The Blacker the Berry (11 page)

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.

“Ali, 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 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 answer only 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 Barbados, 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 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 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 Green 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 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…