The reflection in the mirror gave him new life and strength. He now stood erect, without support, and grinned at the two tall, black attendants. “Well, Boys,” he crowed, “I’m all set now. That machine of Doc’s worked like a charm. Soon’s I get a feed under my belt I’ll be okeh.”
Six hours later, bathed, fed, clean-shaven, spry, blond and jubilant, he emerged from the outpatient ward and tripped gaily down the corridor to the main entrance. He was through with coons, he resolved, from now on. He glanced in a superior manner at the long line of black and brown folk on one side of the corridor, patiently awaiting treatment. He saw many persons whom he knew but none of them recognized him. It thrilled him to feel that he was now indistinguishable from nine-tenths of the people of the United States; one of the great majority. Ah, it was good not to be a Negro any longer!
As he sought to open the front door, the strong arm of a guard restrained him. “Wait a minute,” the man said, “and we’ll help you get through the mob.”
A moment or two later Max found himself the center of a flying wedge of five or six husky special policemen, cleaving through a milling crowd of colored folk. From the top step of the sanitarium he had noticed the crowd spread over the sidewalk, into the street and around the corners. Fifty traffic policemen strained and sweated to keep prospective patients in line and out from under the wheels of taxicabs and trucks.
Finally he reached the curb, exhausted from the jostling and squeezing, only to be set upon by a mob of newspaper photographers and reporters. As the first person to take the treatment, he was naturally the center of attraction for about fifteen of these journalistic gnats. They asked a thousand questions seemingly all at once. What was his name? How did he feel? What was he going to do? Would he marry a white woman? Did he intend to continue living in Harlem?
Max would say nothing. In the first place, he thought to himself, if they’re so anxious to know all this stuff, they ought to be willing to pay for it. He needed money if he was going to be able to thoroughly enjoy being white; why not get some by selling his story? The reporters, male and female, begged him almost with tears in their eyes for a statement but he was adamant.
While they were wrangling, an empty taxicab drove up. Pushing the inquisitive reporters to one side, Max leaped into it and yelled “Central Park!” It was the only place he could think of at the moment. He wanted to have time to compose his mind, to plan the future in this great world of whiteness. As the cab lurched forward, he turned and was astonished to find another occupant, a pretty girl.
“Don’t be scared,” she smiled. “I knew you would want to get away from that mob so I went around the corner and got a cab for you. Come along with me and I’ll get everything fixed up for you. I’m a reporter from The Scimitar. We’ll give you a lot of money for your story.” She talked rapidly. Max’s first impulse had been to jump out of the cab, even at the risk of having to face again the mob of reporters and photographers he had sought to escape, but he changed his mind when he heard mention of money.
“How much?” he asked, eyeing her. She was very comely and he noted that her ankles were well turned.
“Oh, probably a thousand dollars,” she replied.
“Well, that sounds good.” A thousand dollars! What a time he could have with that! Broadway for him as soon as he got paid off.
As they sped down Seventh Avenue, the newsboys were yelling the latest editions. “Ex—try! Ex—try! Blacks turning white! Blacks turning white! . . . Read all about the gr-r-reat dis—covery! Paper, Mister! Paper! . . . Read all about Dr. Crookman.”
He settled back while they drove through the park and glanced frequently at the girl by his side. She looked mighty good; wonder could he talk business with her? Might go to dinner and a cabaret. That would be the best way to start.
“What did you say your name was?” he began.
“I didn’t say,” she stalled.
“Well, you have a name, haven’t you?” he persisted.
“Suppose I have?”
“You’re not scared to tell it, are you?”
“Why do you want to know my name?”
“Well, there’s nothing wrong about wanting to know a pretty girl’s name, is there?”
“Well, my name’s Smith, Sybil Smith. Now are you satisfied?”
“Not yet. I want to know something more. How would you like to go to dinner with me tonight?”
“I don’t know and I won’t know until I’ve had the experience.” She smiled coquettishly. Going out with him, she figured, would make the basis of a rattling good story for tomorrow’s paper. “Negro’s first night as a Caucasian!” Fine!
“Say, you’re a regular fellow,” he said, beaming upon her. “I’ll get a great kick out of going to dinner with you because you’ll be the only one in the place that’ll know I’m a Negro.”
Down at the office of The Scimitar, it didn’t take Max long to come to an agreement, tell his story to a stenographer and get a sheaf of crisp, new bills. As he left the building a couple of hours later with Miss Smith on his arm, the newsboys were already crying the extra edition carrying the first installment of his strange tale. A huge photograph of him occupied the entire front page of the tabloid. Lucky for him that he’d given his name as William Small, he thought.
He was annoyed and a little angered. What did they want to put his picture all over the front of the paper for? Now everybody would know who he was. He had undergone the tortures of Doc Crookman’s devilish machine in order to escape the conspicuousness of a dark skin and now he was being made conspicuous because he had once had a dark skin! Could one never escape the plagued race problem?
“Don’t worry about that,” comforted Miss Smith. “Nobody’ll recognize you. There are thousands of white people, yes millions, that look like you do.” She took his arm and snuggled up closer. She wanted to make him feel at home. It wasn’t often a poor, struggling newspaper woman got a chap with a big bankroll to take her out for the evening. Moreover, the description she would write of the experience might win her a promotion.
They walked down Broadway in the blaze of white lights to a dinner-dance place. To Max it was like being in heaven. He had strolled through the Times Square district before but never with such a feeling of absolute freedom and sureness. No one now looked at him curiously because he was with a white girl, as they had when he came down there with Minnie, his former octoroon lady friend. Gee, it was great!
They dined and they danced. Then they went to a cabaret, where, amid smoke, noise and body smells, they drank what was purported to be whiskey and watched a semi-nude chorus do its stuff. Despite his happiness Max found it pretty dull. There was something lacking in these ofay places of amusement or else there was something present that one didn’t find in the black-and-tan resorts in Harlem. The joy and abandon here was obviously forced. Patrons went to extremes to show each other they were having a wonderful time. It was all so strained and quite unlike anything to which he had been accustomed. The Negroes, it seemed to him, were much gayer, enjoyed themselves more deeply and yet they were more restrained, actually more refined. Even their dancing was different. They followed the rhythm accurately, effortlessly and with easy grace; these lumbering couples, out of step half the time and working as strenuously as stevedores emptying the bowels of a freighter, were noisy, awkward, inelegant. At their best they were gymnastic where the Negroes were sensuous. He felt a momentary pang of mingled disgust, disillusionment and nostalgia. But it was only momentary. He looked across at the comely Sybil and then around at the other white women, many of whom were very pretty and expensively gowned, and the sight temporarily drove from his mind the thoughts that had been occupying him.
—
They parted at three o’clock, after she had given him her telephone number. She pecked him lightly on the cheek in payment, doubtless, for a pleasant evening’s entertainment. Somewhat disappointed be
cause she had failed to show any interest in his expressed curiosity about the interior of her apartment, he directed the chauffeur to drive him to Harlem. After all, he argued to himself in defense of his action, he had to get his things.
As the cab turned out of Central Park at 110th Street he felt, curiously enough, a feeling of peace. There were all the old familiar sights: the all-night speakeasies, the frankfurter stands, the loiterers, the late pedestrians, the chop suey joints, the careening taxicabs, the bawdy laughter.
He couldn’t resist the temptation to get out at 133rd Street and go down to Boogie’s place, the hangout of his gang. He tapped, an eye peered through a hole, appraised him critically, then disappeared and the hole was closed. There was silence.
Max frowned. What was the matter with old Bob? Why didn’t he open that door? The cold January breeze swept down into the little court where he stood and made him shiver. He knocked a little louder, more insistently. The eye appeared again.
“Who’s ’at?” growled the doorkeeper.
“It’s me, Max Disher,” replied the ex-Negro.
“Go ’way f’m here, white man. Dis heah place is closed.”
“Is Bunny Brown in there?” asked Max in desperation.
“Yeh, he’s heah. Does yuh know him? Well, Ah’ll call ’im out heah and see if he knows you.”
Max waited in the cold for about two or three minutes and then the door suddenly opened and Bunny Brown, a little unsteady, came out. He peered at Max in the light from the electric bulb over the door.
“Hello, Bunny,” Max greeted him. “Don’t know me, do you? It’s me, Max Disher. You recognize my voice, don’t you?”
Bunny looked again, rubbed his eyes and shook his head. Yes, the voice was Max Disher’s, but this man was white. Still, when he smiled his eyes revealed the same sardonic twinkle—so characteristic of his friend.
“Max,” he blurted out, “is that you, sure enough? Well, for cryin’ out loud! Damned ’f you ain’t been up there to Crookman’s and got fixed up. Well, hush my mouth! Bob, open that door. This is old Max Disher. Done gone up there to Crookman’s and got all white on my hands. He’s just too tight, with his blond hair, ’n everything.”
Bob opened the door, the two friends entered, sat down at one of the small round tables in the narrow, smoke-filled cellar and were soon surrounded with cronies. They gazed raptly at his colorless skin, commented on the veins showing blue through the epidermis, stroked his ash-blond hair and listened with mouths open to his remarkable story.
“Watcha gonna do now, Max?” asked Boogie, the rangy, black, bullet-headed proprietor.
“I know just what that joker’s gonna do,” said Bunny. “He’s goin’ back to Atlanta. Am I right, Big Boy?”
“You ain’t wrong,” Max agreed. “I’m goin’ right on down there, brother, and make up for lost time.”
“Whadayah mean?” asked Boogie.
“Boy, it would take me until tomorrow night to tell you and then you wouldn’t understand.”
The two friends strolled up the avenue. Both were rather mum. They had been inseparable pals since the stirring days in France. Now they were about to be parted. It wasn’t as if Max was going across the ocean to some foreign country; there would be a wider gulf separating them: the great sea of color. They both thought about it.
“I’ll be pretty lonesome without you, Bunny.”
“It ain’t you, Big Boy.”
“Well, why don’t you go ahead and get white and then we could stay together. I’ll give you the money.”
“Say not so! Where’d you get so much jack all of a sudden?” asked Bunny.
“Sold my story to The Scimitar for a grand.”
“Paid in full?”
“Wasn’t paid in part!”
“All right, then, I’ll take you up, Heavy Sugar.” Bunny held out his plump hand and Max handed him a hundred-dollar bill.
They were near the Crookman Sanitarium. Although it was five o’clock on a Sunday morning, the building was brightly lighted from cellar to roof and the hum of electric motors could be heard, low and powerful. A large electric sign hung from the roof to the second floor. It represented a huge arrow outlined in green with the words BLACK-NO-MORE running its full length vertically. A black face was depicted at the lower end of the arrow while at the top shone a white face to which the arrow was pointed. First would appear the outline of the arrow; then, BLACK-NO-MORE would flash on and off. Following that the black face would appear at the bottom and beginning at the lower end the long arrow with its lettering would appear progressively until its tip was reached, when the white face at the top would blazon forth. After that the sign would flash off and on and the process would be repeated.
In front of the sanitarium milled a half-frozen crowd of close to four thousand Negroes. A riot squad armed with rifles, machine guns and tear gas bombs maintained some semblance of order. A steel cable stretched from lamp post to lamp post the entire length of the block kept the struggling mass of humanity on the sidewalk and out of the path of the traffic. It seemed as if all Harlem were there. As the two friends reached the outskirts of the mob, an ambulance from the Harlem Hospital drove up and carried away two women who had been trampled upon.
Lined up from the door to the curb was a gang of tough special guards dredged out of the slums. Grim Irish from Hell’s Kitchen, rough Negroes from around 133rd Street and 5th Avenue (New York’s “Beale Street”) and tough Italians from the lower West Side. They managed with difficulty to keep an aisle cleared for incoming and outgoing patients. Near the curb were stationed the reporters and photographers.
The noise rose and fell. First there would be a low hum of voices. Steadily it would rise and rise in increasing volume as the speakers became more animated and reach its climax in a great animal-like roar as the big front door would open and a whitened Negro would emerge. Then the mass would surge forward to peer at and question the ersatz Nordic. Sometimes the ex-Ethiopian would quail before the mob and jump back into the building. Then the hardboiled guards would form a flying squad and hustle him to a waiting taxicab. Other erstwhile Aframericans issuing from the building would grin broadly, shake hands with friends and relatives and start to graphically describe their experience while the Negroes around them enviously admired their clear white skins.
In between these appearances the hot dog and peanut vendors did a brisk trade, along with the numerous pickpockets of the district. One slender, anemic, ratty-looking mulatto Negro was almost beaten to death by a gigantic black laundress whose purse he had snatched. A Negro selling hot roasted sweet potatoes did a land-office business while the neighboring saloons, that had increased so rapidly in number since the enactment of the Volstead Law that many of their Italian proprietors paid substantial income taxes, sold scores of gallons of incredibly atrocious hootch.
“Well, bye, bye, Max,” said Bunny, extending his hand. “I’m goin’ in an’ try my luck.”
“So long, Bunny. See you in Atlanta. Write me general delivery.”
“Why, ain’t you gonna wait for me, Max?”
“Naw! I’m fed up on this town.”
“Oh, you ain’t kiddin’ me, Big Boy. I know you want to look up that broad you saw in the Honky Tonk New Year’s Eve,” Bunny beamed.
Max grinned and blushed slightly. They shook hands and parted. Bunny ran up the aisle from the curb, opened the sanitarium door and without turning around, disappeared within.
For a minute or so, Max stood irresolutely in the midst of the gibbering crowd of people. Unaccountably he felt at home here among these black folk. Their jests, scraps of conversation and lusty laughter all seemed like heavenly music. Momentarily he felt a disposition to stay among them, to share again their troubles which they seemed always to bear with a lightness that was yet not indifference. But then, he suddenly realized with just a tiny trace of remorse that the past was
forever gone. He must seek other pastures, other pursuits, other playmates, other loves. He was white now. Even if he wished to stay among his folk, they would be either jealous or suspicious of him, as they were of most octoroons and nearly all whites. There was no other alternative than to seek his future among the Caucasians with whom he now rightfully belonged.
And after all, he thought, it was a glorious new adventure. His eyes twinkled and his pulse quickened as he thought of it. Now he could go anywhere, associate with anybody, be anything he wanted to be. He suddenly thought of the comely miss he had seen in the Honky Tonk on New Year’s Eve and the greatly enlarged field from which he could select his loves. Yes, indeed there were advantages in being white. He brightened and viewed the tightly-packed black folk around him with a superior air. Then, thinking again of his clothes at Mrs. Blandish’s, the money in his pocket and the prospect for the first time of riding into Atlanta in a Pullman car and not as a Pullman porter, he turned and pushed his way through the throng.
He strolled up West 139th Street to his rooming place, stepping lightly and sniffing the early morning air. How good it was to be free, white and to possess a bankroll! He fumbled in his pocket for his little mirror and looked at himself again and again from several angles. He stroked his pale blond hair and secretly congratulated himself that he would no longer need to straighten it nor be afraid to wet it. He gazed raptly at his smooth, white hands with the blue veins showing through. What a miracle Dr. Crookman had wrought!
As he entered the hallway, the mountainous form of his landlady loomed up. She jumped back as she saw his face.
“What you doing in here?” she almost shouted. “Where’d you get a key to this house?”
“It’s me, Max Disher,” he assured her with a grin at her astonishment. “Don’t know me, do you?”
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