The Blacker the Berry (8 page)

“What can I do for you?”

The voice with the smile wins. Emma Lou was encouraged.

“I would like stenographic work.”

“Experienced?”

“Yes.” It was so much easier to say than “no.”

“Good.”

Emma Lou held tightly to her under-arm bag.

“We have something that would just about suit you. Just a minute, and I’ll let you see Mrs. Blake.”

The chair squeaked and was eased of its burden. Emma Lou thought she heard a telephone ringing somewhere in the distance, or perhaps it was the clang of the street car that had just passed, heading for Seventh Avenue. The people in the room began talking again.

“Dat last job.” “Boy, she was dressed right down to the bricks.”

“And I told him …” “Yeah, we went to see ‘Flesh and the Devil’.” “Some parteee.” “I just been here a week.”

Emma Lou’s mind became jumbled with incoherent wisps of thought. Her left foot beat a nervous tattoo upon a sagging floor board. The door opened. The gray-haired lady with the smile in her voice beckoned, and Emma Lou walked into the private office of Mrs. Blake.

Four people in the room. The only window facing a brick wall on the outside. Two telephones, both busy. A good-looking young man, fingering papers in a filing cabinet, while he talked over one of the telephones. The lady from the outer office. Another lady, short and brown, like butterscotch, talking over a desk telephone and motioning for Emma Lou to sit down. Blur of high-powered electric lights, brighter than daylight. The butterscotch lady hanging up the receiver.

“I’m through with you young man.” Crisp tones. Metal, warm in spite of itself.

“Well, I ain’t through with you.” The fourth person was speaking. Emma Lou had hardly noticed him before. Sullen face. Dull black eyes in watery sockets. The nose flat, the lips thick and pouting. One hand clutching a derby, the other clenched, bearing down on the corner of the desk.

“I have no intention of arguing with you. I’ve said my say. Go on outside. When a cook’s job comes in, you can have it. That’s all I can do.”

“No, it ain’t all you can do.”

“Well, I’m not going to give you your fee back.”

The lady from the outside office returns to her post. The good-looking young man is at the telephone again.

“Why not, I’m entitled to it?”

“No, you’re not. I send you on a job, the man asks you to do something, you walk out, Mister Big I—am. Then, show up here two days later and want your fee back. No siree.”

“I didn’t walk out.”

“The man says you did.”

“Aw, sure, he’d say anything. I told him I came there to be a cook, not a waiter. I—”

“It was your place to do as he said, then, if not satisfied, to come here and tell me so.”

“I am here.”

“All right now. I’m tired of this. Take either of two courses—go on outside and wait until a job comes in or else go down to the license bureau and tell them your story. They’ll investigate. If I’m right—”

“You know you ain’t right.”

“Not according to you, no, but by law, yes. That’s all.”

Telephone ringing. Warm metal whipping words into it. The good-looking young man yawning. He looks like a Y.M.C.A. secretary. The butterscotch woman speaking to Emma Lou:

“You’re a stenographer?”

“Yes.”

“I have a job in a real estate office, nice firm, nice people. Fill out this card. Here’s a pen.”

“Mrs. Blake, you know you ain’t doin’ right.”

Why didn’t this man either shut up or get out?

“I told you what to do. Now please do one or the other. You’ve taken up enough of my time. The license bureau—”

“You know I ain’t goin’ down there. I’d rather you keep the fee, if you think it will do you any good.”

“I only keep what belongs to me. I’ve found out that’s the best policy.”

Why should they want three people for reference? Where had she worked before? Lies. Los Angeles was far away.

“Then, if a job comes in you’ll give it to me?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“Awright.” And finally he went out.

Mrs. Blake grinned across the desk at Emma Lou. “Your folks won’t do, honey.”

“Do you have many like that?”

The card was made out. Mrs. Blake had it in her hand. Telephones ringing, both at once. Loud talking in the outer office. Lies. Los Angeles was far away. I can bluff. Mrs. Blake had finished reading over the card.

“Just came to New York, eh?”

“Yes.”

“Like it better than Los Angeles?”

The good-looking young man turned around and stared at her coldly. Now he did resemble a Y.M.C.A. secretary. The lady from the outer office came in again. There was a triple crisscross conversation carried on. It ended. The short bob-haired butterscotch boss gave Emma Lou instructions and information about her prospective position. She was half heard. Sixteen dollars a week. Is that all:? Work from nine to five. Address on card. Corner of 139th Street, left side of the avenue. Dismissal. Smiles and good luck. Pay the lady outside five dollars. Awkward, flustered moments. Then the entrance door and 135th Street once more. Emma Lou was on her way to get a job.

She walked briskly to the corner, crossed the street, and turned north on Seventh Avenue. Her hopes were high, her mind a medley of pleasing mental images. She visualized herself trim and pert in her blue tailored suit being secretary to some well-groomed Negro business man. There had not been many such in the West, and she was eager to know and admire one. There would be other girls in the office, too, girls who, like herself, were college trained and reared in cultural homes, and through these fellow workers she would meet still other girls and men, get in with the right sort of people.

She continued daydreaming as she went her way, being practical only at such fleeting moments when she would wonder—would she be able to take dictation at the required rate of speed? would her fingers be nimble enough on the keyboard of the typewriter?—Oh, bother. It wouldn’t take her over one day to adapt herself to her new job.

A street crossing. Traffic delayed her and she was conscious of a man, a blurred tan image, speaking to her. He was ignored. Everything was to be ignored save the address digits on the buildings. Everything was secondary to the business at hand. Let traffic pass, let men aching for flirtations speak, let Seventh Avenue be spangled with forenoon sunshine and shadow, and polka-dotted with still or moving human forms. She was going to have a job. The rest of the world could go to hell.

Emma Lou turned into a four-story brick building and sped up one flight of stairs. The rooms were not numbered and directing signs in the hallway only served to confuse. But Emma Lou was not to be delayed. She rushed back and forth from door to door on the first floor, then to the second, until she finally found the office she was looking for.

Angus and Brown were an old Harlem firm. They had begun business during the first decade of the century, handling property for a while in New York’s far-famed San Juan Hill district. When the Negro population had begun to need more and better homes, Angus and Brown had led the way in buying real estate in what was to be Negro Harlem. They had been fighters, unscrupulous and canny. They had revealed a perverse delight in seeing white people rush pell-mell from the neighborhood in which they obtained homes for their colored clients. They had bought three six-story tenement buildings on 140th Street, and, when the white tenants had been slow in moving, had personally dispossessed them, and, in addition, had helped their incoming Negro tenants fight fistic battles in the streets and hallways, and legal battles in the court.

Now they were a substantial firm, grown fat and satisfied. Junior real estate men got their business for them. They held the whip. Their activities were many and varied. Politics and fraternal activities occupied more of their hectic days. Now they sat back and took it easy.

Emma Lou opened the door to their office, consisting of one medium-sized outer room overlooking Seventh Avenue. There were two girls in the outer office. One was busy at a typewriter; the other was gazing over her desk through a window into the aristocratic tree-lined city lane of 139th Street. Both looked up expectantly. Emma Lou noticed the powdered smoothness of their fair skins and the marcelled waviness of their shingled brown hair. Were they sisters? Hardly, for their features were in no way similar. Yet that skin color and that brown hair—

“Can I do something for you?” The idle one spoke, and the other ceased her peck-peck-pecking on the typewriter keys. Emma Lou was buoyant.

“I’m from Mrs. Blake’s employment agency.”

“Oh,” from both. And they exchanged glances. Emma Lou thought she saw a quickly suppressed smile from the fairer of the two as she hastily resumed her typing. Then—

“Sit down a moment, won’t you, please? Mr. Angus is out, but I’ll inform Mr. Brown that you are here.” She picked a powder puff from an open side drawer in her desk, patted her nose and cheeks, then got up and crossed the office to enter cubby hole number one. Emma Lou observed that she, too, looked “pert” in a trim, blue suit and high-heeled patent leather oxfords—

“Mr. Brown?” She had opened the door.

“Come in Grace. What is it?” The door was closed.

Emma Lou felt nervous. Something in the pit of her stomach seemed to flutter. Her pulse raced. Her eyes gleamed and a smile of anticipation spread over her face, despite her efforts to appear dignified and suave. The typist continued her work. From the cubby hole came a murmur of voices, one feminine and affected, the other masculine and coarse. Through the open window came direct sounds and vagrant echoes of traffic noises from Seventh Avenue. Now the two in the cubby hole were laughing, and the girl at the typewriter seemed to be smiling to herself as she worked.

What did this mean? Nothing, silly. Don’t be so sensitive. Emma Lou’s eyes sought the pictures on the wall. There was an early-twentieth-century photographic bust-portrait, encased in a beveled glass frame, of a heavy-set good-looking, brown-skinned man. She admired his mustache. Men didn’t seem to take pride in such hirsute embellishments now. Mustaches these days were abbreviated and limp. They no longer were virile enough to dominate and make a man’s face appear more strong. Rather, they were only significant patches weakly keeping the nostrils from merging with the upper lip.

Emma Lou wondered if that was Mr. Brown. He had a brown face and wore a brown suit. No, maybe that was Mr. Angus, and perhaps that was Mr. Brown on the other side of the room, in the square, enlarged Kodak print, a slender yellow man, standing beside a motor car, looking as if he wished to say, “Yeah, this is me and this is my car.” She hoped he was Mr. Angus. She didn’t like his name and since she was to see Mr. Brown first, she hoped he was the more flatteringly portrayed.

The door to the cubby hole opened and the girl Mr. Brown had called Grace, came out. The expression on her face was too business-like to be natural. It seemed as if it had been placed there for a purpose.

She walked toward Emma Lou, who got up and stood like a child, waiting for punishment and hoping all the while that it will dissipate itself in threats. The typewriter was stilled and Emma Lou could feel an extra pair of eyes looking at her. The girl drew close, then spoke:

“I’m sorry, Miss. Mr. Brown says he has some one else in view for the job. We’ll call the agency. Thank you for coming in.”

Thank her for coming in? What could she say? What should she say? The girl was smiling at her, but Emma Lou noticed that her fair skin was flushed and that her eyes danced nervously. Could she be hoping that Emma Lou would hurry and depart? The door was near. It opened easily. The steps were steep. One went down slowly. Seventh Avenue was still spangled with forenoon sunshine and shadow. Its pavement was hard and hot. The windows in the buildings facing it, gleaming reflectors of the mounting sun.

Emma Lou returned to the employment agency. It was still crowded and more stuffy than ever. The sun had advanced high into the sky and it seemed to be centering its rays on that solitary defenseless window. There was still much conversation. There were still people crowded around the desk, still people in all the chairs, people and talk and heat and smells.

“Mrs. Blake is waiting for you,” the gray-haired lady with the young face was unflustered and cool. Emma Lou went into the inner office. Mrs. Blake looked up quickly and forced a smile. The good-looking young man, more than ever resembling a Y.M.C.A. secretary, turned his back and fumbled with the card files. Mrs. Blake suggested that he leave the room. He did, beaming benevolently at Emma Lou as he went.

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Blake was very kind and womanly. “Mr. Brown called me. I didn’t know he had some one else in mind. He hadn’t told me.”

“That’s all right,” replied Emma Lou briskly. “Have you something else?”

“Not now. Er—er. Have you had luncheon? It’s early yet, I know, but I generally go about this time. Come along, won’t you, I’d like to talk to you. I’ll be ready in about thirty minutes if you don’t mind the wait.”

Emma Lou warmed to the idea. At that moment, she would have warmed toward any suggestion of friendliness. Here, perhaps, was a chance to make a welcome contact. She was lonesome and disappointed, so she readily assented and felt elated and superior as she walked out of the office with the “boss.”

They went to Eddie’s for luncheon. Eddie’s was an elbow-shaped combination lunch-counter and dining room that embraced a United Cigar Store on the northeast corner of 135th Street and Seventh Avenue. Following Mrs. Blake’s lead, Emma Lou ordered a full noontime dinner, and, flattered by Mrs. Blake’s interest and congeniality, began to talk about herself. She told of her birthplace and her home life. She told of her high school days, spoke proudly of the fact that she had been the only Negro student and how she had graduated cum laude. Asked about her college years, she talked less freely. Mrs. Blake sensed a cue.

“Didn’t you like college?”

“For a little while, yes.”

“What made you dislike it? Surely not the studies?”