_Black Belt_
But I figures I has got something better to do than just to be
gallivanting to and fro on a frolic. A notion has busted out insides of
my brains. So right off I puts off across town for West One-Hundred and
Thirty-fifth Street hoping for to find one U. S. G. Petty, Colored.
Some time back, as I remembers, I made brief mention about having
affiliated myself into the Pastime Colored Pleasure and Recreation Club,
Inc. Only, the last word--_Inc._--is not usually spoke when you is
naming the club, by reason of its sounding so much like a personal
reflection upon the prevailing complexion of some of the members. Still,
that is the way it is wrote out on the letter-heads and the initiation
blanks.
I has belonged for going on more than a month now and I spends much of
my spare time in the club-rooms. I feels more comfortable among my
fellow-affiliators than I does any place else in this town. Looking back
on it I'm convinced 'twas up there I first began to get shut of the
grievous homestick pangs which afflicted me so sorefully following after
our advent into these parts. Up to now I has not spoke of my being
homesick because it seemed like to me the mainest job was to set down
what come to pass without paying much heed to private sensations upon
the part of the scribe thereof, but, if the truth must now be confessed,
I oftentimes was mighty nigh completely overcome by my sufferings from
the same during them opening weeks of the present sojourn.
At the beginning I used to get so tired, night-times, tramping about
streets which was full of utter strangers and not never speaking a word
to nobody nor seeing a friendly face, that I liked to died, dad-blame if
I didn't! If I stood still they'd run right on over me and if I walked
on I didn't have nowheres to go and I'd be so exhaustified from looking
at sights all by myself that I'd get to wishing I'd never see another
sight again as long as I lived, without I had somebody I knowed along
with me to help me look at it. And then I'd come morosing on back to the
apartment and probably Mr. Dallas he'd be out and nobody there but that
there slick-headed Japanee boy. I tried sociable talk with him once or
twice but you really don't derive no great amount of nourishment from
talking with somebody which thinks language is sucking your breath in
through your front teeth and once in awhile grinning like one of these
here pumpkin Jack-mer-lanterns. So I soon learned the lesson of just
letting him be.
I'd go on back to my room and take off my shoes for to ease my aching
feet; but whilst taking off your shoes is good for your feet it don't
help the ache in your soul none. I'd set at the window and look out on
them millions and millions of lights, all winking and blinking at me
like hostile bright eyes, and away down below me in the street I could
hear old automobile horns blatting like lost ghosts, and every now and
then there'd rise up to my ears a sort of a rumble and a roar, like as
if New York City was having indigestion pains; and I'll say it
positively was lonesome. I could shut my eyes and see my own home-town
with the shade trees leaning down towards the sidewalks like they was
interested in what went on underneath them, and I could hear the voices
of the neighbors, both white and black, calling back and forth to one
another and I could seem to smell frying cat-fish spitting in the
skillet at old Uncle Isom Woolfolk's hot snack-stand down back of the
Market House, and I also could smell that damp, soothing kind of a smell
which it rolls in off the river on a warm night and then--oh, my Blessed
Maker!--something would hurt me like having the misery in your side.
That's the way it was very frequent at the outsetting. But pretty soon I
gets acquainted with a couple of colored boys which works in the
apartment house next door to ours--not West Indians but regulation
colored boys, one being from Macon, Georgia, and one from Memphis,
Tennessee--and they takes to escorting me round with 'em at night,
mainly in what the white folks calls the Harlem Black Belt. Fussing back
and forth, thuslike, I makes yet more acquaintances and
then--_bam_!--all at once there's a quick change in me and I ain't so
choked up with lonesomeness like I was. All of a sudden my having lived
heretofore always down in Kentucky has become to me just a kind of a
far-off dream and it's almost like as if I had been a New York
residenter for years past. 'Specially does I feel so when I goes up to
the Pastime Club; which I joins it by invitation about a month ago and
is now already being talked of for one of the honory offices at the next
annual election which will come along in about five or six weeks from
now.
I finds that the most of my race up here aims to copy their actions
after white folks when they is showing themselves off in public. They is
forever trying to talk like whites and trying to appear deeply
oninterested in passing things, the same as some white folks does, and
even trying to think like whites, I expect. But when they gets off
amongst themselves their natural feelings comes out on 'em and the true
coloredism breaks forth and they cuts loose and enjoys themselves
regardless. That's the way it is behind the closed doors of our
club-rooms. Also, there's suitable games and indoor sports such as
coon-can and two-bit-limit poker with the joker running wild and a round
of rumdoodlums after every face-full; and when hunger gnaws at you
there's a Chinee restaurant right handy by, which it caters 'specially
to the colored trade. Here is where I first meets a crock of this here
chop suey face to face; which it may be a Chinee dish but certainly is
got a kind of an African flavor to it. If you can't get a mess of
cow-peas and some real corn-pones and maybe half a fried young spring
chicken with an abundance of gravy, I don't know of nothing which makes
a more desirable light snack between meals than about fifty cents worth
of chop suey with a double order of boiled rice on the side and some of
that there greasy black Chinee sauce to sop it in.
It's one time in the front room of the club that I first takes special
notice of this here U. S. G. Petty, which he is the same person I goes
a-seeking upon leaving the studios on this day in question. The way he
comes to bring himself to my attention is this way: One night five or
six of us Pastimers in good standing is setting round not doing nothing
in particular, but just setting, when talk arises concerning of Gabriel,
the Black Prophet of Abyssinia, which his name is now on everybody's
tongue, more or less.
It seems that the Black Prophet come a-projecting himself onto the local
scene last spring, him claiming to hail from a far-off latitude called
Abyssinia, and immediately he creates a big to-do, which is only to be
expected considering of his general aspect. In the first place, he's a
powerful orator and just overflowing with noble large words. In the
second place, he's a great big over-bearing-looking man and wearing at
all times a flowing garment of purple like the night-shirt of a king,
and instead of having a hat on he's got his head all bandaged up in many
silken folds like he's got scalp-trouble. Naturally, folks turns out to
look at him; but language and curious clothes is not the sole things by
which he recommends himself. He's got something even more compelling to
the colored mind than what these two is--he's had a glorious vision, so
he states, and he craves for to tell about it on all occasions where
folks'll give heed; which they freely does, because he certainly can
explain the whyfores and 'numerate the whereases and show the whereins.
But showing wherein is his main hold.
From the way he tells it, he laid down one night in his native country
for to sleep and whilst he slept an angel appeared before him in a dream
bearing a flaming scroll and a golden sword, and the angel anointed his
brows with the oils of understanding and wiped the scales of blindness
from off his eyes and smeared his lips with the salves of
eloquence--altogether, it seem like the angel must a-been working on him
half the night getting him greased-up to suit. And along towards morning
the command is laid on him to go forth into the world and deliver his
race from bondage in every hemisphere there is. So it transpires that
he takes his foot in his hand and he comes on across the seas over to
these here United States of North America and starts in his
ministrations in New York. Leastwise, that is the account as he lays it
down; which he calls it an inspired prophecy from On High but it sounds
more to me like an inspired real-estate scheme, because the plan as he
preaches it is that all us black folks everywhere must straight-away
rise ourselves up and follow after him, which he will then lead us back
to our original own country of Affika where he will cause all the white
folks which has settled there to pull out and leave us in sole charge
for to rule the state and run our own government and be a free and
independent people from thenceforth on forever. So you pays down so much
for to join and so much every month in dues and soon then--to hear him
tell it--you will be happy on your way across the ocean to find your
haven in the Promised Land.
But not me! I ain't lost no haven. Moreover, if ever anybody does
promise me one-such I ain't aiming to go seeking after it under the
guidnance of a dark stranger which he ain't no credentials for to
endorse him in my eyes, excusing it's a purple silk night-shirt and a
tale about him having been lubricated all over with a lot of different
kinds of fancy ointments by an Abyssinian angel. No sir, if I has to do
traveling in extreme foreign-off parts I'll go along with some of my own
white folks which I can put trust in their words and dependence on their
acts. And, finally, the idea of my returning to Affika does not seem to
appeal to me in no way nor at no time whatsomever. What's the use of
returning to a place where you ain't never been? As I says to myself the
first time the notion is expounded to me, I says:
"I ain't frum Affika, I is frum Paducah, Kintucky. Some of my former
folks may a-hailed frum there--leas'wise, tha's the common rumor--but
the Poindexter fambly is been away so long it seems lak I ain't
inherited the taste to 'go traipsin' back. Mo'over, ef whut I heahs
'bout it is correc', Affika is full of alligators an' lions an'
onreconciled Bengal tigers an' man-eatin' cannibals, w'ich I wouldn't
be surprised but whut they all of 'em 'specially favors the dark meat.
An' yere I is, a pernounced brunette! So, w'en they starts makin' up the
excursion list they kin kin'ly leave my name off, 'cause I 'spects to be
very busily engaged stayin' right whar I dog-goned is!"