’s
philandering. She had had to accept it. Most of the women of her
generation and in her circle had done likewise. But these were the post
world war days of modernity ... and, well, it just wasn’t being done,
what with the growing intelligence of the “darkies,” and the increased
sophistication of the children.
So Anise Hamilton had been surreptitiously shipped away to New York,
and a new maid-of-all-work had mysteriously appeared in her place. The
mistress had seen to it that this new maid was not as desirable as
Anise, but a habit is a habit, and the master of the house was not the
sort to substitute one habit for another. If anything, his wife had
made herself more miserable by the change, since the last girl loved
much better than she worked, while Anise had proved competent on both
scores, thereby pleasing both master and mistress.
Anise had come to Harlem and deposited the money her former mistress
had supplied her with in the postal savings. She wouldn’t hear
to placing it in any other depository. Banks had a curious and
discomforting habit of closing their doors without warning, and without
the foresight to provide their patrons with another nest egg. If banks
in Virginia went broke, those in wicked New York would surely do so.
Now, Uncle Sam had the whole country behind him, and everybody knew
that the United States was the most wealthy of the world’s nations.
Therefore, what safer place than the post office for one’s bank account?
Anise got a job, too, almost immediately. Her former mistress had
given her a letter to a friend of hers on Park Avenue, and this
friend had another friend who had a sister who wanted a stock girl
in her exclusive modiste shop. Anise was the type to grace such an
establishment as this person owned, just the right size to create
a smart uniform for, and shapely enough to allow the creator of the
uniform ample latitude for bizarre experimentation. Most important
of all, her skin, the color of beaten brass with copper overtones,
synchronized with the gray plaster walls, dark hardwood furniture and
powder blue rugs on the Maison Quantrelle.
Anise soon had any number of “boy friends,” with whom she had varying
relations. But she willingly dropped them all for Braxton, and, simple
village girl that she was, expected him to do likewise with his “girl
friends.” She had heard much about the “two-timing sugar daddies” in
Harlem, and while she was well versed in the art herself, having never
been particularly true to her male employer, she did think that this
sort of thing was different, and that any time she was willing to play
fair, her consort should do likewise.
Alva was proud of himself when he noticed how rapidly things progressed
between Anise and Braxton. They were together constantly, and Anise,
not unused to giving her home town “boy friends” some of “Mister
Bossman’s bounty,” was soon slipping Braxton spare change to live on.
Then she undertook to pay his half of the room rent, and finally,
within three weeks, was, as Alva phrased it, “treating Braxton royally.”
But as ever, he was insistent upon being perverse. His old swank and
swagger was much in evidence. With most of his clothing out of the
pawnshop, he attempted to dazzle the Avenue when he paraded its length,
the alluring Anise, attired in clothes borrowed from her employer’s
stockroom, beside him. The bronze replica of Rudolph Valentino was, in
the argot of Harlem’s pool hall Johnnies, “out the barrel.” The world
was his. He had in it a bottle, and he need only make it secure by
corking. But Braxton was never the person to make anything secure. He
might manage to capture the entire universe, but he could never keep
it pent up, for he would soon let it alone to look for two more like
it. It was to be expected, then, that Braxton would lose his head.
He did, deliberately and diabolically. Because Anise was so madly in
love with him, he imagined that all other women should do as she had
done, and how much more delightful and profitable it would be to have
two or three Anises instead of one. So he began a crusade, spending
much of Anise’s money for campaign funds. Alva quarrelled, and Anise
threatened, but Braxton continued to explore and expend.
Anise finally revolted when Braxton took another girl to a dance on
her money. He had done this many times before, but she hadn’t known
about it. She wouldn’t have known about it this time if he hadn’t
told her. He often did things like that. Thought it made him more
desirable. Despite her simple-mindedness, Anise had spunk. She didn’t
like to quarrel, but she wasn’t going to let any one make a fool out
of her, so, the next week after the heartbreaking incident, she had
moved and left no forwarding address. It was presumed that she had gone
downtown to live in the apartment of the woman for whom she worked.
Braxton seemed unconcerned about her disappearance, and continued
his peacock-like march for some time, with feathers unruffled, even
by frequent trips to the pawnshop. But a peacock can hardly preen an
unplumaged body, and, though Braxton continued to strut, in a few weeks
after the break, he was only a sad semblance of his former self.
Alva nagged at him continually. “Damned if I’m going to carry you.”
Braxton would remain silent. “You’re the most no-count nigger I know.
If you can’t do anything else, why in the hell don’t you get a job?” “I
don’t see you working,” Braxton would answer.
“And you don’t see me starving, either,” would be the come-back.
“Oh, jost ’cause you got that little black wench....”
“That’s all right about the little black wench. She’s forty with me,
and I know how to treat her. I bet you couldn’t get five cents out of
her.”
“I wouldn’t try.”
“Hell, if you tried it wouldn’t make no difference. There’s a gal ready
to pay to have a man, and there are lots more like her. You couldn’t
even keep a good-looking gold mine like Anise. Wish I could find her.”
Braxton would sulk a while, thinking that his silence would discourage
Alva, but Alva was not to be shut up. He was truly outraged. He felt
that he was being imposed upon, being used by some one who thought
himself superior to him. He would admit that he wasn’t as handsome
as Braxton, but he certainly had more common sense. The next Monday
Braxton moved.
* * * * *
Alva was to take Emma Lou to the midnight show at the Lafayette
Theater. He met her as she left work and they had taken the subway
uptown. On the train they began to talk, shouting into one another’s
ears, trying to make their voices heard above the roar of the
underground tube.
“Do you like your new home?” Alva shouted. He hadn’t seen her since she
had moved two days before.
“It’s nice,” she admitted loudly, “but it would be nicer if I had you
there with me.”
He patted her hand and held it regardless of the onlooking crowd.
“Maybe so, sugar, but you wouldn’t like me if you had to live with me
all the time.”
Emma Lou was aggrieved: “I don’t see how you can say that. How do you
know? That’s what made me mad last Sunday.”
Alva saw that Emma Lou was ready for argument and he had no intention
of favoring her, or of discomfiting himself. He was even sorry that
he said as much as he had when she had first broached the “living
together” matter over the telephone on Sunday, calling him out of bed
before noon while Geraldine was there too, looking, but not asking, for
information. He smiled at her indulgently:
“If you say another word about it, I’ll kiss you right here in the
subway.”
Emma Lou didn’t put it beyond him so she could do nothing but smile
and shut up. She rather liked him to talk to her that way. Alva was
shouting into her ear again, telling her a scandalous tale he claimed
to have heard while playing poker with some of the boys. He thus
contrived to keep her entertained until they reached the 135th Street
station where they finally emerged from beneath the pavement to mingle
with the frowsy crowds of Harlem’s Bowery, Lenox Avenue.
They made their way to the Lafayette, the Jew’s gift of entertainment
to Harlem colored folk. Each week the management of this theater
presents a new musical revue of the three a day variety with motion
pictures--all guaranteed to be from three to ten years old--sandwiched
in between. On Friday nights there is a special midnight performance
lasting from twelve o’clock until four or four-thirty the next morning,
according to the stamina of the actors. The audience does not matter.
It would as soon sit until noon the next day if the “high yaller”
chorus girls would continue to undress, and the black face comedians
would continue to tell stale jokes, just so long as there was a raucous
blues singer thrown in every once in a while for vulgar variety.
Before Emma Lou and Alva could reach the entrance door, they had
to struggle through a crowd of well dressed young men and boys,
congregated on the sidewalk in front of the theater. The midnight
show at the Lafayette on Friday is quite a social event among certain
classes of Harlem folk, and, if one is a sweetback or a man about town,
one must be seen standing in front of the theater, if not inside. It
costs nothing to obstruct the entrance way, and it adds much to one’s
prestige. Why, no one knows.
Without untoward incident Emma Lou and Alva found the seats he had
reserved. There was much noise in the theater, much passing to and
fro, much stumbling down dark aisles. People were always leaving their
seats, admonishing their companions to hold them, and some one else
was always taking them despite the curt and sometimes belligerent,
“This seat is taken.” Then, when the original occupant would return
there would be still another argument. This happened so frequently
that there seemed to be a continual wrangling automatically staged in
different parts of the auditorium. Then people were always looking for
some one or for something, always peering into the darkness, emitting
code whistles, and calling to Jane or Jim or Pete or Bill. At the
head of each aisle, both upstairs and down, people were packed in a
solid mass, a grumbling, garrulous mass, elbowing their neighbors,
cursing the management, and standing on tiptoe trying to find an empty,
intact seat--intact because every other seat in the theater seemed to
be broken. Hawkers went up and down the aisle shouting, “Ice cream,
peanuts, chewing gum or candy.” People hissed at them and ordered what
they wanted. A sadly inadequate crew of ushers inefficiently led people
up one aisle and down another trying to find their supposedly reserved
seats; a lone fireman strove valiantly to keep the aisles clear as the
fire laws stipulated. It was a most chaotic and confusing scene.
First, a movie was shown while the organ played mournful jazz. About
one o’clock the midnight revue went on. The curtain went up on the
customary chorus ensemble singing the customary, “Hello, we’re glad to
be here, we’re going to please you” opening song. This was followed
by the usual song and dance team, a blues singer, a lady Charleston
dancer, and two black faced comedians. Each would have his turn, then
begin all over again, aided frequently by the energetic and noisy
chorus, which somehow managed to appear upon the stage almost naked in
the first scene, and keep getting more and more naked as the evening
progressed.
Emma Lou had been to the Lafayette before with John and had been
shocked by the scantily clad women and obscene skits. The only
difference that she could see in this particular revue was that the
performers were more bawdy and more boisterous. And she had never been
in or seen such an audience. There was as much, if not more, activity
in the orchestra and box seats than there was on the stage. It was
hard to tell whether the cast was before or behind the proscenium
arch. There seemed to be a veritable contest going on between the
paid performers and their paying audience, and Emma Lou found the
spontaneous monkey shines and utterances of those around her much more
amusing than the stereotyped antics of the hired performers on the
stage.
She was surprised to find that she was actually enjoying herself, yet
she supposed that after the house-rent party she could stand anything.
Imagine people opening their flats to the public and charging any one
who had the price to pay twenty-five cents to enter? Imagine people
going to such bedlam Bacchanals?
A new scene on the stage attracted her attention. A very colorfully
dressed group of people had gathered for a party. Emma Lou immediately
noticed that all the men were dark, and that all the women were either
a very light brown or “high yaller.” She turned to Alva:
“Don’t they ever have anything else but fair chorus girls?”
Alva made a pretense of being very occupied with the business on the
stage. Happily, at that moment, one of a pair of black faced comedians
had set the audience in an uproar with a suggestive joke. After a
moment Emma Lou found herself laughing too. The two comedians were
funny, no matter how prejudiced one might be against unoriginality.
There must be other potent elements to humor besides surprise. Then
a very Topsy-like girl skated onto the stage to the tune of “Ireland
must be heaven because my mother came from there.” Besides being
corked until her skin was jet black, the girl had on a wig of kinky
hair. Her lips were painted red--their thickness exaggerated by the
paint. Her coming created a stir. Every one concerned was indignant
that something like her should crash their party. She attempted to
attach herself to certain men in the crowd. The straight men spurned
her merely by turning away. The comedians made a great fuss about it,
pushing her from one to the other, and finally getting into a riotous
argument because each accused the other of having invited her. It ended
by them agreeing to toss her bodily off the stage to the orchestral
accompaniment of “Bye, Bye, Blackbird,” while the entire party loudly
proclaimed that “Black cats must go.”
Then followed the usual rigamarole carried on weekly at the Lafayette
concerning the undesirability of black girls. Every one, that is, all
the males, let it be known that high browns and “high yallers” were
“forty” with them, but that.... They were interrupted by the re-entry
of the little black girl riding a mule and singing mournfully as she
was being thus transported across the stage:
A yellow gal rides in a limousine,
A brown-skin rides a Ford,
A black gal rides an old jackass
But she gets there, yes my Lord.
Emma Lou was burning up with indignation. So color-conscious had she
become that any time some one mentioned or joked about skin color, she
immediately imagined that they were referring to her. Now she even felt
that all the people near by were looking at her and that their laughs
were at her expense. She remained silent throughout the rest of the
performance, averting her eyes from the stage and trying hard not to
say anything to Alva before they left the theater. After what seemed an
eternity, the finale screamed its good-bye at the audience, and Alva
escorted her out into Seventh Avenue.
Alva was tired and thirsty. He had been up all night the night before
at a party to which he had taken Geraldine, and he had had to get up
unusually early on Friday morning in order to go after his laundry. Of
course when he had arrived at Bobby’s apartment where his laundry was
being done, he found that his shirts were not yet ironed, so he had
gone to bed there, with the result that he hadn’t been able to go to
sleep, nor had the shirts been ironed, but that was another matter.
“First time I ever went to a midnight show without something on my
hip,” he complained to Emma Lou as they crossed the taxi-infested
street in order to escape the crowds leaving the theater and idling in
front of it, even at four A. M. in the morning.
“Well,” Emma Lou returned vehemently, “it’s the last time I’ll ever go
to that place any kind of way.”
Alva hadn’t expected this. “What’s the matter with you?”
“You’re always taking me some place, or placing me in some position
where I’ll be insulted.”
“Insulted?” This was far beyond Alva. Who on earth had insulted her and
when. “But,” he paused, then advanced cautiously, “Sugar, I don’t know
what you mean.”
Emma Lou was ready for a quarrel. In fact she had been trying to pick
one with him ever since the night she had gone to that house-rent
party, and the landlady had asked her to move on the following day.
Alva’s curt refusal of her proposal that they live together had hurt
her far more than he had imagined. Somehow or other he didn’t think
she could be so serious about the matter, especially upon such short
notice. But Emma Lou had been so certain that he would be as excited
over the suggestion as she had been that she hadn’t considered meeting
a definite refusal. Then the finding of a room had been irritating to
contemplate. She couldn’t have called it irritating of accomplishment
because Alva had done that for her. She had told him on Sunday morning
that she had to move and by Sunday night he had found a place for her.
She had to admit that he had found an exceptionally nice place too. It
was just two blocks from him, on 138th Street between Eighth Avenue and
Edgecombe. It was near the elevated station, near the park, and cost
only ten dollars and fifty cents per week for the room, kitchenette and
private bath.
On top of his refusal to live with her, Alva had broken two dates with
Emma Lou, claiming that he was playing poker. On one of these nights,
after leaving work, Emma Lou had decided to walk past his house. Even
at a distance she could see that there was a light in his room, and
when she finally passed the house, she recognized Geraldine, the girl
with whom she had seen Alva dancing at the Renaissance Casino, seated
in the window. Angrily, she had gone home, determined to break with
Alva on the morrow, and on reaching home had found a letter from her
mother which had disturbed her even more. For a long time now her
mother had been urging her to come home, and her Uncle Joe had even
sent her word that he meant to forward a ticket at an early date. But
Emma Lou had no intentions of going home. She was so obsessed with
the idea that her mother didn’t want her, and she was so incensed at
the people with whom she knew she would be forced to associate, that
she could consider her mother’s hysterically-put request only as an
insult. Thus, presuming, she had answered in kind, giving vent to her
feelings about the matter. This disturbing letter was in answer to
her own spleenic epistle, and what hurt her most was, not the sharp
counsellings and verbose lamentations therein, but the concluding
phrase, which read, “I don’t see how the Lord could have given me such
an evil, black hussy for a daughter.”
The following morning she had telephoned Alva, determined to break with
him, or at least make him believe she was about to break with him,
but Alva had merely yawned and asked her not to be a goose. Could he
help it if Braxton’s girl chose to sit in his window? It was as much
Braxton’s room as it was his. True, Braxton wouldn’t be there long,
but while he was, he certainly should have full privileges. That had
quieted Emma Lou then, but there was nothing that could quiet her now.
She continued arguing as they walked toward 135th Street.
“You don’t want to know what I mean.”
“No, I guess not,” Alva assented wearily, then quickened his pace. He
didn’t want to have a public scene with this black wench. But Emma Lou
was not to be appeased.
“Well, you will know what I mean. First you take me out with a bunch of
your supposedly high-toned friends, and sit silently by while they poke
fun at me. Then you take me to a theater, where you know I’ll have my
feelings hurt.” She stopped for breath. Alva filled in the gap.
“If you ask me,” he said wearily, “I think you’re full of stuff. Let’s
take a taxi. I’m too tired to walk.” He hailed a taxi, pushed her into
it, and gave the driver the address. Then he turned to Emma Lou, saying
something which he regretted having said a moment later.
“How did my friends insult you?”
“You know how they insulted me, sitting up there making fun of me
’cause I’m black.”
Alva laughed, something he also regretted later.
“That’s right, laugh, and I suppose you laughed with them then, behind
my back, and planned all that talk before I arrived.”
Alva didn’t answer and Emma Lou cried all the rest of the way home.
Once there he tried to soothe her.
“Come on, Sugar, let Alva put you to bed.”
But Emma Lou was not to be sugared so easily. She continued to cry.
Alva sat down on the bed beside her.
“Snap out of it, won’t you, Honey? You’re just tired. Go to bed and get
some sleep. You’ll be all right tomorrow.”
Emma Lou stopped her crying.
“I may be all right, but I’ll never forget the way you’ve allowed me
to be insulted in your presence.”
This was beginning to get on Alva’s nerves but he smiled at her
indulgently:
“I suppose I should have gone down on the stage and biffed one of the
comedians in the jaw?”
“No,” snapped Emma Lou, realizing she was being ridiculous, “but you
could’ve stopped your friends from poking fun at me.”
“But, Sugar,” this was growing tiresome. “How can you say they were
making fun of you. It’s beyond me.”
“It wasn’t beyond you when it started. I bet you told them about me
before I came in, told them I was black....”
“Nonsense, weren’t some of them dark? I’m afraid,” he advanced slowly,
“that you are a trifle too color-conscious,” he was glad he remembered
that phrase.
Emma Lou flared up: “Color-conscious ... who wouldn’t be
color-conscious when everywhere you go people are always talking about
color. If it didn’t make any difference they wouldn’t talk about it,
they wouldn’t always be poking fun, and laughing and making jokes....”
Alva interrupted her tirade. “You’re being silly, Emma Lou. About
three-quarters of the people at the Lafayette tonight were either dark
brown or black, and here you are crying and fuming like a ninny over
some reference made on the stage to a black person.” He was disgusted
now. He got up from the bed. Emma Lou looked up.
“But, Alva, you don’t know.”
“I do know,” he spoke sharply for the first time, “that you’re a damn
fool. It’s always color, color, color. If I speak to any of my friends
on the street you always make some reference to their color and keep
plaguing me with--‘Don’t you know nothing else but light-skinned
people?’ And you’re always beefing about being black. Seems like to me
you’d be proud of it. You’re not the only black person in this world.
There are gangs of them right here in Harlem, and I don’t see them
going around a-moanin’ ’cause they ain’t half white.”
“I’m not moaning.”
“Oh, yes you are. And a person like you is far worse than a hinkty
yellow nigger. It’s your kind helps make other people color-prejudiced.”
“That’s just what I’m saying; it’s because of my color....”
“Oh, go to hell!” And Alva rushed out of the room, slamming the door
behind him.
* * * * *
Braxton had been gone a week. Alva, who had been out with Marie,
the creole Lesbian, came home late, and, turning on the light,
found Geraldine asleep in his bed. He was so surprised that he could
do nothing for a moment but stand in the center of the room and
look--first at Geraldine and then at her toilet articles spread over
his dresser. He twisted his lips in a wry smile, muttered something to
himself, then walked over to the bed and shook her.
“Geraldine, Geraldine,” he called. She awoke quickly and smiled at him.
“Hello. What time is it?”
“Oh,” he returned guardedly, “somewhere after three.”
“Where’ve you been?”
“Playing poker.”
“With whom?”
“Oh, the same gang. But what’s the idea?”
Geraldine wrinkled her brow.
“The idea of what?”
“Of sorta taking possession?”
“Oh,” she seemed enlightened, “I’ve moved to New York.”
It was Alva’s cue to register surprise.
“What’s the matter? You and the old lady fall out?”
“Not at all.”
“Does she know where you are?”
“She knows I’m in New York.”
“You know what I mean. Does she know you’re going to stay?”
“Certainly.”
“But where are you going to live?”
“Here.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“But ... but ... well, what is this all about, anyhow?”
She sat up in the bed and regarded him for a moment, a light smile
playing around her lips. Before she spoke she yawned; then in a cool,
even tone of voice, announced “I’m going to have a baby.”
“But,” he began after a moment, “can’t you--can’t you...?”
“I’ve tried everything and now it’s too late. There’s nothing to do but
have it.”