“What about Gin-head Susy tonight?”
“Sure, let’s go and look the crazy old broad over.”
“I’ll go anywheres foh swilling of good booze.”
“She’s sho one ugly spade, but she’s right there with her Gordon Dry.”
“She ain’t got ’em from creeps to crown and her trotters is B flat, but her gin is regal.”
But now, after all the years of gin sociables and unsatisfactory lemons, Susy was changing just a little. She was changing under the influence of her newly-acquired friend, Lavinia Curdy, the only woman whom she tolerated at her parties. That was not so difficult, as Miss Curdy was less attractive than Susy. Miss Curdy was a putty-skinned mulattress with purple streaks on her face. Two of her upper front teeth had been knocked out and her lower lip slanted pathetically leftward. She was skinny and when she laughed she resembled an old braying jenny.
When Susy came to know Miss Curdy, she unloaded a quantity of the stuff of her breast upon her. Her drab childhood in a South Carolina town. Her early marriage. No girlhood. Her husband leaving her. And all the yellow men that had beaten her, stolen from her, and pawned her things.
Miss Curdy had been very emphatic to Susy about “yaller men.” “I know them from long experience. They never want to work. They’re a lazy and shiftless lot. Want to be kept like women. I found that out a long, long time ago. And that’s why when I wanted a man foh keeps I took me a black plug-ugly one, mah dear.”
It wouldn’t have supported the plausibility of Miss Curdy’s advice if she had mentioned that more than one black plug-ugly had ruthlessly cut loose from her. As the black woman had had her entanglements in yellow, so had the mulattress hers of black. But, perhaps, Miss Curdy did not realize that she could not help desiring black. In her salad days as a business girl her purse was controlled by many a black man. Now, however, her old problems did not arise in exactly the same way,—her purse was old and worn and flat and attracted no attention.
“A black man is as good to me as a yaller when I finds a real one.” Susy lied a little to Miss Curdy from a feeling that she ought to show some pride in her own complexion.
“But all these sociables—and you spend so much coin on gin,” Miss Curdy had said.
“Well, that’s the trute, but we all of us drinks it. And I loves to have company in mah house, plenty of company.”
But when Susy came home from work one evening and found that her latest “yaller” sweetie had stolen her suitcase and best dresses and pawned even her gas range, she resolved never to keep another of his kind as a “steady.” At least she made that resolve to Miss Curdy. But the sociables went on and the same types came to drink the Saturday evenings away, leaving the two women at the finish to their empty bottles and glasses. Once Susy did make a show of a black lover. He was the house man at the boarding-house where she cooked. But the arrangement did not hold any time, for Susy demanded of the chocolate extremely more than she ever got from her yellows.
“Well, boh, we’s Brooklyn bound tonight,” said Zeddy to Jake.
“You got to show me that Brooklyn’s got any life to it,” replied Jake.
“Theah’s life anywheres theah’s booze and jazz, and theah’s cases o’ gin and a gramophone whar we’s going.”
“Has we got to pay foh it, buddy?”
“No, boh, eve’ything is f. o. c. ef the lady likes you.”
“Blimey!” A cockney phrase stole Jake’s tongue. “Don’t bull me.”
“I ain’t. Honest-to-Gawd Gordon Dry, and moh—ef you’re the goods, all f. o. c.”
“Well, I’ll be browned!” exclaimed Jake.
Zeddy also took along Strawberry Lips, a new pal, burnt-cork black, who was thus nicknamed from the peculiar stage-red color of his mouth. Strawberry Lips was typically the stage Negro. He was proof that a generalization has some foundation in truth. . . . You might live your life in many black belts and arrive at the conclusion that there is no such thing as a typical Negro—no minstrel coon off the stage, no Thomas Nelson Page’s nigger, no Octavus Roy Cohen’s porter, no lineal descendant of Uncle Tom. Then one day your theory may be upset through meeting with a type by far more perfect than any created counterpart.
“Myrtle Avenue used to be a be-be itching of a place,” said Strawberry Lips, “when Doc Giles had his gambling house on there and Elijah Bowers was running his cabaret. H’m. But Bowers was some big guy. He knew swell white folks in politics, and had a grand automobile and a high-yaller wife that hadn’t no need of painting to pass. His cabaret was running neck and neck with Marshall’s in Fifty-third Street. Then one night he killed a man in his cabaret, and that finished him. The lawyers got him off. But they cleaned him out dry. Done broke him, that case did. And today he’s plumb down and out.”
Jake, Zeddy, and Strawberry Lips had left the subway train at Borough Hall and were walking down Myrtle Avenue.
“Bowers’ cabaret was some place for the teasing-brown pick-me-up then, brother—and the snow. The stuff was cheap then. You sniff, boh?” Strawberry Lips asked Jake and Zeddy.
“I wouldn’t know befoh I sees it,” Jake laughed.
“I ain’t no habitual prisoner,” said Zeddy, “but I does any little thing for a change. Keep going and active with anything, says I.”
The phonograph was discharging its brassy jazz notes when they entered the apartment. Susy was jerking herself from one side to the other with a potato-skinned boy. Miss Curdy was half-hopping up and down with the only chocolate that was there. Five lads, ranging from brown to yellow in complexion, sat drinking with jaded sneering expressions on their faces. The one that had invited Zeddy was among them. He waved to him to come over with his friends.
“Sit down and try some gin,” he said. . . .
Zeddy dipped his hand in his pocket and sent two bones rolling on the table.
“Ise with you, chappie,” his yellow friend said. The others crowded around. The gramophone stopped and Susy, hugging a bottle, came jerking on her French heels over to the group. She filled the glasses and everybody guzzled gin.
Miss Curdy looked the newcomers over, paying particular attention to Jake. A sure-enough eye-filling chocolate, she thought. I would like to make a steady thing of him.
Over by the door two light-brown lads began arguing about an actress of the leading theater of the Black Belt.
“I tell you I knows Gertie Kendall. I know her more’n I know you.”
“Know her mah granny. You knows her just like I do, from the balcony of the Lafayette. Don’t hand me none o’ that fairy stuff, for I ain’t gwine to swallow it.”
“Youse an aching pain. I knows her, I tell you. I even danced with her at Madame Mulberry’s apartment. You thinks I only hangs out with low-down trash becassin Ise in a place like this, eh? I done met mos’n all our big niggers: Jack Johnson, James Reese Europe, Adah Walker, Buddy, who used to play that theah drum for them Castle Walkers, and Madame Walker.”
“Yaller, it ’pears to me that youse jest a nacherally-born story-teller. You really spec’s me to believe youse been associating with the mucty-mucks of the race? Gwan with you. You’ll be telling me next you done speaks with Charlie Chaplin and John D. Rockefeller ——”
Miss Curdy had tuned her ears to the conversation and broke in: “Why, what is that to make so much fuss about? Sure he can dance with Gertie Kendall and know the dickty niggers. In my sporting days I knew Bert Williams and Walker and Adah Overton and Editor Tukslack and all that upstage race gang that wouldn’t touch Jack Johnson with a ten-foot pole. I lived in Washington and had Congressmen for my friends—foop! Why you can get in with the top-crust crowd at any swell ball in Harlem. All you need is clothes and the coin. I know them all, yet I don’t feel a bit haughty mixing here with Susy and you all.”
“I guess you don’t now,” somebody said.
Gin went round . . . and round . . . and round. . . . Desultory dancing. . . . Dice. . . . Blackjack. . . . Poker. . . . The room became a close, live, intens
e place. Tight-faced, the men seemed interested only in drinking and gaming, while Susy and Miss Curdy, guzzling hard, grew uglier. A jungle atmosphere pervaded the room, and, like shameless wild animals hungry for raw meat, the females savagely searched the eyes of the males. Susy’s eyes always came back to settle upon the lad that had invited Zeddy. He was her real object. And Miss Curdy was ginned up with high hopes of Jake.
Jake threw up the dice and Miss Curdy seized her chance to get him alone for a little while.
“The cards do get so tiresome,” she said. “I wonder how you men can go on and on all night long poking around with poker.”
“Better than worser things,” retorted Jake. Disgusted by the purple streaks, he averted his eyes from the face of the mulattress.
“I don’t know about that,” Miss Curdy bridled. “There’s many nice ways of spending a sociable evening between ladies and gentlemen.”
“Got to show me,” said Jake, simply because the popular phrase intrigued his tongue.
“And that I can.”
Irritated, Jake turned to move away.
“Where you going? Scared of a lady?”
Jake recoiled from the challenge, and shuffled away from the hideous mulattress. From experience in seaport towns in America, in France, in England, he had concluded that a woman could always go farther than a man in coarseness, depravity, and sheer cupidity. Men were ugly and brutal. But beside women they were merely vicious children. Ignorant about the aim and meaning and fulfillment of life; uncertain and indeterminate; weak. Rude children who loved excelling in spectacular acts to win the applause of women.
But women were so realistic and straight-going. They were the real controlling force of life. Jake remembered the bal-musette fights between colored and white soldiers in France. Blacks, browns, yellows, whites. . . . He remembered the interracial sex skirmishes in England. Men fought, hurt, wounded, killed each other. Women, like blazing torches, egged them on or denounced them. Victims of sex, the men seemed foolish, apelike blunderers in their pools of blood. Didn’t know what they were fighting for, except it was to gratify some vague feeling about women. . . .
Jake’s thoughts went roaming after his little lost brown of the Baltimore. The difference! She, in one night, had revealed a fine different world to him. Mystery again. A little stray girl. Finer than the finest!
Some of the fellows were going. In a vexed spirit, Susy had turned away from her unresponsive mulatto toward Zeddy. Relieved, the mulatto yawned, threw his hands backwards and said: “I guess mah broad is home from Broadway by now. Got to final on home to her. Harlem, lemme see you.”
Miss Curdy was sitting against the mantelpiece, charming Strawberry Lips. Marvellous lips. Salmon-pink and planky. She had hoisted herself upon his knees, her arm around his thick neck.
Jake went over to the mantelpiece to pour a large chaser of beer and Miss Curdy leered at him. She disgusted him. His life was a free coarse thing, but he detested nastiness and ugliness. Guess I’ll haul bottom to Harlem, he thought. Congo Rose was a rearing wild animal, all right, but these women, these boys. . . . Skunks, tame skunks, all of them!
He was just going out when a chocolate lad pointed at a light-brown and said: “The pot calls foh four bits, chappie. Come across or stay out.”
“Lemme a quarter!”
“Ain’t got it. Staying out?”
Biff! Square on the mouth. The chocolate leaped up like a tiger-cat at his assailant, carrying over card table, little pile of money, and half-filled gin glasses with a crash. Like an enraged ram goat, he held and butted the light-brown boy twice, straight on the forehead. The victim crumpled with a thud to the floor. Susy jerked over to the felled boy and hauled him, his body leaving a liquid trail, to the door. She flung him out in the corridor and slammed the door.
“Sarves him right, pulling off that crap in mah place. And you, Mis’er Jack Johnson,” she said to the chocolate youth, “lemme miss you quick.”
“He done hits me first,” the chocolate said.
“I knows it, but I ain’t gwina stand foh no rough-house in mah place. Ise got a dawg heah wif me all ready foh bawking.”
“K-hhhhh, K-hhhhh,” laughed Strawberry Lips. “Oh, boh, I know it’s the trute, but ——”
The chocolate lad slunk out of the flat.
“Lavinia,” said Susy to Miss Curdy, “put on that theah ‘Tickling Blues’ on the victroly.”
The phonograph began its scraping and Miss Curdy started jig-jagging with Strawberry Lips. Jake gloomed with disgust against the door.
“Getting outa this, buddy?” he asked Zeddy.
“Nobody’s chasing us, boh.” Zeddy commenced stepping with Susy to the “Tickling Blues.”
Outside, Jake found the light-brown boy still half-stunned against the wall.
“Ain’t you gwine at home?” Jake asked him.
“I can’t find a nickel foh car fare,” said the boy.
Jake took him into a saloon and bought him a lemon squash. “Drink that to clear you’ haid,” he said. “And heah’s car fare.” He gave the boy a dollar. “Whar you living at?”
“San Juan Hill.”
“Come on, le’s git the subway, then.”
The Myrtle Avenue Elevated train passed with a high raucous rumble over their heads.
“Myrtle Avenue,” murmured Jake. “Pretty name, all right, but it stinks like a sewer. Legs and feets! Come take me outa it back home to Harlem.”
ZEDDY’S RISE AND FALL
VII
ZEDDY was scarce in Harlem. And Strawberry Lips was also scarce. It was fully a week after the Myrtle Avenue gin-fest before Jake saw Zeddy again. They met on the pavement in front of Uncle Doc’s saloon.
“Why, where in the sweet name of niggers in Harlem, buddy, you been keeping you’self?”
“Whar you think?”
“Think? I been very much thinking that Nije Gridley done git you.”
“How come you git thataway, boh? Nije Gridley him ain’t got a chawnst on the carve or the draw ag’inst Zeddy Plummer so long as Ise got me a black moon.”
“Well, what’s it done git you, then?”
“Myrtle Avenue.”
“Come outa that; you ain’t talking. . . .”
“The trute as I knows it, buddy.”
“Crazy dog bite mah laig!” cried Jake. “You ain’t telling me that you done gone. . . .”
“Transfer mah suitcase and all mah pohsitions to Susy.”
“Gin-head Susy!”
“Egsactly; that crechur is mah ma-ma now. I done express mahself ovah theah on that very mahv’lously hang-ovah afternoon of that ginnity mawnin’ that you left me theah. And Ise been right theah evah since.”
“Well, Ise got to wish you good luck, buddy, although youse been keeping it so dark.”
“It’s the darkness of new loving, boh. But the honeymoon is good and well ovah, and I’ll be li’l moh in Harlem as usual, looking the chippies and chappies ovah. I ain’t none at all stuck on Brooklyn.”
“It’s a swah hole all right,” said Jake.
“But theah’s sweet stuff in it.” Zeddy tongue-wiped his fleshy lips with a salacious laugh.
“It’s all right, believe me, boh,” he informed Jake. “Susy ain’t nothing to look at like you’ fair-brown queen, but she’s tur’bly sweet loving. You know when a ma-ma ain’t the goods in looks and figure, she’s got to make up foh it some. And that Susy does. And she treats me right. Gimme all I wants to drink and brings home the goodest poke chops and fried chicken foh me to put away under mah shirt. . . . Youse got to come and feed with us all one o’ these heah evenings.”
It was a party of five when Jake went again to Myrtle Avenue for the magnificent freelove feast that Susy had prepared. It was Susy’s free Sunday. Miss Curdy and Strawberry Lips were also celebrating. Susy had concocted a pitcherful of knock-out gin cocktails. And such food! Susy could cook. Perhaps it was her splendid style that made her sink all her wages in gin and sweetmen. For she belon
ged to the ancient aristocracy of black cooks, and knew that she was always sure of a good place, so long as the palates of rich Southerners retained their discriminating taste.
Cream tomato soup. Ragout of chicken giblets. Southern fried chicken. Candied sweet potatoes. Stewed corn. Rum-flavored fruit salad waiting in the ice-box. . . . The stars rolling in Susy’s shining face showed how pleased she was with her art.
She may be fat and ugly as a turkey, thought Jake, but her eats am sure beautiful.
“Heah! Pass me you’ plate,” Susy gave Jake a leg. Zeddy held out his plate again and got a wing. Strawberry Lips received a bit of breast. . . .
“No more chicken for me, Susy,” Miss Curdy mumbled, “but I will have another helping of that there stewed corn. I don’t know what ingredients yo-all puts in it, but, Lawdy! I never tasted anything near so good.”
Susy beamed and dipped up three spoonfuls of corn. “Plenty, thank you,” Miss Curdy stopped her from filling up her saucer. . . . Susy drank off a tumbler of cocktail at a draught, and wiped her lips with the white serviette that was stuck into the low neck of her vermillion crepe-de-chine blouse. . . .
When Jake was ready to leave, Zeddy announced that he would take a little jaunt with him to Harlem.
“You ain’ta gwine to do no sich thing as that,” Susy said.
“Yes I is,” responded Zeddy. “Wha’ there is to stop me?”
“I is,” said Susy.
“And what foh?”
“ ’Causen I don’t wanchu to go to Harlem. What makes you niggers love Harlem so much? Because it’s a bloody ungodly place where niggers nevah go to bed. All night running around speakeasies and cabarets, where bad, hell-bent nigger womens am giving up themselves to open sin.”
Susy stood broad and aggressive against the window overlooking Myrtle Avenue.
“Harlem is all right,” said Zeddy. “I ain’t knocking round no cabarets and speakeasies. Ahm just gwine ovah wif Jake to see somathem boys.”
“Can that boy business!” cried Susy. “I’ve had anuff hell scrapping wif the women ovah mah mens. I ain’t agwine to have no Harlem boys seducin’ mah man away fwom me. The boy business is a fine excuse indeedy foh sich womens as ain’t wise. I always heah the boss say to the missus, ‘I gwine out foh a little time wif the boys, dearie.’ when him wants an excuse foh a night off. I ain’t born yestiday, honey. If you wants the boys foh a li’l’ game o’ poky, you bring ’em ovah heah. I ain’t got the teeeniest bit of objection, and Ise got plenty o’ good Gordon Dry foh eve’body.”
Home To Harlem Page 5
