The Third Generation

by Chester B Himes

  William was placed with the Douglas family by the Foundation for the Blind. The Douglases lived on a quiet residential street and had a son William’s age. Both parents went with William when he moved. Charles carried his brother’s valise. It gave him a funny sensation to see William in a strange separate room. He had an empty feeling at the pit of his stomach as when he was suddenly frightened. It was something like he felt when Will and his mother boarded the train that took them to St. Louis. Only this time there was no reason to be afraid. He couldn’t understand it.

  “So long, Chuck,” William said cheerfully. “Don’t take any wooden nickels.”

  “Not if I can s—help it.” He still couldn’t say see around his brother.

  “Be a good boy and don’t give Mrs. Douglas any trouble,” he heard his mother say. It was as if he were reliving a forgotten dream, the hurt of the dream coming back in strange cadence. He ran down the steps and out of the house and walked down the street bordered by trees. Overhead the dusty leaves of summer’s end whispered in the slight hot breeze. A housewife sweeping her front porch stopped to watch him pass. A dog ran out from another house and barked at him. He felt himself crying quietly inside.

  17

  CEDAR AVENUE WAS THE main thorough-fare of the East Side colored section. Streetcar tracks ran down the brick pavement toward the Public Square and Negro businesses fronted on the broken sidewalks. All day long people passed up and down, shouting and laughing, and the noisy streetcars rumbled by, rattling the windowpanes in the weather-beaten houses.

  Mrs. Robinson lived in a pleasant frame house in a residential block. Her husband had been a dining car waiter. Through him she’d met Mr. Sutton, the white steward of his car. For years before her husband’s death she’d carried on a love affair with Mr. Sutton. Now she was his mistress and he supported her. Three nights each week his run put him in Cleveland, and he lived openly in her house. Everyone assumed that he was her husband and he was known as Mr. Robinson.

  Mrs. Taylor was secretly impressed by Mrs. Robinson’s white husband. She wanted Mrs. Robinson to realize that she was almost white, herself. The day she took Charles there to live she stopped on her way out and told Mrs. Robinson all about the white members of the Manning family—the grandfather who was a Senator and the one who was the son of a President and the grandmother who was the daughter of an English nobleman.

  Mrs. Robinson was a big-boned handsome woman in her early forties. She had a light tan complexion with a scattering of freckles, and wore her hair in a boyish bob with a bang across her forehead. As with many Negroes of her complexion, she was awed by the tiny lady with her superior manners and famous white forebears, and she became very attentive to Mrs. Taylor’s son.

  When Charles came down from putting away his clothes, she said in her soft, caressing voice, “Just make yourself at home, honey. Ask for anything you want. Greg will be home soon and you two can get acquainted.”

  Her warm nature and heavily scented femininity affected Charles like a subtle aphrodisiac. He felt a sickness in his stomach and the warmth grow in his groins as he forced a shamefaced smile. He couldn’t stay in her presence without having an erection. It shamed him and he was afraid she might discover it.

  “I’m going to take a walk. I’ll be back in time for dinner,” he mumbled, going out.

  Mr. Sutton was home for dinner that night. Gregory referred to him as his stepfather and called him “Dad.” Although he knew that Mr. Sutton had a family in Chicago, he never admitted it. He was inordinately proud of having a white stepfather. Mr. Sutton treated him as a son; they had a wonderful relationship. The fine-looking, elderly white man took the Negro youth to the best stores and dressed him in excellent taste. At first the clerks were shocked to hear the boy address the man as Dad. But they soon got used to it.

  With young men his own age, Greg was insufferable. He was a husky young man with an enormous head which he considered leonine, and he wore his kinky red hair in a sort of lion’s mane. Although his complexion was tan, he had the thick, flat features of his father, a squat, black man who’d been fifty when Greg was born. Greg had a strange look of age. His huge, heavy features sagged like those of a man of forty who had dissipated greatly in his youth. Secretly he was proud of his appearance. He thought he looked blasé and sophisticated.

  When he discovered his mother had taken a boarder, he was instantly resentful. “Why do you have to go and take a stranger in the house?” he said angrily at dinner.

  “Son, I’m surprised at you,” Mr. Sutton chided. “Now apologize to Charles.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” Charles muttered, so choked he could scarcely speak.

  But Mrs. Robinson made her son apologize. Afterwards everyone was uncomfortable.

  For the first few days Charles was tight and lonely and missed his brother more than ever. Mr. Sutton was very kind to the lad. But Greg treated him with studied condescension.

  Greg was taking courses in Cleveland College and working lunches as a bus boy at the Union Club. He played the piano and had a fair talent for pencil sketching. They had a very cozy parlor and his friends were always calling. Girls found him interesting, although his charm was lessened by his affectations. He seemed to delight in making Charles miserable.

  Mrs. Robinson noticed the lad’s painful self-consciousness and tried to put him at ease. What he needed was a girl, she thought.

  “Chuck, why don’t you bring your girl here to the house,” she suggested one day at dinner. “You can entertain her in the parlor; play the phonograph, I don’t mind. Does she play the piano?”

  “I don’t have a girl,” he stammered, blushing painfully.

  “Don’t have a girl? With eyes like those. Shame on you! You shouldn’t be so mean to all the little girls.”

  “He’s just a kid, Mother,” Greg said irritably. He was intensely jealous of his mother. Whenever she showed Charles the least affection he squirmed with anxiety. “He’s not even dry behind the ears. He doesn’t even know what it’s all about.”

  “Now tell the truth, honey,” Mrs. Robinson persisted. “Don’t be so shamefaced. Haven’t you ever had a girl?”

  Charles writhed in an agony of shame. “No, I—I just never thought about it.”

  “Never thought about it! What’s happening to these little girls in Cleveland. When I was your age I would have thought about it for you.”

  Greg was furious with his mother. “Let him alone!” he shouted. “Can’t you see he’s scared of girls?”

  “We’ll have to do something about that,” she said tenderly, ignoring her son’s outburst. “You need a girl. Imagine a lovely boy your age who’s never had a girl.” She turned to her son. “Darling, can’t you find Chuck a nice little girl to go with?”

  “I don’t know any girls who’d even look at him,” Greg said hurtingly.

  “I don’t want a girl,” Charles cried. He wished they’d let him alone.

  “Sure you want a girl,” Mrs. Robinson declared. “Maybe you don’t know it but you do.” She turned to her son again. “Susie Dean would be just the girl for him.”

  “Susie Dean!” he sneered. “Why don’t you just give him two dollars and let him get his ashes hauled?”

  “Now, darling, don’t be jealous,” she chided, unperturbed. “You introduce him to some of your girls then. I’m sure they won’t agree with you.”

  Despite his mother’s insistence, Greg refused to introduce Charles to any of the girls who called. But after school began he introduced him to some of the young men who dropped around. For the first time in his life Charles had the opportunity to enjoy normal friendships. But he thought the fellows so poised and sophisticated, he became shy and inarticulate. Whenever forced to speak, he blurted out the first thing that came to mind. The fellows thought him quite witty.

  “Chuck’s a sly boy,” Curly Wright observed. “Tell us about your girls back in St. Louis, Chuck.”

  “Aw, I didn’t have any girls,” he replied, trying
to keep from blushing. “I just played the field.”

  Greg gave him a contemptuous look. “Played the field all right,” he said sarcastically. “You don’t even know what pussy’s like.”

  “Hell, you don’t have to have a girl to get that,” Charles protested weakly.

  It was a signal for the boys to brag of their sexual prowess. There was one tall, handsome lad less extravagant than the others. They called him “The Great Profile” and accused him of holding out on them. But Harvard smiled deprecatingly and said, “It’s not that. I just don’t find them easy as you guys.”

  “They’re tryna marry you, son,” Roy Williams pointed out.

  Charles admired Harvard Eaton tremendously. He thought him the best looking and most gracious of the bunch. Harvard was always saying something nice to him. Although most of the young men were high school seniors as himself, he felt so much younger and immature. They attended high schools in the colored neighborhoods and had enjoyed greater social activity. And Greg always kept referring to his youth.

  “Shhh, the tadpole’s listening,” he said once when the talk turned to a girl. “Little pitchers have big ears. You’ll be wondering how it got around.”

  “I won’t tell,” Charles promised stoutly.

  The others took up for him. “Lay off Chuck, Greg. What’s he done to you. You scared Marie might fall for him.”

  “Pshaw, Marie rob the cradle,” he said contemptuously.

  “She hasn’t stooped to that yet, eh?” Bert said slyly.

  The others laughed. Marie King was the old date-horse. She was older than most of these young men. Although Greg thought she liked him best, she’d dated all of them at various times.

  Many evenings the boys and girls got together in the Robinson’s parlor. Greg played the catchy tunes popular with their set. The couples whirled gaily about the floor, their feet flying through the intricate patterns of the Charleston.

  Charleston…Charleston…

  They chanted and panted, their eyes flashing, bodies bouncing…

  Charleston…Charleston…

  It was an age of daring and sophistication. The young men sought to be blasé, the young women bold and forward. Monkey-back coats and bell-bottom trousers had gone into oblivion; sloppy coats and baggy pants were all the rage. And the girls wore skirts above their knees and stockings rolled below; they clipped their hair in page-boy bobs and wore bangs down to their eyes.

  A great motion picture lover of the time, possessed of slumbrous eyes and sleek black hair, had set the pattern for manly beauty in a melodrama of love and passion called The Sheik. The young men slicked their hair with greasy pomades and wore tightly knotted skullcaps day and night to keep it pressed in place. About the ears and the base of the skull where the hair was left exposed it remained kinky and thick with grease, but the top glistened with gleaming waves. This was called the “pomp,” short for pompadour, because of its similarity to the coiffure worn by the Marquise de Pompadour. And when their pomps were mussed, they became unreasonably furious and quite often fought the one who mussed it.

  They discussed clothes with a passion, and preened themselves for hours before the mirrors, practising sultry looks from lowered lids. They walked about with burning eyes, seeming half-asleep, and approached their girls with slow, sinuous steps, as if to steal upon them.

  Occasionally the boys brought a flask of bathtub gin to animate the party. From his room above, Charles could hear them laughing and screaming in frenzied glee.

  Unless the fellows asked for him, Greg never called him down when girls were present. And then all through the evening he made disparaging remarks.

  “Little Charley can’t dance; he’s got two left feet,” he jeered as Charles sat mute and sweating between two willing girls.

  They looked at him askance. “Come on, baby, let mother show you how,” Susie cooed.

  Mutely he stood and put his arm about her waist and tried to follow through the intricate steps. But he was wooden with self-consciousness; his legs like rusty rigid joints.

  Susie stopped. “Relax, baby. You’ll never learn.”

  “I—I—let’s try it later on,” he stammered, flaming painfully.

  “Oh—” But she was relieved to let him go, and found an older man.

  He tried to get the girls alone. Away from the others he could talk to one girl at a time. He sang a rapid monologue to keep his courage up, and the girls thought he had a sly, sweet line.

  “Your eyes are like rare wine,” he told Marie as they sat swinging on the porch. “Your lips burn like eternal fire; I’d like to quench them with my kisses. Your throat is a pillar of gold, brushed by the lips of men who worship at your feet. Your breasts are softly distant mountain peaks at dusk; between them flows the dark disturbing river down to the mysterious sea.”

  She was entranced. “You’re sweet,” she said, her arm stealing about his neck as she leaned forward in the dark and kissed him wetly. Then she heard Greg call and jumped from the swing and ran inside. That was as far as he ever got. With one girl in the dark he was exciting as long as he could think up words and fire them breathlessly, no matter what they meant. Quite often he was shocking.

  “I could kiss you like the sea lapping at a virgin cave,” he said to Susie Dean once, finding her alone in the kitchen.

  “You could?” she whispered throatily. She had no idea what he meant; it was her own interpretation that set her panting.

  “I’ll make you tremble in delirium and cry sweet ecstatic sounds.” He was blushing furiously, his voice breathless from the effort of trying to make a hit.

  “You lover,” she panted. “Feel here.”

  He felt her breasts.

  “Oh shit!” she cried. “Let’s go down and put some coal on the fire.”

  “But there isn’t any fire in the furnace,” he said uncomprehendingly.

  Furiously she jerked away. “You’re just a teaser.”

  There was always this point beyond which he couldn’t go. He didn’t recognize the moment when it came and didn’t know the words to get him over. So many times only a gentle push was needed. But he didn’t dream this thing was ever quite that easy. He always got bogged down in a ritual he thought surely was demanded. In his dreams, virtue sat so high on pristine pedestals; gallant swordsmen dueled to the death to kiss a woman’s hand. He envied the poised attitudes and glib flattery of the older fellows. He never knew his breathless, incoherent rhapsody brought him closer to actual conquest than most of them had ever got.

  Greg made him think the girls just tolerated him. He didn’t dare ask one to be his girl, or even for a date to see a picture show. He only saw them at some impromptu party or gathering where the fellows took him. And then his time was occupied by the younger sisters and the unattractive ones. At first they thought him bashful. But once alone with him they changed their minds. He was after the real thing, they thought. He didn’t like to play, but Oh Boy, he was really frantic for it.

  Often Charles went down to the tennis courts at the neighborhood YMCA hoping to meet a girl. But the players were always paired, the games dated in advance. He wound up on the other field playing rough and tumble football with a gang of ruffians commanded by a young hoodlum called Wop who smoked marijuana and played a remarkable game at quarterback. Charles always played opposite him. They made a great attraction and crowds gathered along the fence. But Wop was too much even for Charles. He tried to get Charles to smoke marijuana and drink whiskey and once suggested that they cut school and steal a car.

  “When we get through riding we can sell it,” Wop said. “I know a fence that’ll give us fifty bucks for anything we bring in. All they do is strip it.”

  “Suppose we’re caught?”

  “How you gonna be caught? You gonna be with Wop.”

  Charles shook his head.

  “If you skeered, go home,” Wop sneered. He was no older than Charles but was already notorious throughout the city. “If you skeered, go home.” He had ev
erybody saying it, even good little boys and girls who’d only heard of him.

  Charles didn’t envy Wop. He wanted to cut a figure among a different group. If he could just dance like the boy who was winning all the Charleston contests.

  On the top floor of the Y was a basketball court that doubled for dances on weekends. Charles went to several of the dances but it was no fun drinking lemonade and eating cake alone. Everywhere he turned was the gimlet eye of some chaperone. He couldn’t even smoke and pretend to be indifferent. He sat in the window and watched the couples cavort about the floor.

  Charleston…Charleston…

  Envy cut him to the quick. He wondered how they did it; how they came by such natural sense of rhythm. He didn’t have it, couldn’t learn it, although he was blessed with remarkable coordination.

  He left the Y and walked out Cedar Avenue past houses with drawn shades and loud laughter from within, where he was certain women could be bought. He stopped at one and went up to the door.

  “Er, does Miss er-er Robinson live here?” he asked the red-eyed man who cracked the door in response to his timid knocking, giving the first name that came to mind.

  “Who? Who dat?” The voice was thick with rotgut and suspicion.

  “Er, Miss Robinson. She’s a nice-looking, light lady with a gold tooth.”

  “Ah’ll see.” The red eyes disappeared and the door closed in his face. From behind it he could hear the whiskey-thickened voice. “Mama D! Yay, Mama D! You got an’ who’ ‘round heah call Roberson?”

  “Ah’ll see,” came a high, soft, whining bedroom voice.

  The door cracked and the heavily made-up face of a light tan woman popped suddenly in the opening. Glazed muddy eyes looked Charles up and down. “Who you wanna see, baby?”

  “Er-er, a Miss Robinson.”

  “Ah’s Miz Roberson, baby. Cum on in.”

  “Oh!” His nerve deserted him. He didn’t want this painted, staring mass of sinister, effluvious flesh. “Another Miss Robinson.”

  “Git de hell ‘way frum heah, you lil’ bastard!” the voice said harshly; the door slammed in his face.