The Blacker the Berry

by Wallace Thurman

  Hours passed. Finally the lady came into the room again to see if he or the baby wanted anything. She knew Geraldine had not come in yet. The partition between the two rooms was so thin that the people in one were privy to everything the people in the other did or said. Alva told her his wife must have gone to see her sick mother in Long Island. He asked her to take care of the baby for him. He would pay her for her extra trouble. The whole situation offered her much pleasure. She went away radiant, eager to tell the other lodgers in the house her version of what had happened.

  Alva got up and paced the room. He felt that he could no longer remain flat on his back. His stomach ached, but it also craved for alcoholic stimulant. So did his brain and nervous system in general. Inadvertantly, in one of his trips across the room, he looked into the dresser mirror. What he saw there halted his pacing. Surely that wan, dissipated, bloated face did not belong to him. Perhaps he needed a shave. He set about ridding himself of a week’s growth of beard, but being shaved only made his face look more like the face of a corpse. It was liquor he needed. He wished to hell some one would come along and get him some. But no one came. He went back to bed, his eyes fixed on the clock, watching its hands approach midnight. Five minutes to go.... There was a knock on the door. Eagerly he sat up in the bed and shouted, “Come in.”

  But he was by no means expecting or prepared to see Emma Lou.

  Emma Lou’s room in the Y.W.C.A. at three o’clock that same morning. Emma Lou busy packing her clothes. Gwendolyn in negligee, hair disarrayed, eyes sleepy, yet angry:

  “You mean you’re going over there to live with that man?”

  “Why not? I love him.”

  Gwendolyn stared hard at Emma Lou. “But don’t you understand he’s just tryin’ to find some one to take care of that brat of his? Don’t be silly, Emma Lou. He doesn’t really care for you. If he did, he never would have deserted you as you once told me he did, or have subjected you to all those insults. And . . . he isn’t your type of man. Why, he’s nothing but a . . .”

  “Will you mind tending to your own business, Gwendolyn,” her purple powdered skin was streaked with tears.

  “But what about your appointment?”

  “I shall take it.”

  “What!” She forgot her weariness. “You mean to say you’re going to teach school and live with that man, too? Ain’t you got no regard for your reputation? I wouldn’t ruin myself for no yaller nigger. Here you’re doing just what folks say a black gal always does. Where is your intelligence and pride? I’m through with you, Emma Lou. There’s probably something in this stuff about black people being different and more low than other colored people. You’re just a common ordinary nigger! God, how I despise you!” And she rushed out of the room, leaving Emma Lou dazed by the suddenness and wrath of her tirade.

  Emma Lou was busier than she had ever been before in her life. She had finally received her appointment and was teaching in one of the public schools in Harlem. Doing this in addition to nursing Alva and Alva Junior and keeping house for them in Alva’s same old room. Within six months she had managed to make little Alva Junior take on some of the physical aspects of a normal child. His little legs were in braces, being straightened. Twice a week she took him to the clinic where he had violet ray sun baths and oil massages. His little body had begun to fill out and simultaneously it seemed as if his head was decreasing in size. There was only one feature which remained unchanged; his abnormally large eyes still retained their insane stare. They appeared frozen and terrified as if their owner was gazing upon some horrible yet fascinating object or occurrence. The doctor said that this would disappear in time.

  During those six months there had been a steady change in Alva Senior, too. At first he had been as loving and kind to Emma Lou as he had been during the first days of their relationship. Then, as he got better and began living his old life again, he more and more relegated her to the position of a hired nurse girl. He was scarcely civil to her. He seldom came home except to eat and get some pocket change. When he did come home nights, he was usually drunk, so drunk that his companions would have to bring him home, and she would have to undress him and put him to bed. Since his illness, he could not stand as much liquor as before. His stomach refused to retain it, and his legs refused to remain steady.

  Emma Lou began to loathe him, yet ached for his physical nearness. She was lonesome again, cooped up in that solitary room with only Alva Junior for company. She had lost track of all her old friends, and, despite her new field of endeavor, she had made no intimate contacts. Her fellow colored teachers were congenial enough, but they didn’t seem any more inclined to accept her socially than did her fellow white teachers. There seemed to be some question about her antecedents. She didn’t belong to any of the collegiate groups around Harlem. She didn’t seem to be identified with any one who mattered. They wondered how she had managed to get into the school system.

  Of course Emma Lou made little effort to make friends among them. She didn’t know how. She was too shy to make an approach and too suspicious to thaw out immediately when some one approached her. The first thing she noticed was that most of the colored teachers who taught in her school were lighter colored than she. The darkest was a pleasing brown. And she had noticed them putting their heads together when she first came around. She imagined that they were discussing her. And several times upon passing groups of them, she imagined that she was being pointed out. In most cases what she thought was true, but she was being discussed and pointed out not because of her dark skin but because of the obvious traces of an excess of rouge and powder which she insisted upon using.

  It had been suggested, in a private council among the Negro members of the teaching staff, that some one speak to Emma Lou about this rather ludicrous habit of making up. But no one had the nerve. She appeared so distant and so ready to take offense at the slightest suggestion even of friendship that they were wary of her. But after she began to be a standard joke among the pupils and among the white teachers, they finally decided to send her an anonymous note, suggesting that she use fewer aids to the complexion. Emma Lou, on receiving the note, at first thought that it was the work of some practical joker. It never occurred to her that the note told the truth and that she looked twice as bad with paint and powder as she would without it. She interpreted it as being a means of making fun of her because she was darker than any one of the other colored girls. She grew more haughty, more acid, and more distant than ever. She never spoke to any one except as a matter of business. Then she discovered that her pupils had nicknamed her . . . “Blacker’n me.”

  What made her still more miserable was the gossip and comments of the woman in the next room. Lying in bed nights or else sitting at her table preparing her lesson plans, she could hear her telling every one who chanced in—

  “You know that fellow in the next room? Well, let me tell you. His wife left him, yes-sireee, left him flat on his back in the bed, him and the baby, too. Yes, she did. Walked out of here just as big as you please to go to work one morning and she ain’t come back yet. Then up comes this little black wench. I heard her when she knocked on the door that very night his wife left. At first he was mighty s’prised to see her and hugged her, a-tellin’ her how much he loved her, and she crying like a fool all the time. I never heard the likes of it in my life. The next morning in she moves an’ she’s been here ever since. And you oughter see how she carries on over that child, just as loving, like as if she was his own mother. An’ now that she’s here an’ workin’ an’ that nigger’s well again, what does he do but go out an’ get drunk worse than he uster with his wife. Would you believe it? Stays away three and four nights a week, while she hustles out of here an’ makes time every morning. . . .”

  On hearing this for about the twentieth time, Emma Lou determined to herself that she was not going to hear it again. (She had also planned to ask for a transfer to a new school, one on the east side in the Italian section where she would not have to associat
e with so many colored teachers.) Alva hadn’t been home for four nights. She picked Alva Junior from out his crib and pulled off his nightgown, letting him lie naked in her lap. She loved to fondle his warm, mellow-colored body, loved to caress his little crooked limbs after the braces had been removed. She wondered what would become of him. Obviously she couldn’t remain living with Alva, and she certainly couldn’t keep Alva Junior forever. Suppose those evil school teachers should find out how she was living and report it to the school authorities? Was she morally fit to be teaching youth? She remembered her last conversation with Gwendolyn.

  For the first time now she also saw how Alva had used her during both periods of their relationship. She also realized that she had been nothing more than a commercial proposition to him at all times. He didn’t care for dark women either. He had never taken her among his friends, never given any signs to the public that she was his girl. And now when he came home with some of his boy friends, he always introduced her as Alva Junior’s mammy. That’s what she was, Alva Junior’s mammy, and a typical black mammy at that.

  Campbell Kitchen had told her that when she found economic independence, everything else would come. Well now that she had economic independence she found herself more enslaved and more miserable than ever. She wondered what he thought of her. She had never tried to get in touch with him since she had left the Y.W.C.A., and had never let him know of her whereabouts, had just quit communicating with him as unceremoniously as she had quit the Y.W.C.A. No doubt Gwendolyn had told him the whole sordid tale. She could never face him again unless she had made some effort to reclaim herself. Well, that’s what she was going to do. Reclaim herself. She didn’t care what became of Alva Junior. Let Alva and that yellow slut of a wife of his worry about their own piece of tainted suet.

  She was leaving. She was going back to the Y.W.C.A., back to St. Mark’s A.M.E. Church, back to Gwendolyn, back to Benson. She wouldn’t stay here and have that child grow up to call her “black mammy.” Just because she was black was no reason why she was going to let some yellow nigger use her. At once she was all activity. Putting Alva Junior’s nightgown on, she laid him back into his crib and left him there crying while she packed her trunk and suitcase. Then, asking the woman in the next room to watch him until she returned, she put on her hat and coat and started for the Y.W.C.A., making plans for the future as she went.

  Halfway there she decided to telephone Benson. It had been seven months now since she had seen him, seven months since, without a word of warning or without leaving a message, she had disappeared, telling only Gwendolyn where she was going. While waiting for the operator to establish connections, she recalled the conversation she and Gwendolyn had had at the time, recalled Gwendolyn’s horror and disgust on hearing what Emma Lou planned doing, recalled . . . some one was answering the ’phone. She asked for Benson, and in a moment heard his familiar:

  “Hello.”

  “Hello, Benson, this is Emma Lou.” There was complete silence for a moment, then:

  “Emma Lou?” he dinned into her ear. “Well, where have you been. Gwennie and I have been trying to find you.”

  This warmed her heart; coming back was not going to be so difficult after all.

  “You did?”

  “Why, yes. We wanted to invite you to our wedding.”

  The receiver fell from her hand. For a moment she stood like one stunned, unable to move. She could hear Benson on the other end of the wire clicking the receiver and shouting “Hello, Hello,” then the final clicking of the receiver as he hung up, followed by a deadened . . . “operator” . . . “operator” from central. Somehow or other she managed to get hold of the receiver and replace it in the hook. Then she left the telephone booth and made her way out of the drugstore and into the street. Seventh Avenue as usual was alive and crowded. It was an early spring evening and far too warm for people to remain cooped up in stuffy apartments. Seventh Avenue was the gorge into which Harlem cliff dwellers crowded to promenade. It was heavy laden, full of life and color, vibrant and leisurely. But for the first time since her arrival in Harlem, Emma Lou was impervious to all this. For the moment she hardly realized where she was. Only the constant jostling and the raucous ensemble of street noises served to bring her out of her daze.

  Gwendolyn and Benson married. “What do you want to waste time with that yaller nigger for? I wouldn’t marry a yaller nigger.”

  “Blacker’n me” . . . “Why don’t you take a hint and stop plastering your face with so much rouge and powder.”

  Emma Lou stumbled down Seventh Avenue, not knowing where she was going. She noted that she was at 135th Street. It was easy to tell this particular corner. It was called the campus. All the college boys hung out there when the weather permitted, obstructing the traffic and eyeing the passersby professionally. She turned west on 135th Street. She wanted quiet. Seventh Avenue was too noisy and too alive and too happy. How could the world be happy when she felt like she did? There was no place for her in the world. She was too black, black is a portent of evil, black is a sign of bad luck.

  A yaller gal rides in a limousine

  A brown-skin does the same;

  A black gal rides in a rickety Ford,

  But she gets there, yes, my Lord.

  “Alva Junior’s black mammy.” “Low down common nigger.” “Jes’ crazy ’bout that littler yaller brat.”

  She looked up and saw a Western Union office sign shining above a lighted doorway. For a moment she stood still, repeating over and over to herself Western Union, Western Union, as if to understand its meaning. People turned to stare at her as they passed. They even stopped and looked up into the air trying to see what was attracting her attention, and, seeing nothing, would shrug their shoulders and continue on their way. The Western Union sign suggested only one thing to Emma Lou and that was home. For the moment she was ready to rush into the office and send a wire to her Uncle Joe, asking for a ticket, and thus be able to escape the whole damn mess. But she immediately saw that going home would mean beginning her life all over again, mean flying from one degree of unhappiness into another probably much more intense and tragic than the present one. She had once fled to Los Angeles to escape Boise, then fled to Harlem to escape Los Angeles, but these mere geographical flights had not solved her problems in the past, and a further flight back to where her life had begun, although facile of accomplishment, was too futile to merit consideration.

  Rationalizing thus, she moved away from in front of the Western Union office and started toward the park two blocks away. She felt that it was necessary that she do something about herself and her life and do it immediately. Campbell Kitchen had said that every one must find salvation within one’s self, that no one in life need be a total misfit, and that there was some niche for every peg, whether that peg be round or square. If this were true then surely she could find hers even at this late date. But then hadn’t she exhausted all possibilities? Hadn’t she explored every province of life and everywhere met the same problem? It was easy for Campbell Kitchen or for Gwendolyn to say what they would do had they been she, for they were looking at her problem in the abstract, while to her it was an empirical reality. What could they know of the adjustment proceedings necessary to make her life more full and more happy? What could they know of her heartaches?

  She trudged on, absolutely oblivious to the people she passed or to the noise and bustle of the street. For the first time in her life she felt that she must definitely come to some sort of conclusion about her life and govern herself accordingly. After all, she wasn’t the only black girl alive. There were thousands on thousands who, like her, were plain, untalented, ordinary, and who, unlike herself, seemed to live in some degree of comfort. Was she alone to blame for her unhappiness? Although this had been suggested to her by others, she had been too obtuse to accept it. She had ever been eager to shift the entire blame on others when no doubt she herself was the major criminal.

  But having arrived at this—what did it
solve or promise for the future? After all, it was not the abstractions of her case which at the present moment most needed elucidation. She could strive for a change of mental attitudes later. What she needed to do now was to accept her black skin as being real and unchangeable, to realize that certain things were, had been, and would be, and with this in mind begin life anew, always fighting, not so much for acceptance by other people, but for acceptance of herself by herself. In the future she would be eminently selfish. If people came into her life—well and good. If they didn’t—she would live anyway, seeking to find herself and achieving meanwhile economic and mental independence. Then possibly, as Campbell Kitchen had said, life would open up for her, for it seemed as if its doors yielded more easily to the casual, self-centered individual than to the ranting, praying pilgrim. After all, it was the end that mattered, and one only wasted time and strength seeking facile open-sesame means instead of pushing along a more difficult and direct path.

  By now Emma Lou had reached St. Nicholas Avenue and was about to cross over into the park when she heard the chimes of a clock and was reminded of the hour. It was growing late—too late for her to wander in the park alone where she knew she would be approached either by some persistent male or an insulting park policeman. Wearily she started toward home, realizing that it was necessary for her to get some rest in order to be in her class room on the next morning. She mustn’t jeopardize her job, for it was partially through the money she was earning from it that she would be able to find her place in life. She was tired of running up blind alleys all of which seemed to converge and lead her ultimately to the same blank wall. Her motto from now on would be “find—not seek.” All things were at one’s fingertips. Life was most kind to those who were judicious in their selections, and she, weakling that she now realized she was, had not been a connoisseur.