Home To Harlem

by McKay, Claude; Cooper, Wayne F. ;

  “Superb!” agreed Madame Mulberry, appreciating Jake through her lorgnette.

  Felice caught Maunie Whitewing’s carnal stare at her man and said to the mulatto girl: “Jest look at that high-class hussy!”

  And the dapper escort tried to be obviously unconcerned.

  At the bar the three pals had finished one round and the bar-man was in the act of pouring another when a loud scream tore through music and conversation. Jake knew that voice and dashed down the stairs. What he saw held him rooted at the foot of the stairs for a moment. Zeddy had Felice’s wrists in a hard grip and she was trying to wrench herself away.

  “Leggo a me, I say,” she bawled.

  “I ain’t gwineta do no sich thing. Youse mah woman.”

  “You lie! I ain’t and you ain’t mah man, black nigger.”

  “We’ll see ef I ain’t. Youse gwine home wif me right now.”

  Jake strode up to Zeddy. “Turn that girl loose.”

  “Whose gwineta make me?” growled Zeddy.

  “I is. She’s mah woman. I knowed her long before you. For Gawd’s sake quit you’ fooling and don’t let’s bust up the man’s cabaret.”

  All the fashionable folk had already fled.

  “She’s my woman and I’ll carve any damnfool nigger for her.” Lightning-quick Zeddy released the girl and moved upon Jake like a terrible bear with open razor.

  “Don’t let him kill him, foh Gawd’s sake don’t,” a woman shrieked, and there was a general stampede for the exit.

  But Zeddy had stopped like a cowed brute in his tracks, for leveled straight at his heart was the gift that Billy gave.

  “Drop that razor and git you’ hands up,” Jake commanded, “and don’t make a fool move or youse a dead nigger.”

  Zeddy obeyed. Jake searched him and found nothing. “I gotta good mind fixing you tonight, so you won’t evah pull a razor on another man.”

  Zeddy looked Jake steadily in the face and said: “You kain kill me, nigger, ef you wanta. You come gunning at me, but you didn’t go gunning after the Germans. Nosah! You was scared and runned away from the army.”

  Jake looked bewildered, sick. He was hurt now to his heart and he was dumb. The waiters and a few rough customers that the gun did not frighten away looked strangely at him.

  “Yes, mah boy,” continued Zeddy, “that’s what life is everytime. When youse good to a buddy, he steals you woman and pulls a gun on you. Tha’s what I get for prohceeding a slacker. A-llll right, boh, I was a good sucker, but—I ain’t got no reason to worry sence youse down in the white folks’ books.” And he ambled away.

  Jake shuffled off by himself. Billy Biasse tried to say a decent word, but he waved him away.

  These miserable cock-fights, beastly, tigerish, bloody. They had always sickened, saddened, unmanned him. The wild, shrieking mad woman that is sex seemed jeering at him. Why should love create terror? Love should be joy lifting man out of the humdrum ways of life. He had always managed to delight in love and yet steer clear of the hate and violence that govern it in his world. His love nature was generous and warm without any vestige of the diabolical or sadistic.

  Yet here he was caught in the thing that he despised so thoroughly. . . . Brest, London, and his America. Their vivid brutality tortured his imagination. Oh, he was infinitely disgusted with himself to think that he had just been moved by the same savage emotions as those vile, vicious, villainous white men who, like hyenas and rattlers, had fought, murdered, and clawed the entrails out of black men over the common, commercial flesh of women. . . .

  He reached home and sat brooding in the shadow upon the stoop.

  “Zeddy. My own friend in some ways. Naturally lied about me and the army, though. Playing martyr. How in hell did he get hooked up with her? Thought he was up in Yonkers. Would never guess one in a hundred it was he. What a crazy world! He must have passed us drinking at the bar. Wish I’d seen him. Would have had him drinking with us. And maybe we would have avoided that stinking row. Maybe and maybe not. Can’t tell about Zeddy. He was always a bad-acting razor-flashing nigger.”

  A little hand timidly took his arm.

  “Honey, you ain’t mad at you sweetness, is you?”

  “No. . . . I’m jest sick and tiah’d a everything.”

  “I nevah know you knowed one anether, honey. Oh, I was so scared. . . . But how could I know?”

  “No, you couldn’t. I ain’t blaming nothing on you. I nevah would guess it was him mah-self. I ain’t blaming nobody at all.”

  Felice cuddled closer to Jake and fondled his face. “It was a good thing you had you’ gun, though, honey, or—— O Lawd! what mighta happened!”

  “Oh, I woulda been a dead nigger this time or a helpless one,” Jake laughed and hugged her closer to him. “It was Billy gived me that gun and I didn’t even wanta take it.”

  “Didn’t you? Billy is a good friend, eh?”

  “You bet he is. Nevah gets mixed up with—in scraps like that.”

  “Honest, honey, I nevah liked Zeddy, but ——”

  “Oh, you don’t have to explain me nothing. I know it’s jest connexidence. It coulda been anybody else. That don’t worry mah skin.”

  “I really didn’t like him, though, honey. Lemme tell you. I was kinder sorry for him. It was jest when I got back from Palm Beach I seen him one night at a buffet flat. And he was that nice to me. He paid drinks for the whole houseful a people and all because a me. I couldn’t act mean, so I had to be nice mahself. And the next day he ups and buys me two pair a shoes and silk stockings and a box a chocolate candy. So I jest stayed on and gived him a li’l’ loving, honey, but I nevah did tuk him to mah haht.”

  “It’s awright, sweetness. What do I care so long as wese got one another again?”

  She drew down his head and sought his mouth. . . .

  “But what is we gwineta do, daddy? Sence they say that youse a slacker or deserter, I don’t which is which ——”

  “He done lied about that, though,” Jake said, angrily. “I didn’t run away because I was scared a them Germans. But I beat it away from Brest because they wouldn’t give us a chance at them, but kept us in that rainy, sloppy, Gawd-forsaken burg working like wops. They didn’t seem to want us niggers foh no soldiers. We was jest a bunch a despised hod-carriers, and Zeddy know that.”

  Now it was Felice’s turn. “You ain’t telling me a thing, daddy. I’ll be slack with you and desert with you. What right have niggers got to shoot down a whole lot a Germans for? Is they worse than Americans or any other nation a white people? You done do the right thing, honey, and Ise with you and I love you the more for that. . . . But all the same, we can’t stay in Harlem no longer, for the bulls will sure get you.”

  “I been thinking a gitting away from the stinking mess and go on off to sea again.”

  “Ah no, daddy,” Felice tightened her hold on his arm. “And what’ll become a me? I kain’t go ’board a ship with you and I needs you.”

  Jake said nothing.

  “What you wanta go knocking around them foreign countries again for like swallow come and swallow go from year to year and nevah settling down no place? This heah is you’ country, daddy. What you gwine away from it for?”

  “And what kain I do?”

  “Do? Jest le’s beat it away from Harlem, daddy. This heah country is good and big enough for us to git lost in. You know Chicago?”

  “Haven’t made that theah burg yet.”

  “Why, le’s go to Chicago, then. I hear it’s a mahvelous place foh niggers. Chicago, honey.”

  “When?”

  “This heah very night. Ise ready. Ain’t nothing in Harlem holding me, honey. Come on. Le’s pack.”

  Zeddy rose like an apparition out of the shadow. Automatically Jake’s hand went to his pocket.

  “Don’t shoot!” Zeddy threw up his hands. “I ain’t here foh no trouble. I jest wanta ast you’ pahdon, Jake. Excuse me, boh. I was crazy-mad and didn’t know what I was saying. Ahm bloody well ashame
d a mahself. But you know how it is when a gal done make a fool outa you. I done think it ovah and said to mah inner man: Why, you fool fellah, whasmat with you? Ef Zeddy slit his buddy’s thwoat for a gal, that won’t give back the gal to Zeddy. . . . So I jest had to come and tell it to you and ast you pahdon. You kain stay in Harlem as long as you wanta. Zeddy ain’ta gwineta open his mouf against you. You was always a good man-to-man buddy and nevah did wears you face bahind you. Don’t pay no mind to what I done said in that theah cabaret. Them niggers hanging around was all drunk and wouldn’t shoot their mouf off about you nohow. You ain’t no moh slacker than me. What you done was all right, Jakey, and I woulda did it mahself ef I’d a had the guts to.”

  “It’s all right, Zeddy,” said Jake, “It was jest a crazy mix-up we all got into. I don’t bear you no grudge.”

  “Will you take the paw on it?”

  “Sure!” Jake gripped Zeddy’s hand.

  “So long, buddy, and fohgit it.”

  “So long, Zeddy, ole top.” And Zeddy bear-walked off, without a word or a look at Felice, out of Jake’s life forever. Felice was pleased, yet, naturally, just a little piqued. He might have said good-by to me, too, she thought. I would even have kissed him for the last time. She took hold of Jake’s hands and swung them meditatively: “It’s all right daddy, but ——”

  “But what?”

  “I think we had better let Harlem miss us foh a little while.”

  “Scared?”

  ‘Yes, daddy, but for you only. Zeddy won’t go back on you. I guess not. But news is like a traveling agent, honey, going from person to person. I wouldn’t take no chances.”

  “I guess youse right, sweetness. Come on, le’s get our stuff together.”

  The two leather cases were set together against the wall. Felice sat upon the bed dangling her feet and humming “Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you ma-ma.” Jake, in white shirtsleeves, was arranging in the mirror a pink-yellow-and-blue necktie.

  “ALL set! What you say, sweetness?”

  “I say, honey, le’s go to the Baltimore and finish the night and ketch the first train in the morning.”

  “Why, the Baltimore is padlocked!” said Jake.

  “It was, daddy, but it’s open again and going strong. White folks can’t padlock niggers outa joy forever. Let’s go, daddy.”

  She jumped down from the bed and jazzed around.

  “Oh, I nearly made a present of these heah things to the landlady!” She swept from the bed a pink coverlet edged with lace, and pillow-slips of the same fantasy (they were her own make), with which she had replaced the flat, rooming-house-white ones, and carefully folded them to fit in the bag that Jake had ready open for her. He slid into his coat, made certain of his pocket-book, and picked up the two bags.

  The Baltimore was packed with happy, grinning wrigglers. Many pleasure-seekers who had left the new cabaret, on account of the Jake-Zeddy incident, had gone there. It was brighter than before the raid. The ceiling and walls were kalsomined in white and lilac and the lights glared stronger from new chandeliers.

  The same jolly, compact manager was there, grinning a welcome to strange white visitors, who were pleased and never guessed what cautious reserve lurked under that grin.

  Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you’ ma-ma. . . .

  Jake and Felice squeezed a way in among the jazzers. They were all drawn together in one united mass, wriggling around to the same primitive, voluptuous rhythm.

  Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you’ ma-ma. . . .

  Haunting rhythm, mingling of naïve wistfulness and charming gayety, now sheering over into mad riotous joy, now, like a jungle mask, strange, unfamiliar, disturbing, now plunging headlong into the far, dim depths of profundity and rising out as suddenly with a simple, childish grin. And the white visitors laugh. They see the grin only. Here are none of the well-patterned, well-made emotions of the respectable world. A laugh might finish in a sob. A moan end in hilarity. That gorilla type wriggling there with his hands so strangely hugging his mate, may strangle her tonight. But he has no thought of that now. He loves the warm wriggle and is lost in it. Simple, raw emotions and real. They may frighten and repel refined souls, because they are too intensely real, just as a simple savage stands dismayed before nice emotions that he instantly perceives are false.

  Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you’ ma-ma. . . .

  Jake was the only guest left in the Baltimore. The last wriggle was played. The waiters were picking up things and settling accounts.

  “Whar’s the little hussy?” irritated and perplexed, Jake wondered.

  Felice was not in the cabaret nor outside on the pavement. Jake could not understand how she had vanished from his side.

  “Maybe she was making a high sign when you was asleep,” a waiter laughed.

  “Sleep hell!” retorted Jake. He was in no joking mood.

  “We gwineta lock up now, big boy,” the manager said.

  Jake picked up the bags and went out on the sidewalk again. “I kain’t believe she’d ditch me like that at the last moment,” he said aloud. “Anyhow, I’m bound foh Chicago. I done made up mah mind to go all becausing a her, and I ain’ta gwineta change it whether she throws me down or not. But sure she kain’ta run off and leaves her suitcase. What the hell is I gwine do with it?”

  Felice came running up to him, panting, from Lenox Avenue.

  “Where in hell you been all this while?” he growled.

  “Oh, daddy, don’t get mad!”

  “Whar you been I say?”

  “I done been to look for mah good-luck necklace. I couldn’t go to Chicago without it.”

  Jake grinned. “Whyn’t you tell me you was gwine? Weren’t you scared a Zeddy?”

  “I was and I wasn’t. Ef I’d a told you, you woulda said it wasn’t worth troubling about. So I jest made up mah mind to slip off and git it. The door wasn’t locked and Zeddy wasn’t home. It was hanging same place where I left it and I slipped it on mah leg and left the keys on the table. You know I had the keys. Ah, daddy, ef I’d a had mah luck with me, we nevah would a gotten into a fight at that cabaret.”

  “You really think so, sweetness?”

  They were walking to the subway station along Lenox Avenue.

  “I ain’t thinking, honey. I knows it. I’ll nevah fohgit it again and it’ll always give us good luck.”

  THE END