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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78747 ***
+
+
+
+
+                 [Illustration: Full-width decoration]
+
+                              THE BLACKER
+                              THE BERRY
+
+                               A NOVEL OF
+                               NEGRO LIFE
+
+                           By WALLACE THURMAN
+
+                    [Illustration: Small decoration]
+
+
+                          THE MACAULAY COMPANY
+                          NEW YORK     MCMXXIX
+
+                 [Illustration: Full-width decoration]
+
+
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1929, BY THE MACAULAY COMPANY
+  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  PART I -- EMMA LOU -- 9
+
+  PART II -- HARLEM -- 75
+
+  PART III -- ALVA -- 111
+
+  PART IV -- RENT PARTY -- 157
+
+  PART V -- PYRRHIC VICTORY -- 217
+
+
+
+
+  _TO MA JACK_
+
+
+
+
+  The blacker the berry
+  The sweeter the juice...
+
+  --_Negro folk saying_
+
+
+  My color shrouds me in....
+
+  --_Countee Cullen_
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+EMMA LOU
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+EMMA LOU
+
+
+More acutely than ever before Emma Lou began to feel that her luscious
+black complexion was somewhat of a liability, and that her marked color
+variation from the other people in her environment was a decided curse.
+Not that she minded being black, being a Negro necessitated having a
+colored skin, but she did mind being too black. She couldn’t understand
+why such should be the case, couldn’t comprehend the cruelty of the
+natal attenders who had allowed her to be dipped, as it were, in indigo
+ink when there were so many more pleasing colors on nature’s palette.
+Biologically, it wasn’t necessary either; her mother was quite fair,
+so was her mother’s mother, and her mother’s brother, and her mother’s
+brother’s son; but then none of them had had a black man for a father.
+Why _had_ her mother married a black man? Surely there had been some
+eligible brown-skin men around. She didn’t particularly desire to have
+had a “high yaller” father, but for her sake certainly some more happy
+medium could have been found.
+
+She wasn’t the only person who regretted her darkness either. It was
+an acquired family characteristic, this moaning and grieving over the
+color of her skin. Everything possible had been done to alleviate the
+unhappy condition, every suggested agent had been employed, but her
+skin, despite bleachings, scourgings, and powderings, had remained
+black--fast black--as nature had planned and effected.
+
+She should have been born a boy, then color of skin wouldn’t have
+mattered so much, for wasn’t her mother always saying that a black boy
+could get along, but that a black girl would never know anything but
+sorrow and disappointment? But she wasn’t a boy; she was a girl, and
+color did matter, mattered so much that she would rather have missed
+receiving her high school diploma than have to sit as she now sat,
+the only odd and conspicuous figure on the auditorium platform of the
+Boise high school. Why had she allowed them to place her in the center
+of the first row, and why had they insisted upon her dressing entirely
+in white so that surrounded as she was by similarly attired pale-faced
+fellow graduates she resembled, not at all remotely, that comic picture
+her Uncle Joe had hung in his bedroom? The picture wherein the black,
+kinky head of a little red-lipped pickaninny lay like a fly in a pan of
+milk amid a white expanse of bedclothes.
+
+But of course she couldn’t have worn blue or black when the call was
+for the wearing of white, even if white was not complementary to her
+complexion. She would have been odd-looking anyway no matter what she
+wore and she would also have been conspicuous, for not only was she the
+only dark-skinned person on the platform, she was also the only Negro
+pupil in the entire school, and had been for the past four years. Well,
+thank goodness, the principal would soon be through with his monotonous
+farewell address, and she and the other members of her class would
+advance to the platform center as their names were called and receive
+the documents which would signify their unconditional release from
+public school.
+
+As she thought of these things, Emma Lou glanced at those who sat
+to the right and to the left of her. She envied them their obvious
+elation, yet felt a strange sense of superiority because of her
+immunity for the moment from an ephemeral mob emotion. Get a
+diploma?--What did it mean to her? College?--Perhaps. A job?--Perhaps
+again. She was going to have a high school diploma, but it would mean
+nothing to her whatsoever. The tragedy of her life was that she was too
+black. Her face and not a slender roll of ribbon-bound parchment was
+to be her future identification tag in society. High school diploma
+indeed! What she needed was an efficient bleaching agent, a magic
+cream that would remove this unwelcome black mask from her face and
+make her more like her fellow men.
+
+“Emma Lou Morgan.”
+
+She came to with a start. The principal had called her name and stood
+smiling down at her benevolently. Some one--she knew it was her Cousin
+Buddie, stupid imp--applauded, very faintly, very provokingly. Some one
+else snickered.
+
+“Emma Lou Morgan.”
+
+The principal had called her name again, more sharply than before and
+his smile was less benevolent. The girl who sat to the left of her
+nudged her. There was nothing else for her to do but to get out of that
+anchoring chair and march forward to receive her diploma. But why did
+the people in the audience have to stare so? Didn’t they all know that
+Emma Lou Morgan was Boise high school’s only nigger student? Didn’t
+they all know--but what was the use. She had to go get that diploma,
+so summoning her most insouciant manner, she advanced to the platform
+center, brought every muscle of her lithe limbs into play, haughtily
+extended her shiny black arm to receive the proffered diploma, bowed a
+chilly thanks, then holding her arms stiffly at her sides, insolently
+returned to her seat in that foreboding white line, insolently returned
+once more to splotch its pale purity and to mock it with her dark,
+outlandish difference.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Emma Lou had been born in a semi-white world, totally surrounded by an
+all-white one, and those few dark elements that had forced their way in
+had either been shooed away or else greeted with derisive laughter. It
+was the custom always of those with whom she came into most frequent
+contact to ridicule or revile any black person or object. A black cat
+was a harbinger of bad luck, black crape was the insignia of mourning,
+and black people were either evil niggers with poisonous blue gums or
+else typical vaudeville darkies. It seemed as if the people in her
+world never went half-way in their recognition or reception of things
+black, for these things seemed always to call forth only the most
+extreme emotional reactions. They never provoked mere smiles or mere
+melancholy, rather they were the signal either for boisterous guffaws
+or pain-induced and tear-attended grief.
+
+Emma Lou had been becoming increasingly aware of this for a long time,
+but her immature mind had never completely grasped its full, and to
+her, tragic significance. First there had been the case of her father,
+old black Jim Morgan they called him, and Emma Lou had often wondered
+why it was that he of all the people she heard discussed by her family
+should always be referred to as if his very blackness condemned him to
+receive no respect from his fellow men.
+
+She had also begun to wonder if it was because of his blackness that
+he had never been in evidence as far as she knew. Inquiries netted
+very unsatisfactory answers. “Your father is no good.” “He left your
+mother, deserted her shortly after you were born.” And these statements
+were always prefixed or followed by some epithet such as “dirty black
+no-gooder” or “durn his onery black hide.” There was in fact only one
+member of the family who did not speak of her father in this manner,
+and that was her Uncle Joe, who was also the only person in the family
+to whom she really felt akin, because he alone never seemed to regret,
+to bemoan, or to ridicule her blackness of skin. It was her grandmother
+who did all the regretting, her mother who did the bemoaning, her
+Cousin Buddie and her playmates, both white and colored, who did the
+ridiculing.
+
+Emma Lou’s maternal grandparents, Samuel and Maria Lightfoot, were
+both mulatto products of slave-day promiscuity between male masters
+and female chattel. Neither had been slaves, their own parents having
+been granted their freedom because of their rather close connections
+with the white branch of the family tree. These freedmen had migrated
+into Kansas with their children, and when these children had grown up
+they in turn had joined the westward-ho parade of that current era, and
+finally settled in Boise, Idaho.
+
+Samuel and Maria, like many others of their kind and antecedents, had
+had only one compelling desire, which motivated their every activity
+and dictated their every thought. They wished to put as much physical
+and mental space between them and the former home of their parents as
+was possible. That was why they had left Kansas, for in Kansas there
+were too many reminders of that which their parents had escaped and
+from which they wished to flee. Kansas was too near the former slave
+belt, too accessible to disgruntled southerners, who, deprived of their
+slaves, were inculcated with an easily communicable virus, nigger
+hatred. Then, too, in Kansas all Negroes were considered as belonging
+to one class. It didn’t matter if you and your parents had been
+freedmen before the Emancipation Proclamation, nor did it matter that
+you were almost three-quarters white. You were, nevertheless, classed
+with those hordes of hungry, ragged, ignorant black folk arriving from
+the South in such great numbers, packed like so many stampeding cattle
+in dirty, manure-littered box cars.
+
+From all of this these maternal grandparents of Emma Lou fled, fled
+to the Rocky Mountain states which were too far away for the recently
+freed slaves to reach, especially since most of them believed that
+the world ended just a few miles north of the Mason-Dixon line. Then,
+too, not only were the Rocky Mountain states beyond the reach of
+this raucous and smelly rabble of recently freed cotton pickers and
+plantation hands, but they were also peopled by pioneers, sturdy land
+and gold seekers from the East, marching westward, always westward in
+search of El Dorado, and being too busy in this respect to be violently
+aroused by problems of race unless economic factors precipitated
+matters.
+
+So Samuel and Maria went into the fast farness of a little known Rocky
+Mountain territory and settled in Boise, at the time nothing more
+than a trading station for the Indians and whites, and a red light
+center for the cowboys and sheepherders and miners in the neighboring
+vicinity. Samuel went into the saloon business and grew prosperous.
+Maria raised a family and began to mother nuclear elements for a future
+select Negro social group.
+
+There was of course in such a small and haphazardly populated community
+some social intermixture between whites and blacks. White and black
+gamblers rolled the dice together, played tricks on one another while
+dealing faro, and became allies in their attempts to outfigure the
+roulette wheel. White and black men amicably frequented the saloons and
+dancehalls together. White and black women leaned out of the doorways
+and windows of the jerry-built frame houses and log cabins of “Whore
+Row.” White and black housewives gossiped over back fences and lent
+one another needed household commodities. But there was little social
+intercourse on a higher scale. Slue-foot Sal, the most popular high
+yaller on “Whore Row,” might be a buddy to Irish Peg and Blond Liz, but
+Mrs. Amos James, whose husband owned the town’s only drygoods store,
+could certainly not become too familiar with Mrs. Samuel Lightfoot,
+colored, whose husband owned a saloon. And it was not a matter of the
+difference in their respective husbands’ businesses. Mrs. Amos James
+did associate with Mrs. Arthur Emory, white, whose husband also owned a
+saloon. It was purely a matter of color.
+
+Emma Lou’s grandmother then, holding herself aloof from the inmates of
+“Whore Row,” and not wishing to associate with such as old Mammy Lewis’
+daughters, who did most of the town wash, and others of their ilk, was
+forced to choose her social equals slowly and carefully. This was hard,
+for there were so few Negroes in Boise anyway that there wasn’t much
+cream to skim off. But as the years passed, others, who, like Maria
+and her husband, were mulatto offsprings of mulatto freedmen seeking a
+freer land, moved in, and were soon initiated into what was later to be
+known as the blue vein circle, so named because all of its members were
+fair-skinned enough for their blood to be seen pulsing purple through
+the veins of their wrists.
+
+Emma Lou’s grandmother was the founder and the acknowledged leader of
+Boise’s blue veins, and she guarded its exclusiveness passionately and
+jealously. Were they not a superior class? Were they not a very high
+type of Negro, comparable to the persons of color group in the West
+Indies? And were they not entitled, ipso facto, to more respect and
+opportunity and social acceptance than the more pure blooded Negroes?
+In their veins was some of the best blood of the South. They were
+closely akin to the only true aristocrats in the United States. Even
+the slave masters had been aware of and acknowledged in some measure
+their superiority. Having some of Marse George’s blood in their veins
+set them apart from ordinary Negroes at birth. These mulattoes as a
+rule were not ordered to work in the fields beneath the broiling sun at
+the urge of a Simon Legree lash. They were saved and trained for the
+more gentle jobs, saved and trained to be ladies’ maids and butlers.
+Therefore, let them continue this natural division of Negro society.
+Let them also guard against unwelcome and degenerating encroachments.
+Their motto must be “Whiter and whiter every generation,” until the
+grandchildren of the blue veins could easily go over into the white
+race and become assimilated so that problems of race would plague them
+no more.
+
+Maria had preached this doctrine to her two children, Jane and Joe,
+throughout their apprentice years, and can therefore be forgiven
+for having a physical collapse when they both, first Joe, then Emma
+Lou’s mother, married not mulattoes, but a copper brown and a blue
+black. This had been somewhat of a necessity, for, when the mating
+call had made itself heard to them, there had been no eligible blue
+veins around. Most of their youthful companions had been sent away to
+school or else to seek careers in eastern cities, and those few who had
+remained had already found their chosen life’s companions. Maria had
+sensed that something of the kind might happen and had urged Samuel
+to send Jane and Joe away to some eastern boarding school, but Samuel
+had very stubbornly refused. He had his own notions of the sort of
+things one’s children learned in boarding school, and of the greater
+opportunities they had to apply that learning. True, they might
+acquire the same knowledge in the public schools of Boise, but then
+there would be some limit to the extent to which they could apply this
+knowledge, seeing that they lived at home and perforce must submit to
+some parental supervision. A cot in the attic at home was to Samuel a
+much safer place for a growing child to sleep than an iron four poster
+in a boarding school dormitory.
+
+So Samuel had remained adamant and the two carefully reared scions of
+Boise’s first blue vein family had of necessity sought their mates
+among the lower orders. However, Joe’s wife was not as undesirable as
+Emma Lou’s father, for she was almost three-quarters Indian, and there
+was scant possibility that her children would have revolting dark
+skins, thick lips, spreading nostrils, and kinky hair. But in the case
+of Emma Lou’s father, there were no such extenuating characteristics,
+for his physical properties undeniably stamped him as a full blooded
+Negro. In fact, it seemed as if he had come from one of the few
+families originally from Africa, who could not boast of having been
+seduced by some member of the southern aristocracy, or befriended by
+some member of a strolling band of Indians.
+
+No one could understand why Emma Lou’s mother had married Jim Morgan,
+least of all Jane herself. In fact she hadn’t thought much about it
+until Emma Lou had been born. She had first met Jim at a church
+picnic, given in a woodlawn meadow on the outskirts of the city,
+and almost before she had realized what was happening she had found
+herself slipping away from home, night after night, to stroll down a
+well shaded street, known as Lover’s Lane, with the man her mother had
+forbidden her to see. And it hadn’t been long before they had decided
+that an elopement would be the only thing to assure themselves the
+pleasure of being together without worrying about Mama Lightfoot’s
+wrath, talkative neighbors, prying town marshals, and grass stains.
+
+Despite the rancor of her mother and the whispering of her mother’s
+friends, Jane hadn’t really found anything to regret in her choice of a
+husband until Emma Lou had been born. Then all the fears her mother had
+instilled in her about the penalties inflicted by society upon black
+Negroes, especially upon black Negro girls, came to the fore. She was
+abysmally stunned by the color of her child, for she had been certain
+that since she herself was so fair that her child could not possibly be
+as dark as its father. She had been certain that it would be a luscious
+admixture, a golden brown with all its mother’s desirable facial
+features and its mother’s hair. But she hadn’t reckoned with nature’s
+perversity, nor had she taken under consideration the inescapable
+fact that some of her ancestors too had been black, and that some of
+their color chromosomes were still imbedded within her. Emma Lou had
+been fortunate enough to have hair like her mother’s, a thick, curly
+black mass of hair, rich and easily controlled, but she had also been
+unfortunate enough to have a face as black as her father’s, and a nose
+which, while not exactly flat, was as distinctly negroid as her too
+thick lips.
+
+Her birth had served no good purpose. It had driven her mother back to
+seek the confidence and aid of Maria, and it had given Maria the chance
+she had been seeking to break up the undesirable union of her daughter
+with what she termed an ordinary black nigger. But Jim’s departure
+hadn’t solved matters at all, rather it had complicated them, for
+although he was gone, his child remained, a tragic mistake which could
+not be stamped out or eradicated even after Jane, by getting a divorce
+from Jim and marrying a red-haired Irish Negro, had been accepted back
+into blue vein grace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Emma Lou had always been the alien member of the family and of the
+family’s social circle. Her grandmother, now a widow, made her feel
+it. Her mother made her feel it. And her Cousin Buddie made her feel
+it, to say nothing of the way she was regarded by outsiders. As early
+as she could remember, people had been saying to her mother, “What an
+extraordinarily black child! Where did you adopt it?” or else, “Such
+lovely unniggerish hair on such a niggerish-looking child.” Some had
+even been facetious and made suggestions like, “Try some lye, Jane, it
+may eat it out. She can’t look any worse.”
+
+Then her mother’s re-marriage had brought another person into her life,
+a person destined to give her, while still a young child, much pain and
+unhappiness. Aloysius McNamara was his name. He was the bastard son of
+an Irish politician and a Negro washerwoman, and until he had been sent
+East to a parochial school, Aloysius, so named because that was his
+father’s middle name, had always been known as Aloysius Washington, and
+the identity of his own father had never been revealed to him by his
+proud and humble mother. But since his father had been prevailed upon
+to pay for his education, Aloysius’ mother thought it the proper time
+to tell her son his true origin and to let him assume his real name.
+She had hopes that away from his home town he might be able to pass for
+white and march unhindered by bars of color to fame and fortune.
+
+But such was not to be the case, for Emma Lou’s prospective stepfather
+was so conscious of the Negro blood in his veins and so bitter because
+of it, that he used up whatever talents he had groaning inwardly
+at capricious fate, and planning revenge upon the world at large,
+especially the black world. For it was Negroes and not whites whom he
+blamed for his own, to him, life’s tragedy. He was not fair enough
+of skin, despite his mother’s and his own hopes, to pass for white.
+There was a brownness in his skin, inherited from his mother, which
+immediately marked him out for what he was, despite the red hair and
+the Irish blue eyes. And his facial features had been modeled too
+generously. He was not thin lipped, nor were his nostrils as delicately
+chiseled as they might have been. He was a Negro. There was no getting
+around it, although he tried in every possible way to do so.
+
+Finishing school, he had returned West for the express purpose of
+making his father accept him publicly and personally advance his
+career. He had wanted to be a lawyer and figured that his father’s
+political pull was sufficiently strong to draw him beyond race barriers
+and set him as one apart. His father had not been entirely cold to
+these plans and proposals, but his father’s wife had been. She didn’t
+mind her husband giving this nigger bastard of his money, and receiving
+him in his home on rare and private occasions. She was trying to be
+liberal, but she wasn’t going to have people point to her and say,
+“That’s Boss McNamara’s wife. Wonder if that nigger son is his’n or
+hers. They do say....” So Aloysius had found himself shunted back
+into the black world he so despised. He couldn’t be made to realize
+that being a Negro did not necessarily indicate that one must also
+be a ne’er-do-well. Had he been white, or so he said, he would have
+been a successful criminal lawyer, but being considered black it was
+impossible for him ever to be anything more advanced than a pullman car
+porter or a dining car waiter, and acting upon this premise, he hadn’t
+tried to be anything else.
+
+His only satisfaction in life was the pleasure he derived from
+insulting and ignoring the real blacks. Persons of color, mulattoes,
+were all right, but he couldn’t stand detestable black Negroes.
+Unfortunately, Emma Lou fell into this latter class, and suffered at
+his hands accordingly, until he finally ran away from his wife, Emma
+Lou, Boise, Negroes, and all, ran away to Canada with Diamond Lil of
+“Whore Row.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Summer vacation was nearly over and it had not yet been decided what
+to do with Emma Lou now that she had graduated from high school. She
+herself gave no help nor offered any suggestions. As it was, she
+really did not care what became of her. After all it didn’t seem to
+matter. There was no place in the world for a girl as black as she
+anyway. Her grandmother had assured her that she would never find a
+husband worth a dime, and her mother had said again and again, “Oh,
+if you had only been a boy!” until Emma Lou had often wondered why it
+was that people were not able to effect a change of sex or at least a
+change of complexion.
+
+It was her Uncle Joe who finally prevailed upon her mother to send her
+to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. There, he
+reasoned, she would find a larger and more intelligent social circle.
+In a city the size of Los Angeles there were Negroes of every class,
+color, and social position. Let Emma Lou go there where she would not
+be as far away from home as if she were to go to some eastern college.
+
+Jane and Maria, while not agreeing entirely with what Joe said, were
+nevertheless glad that at last something which seemed adequate and
+sensible could be done for Emma Lou. She was to take the four year
+college course, receive a bachelor degree in education, then go South
+to teach. That, they thought, was a promising future, and for once in
+the eighteen years of Emma Lou’s life every one was satisfied in some
+measure. Even Emma Lou grew elated over the prospects of the trip.
+Her Uncle Joe’s insistence upon the differences of social contacts
+in larger cities intrigued her. Perhaps he was right after all in
+continually reasserting to them that as long as one was a Negro, one’s
+specific color had little to do with one’s life. Salvation depended
+upon the individual. And he also told Emma Lou, during one of their
+usual private talks, that it was only in small cities one encountered
+stupid color prejudice such as she had encountered among the blue vein
+circle in her home town.
+
+“People in large cities,” he had said, “are broad. They do not have
+time to think of petty things. The people in Boise are fifty years
+behind the times, but you will find that Los Angeles is one of the
+world’s greatest and most modern cities, and you will be happy there.”
+
+On arriving in Los Angeles, Emma Lou was so busy observing the colored
+inhabitants that she had little time to pay attention to other things.
+Palm trees and wild geraniums were pleasant to behold, and such strange
+phenomena as pepper trees and century plants had to be admired. They
+were very obvious and they were also strange and beautiful, but they
+impinged upon only a small corner of Emma Lou’s consciousness. She
+was minutely aware of them, necessarily took them in while passing,
+viewing the totality without pondering over or lingering to praise
+their stylistic details. They were, in this instance, exquisite
+theatrical props, rendered insignificant by a more strange and a
+more beautiful human pageant. For to Emma Lou, who, in all her life,
+had never seen over five hundred Negroes, the spectacle presented by
+a community containing over fifty thousand, was sufficient to make
+relatively commonplace many more important and charming things than the
+far famed natural scenery of Southern California.
+
+She had arrived in Los Angeles a week before registration day at the
+university, and had spent her time in being shown and seeing the city.
+But whenever these sightseeing excursions took her away from the
+sections where Negroes lived, she immediately lost all interest in
+what she was being shown. The Pacific Ocean in itself did not cause
+her heart beat to quicken, nor did the roaring of its waves find an
+emotional echo within her. But on coming upon Bruce’s Beach for colored
+people near Redondo, or the little strip of sandied shore they had
+appropriated for themselves at Santa Monica, the Pacific Ocean became
+an intriguing something to contemplate as a background for their
+activities. Everything was interesting as it was patronized, reflected
+through, or acquired by Negroes.
+
+Her Uncle Joe had been right. Here, in the colored social circles of
+Los Angeles, Emma Lou was certain that she would find many suitable
+companions, intelligent, broad-minded people of all complexions,
+intermixing and being too occupied otherwise to worry about either
+their own skin color or the skin color of those around them. Her Uncle
+Joe had said that Negroes were Negroes whether they happened to be
+yellow, brown, or black, and a conscious effort to eliminate the darker
+elements would neither prove nor solve anything. There was nothing
+quite so silly as the creed of the blue veins: “Whiter and whiter,
+every generation. The nearer white you are the more white people will
+respect you. Therefore all light Negroes marry light Negroes. Continue
+to do so generation after generation, and eventually white people will
+accept this racially, bastard aristocracy, thus enabling those Negroes
+who really matter to escape the social and economic inferiority of the
+American Negro.”
+
+Such had been the credo of her grandmother and of her mother and of
+their small circle of friends in Boise. But Boise was a provincial
+town, given to the molding of provincial people with provincial minds.
+Boise was a backwoods town out of the main stream of modern thought
+and progress. Its people were cramped and narrow, their intellectual
+concepts stereotyped and static. Los Angeles was a happy contrast in
+all respects.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On registration day, Emma Lou rushed out to the campus of the
+University of Southern California one hour before the registrar’s
+office was scheduled to open. She spent the time roaming around,
+familiarizing herself with the layout of the campus and learning the
+names of the various buildings, some old and vineclad, others new and
+shiny in the sun, and watching the crowds of laughing students, rushing
+to and fro, greeting one another and talking over their plans for the
+coming school year. But her main reason for such an early arrival on
+the campus had been to find some of her fellow Negro students. She had
+heard that there were to be quite a number enrolled, but in all her
+hour’s stroll she saw not one, and finally somewhat disheartened she
+got into the line stretched out in front of the registrar’s office,
+and, for the moment, became engrossed in becoming a college freshman.
+
+All the while, though, she kept searching for a colored face, but it
+was not until she had been duly signed up as a student and sent in
+search of her advisor that she saw one. Then three colored girls had
+sauntered into the room where she was having a conference with her
+advisor, sauntered in, arms interlocked, greeted her advisor, then
+sauntered out again. Emma Lou had wanted to rush after them--to
+introduce herself, but of course it had been impossible under the
+circumstances. She had immediately taken a liking to all three, each of
+whom was what is known in the parlance of the black belt as high brown,
+with modishly-shingled bobbed hair and well formed bodies, fashionably
+attired in flashy sport garments. From then on Emma Lou paid little
+attention to the business of choosing subjects and class hours, so
+little attention in fact that the advisor thought her exceptionally
+tractable and somewhat dumb. But she liked students to come that way.
+It made the task of being advisor easy. One just made out the program
+to suit oneself, and had no tedious explanations to make as to why the
+student could not have such and such a subject at such and such an
+hour, and why such and such a professor’s class was already full.
+
+After her program had been made out, Emma Lou was directed to the
+bursar’s office to pay her fees. While going down the stairs she almost
+bumped into two dark-brown-skinned boys, obviously brothers if not
+twins, arguing as to where they should go next. One insisted that they
+should go back to the registrar’s office. The other was being equally
+insistent that they should go to the gymnasium and make an appointment
+for their required physical examination. Emma Lou boldly stopped when
+she saw them, hoping they would speak, but they merely glanced up at
+her and continued their argument, bringing cards and pamphlets out of
+their pockets for reference and guidance. Emma Lou wanted to introduce
+herself to them, but she was too bashful to do so. She wasn’t yet used
+to going to school with other Negro students, and she wasn’t exactly
+certain how one went about becoming acquainted. But she finally decided
+that she had better let the advances come from the others, especially
+if they were men. There was nothing forward about her, and since she
+was a stranger it was no more than right that the old-timers should
+make her welcome. Still, if these had been girls ..., but they weren’t,
+so she continued her way down the stairs.
+
+In the bursar’s office, she was somewhat overjoyed at first to find
+that she had fallen into line behind another colored girl who turned
+around immediately, and, after saying hello, announced in a loud, harsh
+voice:
+
+“My feet are sure some tired!”
+
+Emma Lou was so taken aback that she couldn’t answer. People in college
+didn’t talk that way. But meanwhile the girl was continuing:
+
+“Ain’t this registration a mess?”
+
+Two white girls who had fallen into line behind Emma Lou snickered.
+Emma Lou answered by shaking her head. The girl continued:
+
+“I’ve been standin’ in line and climbin’ stairs and talkin’ and
+a-signin’ till I’m just ’bout done for.”
+
+“It is tiresome,” Emma Lou returned softly, hoping the girl would take
+a hint and lower her own strident voice. But she didn’t.
+
+“Tiresome ain’t no name for it,” she declared more loudly than ever
+before, then, “Is you a new student?”
+
+“I am,” answered Emma Lou, putting much emphasis on the “I am.”
+
+She wanted the white people who were listening to know that she knew
+her grammar if this other person didn’t. “Is you,” indeed! If this girl
+was a specimen of the Negro students with whom she was to associate,
+she most certainly did not want to meet another one. But it couldn’t
+be possible that all of them--those three girls and those two boys for
+instance--were like this girl. Emma Lou was unable to imagine how such
+a person had ever gotten out of high school. Where on earth could she
+have gone to high school? Surely not in the North. Then she must be a
+southerner. That’s what she was, a southerner--Emma Lou curled her lips
+a little--no wonder the colored people in Boise spoke as they did about
+southern Negroes and wished that they would stay South. Imagine any
+one preparing to enter college saying “Is you,” and, to make it worse,
+right before all these white people, these staring white people, so
+eager and ready to laugh. Emma Lou’s face burned.
+
+“Two mo’, then I goes in my sock.”
+
+Emma Lou was almost at the place where she was ready to take even
+this statement literally, and was on the verge of leaving the line.
+Supposing this creature did “go in her sock!” God forbid!
+
+“Wonder where all the spades keep themselves? I ain’t seen but two
+’sides you.”
+
+“I really do not know,” Emma Lou returned precisely and chillily. She
+had no intentions of becoming friendly with this sort of person. Why
+she would be ashamed even to be seen on the street with her, dressed as
+she was in a red-striped sport suit, a white hat, and white shoes and
+stockings. Didn’t she know that black people had to be careful about
+the colors they affected?
+
+The girl had finally reached the bursar’s window and was paying her
+fees, and loudly differing with the cashier about the total amount due.
+
+“I tell you it ain’t that much,” she shouted through the window bars.
+“I figured it up myself before I left home.”
+
+The cashier obligingly turned to her adding machine and once more
+obtained the same total. When shown this, the girl merely grinned,
+examined the list closely, and said:
+
+“I’m gonna’ pay it, but I still think you’re wrong.”
+
+Finally she moved away from the window, but not before she had turned
+to Emma Lou and said, “You’re next,” and then proceeded to wait until
+Emma Lou had finished.
+
+Emma Lou vainly sought some way to escape, but was unable to do so, and
+had no choice but to walk with the girl to the registrar’s office where
+they had their cards stamped in return for the bursar’s receipt. This
+done, they went onto the campus together. Hazel Mason was the girl’s
+name. Emma Lou had fully expected it to be either Hyacinth or Geranium.
+Hazel was from Texas, Prairie Valley, Texas, and she told Emma Lou that
+her father, having become quite wealthy when oil had been found on his
+farm lands, had been enabled to realize two life ambitions--obtain a
+Packard touring car and send his only daughter to a “fust-class” white
+school.
+
+Emma Lou had planned to loiter around the campus. She was still eager
+to become acquainted with the colored members of the student body, and
+this encounter with the crass and vulgar Hazel Mason had only made her
+the more eager. She resented being approached by any one so flagrantly
+inferior, any one so noticeably a typical southern darky, who had no
+business obtruding into the more refined scheme of things. Emma Lou
+planned to lose her unwelcome companion somewhere on the campus so that
+she could continue unhindered her quest for agreeable acquaintances.
+
+But Hazel was as anxious to meet some one as was Emma Lou, and having
+found her was not going to let her get away without a struggle. She,
+too, was new to this environment and in a way was more lonely and eager
+for the companionship of her own kind than Emma Lou, for never before
+had she come into such close contact with so many whites. Her life had
+been spent only among Negroes. Her fellow pupils and teachers in school
+had always been colored, and as she confessed to Emma Lou, she couldn’t
+get used “to all these white folks.”
+
+“Honey, I was just achin’ to see a black face,” she had said, and,
+though Emma Lou was experiencing the same ache, she found herself
+unable to sympathize with the other girl, for Emma Lou classified Hazel
+as a barbarian who had most certainly not come from a family of best
+people. No doubt her mother had been a washerwoman. No doubt she had
+innumerable relatives and friends all as ignorant and as ugly as she.
+There was no sense in any one having a face as ugly as Hazel’s, and
+Emma Lou thanked her stars that though she was black, her skin was
+not rough and pimply, nor was her hair kinky, nor were her nostrils
+completely flattened out until they seemed to spread all over her face.
+No wonder people were prejudiced against dark skinned people when they
+were so ugly, so haphazard in their dress, and so boisterously mannered
+as was this present specimen. She herself was black, but nevertheless
+she had come from a good family, and she could easily take her place in
+a society of the right sort of people.
+
+The two strolled along the lawn-bordered gravel path which led to a
+vine-covered building at the end of the campus. Hazel never ceased
+talking. She kept shouting at Emma Lou, shouting all sorts of personal
+intimacies as if she were desirous of the whole world hearing them.
+There was no necessity for her to talk so loudly, no necessity for her
+to afford every one on the crowded campus the chance to stare and laugh
+at them as they passed. Emma Lou had never before been so humiliated
+and so embarrassed. She felt that she must get away from her offensive
+companion. What did she care if she had to hurt her feelings to do so.
+The more insulting she could be now, the less friendly she would have
+to be in the future.
+
+“Good-by,” she said abruptly, “I must go home.” With which she turned
+away and walked rapidly in the opposite direction. She had only gone a
+few steps when she was aware of the fact that the girl was following
+her. She quickened her pace, but the girl caught up with her and
+grabbing hold of Emma Lou’s arm, shouted, “Whoa there, Sally.”
+
+It seemed to Emma Lou as if every one on the campus was viewing and
+enjoying this minstrel-like performance. Angrily she tried to jerk
+away, but the girl held fast.
+
+“Gal, you sure walk fast. I’m going your way. Come on, let me drive you
+home in my buggy.”
+
+And still holding on to Emma Lou’s arm, she led the way to the side
+street where the students parked their cars. Emma Lou was powerless
+to resist. The girl didn’t give her a chance, for she held tight,
+then immediately resumed the monologue which Emma Lou’s attempted
+leave-taking had interrupted. They reached the street, Hazel still
+talking loudly, and making elaborate gestures with her free hand.
+
+“Here we are,” she shouted, and releasing Emma Lou’s arm, salaamed
+before a sport model Stutz roadster. “Oscar,” she continued, “meet the
+new girl friend. Pleased to meetcha, says he. Climb aboard.”
+
+And Emma Lou had climbed aboard, perplexed, chagrined, thoroughly
+angry, and disgusted. What was this little black fool doing with a
+Stutz roadster? And of course, it would be painted red--Negroes always
+bedecked themselves and their belongings in ridiculously unbecoming
+colors and ornaments. It seemed to be a part of their primitive
+heritage which they did not seem to have sense enough to forget and
+deny. Black girl--white hat--red and white striped sport suit--white
+shoes and stockings--red roadster. The picture was complete. All Hazel
+needed to complete her circus-like appearance, thought Emma Lou, was to
+have some purple feathers stuck in her hat.
+
+Still talking, the girl unlocked and proceeded to start the car. As
+she was backing it out of the narrow parking space, Emma Lou heard a
+chorus of semi-suppressed giggles from a neighboring automobile. In her
+anger she had failed to notice that there were people in the car parked
+next to the Stutz. But as Hazel expertly swung her machine around,
+Emma Lou caught a glimpse of them. They were all colored and they were
+all staring at her and at Hazel. She thought she recognized one of the
+girls as being one of the group she had seen earlier that morning, and
+she did recognize the two brothers she had passed on the stairs. And as
+the roadster sped away, their laughter echoed in her ears, although she
+hadn’t actually heard it. But she had seen the strain in their faces,
+and she knew that as soon as she and Hazel were out of sight, they
+would give free rein to their suppressed mirth.
+
+Although Emma Lou had finished registering, she returned to the
+university campus on the following morning in order to continue her
+quest for collegiate companions without the alarming and unwelcome
+presence of Hazel Mason. She didn’t know whether to be sorry for the
+girl and try to help her or to be disgusted and avoid her. She didn’t
+want to be intimately associated with any such vulgar person. It would
+damage her own position, cause her to be classified with some one who
+was in a class by herself, for Emma Lou was certain that there was not,
+and could not be, any one else in the university just like Hazel. But
+despite her vulgarity, the girl was not all bad. Her good nature was
+infectious, and Emma Lou had surmised from her monologue on the day
+before how utterly unselfish a person she could be and was. All of her
+store of the world’s goods were at hand to be used and enjoyed by her
+friends. There was not, as she had said, “a selfish bone in her body.”
+But even that did not alter the disgusting fact that she was not one
+who would be welcome by the “right sort of people.” Her flamboyant
+style of dress, her loud voice, her raucous laughter, and her flagrant
+disregard or ignorance of English grammar seemed inexcusable to Emma
+Lou, who was unable to understand how such a person could stray so far
+from the environment in which she rightfully belonged to enter a first
+class university. Now Hazel, according to Emma Lou, was the type of
+Negro who should go to a Negro college. There were plenty of them in
+the South whose standard of scholarship was not beyond her ability. And
+then, in one of those schools, her darky-like clownishness would not
+have to be paraded in front of white people, thereby causing discomfort
+and embarrassment to others of her race, more civilized and circumspect
+than she.
+
+The problem irritated Emma Lou. She didn’t see why it had to be. She
+had looked forward so anxiously, and so happily to her introductory
+days on the campus, and now her first experience with one of her fellow
+colored students had been an unpleasant one. But she didn’t intend to
+let that make her unhappy. She was determined to return to the campus
+alone, seek out other companions, see whether they accepted or ignored
+the offending Hazel, and govern herself accordingly.
+
+It was early and there were few people on the campus. The grass was
+still wet from a heavy overnight dew, and the sun had not yet dispelled
+the coolness of the early morning. Emma Lou’s dress was of thin
+material and she shivered as she walked or stood in the shade. She had
+no school business to attend to; there was nothing for her to do but to
+walk aimlessly about the campus.
+
+In another hour, Emma Lou was pleased to see that the campus walks were
+becoming crowded, and that the side streets surrounding the campus were
+now heavy with student traffic. Things were beginning to awaken. Emma
+Lou became jubilant and walked with jaunty step from path to path, from
+building to building. It then occurred to her that she had been told
+that there were more Negro students enrolled in the School of Pharmacy
+than in any other department of the university, so finding the Pharmacy
+building she began to wander through its crowded hallways.
+
+Almost immediately, she saw a group of five Negro students, three boys
+and two girls, standing near a water fountain. She was both excited and
+perplexed, excited over the fact that she was so close to those she
+wished to find, and perplexed because she did not know how to approach
+them. Had there been only one person standing there, the matter would
+have been comparatively easy. She could have approached with a smile
+and said, “Good morning.” The person would have returned her greeting,
+and it would then have been a simple matter to get acquainted.
+
+But five people in one bunch, all known to one another and all chatting
+intimately together!--it would seem too much like an intrusion to go
+bursting into their gathering--too forward and too vulgar. Then,
+there was nothing she could say after having said “good morning.” One
+just didn’t break into a group of five and say, “I’m Emma Lou Morgan,
+a new student, and I want to make friends with you.” No, she couldn’t
+do that. She would just smile as she passed, smile graciously and
+friendly. They would know that she was a stranger, and her smile would
+assure them that she was anxious to make friends, anxious to become a
+welcome addition to their group.
+
+One of the group of five had sighted Emma Lou as soon as she had
+sighted them:
+
+“Who’s this?” queried Helen Wheaton, a senior in the College of Law.
+
+“Some new ‘pick,’ I guess,” answered Bob Armstrong, who was Helen’s
+fiance and a senior in the School of Architecture.
+
+“I bet she’s going to take Pharmacy,” whispered Amos Blaine.
+
+“She’s hottentot enough to take something,” mumbled Tommy Brown. “Thank
+God, she won’t be in any of our classes, eh Amos?”
+
+Emma Lou was almost abreast of them now. They lowered their voices, and
+made a pretense of mumbled conversation among themselves. Only Verne
+Davis looked directly at her and it was she alone who returned Emma
+Lou’s smile.
+
+“Whatcha grinnin’ at?” Bob chided Verne as Emma Lou passed out of
+earshot.
+
+“At the little frosh, of course. She grinned at me. I couldn’t stare at
+her without returning it.”
+
+“I don’t see how anybody could even look at her without grinning.”
+
+“Oh, she’s not so bad,” said Verne.
+
+“Well, she’s bad enough.”
+
+“That makes two of them.”
+
+“Two of what, Amos?”
+
+“Hottentots, Bob.”
+
+“Good grief,” exclaimed Tommy, “why don’t you recruit some good-looking
+co-eds out here?”
+
+“We don’t choose them,” Helen returned.
+
+“I’m going out to the Southern Branch where the sight of my fellow
+female students won’t give me dyspepsia.”
+
+“Ta-ta, Amos,” said Verne, “and you needn’t bother to sit in my car any
+more if you think us so terrible.” She and Helen walked away, leaving
+the boys to discuss the sad days which had fallen upon the campus.
+
+Emma Lou, of course, knew nothing of all this. She had gone her way
+rejoicing. One of the students had noticed her, had returned her smile.
+This getting acquainted was going to be an easy matter after all. It
+was just necessary that she exercise a little patience. One couldn’t
+expect people to fall all over one without some preliminary advances.
+True, she was a stranger, but she would show them in good time that
+she was worthy of their attention, that she was a good fellow and a
+well-bred individual quite prepared to be accepted by the best people.
+
+She strolled out on to the campus again trying to find more prospective
+acquaintances. The sun was warm now, the grass dry, and the campus
+overcrowded. There was an infectious germ of youth and gladness abroad
+to which Emma Lou could not remain immune. Already she was certain
+that she felt the presence of that vague something known as “college
+spirit.” It seemed to enter into her, to make her jubilant and set her
+every nerve tingling. This was no time for sobriety. It was the time
+for youth’s blood to run hot, the time for love and sport and wholesome
+fun.
+
+Then Emma Lou saw a solitary Negro girl seated on a stone bench. It did
+not take her a second to decide what to do. Here was her chance. She
+would make friends with this girl and should she happen to be a new
+student, they could become friends and together find their way into the
+inner circle of those colored students who really mattered.
+
+Emma Lou was essentially a snob. She had absorbed this trait from the
+very people who had sought to exclude her from their presence. All
+of her life she had heard talk of “right sort of people,” and of “the
+people who really mattered,” and from these phrases she had formed a
+mental image of those to whom they applied. Hazel Mason most certainly
+could not be included in either of these categories. Hazel was just a
+vulgar little nigger from down South. It was her kind, who, when they
+came North, made it hard for the colored people already resident there.
+It was her kind who knew nothing of the social niceties or the polite
+conventions. In their own home they had been used only to coarse work
+and coarser manners. And they had been forbidden the chance to have
+intimate contact in schools and in public with white people from whom
+they might absorb some semblance of culture. When they did come North
+and get a chance to go to white schools, white theaters, and white
+libraries, they were too unused to them to appreciate what they were
+getting, and could be expected to continue their old way of life in an
+environment where such a way was decidedly out of place.
+
+Emma Lou was determined to become associated only with those people who
+really mattered, northerners like herself or superior southerners, if
+there were any, who were different from whites only in so far as skin
+color was concerned. This girl, to whom she was now about to introduce
+herself, was the type she had in mind, genteel, well and tastily
+dressed, and not ugly.
+
+“Good morning.”
+
+Alma Martin looked up from the book she was reading, gulped in
+surprise, then answered, “Good morning.”
+
+Emma Lou sat down on the bench. She was congeniality itself. “Are you a
+new student?” she inquired of the astonished Alma, who wasn’t used to
+this sort of thing.
+
+“No, I’m a ‘soph’,” then realizing she was expected to say more,
+“you’re new, aren’t you?”
+
+“Oh yes,” replied Emma Lou, her voice buoyant and glad. “This will be
+my first year.”
+
+“Do you think you will like it?”
+
+“I’m just crazy about it already. You know,” she advanced
+confidentially, “I’ve never gone to school with any colored people
+before.”
+
+“No?”
+
+“No, and I am just dying to get acquainted with the colored students.
+Oh, my name’s Emma Lou Morgan.”
+
+“And mine is Alma Martin.”
+
+They both laughed. There was a moment of silence. Alma looked at her
+wrist watch, then got up from the bench.
+
+“I’m glad to have met you. I’ve got to see my advisor at ten-thirty.
+Good-by.” And she moved away gracefully.
+
+Emma Lou was having difficulty in keeping from clapping her hands. At
+last she had made some headway. She had met a second-year student,
+one who, from all appearances, was in the know, and, who, as they met
+from time to time, would see that she met others. In a short time
+Emma Lou felt that she would be in the whirl of things collegiate.
+She must write to her Uncle Joe immediately and let him know how well
+things were going. He had been right. This was the place for her
+to be. There had been no one in Boise worth considering. Here she
+was coming into contact with really superior people, intelligent,
+genteel, college-bred, all trying to advance themselves and their race,
+unconscious of intra-racial schisms, caused by differences in skin
+color.
+
+She mustn’t stop upon meeting one person. She must find others, so
+once more she began her quest and almost immediately met Verne and
+Helen strolling down one of the campus paths. She remembered Verne
+as the girl who had smiled at her. She observed her more closely,
+and admired her pleasant dark brown face, made doubly attractive by
+two evenly placed dimples and a pair of large, heavily-lidded, pitch
+black eyes. Emma Lou thought her to be much more attractive than the
+anemic-looking yellow girl with whom she was strolling. There was
+something about this second girl which made Emma Lou feel that she was
+not easy to approach.
+
+“Good morning.” Emma Lou had evolved a formula.
+
+“Good morning,” the two girls spoke in unison. Helen was about to walk
+on but Verne stopped.
+
+“New student?” she asked.
+
+“Yes, I am.”
+
+“So am I. I’m Verne Davis.”
+
+“I’m Emma Lou Morgan.”
+
+“And this is Helen Wheaton.”
+
+“Pleased to meet you, Miss Morgan.”
+
+“And I’m pleased to meet you, too, both of you,” gushed Emma Lou. “You
+see, I’m from Boise, Idaho, and all through high school I was the only
+colored student.”
+
+“Is that so?” Helen inquired listlessly. Then turning to Verne said,
+“Better come on Verne if you are going to drive us out to the ‘Branch’.”
+
+“All right. We’ve got to run along now. We’ll see you again, Miss
+Morgan. Good-by.”
+
+“Good-by,” said Emma Lou and stood watching them as they went on their
+way. Yes, college life was going to be the thing to bring her out, the
+turning point in her life. She would show the people back in Boise
+that she did not have to be a “no-gooder” as they claimed her father
+had been, just because she was black. She would show all of them that
+a dark skin girl could go as far in life as a fair skin one, and that
+she could have as much opportunity and as much happiness. What did the
+color of one’s skin have to do with one’s mentality or native ability?
+Nothing whatsoever. If a black boy could get along in the world, so
+could a black girl, and it would take her, Emma Lou Morgan, to prove it.
+
+With which she set out to make still more acquaintances.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two weeks of school had left Emma Lou’s mind in a chaotic state. She
+was unable to draw any coherent conclusions from the jumble of new
+things she had experienced. In addition to her own social strivings,
+there had been the academic routine to which she had had to adapt
+herself. She had found it all bewildering and overpowering. The
+university was a huge business proposition and every one in it had jobs
+to perform. Its bigness awed her. Its blatant reality shocked her.
+There was nothing romantic about going to college. It was, indeed, a
+serious business. One went there with a purpose and had several other
+purposes inculcated into one after school began. This getting an
+education was stern and serious, regulated and systematized, dull and
+unemotional.
+
+Besides being disappointed at the drabness and lack of romance in
+college routine, Emma Lou was also depressed by her inability to
+make much headway in the matter of becoming intimately associated
+with her colored campus mates. They were all polite enough. They all
+acknowledged their introductions to her and would speak whenever they
+passed her, but seldom did any of them stop for a chat, and when she
+joined the various groups which gathered on the campus lawn between
+classes, she always felt excluded and out of things because she found
+herself unable to participate in the general conversation. They talked
+of things about which she knew nothing, of parties and dances, and of
+people she did not know. They seemed to live a life off the campus to
+which she was not privy, and into which they did not seem particularly
+anxious to introduce her.
+
+She wondered why she never knew of the parties they talked about, and
+why she never received invitations to any of their affairs. Perhaps
+it was because she was still new and comparatively unknown to them.
+She felt that she must not forget that most of them had known one
+another for a long period of time and that it was necessary for people
+who “belonged” to be wary of strangers. That was it. She was still a
+stranger, had only been among them for about two weeks. What did she
+expect? Why was she so impatient?
+
+The thought of the color question presented itself to her time and time
+again, but she would always dismiss it from her mind. Verne Davis was
+dark and she was not excluded from the sacred inner circle. In fact,
+she was one of the most popular colored girls on the campus. The only
+thing that perplexed Emma Lou was that although Verne too was new to
+the group, had just recently moved into the city, and was also just
+beginning her first year at the University, she had not been kept at a
+distance or excluded from any of the major extra-collegiate activities.
+Emma Lou could not understand why there should be this difference in
+their social acceptance. She was certainly as good as Verne.
+
+In time Emma Lou became certain that it was because of her intimacy
+with Hazel that the people on the campus she really wished to be
+friendly with paid her so little attention. Hazel was a veritable
+clown. She went scooting about the campus, cutting capers, playing the
+darky for the amused white students. Any time Hazel asked or answered a
+question in any of the lecture halls, there was certain to be laughter.
+She had a way of phrasing what she wished to say in a manner which was
+invariably laugh provoking. The very tone and quality of her voice
+designated her as a minstrel type. In the gymnasium she would do buck
+and wing dances and play low-down blues on the piano. She was a pariah
+among her own people because she did not seem to know, as they knew,
+that Negroes could not afford to be funny in front of white people even
+if that was their natural inclination. Negroes must always be sober
+and serious in order to impress white people with their adaptability
+and non-difference in all salient characteristics save skin color. All
+of the Negro students on the campus, except Emma Lou, laughed at her
+openly and called her Topsy. Emma Lou felt sorry for her although she,
+too, regretted her comic propensities and wished that she would be less
+the vaudevillian and more the college student.
+
+Besides Hazel, there was only one other person on the campus who was
+friendly with Emma Lou. This was Grace Giles, also a black girl, who
+was registered in the School of Music. The building in which she had
+her classes was located some distance away, and Grace did not get over
+to the main campus grounds very often, but when she did, she always
+looked for Emma Lou and made welcome overtures of friendship. It was
+her second year in the university, and yet, she too seemed to be on the
+outside of things. She didn’t seem to be invited to the parties and
+dances, nor was she a member of the Greek letter sorority which the
+colored girls had organized. Emma Lou asked her why.
+
+“Have they pledged you?” was Grace Giles’ answer.
+
+“Why no.”
+
+“And they won’t either.”
+
+“Why?” Emma Lou asked surprised.
+
+“Because you are not a high brown or half-white.”
+
+Emma Lou had thought this too, but she had been loathe to believe it.
+
+“You’re silly, Grace. Why--Verne belongs.”
+
+“Yeah,” Grace had sneered, “Verne, a bishop’s daughter with plenty of
+coin and a big Buick. Why shouldn’t they ask her?”
+
+Emma Lou did not know what to make of this. She did not want to believe
+that the same color prejudice which existed among the blue veins in
+Boise also existed among the colored college students. Grace Giles was
+just hypersensitive. She wasn’t taking into consideration the fact that
+she was not on the campus regularly and thus could not expect to be
+treated as if she were. Emma Lou fully believed that had Grace been a
+regularly enrolled student like herself, she would have found things
+different, and she was also certain that both she and Grace would be
+asked to join the sorority in due time.
+
+But they weren’t. Nor did an entire term in the school change things
+one whit. The Christmas holidays had come and gone and Emma Lou had
+not been invited to one of the many parties. She and Grace and Hazel
+bound themselves together and sought their extra-collegiate pleasures
+among people not on the campus. Hazel began to associate with a group
+of housemaids and mature youths who worked only when they had to,
+and played the pool rooms and the housemaids as long as they proved
+profitable. Hazel was a welcome addition to this particular group what
+with her car and her full pocketbook. She had never been proficient in
+her studies, had always found it impossible to keep pace with the other
+students, and, finally realizing that she did not belong and perhaps
+never would, had decided to “go to the devil,” and be done with it.
+
+It was not long before Hazel was absent from the campus more often
+than she was present. Going to cabarets and parties, and taking long
+drunken midnight drives made her more and more unwilling and unable
+to undertake the scholastic grind on the next morning. Just before
+the mid-term examinations, she was advised by the faculty to drop out
+of school until the next year, and to put herself in the hands of a
+tutor during the intervening period. It was evident that her background
+was not all that it should be; her preparatory work had not been
+sufficiently complete to enable her to continue in college. As it was,
+they told her, she was wasting her time. So Hazel disappeared from the
+campus and was said to have gone back to Texas. “Serves her right, glad
+she’s gone,” was the verdict of her colored campus fellows.
+
+The Christmas holidays for Emma Lou were dull and uneventful. The
+people she lived with were rheumatic and not much given to yuletide
+festivities. It didn’t seem like Christmas to Emma Lou anyway. There
+was no snow on the ground, and the sun was shining as brightly and as
+warmly as it had shone during the late summer and early autumn months.
+The wild geraniums still flourished, the orange trees were blossoming,
+and the whole southland seemed to be preparing for the annual New
+Year’s Day Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena.
+
+Emma Lou received a few presents from home, and a Christmas greeting
+card from Grace Giles. That was all. On Christmas Day she and Grace
+attended church in the morning, and spent the afternoon at the
+home of one of Grace’s friends. Emma Lou never liked the people to
+whom Grace introduced her. They were a dull, commonplace lot for
+the most part, people from Georgia, Grace’s former home, untutored
+people who didn’t really matter. Emma Lou borrowed a word from her
+grandmother and classified them as “fuddlers,” because they seemed to
+fuddle everything--their language, their clothes, their attempts at
+politeness, and their efforts to appear more intelligent than they
+really were.
+
+The holidays over, Emma Lou returned to school a little reluctantly.
+She wasn’t particularly interested in her studies, but having nothing
+else to do kept up in them and made high grades. Meanwhile she had
+been introduced to a number of young men and gone out with them
+occasionally. They too were friends of Grace’s and of the same caliber
+as Grace’s other friends. There were no college boys among them except
+Joe Lane who was flunking out in the School of Dentistry. He did not
+interest Emma Lou. As it was with Joe, so it was with all the other
+boys. She invariably picked them to pieces when they took her out, and
+remained so impassive to their emotional advances that they were soon
+glad to be on their way and let her be. Emma Lou was determined not to
+go out of her class, determined either to associate with the “right
+sort of people” or else to remain to herself.
+
+Had any one asked Emma Lou what she meant by the “right sort of people”
+she would have found herself at a loss for a comprehensive answer.
+She really didn’t know. She had a vague idea that those people on the
+campus who practically ignored her were the only people with whom she
+should associate. These people, for the most part, were children of
+fairly well-to-do families from Louisiana, Texas and Georgia, who,
+having made nest eggs, had journeyed to the West for the same reasons
+that her grandparents at an earlier date had also journeyed West.
+They wanted to live where they would have greater freedom and greater
+opportunity for both their children and themselves. Then, too, the
+World War had given impetus to this westward movement. There was more
+industry in the West and thus more chances for money to be made, and
+more opportunities to invest this money profitably in property and
+progeny.
+
+The greater number of them were either mulattoes or light brown in
+color. In their southern homes they had segregated themselves from
+their darker skinned brethren and they continued this practice in the
+North. They went to the Episcopal, Presbyterian, or Catholic churches,
+and though they were not as frankly organized into a blue vein society
+as were the Negroes of Boise, they nevertheless kept more or less to
+themselves. They were not insistent that their children get “whiter
+and whiter every generation”, but they did want to keep their children
+and grandchildren from having dark complexions. A light brown was the
+favored color; it was therefore found expedient to exercise caution
+when it came to mating.
+
+The people who, in Emma Lou’s phrase, really mattered, the business
+men, the doctors, the lawyers, the dentists, the more moneyed pullman
+porters, hotel waiters, bank janitors, and majordomos, in fact all of
+the Negro leaders and members of the Negro upper class, were either
+light skinned themselves or else had light skinned wives. A wife of
+dark complexion was considered a handicap unless she was particularly
+charming, wealthy, or beautiful. An ordinary looking dark woman was
+no suitable mate for a Negro man of prominence. The college youths
+on whom the future of the race depended practiced this precept of
+their elders religiously. It was not the girls in the school who were
+prejudiced--they had no reason to be, but they knew full well that the
+boys with whom they wished to associate, their future husbands, would
+not tolerate a dark girl unless she had, like Verne, many things to
+compensate for her dark skin. Thus they did not encourage a friendship
+with some one whom they knew didn’t belong. Thus they did not even
+pledge girls like Grace, Emma Lou, and Hazel into their sorority, for
+they knew that it would make them the more miserable to attain the
+threshold only to have the door shut in their faces.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Summer vacation time came and Emma Lou went back to Boise. She was
+thoroughly discouraged and depressed. She had been led to expect
+so much pleasure from her first year in college and in Los Angeles;
+but she had found that the people in large cities were after all
+no different from people in small cities. Her Uncle Joe had been
+wrong--her mother and grandmother had been right. There was no place in
+the world for a dark girl.
+
+Being at home depressed her all the more. There was absolutely nothing
+for her to do nor any place for her to go. For a month or more she
+just lingered around the house, bored by her mother’s constant and
+difficult attempts to be maternal, and irritated by her Cousin Buddy’s
+freshness. Adolescent boys were such a nuisance. The only bright spot
+on the horizon was the Sunday School Union picnic scheduled to be held
+during the latter part of July. It was always the crowning social
+event of the summer season among the colored citizens of Boise. Both
+the Methodists and Baptists missions cooperated in this affair and had
+their numbers augmented by all the denominationally unattached members
+of the community. It was always a gala, democratic affair designed to
+provide a pleasant day in the out-of-doors. It was, besides the annual
+dance fostered by the local chapters of the Masons and the Elks, the
+only big community gathering to which the entire colored population of
+Boise looked forward.
+
+Picnic day came, and Emma Lou accompanied her mother, her uncle, and
+her cousin to Bedney’s Meadow, a green, heavily forested acre of park
+land, which lay on the outskirts of the city, surrounded on three sides
+by verdant foothills. The day went by pleasantly enough. There were the
+usually heavily laden wooden tables, to which all adjourned in the late
+afternoon, and there were foot races, games, and canoeing.
+
+Emma Lou took part in all these activities and was surprised to find
+that she was having a good time. The company was congenial, and she
+found that since she had gone away to college she had become somewhat
+of a personage. Every one seemed to be going out of his way to be
+congenial to her. The blue veins did not rule this affair. They were,
+in fact, only a minority element, and, for one of the few times of
+the year, mingled freely and unostentatiously with their lower caste
+brethren.
+
+All during the day, Emma Lou found herself paired off with a chap by
+the name of Weldon Taylor. In the evening they went for a stroll up
+the precipitous footpaths in the hills which grew up from the meadow.
+Weldon Taylor was a newcomer in the West trying to earn sufficient
+money to re-enter an eastern school and finish his medical education.
+Emma Lou rather liked him. She admired his tall, slender body, the
+deep burnish of his bronze colored skin, and his mass of black curly
+hair. Here, thought Emma Lou, is the type of man I like. Only she did
+wish that his skin had been colored light brown instead of dark brown.
+It was better if she was to marry that she did not get a dark skin
+mate. Her children must not suffer as she had and would suffer.
+
+The two talked of commonplace things as they walked along, comparing
+notes on their school experiences, and talking of their professors and
+their courses of study. It was dusk now and the sun had disappeared
+behind the snow capped mountains. The sky was a colorful haze, a master
+artist’s canvas on which the colors of day were slowly being dominated
+by the colors of night. Weldon drew Emma Lou off the little path they
+had been following, and led her to a huge bowlder which jutted out,
+elbow like, from the side of a hill, and which was hidden from the
+meadow below by clumps of bushes. They sat down, his arm slipped around
+her waist, and, as the darkness of night more and more conquered the
+evanescent light of day, their lips met, and Emma Lou grew lax in
+Weldon’s arms....
+
+When they finally returned to the picnic grounds all had left save a
+few stragglers like themselves who had sauntered away from the main
+party. These made up a laughing, half-embarrassed group, who collected
+their baskets and reluctantly withdrew from the meadow to begin the
+long walk back to their homes. Emma Lou and Weldon soon managed to
+fall at the end of the procession, walking along slowly, his arm
+around her waist. Emma Lou felt an ecstasy surging through her at
+this moment greater than she had ever known before. This had been her
+first intimate sexual contact, her first awareness of the physical and
+emotional pleasures able to be enjoyed by two human beings, a woman and
+a man. She felt some magnetic force drawing her to this man walking by
+her side, which made her long to feel the pleasure of his body against
+hers, made her want to know once more the pleasure which had attended
+the union of their lips, the touching of their tongues. It was with
+a great effort that she walked along apparently calm, for inside she
+was seething. Her body had become a kennel for clashing, screaming
+compelling urges and desires. She loved this man. She had submitted
+herself to him, had gladly suffered momentary physical pain in order to
+be introduced into a new and incomparably satisfying paradise.
+
+Not for one moment did Emma Lou consider regretting the loss of her
+virtue, not once did any of her mother’s and grandmother’s warnings and
+solicitations revive themselves and cause her conscience to plague her.
+She had finally found herself a mate; she had finally come to know the
+man she should love, some inescapable force had drawn them together,
+had made them feel from the first moment of their introduction that
+they belonged to one another, and that they were destined to explore
+nature’s mysteries together. Life was not so cruel after all. There
+were some compensatory moments. Emma Lou believed that at last she had
+found happiness, that at last she had found her man.
+
+Of course, she wasn’t going back to school. She was going to stay
+in Boise, marry Weldon, and work with him until they should have
+sufficient money to go East, where he could re-enter medical school,
+and she could keep a home for him and spur him on. A glorious panorama
+of the future unrolled itself in her mind. There were no black spots in
+it, no shadows, nothing but luminous landscapes, ethereal in substance.
+
+It was the way of Emma Lou always to create her worlds within her own
+mind without taking under consideration the fact that other people and
+other elements, not contained within herself, would also have to aid in
+their molding. She had lived to herself for so long, had been shut out
+from the stream of things in which she was interested for such a long
+period during the formative years of her life, that she considered her
+own imaginative powers omniscient. Thus she constructed a future world
+of love on one isolated experience, never thinking for the moment that
+the other party concerned might not be of the same mind. She had been
+lifted into a superlatively perfect emotional and physical state. It
+was unthinkable, incongruous, that Weldon, too, had not been similarly
+lifted. He had for the moment shared her ecstasy, therefore, according
+to Emma Lou’s line of reasoning, he would as effectively share what she
+imagined would be the fruits of that ecstatic moment.
+
+The next two weeks passed quickly and happily. Weldon called on her
+almost every night, took her for long walks, and thrilled her with
+his presence and his love making. Never before in her life had Emma
+Lou been so happy. She forgot all the sad past. Forgot what she had
+hitherto considered the tragedy of her birth, forgot the social
+isolation of her childhood and of her college days. What did being
+black, what did the antagonistic mental attitudes of the people who
+really mattered mean when she was in love? Her mother and her Uncle Joe
+were so amazed at the change in her that they became afraid, sensed
+danger, and began to be on the lookout for some untoward development;
+for hitherto Emma Lou had always been sullen and morose and impertinent
+to all around the house. She had always been the anti-social creature
+they had caused her to feel she was and, since she was made to feel
+that she was a misfit, she had encroached upon their family life
+and sociabilities only to the extent that being in the house made
+necessary. But now she was changed--she had become a vibrant, joyful
+being. There was always a smile on her face, always a note of joy in
+her voice as she spoke or sang. She even made herself agreeable to her
+Cousin Buddy, who in the past she had either ignored or else barely
+tolerated.
+
+“She must be in love, Joe,” her mother half whined.
+
+“That’s good,” he answered laconically. “It probably won’t last long.
+It will serve to take her mind off herself.”
+
+“But suppose she gets foolish?” Jane had insisted, remembering no doubt
+her own foolishness, during a like period of her own life, with Emma
+Lou’s father.
+
+“She’ll take care of herself,” Joe had returned with an assurance he
+did not feel. He, too, was worried, but he was also pleased at the
+change in Emma Lou. His only fear was that perhaps in the end she would
+make herself more miserable than she had ever been before. He did
+not know much about this Weldon fellow, who seemed to be a reliable
+enough chap, but no one had any way of discerning whether or no his
+intentions were entirely honorable. It was best, thought Joe, not to
+worry about such things. If, for the present, Emma Lou was more happy
+than she had ever been before, there would be time enough to worry
+about the future when its problems materialized.
+
+“Don’t you worry about Emma Lou. She’s got sense.”
+
+“But, Joe, suppose she does forget herself with this man? He is
+studying to be a doctor and he may not want a wife, especially when....”
+
+“Damn it, Jane!” her brother snapped at her. “Do you think every one is
+like you? The boy seems to like her.”
+
+“Men like any one they can use, but you know as well as I that no
+professional man is going to marry a woman dark as Emma Lou.”
+
+“Men marry any one they love, just as you and I did.”
+
+“But I was foolish.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“That’s right--Be unconcerned. That’s right--Let her go to the devil.
+There’s no hope for her anyway. Oh--why--why did I marry Jim Morgan?”
+and she had gone into the usual crying fit which inevitably followed
+this self-put question.
+
+Then, without any warning, as if to put an end to all problems, Weldon
+decided to become a Pullman porter. He explained to Emma Lou that he
+could make more money on the railroad than he could as a hotel waiter
+in Boise. It was necessary for his future that he make as much money
+as possible in as short a time as possible. Emma Lou saw the logic
+of this and agreed that it was the best possible scheme, until she
+realized that it meant his going away from Boise, perhaps forever.
+Oakland, California, was to be his headquarters, and he, being a new
+man, would not have a regular run. It was possible that he might be
+sent to different sections of the country each and every time he made a
+trip. There was no way of his knowing before he reported for duty just
+where he might be sent. It might be Boise or Palm Beach or Albany or
+New Orleans. One never knew. That was the life of the road, and one had
+to accept it in order to make money.
+
+It made Emma Lou shiver to hear him talk so dispassionately about the
+matter. There didn’t seem to be the least note of regret in his voice,
+the least suggestion that he hated to leave her or that he would miss
+her, and, for the first time since the night of their physical union,
+Emma Lou began to realize that perhaps after all he did not feel
+toward her as she did toward him. He couldn’t possibly love her as
+much as she loved him, and, at the same time, remain so unconcerned
+about having to part from her. There was something radically wrong
+here, something conclusive and unexpected which was going to hurt her,
+going to plunge her back into unhappiness once more. Then she realized
+that not once had he ever spoken of marriage or even hinted that their
+relationship would continue indefinitely. He had said that he loved
+her, he had treated her kindly, and had seemed as thrilled as she
+over their physical contacts. But now it seemed that since he was no
+longer going to be near her, no longer going to need her body, he had
+forgotten that he loved her. It was then that all the old preachments
+of her mother and grandmother were resurrected and began to swirl
+through her mind. Hadn’t she been warned that men didn’t marry black
+girls? Hadn’t she been told that they would only use her for their
+sexual convenience? That was the case with Weldon! He hadn’t cared
+about her in the first place. He had taken up with her only because he
+was a stranger in the town and lonesome for a companion, and she, like
+a damn fool, had submitted herself to him! And now that he was about
+to better his condition, about to go some place where he would have a
+wider circle of acquaintances, she was to be discarded and forgotten.
+
+Thus Emma Lou reasoned to herself and grew bitter. It never occurred
+to her that the matter of her color had never once entered the mind of
+Weldon. Not once did she consider that he was acting toward her as he
+would have acted toward any girl under similar circumstances, whether
+her face had been white, yellow, brown, or black. Emma Lou did not
+understand that Weldon was just a selfish normal man and not a color
+prejudiced one, at least not while he was resident in a community where
+the girls were few, and there were none of his college friends about
+to tease him for liking “dark meat.” She did not know that for over a
+year he had been traveling about from town to town, always seeking a
+place where money was more plentiful and more easily saved, and that
+in every town he had managed to find a girl, or girls, who made it
+possible for him to continue his grind without being totally deprived
+of pleasurable moments. To Emma Lou there could only be one reason for
+his not having loved her as she had loved him. She was a black girl and
+no professional man could afford to present such a wife in the best
+society. It was the tragic feature of her life once more asserting
+itself. There could be no happiness in life for any woman whose face
+was as black as hers.
+
+Believing this more intensely than ever before Emma Lou yet felt that
+she must manage in some way to escape both home and school. That she
+must find happiness somewhere else. The idea her Uncle Joe had given
+her about the provinciality of people in small towns re-entered her
+mind. After all Los Angeles, too, was a small town mentally, peopled by
+mentally small southern Negroes. It was no better than Boise. She was
+now determined to go East where life was more cosmopolitan and people
+were more civilized. To this end she begged her mother and uncle to
+send her East to school.
+
+“Can’t you ever be satisfied?”
+
+“Now Jane,” Joe as usual was trying to keep the peace----
+
+“Now Jane, nothing! I never saw such an ungrateful child.”
+
+“I’m not ungrateful. I’m just unhappy. I don’t like that school. I
+don’t want to go there any more.”
+
+“Well, you’ll either go there or else stay home.” Thus Jane ended the
+discussion and could not be persuaded to reopen it.
+
+And rather than remain home Emma Lou returned to Los Angeles and spent
+another long miserable, uneventful year in the University of Southern
+California, drawing more and more within herself and becoming more and
+more bitter. When vacation time came again she got herself a job as
+maid in a theater, rather than return home, and studied stenography
+during her spare hours. School began again and Emma Lou re-entered
+with more determination than ever to escape should the chance present
+itself. It did, and once more Emma Lou fled into an unknown town to
+escape the haunting chimera of intra-racial color prejudice.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+ALVA
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+ALVA
+
+
+It was nine o’clock. The alarm rang. Alva’s roommate awoke cursing.
+
+“Why the hell don’t you turn off that alarm?”
+
+There was no response. The alarm continued to ring.
+
+“Alva!” Braxton yelled into his sleeping roommate’s ear, “Turn off that
+clock. Wake up,” he began shaking him, “Wake up, damn you ... ya dead?”
+
+Alva slowly emerged from his stupor. Almost mechanically he reached for
+the clock, dancing merrily on a chair close to the bed, and, finding
+it, pushed the guilty lever back into the silent zone. Braxton watched
+him disgustedly:
+
+“Watcha gettin’ up so early for? Don’tcha know this is Monday?”
+
+“Shure, I know it’s Monday, but I gotta go to Uncle’s. The landlord’ll
+be here before eleven o’clock.”
+
+“Watcha gonna pawn?”
+
+“My brown suit. I won’t need it ’til next Sunday. You got your rent?”
+
+“I got four dollars,” Braxton advanced slowly.
+
+“Cantcha get the other two?”
+
+Braxton grew apologetic and explanatory, “Not today ... ya ... see....”
+
+“Aw, man, you make me sick.”
+
+Disgust overcoming his languor, Alva got out of the bed. This was
+getting to be a regular Monday morning occurrence. Braxton was always
+one, two or three dollars short of having his required half of the
+rent, and Alva, who had rented the room, always had to make it up.
+Luckily for Alva, both he and the landlord were Elks. Fraternal
+brothers must stick together. Thus it was an easy matter to pay the
+rent in installments. The only difficulty being that it was happening
+rather frequently. There is liable to be a limit even to a brother
+Elk’s patience, especially where money is concerned.
+
+Alva put on his dressing gown, and his house shoes, then went into the
+little alcove which was curtained off in the rear from the rest of
+the room. Jumbled together on the marble topped stationary washstand
+were a half dozen empty gin bottles bearing a pre-prohibition Gordon
+label, a similar number of empty ginger ale bottles, a cocktail shaker,
+and a medley of assorted cocktail, water, jelly and whiskey glasses,
+filled and surrounded by squeezed orange and lemon rinds. The little
+two-burner gas plate atop a wooden dry goods box was covered with
+dirty dishes, frying pan, egg shells, bacon rinds, and a dominating
+though lopsided tea kettle. Even Alva’s trunk, which occupied half the
+entrance space between the alcove and the room, littered as it was with
+paper bags, cracker boxes and greasy paper plates, bore evidence of the
+orgy which the occupants of the room staged over every weekend.
+
+Alva surveyed this rather intimate and familiar disorder, faltered
+a moment, started to call Braxton, then remembering previous Monday
+mornings set about his task alone. It was Braxton’s custom never to
+arise before noon. Alva who worked as a presser in a costume house was
+forced to get up at seven o’clock on every week day save Monday when he
+was not required to report for work until twelve o’clock. His employers
+thus managed to accumulate several baskets of clothes from the sewing
+room before their pressers arrived. It was better to have them remain
+at home until this was done. Then you didn’t have to pay them so much,
+and having let the sewing room get head start, there was never any
+chance for the pressing room to slow down.
+
+Alva’s mother had been an American mulatto, his father a Filipino.
+Alva himself was small in stature as his father had been, small
+and well developed with broad shoulders, narrow hips and firm well
+modeled limbs. His face was oval shaped and his features more oriental
+than Negroid. His skin was neither yellow nor brown but something
+in between, something warm, arresting and mellow with the faintest
+suggestion of a parchment tinge beneath, lending it individuality. His
+eyes were small, deep and slanting. His forehead high, hair sparse and
+finely textured.
+
+The alcove finally straightened up, Alva dressed rather hurriedly, and,
+taking a brown suit from the closet, made his regular Monday morning
+trip to the pawn shop.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Emma Lou finished rinsing out some silk stockings and sat down in a
+chair to reread a letter she had received from home that morning. It
+was about the third time she had gone over it. Her mother wanted her
+to come home. Evidently the home-town gossips were busy. No doubt they
+were saying, “Strange mother to let that gal stay in New York alone.
+She ain’t goin’ to school, either. Wonder what she’s doin’?” Emma Lou
+read all this between the lines of what her mother had written. Jane
+Morgan was being tearful as usual. She loved to suffer, and being
+tearful seemed the easiest way to let the world know that one was
+suffering. Sob stuff, thought Emma Lou, and, tearing the letter up,
+threw it into the waste paper basket.
+
+Emma Lou was now maid to Arline Strange, who was playing for the
+moment the part of a mulatto Carmen in an alleged melodrama of Negro
+life in Harlem. Having tried, for two weeks to locate what she termed
+“congenial work,” Emma Lou had given up the idea and meekly returned to
+Mazelle Lindsay. She had found her old job satisfactorily filled, but
+Mazelle had been sympathetic and had arranged to place her with Arline
+Strange. Now her mother wanted her to come home. Let her want. She was
+of age, and supporting herself. Moreover, she felt that if it had not
+been for gossip her mother would never have thought of asking her to
+come home.
+
+“Stop your mooning, dearie.” Arline Strange had returned to her
+dressing room. Act one was over. The Negro Carmen had become the
+mistress of a wealthy European. She would now shed her gingham dress
+for an evening gown.
+
+Mechanically, Emma Lou assisted Arline in making the change. She was
+unusually silent. It was noticed.
+
+“’Smatter, Louie. In love or something?”
+
+Emma Lou smiled, “Only with myself.”
+
+“Then snap out of it. Remember, you’re going cabareting with us
+tonight. This brother of mine from Chicago insists upon going to Harlem
+to check up on my performance. He’ll enjoy himself more if you act as
+guide. Ever been to Small’s?” Emma Lou shook her head. “I haven’t been
+to any of the cabarets.”
+
+“What?” Arline was genuinely surprised. “You in Harlem and never been
+to a cabaret? Why I thought all colored people went.”
+
+Emma Lou bristled. White people were so stupid. “No” she said firmly.
+“All colored people don’t go. Fact is, I’ve heard that most of the
+places are patronized almost solely by whites.”
+
+“Oh, yes, I knew that, I’ve been to Small’s and Barron’s and the Cotton
+Club, but I thought there were other places.” She stopped talking, and
+spent the next few moments deepening the artificial duskiness of her
+skin. The gingham dress was now on its hanger. The evening gown clung
+glamorously to her voluptuous figure. “For God’s sake, don’t let on
+to my brother you ain’t been to Small’s before. Act like you know all
+about it. I’ll see that he gives you a big tip.” The call bell rang.
+Arline said “Damn,” gave one last look into the mirror, then hurried
+back to the stage so that the curtain could go up on the cabaret scene
+in Act Two.
+
+Emma Lou laid out the negligee outfit Arline would be killed in at the
+end of Act Three, and went downstairs to stand in the stage wings, a
+makeup box beneath her arm. She never tired of watching the so-called
+dramatic antics on the stage. She wondered if there were any Negroes of
+the type portrayed by Arline and her fellow performers. Perhaps there
+were since there were any number of minor parts being played by real
+Negroes who acted much different from any Negroes she had ever known or
+seen. It all seemed to her like a mad caricature.
+
+She watched for about the thirtieth time Arline acting the part of
+a Negro cabaret entertainer, and also for about the thirtieth time,
+came to the conclusion that Arline was being herself rather than the
+character she was supposed to be playing. From where she was standing
+in the wings she could see a small portion of the audience, and she
+watched their reaction. Their interest seemed genuine. Arline did have
+pep and personality, and the alleged Negro background was strident and
+kaleidoscopic, all of which no doubt made up for the inane plot and
+vulgar dialogue.
+
+They entered Small’s Paradise, Emma Lou, Arline and Arline’s brother
+from Chicago. All the way uptown he had plied Emma Lou with questions
+concerning New York’s Black Belt. He had reciprocated by relating how
+well he knew the Negro section of Chicago. Quite a personage around the
+Black and Tan cabarets there, it seemed. “But I never,” he concluded
+as the taxi drew up to the curb in front of Small’s, “have seen any
+black gal in Chicago act like Arline acts. She claims she is presenting
+a Harlem specie. So I am going to see for myself.” And he chuckled
+all the time he was helping them out of the taxi and paying the fare.
+While they were checking their wraps in the foyer, the orchestra began
+playing. Through the open entrance way Emma Lou could see a hazy,
+dim-lighted room, walls and ceiling colorfully decorated, floor space
+jammed with tables and chairs and people. A heavy set mulatto in
+tuxedo, after asking how many were in their party, led them through a
+lane of tables around the squared off dance platform to a ringside seat
+on the far side of the cabaret.
+
+Immediately they were seated, a waiter came to take their order.
+
+“Three bottles of White Rock.” The waiter nodded, twirled his tray on
+the tip of his fingers and skated away.
+
+Emma Lou watched the dancers, and noticed immediately that in all that
+insensate crowd of dancing couples there were only a few Negroes.
+
+“My God, such music. Let’s dance, Arline,” and off they went, leaving
+Emma Lou sitting alone. Somehow or other she felt frightened. Most
+of the tables around her were deserted, their tops littered with
+liquid-filled glasses, and bottles of ginger ale and White Rock. There
+was no liquor in sight, yet Emma Lou was aware of pungent alcoholic
+odors. Then she noticed a heavy-jowled white man with a flashlight
+walking among the empty tables and looking beneath them. He didn’t seem
+to be finding anything. The music soon stopped. Arline and her brother
+returned to the table. He was feigning anxiety because he had not seen
+the type of character Arline claimed to be portraying, and loudly
+declared that he was disappointed.
+
+“Why there ain’t nothing here but white people. Is it always like this?”
+
+Emma Lou said it was and turned to watch their waiter, who with two
+others had come dancing across the floor, holding aloft his tray,
+filled with bottles and glasses. Deftly, he maneuvered away from the
+other two and slid to their table, put down a bottle of White Rock and
+an ice-filled glass before each one, then, after flicking a stub check
+on to the table, rejoined his companions in a return trip across the
+dance floor.
+
+Arline’s brother produced a hip flask, and before Emma Lou could demur
+mixed her a highball. She didn’t want to drink. She hadn’t drunk
+before, but....
+
+“Here come the entertainers!” Emma Lou followed Arline’s turn of
+the head to see two women, one light brown skin and slim, the other
+chocolate colored and fat, walking to the center of the dance floor.
+
+The orchestra played the introduction and vamp to “Muddy Waters.” The
+two entertainers swung their legs and arms in rhythmic unison, smiling
+broadly and rolling their eyes, first to the left and then to the
+right. Then they began to sing. Their voices were husky and strident,
+neither alto nor soprano. They muddled their words and seemed to
+impregnate the syncopated melody with physical content.
+
+As they sang the chorus, they glided out among the tables, stopping at
+one, then at another, and another, singing all the time, their bodies
+undulating and provocative, occasionally giving just a promise of an
+obscene hip movement, while their arms waved and their fingers held
+tight to the dollar bills and silver coins placed in their palms by
+enthusiastic onlookers.
+
+Emma Lou, all of her, watched and listened. As they approached her
+table, she sat as one mesmerized. Something in her seemed to be
+trying to give way. Her insides were stirred, and tingled. The two
+entertainers circled their table; Arline’s brother held out a dollar
+bill. The fat, chocolate colored girl leaned over the table, her hand
+touched his, she exercised the muscles of her stomach, muttered a
+guttural “thank you” in between notes and moved away, moaning “Muddy
+Waters,” rolling her eyes, shaking her hips.
+
+Emma Lou had turned completely around in her chair, watching the
+progress of that wah-wahing, jello-like chocolate hulk, and her slim
+light brown skin companion. Finally they completed their rounds of
+the tables and returned to the dance floor. Red and blue spotlights
+played upon their dissimilar figures, the orchestra increased the tempo
+and lessened the intensity of its playing. The swaying entertainers
+pulled up their dresses, exposing lace trimmed stepins and an island
+of flesh. Their stockings were rolled down below their knees, their
+stepins discreetly short and delicate. Finally, they ceased their
+swaying and began to dance. They shimmied and whirled, charlestoned
+and black-bottomed. Their terpsichorean ensemble was melodramatic and
+absurd. Their execution easy and emphatic. Emma Lou forgot herself. She
+gaped, giggled and applauded like the rest of the audience, and only
+as they let their legs separate, preparatory to doing one final split
+to the floor, did Emma Lou come to herself long enough to wonder if
+the fat one could achieve it without seriously endangering those ever
+tightening stepins.
+
+“Dam’ good, I’ll say,” a slender white youth at the next table
+asseverated, as he lifted an amber filled glass to his lips.
+
+Arline sighed. Her brother had begun to razz her. Emma Lou blinked
+guiltily as the lights were turned up. She had been immersed in
+something disturbingly pleasant. Idiot, she berated herself, just
+because you’ve had one drink and seen your first cabaret entertainer,
+must your mind and body feel all aflame?
+
+Arline’s brother was mixing another highball. All around, people were
+laughing. There was much more laughter than there was talk, much more
+gesticulating and ogling than the usual means of expression called for.
+Everything seemed unrestrained, abandoned. Yet, Emma Lou was conscious
+of a note of artificiality, the same as she felt when she watched
+Arline and her fellow performers cavorting on the stage in “Cabaret
+Gal.” This entire scene seemed staged, they were in a theater, only
+the proscenium arch had been obliterated. At last the audience and the
+actors were as one.
+
+A call to order on the snare drum. A brutal sliding trumpet call on the
+trombone, a running minor scale by the clarinet and piano, an umpah,
+umpah by the bass horn, a combination four measure moan and strum by
+the saxophone and banjo, then a melodic ensemble, and the orchestra
+was playing another dance tune. Masses of people jumbled up the three
+entrances to the dance square and with difficulty, singled out their
+mates and became closely allied partners. Inadvertently, Emma Lou
+looked at Arline’s brother. He blushed, and appeared uncomfortable. She
+realized immediately what was on his mind. He didn’t know whether or
+not to ask her to dance with him. The ethics of the case were complex.
+She was a Negro and hired maid. But was she a hired maid after hours,
+and in this environment? Emma Lou had difficulty in suppressing a
+smile, then she decided to end the suspense.
+
+“Why don’t you two dance. No need of letting the music go to waste.”
+
+Both Arline and her brother were obviously relieved, but as they got
+up Arline said, “Ain’t much fun cuddling up to your own brother when
+there’s music like this.” But off they went, leaving Emma Lou alone and
+disturbed. John ought to be here, slipped out before she remembered
+that she didn’t want John any more. Then she began to wish that John
+had introduced her to some more men. But he didn’t know the kind of men
+she was interested in knowing. He only knew men and boys like himself,
+porters and janitors and chauffeurs and bootblacks. Imagine her, a
+college trained person, even if she hadn’t finished her senior year,
+being satisfied with the company of such unintelligent servitors. How
+had she stood John so long with his constant of defense, “I ain’t got
+much education, but I got mother wit.” Mother wit! Creation of the
+unlettered, satisfying illusion to the dumb, ludicrous prop to the
+mentally unfit. Yes, he had mother wit all right.
+
+Emma Lou looked around and noticed at a near-by table three young
+colored men, all in tuxedos, gazing at her and talking. She averted
+her glance and turned to watch the dancers. She thought she heard a
+burst of ribald laughter from the young men at the table. Then some
+one touched her on the shoulder, and she looked up into a smiling
+oriental-like face, neither brown nor yellow in color, but warm and
+pleasing beneath the soft lights, and, because of the smile, showing a
+gleaming row of small, even teeth, set off by a solitary gold incisor.
+The voice was persuasive and apologetic, “Would you care to dance with
+me?” The music had stopped, but there was promise of an encore. Emma
+Lou was confused, her mind blankly chaotic. She was expected to push
+back her chair and get up. She did. And, without saying a word, allowed
+herself to be maneuvered to the dance floor.
+
+In a moment they were swallowed up in the jazz whirlpool. Long
+strides were impossible. There were too many other legs striding for
+free motion in that over populated area. He held her close to him;
+the contours of her body fitting his. The two highballs had made her
+giddy. She seemed to be glowing inside. The soft lights and the music
+suggested abandon and intrigue. They said nothing to one another. She
+noticed that her partner’s face seemed alive with some inner ecstasy.
+It must be the music, thought Emma Lou. Then she got a whiff of his
+liquor-laden breath.
+
+After three encores, the clarinet shrilled out a combination of notes
+that seemed to say regretfully, “That’s all.” Brighter lights were
+switched on, and the milling couples merged into a struggling mass of
+individuals, laughing, talking, over-animated individuals, all trying
+to go in different directions, and getting a great deal of fun out
+of the resulting confusion. Emma Lou’s partner held tightly to her
+arm, and pushed her through the insensate crowd to her table. Then
+he muttered a polite “thank you” and turned away. Emma Lou sat down.
+Arline and her brother looked at her and laughed. “Got a dance, eh
+Louie?” Emma Lou wondered if Arline was being malicious, and for an
+answer she only nodded her head and smiled, hoping all the while that
+her smile was properly enigmatic.
+
+Arline’s brother spoke up. “Whadda say we go. I’ve seen enough of this
+to know that Arline and her stage director are all wet.” Their waiter
+was called, the check was paid, and they were on their way out. In
+spite of herself, Emma Lou glanced back to the table where her dancing
+partner was sitting. To her confusion, she noticed that he and his two
+friends were staring at her. One of them said something and made a wry
+face. Then they all laughed, uproariously and cruelly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alva had overslept. Braxton, who had stayed out the entire night, came
+in about eight o’clock, and excitedly interrupted his drunken slumber.
+
+“Ain’t you goin’ to work?”
+
+“Work?” Alva was alarmed. “What time is it?”
+
+“’Bout eight. Didn’t you set the clock?”
+
+“Sure, I did.” Alva picked up the clock from the floor and examined
+the alarm dial. It had been set for ten o’clock instead of for six. He
+sulked for a moment, then attempted to shake off the impending mood of
+regretfulness and disgust for self.
+
+“Aw, hell, what’s the dif’. Call ’em up and tell ’em I’m sick. There’s
+a nickel somewhere in that change on the dresser.” Braxton had taken
+off his tuxedo coat and vest.
+
+“If you’re not goin’ to work ever, you might as well quit. I don’t see
+no sense in working two days and laying off three.”
+
+“I’m goin’ to quit the damn job anyway. I been working steady now since
+last fall.”
+
+“I thought it was about time you quit.” Braxton had stripped off his
+white full dress shirt, put on his bathrobe, and started out of the
+room, to go downstairs to the telephone. Alva reached across the bed
+and pulled up the shade, blinked at the inpouring daylight and lay
+himself back down, one arm thrown across his forehead. He had slipped
+off into a state of semi-consciousness again when Braxton returned.
+
+“The girl said she’d tell the boss. Asked who I was as usual.” He went
+into the alcove to finish undressing, and put on his pajamas. Alva
+looked up.
+
+“You goin’ to bed?”
+
+“Yes, don’t you think I want some sleep?”
+
+“Thought you was goin’ to look for a job?”
+
+“I was, but I hadn’t figured on staying out all night.”
+
+“Always some damn excuse. Where’d you go?”
+
+“Down to Flo’s.”
+
+“Who in the hell is Flo?”
+
+“That little yaller broad I picked up at the cabaret last night.”
+
+“I thought she had a nigger with her.”
+
+“She did, but I jived her along, so she ditched him, and gave me her
+address. I met her there later.”
+
+Braxton was now ready to get into the bed. All this time he had been
+preparing himself in his usual bedtime manner. His face had been
+cold-creamed, his hair greased and tightly covered by a silken stocking
+cap. This done, he climbed over Alva and lay on top of the covers. They
+were silent for a moment, then Braxton laughed softly to himself.
+
+“Where’d _you_ go last night?”
+
+“Where’d I go?” Alva seemed surprised. “Why I came home, where’d ya
+think I went?” Braxton laughed again.
+
+“Oh, I thought maybe you’d really made a date with that coal scuttle
+blond you danced with.”
+
+“Ya musta thought it.”
+
+“Well, ya seemed pretty sweet on her.”
+
+“Whaddaya mean, sweet? Just because I danced with her once. I took pity
+on her, cause she looked so lonesome with those ofays. Wonder who they
+was?”
+
+“Oh, she probably works for them. It’s good you danced with her. Nobody
+else would.”
+
+“I didn’t see nothing wrong with her. She might have been a little
+dark.”
+
+“Little dark is right, and you know when they comes blacker’n me,
+they ain’t got no go.” Braxton was a reddish brown aristocrat, with
+clear-cut features and curly hair. His paternal grandfather had been
+an Iroquois Indian.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Emma Lou was very lonesome. She still knew no one save John, two
+or three of the Negro actors who worked on the stage with Arline,
+and a West Indian woman who lived in the same apartment with her.
+Occasionally John met her when she left the theater at night and
+escorted her to her apartment door. He repeatedly importuned her to be
+nice to him once more. Her only answer was a sigh or a smile.
+
+The West Indian woman was employed as a stenographer in the office of a
+Harlem political sheet. She was shy and retiring, and not much given to
+making friends with American Negroes. So many of them had snubbed and
+pained her when she was newly emigrant from her home in Barbadoes, that
+she lumped them all together, just as they seemed to do her people. She
+would not take under consideration that Emma Lou was new to Harlem,
+and not even aware of the prejudice American-born Harlemites nursed
+for foreign-born ones. She remembered too vividly how, on ringing the
+bell of a house where there had been a vacancy sign in the window, a
+little girl had come to the door, and, in answer to a voice in the back
+asking, “Who is it, Cora?” had replied, “monkey chaser wants to see the
+room you got to rent.” Jasmine Griffith was wary of all contact with
+American Negroes, for that had been only one of the many embittering
+incidents she had experienced.
+
+Emma Lou liked Jasmine, but was conscious of the fact that she could
+never penetrate her stolid reserve. They often talked to one another
+when they met in the hallway, and sometimes they stopped in one
+another’s rooms, but there was never any talk of going places together,
+never any informal revelations or intimacies.
+
+The Negro actors in “Cabaret Gal,” all felt themselves superior to
+Emma Lou, and she in turn felt superior to them. She was just a maid.
+They were just common stage folk. Once she had had an inspiration. She
+had heard that “Cabaret Gal” was liable to run for two years or more
+on Broadway before road shows were sent out. Without saying anything
+to Arline she had approached the stage director and asked him, in all
+secrecy, what her chances were of getting into the cabaret ensemble.
+She knew they paid well, and she speculated that two or three years in
+“Cabaret Gal” might lay the foundations for a future stage career.
+
+“What the hell would Arline do,” he laughed, “if she didn’t have you to
+change her complexion before every performance?”
+
+Emma Lou had smiled away this bit of persiflage and had reiterated her
+request in such a way that there was no mistaking her seriousness.
+
+Sensing this, the director changed his mood, and admitted that even
+then two of the girls were dropping out of “Cabaret Gal” to sail for
+Europe with another show, booked for a season on the continent. But he
+hastened to tell her, as he saw her eyes brighten with anticipation:
+
+“Well, you see, we worked out a color scheme that would be a complement
+to Arline’s makeup. You’ve noticed, no doubt, that all of the girls are
+about one color, and....”
+
+Unable to stammer any more, he had hastened away, embarrassed.
+
+Emma Lou hadn’t noticed that all the girls were one color. In fact, she
+was certain they were not. She hastened to stand in the stage wings
+among them between scenes and observe their skin coloring. Despite many
+layers of liquid powder she could see that they were not all one color,
+but that they were either mulatto or light-brown skin. Their makeup and
+the lights gave them an appearance of sameness. She noticed that there
+were several black men in the ensemble, but that none of the women were
+dark. Then the breach between Emma Lou and the show people widened.
+
+Emma Lou had had another inspiration. She had decided to move. Perhaps
+if she were to live with a homey type of family they could introduce
+her to “the right sort of people.” She blamed her enforced isolation
+on the fact that she had made no worthwhile contacts. Mrs. Blake was
+a disagreeable remembrance. Since she came to think about it, Mrs.
+Blake had been distinctly patronizing like ... like ... her high school
+principal, or like Doris Garrett, the head of the only Negro sorority
+in the Southern California college she had attended. Doris Garrett had
+been very nice to all her colored schoolmates, but had seen to it that
+only those girls who were of a mulatto type were pledged for membership
+in the Greek letter society of which she was the head.
+
+Emma Lou reasoned that she couldn’t go on as she was, being alone
+and aching for congenial companionship. True, her job didn’t allow
+her much spare time. She had to be at Arline’s apartment at eleven
+every morning, but except on the two matinee days, she was free from
+two until seven-thirty P. M., when she had to be at the theater, and
+by eleven-thirty every night, she was in Harlem. Then she had all
+day Sunday to herself. Arline paid her a good salary, and she made
+tips from the first and second leads in the show, who used her spare
+moments. She had been working for six weeks now, and had saved one
+hundred dollars. She practically lived on her tips. Her salary was
+twenty-five dollars per week. Dinner was the only meal she had to pay
+for, and Arline gave her many clothes.
+
+So Emma Lou began to think seriously of getting another room. She
+wanted more space and more air and more freedom from fish and cabbage
+smells. She had been in Harlem now for about fourteen weeks. Only
+fourteen weeks? The count stunned her. It seemed much longer. It was
+this rut she was in. Well, she would get out of it. Finding a room, a
+new room, would be the first step.
+
+Emma Lou asked Jasmine how one went about it. Jasmine was noncommittal,
+and said she didn’t know, but she had heard that _The Amsterdam News_,
+a Harlem Negro weekly, carried a large “Furnished rooms for rent”
+section. Emma Lou bought a copy of this paper, and, though attracted,
+did not stop to read the news columns under the streaming headlines
+to the effect “Headless Man Found In Trunk”; “Number Runner Given
+Sentence”; “Benefit Ball Huge Success”; but turned immediately to the
+advertising section.
+
+There were many rooms advertised for rent, rooms of all sizes and for
+all prices, with all sorts of conveniences and inconveniences. Emma Lou
+was more bewildered than ever. Then, remembering that John had said
+that all the “dictys” lived between Seventh and Edgecombe Avenues on
+136th, 137th, 138th and 139th Streets, decided to check off the places
+in these streets. John had also told her that “dictys” lived in the
+imposing apartment houses on Edgecombe, Bradhurst and St. Nicholas
+Avenues. “Dictys” were Harlem’s high-toned people, folk listed in the
+local social register, as it were. But Emma Lou did not care to live in
+another apartment building. She preferred, or thought she would prefer,
+living in a private house where there would be fewer people and more
+privacy.
+
+The first place Emma Lou approached had a double room for two girls,
+two men, or a couple. They thought their advertisement had said as
+much. It hadn’t, but Emma Lou apologized, and left. The next three
+places were nice but exorbitant. Front rooms with two windows and a
+kitchenette, renting for twelve, fourteen and sixteen dollars a week.
+Emma Lou had planned to spend not more than eight or nine dollars at
+the most. The next place smelled far worse than her present home. The
+room was smaller and the rent higher. Emma Lou began to lose hope, then
+rallying, had gone to the last place on her list from _The Amsterdam
+News_. The landlady was the spinster type, garrulous and friendly. She
+had a high forehead, keen intellectual eyes, and a sharp profile. The
+room she showed to Emma Lou was both spacious and clean, and she only
+asked eight dollars and fifty cents per week for it.
+
+After showing her the room, the landlady had invited Emma Lou
+downstairs to her parlor. Emma Lou found a place to sit down on a
+damask covered divan. There were many other seats in the room, but the
+landlady, _Miss_ Carrington, as she had introduced herself, insisted
+upon sitting down beside her. They talked for about a half an hour,
+and in that time, being a successful “pumper,” _Miss_ Carrington had
+learned the history of Emma Lou’s experiences in Harlem. Satisfied of
+her ground, she grew more familiar, placed her hand on Emma Lou’s knee,
+then finally put her arm around her waist. Emma Lou felt uncomfortable.
+This sudden and unexpected intimacy disturbed her. The room was close
+and hot. Damask coverings seemed to be everywhere. Damask coverings and
+dull red draperies and mauve walls.
+
+“Don’t worry any more, dearie, I’ll take care of you from now on,” and
+she had tightened her arm around Emma Lou’s waist, who, feeling more
+uncomfortable than ever, looked at her wrist watch.
+
+“I must be going.”
+
+“Do you want the room?” There was a note of anxiety in her voice.
+“There are lots of nice girls living here. We call this the ‘Old Maid’s
+Home.’ We have parties among ourselves, and just have a grand time.
+Talk about fun! I know you’d be happy here.”
+
+Emma Lou knew she would too, and said as much. Then hastily, she gave
+_Miss_ Carrington a three dollar deposit on the room, and left ... to
+continue her search for a new place to live.
+
+There were no more places on her _Amsterdam News_ list, so noticing
+“Vacancy” signs in windows along the various streets, Emma Lou decided
+to walk along and blindly choose a house. None of the houses in 137th
+Street impressed her, they were all too cold looking, and she was
+through with 136th Street. _Miss_ Carrington lived there. She sauntered
+down the “L” trestled Eighth Avenue to 138th Street. Then she turned
+toward Seventh Avenue and strolled along slowly on the south side
+of the street. She chose the south side because she preferred the
+appearance of the red brick houses there to the green brick ones on the
+north side. After she had passed by three “Vacancy” signs, she decided
+to enter the very next house where such a sign was displayed.
+
+Seeing one, she climbed the terraced stone stairs, rang the doorbell
+and waited expectantly. There was a long pause. She rang the bell
+again, and just as she relieved her pressure, the door was opened by a
+bedizened yellow woman with sand colored hair and deep set corn colored
+eyes. Emma Lou noted the incongruous thickness of her lips.
+
+“How do you do. I ... I ... would like to see one of your rooms.”
+
+The woman eyed Emma Lou curiously and looked as if she were about to
+snort. Then slowly she began to close the door in the astonished girl’s
+face. Emma Lou opened her mouth and tried to speak, but the woman
+forestalled her, saying testily in broken English:
+
+“We have nothing here.”
+
+Persons of color didn’t associate with blacks in the Caribbean Island
+she had come from.
+
+From then on Emma Lou intensified her suffering, mulling over and
+magnifying each malignant experience. They grew within her and were
+nourished by constant introspection and livid reminiscences. Again, she
+stood upon the platform in the auditorium of the Boise high school.
+Again that first moment of realization and its attendant strictures
+were disinterred and revivified. She was black, too black, there was no
+getting around it. Her mother had thought so, and had often wished that
+she had been a boy. Black boys can make a go of it, but black girls....
+
+No one liked black, anyway....
+
+Wanted: light colored girl to work as waitress in tearoom....
+
+Wanted: Nurse girl, light colored preferred (children are afraid of
+black folks)....
+
+“I don’ haul no coal....”
+
+“It’s like this, Emma Lou, they don’t want no dark girls in their
+sorority. They ain’t pledged us, and we’re the only two they ain’t, and
+we’re both black.”
+
+_The ineluctability of raw experience! The muddy mirroring of life’s
+perplexities.... Seeing everything in terms of self.... The spreading
+sensitiveness of an adder’s sting._
+
+“Mr. Brown has some one else in mind....”
+
+“We have nothing here....”
+
+She should have been a boy. A black boy could get along, but a black
+girl....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Arline was leaving the cast of “Cabaret Gal” for two weeks. Her mother
+had died in Chicago. The Negro Carmen must be played by an understudy,
+a real mulatto this time, who, lacking Arline’s poise and personality,
+nevertheless brought down the house because of the crude vividity
+of her performance. Emma Lou was asked to act as her maid while
+Arline was away. Indignantly, she had taken the alternative of a two
+weeks’ vacation. Imagine her being maid for a _Negro_ woman! It was
+unthinkable.
+
+Left entirely to herself, she proceeded to make herself more miserable.
+Lying in bed late every morning, semi-conscious, body burning, mind
+disturbed by thoughts of sex. Never before had she experienced such
+physical longing. She often thought of John and at times was almost
+driven to slip him into her room once more. But John couldn’t satisfy
+her. She felt that she wanted something more than just the mere
+physical relationship with some one whose body and body coloring were
+distasteful to her.
+
+When she did decide to get up, she would spend an hour before her
+dresser mirror, playing with her hair, parting it on the right side,
+then on the left, then in the middle, brushing it straight back, or
+else teasing it with the comb, inducing it to crackle with electric
+energy. Then she would cover it with a cap, pin a towel around her
+shoulders, and begin to experiment with her complexion.
+
+She had decided to bleach her skin as much as possible. She had
+bought many creams and skin preparations, and had tried to remember
+the various bleaching aids she had heard of throughout her life. She
+remembered having heard her grandmother speak of that “old fool, Carrie
+Campbell,” who, already a fair mulatto, had wished to pass for white.
+To accomplish this she had taken arsenic wafers, which were guaranteed
+to increase the pallor of one’s skin.
+
+Emma Lou had obtained some of these arsenic wafers and eaten them, but
+they had only served to give her pains in the pit of her stomach. Next
+she determined upon a peroxide solution in addition to something which
+was known as Black and White Ointment. After she had been using these
+for about a month she thought that she could notice some change. But
+in reality the only effects were an increase in blackheads, irritating
+rashes, and a burning skin.
+
+Meanwhile she found her thoughts straying often to the chap she had
+danced with in the cabaret. She was certain he lived in Harlem, and
+she was determined to find him. She took it for granted that he would
+remember her. So day after day, she strolled up and down Seventh Avenue
+from 125th to 145th Street, then crossed to Lenox Avenue and traversed
+the same distance. _He_ was her ideal. He looked like a college person.
+He dressed well. His skin was such a warm and different color, and
+she had been tantalized by the mysterious slant and deepness of his
+oriental-like eyes.
+
+After walking the streets like this the first few days of her vacation,
+she became aware of the futility of her task. She saw many men on the
+street, many well dressed, seemingly cultured, pleasingly colored men
+and boys. They seemed to congregate in certain places, and stand there
+all the day. She found herself wondering when and where they worked,
+and how they could afford to dress so well. She began to admire their
+well formed bodies and gloried in the way their trousers fit their
+shapely limbs, and in the way they walked, bringing their heels down
+so firmly and so noisily on the pavement. Rubber heels were out of
+fashion. Hard heels, with metal heel plates were the mode of the day.
+These corner loafers were so care-free, always smiling, eyes always
+bright. She loved to hear them laugh, and loved to watch them, when,
+without any seeming provocation, they would cut a few dance steps or do
+a jig. It seemed as if they either did this from sheer exuberance or
+else simply to relieve the monotony of standing still.
+
+Of course, they noticed her as she passed and repassed day after day.
+She eyed them boldly enough, but she was still too self-conscious to
+broadcast an inviting look. She was too afraid of public ridicule or a
+mass mocking. Ofttimes men spoke to her, and tried to make advances,
+but they were never the kind she preferred. She didn’t like black men,
+and the others seemed to keep their distance.
+
+One day, tired of walking, she went into a motion picture theater
+on the avenue. She had seen the feature picture before, but was too
+lethargic and too uninterested in other things to go some place else.
+In truth, there was no place else for her to go. So she sat in the
+darkened theater, squirmed around in her seat, and began to wonder
+just how many thousands of Negroes there were in Harlem. This theater
+was practically full, even in mid-afternoon. The streets were crowded,
+other theaters were crowded, and then there must be many more at home
+and at work. Emma Lou wondered what the population of Negro Harlem was.
+She should have read that Harlem number of the Survey Graphic issued
+two or three years ago. But Harlem hadn’t interested her then for she
+had had no idea at the time that she would ever come to Harlem.
+
+Some one sat down beside her. She was too occupied with herself to
+notice who the person was. The feature picture was over and a comedy
+was being flashed on the screen. Emma Lou found herself laughing, and,
+finding something on the screen to interest her, squared herself in
+her seat. Then she felt a pressure on one of her legs, the warm fleshy
+pressure of another leg. Her first impulse was to change her position.
+Perhaps she had touched the person next to her. Perhaps it was an
+accident. She moved her leg a little, but she still felt the pressure.
+Maybe it wasn’t an accident. Her heart beat fast, her limbs began to
+quiver. The leg which was pressed against hers had such a pleasant,
+warm, fleshy feeling. She stole a glance at the person who had sat down
+next to her. He smiled ... an impudent boyish smile and pressed her leg
+the harder.
+
+“Funny cuss, that guy,” he was speaking to her.
+
+_Slap him in the face. Change your seat. Don’t be an idiot. He has a
+nice smile. Look at him again._
+
+“Did you see him in ‘Long Pants’?”
+
+He was leaning closer now, and Emma Lou took note of a teakwood tan
+hand resting on her knee. She took another look at him, and saw that he
+had curly hair. He leaned toward her, and she leaned toward him. Their
+shoulders touched, his hand reached for hers and stole it from her lap.
+She wished that the theater wasn’t so dark. But if it hadn’t been so
+dark this couldn’t have happened. She wondered if his hair and eyes
+were brown or jet black.
+
+The feature picture was being reeled off again. They were too busy
+talking to notice that. When it was half over, they left their seats
+together. Before they reached the street, Emma Lou handed him three
+dollars, and, leaving the theater, they went to an apartment house on
+140th Street, off Lenox Avenue. Emma Lou waited downstairs in the dirty
+marble hallway where she was stifled by urinal smells and stared at by
+passing people, waited for about ten minutes, then, in answer to his
+call, climbed one flight of stairs, and was led into a well furnished,
+though dark, apartment.
+
+His name was Jasper Crane. He was from Virginia. Living in Harlem with
+his brother, so he said. He had only been in New York a month. Didn’t
+have a job yet. His brother wasn’t very nice to him ... wanted to
+kick him out because he was jealous of him, thought his wife was more
+attentive than a sister-in-law should be. He asked Emma Lou to lend him
+five dollars. He said he wanted to buy a job. She did. And when he left
+her, he kissed her passionately and promised to meet her on the next
+day and to telephone her within an hour.
+
+But he didn’t telephone nor did Emma Lou ever see him again. The
+following day she waited for an hour and a half in the vicinity of
+that hallway where they were supposed to meet again. Then she went to
+the motion picture theater where they had met, and sat in the same
+seat in the same row so that he could find her. She sat there through
+two shows, then came back on the next day, and on the next. Meanwhile
+several other men approached her, a panting fat Jew, whom she reported
+to the usher, a hunchback, whom she pitied and then admired as he
+“made” the girl sitting on the other side of him; and there were
+several not very clean, trampy-looking men, but no Jasper.
+
+He had asked her if she ever went to the Renaissance Casino, a public
+hall, where dances were held every night, so Emma Lou decided to go
+there on a Saturday, hoping to see him. She drew twenty-five dollars
+from the bank in order to buy a new dress, a very fine elaborate
+dress, which she got from a “hot” man, who had been recommended to
+her by Jasmine. “Hot” men sold supposedly stolen goods, thus enabling
+Harlem folk to dress well but cheaply. Then she spent the entire
+afternoon and evening preparing herself for the night, had her hair
+washed and marcelled, and her fingernails manicured.
+
+Before putting on her dress she stood in front of her mirror for over
+an hour, fixing her face, drenching it with a peroxide solution,
+plastering it with a mudpack, massaging it with a bleaching ointment,
+and then, as a final touch, using much vanishing cream and powder.
+She even ate an arsenic wafer. The only visible effect of all this on
+her complexion was to give it an ugly purple tinge, but Emma Lou was
+certain that it made her skin less dark.
+
+She hailed a taxi and went to the Renaissance Casino. She did feel
+foolish, going there without an escort, but the doorman didn’t seem to
+notice. Perhaps it was all right. Perhaps it was customary for Harlem
+girls to go about unaccompanied. She checked her wraps and wandered
+along the promenade that bordered the dance floor. It was early yet,
+just ten-thirty, and only a few couples were dancing. She found a
+chair, and tried to look as if she were waiting for some one. The
+orchestra stopped playing, people crowded past her. She liked the dance
+hall, liked its draped walls and ceilings, its harmonic color design
+and soft lights.
+
+The music began again. She didn’t see Jasper. A spindly legged yellow
+boy, awkward and bashful, asked her to dance with him. She did. The boy
+danced badly, but dancing with him was better than sitting there alone,
+looking foolish. She did wish that he would assume a more upright
+position and stop scrunching his shoulders. It seemed as if he were
+trying to bend both their backs to the breaking point. As they danced
+they talked about the music. He asked her did she have an escort. She
+said yes, and hurried to the ladies’ room when the dance was over.
+
+She didn’t particularly like the looks of the crowd. It was
+well-behaved enough, but ... well ... one could see that they didn’t
+belong to the cultured classes. They weren’t the right sort of people.
+Maybe nice people didn’t come here. Jasper hadn’t been so nice.
+She wished she could see him, wouldn’t she give him a piece of her
+mind?--And for the first time she really sensed the baseness of the
+trick he had played on her.
+
+She walked out of the ladies’ room and found herself again on the
+promenade. For a moment she stood there, watching the dancers. The
+floor was more crowded now, the dancers more numerous and gay. She
+watched them swirl and glide around the dance floor, and an intense
+longing for Jasper or John or any one welled up within her. It was
+terrible to be so alone, terrible to stand here and see other girls
+contentedly curled up in men’s arms. She had been foolish to come,
+Jasper probably never came here. In truth he was no doubt far away from
+New York by now. What sense was there in her being here. She wasn’t
+going to stay. She was going home, but before starting toward the check
+room, she took one more glance at the dancers and saw her cabaret
+dancing partner.
+
+He was dancing with a slender brown-skin girl, his smile as ecstatic
+and intense as before. Emma Lou noted the pleasing lines of his body
+encased in a form-fitting blue suit. Why didn’t he look her way?
+
+“May I have this dance?” A well modulated deep voice. A slender
+stripling, arrayed in brown, with a dark brown face. He had dimples.
+They danced. Emma Lou was having difficulty in keeping track of Alva.
+He seemed to be consciously striving to elude her. He seemed to be
+deliberately darting in among clusters of couples, where he would
+remain hidden for some time, only to reappear far ahead or behind her.
+
+Her partner was congenial. He introduced himself, but she did not hear
+his name, for at that moment, Alva and his partner glided close by.
+Emma Lou actually shoved the supple, slender boy she was dancing with
+in Alva’s direction. She mustn’t lose him this time. She must speak.
+They veered close to one another. They almost collided. Alva looked
+into her face. She smiled and spoke. He acknowledged her salute, but
+stared at her, frankly perplexed, and there was no recognition in his
+face as he moved away, bending his head close to that of his partner,
+the better to hear something she was asking him.
+
+The slender brown boy clung to Emma Lou’s arm, treated her to a
+soda, and, at her request, piloted her around the promenade. She saw
+Alva sitting in a box in the balcony, and suggested to her companion
+that they parade around the balcony for a while. He assented. He was
+lonesome too. First summer in New York. Just graduated from Virginia
+Union University. Going to Columbia School of Law next year. Nice boy,
+but no appeal. Too--supple.
+
+They passed by Alva’s box. He wasn’t there. Two other couples and the
+girl he had been dancing with were. Emma Lou and her companion walked
+the length of the balcony, then retraced their steps just in time to
+see Alva coming around the corner carrying a cup of water. She watched
+the rhythmic swing of his legs, like symmetrical pendulums, perfectly
+shaped; and she admired once more the intriguing lines of his body and
+pleasing foreignness of his face. As they met, she smiled at him. He
+was certain he did not know her but he stopped and was polite, feeling
+that he must find out who she was and where he had met her.
+
+“How do you do?” Emma Lou held out her hand. He shifted the cup of
+water from his right hand to his left. “I’m glad to see you again.”
+They shook hands. His clasp was warm, his palm soft and sweaty. The
+supple lad stepped to one side. “I--I,” Emma Lou was speaking now,
+“have often wondered if we would meet again.” Alva wanted to laugh.
+He could not imagine who this girl with the purple-powdered skin was.
+Where had he seen her? She must be mistaking him for some one else.
+Well, he was game. He spoke sincerely:
+
+“And I, too, have wanted to see you.”
+
+Emma Lou couldn’t blush, but she almost blubbered with joy.
+
+“Perhaps we’ll have a dance together.”
+
+“My God,” thought Alva, “She’s a quick worker.”
+
+“Oh, certainly, where can I find you?”
+
+“Downstairs on the promenade, near the center boxes.”
+
+“The one after this?” This seemed to be the easiest way out. He could
+easily dodge her later.
+
+“Yes,” and she moved away, the supple lad clinging to her arm again.
+
+“Who’s the ‘spade,’ Alva?” Geraldine had seen him stop to talk to her.
+
+“Damned if I know.”
+
+“Aw, sure you know who she is. You danced with her at Small’s.” Braxton
+hadn’t forgotten.
+
+“Well, I never. Is that _it_?” Laughter all around as he told about
+their first meeting. But he didn’t dodge her, for Geraldine and Braxton
+riled him with their pertinacious badinage. He felt that they were
+making more fun of him than of her, and to show them just how little he
+minded their kidding he stalked off to find her. She was waiting, the
+slim, brown stripling swaying beside her, importuning her not to wait
+longer. He didn’t want to lose her. She didn’t want to lose Alva, and
+was glad when they danced off together.
+
+“Who’s your boy friend?” Alva had fortified himself with gin. His
+breath smelled familiar.
+
+“Just an acquaintance.” She couldn’t let him know she had come here
+unescorted. “I didn’t think you’d remember me.”
+
+“Of course, I did; how could I forget you?” Smooth tongue, phrases with
+a double meaning.
+
+“I didn’t forget _you_.” Emma Lou was being coy. “I have often looked
+for you.”
+
+Looked for him where? My God, what an impression he must have made! He
+wondered what he had said to her before. Plunge in boy, plunge! The
+blacker the berry--he chuckled to himself.
+
+Orchestra playing “Blue Skies,” as an especial favor to her. Alva
+telling her his name and giving her his card, and asking her to ’phone
+him some day. Alva close to her and being nice, his arms tightening
+about her. She would call him tomorrow. Ecstasy ended too soon. The
+music stopped. He thanked her for the dance and left her standing on
+the promenade by the side of the waiting slender stripling. She danced
+with him twice more, then let him take her home.
+
+At ten the next morning Emma Lou called Alva. Braxton came to the
+telephone.
+
+“Alva’s gone to work; who is it?” People should have more sense than to
+call that early in the morning. He never got up until noon. Emma Lou
+was being apologetic.
+
+“Could you tell me what time he will be in?”
+
+“’Bout six-thirty. Who shall I say called? This is his roommate.”
+
+“Just.... Oh.... I’ll call him later. Thank you.”
+
+Braxton swore. “Why in the hell does Alva give so many damn women his
+’phone number?”
+
+Six-thirty-five. His roommate had said about six-thirty. She called
+again. _He_ came to the ’phone. She thought his voice was more harsh
+than usual.
+
+“Oh, I’m all right, only tired.”
+
+“Did you work hard?”
+
+“I always work hard.”
+
+“I ... I ... just thought I’d call.”
+
+“Glad you did, call me again some time. Goodbye”--said too quickly. No
+chance to say “When will I see you again?”
+
+She went home, got into the bed and cried herself to sleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Arline returned two days ahead of schedule. Things settled back into
+routine. The brown stripling had taken Emma Lou out twice, but upon her
+refusal to submit herself to him, had gone away in a huff, and had not
+returned. She surmised that it was the first time he had made such a
+request of any one. He did it so ineptly. Work. Home. Walks. Theaters
+downtown during the afternoon, and thoughts of Alva. Finally, she just
+had to call him again. He came to the ’phone:
+
+“Hello. Who? Emma Lou? Where have you been? I’ve been wondering where
+you were?”
+
+She was shy, afraid she might be too bold. But Alva had had his usual
+three glasses of before-dinner gin. He helped her out.
+
+“When can I see you, Sugar?”
+
+Sugar! He had called her “sugar.” She told him where she worked. He
+was to meet her after the theater that very night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“How many nights a week you gonna have that little inkspitter up here?”
+
+“Listen here, Brax, you have who you want up here, don’t you?”
+
+“That ain’t it. I just don’t like to see you tied up with a broad like
+that.”
+
+“Why not? She’s just as good as the rest, and you know what they say,
+‘The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice.’”
+
+“The only thing a black woman is good for is to make money for a
+brown-skin papa.”
+
+“I guess I don’t know that.”
+
+“Well,” Braxton was satisfied now, “if that’s the case....”
+
+He had faith in Alva’s wisdom.
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+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.”
+
+
+
+
+PART V
+
+PYRRHIC VICTORY
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+PYRRHIC VICTORY
+
+
+It was two years later. “Cabaret Gal,” which had been on the road for
+one year, had returned to New York and the company had been disbanded.
+Arline was preparing to go to Europe and had decided not to take a
+maid with her. However, she determined to get Emma Lou another job
+before she left. She inquired among her friends, but none of the active
+performers she knew seemed to be in the market for help, and it was
+only on the eve of sailing that she was able to place Emma Lou with
+Clere Sloane, a former stage beauty, who had married a famous American
+writer and retired from public life.
+
+Emma Lou soon learned to like her new place. She was Clere’s personal
+maid, and found it much less tiresome than being in the theater with
+Arline. Clere was less temperamental and less hurried. She led a rather
+leisurely life, and treated Emma Lou more as a companion than as a
+servant. Clere’s husband, Campbell Kitchen, was very congenial and
+kind too, although Emma Lou, at first, seldom came into contact with
+him, for he and his wife practically led separate existences, meeting
+only at meals, or when they had guests, or when they both happened to
+arise at the same hour for breakfast. Occasionally, they attended the
+theater or a party together, and sometimes entertained, but usually
+they followed their own individual paths.
+
+Campbell Kitchen, like many other white artists and intellectuals,
+had become interested in Harlem. The Negro and all things negroid
+had become a fad, and Harlem had become a shrine to which feverish
+pilgrimages were in order. Campbell Kitchen, along with Carl Van
+Vechten, was one of the leading spirits in this “Explore Harlem; Know
+the Negro” crusade. He, unlike many others, was quite sincere in his
+desire to exploit those things in Negro life which he presumed would
+eventually win for the Negro a more comfortable position in American
+life. It was he who first began the agitation in the higher places of
+journalism which gave impetus to the spiritual craze. It was he who
+ferreted out and gave publicity to many unknown blues singers. It was
+he who sponsored most of the younger Negro writers, personally carrying
+their work to publishers and editors. It wasn’t his fault entirely that
+most of them were published before they had anything to say or before
+they knew how to say it. Rather it was the fault of the faddistic
+American public which followed the band wagon and kept clamoring for
+additional performances, not because of any manifested excellence, but
+rather because of their sensationalism and pseudo-barbaric _decor_.
+
+Emma Lou had heard much of his activity, and had been surprised to find
+herself in his household. Recently he had written a book concerning
+Negro life in Harlem, a book calculated by its author to be a sincere
+presentation of those aspects of life in Harlem which had interested
+him. Campbell Kitchen belonged to the sophisticated school of modern
+American writers. His novels were more or less fantastic bits of
+realism, skipping lightly over the surfaces of life, and managing
+somehow to mirror depths through superficialities. His novel on
+Harlem had been a literary failure because the author presumed that
+its subject matter demanded serious treatment. Hence, he disregarded
+the traditions he had set up for himself in his other works, and
+produced an energetic and entertaining hodgepodge, where the bizarre
+was strangled by the sentimental, and the erotic clashed with the
+commonplace.
+
+Negroes had not liked Campbell Kitchen’s delineation of their life
+in the world’s greatest colored city. They contended that, like
+“Nigger Heaven” by Carl Van Vechten, the book gave white people a
+wrong impression of Negroes, thus lessening their prospects of doing
+away with prejudice and race discrimination. From what she had heard,
+Emma Lou had expected to meet a sneering, obscene cynic, intent upon
+ravaging every Negro woman and insulting every Negro man, but he proved
+to be such an ordinary, harmless individual that she was won over to
+his side almost immediately.
+
+Whenever they happened to meet, he would talk to her about her life in
+particular and Negro life in general. She had to admit that he knew
+much more about such matters than she or any other Negro she had ever
+met. And it was because of one of these chance talks that she finally
+decided to follow Mrs. Blake’s advice and take the public school
+teachers’ examination.
+
+Two years had wrought little change in Emma Lou, although much had
+happened to her. After that tearful night, when Alva had sworn at
+her and stalked out of her room, she had somewhat taken stock of
+herself. She wondered if Alva had been right in his allegations. Was
+she supersensitive about her color? Did she encourage color prejudice
+among her own people, simply by being so expectant of it? She tried
+hard to place the blame on herself, but she couldn’t seem to do it. She
+knew she hadn’t been color-conscious during her early childhood days;
+that is, until she had had it called to her attention by her mother
+or some of her mother’s friends, who had all seemed to take delight in
+marvelling, “What an extraordinarily black child!” or “Such beautiful
+hair on such a black baby!”
+
+Her mother had even hidden her away on occasions when she was to
+have company, and her grandmother had been cruel in always assailing
+Emma Lou’s father, whose only crime seemed to be that he had had a
+blue black skin. Then there had been her childhood days when she had
+ventured forth into the streets to play. All of her colored playmates
+had been mulattoes, and her white playmates had never ceased calling
+public attention to her crow-like complexion. Consequently, she had
+grown sensitive and had soon been driven to play by herself, avoiding
+contact with other children as much as possible. Her mother encouraged
+her in this, had even suggested that she not attend certain parties
+because she might not have a good time.
+
+Then there had been the searing psychological effect of that dreadful
+graduation night, and the lonely embittering three years at college,
+all of which had tended to make her color more and more a paramount
+issue and ill. It was neither fashionable nor good for a girl to
+be as dark as she, and to be, at the same time, as untalented and
+undistinguished. Dark girls could get along if they were exceptionally
+talented or handsome or wealthy, but she had nothing to recommend her,
+save a beautiful head of hair. Despite the fact that she had managed
+to lead her classes in school, she had to admit that mentally she was
+merely mediocre and average. Now, had she been as intelligent as Mamie
+Olds Bates, head of a Negro school in Florida, and president of a huge
+national association of colored women’s clubs, her darkness would not
+have mattered. Or had she been as wealthy as Lillian Saunders, who had
+inherited the millions her mother had made producing hair straightening
+commodities, things might have been different; but here she was,
+commonplace and poor, ugly and undistinguished.
+
+Emma Lou recalled all these things, while trying to fasten the blame
+for her extreme color-consciousness on herself as Alva had done, but
+she was unable to make a good case of it. Surely, it had not been her
+color-consciousness which had excluded her from the only Negro sorority
+in her college, nor had it been her color-consciousness that had caused
+her to spend such an isolated three years in Southern California. The
+people she naturally felt at home with had, somehow or other, managed
+to keep her at a distance. It was no fun going to social affairs and
+being neglected throughout the entire evening. There was no need in
+forcing one’s self into a certain milieu only to be frozen out. Hence,
+she had stayed to herself, had had very few friends, and had become
+more and more resentful of her blackness of skin.
+
+She had thought Harlem would be different, but things had seemed
+against her from the beginning, and she had continued to go down, down,
+down, until she had little respect left for herself.
+
+She had been glad when the road show of “Cabaret Gal” had gone into
+the provinces. Maybe a year of travel would set her aright. She would
+return to Harlem with considerable money saved, move into the Y. W. C.
+A., try to obtain a more congenial position, and set about becoming
+respectable once more, set about coming into contact with the “right
+sort of people.” She was certain that there were many colored boys and
+girls in Harlem with whom she could associate and become content. She
+didn’t wish to chance herself again with a Jasper Crane or an Alva.
+
+Yet, she still loved Alva, no matter how much she regretted it, loved
+him enough to keep trying to win him back, even after his disgust had
+driven him away from her. She sadly recalled how she had telephoned
+him repeatedly, and how he had hung up the receiver with the brief,
+cruel “I don’t care to talk to you,” and she recalled how, swallowing
+her pride, she had gone to his house the day before she had left New
+York. Alva had greeted her coolly, then politely informed her that he
+couldn’t let her in, as he had other company.
+
+This had made her ill, and for three days after “Cabaret Gal” opened
+in Philadelphia, she had confined herself to her hotel room and cried
+hysterically. When it was all over, she had felt much better. The
+outlet of tears had been good for her, but she had never ceased to long
+for Alva. He had been the only completely satisfying thing in her life,
+and it didn’t seem possible for one who had pretended to love her as
+much as he, suddenly to become so completely indifferent. She measured
+everything by her own moods and reactions, translated everything into
+the language of Emma Lou, and variations bewildered her to the extent
+that she could not believe in their reality.
+
+So, when the company had passed through New York on its way from
+Philadelphia to Boston, she had approached Alva’s door once more. It
+had never occurred to her that any one save Alva would answer her
+knock, and the sight of Geraldine in a negligee had stunned her. She
+had hastened to apologize for knocking on the wrong door, and had
+turned completely away without asking for Alva, only to halt as if
+thunderstruck when she heard his voice, as Geraldine was closing the
+door, asking, “Who was it, Sugar?”
+
+For a while, Alva had been content. He really loved Geraldine, or so he
+thought. To him she seemed eminently desirable in every respect, and
+now that she was about to bear him a child, well ... he didn’t yet know
+what they would do with it, but everything would work out as it should.
+He didn’t even mind having to return to work, nor, for the moment, mind
+having to give less attention to the rest of his harem.
+
+Of course, Geraldine’s attachment of herself to him ruled Emma Lou out
+more definitely than it did any of his other “paying off” people. He
+had been thoroughly disgusted with her and had intended to relent only
+after she had been forced to chase him for a considerable length of
+time. But Geraldine’s coming had changed things altogether. Alva knew
+when not to attempt something, and he knew very well that he could not
+toy with Emma Lou and live with Geraldine at the same time. Some of the
+others were different. He could explain Geraldine to them, and they
+would help him keep themselves secreted from her. But Emma Lou, never!
+She would be certain to take it all wrong.
+
+The months passed; the baby was born. Both of the parents were bitterly
+disappointed by this sickly, little “ball of tainted suet,” as Alva
+called it. It had a shrunken left arm and a deformed left foot. The
+doctor ordered oil massages. There was a chance that the infant’s
+limbs could be shaped into some semblance of normality. Alva declared
+that it looked like an idiot. Geraldine had a struggle with herself,
+trying to keep from smothering it. She couldn’t see why such a
+monstrosity should live. Perhaps as the years passed it would change.
+At any rate, she had lost her respect for Alva. There was no denying to
+her that had she mated with some one else, she might have given birth
+to a normal child. The pain she had experienced had shaken her. One
+sight of the baby and continual living with it and Alva in that one,
+now frowsy and odoriferous room, had completed her disillusionment. For
+one of the very few times in her life, she felt like doing something
+drastic.
+
+Alva hardly ever came home. He had quit work once more and started
+running around as before, only he didn’t tell her about it. He lied
+to her or else ignored her altogether. The baby now a year old was
+assuredly an idiot. It neither talked nor walked. Its head had grown
+out of all proportion to its body, and Geraldine felt that she could
+have stood its shrivelled arm and deformed foot, had it not been for
+its insanely large and vacant eyes which seemed never to close, and for
+the thick grinning lips, which always remained half open and through
+which came no translatable sounds.
+
+Geraldine’s mother was a pious woman, and, of course, denounced the
+parents for the condition of the child. Had they not lived in sin,
+this would not be. Had they married and lived respectably, God would
+not have punished them in this manner. According to her, the mere
+possession of a marriage license and an official religious sanction
+of their mating would have assured them a bouncing, healthy, normal
+child. She refused to take the infant. Her pastor had advised her not
+to, saying that the parents should be made to bear the burden they had
+brought upon themselves.
+
+For once, neither Geraldine nor Alva knew what to do. They couldn’t
+keep on as they were now. Alva was drinking more and more. He was also
+becoming less interested in looking well. He didn’t bother about his
+clothes as much as before, his almond shaped eyes became more narrow,
+and the gray parchment conquered the yellow in his skin and gave him a
+deathlike pallor. He hated that silent, staring idiot infant of his,
+and he had begun to hate its mother. He couldn’t go into the room
+sober. Yet his drinking provided no escape. And though he was often
+tempted, he felt that he could not run away and leave Geraldine alone
+with the baby.
+
+Then he began to need money. Geraldine couldn’t work because some
+one had to look after the child. Alva wouldn’t work now, and made
+no effort to come into contact with new “paying off” people. The old
+ones were not as numerous or as generous as formerly. Those who hadn’t
+drifted away didn’t care enough about the Alva of today to help support
+him, his wife and child. Luckily, though, about this time, he “hit”
+the numbers twice in one month, and both he and Geraldine borrowed
+some money on their insurance policies. They accrued almost a thousand
+dollars from these sources, but that wouldn’t last forever, and the
+problem of what they were going to do with the child still remained
+unsolved.
+
+Both wanted to kill it, and neither had the courage to mention the word
+“murder” to the other. Had they been able to discuss this thing frankly
+with one another, they could have seen to it that the child smothered
+itself or fell from the crib sometime during the night. No one would
+have questioned the accidental death of an idiot child. But they did
+not trust one another, and neither dared to do the deed alone. Then
+Geraldine became obsessed with the fear that Alva was planning to run
+away from her. She knew what this would mean and she had no idea of
+letting him do it. She realized that should she be left alone with the
+child it would mean that she would be burdened throughout the years it
+lived, forced to struggle and support herself and her charge. But were
+she to leave Alva, some more sensible plan would undoubtedly present
+itself. No one expected a father to tie himself to an infant, and if
+that infant happened to be ill and an idiot ... well, there were any
+number of social agencies which would care for it. Assuredly, then she
+must get away first. But where to go?
+
+She was stumped again and forced to linger, fearing all the while that
+Alva would fail to return home once he left. She tried desperately
+to reintroduce a note of intimacy into their relationship, tried
+repeatedly to make herself less repellent to him, and, at the same
+time, discipline her own self so that she would not communicate her
+apprehensions to him. She hired the little girl who lived in the next
+room to take charge of the child, bought it a store of toys and went
+out to find a job. This being done, she insisted that Alva begin taking
+her out once again. He acquiesced. He wasn’t interested one way or the
+other as long as he could go to bed drunk every night and keep a bottle
+of gin by his bedside.
+
+Neither, though, seemed interested in what they were doing. Both were
+feverishly apprehensive at all times. They quarrelled frequently, but
+would hasten to make amends to one another, so afraid were they that
+the first one to become angry might make a bolt for freedom. Alva drank
+more and more. Geraldine worked, saved and schemed, always planning
+and praying that she would be able to get away first.
+
+Then Alva was taken ill. His liquor-burned stomach refused to retain
+food. The doctor ordered him not to drink any more bootleg beverages.
+Alva shrugged his shoulders, left the doctor’s office and sought out
+his favorite speakeasy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Emma Lou was busy, and being busy, had had less time to think about
+herself than ever before. Thus, she was less distraught and much less
+dissatisfied with herself and with life. She was taking some courses
+in education in the afternoon classes at City College, preparatory to
+taking the next public school teacher’s examination. She still had
+her position in the household of Campbell Kitchen, a position she had
+begun to enjoy and appreciate more and more as the master of the house
+evinced an interest in her and became her counsellor and friend. He
+encouraged her to read and opened his library to her. Ofttimes he gave
+her tickets to musical concerts or to the theater, and suggested means
+of meeting what she called “the right sort of people.”
+
+She had moved meanwhile into the Y. W. C. A. There she had met many
+young girls like herself, alone and unattached in New York, and she had
+soon found herself moving in a different world altogether. She even
+had a pal, Gwendolyn Johnson, a likable, light-brown-skinned girl, who
+had the room next to hers. Gwendolyn had been in New York only a few
+months. She had just recently graduated from Howard University, and was
+also planning to teach school in New York City. She and Emma Lou became
+fast friends and went everywhere together. It was with Gwendolyn that
+Emma Lou shared the tickets Campbell Kitchen gave her. Then on Sundays
+they would attend church. At first they attended a different church
+every Sunday, but finally took to attending St. Mark’s A. M. E. Church
+on St. Nicholas Avenue regularly.
+
+This was one of the largest and most high-toned churches in Harlem.
+Emma Lou liked to go there; and both she and Gwendolyn enjoyed sitting
+in the congregation, observing the fine clothes and triumphal entries
+of its members. Then, too, they soon became interested in the various
+organizations which the church sponsored for young people. They
+attended the meetings of a literary society every Thursday evening, and
+joined the young people’s bible class which met every Tuesday evening.
+In this way, they came into contact with many young folk, and were
+often invited to parties and dances.
+
+Gwendolyn helped Emma Lou with her courses in education and the two
+obtained and studied copies of questions which had been asked in
+previous examinations. Gwendolyn sympathized with Emma Lou’s color
+hyper-sensitivity and tried hard to make her forget it. In order to
+gain her point, she thought it necessary to down light people, and
+with this in mind, ofttimes told Emma Lou many derogatory tales about
+the mulattoes in the social and scholastic life at Howard University
+in Washington, D. C. The color question had never been of much moment
+to Gwendolyn. Being the color she was, she had never suffered. In
+Charleston, the mulattoes had their own churches and their own social
+life and mingled with darker Negroes only when the jim crow law or
+racial discrimination left them no other alternative. Gwendolyn’s
+mother had belonged to one of these “persons of color” families, but
+she hadn’t seen much in it all. What if she was better than the little
+black girl who lived around the corner? Didn’t they both have to attend
+the same colored school, and didn’t they both have to ride in the same
+section of the street car, and were not they both subject to be called
+nigger by the poor white trash who lived in the adjacent block?
+
+She had thought her relatives and associates all a little silly,
+especially when they had objected to her marrying a man just two or
+three shades darker than herself. She felt that this was carrying
+things too far even in ancient Charleston where customs, houses and
+people all seemed antique and far removed from the present. Stubbornly
+she had married the man of her choice, and had exulted when her
+daughter had been nearer the richer color of her father than the
+washed-out color of herself. Gwendolyn’s father had died while she was
+in college, and her mother had begun teaching in a South Carolina Negro
+industrial school, but she insisted that Gwendolyn must finish her
+education and seek her career in the North.
+
+Gwendolyn’s mother had always preached for complete tolerance in
+matters of skin color. So afraid was she that her daughter would
+develop a “pink” complex that she wilfully discouraged her associating
+with light people and persistently encouraged her to choose her friends
+from among the darker elements of the race. And she insisted that
+Gwendolyn must marry a dark brown man so that her children would be
+real Negroes. So thoroughly had this become inculcated into her, that
+Gwendolyn often snubbed light people, and invariably, in accordance
+with her mother’s sermonisings, chose dark-skinned friends and beaux.
+Like her mother, Gwendolyn was very exercised over the matter of
+intra-racial segregation and attempted to combat it verbally as well as
+actively.
+
+When she and Emma Lou began going around together, trying to find
+a church to attend regularly, she had immediately black-balled the
+Episcopal Church, for she knew that most of its members were “pinks,”
+and despite the fact that a number of dark-skinned West Indians, former
+members of the Church of England, had forced their way in, Gwendolyn
+knew that the Episcopal Church in Harlem, as in most Negro communities,
+was dedicated primarily to the salvation of light-skinned Negroes.
+
+But Gwendolyn was a poor psychologist. She didn’t realize that Emma Lou
+was possessed of a perverse bitterness and that she idolized the thing
+one would naturally expect her to hate. Gwendolyn was certain that Emma
+Lou hated “yaller” niggers as she called them. She didn’t appreciate
+the fact that Emma Lou hated her own color and envied the more mellow
+complexions. Gwendolyn’s continual damnation of “pinks” only irritated
+Emma Lou and made her more impatient with her own blackness, for, in
+damning them, Gwendolyn also enshrined them for Emma Lou, who wasn’t
+the least bit anxious to be classified with persons who needed a
+champion.
+
+However, for the time being, Emma Lou was more free than ever from
+tortuous periods of self-pity and hatred. In her present field of
+activity, the question of color seldom introduced itself except as
+Gwendolyn introduced it, which she did continually, even to the extent
+of giving lectures on race purity and the superiority of unmixed racial
+types. Emma Lou would listen attentively, but all the while she was
+observing Gwendolyn’s light-brown skin, and wishing to herself that it
+were possible for her and Gwendolyn to effect a change in complexions,
+since Gwendolyn considered a black skin so desirable.
+
+They both had beaux, young men whom they had met at the various church
+meetings and socials. Gwendolyn insisted that they snub the “high
+yallers” and continually was going into ecstasies over the browns and
+blacks they conquested. Emma Lou couldn’t get excited over any of them.
+They all seemed so young and so pallid. Their air of being all-wise
+amused her, their affected church purity and wholesomeness, largely a
+verbal matter, tired her. Their world was so small--church, school,
+home, mother, father, parties, future. She invariably compared them to
+Alva and made herself laugh by classifying them as a litter of sick
+puppies. Alva was a bulldog and a healthy one at that. Yet these sick
+puppies, as she called them, were the next generation of Negro leaders,
+the next generation of respectable society folk. They had a future;
+Alva merely lived for no purpose whatsoever except for the pleasure he
+could squeeze out of each living moment. He didn’t construct anything;
+the litter of pups would, or at least they would be credited with
+constructing something whether they did or not. She found herself
+strangely uninterested in anything they might construct. She didn’t see
+that it would make much difference in the world whether they did or did
+not. Months of sophisticated reading under Campbell Kitchen’s tutelage
+had cultivated the seeds of pessimism experience had sown. Life was
+all a bad dream recurrent in essentials. Every dog had his day and
+every dog died. These priggish little respectable persons she now knew
+and associated with seemed infinitely inferior to her. They were all
+hypocritical and colorless. They committed what they called sin in the
+same colorless way they served God, family, and race. None of them had
+the fire and gusto of Alva, nor his light-heartedness. At last she had
+met the “right sort of people” and found them to be quite wrong.
+
+However, she quelled her growing dissatisfaction and immersed herself
+in her work. Campbell Kitchen had told her again and again that
+economic independence was the solution to almost any problem. When
+she found herself a well-paying position she need not worry more.
+Everything else would follow and she would find herself among the
+pursued instead of among the pursuers. This was the gospel she now
+adhered to and placed faith in. She studied hard, finished her courses
+at Teachers College, took and passed the school board examination,
+and mechanically followed Gwendolyn about, pretending to share her
+enthusiasms and hatreds. All would soon come to the desired end. Her
+doctrine of pessimism was weakened by the optimism the future seemed to
+promise. She had even become somewhat interested in one of the young
+men she had met at St. Mark’s. Gwendolyn discouraged this interest.
+“Why, Emma Lou, he’s one of them yaller niggers; you don’t want to get
+mixed up with him.”
+
+Though meaning well, she did not know that it was precisely because he
+was one of those “yaller niggers” that Emma Lou liked him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Emma Lou and her new “yaller nigger,” Benson Brown, were returning from
+church on a Tuesday evening where they had attended a Young People’s
+Bible Class. It was a beautiful early fall night, warm and moonlit,
+and they had left the church early, intent upon slipping away from
+Gwendolyn, and taking a walk before they parted for the night. Emma
+Lou had no reason for liking Benson save that she was flattered that
+a man as light as he should find himself attracted to her. It always
+gave her a thrill to stroll into church or down Seventh Avenue with
+him. And she loved to show him off in the reception room of the Y.
+W. C. A. True, he was almost as colorless and uninteresting to her as
+the rest of the crowd with whom she now associated, but he had a fair
+skin and he didn’t seem to mind her darkness. Then, it did her good to
+show Gwendolyn that she, Emma Lou, could get a yellow-skinned man. She
+always felt that the reason Gwendolyn insisted upon her going with a
+dark-skinned man was because she secretly considered it unlikely for
+her to get a light one.
+
+Benson was a negative personality. His father was an ex-preacher turned
+Pullman porter because, since prohibition times, he could make more
+money on the Pullman cars than he could in the pulpit. His mother was
+an active church worker and club woman, “one of the pillars of the
+community,” the current pastor at their church had called her. Benson
+himself was in college, studying business methods and administration.
+It had taken him six years to finish high school, and it promised to
+take him much longer to finish college. He had a placid, ineffectual
+dirty yellow face, topped by red mariney hair, and studded with gray
+eyes. He was as ugly as he was stupid, and he had been as glad to have
+Emma Lou interested in him as she had been glad to attract him. She
+actually seemed to take him seriously, while every one else more or
+less laughed at him. Already he was planning to quit school, go to
+work, and marry her; and Emma Lou, while not anticipating any such
+sudden consummation, remained blind to everything save his color and
+the attention he paid to her.
+
+Benson had suggested their walk and Emma Lou had chosen Seventh Avenue
+in preference to some of the more quiet side streets. She still loved
+to promenade up and down Harlem’s main thoroughfare. As usual on a warm
+night, it was crowded. Street speakers and their audiences monopolized
+the corners. Pedestrians and loiterers monopolized all of the remaining
+sidewalk space. The street was jammed with traffic. Emma Lou was more
+convinced than ever that there was nothing like it anywhere. She tried
+to formulate some of her impressions and attempted to convey them to
+Benson, but he couldn’t see anything unusual or novel or interesting in
+a “lot of niggers hanging out here to be seen.” Then, Seventh Avenue
+wasn’t so much. What about Broadway or Fifth Avenue downtown where the
+white folks gathered and strolled. Now those were the streets, Seventh
+Avenue, Harlem’s Seventh Avenue, didn’t enter into it.
+
+Emma Lou didn’t feel like arguing. She walked along in silence,
+holding tightly to Benson’s arm and wondering whether or not Alva was
+somewhere on Seventh Avenue. Strange she had never seen him. Perhaps
+he had gone away. Benson wished to stop in order to listen to one of
+the street speakers who, he informed Emma Lou, was mighty smart. It
+seemed that he was the self-styled mayor of Harlem, and his spiel
+nightly was concerning the fact that Harlem Negroes depended upon white
+people for most of their commodities instead of opening food and dress
+commissaries of their own. He lamented the fact that there were no
+Negro store owners, and regretted that wealthy Negroes did not invest
+their money in first class butcher shops, grocery stores, et cetera.
+Then, he perorated, the Jews, who now grew rich off their Negro trade,
+would be forced out, and the money Negroes spent would benefit Negroes
+alone.
+
+Emma Lou knew that this was just the sort of thing that Benson liked to
+hear. She had to tug hard on his arm to make him remain on the edge of
+the crowd, so that she could see the passing crowds rather than center
+her attention on the speaker. In watching, Emma Lou saw a familiar
+figure approach, a very trim, well garbed figure, alert and swaggering.
+It was Braxton. She didn’t know whether to speak to him or not. She
+wasn’t sure that he would acknowledge her salute should she address
+him, yet here was her chance to get news of Alva, and she felt that she
+might risk being snubbed. It would be worth it. He drew near. He was
+alone, and, as he passed, she reached out her arm and touched him on
+the sleeve. He stopped, looked down at her and frowned.
+
+“Braxton,” she spoke quickly, “pardon me for stopping you, but I
+thought you might tell me where Alva is.”
+
+“I guess he’s at the same place,” he answered curtly, then moved away.
+Emma Lou bowed her head shamefacedly as Benson turned toward her long
+enough to ask who it was she had spoken to. She mumbled something about
+an old friend, then suggested that they go home. She was tired. Benson
+agreed reluctantly and they turned toward the Y. W. C. A.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A taxi driver had brought Alva home from a saloon where he had
+collapsed from cramps in the stomach. That had been on a Monday. The
+doctor had come and diagnosed his case. He was in a serious condition,
+his stomach lining was practically eaten away and his entire body
+wrecked from physical excess. Unless he took a complete rest and
+abstained from drinking liquor and all other forms of dissipation,
+there could be no hope of recovery. This hadn’t worried Alva very
+much. He chafed at having to remain in bed, but possibility of death
+didn’t worry him. Life owed him very little, he told Geraldine. He was
+content to let the devil take his due. But Geraldine was quite worried
+about the whole matter. Should Alva die or even be an invalid for any
+lengthy period, it would mean that she alone would have the burden of
+their misshapen child. She didn’t want that burden. In fact, she was
+determined not to have it. And neither did she intend to nurse Alva.
+
+On the Friday morning after the Monday Alva had been taken ill,
+Geraldine left for work as was her custom. But she did not come back
+that night. Every morning during that week she had taken away a bundle
+of this and a bundle of that until she had managed to get away most
+of her clothes. She had saved enough money out of her earnings to pay
+her fare to Chicago. She had chosen Chicago because a man who was
+interested in her lived there. She had written to him. He had been glad
+to hear from her. He ran a buffet flat. He needed some one like her to
+act as hostess. Leaving her little bundles at a girl friend’s day after
+day and packing them away in a second hand trunk, she had planned to
+leave the moment she received her pay on Saturday. She had intended
+going home on Friday night, but at the last moment she had faltered and
+reasoned that as long as she was away and only had twenty-four hours
+more in New York she might as well make her disappearance then. If she
+went back she might betray herself or else become soft-hearted and
+remain.
+
+Alva was not very surprised when she failed to return home from
+work that Friday. The woman in the next room kept coming in at
+fifteen-minute intervals after five-thirty inquiring: “Hasn’t your wife
+come in yet?” She wanted to get rid of the child which was left in her
+care daily. She had her own work to do, her own husband and child’s
+dinner to prepare; and, furthermore, she wasn’t being paid to keep the
+child both day and night. People shouldn’t have children unless they
+intended taking care of them. Finally Alva told her to bring the baby
+back to his room ... his wife would be in soon. But he knew full well
+that Geraldine was not coming back. Hell of a mess. He was unable to
+work, would probably have to remain in bed another week, perhaps two.
+His money was about gone, and now Geraldine was not there to pay the
+rent out of her earnings. Damn. What to do ... what to do? He couldn’t
+keep the child. If he put it in a home they would expect him to
+contribute to its support. It was too bad that he didn’t know some one
+to leave this child of his with as his mother had done in his case. He
+began to wish for a drink.
+
+Hours passed. Finally the lady came into the room again to see if he
+or the baby wanted anything. She knew Geraldine had not come in yet.
+The partition between the two rooms was so thin that the people in one
+were privy to everything the people in the other did or said. Alva told
+her his wife must have gone to see her sick mother in Long Island. He
+asked her to take care of the baby for him. He would pay her for her
+extra trouble. The whole situation offered her much pleasure. She went
+away radiant, eager to tell the other lodgers in the house her version
+of what had happened.
+
+Alva got up and paced the room. He felt that he could no longer
+remain flat on his back. His stomach ached, but it also craved for
+alcoholic stimulant. So did his brain and nervous system in general.
+Inadvertently, in one of his trips across the room, he looked into the
+dresser mirror. What he saw there halted his pacing. Surely that wan,
+dissipated, bloated face did not belong to him. Perhaps he needed a
+shave. He set about ridding himself of a week’s growth of beard, but
+being shaved only made his face look more like the face of a corpse.
+It was liquor he needed. He wished to hell some one would come along
+and get him some. But no one came. He went back to bed, his eyes fixed
+on the clock, watching its hands approach midnight. Five minutes to
+go.... There was a knock on the door. Eagerly he sat up in the bed and
+shouted, “Come in.”
+
+But he was by no means expecting or prepared to see Emma Lou.
+
+Emma Lou’s room in the Y. W. C. A. at three o’clock that same morning.
+Emma Lou busy packing her clothes. Gwendolyn in negligee, hair
+disarrayed, eyes sleepy, yet angry:
+
+“You mean you’re going over there to live with that man?”
+
+“Why not? I love him.”
+
+Gwendolyn stared hard at Emma Lou. “But don’t you understand he’s just
+tryin’ to find some one to take care of that brat of his? Don’t be
+silly, Emma Lou. He doesn’t really care for you. If he did, he never
+would have deserted you as you once told me he did, or have subjected
+you to all those insults. And ... he isn’t your type of man. Why, he’s
+nothing but a ...”
+
+“Will you mind tending to your own business, Gwendolyn,” her purple
+powdered skin was streaked with tears.
+
+“But what about your appointment?”
+
+“I shall take it.”
+
+“What!” She forgot her weariness. “You mean to say you’re going to
+teach school and live with that man, too? Ain’t you got no regard for
+your reputation? I wouldn’t ruin myself for no yaller nigger. Here
+you’re doing just what folks say a black gal always does. Where is
+your intelligence and pride? I’m through with you, Emma Lou. There’s
+probably something in this stuff about black people being different
+and more low than other colored people. You’re just a common ordinary
+nigger! God, how I despise you!” And she had rushed out of the room,
+leaving Emma Lou dazed by the suddenness and wrath of her tirade.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Emma Lou was busier than she had ever been before in her life. She had
+finally received her appointment and was teaching in one of the public
+schools in Harlem. Doing this in addition to nursing Alva and Alva
+Junior, and keeping house for them in Alva’s same old room. Within six
+months she had managed to make little Alva Junior take on some of the
+physical aspects of a normal child. His little legs were in braces,
+being straightened. Twice a week she took him to the clinic where he
+had violet ray sun baths and oil massages. His little body had begun
+to fill out and simultaneously it seemed as if his head was decreasing
+in size. There was only one feature which remained unchanged; his
+abnormally large eyes still retained their insane stare. They appeared
+frozen and terrified as if their owner was gazing upon some horrible,
+yet fascinating object or occurrence. The doctor said that this would
+disappear in time.
+
+During those six months there had been a steady change in Alva Senior,
+too. At first he had been as loving and kind to Emma Lou as he had
+been during the first days of their relationship. Then, as he got
+better and began living his old life again, he more and more relegated
+her to the position of a hired nurse girl. He was scarcely civil to
+her. He seldom came home except to eat and get some pocket change.
+When he did come home nights, he was usually drunk, so drunk that his
+companions would have to bring him home, and she would have to undress
+him and put him to bed. Since his illness, he could not stand as much
+liquor as before. His stomach refused to retain it, and his legs
+refused to remain steady.
+
+Emma Lou began to loathe him, yet ached for his physical nearness. She
+was lonesome again, cooped up in that solitary room with only Alva
+Junior for company. She had lost track of all her old friends, and,
+despite her new field of endeavor, she had made no intimate contacts.
+Her fellow colored teachers were congenial enough, but they didn’t seem
+any more inclined to accept her socially than did her fellow white
+teachers. There seemed to be some question about her antecedents. She
+didn’t belong to any of the collegiate groups around Harlem. She didn’t
+seem to be identified with any one who mattered. They wondered how she
+had managed to get into the school system.
+
+Of course Emma Lou made little effort to make friends among them. She
+didn’t know how. She was too shy to make an approach and too suspicious
+to thaw out immediately when some one approached her. The first thing
+she noticed was that most of the colored teachers who taught in her
+school were lighter colored than she. The darkest was a pleasing brown.
+And she had noticed them putting their heads together when she first
+came around. She imagined that they were discussing her. And several
+times upon passing groups of them, she imagined that she was being
+pointed out. In most cases what she thought was true, but she was being
+discussed and pointed out, not because of her dark skin, but because of
+the obvious traces of an excess of rouge and powder which she insisted
+upon using.
+
+It had been suggested, in a private council among the Negro members of
+the teaching staff, that some one speak to Emma Lou about this rather
+ludicrous habit of making up. But no one had the nerve. She appeared
+so distant and so ready to take offense at the slightest suggestion
+even of friendship that they were wary of her. But after she began to
+be a standard joke among the pupils and among the white teachers, they
+finally decided to send her an anonymous note, suggesting that she
+use fewer aids to the complexion. Emma Lou, on receiving the note, at
+first thought that it was the work of some practical joker. It never
+occurred to her that the note told the truth and that she looked twice
+as bad with paint and powder as she would without it. She interpreted
+it as being a means of making fun of her because she was darker than
+any one of the other colored girls. She grew more haughty, more acid,
+and more distant than ever. She never spoke to any one except as a
+matter of business. Then she discovered that her pupils had nicknamed
+her ... “Blacker’n me.”
+
+What made her still more miserable was the gossip and comments of the
+woman in the next room. Lying in bed nights or else sitting at her
+table preparing her lesson plans, she could hear her telling every one
+who chanced in----
+
+“You know that fellow in the next room? Well, let me tell you. His
+wife left him, yes-sireee, left him flat on his back in the bed, him
+and the baby, too. Yes, she did. Walked out of here just as big as you
+please to go to work one morning and she ain’t come back yet. Then up
+comes this little black wench. I heard her when she knocked on the door
+that very night his wife left. At first he was mighty s’prised to see
+her, then started laying it on, kissed her and hugged her, a-tellin’
+her how much he loved her, and she crying like a fool all the time. I
+never heard the likes of it in my life. The next morning in she moves
+an’ she’s been here ever since. And you oughter see how she carries
+on over that child, just as loving, like as if she was his own mother.
+An’ now that she’s here an’ workin’ an’ that nigger’s well again, what
+does he do but go out an’ get drunk worse than he uster with his wife.
+Would you believe it? Stays away three and four nights a week, while
+she hustles out of here an’ makes time every morning....”
+
+On hearing this for about the twentieth time, Emma Lou determined to
+herself that she was not going to hear it again. (She had also planned
+to ask for a transfer to a new school, one on the east side in the
+Italian section where she would not have to associate with so many
+other colored teachers.) Alva hadn’t been home for four nights. She
+picked Alva Junior from out his crib and pulled off his nightgown,
+letting him lie naked in her lap. She loved to fondle his warm,
+mellow-colored body, loved to caress his little crooked limbs after
+the braces had been removed. She wondered what would become of him.
+Obviously she couldn’t remain living with Alva, and she certainly
+couldn’t keep Alva Junior forever. Suppose those evil school teachers
+should find out how she was living and report it to the school
+authorities? Was she morally fit to be teaching youth? She remembered
+her last conversation with Gwendolyn.
+
+For the first time now she also saw how Alva had used her during both
+periods of their relationship. She also realized that she had been
+nothing more than a commercial proposition to him at all times. He
+didn’t care for dark women either. He had never taken her among his
+friends, never given any signs to the public that she was his girl.
+And now when he came home with some of his boy friends, he always
+introduced her as Alva Junior’s mammy. That’s what she was, Alva
+Junior’s mammy, and a typical black mammy at that.
+
+Campbell Kitchen had told her that when she found economic
+independence, everything else would come. Well now that she had
+economic independence she found herself more enslaved and more
+miserable than ever. She wondered what he thought of her. She had never
+tried to get in touch with him since she had left the Y. W. C. A., and
+had never let him know of her whereabouts, had just quit communicating
+with him as unceremoniously as she had quit the Y. W. C. A. No doubt
+Gwendolyn had told him the whole sordid tale. She could never face him
+again unless she had made some effort to reclaim herself. Well, that’s
+what she was going to do. Reclaim herself. She didn’t care what became
+of Alva Junior. Let Alva and that yellow slut of a wife of his worry
+about their own piece of tainted suet.
+
+She was leaving. She was going back to the Y. W. C. A., back to St.
+Mark’s A. M. E. Church, back to Gwendolyn, back to Benson. She
+wouldn’t stay here and have that child grow up to call her “black
+mammy.” Just because she was black was no reason why she was going to
+let some yellow nigger use her. At once she was all activity. Putting
+Alva Jr.’s nightgown on, she laid him back into his crib and left him
+there crying while she packed her trunk and suitcase. Then, asking the
+woman in the next room to watch him until she returned, she put on her
+hat and coat and started for the Y. W. C. A., making plans for the
+future as she went.
+
+Halfway there she decided to telephone Benson. It had been seven
+months now since she had seen him, seven months since, without a word
+of warning or without leaving a message, she had disappeared, telling
+only Gwendolyn where she was going. While waiting for the operator to
+establish connections, she recalled the conversation she and Gwendolyn
+had had at the time, recalled Gwendolyn’s horror and disgust on hearing
+what Emma Lou planned doing, recalled ... some one was answering the
+’phone. She asked for Benson, and in a moment heard his familiar:
+
+“Hello.”
+
+“Hello, Benson, this is Emma Lou.” There was complete silence for a
+moment, then:
+
+“Emma Lou?” he dinned into her ear. “Well, where have you been.
+Gwennie and I have been trying to find you.”
+
+This warmed her heart; coming back was not going to be so difficult
+after all.
+
+“You did?”
+
+“Why, yes. We wanted to invite you to our wedding.”
+
+The receiver fell from her hand. For a moment she stood like one
+stunned, unable to move. She could hear Benson on the other end of the
+wire clicking the receiver and shouting “Hello, Hello,” then the final
+clicking of the receiver as he hung up, followed by a deadened ...
+“operator” ... “operator” from central.
+
+Somehow or other she managed to get hold of the receiver and replace it
+in the hook. Then she left the telephone booth and made her way out of
+the drugstore into the street. Seventh Avenue as usual was alive and
+crowded. It was an early spring evening and far too warm for people to
+remain cooped up in stuffy apartments. Seventh Avenue was the gorge
+into which Harlem cliff dwellers crowded to promenade. It was heavy
+laden, full of life and color, vibrant and leisurely. But for the first
+time since her arrival in Harlem, Emma Lou was impervious to all this.
+For the moment she hardly realized where she was. Only the constant
+jostling and the raucous ensemble of street noises served to bring her
+out of her daze.
+
+Gwendolyn and Benson married. “What do you want to waste your time with
+that yaller nigger for? I wouldn’t marry a yaller nigger.”
+
+“Blacker’n me”.... “Why don’t you take a hint and stop plastering your
+face with so much rouge and powder.”
+
+Emma Lou stumbled down Seventh Avenue, not knowing where she was
+going. She noted that she was at 135th Street. It was easy to tell
+this particular corner. It was called the campus. All the college boys
+hung out there when the weather permitted, obstructing the traffic and
+eyeing the passersby professionally. She turned west on 135th Street.
+She wanted quiet. Seventh Avenue was too noisy and too alive and too
+happy. How could the world be happy when she felt like she did? There
+was no place for her in the world. She was too black, black is a
+portent of evil, black is a sign of bad luck.
+
+  “A yaller gal rides in a limousine
+  A brown-skin does the same;
+  A black gal rides in a rickety Ford,
+  But she gets there, yes, my Lord.”
+
+“Alva Jr’s black mammy.” “Low down common nigger.” “Jes’ crazy ’bout
+that little yaller brat.”
+
+She looked up and saw a Western Union office sign shining above a
+lighted doorway. For a moment she stood still, repeating over and
+over to herself Western Union, Western Union, as if to understand
+its meaning. People turned to stare at her as they passed. They even
+stopped and looked up into the air trying to see what was attracting
+her attention, and, seeing nothing, would shrug their shoulders and
+continue on their way. The Western Union sign suggested only one thing
+to Emma Lou and that was home. For the moment she was ready to rush
+into the office and send a wire to her Uncle Joe, asking for a ticket,
+and thus be able to escape the whole damn mess. But she immediately
+saw that going home would mean beginning her life all over again, mean
+flying from one degree of unhappiness into another probably much more
+intense and tragic than the present one. She had once fled to Los
+Angeles to escape Boise, then fled to Harlem to escape Los Angeles,
+but these mere geographical flights had not solved her problems in the
+past, and a further flight back to where her life had begun, although
+facile of accomplishment, was too futile to merit consideration.
+
+Rationalizing thus, she moved away from in front of the Western Union
+office and started toward the park two blocks away. She felt that
+it was necessary that she do something about herself and her life
+and do it immediately. Campbell Kitchen had said that every one
+must find salvation within one’s self, that no one in life need be a
+total misfit, and that there was some niche for every peg, whether
+that peg be round or square. If this were true then surely she could
+find hers even at this late date. But then hadn’t she exhausted
+all possibilities? Hadn’t she explored every province of life and
+everywhere met the same problem? It was easy for Campbell Kitchen or
+for Gwendolyn to say what they would do had they been she, for they
+were looking at her problem in the abstract, while to her it was an
+empirical reality. What could they know of the adjustment proceedings
+necessary to make her life more full and more happy? What could they
+know of her heartaches?
+
+She trudged on, absolutely oblivious to the people she passed or to the
+noise and bustle of the street. For the first time in her life she felt
+that she must definitely come to some conclusion about her life and
+govern herself accordingly. After all she wasn’t the only black girl
+alive. There were thousands on thousands, who, like her, were plain,
+untalented, ordinary, and who, unlike herself, seemed to live in some
+degree of comfort. Was she alone to blame for her unhappiness? Although
+this had been suggested to her by others, she had been too obtuse to
+accept it. She had ever been eager to shift the entire blame on others
+when no doubt she herself was the major criminal.
+
+But having arrived at this--what did it solve or promise for the
+future? After all it was not the abstractions of her case which at the
+present moment most needed elucidation. She could strive for a change
+of mental attitudes later. What she needed to do now was to accept her
+black skin as being real and unchangeable, to realize that certain
+things were, had been, and would be, and with this in mind begin life
+anew, always fighting, not so much for acceptance by other people,
+but for acceptance of herself by herself. In the future she would
+be eminently selfish. If people came into her life--well and good.
+If they didn’t--she would live anyway, seeking to find herself and
+achieving meanwhile economic and mental independence. Then possibly, as
+Campbell Kitchen had said, life would open up for her, for it seemed
+as if its doors yielded more easily to the casual, self-centered
+individual than to the ranting, praying pilgrim. After all it was the
+end that mattered, and one only wasted time and strength seeking facile
+open-sesame means instead of pushing along a more difficult and direct
+path.
+
+By now Emma Lou had reached St. Nicholas Avenue and was about to
+cross over into the park when she heard the chimes of a clock and was
+reminded of the hour. It was growing late--too late for her to wander
+in the park alone where she knew she would be approached either by some
+persistent male or an insulting park policeman. Wearily she started
+towards home, realizing that it was necessary for her to get some rest
+in order to be able to be in her class room on the next morning. She
+mustn’t jeopardize her job, for it was partially through the money
+she was earning from it that she would be able to find her place in
+life. She was tired of running up blind alleys all of which seemed to
+converge and lead her ultimately to the same blank wall. Her motto from
+now on would be “find--not seek.” All things were at one’s finger-tips.
+Life was most kind to those who were judicious in their selections, and
+she, weakling that she now realized she was, had not been a connoisseur.
+
+As she drew nearer home she felt certain that should she attempt to
+spend another night with Alva and his child, she would surely smother
+to death during the night. And even though she felt this, she also
+knew within herself that no matter how much at the present moment she
+pretended to hate Alva that he had only to make the proper advances in
+order to win her to him again. Yet she also knew that she must leave
+him if she was to make her self-proposed adjustment--leave him now even
+if she should be weak enough to return at some not so distant date.
+She was determined to fight against Alva’s influence over her, fight
+even though she lost, for she reasoned that even in losing she would
+win a pyrrhic victory and thus make her life less difficult in the
+future, for having learned to fight future battles would be easy.
+
+She tried to convince herself that it would not be necessary for her to
+have any more Jasper Cranes or Alvas in her life. To assure herself of
+this she intended to look John up on the morrow and if he were willing
+let him re-enter her life. It was clear to her now what a complete
+fool she had been. It was clear to her at last that she had exercised
+the same discrimination against her men and the people she wished for
+friends that they had exercised against her--and with less reason. It
+served her right that Jasper Crane had fooled her as he did. It served
+her right that Alva had used her once for the money she could give
+him and again as a black mammy for his child. That was the price she
+had had to pay for getting what she thought she wanted. But now she
+intended to balance things. Life after all was a give and take affair.
+Why should she give important things and receive nothing in return?
+
+She was in front of the house now and looking up saw that all the
+lights in her room were lit. And as she climbed the stairs she could
+hear a drunken chorus of raucous masculine laughter. Alva had come
+home meanwhile, drunk of course and accompanied by the usual drunken
+crowd. Emma Lou started to turn back, to flee into the street--anywhere
+to escape being precipitated into another sordid situation, but
+remembering that this was to be her last night there, and that the new
+day would find her beginning a new life, she subdued her flight impulse
+and without knocking threw open the door and walked into the room. She
+saw the usual and expected sight: Alva, face a death mask, sitting on
+the bed embracing an effeminate boy whom she knew as Bobbie, and who
+drew hurriedly away from Alva as he saw her. There were four other
+boys in the room, all in varied states of drunkenness--all laughing
+boisterously at some obscene witticism. Emma Lou suppressed a shudder
+and calmly said “Hello Alva”--The room grew silent. They all seemed
+shocked and surprised by her sudden appearance. Alva did not answer
+her greeting but instead turned to Bobbie and asked him for another
+drink. Bobbie fumbled nervously at his hip pocket and finally produced
+a flask which he handed to Alva. Emma Lou stood at the door and watched
+Alva drink the liquor Bobbie had given him. Every one else in the room
+watched her. For the moment she did not know what to say or what to do.
+Obviously she couldn’t continue standing there by the door nor could
+she leave and let them feel that she had been completely put to rout.
+
+Alva handed the flask back to Bobbie, who got up from the bed and said
+something about leaving. The others in the room also got up and began
+staggering around looking for their hats. Emma Lou thought for a moment
+that she was going to win without any further struggle, but she had not
+reckoned with Alva who, meanwhile, had sufficiently emerged from his
+stupor to realize that his friends were about to go.
+
+“What the hell’s the matter with you,” he shouted up at Bobbie, and
+without waiting for an answer reached out for Bobbie’s arm and jerked
+him back down on the bed.
+
+“Now stay there till I tell you to get up.”
+
+The others in the room had now found their hats and started toward the
+door, eager to escape. Emma Lou crossed the room to where Alva was
+sitting and said, “You might make less noise, the baby’s asleep.”
+
+The four boys had by this time opened the door and staggered out into
+the hallway. Bobbie edged nervously away from Alva, who leered up at
+Emma Lou and snarled “If you don’t like it--”
+
+For the moment Emma Lou did not know what to do. Her first impulse was
+to strike him, but she was restrained because underneath the loathsome
+beast that he now was, she saw the Alva who had first attracted her
+to him, the Alva she had always loved. She suddenly felt an immense
+compassion for him and had difficulty in stifling an unwelcome urge to
+take him into her arms. Tears came into her eyes, and for a moment it
+seemed as if all her rationalization would go for naught. Then once
+more she saw Alva, not as he had been, but as he was now, a drunken,
+drooling libertine, struggling to keep the embarrassed Bobbie in a
+vile embrace. Something snapped within her. The tears in her eyes
+receded, her features grew set, and she felt herself hardening inside.
+Then, without saying a word, she resolutely turned away, went into the
+alcove, pulled her suitcases down from the shelf in the clothes-closet,
+and, to the blasphemous accompaniment of Alva berating Bobbie for
+wishing to leave, finished packing her clothes, not stopping even when
+Alva Junior’s cries deafened her, and caused the people in the next
+room to stir uneasily.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s Notes
+
+
+  In the .txt version, surrounding characters have been used to indicate
+    _Italics_.
+  Minor typographical and formatting errors have been silently
+    corrected.
+  p. 245 changed “Geraldine” to “Gwendolyn” in “Gwendolyn in negligee”
+    and “Gwendolyn stared hard”.
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78747 ***