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 inpregnate 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 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 expenenced 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 deter- mined 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 bim 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 bov 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 your”
“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,’ Alvar?” 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. Good-bye”—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.