And Alva? She had to admit she was a trifle disappointed in him and his friends. They certainly weren’t what she would have called either intellectuals or respectable people. Whoever heard of decent folk attending such a lascivious festival? She remembered their enthusiastic comments and tried to comprehend just what it was that had intrigued and interested them. Looking for material, they had said. More than likely they were looking for liquor and a chance to be licentious.
Alva himself worried her a bit. She couldn’t understand why gin seemed so indispensable to him. He always insisted that he had to have at least three drinks a day. Once she had urged him not to follow this program. Unprotestingly, he had come to her the following evening without the usual juniper berry smell on his breath, but he had been so disagreeable and had seemed so much like a worn out and dissipated person that she had never again suggested that he not have his usual quota of drinks. Then, too, she had discovered that he was much too lovable after having had his “evening drams” to be discouraged from taking them. Emma Lou had never met any one in her life who was as loving and kind to her as Alva. He seemed to anticipate her every mood and desire, and he was the most soothing and satisfying person with whom she had ever come into contact. He seldom riled her—seldom ruffled her feelings. He seemed to give in to her on every occasion, and was the most chivalrous escort imaginable. He was always courteous, polite, and thoughtful of her comfort.
As yet she had been unable to become angry with him. Alva never argued or protested unduly. Although Emma Lou didn’t realize it, he used more subtle methods. His means of remaining master of all situations were both tactful and sophisticated; for example, Emma Lou never realized just how she had first begun giving him money. Surely he hadn’t asked her for it. It had just seemed the natural thing to do after a while, and she had done it, willingly and without question. The ethical side of their relationship never worried her. She was content and she was happy—at least she was in possession of something that seemed to bring her happiness. She seldom worried about Alva not being true to her, and if she questioned him about such matters, he would pretend not to hear her and change the conversation. The only visible physical reaction would be a slight narrowing of the eyes, as if he were trying not to wince from the pain of some inner hurt.
Once she had suggested marriage, and had been shocked when Alva told her that to him the marriage ceremony seemed a waste of time. He had already been married twice, and he hadn’t even bothered to obtain a divorce from his first wife before acquiring number two. On hearing this, Emma Lou had urged him to tell her more about these marital experiments, and after a little coaxing, he had done so, very impassively and very sketchily, as if he were relating the experiences of another. He told her that he had really loved his first wife, but that she was such an essential polygamous female that he had been forced to abdicate and hand her over to the multitudes. According to Alva, she had been as vain as Braxton, and as fundamentally dependent upon flattery. She could go without three square meals a day, but she couldn’t do without her contingent of mealy-mouthed admirers, all eager to outdo one another in the matter of compliments. One man could never have satisfied her, not that she was a nymphomaniac with abnormal physical appetites, but because she wanted attention, and the more men she had around her, the more attention she could receive. She hadn’t been able to convince Alva, though, that her battalion of admirers were all of the platonic variety. “I know niggers too well,” Alva had summed it up to Emma Lou, “so I told her she just must go, and she went.”
“But,” Emma Lou had queried when he had started to talk about something else, “what about your second wife?”
“Oh,” he laughed, “well I married her when I was drunk. She was an old woman about fifty. She kept me drunk from Sunday to Sunday. When I finally got sober she showed me the marriage license and I well nigh passed out again.”
“But where is she?” Emma Lou had asked, “and how did they let you get married while you were drunk and already had a wife?”
Alva shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know where she is. I ain’t seen her since I left her room that day. I sent Braxton up there to talk to her. Seems like she’d been drunk, too. So, it really didn’t matter. And as for a divorce, I know plenty spades right here in Harlem get married any time they want to. Who in hell’s gonna take the trouble getting a divorce when, if you marry and already have a wife, you can get another without going through all that red tape?”
Emma Lou had had to admit that this sounded logical, if illegal. Yet she hadn’t been convinced. “But,” she insisted, “don’t they look you up and convict you of bigamy?”
“Hell, no. The only thing the law bothers niggers about is for stealing, murdering, or chasing white women, and as long as they don’t steal from or murder ofays, the law ain’t none too particular about bothering them. The only time they act about bigamy is when one of the wives squawk, and they hardly ever do that. They’re only too glad to see the old man get married again—then they can do likewise, without spending lots of time on lawyers and courthouse red tape.”
This, and other things which Emma Lou had elicited from Alva, had convinced her that he was undoubtedly the most interesting person she had ever met. What added to this was the strange fact that he seemed somewhat cultured despite his admitted unorganized and haphazard early training. On being questioned, he advanced the theory that perhaps this was due to his long period of service as waiter and valet to socially prominent white people. Many Negroes, he had explained, even of the “dicty” variety, had obtained their savoir faire and knowledge of the social niceties in this manner.
Emma Lou lay abed, remembering the many different conversations they had had together, most of which had taken place on a bench in City College Park, or in Alva’s room. With enough gin for stimulation, Alva could tell many tales of his life and hold her spellbound with vivid descriptions of the various situations he had found himself in. He loved to reminisce, when he found a good listener, and Emma Lou loved to listen when she found a good talker. Alva often said that he wished some one would write a story of his life. Maybe that was why he cultivated an acquaintance with these writer people.... Then it seemed as if this one-sided conversational communion strengthened their physical bond. It made Emma Lou more palatable to Alva, and it made Alva a more glamorous figure to Emma Lou.
But here she was day dreaming when she should be wondering where she was going to move. She couldn’t possibly remain in this place, even if the old lady relented and decided to give her another chance to be respectable. Somehow or other she felt she had been insulted and, for the first time, began to feel angry with the old snuff-chewing termagant.
Her head ached no longer, but her body was still lethargic. Alva, Alva, Alva. Could she think of nothing else? Supposing she sat upright in the bed—supposing she and Alva were to live together. They might get a small apartment and be with one another entirely. Immediately she was all activity. The headache was forgotten. Out of bed, into her bathrobe, and down the hall to the bathroom. Even the quick shower seemed to be a slow, tedious process, and she was in such a hurry to hasten into the street and telephone Alva, in order to tell him of her new plans, that she almost forgot to make the very necessary and very customary application of bleaching cream to her face. As it was, she forgot to rinse her face and hands in lemon juice.
Alva had lost all patience with Braxton, and profanely told him so. No matter what his condition, Braxton would not work. He seemed to believe that because he was handsome, and because he was Braxton, he shouldn’t have to work. He graced the world with his presence. Therefore, it should pay him. “A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” and should be sustained by a communal larder. Alva tried to show him that such a larder didn’t exist, that one either worked or hustled.
But as Alva had explained to Emma Lou, Braxton wouldn’t work, and as a hustler he was a distinct failure. He couldn’t gamble successfully, he never had a chance to steal, and he always allowed hi
s egotism to defeat his own ends when he tried to get money from women. He assumed that at a word from him, anybody’s pocketbook should be at his disposal, and that his handsomeness and personality were a combination none could withstand. It is a platitude among sundry sects and individuals that as a person thinketh, so he is, but it was not within the power of Braxton’s mortal body to become the being his imagination sought to create. He insisted, for instance, that he was a golden brown replica of Rudolph Valentino. Every picture he could find of the late lamented cinema sheik he pasted either on the wall or on some of his belongings. The only reason that likenesses of his idol did not decorate all the wall space was because Alva objected to this flapperish ritual. Braton emulated his silver screen mentor in every way, watched his every gesture on the screen, then would stand in front of his mirror at home and practice Rudy’s poses and facial expressions. Strange as it may seem, there was a certain likeness between the two, especially at such moments when Braxton would suddenly stand in the center of the floor and give a spontaneous impersonation of Rudy making love or conquering enemies. Then, at all times, Braxton held his head as Rudy held his, and had even learned how to smile and how to use his eyes in the same captivating manner. But his charms were too obviously cultivated, and his technique too clumsy. He would attract almost any one to him, but they were sure to bolt away as suddenly as they had come. He could have, but he could not hold.
Now, as Alva told Emma Lou, this was a distinct handicap to one who wished to be a hustler, and live by one’s wits off the bounty of others. And the competition was too keen in a place like Harlem, where the adaptability to city ways sometimes took strange and devious turns, for a bungler to have much success. Alva realized this, if Braxton didn’t, and tried to tell him so, but Braxton wouldn’t listen. He felt that Alva was merely being envious—the fact that Alva had more suits than he, and that Alva always had clean shirts, liquor money and room rent, and that Alva could continue to have these things, despite the fact that he had decided to quit work during the hot weather, meant nothing to Braxton at all. He had facial and physical perfection, a magnetic body and much sex appeal. Ergo, he was a master.
However, lean days were upon him. His mother and aunt had unexpectedly come to New York to help him celebrate the closing day of his freshman year at Columbia. His surprise at seeing them was nothing in comparison to their surprise in finding that their darling had not even started his freshman year. The aunt was stoic—“What could you expect of a child with all that wild Indian blood in him? Now, our people . . .” She hadn’t liked Braxton’s father. His mother simply could not comprehend his duplicity. Such an unnecessarily cruel and deceptive performance was beyond her understanding. Had she been told that he was guilty of thievery, murder, or rape, she could have borne up and smiled through her tears in true maternal fashion, but that he could so completely fool her for nine months—incredible; preposterous, it just couldn’t be!
She and her sister returned to Boston, telling every one there what a successful year their darling had had at Columbia, and telling Braxton before they left that he could not have another cent of their money that summer, that if he didn’t enter Columbia in the fall . . . well, he was not yet of age. They made many vague threats; none so alarming, however, as the threat of a temporary, if not permanent, suspension of his allowance.
By pawning some of his suits, his watch, and diamond ring, he amassed a small stake and took to gambling. Unlucky at love, he should, so Alva said, have been lucky at cards, and was. But even a lucky man will suffer from lack of skill and foolhardiness. Braxton would gamble only with mature men who gathered in the police-protected clubs, rather than with young chaps like himself, who gathered in private places. He couldn’t classify himself with the cheap or the lowly. If he was to gamble, he must gamble in a professional manner, with professional men. As in all other affairs, he had luck, but no skill and little sense. His little gambling stake lasted but a moment, flitted from him feverishly, and left him holding an empty purse.
Then he took to playing the “numbers,” placing quarters and half dollars on a number compounded of three digits and anxiously perusing the daily clearing house reports to see whether or not he had chosen correctly. Alva, too, played the numbers consistently and, somehow or other, managed to remain ahead of the game, but Braxton, as was to be expected, “hit” two or three times, then grew excited over his winnings and began to play two or three or even five dollars daily on one number. Such plunging, unattended by scientific observation or close calculation, put him so far behind the game that his winnings were soon dissipated and he had to stop playing altogether.
Alva had quit work for the summer. He contended that it was far too hot to stand over a steam pressing machine during the sultry summer months, and there was no other congenial work available. Being a bellhop in one of the few New York hotels where colored boys were used called for too long hours and broken shifts. Then they didn’t pay much money and he hated to work for tips. He certainly would not take an elevator job, paying only sixty or sixty-five dollars a month at most, and making it necessary for him to work nights one week from six to eight, and days the next week, vice versa. Being an elevator operator in a loft building required too much skill, patience and muscular activity. The same could be said of the shipping clerk positions, open in the various wholesale houses. He couldn’t, of course, be expected to be a porter, and swing a mop. Boot-blacking was not even to be considered. There was nothing left. He was unskilled, save as a presser. Once he had been apprenticed to a journeyman tailor, but he preferred to forget that.
No, there was nothing he could do, and there was no sense in working in the summer. He never had done it; at least, not since he had been living in New York—so he didn’t see why he should do it now. Furthermore, his salary hardly paid his saloon bill, and since his board and room and laundry and clothes came from other sources, why not quit work altogether and develop these sources to their capacity output? Things looked much brighter this year than ever before. He had more clothes, he had “hit” the numbers more than ever, he had won a baseball pool of no mean value, and, in addition to Emma Lou, he had made many other profitable contacts during the spring and winter months. It was safe for him to loaf, but he couldn’t carry Braxton, or rather, he wouldn’t. Yet he liked him well enough not to kick him into the streets. Something, he told Emma Lou, should be done for him first, so Alva started doing things.
First, he got him a girl, or rather steered him in the direction of one who seemed to be a good bet. She was. And as usual, Braxton had little trouble in attracting her to him. She was a simple-minded over-sexed little thing from a small town in Central Virginia, new to Harlem, and had hitherto always lived in her home town where she had been employed since her twelfth year as a maid-of-all-work to a wealthy white family. For four years, she had been her master’s concubine, and probably would have continued in that capacity for an unspecified length of time had not the mistress of the house decided that after all it might not be good for her two adolescent sons to become aware of their father’s philandering. She had had to accept it. Most of the women of her generation and in her circle had done likewise. But these were post-world war days of modernity . . . and, well, it just wasn’t being done, what with the growing intelligence of the “darkies,” and the increased sophistication of the children.
So Anise Hamilton had been surreptitiously shipped away to New York, and a new maid-of-all-work had mysteriously appeared in her place. The mistress had seen to it that this new maid was not as desirable as Anise, but a habit is a habit, and the master of the house was not the sort to substitute one habit for another. If anything, his wife had made herself more miserable by the change, since the last girl loved much better than she worked, while Anise proved competent on both scores, thereby pleasing both master and mistress.
Anise had come to Harlem and deposited the money her former mistress had supplied her with in the postal savings. She wouldn’t hear to placing it
in any other depository. Banks had a curious and discomforting habit of closing their doors without warning, and without the foresight to provide their patrons with another nest egg. If banks in Virginia went broke, those in wicked New York would surely do so. Now, Uncle Sam had the whole country behind him, and everybody knew that the United States was the most wealthy of the world’s nations. Therefore, what safer place than the post office for one’s bank account?
Anise got a job, too, almost immediately. Her former mistress had given her a letter to a friend of hers on Park Avenue, and this friend had another friend who had a sister who wanted a stock girl in her exclusive modiste shop. Anise was the type to grace such an establishment as this person owned, just the right size to create a smart uniform for, and shapely enough to allow the creator of the uniform ample latitude for bizarre experimentation.
Most important of all, her skin, the color of beaten brass with copper overtones, synchronized with the gray plaster walls, dark hardwood furniture and powder blue rugs in the Maison Quantrelle.
Anise soon had any number of “boy friends,” with whom she had varying relations. But she willingly dropped them all for Braxton, and, simple village girl that she was, expected him to do likewise with his “girl friends.” She had heard much about the “two-timing sugar daddies” in Harlem, and while she was well versed in the art herself, having never been particularly true to her male employer, she did think that this sort of thing was different, and that any time she was willing to play fair, her consort should do likewise.
The Blacker the Berry Page 12
