Home To Harlem
Page 16
“And ef all the niggers did as you does,” said Jake, “theah’d be a regular gun-toting army of us up here in the haht of the white man’s city. . . . Guess ef a man stahts gunning after you and means to git you he will someways ——”
“But you might git him fierst, too, boh, ef youse in luck.”
“I mean ef you don’t know he’s gunning after you,” said Jake. “I don’t carry no weapons nonetall, but mah two long hands.”
“Youse a punk customer, then, I tell you,” declared Billy Biasse, “and no real buddy o’ mine. Ise got a A number one little barker I’ll give it to you. You kain’t lay you’self wide open lak thataways in this heah burg. No boh!”
Jake went home alone in a mood different from the lyrical feelings that had fevered his blood among the dandelions. “Niggers fixing to slice one another’s throats. Always fighting. Got to fight if youse a man. It ain’t because Yaller was a p-i. . . . It coulda been me or anybody else. Wese too close and thick in Harlem. Need some moh fresh air between us. . . . Hitting out at a edjucated nigger minding his own business and without a word said. . . . Guess Billy is right toting his silent dawg around with him. He’s gotta, though, when he’s running a gambling joint. All the same, I gambles mahself and you nevah know when niggers am gwineta git crazy-mad. Guess I’ll take the li’l’ dawg offn Billy, all right. It ain’t costing me nothing.” . . .
In the late afternoon he lingered along Seventh Avenue in a new nigger-brown suit. The fine gray English suit was no longer serviceable for parade. The American suit did not fit him so well. Jake saw and felt it. . . . The only thing he liked better about the American suit was the pantaloons made to wear with a belt. And the two hip pockets. If you have the American habit of carrying your face-cloth on the hip instead of sticking it up in your breast pocket like a funny decoration, and if, like Billy Biasse, you’re accustomed to toting some steely thing, what is handier than two hip pockets?
Except for that, Jake had learned to prefer the English cut of clothes. Such first-rate tweed stuff, and so cheap and durable compared with American clothes! Jake knew nothing of tariff laws and naïvely wondered why the English did not spread their fine cloth all over the American clothes market. . . . He worked up his shoulders in his nigger-brown coat. It didn’t feel right, didn’t hang so well. There was something a little too chic in American clothes. Not nearly as awful as French, though, Jake horse-laughed, vividly remembering the popular French styles. Broad-pleated, long-waisted, tight-bottomed pants and close-waisted coats whose breast pockets stick out their little comic signs of color. . . . Better color as a savage wears it, or none at all, instead of the Frenchman’s peeking bit. The French must consider the average bantam male killing handsome, and so they make clothes to emphasize all the angular elevated rounded and pendulated parts of the anatomy. . . .
The broad pavements of Seventh Avenue were colorful with promenaders. Brown babies in white carriages pushed by little black brothers wearing nice sailor suits. All the various and varying pigmentation of the human race were assembled there: dim brown, clear brown, rich brown, chestnut, copper, yellow, near-white, mahogany, and gleaming anthracite. Charming brown matrons, proud yellow matrons, dark nursemaids pulled a zigzag course by their restive little charges. . . .
And the elegant strutters in faultless spats; West Indians, carrying canes and wearing trousers of a different pattern from their coats and vests, drawing sharp comments from their Afro-Yank rivals.
Jake mentally noted: “A dickty gang sure as Harlem is black, but——”
The girls passed by in bright batches of color, according to station and calling. High class, menial class, and the big trading class, flaunting a front of chiffon-soft colors framed in light coats, seizing the fashion of the day to stage a lovely leg show and spilling along the Avenue the perfume of Djer-kiss, Fougère, and Brown Skin.
“These heah New York gals kain most sartainly wear some moh clothes,” thought Jake, “jest as nifty as them French gals.” . . .
Twilight was enveloping the Belt, merging its life into a soft blue-black symphony. . . . The animation subsided into a moment’s pause, a muffled, tremulous soul-stealing note . . . then electric lights flared everywhere, flooding the scene with dazzling gold.
Jake went to Aunt Hattie’s to feed. Billy Biasse was there and a gang of longshoremen who had boozed and fed and were boozing again and, touched by the tender spring night, were swapping love stories and singing:
“Back home in Dixie is a brown gal there,
Back home in Dixie is a brown gal there,
Back home in Dixie is a brown gal there,
Back home in Dixie I was bawn in.
“Back home in Dixie is a gal I know,
Back home in Dixie is a gal I know,
Back home in Dixie is a gal I know,
And I wonder what nigger is saying to her a bootiful good mawnin’.”
A red-brown West Indian among them volunteered to sing a Port-of-Spain song. It immortalized the drowning of a young black sailor. It was made up by the bawdy colored girls of the port, with whom the deceased had been a favorite, and became very popular among the stevedores and sailors of the island.
“Ring the bell again,
Ring the bell again,
Ring the bell again,
But the sharks won’t puke him up.
Oh, ring the bell again.
“Empty is you’ room,
Empty is you’ room,
Empty is you’ room,
But you find one in the sea.
Oh, empty is you’ room.
“Ring the bell again,
Ring the bell again,
Ring the bell again,
But we know who feel the pain.
Oh, ring the bell again.”
The song was curious, like so many Negro songs of its kind, for the strange strengthening of its wistful melody by a happy rhythm that was suitable for dancing.
Aunt Hattie, sitting on a low chair, was swaying to the music and licking her lips, her wrinkled features wearing an expression of ecstatic delight. Billy Biasse offered to stand a bottle of gin. Jake said he would also sing a sailor song he had picked up in Limehouse. And so he sang the chanty of Bullocky Bill who went up to town to see a fair young maiden. But he could not remember most of the words, therefore Bullocky Bill cannot be presented here. But Jake was boisterously applauded for the scraps of it that he rendered.
The singing finished, Jake confided to Billy: “I sure don’t feel lak spending a lonesome night this heah mahvelous night.”
“Ain’t nobody evah lonely in Harlem that don’t wanta be,” retorted Billy. “Even yours truly lone Wolf ain’t nevah lonesome.”
“But I want something as mahvelous as mah feelings.”
Billy laughed and fingered his kinks: “Harlem has got the right stuff, boh, for all feelings.”
“Youse right enough,” Jake agreed, and fell into a reverie of full brown mouth and mischievous brown eyes all composing a perfect whole for his dark-brown delight.
“You wanta take a turn down the Congo?” asked Billy.
“Ah no.”
“Rose ain’t there no moh.”
Rose had stepped up a little higher in her profession and had been engaged to tour the West in a Negro company.
“All the same, I don’t feel like the Congo tonight,” said Jake. “Le’s go to Sheba Palace and jazz around a little.”
Sheba Palace was an immense hall that was entirely monopolized for the amusements of the common workaday Negroes of the Belt. Longshoremen, kitchen-workers, laundresses, and W. C. tenders—all gravitated to the Sheba Palace, while the upper class of semitors—bell-boys, butlers, some railroad workers and waiters, waitresses and maids of all sorts—patronized the Casino and those dancings that were given under the auspices of the churches.
The walls of Sheba Palace were painted with garish gold, and tables and chairs were screaming green. There were green benches also lined round the vast dancing sp
ace. The music stopped with an abrupt clash just as Jake entered. Couples and groups were drinking at tables. Deftly, quickly the waiters slipped a way through the tables to serve and collect the money before the next dance. . . . Little white-filled glasses, little yellow-filled glasses, general guzzling of gin and whisky. Little saucy brown lips, rouged maroon, sucking up iced crème de menthe through straws, and many were sipping the golden Virginia Dare, in those days the favorite wine of the Belt. On the green benches couples lounged, sprawled, and, with the juicy love of spring and the liquid of Bacchus mingled in fascinating white eyes curious in their dark frames, apparently oblivious of everything outside of themselves, were loving in every way but . . .
The orchestra was tuning up. . . . The first notes fell out like a general clapping for merrymaking and chased the dancers running, sliding, shuffling, trotting to the floor. Little girls energetically chewing Spearmint and showing all their teeth dashed out on the floor and started shivering amorously, itching for their partners to come. Some lads were quickly on their feet, grinning gayly and improvising new steps with snapping of fingers while their girls were sucking up the last of their crème de menthe. The floor was large and smooth enough for anything.
They had a new song-and-dance at the Sheba and the black fellows were playing it with éclat.
Brown gal crying on the corner,
Yaller gal done stole her candy,
Buy him spats and feed him cream,
Keep him strutting fine and dandy.
Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you’ ma-ma,
Yaller gal can’t make you fall,
For Ise got some loving pa-pa
Yaller gal ain’t got atall.
“Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you’ ma-ma.” The black players grinned and swayed and let the music go with all their might. The yellow in the music must have stood out in their imagination like a challenge, conveying a sense of that primitive, ancient, eternal, inexplicable antagonism in the color taboo of sex and society. The dark dancers picked up the refrain and jazzed and shouted with delirious joy, “Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you’ ma-ma.” The handful of yellow dancers in the crowd were even more abandoned to the spirit of the song. “White,” “green,” or “red” in place of “yaller” might have likewise touched the same deep-sounding, primitive chord. . . .
Yaller gal sure wants mah pa-pa,
But mah chocolate turns her down,
’Cause he knows there ain’t no loving
Sweeter than his loving brown.
Telli me, pa-pa, Ise you’ ma-ma,
Yaller gal can’t make you fall,
For Ise got some loving pa-pa
Yaller gal ain’t got atall.
Jake was doing his dog with a tall, shapely quadroon girl when, glancing up at the balcony, he spied the little brown that he had entirely given over as lost. She was sitting at a table while “Tell me pa-pa” was tickling everybody to the uncontrollable point—she was sitting with her legs crossed and well exposed, and, with the aid of the mirror attached to her vanity case, was saucily and nonchalantly powdering her nose.
The quadroon girl nearly fell as Jake, without a word of explanation, dropped her in the midst of a long slide and, dashing across the floor, bounded up the stairs.
“Hello, sweetness! What youse doing here?”
The girl started and knocked over a glass of whisky on the floor: “O my Gawd! it’s mah heartbreaking daddy! Where was you all this time?”
Jake drew a chair up beside her, but she jumped up: “Lawdy, no! Le’s get outa here quick, ’cause Ise got somebody with me and now I don’t want see him no moh.”
“’Sawright, I kain take care of mahself,” said Jake.
“Oh, honey, no! I don’t want no trouble and he’s a bad actor, that nigger. See, I done break his glass o’ whisky and tha’s bad luck. Him’s just theah in the lav’try. Come quick. I don’t want him to ketch us.”
And the flustered little brown heart hustled Jake down the stairs and out of the Sheba Palace.
“Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you’ ma-ma . . .”
The black shouting chorus pursued them outside.
“There ain’t no yaller gal gwine get mah honey daddy thisanight.” She took Jake’s arm and cuddled up against his side.
“Aw no, sweetness. I was dogging it with one and jest drops her flat when I seen you.”
“And there ain’t no nigger in the wul’ I wouldn’t ditch foh you, daddy. O Lawdy! How Ise been crazy longing to meet you again.”
FELICE
XX
“WHAR’S we gwine?” Jake asked.
They had walked down Madison Avenue, turned on One Hundred and Thirtieth Street, passing the solid gray-grim mass of the whites’ Presbyterian church, and were under the timidly whispering trees of the decorously silent and distinguished Block Beautiful. . . . The whites had not evacuated that block yet. The black invasion was threatening it from One Hundred and Thirty-first Street, from Fifth Avenue, even from behind in One Hundred and Twenty-ninth Street. But desperate, frightened, blanch-faced, the ancient sepulchral Respectability held on. And giving them moral courage, the Presbyterian church frowned on the corner like a fortress against the invasion. The Block Beautiful was worth a struggle. With its charming green lawns and quaint white-fronted houses, it preserved the most Arcadian atmosphere in all New York. When there was a flat to let in that block, you would have to rubber-neck terribly before you saw in the corner of a window-pane a neat little sign worded, Vacancy. But groups of loud-laughing-and-acting black swains and their sweethearts had started in using the block for their afternoon promenade. That was the limit: the desecrating of that atmosphere by black love in the very shadow of the gray, gaunt Protestant church! The Ancient Respectability was getting ready to flee. . . .
The beautiful block was fast asleep. Up in the branches the little elfin green things were barely whispering. The Protestant church was softened to a shadow. The atmosphere was perfect, the moment sweet for something sacred.
The burning little brownskin cuddled up against Jake’s warm tall person: “Kiss me, daddy,” she said. He folded her closely to him and caressed her. . . .
“But whar was you all this tur’bly long time?” demanded Jake.
Light-heartedly, she frisky like a kitten, they sauntered along Seventh Avenue, far from the rough environment of Sheba Palace.
“Why, daddy, I waited foh you all that day after you went away and all that night! Oh, I had a heart-break on foh you, I was so tur’bly disappointed. I nev’ been so crazy yet about no man. Why didn’t you come back, honey?”
Jake felt foolish, remembering why. He said that shortly after leaving her he had discovered the money and the note. He had met some of his buddies of his company who had plenty of money, and they all went celebrating until that night, and by then he had forgotten the street.
“Mah poor daddy!”
“Even you’ name, sweetness, I didn’t know. Ise Jake Brown—Jake for ev’body. What is you’, sweetness?”
“They calls me Felice.”
“Felice. . . . But I didn’t fohget the cabaret nonatall. And I was back theah hunting foh you that very night and many moh after, but I nevah finds you. Where was you?”
“Why, honey, I don’t lives in cabarets all mah nights ’cause Ise got to work. Further-more, I done went away that next week to Palm Beach ——”
“Palm Beach! What foh?”
“Work of course. What you think? You done brokes mah heart in one mahvelous night and neveh returns foh moh. And I was jest right down sick and tiahd of Harlem. So I went away to work. I always work. . . . I know what youse thinking, honey, but I ain’t in the reg’lar business. ’Cause Ise a funny gal. I kain’t go with a fellah ef I don’t like him some. And ef he kain make me like him enough I won’t take nothing off him and ef he kain make me fall the real way, I guess I’d work like a wop for him.”
“Youse the baby I been waiting foh all along,” said Jake. “I knowed you was the goods.”
“Wher
e is we gwine, daddy?”
“Ise got a swell room, sweetness, up in ’Fortiet’ Street whar all them dickty shines live.”
“But kain you take me there?”
“Sure thing, baby. Ain’t no nigger renting a room in Harlem whar he kain’t have his li’l’ company.”
“Oh, goody, goody, honey-stick!”
Jake took Felice home to his room. She was delighted with it. It was neat and orderly.
“Your landlady must be one of them proper persons,” she remarked. “How did you find such a nice place way up here?”
“A chappie named Ray got it foh me when I was sick ——”
“O Lawdy! was it serious? Did they all take good care a you?”
“It wasn’t nothing much and the fellahs was all awful good spohts, especially Ray.”
“Who is this heah Ray?”
Jake told her. She smoothed out the counterpane on the bed, making a mental note that it was just right for two. She admired the geraniums in the window that looked on the large court.
“These heah new homes fah niggers am sure nice,” she commented.
She looked behind the curtain where his clothes were hanging and remarked his old English suit. Then she regarded archly his new nigger-brown rig-out.
“You was moh illegant in that other, but I likes you in this all the same.”
Jake laughed. “Everything’s gotta wear out some day.”
Felice hung round his neck, twiddling her pretty legs.