The Blacker the Berry/Part 5

by Wallace Henry Thurman

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 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. Marks 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 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. Geraldine 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.”

Geraldine 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 Junior’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 fear Benson on the other end of the wire clicking he 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 Westem 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.