“Ise got to go scares them up to bring them heah,” said Zeddy.
“But not tonight or no night,” declared Susy. “You kain do that in the daytime, foh you ain’t got nothing to do.”
Zeddy moved toward the mantelpiece to get his cap, but Susy blocked his way and held the cap behind her.
Zeddy looked savagely in her eyes and growled: “Come outa that, sistah, and gimme mah cap. It ain’t no use stahting trouble.”
Susy looked steadily in his eyes and chucked the cap at him. “Theah’s you cap, but ef you stahts leaving me nights you . . .”
“What will you do?” asked Zeddy.
“I’ll put you’ block in the street.”
Zeddy’s countenance fell flat from its high aggressiveness.
“Well s’long, eve’body,” said Jake.
Zeddy put on his cap and rocked out of the apartment after him. In the street he asked Jake, “Think I ought to take a crack at Harlem with you tonight, boh?”
“Not ef you loves you’ new home, buddy,” Jake replied.
“Bull! That plug-ugly black woman is ornery like hell. I ain’t gwineta let her bridle and ride me. . . . You ain’t in no pickle like that with Rose, is you?”
“Lawd, no! I do as I wanta. But I’m one independent cuss, buddy. We ain’t sitchuate the same. I works.”
“Black womens when theyse ugly am all sistahs of Satan,” declared Zeddy.
“It ain’t the black ones only,” said Jake.
“I wish I could hit things off like you, boh,” said Zeddy. . . . “Well, I’ll see you all some night at Billy Biasse’s joint. . . . S’long. Don’t pick up no bad change.”
From that evening Zeddy began to discover that it wasn’t all fine and lovely to live sweet. Formerly he had always been envious when any of his pals pointed out an extravagantly-dressed dark dandy and remarked, “He was living sweet.” There was something so romantic about the sweet life. To be the adored of a Negro lady of means, or of a pseudo grass-widow whose husband worked on the railroad, or of a hard-working laundress or cook. It was much more respectable and enviable to be sweet—to belong to the exotic aristocracy of sweetmen than to be just a common tout.
But there were strings to Susy’s largesse. The enjoyment of Harlem’s low night life was prohibited to Zeddy. Susy was jealous of him in the proprietary sense. She believed in free love all right, but not for the man she possessed and supported. She warned him against the ornery hussies of her race.
“Nigger hussies nevah wanta git next to a man ’cep’n’ when he’s a-looking good to another woman,” Susy declared. “I done gived you fair warning to jest keep away from the buffet-flat widdahs and thim Harlem street floaters; foh ef I ketch you making a fool woman of me, I’ll throw you’ pants in the street.”
“Hi, but youse talking sistah. Why don’t you wait till you see something before you staht in chewing the rag?”
“I done give you the straight stuff in time so you kain watch you’self when I kain’t watch you. I ain’t bohding and lodging no black man foh’m to be any other nigger woman’s daddy.”
So, in a few pointed phrases, Susy let Zeddy understand precisely what she would stand for. Zeddy was well kept like a prince of his type. He could not complain about food . . . and bed. Susy was splendid in her matriarchal way, rolling her eyes with love or disapproval at him, according to the exigencies of the moment.
The Saturday-night gin parties went on as usual. The brown and high-brown boys came and swilled. Miss Curdy was a constant visitor, frequently toting Strawberry Lips along. About her general way of handling things Susy brooked no criticism from Zeddy. She had bargained with him in the interest of necessity and of rivalry and she paid and paid fully, but grimly. She was proud to have a man to boss about in an intimate, casual way.
“Git out another bottle of gin, Zeddy. . . .”
“Bring along that packet o’ saltines. . . .”
“Put on that theah ‘Tickling Blues’ that we’s all just crazy about.”
To have an aggressive type like Zeddy at her beck and call considerably increased Susy’s prestige and clucking pride. She noticed, with carefully-concealed delight, that the interest of the yellow gin-swillers was piqued. She became flirtatious and coy by turns. And she was rewarded by fresh attentions. Even Miss Curdy was now meeting with new adventures, and she was prompted to expatiate upon men and love to Susy.
“Men’s got a whole lot of women in their nature, I tell you. Just as women never really see a man until he’s looking good to another woman and the hussies want to steal him, it’s the same thing with men, mah dear. So soon as a woman is all sugar and candy for another man, you find a lot of them heartbreakers all trying to get next to her. Like a set of strutting game cocks all priming themselves to crow over a li’l’ piece o’ nothing.”
“That’s the gospel trute indeed,” agreed Susy. “I done have a mess of knowledge ’bout men tucked away heah.” Susy tapped her head of tight-rolled kinks knotted with scraps of ribbon of different colors. “I pays foh what I know and I’ve nevah been sorry, either. Yes, mam, I done larned about mah own self fust. Had no allusions about mahself. I knowed that I was black and ugly and noclass and unejucated. And I knowed that I was bohn foh love. . . . Mah mammy did useter warn me about love. All what the white folks call white slavery theseadays. I dunno ef theah’s another name foh the niggeran’-white side ovit down home in Dixie. Well, I soon found out it wasn’t womens alone in the business, sposing thimselves like vigitables foh sale in the market. No, mam! I done soon l’arned that the mens was most buyable thimselves. Mah heart-breaking high-yaller done left me sence—how miny wintahs I been counting this heah Nothan snow? All thim and some moh—dawggone ef I remimber. But evah since I been paying sistah, paying good and hard foh mah loving feelings.”
“Life ain’t no country picnic with sweet flute and fiddle,” Miss Curdy sighed.
“Indeed not,” Susy was emphatic. “It ain’t got nothing to do with the rubbish we l’arn at Sunday school and the sweet snooziness I used to lap up in thim blue-cover story books. My God! the things I’ve seen! Working with white folks, so dickty and high-and-mighty, you think theyse nevah oncet naked and thim feets nevah touch ground. Yet all the silks and furs and shining diamonds can’t hide the misery a them lives. . . . Servants and heartbreakers from outside stealing the husband’s stuff. And all the men them that can’t find no sweet-loving life at home. Lavinia, I done seen life.”
“Me, too, I have seen the real life, mixing as I used to in real society,” said Miss Curdy.
“I know society, too, honey, even though I only knows it watching from the servant window. And I know it ain’t no different from us. It’s the same life even ef they drink champagne and we drink gin.”
“You said it and said it right,” responded Miss Curdy.
Zeddy discovered that in his own circles in Harlem he had become something of a joke. It was known that he was living sweet. But his buddies talked about his lady riding him with a cruel bit.
“He was kept, all right,” they said, “kept under ‘Gin-head’ Susy’s skirt.”
He had had to fight a fellow in Dixie Red’s pool-room, for calling him a “skirt-man.”
He was even teased by Billy Biasse or Billy, the Wolf, as he was nicknamed. Billy boasted frankly that he had no time for women. Black women, or the whole diversified world of the sex were all the same to him.
“So Harlem, after the sun done set, has no fun at all foh you, eh, boh?” Billy asked Zeddy.
Zeddy growled something indistinct.
“Sweet with the bit in you’ mouf. Black woman riding her nigger. Great life, boh, ef you don’t weaken.”
“Bull! Wha’s the matter with you niggers, anyhow?” Zeddy said in a sort of general way. “Ain’t it better than being a wolf?”
“Ise a wolf, all right, but I ain’t a lone one,” Billy grinned. “I guess Ise the happiest, well-feddest wolf in Harlem. Oh, boy!”
Zeddy spent t
hat evening in Harlem drinking with Jake and two more longshoremen at Uncle Doc’s saloon. Late in the night they went to the Congo. Zeddy returned to Myrtle Avenue, an hour before it was time for Susy to rise, fully ginned up.
To Susy’s “Whar you been?” he answered, “Shut up or I’ll choke you,” staggered, swayed, and swept from the dresser a vase of chrysanthemums that broke on the floor.
“Goddam fool flowers,” he growled. “Why in hell didn’t you put them out of the way, hey, you Suze?”
“Oh, keep quiet and come along to bed,” said Susy.
A week later he repeated the performance, coming home with alarming symptoms of gin hiccough. Susy said nothing. After that Zeddy began to prance, as much as a short, heavy-made human could, with the bit out of his mouth. . . .
One Saturday night Susy’s gin party was a sad failure. Nobody came beside Miss Curdy with Strawberry Lips. (Zeddy had left for Harlem in the afternoon.) They drank to themselves and played coon-can. Near midnight, when Miss Curdy was going, she said offhandedly, “I wouldn’t mind sampling one of those Harlem cabarets now.” Susy at once seized upon the idea.
“Sure. Let’s go to Harlem for a change.”
They caught the subway train for Harlem. Arrived there they gravitated to the Congo.
Before Susy left Myrtle Avenue, Zeddy was already at the Congo with a sweet, timid, satin-faced brown just from down home, that he had found at Aunt Hattie’s and induced to go with him to the cabaret. Jake sat at Zeddy’s table. Zeddy was determined to go the limit of independence, to show the boys that he was a cocky sweetman and no skirt-man. Plenty of money. He was treating. He wore an elegant nigger-brown sports suit and patent-leather shoes with cream-light spats such as all the sweet swells love to strut in. If Zeddy had only been taller, trimmer, and well-arched he would have been one of Harlem’s dandiest sports.
His new-found brown had a glass of Virginia Dare before her; he was drinking gin. Jake, Scotch-and-soda; and Rose, who sat with them when she was not entertaining, had ordered White Rock. The night before, or rather the early morning after her job was done, she had gone on a champagne party and now she was sobering up.
Billy Biasse was there at a neighboring table with a longshoreman and a straw-colored boy who was a striking advertisement of the Ambrozine Palace of Beauty. The boy was made up with high-brown powder, his eyebrows were elongated and blackened up, his lips streaked with the dark rouge so popular in Harlem, and his carefully-straightened hair lay plastered and glossy under Madame Walker’s absinthe-colored salve “for milady of fashion and color.”
“Who’s the doll baby at the Wolf’s table?” Zeddy asked.
“Tha’s mah dancing pardner,” Rose answered.
“Another entertainer? The Congo is gwine along fast enough.”
“You bet you,” said Jake. “And the ofays will soon be nosing it out. Then we’ll have to take a back seat.”
“Who’s the Wolf?” Timidly Zeddy’s girl asked.
Zeddy pointed out Billy.
“But why Wolf?”
“Khhhhhhh — Khhhhhhhh . . .” Zeddy laughed. “ ’Causen he eats his own kind.”
It was time for Rose to dance. Her partner had preceded her to the open space and was standing, arm akimbo against the piano, talking to the pianist. The pianist was a slight-built, long-headed fellow. His face shone like anthracite, his eyes were arresting, intense, deep-yellow slits. He seemed in a continual state of swaying excitement, whether or not he was playing.
They were ready, Rose and the dancer-boy. The pianist began, his eyes toward the ceiling in a sort of savage ecstatic dream. Fiddler, saxophonist, drummer, and cymbalist seemed to catch their inspiration from him. . . .
When Luty dances, everything
Is dancing in the cabaret.
The second fiddle asks the first:
What makes you sound that funny way?
The drum talks in so sweet a voice,
The cymbal answers in surprise,
The lights put on a brighter glow
To match the shine of Luty’s eyes.
For he’s a foot-manipulating fool
When he hears that crazy moan
Come rolling, rolling outa that saxophone. . . .
Watch that strut; there’s no keeping him cool
When he’s a-rearing with that saxophone. . . .
Oh, the tearing, tantalizing tone!
Of that moaning saxophone. . . .
That saxophone. . . .
That saxophone. . . .
They danced, Rose and the boy. Oh, they danced! An exercise of rhythmical exactness for two. There was no motion she made that he did not imitate. They reared and pranced together, smacking palm against palm, working knee between knee, grinning with real joy. They shimmied, breast to breast, bent themselves far back and shimmied again. Lifting high her short skirt and showing her green bloomers, Rose kicked. And in his tight nigger-brown suit, the boy kicked even with her. They were right there together, neither going beyond the other. . . .
And the pianist! At intervals his yellow eyes, almost bloodshot, swept the cabaret with a triumphant glow, gave the dancers a caressing look, and returned to the ceiling. Lean, smart fingers beating barbaric beauty out of a white frame. Brown bodies, caught up in the wild rhythm, wiggling and swaying in their seats.
For he’s a foot-manipulating fool
When he hears that crazy moan
Come rolling, rolling outa that saxophone. . . .
That saxophone. . . .
That saxophone. . . .
Rose was sipping her White Rock. Her partner, at Billy’s table, sucked his iced cremede-menthe through a straw. The high wave of joyful excitement had subsided and the customers sat casually drinking and gossiping as if they had not been soaring a minute before in a realm of pure joy.
From his place, giving a good view of the staircase, Zeddy saw two apparently familiar long legs swinging down the steps. Sure enough, he knew those big, thick-soled red boots.
“Them feets look jest laka Strawberry Lips’ own,” he said to Jake. Jake looked and saw first Strawberry Lips enter the cabaret, with Susy behind balancing upon her French heels, and Miss Curdy. Susy was gorgeous in a fur coat of rich shiny black, like her complexion. Opened, it showed a cérise blouse and a yellow-and-mauve check skirt. Her head of thoroughly-straightened hair flaunted a green hat with a decoration of red ostrich plumes.
“Great balls of fire! Here’s you doom, buddy,” said Jake.
“Doom, mah granny,” retorted Zeddy. “Ef that theah black ole cow come fooling near me tonight, I’ll show her who’s wearing the pants.”
Susy did not see Zeddy until her party was seated. It was Miss Curdy who saw him first. She dug into Susy’s side with her elbow and cried:
“For the love of Gawd, looka there!”
Susy’s star eyes followed Miss Curdy’s. She glared at Zeddy and fixed her eyes on the girl with him for a moment. Then she looked away and grunted: “He thinks he’s acting smart, eh? Him and I will wrastle that out to a salution, but I ain’t agwine to raise no stink in heah.”
“He’s got some more nerve pulling off that low-down stuff, and on your money, too,” said Miss Curdy.
“Who that?” asked Strawberry Lips.
“Ain’t you seen your best friends over there?” retorted Miss Curdy.
Strawberry Lips waved at Zeddy and Jake, but they were deliberately keeping their eyes away from Susy’s table. He got up to go to them.
“Where you going?” Miss Curdy asked.
“To chin wif ——”
A yell startled the cabaret. A girl had slapped another’s face and replied to her victim’s cry of pain with, “If you no like it you can lump it!”
“You low an’ dutty bobbin-bitch!”
“Bitch is bobbin in you’ sistah’s coffin.”
They were West Indian girls.
“I’ll mek mah breddah beat you’ bottom foh you.”
“Gash it and stop you’ jawing.”
They were interrupted by another West Indian girl, who wore a pink-flowered muslin frock and a wide jippi-jappa hat from which charmingly hung two long ends of broad pea-green ribbon.
“It’s a shame. Can’t you act like decent English people?” she said. Gently she began pushing away the assaulted girl, who burst into tears.
“She come boxing me up ovah a dutty-black ’Merican coon.”
“Mek a quick move or I’ll box you bumbole ovah de moon,” her assailant cried after her. . . .
“The monkey-chasers am scrapping,” Zeddy commented.
“In a language all their own,” said Jake.
“They are wild womens, buddy, and it’s a wild language they’re using, too,” remarked a young West Indian behind Jake.
“Hmm! but theyse got the excitement fever,” a lemon-colored girl at a near table made her contribution and rocked and twisted herself coquettishly at Jake. . . .
Susy had already reached the pavement with Miss Curdy and Strawberry Lips. Susy breathed heavily.
“Lesh git furthest away from this low-down vice hole,” she said. “Leave that plug-ugly nigger theah. I ain’t got no more use foh him nohow.”
“I never did have any time for Harlem,” said Miss Curdy. “When I was high up in society all respectable colored people lived in Washington. There was no Harlem full a niggers then. I declare ——”
“I should think the nigger heaven of a theater downtown is better than anything in this heah Harlem,” said Susy. “When we feels like going out, it’s better we enjoy ourse’f in the li’l’ corner the white folks ’low us, and then shuffle along back home. It’s good and quiet ovah in Brooklyn.”
“And we can have all the inside fun we need,” said Miss Curdy.
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