The Blacker the Berry (7 page)

She had only written home twice. This, of course, seemed quite all right to her. She was not concerned about any one there except her Uncle Joe, and she reasoned that since he was preparing to marry again, he would be far too busy to think much about her. All that worried her was the pitiful spectacle of her mother, her uncle, and her cousin trying to make up lies to tell inquiring friends. Well, she would write today, that is, if she did not start to work, and she must get up at eight o’clock—was the alarm set?—and hire herself to an employment agency. She had only thirty-five dollars left in the bank, and, unless it was replenished, she might have to rescind her avowals to John in order to get her room rent paid.

She must go to sleep for another hour, for she wished to look “pert” when she applied for a job, especially the kind of job she wanted, and she must get the kind of job she wanted in order to show those people in Boise and Los Angeles that she had been perfectly justified in leaving school, home, and all, to come to New York. They all wondered why she had come. So did she, now that she was here. But at the moment of leaving she would have gone any place to escape having to remain in that hateful Southern California college, or having to face the more dreaded alternative of returning home. Home? It had never been a home.

It did seem strange, this being Harlem when only a few weeks before she had been over three thousand miles away. Time and distance—strange things, immutable, yet conquerable. But was time conquerable? Hadn’t she read or heard somewhere that all things were subject to time, even God? Yet, once she was there and now she was here. But even at that she hadn’t conquered time. What was that line in Cullen’s verse, “I run, but Time’s abreast with me”? She had only traversed space and defied distance. This suggested a more banal, if a less arduous thought tangent. She had defied more than distance, she had defied parental restraint—still there hadn’t been much of that friendly concern—there had been still less of that, and malicious, meddlesome gossip, of which there had been plenty. And she still found herself unable to understand why two sets of people in two entirely different communities should seemingly become almost hysterically excited because she, a woman of twenty-one, with three years’ college training and ample sophistication in the ways of sex and self-support, had decided to take a job as an actress’ maid in order to get to New York. They had never seemed interested in her before.

Now she wondered why had she been so painfully anxious to come to New York. She had given as a consoling reason to inquisitive friends and relatives, school. But she knew too well that she had no intentions of ever re-entering school. She had had enough of that school in Los Angeles, and her experiences there, more than anything else, had caused this foolhardy hegira to Harlem. She had been desperately driven to escape, and had she not escaped in this manner she might have done something else much more mad.

Emma Lou closed her eyes once more, and tried to sublimate her mental reverie into a sleep-inducing lullaby. Most of all, she wanted to sleep. One had to look “pert” when one sought a job, and she wondered if eight o’clock would find her looking any more “pert” than she did at this present moment. What had caused her to urge John to spend what she knew would be his last night with her when she was determined to be at her best the following morning! 0, what the hell was the use? She was going to sleep.

The alarm had not yet rung, but Emma Lou was awakened gradually by the sizzling and smell of fried and warmed-over breakfast, by the raucous early morning wranglings and window to window greetings, and by the almost constant squeak of those impudent hall floor boards as the various people in her apartment raced one another to the kitchen or to the bathroom or to the front door. How could Harlem be so happily busy, so alive and merry at eight o’clock. Eight o’clock? The alarm rang. Emma Lou scuttled out of the bed and put on her clothes.

An hour later, looking as “pert” as possible, she entered the first employment agency she came to on 135th Street, between Lenox and Seventh Avenues. It was her first visit to such an establishment and she was particularly eager to experience this phase of a working girl’s life. Her first four weeks in Harlem had convinced her that jobs were easy to find, for she had noticed that there were three or four employment agencies to every block in business Harlem. Assuring herself in this way that she would experience little difficulty in obtaining a permanent and tasty position, Emma Lou had abruptly informed Mazelle Lindsay that she was leaving her employ.

“But, child,” her employer had objected, “I feel responsible for you. Your—your mother! Don’t be preposterous. How can you remain in New York alone?”

Emma Lou had smiled, asked for her money once more, closed her ears to all protest, bid the chagrined woman goodbye, and joyously loafed for a week.

Now, with only thirty-five dollars left in the bank, she thought that she had best find a job—find a job and then finish seeing New York. Of course she had seen much already. She had seen John—and he—oh, damn John, she wanted a job.

“What can I do for you?” the harassed woman at the desk was trying to be polite.

“I—I want a job.” R—r—ring. The telephone insistently petitioned for attention, giving Emma Lou a moment of respite, while the machine-like woman wearily shouted monosyllabic answers into the instrument, and, at the same time, tried to hush the many loud-mouthed men and women in the room, all, it seemed, trying to out-talk one another. While waiting, Emma Lou surveyed her fellow job-seekers. Seedy lot, was her verdict. Perhaps I should have gone to a more high-toned place. Well, this will do for the moment.

“What kinda job d’ye want?”

“I prefer,” Emma Lou had rehearsed these lines for a week, “a stenographic position in some colored business or professional office.”

“’Ny experience?”

“No, but I took two courses in business college, during school vacations. I have a certificate of competency.”

“’Ny reference?”

“No New York ones.”

“Where’d ya work before?”

“I—I just came to the city.”

“Where’d ya come … ?” R—r—ring. That telephone mercifully reiterated its insistent blare, and, for a moment, kept that pesky woman from droning out more insulting queries.

“Now,” she had finished again, “where’d ya come from?”

“Los Angeles.”

“Ummm. What other kind of work would ya take?”

“Anything congenial.”

“Waal, what is that, dishwashing, day work, nurse girl?”

Didn’t this damn woman know what congenial meant? And why should a Jewish woman be in charge of a Negro employment agency in Harlem?

“Waal, girlie, others waiting.”

“I’ll consider anything you may have on hand, if stenographic work is not available.”

“Wanta work part-time?”

“I’d rather not.”

“Awright. Sit down. I’ll call you in a moment.”

“What can I do for you, young man?” Emma Lou was dismissed.

She looked for a place to sit down, and, finding none, walked across the narrow room to the window, hoping to get a breath of fresh air, and at the same time an advantageous position from which to watch the drama of some one else playing the role of a job-seeker.

“R—r—ring.”

“Whadda want? Wait a minute. Oh, Sadie.”

A heavy-set, dark-brown-skinned woman, with full, flopping breasts, and extra-wide buttocks, squirmed off a too narrow chair, and bashfully wobbled up to the desk.

“Wanta’ go to a place on West End Avenue? Part-time cleaning, fifty cents an hour, nine rooms, yeah? All right? Hello, gotta girl on the way. ’Bye. Two and a half, Sadie. Here’s the address. Run along now, don’t idle.”

R—r—ring. “’Lo, yes. What? Come down to the office. I can’t sell jobs over the wire.”

Emma Lou began to see the humor in this sordid situation, began to see something extremely comic in all these plaintive, pitiful-appearing colored folk, some greasy, some neat, some fat, some slim, some brown, some black (why was there only one mulatto in this crowd?), boys and men, girls and women, all single-filing up to the desk, laconically answering laconic questions, impertinently put, showing thanks or sorrow or indifference, as their cases warranted, paying off promptly, or else seeking credit, the while the Jewish overseer of the dirty, dingy office asserted and re-asserted her superiority.

Some one on the outside pushed hard on the warped door. Protestingly it came open, and the small stuffy room was filled with the odor and presence of a stout, black lady dressed in a greasy gingham housedress, still damp in the front from splashing dishwater. On her head was a tight turban, too round for the rather long outlines of her head. Beneath this turban could be seen short and wiry stands of recently straightened hair. And her face! Emma Lou sought to observe it more closely, sought to fathom how so much grease could gather on one woman’s face. But her head reeled. The room was vile with noise and heat and body-smells, and this woman—

“Hy, Rosie, yer late. Got a job for ya.”

The greasy-faced black woman grinned broadly, licked her pork chop lips, and, with a flourish, sat down in an empty chair beside the desk. Emma Lou stumbled over three pairs of number ten shoes, pulled open the door, and fled into the street.

She walked hurriedly for about twenty-five yards, then slowed down and tried to collect her wits. Telephone bells echoed in her ears. Sour smells infested her nostrils. She looked up and discovered that she had paused in front of two garbage cans, waiting on the curbstone for the scavenger’s truck.

Irritated, she turned around and re-traced her steps. There were few people on the street. The early morning work crowds had already been swallowed by the subway kiosks on Lenox Avenue, and it was too early for the afternoon idlers. Yet there was much activity, much passing to and fro. One Hundred and Thirty-Fifth Street, Emma Lou mumbled to herself as she strolled along. How she had longed to see it, and what a different thoroughfare she had imagined it to be! Her eyes sought the opposite side of the street and blinked at a line of monotonously regular fire escape-decorated tenement buildings. She thanked whoever might be responsible for the architectural difference of the Y.M.C.A., for the streaming bit of Seventh Avenue near by, and for the arresting corner of the newly constructed teachers’ college building, which dominated the hill three blocks away, and cast its shadows on the verdure of the terraced park beneath.

But she was looking for a job. Sour smells assailed her nostrils once more. Rasping voices. Pleading voices. Tired voices. Domineering voices. And the insistent ring of the telephone bell all re-echoed in her head and beat against her eardrums. She must have staggered, for a passing youth eyed her curiously, and shouted to no one in particular, “oh, no, now.” Some one else laughed. They thought she was drunk. Tears blurred her eyes. She wanted to run, but resolutely she kept her steady, slow pace, lifted her head a little higher, and, seeing another employment agency, faltered for a moment, then went in.

This agency, like the first, occupied the ground-floor front of a tenement house, three-quarters of the way between Lenox and Seventh Avenue. It was cagey and crowded, and there was a great conversational hubbub as Emma Lou entered. In the rear of the room was a door marked “private,” to the left of this door was a desk, littered with papers and index cards, before which was a swivel chair. The rest of the room was lined with a miscellaneous assortment of chairs, three rows of them, tied together and trying to be precise despite their varying sizes and shapes. A single window looked out upon the street and the Y.M.C.A. building opposite.

All of the chairs were occupied and three people stood lined up by the desk. Emma Lou fell in at the end of this line. There was nothing else to do. In fact, it was all she could do after entering. Not another person could have been squeezed into that room from the outside. This office, too, was noisy and hot and pregnant with clashing body smells. The buzzing electric fan, in a corner over the desk, with all its whirring, could not stir up a breeze.

The rear door opened. A slender, light-brown-skinned boy, his high cheekbones decorated with blackheads, his slender form accentuated by a tight-fitting jazz suit of the high-waistline, one-button coat, bell-bottom trouser variety, emerged smiling broadly, cap in one hand, a slip of pink paper in the other. He elbowed his way to the outside door and was gone.

“Musta got a job,” somebody commented. “It’s about time,” came from some one else, “he said, he’d been sittin’ here a week.”

The rear door opened again and a lady with a youthful brown face and iron-gray hair sauntered in and sat down in the swivel chair before the desk. Immediately all talk in the outer office ceased. An air of anticipation seemed to pervade the room. All eyes were turned toward her.

For a moment she fingered a pack of red index cards, then, as if remembering something, turned around in her chair and called out:

“Mrs. Blake says for all elevator men to stick around.”

There was a shuffling of feet and a settling back into chairs. Noticing this, Emma Lou counted six elevator men and wondered if she was right. Again the brown aristocrat with the tired voice spoke up:

“Day workers come back at one-thirty. Won’t be nothing doin’ ’til then.”

Four women, all carrying newspaper packages, got out of their chairs, and edged their way toward the door, murmuring to one another as they went, “I ain’t fixin’ to come back.”

“Ali, she keeps you hyar.”

They were gone.

Two of the people standing in line sat down, the third approached the desk, Emma Lou close behind.

“I wantsa—”

“What kind of job do you want?”

Couldn’t people ever finish what they had to say?

“Porter or dishwashing, lady.”

“Are you registered with us?”

“No’m.”

“Have a seat. I’ll call you in a moment.”

The boy looked frightened, but he found a seat and slid into it gratefully. Emma Lou approached the desk. The woman’s cold eyes appraised her. She must have been pleased with what she saw for her eyes softened and her smile reappeared. Emma Lou smiled, too. Maybe she was “pert” after all. The tailored blue suit—