“Yes, missus,” she said, and then reluctantly, “But I hates to put you to that bother.”
“Not at all,” I said shortly, because it was a bother. She had interrupted me in the middle of an excellent story. It was about poor people, too; a good proletarian short story.
I banged about the kitchenette, and after awhile the living room was fragrant with steaming coffee and sizzling bacon. I found some cold potatoes and fried them. I sliced my last tomato. I piled some slices of bread on a plate and then I felt guilty and toasted them.
All the while I was humming to myself because I did not want that woman to tell me her story. I could have told it to her myself. It would be no different from a hundred others. It wasn’t I could not hum at the table. I spooned a cup of coffee while they ate. Inevitably, the woman in return for the meal told me the facts that led up to it.
She was widowed when the boy was a baby, knocking about with him from pillar to post. They came North so that he could go to a northern school, sleeping-in and sleeping-out for a string of slave-driving tyrants, farming the boy out to one indifferent slattern after another. She never earned much, never saving anything, keeping body and soul together through sheer determination to survive. Now two weeks out of the hospital after a major operation, she was still too frail for domestic work, and her cousin by marriage, who was on relief, was letting her sleep in the living-room and forage for food as best as she could. The slattern who had been keeping the boy gave him back to her yesterday. She had put him to bed without any supper.
She had brought him out this morning without any breakfast. She was on her way to the relief people now to ask them if they could hurry. As for herself, she could wait, but a boy gets hungry.
The boy had already eaten more than his share of the platter, and was draining his second cup of diluted coffee. He had not said a word. He had simply looked from his mother to me during his intervals of swallowing, throughout her drab recital. It was not surprising that what she was saying evoked no response in him. He knew all about it. It was as much his life as it was hers.
His life in fact was harder, for there was no way for him to know with certainty that she would come once weekly to see him, or that the slattern who beat and neglected him would be replaced by one who only neglected him.
They finished their meal, or rather the platter was clean and the coffeepot empty. Light had come into the woman’s face, and the boy did not look quite so much like a wizened old man.
I got up, and the woman understood the signal. She jumped up and thanked me profusely. She prodded the boy. He did not speak, but he smiled, and suddenly he looked seven and no longer an undersized seventy.
I made a package of the odds and ends in my icebox, and after a little struggle with myself, slipped my half-dollar into the woman’s hand. I could borrow carfare from a friend. Obviously she could not.
I led them to the door, but the boy broke away and ran across the room to Pluto and lovingly touched him. Pluto fell over and the boy laughed aloud. He gave him a final affectionate pat, and trotted back to his mother. He looked up at her with a face full of eager confidence.
He pronounced solemnly, “I’m gonna ask Sandy for one of them dawgs.”
She looked at me almost apologetically. “He believes in Sandy Claus,” she said.
She hurried on proudly, defensively, “He ain’t failed him yet.” “That’s fine,” I said and shut the door. I could hear them going down the hall, and the boy was talking volubly. I guess he was telling his mother what else he was going to ask “Sandy” for.
For a moment I wanted to believe that I had been taken in, for I am perhaps the poorest tenant in my fine apartment house. I Live on the fifth floor in a tiny rear apartment, and why should she have come first to me. And then I realized that in all probability she had not.
I turned back into my room and crossed the floor to put Pluto back on his feet. It has become an automatic act when my door closes after a visitor. The sad-eyed hound looked up at me, and his tail drooped wistfully. He did not look funny, and I did not want to laugh at him, and he is supposed to make you laugh.
I moved away and cleared the table. I was thinking that it is not right to take a child’s joy away and give him hunger. I was thinking that a child’s faith is too fine and precious for the dump heap of poverty. I was thinking that bread should not be bigger than a boy. I though about those things a lot.
Amateur Night in Harlem: “That’s Why Darkies Were Born.”
December 1, 1938
The second balcony is packed. The friendly, familiar usher who scowls all the time without meaning it, flatfoots it up and down the stairs, trying to find seats for the sweethearts. Through his tireless manipulation, separated couples are reunited, and his pride is pardonable.
The crowd has come early, for it is amateur night. The Apollo Theater is full to overflowing. Amateur night is an institution. Every Wednesday, from eleven until midnight, hopeful aspirants come to the mike, lift up their voices and sing. They retire to the wings for the roll call, when a fluttering piece of paper dangled above their heads comes to rest-determined by the volume of applause - to indicate to whom the prizes shall go. The boxes are filled with sightseeing whites led in by swaggering blacks.
The floor is chocolate liberally sprinkled with white sauce. But the balconies belong to the hardworking, holidaying Negroes, and the jitterbug whites are intruders, and their surface excitement is silly compared to the earthy enjoyment of the Negroes.
The moving picture ends. The screen shoots out of sight. The orchestra blares out the soul-ticking tune, “I Think You’re Wonderful, I Think You’re Grand.”
Spontaneously, feet and hands beat out the rhythm, and the show is on. The regular stage show precedes Amateur Hour. Tonight an all-girls orchestra dominates the stage. A long black girl in flowing pink blows blue notes out of a clarinet. It is hot song, and the audience stomps its approval. A little yellow trumpeter swings out. She holds a high note, and it soars up solid. The fourteen pieces are in the groove.
The comedians are old-timers. Their comedy is pure Harlemese, and their prototypes are scattered throughout the audience. There is a burst of appreciative laughter and a round of applause when the redoubtable Jackie (Mom’s) Mabley states that she is doing general housework in the Bronx and adds, with telling emphasis, “When you do housework up there, you really do housework.” It is real Negro idiom when one comedian observes to-another who is carrying a fine fur coat for his girl, “Anytime I see you with something on your arm, somebody is without something.”
The show moves on. The girls of sixteen varying shades dance without precision but with effortless joy. The best of their spontaneous steps will find their way downtown. A long brown boy who looks like Cab Calloway sings, “Papa Tree-Top Tall.” The regular stage show comes to an end. The act file on stage. The chorus girls swing in the background. It is a free-for-all, and to the familiar “I think you’re wonderful, I think you’re grand”, the blackface comic grabs the prettiest chorine and they truck on down. When the curtain descends, both sides of the house are having fun.
A Negro show would rather have the plaudits of an Apollo audience than any other applause. For the Apollo is the hard, testing ground of Negro show business, and approval there can make or break an act.
It is eleven now. The house lights go up. The audience is restless and expectant. Somebody has brought a whistle that sounds like a wailing baby. The cry fills the theater and everybody laughs. The orchestra breaks into the theater’s theme song again. The curtain goes up. A [W-M-C-A radio station] announcer talks into a mike, explaining to his listeners that the three hundred and first broadcast of Amateur Hour at the Apollo is on the air. He signals to the audience and they obligingly applaud.
The emcee comes out of the wings. The audience knows him. He is Negro to his toes, but even Hitler would classify him as Aryan at first glance. He begins a steady patter of jive. When the audience is ready and mellow, he calls the f
irst amateur out of the wings.
Willie comes out and, on his may to the mike, touches the Tree of Hope. For several years the original Tree of Hope stood in front of the Lafayette Theater on Seventh Avenue until the Commissioner of Parks tore it down. It was believed to bring good fortune to whatever actor touched it, and some say it was not Mr. Moses who had it cut down, but the steady stream of down-and-out actors since the depression who wore it out.
Willie sings “I surrender Dear” in a pure Georgia accent. “I can’ mak’ mah way,” he moans. The audience hears him out and claps kindly. He bows and starts for the wings. The emcee admonishes, “You got to boogie-woogie off the stage, Willie.” He boogie-woogies off, which is as much a part of established ritual as touching the Tree of Hope.
Vanessa appears. She is black and the powder makes her look purple. She is dressed [in black], and is altogether unprepossessing. She is the kind of singer who makes faces and regards a mike as an enemy to be wrestled with. The orchestra sobs out her song. “I cried for you, now it’s your turn to cry over me.” Vanessa is an old-time “coon-shouter.” She wails and moans deep blue notes.
The audience gives her their highest form of approval. They clap their hands in time with the music. She finishes to tumultuous applause, and accepts their approval with proud self-confidence. To their wild delight, she flings her arms around the emcee, and boogie woogies off with him.
Ida comes out in a summer print to sing that beautiful lyric, “I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart,” in a nasal, off-key whine. Samuel follows her. He is big and awkward, and his voice is very earnest as he promises, “I Won’t Tell A Soul I love you.” They are both so inoffensive and sincere that the audience lets them off with light applause.
Coretta steps to the mike. Her first note is so awful that the emcee goes to the Tree of Hope and touches it for her. The audience lets her sing the first bar, then bursts into cat-calls and derisive whistling. In a moment the familiar police siren is heard offstage, and big, dark brown Porto Rico, who is part and parcel of amateur night, comes on stage with nothing covering his nakedness but a brassiere and panties and shoots twice at Coretta’s feet. She hurriedly retires to the wings with Porto Rico switching after her, brandishing his gun. A clarinetist, a lean dark boy, pours out such sweetness in “Body and Soul” that somebody rises and shouts, “Peace, brother!” in heartfelt approval. Margaret follows with a sour note. She has chosen to sing “Old Folks”, and her voice quavers so from stage fright that her song becomes an unfortunate choice, and the audience stomps for Puerto Rico who appears in a pink and blue ballet costume to run her off the stage.
David is next on the program. With mounting frenzy he sings the intensely pleading blues song, “Rock it for Me.” He clutches his knees, rolls his eyes, sings away from the mike, and woks himself up to a pitch of excitement that is only cooled by the appearance of Porto Rico in a red brassiere, an ankle-length red skirt, and an exaggerated picture hat. The audience goes wild.
Ida comes out. She is a lumpy girl in a salmon pink blouse. The good-looking emcee leads her to the mike and pats her shoulder encouragingly. She snuggles up to him, and a female onlooker audibly snorts, “She sure wants to be hugged.” A male spectator shouts, gleefully, “Give her something!”
Ida sings the plaintive, “My Reverie”. Her accent is late West Indian and her voice is so bad that for a minute you wonder if it’s an act. Instantly here are whistles, boos, and hand-clapping. The siren sounds off stage and Porto Rico rushed on in an old fashioned corset and a marabou-trimmed bed jacket. His shots leave her undisturbed. The audience tries to drown her out with louder applause and whistling. She holds to the mike and sings to the bitter end.
It is Porto Rico who trots sheepishly after her when she walks unabashed from the stage.
James come to the mike and is reminded by the audience to touch the Tree of Hope. He hasn’t forgotten. He tries to start his song, but the audience will not let him. The emcee explains to him that the Tree of Hope is a sacred emblem. The boy doesn’t care, and begins his song again. He has been in New York two days, and the emcee cracks that he’s been in New York two days too long. The audience refuses to let the lad sing, and the emcee banishes him to the wings to think it over.
A slight, young girl in a crisp white blouse and neat black shirt comes to the mike to sing “Tisket, Tasket.” She has lost her yellow-basket, and her listeners spontaneously inquire of her, “Was it red?” She shouts back dolefully, No, no, no, no!” “Was it blue?” No, it wasn’t blue, either. They go on searching together.
A chastened James reappears and touches the Tree of Hope. A woman states with grim satisfaction, “He teched de tree dat time.” He has tried to upset a precedent, and the audience is against him from the start. They boo and whistle immediately. Porto Rico in red flannels and a floppy red hat happily shoots him off the stage.
A high school girl in middy blouse, jumper and socks rocks “Froggy Bottom.” She is the youngest thing yet, and it doesn’t matter how she sings. The house rocks with her. She winds up triumphantly with a tap dance, and boogie woogies confidently off the stage.
A frightened lad falls upon the mike. It is the only barrier between him and the murderous multitude. The emcee’s encouragement falls on frozen ears. His voice starts down in his chest and stays here. The house roars for the kill, Porto Rico, in a baby’s bonnet and a little girl’s party frock, finishes him off with dispatch.
A white man comes out of the wings, but nobody minds. They have got accustomed to occasional white performers at the Apollo. There was a dancing act in the regular stage show which received deserved applause. The emcee announces the song, “That’s Why -----” he omits the next word “Were Born.” He is a Negro emcee. He will not use the word “darky” in announcing a song a white man is to sing.
The white man begins to sing, “Someone had to plough the cotton, Someone had to plant the corn, Someone had to work while the white folks played, That’s why darkies were born.” The Negroes hiss and boo. Instantly the audience is partisan. The whites applaud vigorously. But the greater volume of hisses and boos drown out the applause. The singer halts. The emcee steps to the house mike and raises his hand for quiet. He does not know what to say, and says ineffectually that the song was written to be sung and urges that the singer be allowed to continue. The man begins again, and on the instant is booed down. The emcee does not know what to do. They are on a sectional hook-up-the announcer have welcomed Boston and Philadelphia to the program during the station break.
The studio officials, the listening audience, largely white, have heard a Negro audience booing a white man. It is obvious that in his confusion the emcee has forgotten what the song connotes. The Negroes are not booing the white man as such. They are booing him for his categorization of them. The song is not new.
A few seasons ago they listened to it in silent resentment. Now they have learned to vocalize their bitterness. They cannot bear that a white man, as poor as themselves, should so separate himself from their common fate and sing paternally for a price of their predestined lot to serve.
For the third time the man begins, and now all the fun that has gone before is forgotten. There is resentment in every heart. The white man will not save the situation by leaving the stage and the emcee steps again to the house mike with an impassioned plea. The Negroes know this emcee. He is as white as any white man. Now it is ironic that he should be so fair, for the difference between him and the amateur is too undefined. The emcee spreads out his arms and begins, “My people ----.” He says without explanation that “his people” should be proud of the song. He begs “his people” to let the song be sung to show that they are ladies and gentlemen. He winds up with a last appeal to “his people” for fair play. He looks for all the world like the plantation owner’s yellow boy acting as buffer between the black and the big house.
The whole house breaks into applause, and this time the scattered hisses are drowned out. The amateur begins and ends in triu
mph. He is the last contestant, and in the line-up immediately following, he is overwhelmingly voted first prize. More of the black man’s blood money goes out of Harlem.
The show is over. The orchestra strikes up, “I think you’re wonderful, I think you’re grand.” The audience files out. They are quiet and confused and sad. It is twelve on the dot. Six hours of sleep and then back to the Bronx or up and down an elevator shaft. Yes sir, Mr. White Man, I work all day while you-all play. It’s only fair. That’s why darkies were born.
Temple of Grace
December 21, 1938
Twenty West One Hundred and Fifteenth Street is the New York stamping ground of Daddy Grace, the self-styled rival of Father Divine. It was to this building that he came roaring out of Washington, with the as yet unfulfilled promise of dethroning the Father. Divine’s lease on this property had expired, and at renewal time it was discovered that Daddy Grace had signed ahead of him.
Divine’s prestige tottered briefly, for it was a test of faith to his followers to accept the forced removal of God from his heaven by a mundane piece of paper. However, through an act of a diviner God, the Father acquired Crum Elbow as well as a handsome property on West One Hundred and Twenty-Fourth Street, and it was Daddy Grace whose triumph was now scarcely more than hollow.
The grace Temple on One Hundred and Fifteenth Street, still surrounded by various flourishing business establishments of Father Divine, is a redbrick building plastered over with crude angelic drawings and pious exhortations. The entrance hall leads directly to a flight of descending stairs over which is the inscription Grace Kitchen, or across a narrow threshold into the auditorium.
This auditorium is of good size, seating possibly two hundred people. The floor is plain, reverberating board. The seats appear new and are cushioned in red leather of good quality. The walls are blue, with gilt borders and two-foot bases painted red. At the rear, to the right, are elevated rows of seats which the choir of fifteen lusty white-robed women occupy. On a platform above them is an upright piano.
The Last Leaf of Harlem Page 13
