The Blacker the Berry

by Wallace Thurman

  “We are all living in a totally white world, where all standards are the standards of the white man, and where almost invariably what the white man does is right, and what the black man does is wrong, unless it is precedented by something a white man has done.

  “Which,” Cora added scornfully, “makes it all right for light Negroes to discriminate against dark ones?”

  “Not at all,” Truman objected. “It merely explains, not justifies, the evil—or rather, the fact of intra-racial segregation. Mulattoes have always been accorded more consideration by white people than their darker brethren. They were made to feel superior even during slave days . . . made to feel proud, as Bud Fischer would say, that they were bastards. It was for the mulatto offspring of white masters and Negro slaves that the first schools for Negroes were organized, and say what you will, it is generally the Negro with a quantity of mixed blood in his veins who finds adaptation to a Nordic environment more easy than one of pure blood, which, of course, you will admit, is, to an American Negro, convenient if not virtuous.”

  “Does that justify their snobbishness and self-evaluated superiority?”

  “No, Cora, it doesn’t,” returned Truman. “I’m not trying to excuse them. I’m merely trying to give what I believe to be an explanation of this thing. I have never been to Washington and only know what Paul and you have told me about conditions there, but they seem to be just about the same as conditions in Los Angeles, Omaha, Chicago, and other cities in which I have lived or visited. You see, people have to feel superior to something, and there is scant satisfaction in feeling superior to domestic animals or steel machines that one can train or utilize. It is much more pleasing to pick out some individual or some group of individuals on the same plane to feel superior to. This is almost necessary when one is a member of a supposedly despised, mistreated minority group. Then consider that the mulatto is much nearer white than he is black and is therefore more liable to act like a white man than like a black one, although I cannot say that I see a great deal of difference in any of their actions. They are human beings first and only white or black incidentally.”

  Ray pursed his lips and whistled.

  “But you seem to forget,” Tony Crews insisted, “that because a man is dark, it doesn’t necessarily mean he is not of mixed blood. Now look at . . .”

  “Yeah, let him look at you or at himself or at Cora,” Paul interrupted. “There ain’t no unmixed Negroes.”

  “But I haven’t forgotten that,” Truman said, ignoring the note of finality in Paul’s voice. “I merely took it for granted that we were talking only about those Negroes who were light-skinned.”

  “But all light-skinned Negroes aren’t color struck or color prejudiced,” interjected Alva, who, up to this time, like Emma Lou, had remained silent. This was, he thought, a strategic moment for him to say something. He hoped Emma Lou would get the full significance of this statement.

  “True enough,” Truman began again. “But I also took it for granted that we were only talking about those who were. As I said before, Negroes are, after all, human beings, and they are subject to be influenced and controlled by the same forces and factors that influence and control other human beings. In an environment where there are so many color-prejudiced whites, there are bound to be a number of color-prejudiced blacks. Color prejudice and religion are akin in one respect. Some folks have it and some don’t, and the kernel that is responsible for it is present in us all, which is to say, that potentially we are all color-prejudiced as long as we remain in this environment. For, as you know, prejudices are always caused by differences, and the majority group sets the standard. Then, too, since black is the favorite color of vaudeville comedians and jokesters, and conversely, as intimately associated with tragedy, it is no wonder that even the blackest individual will seek out some one more black than himself to laugh at.

  “So saith the Lord,” Tony answered soberly.

  “And the Holy Ghost saith, let’s have another drink.”

  “Happy thought, Ray,” returned Cora. “Give us some more ice cream and gin, Alva.”

  Alva went into the alcove to prepare another concoction. Tony started the victrola. Truman turned to Emma Lou, who, all this while, had been sitting there with Alva’s arm around her, every muscle in her body feeling as if it wanted to twitch, not knowing whether to be sad or to be angry. She couldn’t comprehend all of this talk. She couldn’t see how these people could sit down and so dispassionately discuss something that seemed particularly tragic to her. This fellow Truman, whom she was certain she knew, with all his hi-faluting talk disgusted her immeasurably. She wasn’t sure that they weren’t all poking fun at her. Truman was speaking:

  “Miss Morgan, didn’t you attend school in Southern California?” Emma Lou at last realized where she had seen him before. So this was Truman Walter, the little “cock o’ the walk,” as they had called him on the campus. She answered him with difficulty, for there was a sob in her throat. “Yes, I did.” Before Truman could say more, Ray called to him:

  “Say, Bozo, what time are we going to the party? It’s almost one o’clock now.”

  “Is it?” Alva seemed surprised. “But Aaron and Alta aren’t here yet.”

  “They’ve been married just long enough to be late to everything.”

  “What do you say we go by and ring their bell?” Tony suggested, ignoring Paul’s Greenwich Village wit.”

  “’Sall right with me.” Truman lifted his glass to his lips. “Then on to the house-rent party . . . on to the bawdy bowels of Beale Street!”

  They drained their glasses and prepared to leave.

  “Ahhhh, sock it.” . . . “Ummmm” . . . Piano playing—slow, loud, and discordant, accompanied by the rhythmic sound of shuffling feet. Down a long, dark hallway, to an inside room, lit by a solitary red bulb. “Oh, play it you dirty no-gooder.” . . . A room full of dancing couples, scarcely moving their feet, arms completely encircling one another’s bodies . . . cheeks being warmed by one another’s breath . . . eyes closed . . . animal ecstasy agitating their perspiring faces. There was much panting, much hip movement, much shaking of the buttocks.... “Do it twice in the same place.” . . . “Git off that dime.” Now somebody was singing, “I ask you very confidentially. . . .” “Sing it man, sing it.” . . . Piano treble moaning, bass rumbling like thunder. A swarm of people, motivating their bodies to express in suggestive movements the ultimate consummation of desire.

  The music stopped, the room was suffocatingly hot, and Emma Lou was disturbingly dizzy. She clung fast to Alva, and let the room and its occupants whirl around her. Bodies and faces glided by. Leering faces and lewd bodies. Anxious faces and angular bodies. Sad faces and obese bodies. All mixed up together. She began to wonder how such a small room could hold so many people. “Oh, play it again . . .” She saw the pianist now, silhouetted against the dark mahogany piano, saw him bend his long, slick-haired head, until it hung low on his chest, then lift his hands high in the air, and as quickly let them descend upon the keyboard. There was one moment of cacophony, then the long, supple fingers evolved a slow, tantalizing melody out of the deafening chaos.

  Every one began to dance again. Body called to body, and cemented themselves together, limbs lewdly intertwined. A couple there kissing, another couple dipping to the floor, and slowly shimmying, belly to belly, as they came back to an upright position. A slender dark girl with wild eyes and wilder hair stood in the center of the room, supported by the strong, lithe arms of a longshoreman. She bent her trunk backward, until her head hung below her waistline, and all the while she kept the lower portion of her body quivering like jello.

  “She whips it to a jelly,” the piano player was singing now, and banging on the keys with such might that an empty gin bottle on top of the piano seemed to be seized with the ague. “Oh, play it Mr. Charlie.” Emma Lou grew limp in Alva’s arms.

  “What’s the matter, honey, drunk?” She couldn’t answer. The music augmented by the general at
mosphere of the room and the liquor she had drunk had presumably created another person in her stead. She felt like flying into an emotional frenzy—felt like flinging her arms and legs in insane unison. She had become very fluid, very elastic, and all the while she was giving in more and more to the music and to the liquor and to the physical madness of the moment.

  When the music finally stopped, Alva led Emma Lou to a settee by the window which his crowd had appropriated. Every one was exceedingly animated, but they all talked in hushed, almost reverential tones.

  “Isn’t this marvelous?” Truman’s eyes were ablaze with interest and excitement. Even Tony Crews seemed unusually alert.

  “It’s the greatest I’ve seen yet,” he exclaimed.

  Alva seemed the most unemotional one in the crowd. Paul the most detached. “Look at ’em all watching Ray.”

  “Remember, Bo,” Truman counseled him. “Tonight you’re ‘passing.’ Here’s a new wrinkle, white man ‘passes’ for Negro.”

  “Why not?” Enough of you pass for white.” They all laughed, then transferred their interest back to the party. Cora was speaking:

  “Didya see that little girl in pink—the one with the scar on her face—dancing with that tall, lanky, one-armed man? Wasn’t she throwing it up to him?”

  “Yeah,” Tony admitted, “but she didn’t have anything on that little Mexican-looking girl. She musta been born in Cairo.”

  “Saay, but isn’t that one bad-looking darkey over there, two chairs to the left; is he gonna smother that woman?” Truman asked excitedly.

  “I’d say she kinda liked it,” Paul answered, then lit another cigarette.

  “Do you know they have corn liquor in the kitchen? They serve it from a coffee pot.” Aaron seemed proud of his discovery.

  “Yes,” said Alva, “and they got hoppin’-john out there, too.

  “What the hell is hoppin’-john?”

  “Ray, I’m ashamed of you. Here you are passing for colored and don’t know what hoppin’-john is!”

  “Tell him, Cora, I don’t know either.”

  “Another one of these foreigners.” Cora looked at Truman disdainfully. “Hoppin’-john is blackeyed peas and rice. Didn’t they have any out in Salt Lake City?”

  “Have they any chitterlings?” Alta asked eagerly.

  “No, Alta,” Alva replied, dryly. “This isn’t Kansas. They have got pig’s feet though.”

  “Lead me to ’em,” Aaron and Alta shouted in unison, and led the way to the kitchen. Emma Lou clung to Alva’s arm and tried to remain behind. “Alva, I’m afraid.”

  “Afraid of what? Come on, snap out of it! You need another drink.” He pulled her up from the settee and led her through the crowded room down the long dark hallway to the more crowded kitchen.

  When they returned to the room, the pianist was just preparing to play again. He was tall and slender, with extra long legs and arms, giving him the appearance of a scarecrow. His pants were tight in the waist and full in the legs. He wore no coat, and a blue silk shirt hung damply to his body. He acted as if he were king of the occasion, ruling all from his piano stool throne. He talked familiarly to every one in the room, called women from other men’s arms, demanded drinks from any bottle he happened to see being passed around, laughed uproariously, and made many grotesque and ofttimes obscene gestures.

  There were sounds of a scuffle in an adjoining room, and an excited voice exclaimed, “You goddam son-of-a-bitch, don’t you catch my dice no more.” The paino player banged on the keys and drowned out the reply, if there was one.

  Emma Lou could not keep her eyes off the piano player. He was acting like a maniac, occasionally turning completely around on his stool, grimacing like a witch doctor, and letting his hands dawdle over the keyboard of the piano with an agonizing indolence, when compared to the extreme exertion to which he put the rest of his body. He was improvising. The melody of the piece he had started to play was merely a base for more bawdy variations. His left foot thumped on the floor in time with the music, while his right punished the piano’s loud-pedal. Beads of perspiration gathered grease from his slicked-down hair, and rolled oleaginously down his face and neck, spotting the already damp baby-blue shirt, and streaking his already greasy black face with more shiny lanes.

  A sailor lad suddenly ceased his impassioned hip movement and strode out of the room, pulling his partner behind him, pushing people out of the way as he went. The spontaneous moans and slangy ejaculations of the piano player and of the more articulate dancers became more regular, more like a chanted obligato to the music. This lasted for a couple of hours interrupted only by hectic intermissions. Then the dancers grew less violent in their movements, and though the piano player seemed never to tire there were fewer couples on the floor, and those left seemed less loath to move their legs.

  Eventually, the music stopped for a long interval, and there was a more concerted drive on the kitchen’s corn liquor supply. Most of the private flasks and bottles were empty. There were more calls for food, too, and the crap game in the side room annexed more players and more kibitzers. Various men and women had disappeared altogether. Those who remained seemed worn and tired. There was much petty person-to-person badinage and many whispered consultations in corners. There was an argument in the hallway between the landlord and two couples, who wished to share one room without paying him more than the regulation three dollars required of one couple. Finally, Alva suggested they leave. Emma Lou had drifted off into a state of semi-consciousness and was too near asleep or drunk to distinguish people or voices. All she knew was that she was being led out of that dreadful place, that the perturbing “pilgrimage to the proletariat’s parlor social,” as Truman had called it, was ended, and that she was in a taxicab, cuddled up in Alva’s arms.

  Emma Lou awoke with a headache. Some one was knocking at her door, but when she first awakened it had seemed as if the knocking was inside of her head. She pressed her fingers to her throbbing temples and tried to become more conscious. The knock persisted and she finally realized that it was at her door rather than in her head. She called out, “Who is it?”

  “It’s me.” Emma Lou was not far enough out of the fog to recognize who “me” was. It didn’t seem important anyway, so without any more thought or action, she allowed herself to doze off again. Whoever was on the outside of the door banged the louder, and finally Emma Lou distinguished the voice of her landlady, calling, “Let me in, Miss Morgan, let me in.” The voice grew more sharp . . . “Let me in,” and in an undertone, “Must have some one in there.” This last served to awaken Emma Lou more fully, and though every muscle in her body protested, she finally got out of bed and went to the door. The lady entered precipitously, and pushing Emma Lou aside sniffed the air and looked around as if she expected to surprise some one, either squeezing under the bed or leaping through the window. After she had satisfied herself that there was no one else in the room, she turned to Emma Lou furiously:

  “Miss Morgan, I wish to talk to you.” Emma Lou closed the door and wearily sat down upon the bed. The wrinkle-faced old woman glared at her and shifted the position of her snuff so she could talk more easily. “I won’t have it, I tell you, I won’t have it.” Emma Lou tried hard to realize what it was she wouldn’t have, and failing, she said nothing, just screwed up her eyes and tried to look sober.

  “Do you hear me?” Emma Lou nodded. “I won’t have it. When you moved in here I thought I made it clear that I was a respectable woman and that I kept a respectable house. Do you understand now?” Emma Lou nodded again. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do. “I’m glad you do. Then it won’t be necessary for me to explain why I want my room.”

  Emma Lou unscrewed her eyes and opened her mouth. What was this woman talking about? “I don’t think I understand.”

  The old lady was quick with her answer. “There ain’t nothin’ for you to understand, but that I want you to get out of my house. I don’t have no such carryings-on around here. A drunken
woman in my house at all hours in the morning, being carried in by a man! Well, you coulda knocked me over with a feather.”

  At last Emma Lou began to understand. Evidently the landlady had seen her when she had come in, no doubt had seen Alva carry her to her room, and perhaps had listened outside the door. She was talking again:

  “You must get out. Your week is up Wednesday. That gives you three days to find another room, and I want you to act like a lady the rest of that time, too. The idea!” she sputtered, and stalked out of the room.

  This is a pretty mess, thought Emma Lou. Yet she found herself unable to think or do anything about it. Her lethargic state worried her. Here she was about to be dispossessed by an irate landlady, and all she could do about it was sit on the side of her bed and think—maybe I ought to take a dose of salts. Momentarily, she had forgotten it was Sunday, and began to wonder how near time it was for her to go to work. She was surprised to discover that it was still early in the forenoon. She couldn’t possibly have gone to bed before four-thirty or five, yet it seemed as if she had slept for hours. She felt like some one who had been under the influence of some sinister potion for a long period of time. Had she been drugged? Her head still throbbed, her insides burned, her tongue was swollen, her lips chapped and feverish. She began to deplore her physical condition, and even to berate herself and Alva for last night’s debauchery.

  Funny people, his friends. Come to think of it, they were all very much different from any one else she had ever known. They were all so, so—she sought for a descriptive word, but could think of nothing save that revolting, “Oh, sock it,” she had heard on first entering the apartment where the house-rent party had been held.

  Then she began to wonder about her landlady’s charges. There was no need arguing about the matter. She had wanted to move anyway. Maybe now she could go ahead and find a decent place in which to live. She had never had the nerve to begin another room-hunting expedition after the last one. She shuddered as she thought about it, then climbed back into the bed. She could see no need in staying up so long as her head ached as it did. She wondered if Alva had made much noise in bringing her in, wondered how long he had stayed, and if he had had any trouble manipulating the double-barreled police lock on the outside door. Harlem people were so careful about barricading themselves in. They all seemed to fortify themselves, not only against strangers, but against neighbors and friends as well.