Hokum

by Paul Beatty

  After the war he got a job as an interpreter on Ellis Island and immediately applied for naturalization papers.

  There was a beautiful young Spanish girl, named Lupe Rentera, who worked in his department. He was attracted to her on sight, but the knowledge that he was part Negro restrained him from making the first advance. She was also attracted to him. Finally, one day, she gave him an encouraging smile. He responded by asking her to lunch.

  He learned that she roomed with a family of Mexicans on the fringe of the Spanish community in Brooklyn: delightedly he announced that he roomed nearby. They discovered that they rode the same line to work and wondered how they had missed seeing each other. After that he waited for her in the morning and rode home with her at night. He began dating her regularly and in a month they were engaged.

  Two months later they applied for their marriage license. He recorded his race as white, his nationality as Portuguese; she recorded her race as white, her nationality as American. Their fellow workers gave them an office party when they were married. They spent their honeymoon in Brooklyn looking for an apartment.

  Two places were offered them, but both were in communities mixed with Negroes, and they declined. Finally they found a place in South Brooklyn that suited them and they spent all of their savings furnishing it.

  They should have been blissfully happy, but there was a strain in their relationship. He was continuously fearful that his Negro blood would be discovered. Since his discharge he had been communicating with his relatives in Tennessee, but to avoid discovery he had rented a post office box where he received his mail. They did not know his assumed name, his address, nor his occupation. As soon as he read their letters he destroyed them.

  But he was afraid that Lupe might discover signs of his Negro blood in his appearance. He kept himself scrupulously clean and used an after shave lotion which contained a slight bleach. Each week he got a hair cut and a massage. But fearing that the neighborhood barbers might guess his Negro origin from the texture of his hair, he patronized a Negro barbershop uptown in Harlem. Each Saturday afternoon when they returned from their half day at work, he departed for his jaunt uptown and did not return until dark. After getting his haircut and massage, he spent the rest of the time wandering about the streets of Harlem. It was the only time during the week that he felt comfortably relaxed.

  Unknown to him, Lupe also had a problem. She, too, felt strained in their relationship for she was also part Negro. And as with him, she was fearful of his discovering it. She took the same precautions against its discovery as did he. She bathed frequently, used quantities of bleach creams, and patronized a Negro hairdresser uptown in Harlem. Each Saturday she left the house exactly a half-hour after his departure, used the same transportation, and arrived at her beauty parlor at the time he was in his barbershop not more than four blocks away. She also spent part of the afternoon visiting friends in Harlem before returning, although she managed always to get home a few minutes before his arrival. But for those Saturday afternoon sessions with her Negro friends, she could not have endured the strain.

  He told her he spent the time in school, taking a course in electronic engineering. He never knew that she went out at all. In fact he did not know that her hair was the type that required straightening. He was too preoccupied with his own fear of being discovered to notice.

  To make matters worse, both exhibited extreme prejudice against Negroes. Of course, they did so in an effort to hide their identity. But the effect it had was only to increase their trepidation. As they labored more and more desperately to avoid detection, the strain between them increased.

  In time they became the most prejudiced people in all of New York City.

  Due to his excellent war record, some of the red tape concerning his application for citizenship was avoided, and he became a naturalized citizen of the United States sooner than he had expected. It had an immediate effect of security on him. But her fears increased proportionately. She had visions of being discovered and put in jail for falsifying her race on the application for a marriage license. He would have the marriage annulled. He was so prejudiced against Negroes he might even kill her for deceiving him. Her days became filled with constant dread.

  Shortly after this when he stopped at his box for mail he found a letter saying his mother had died. His father had died years before. It was from his elder sister. She wanted him to come home for the funeral.

  He was so upset he forgot to destroy the letter. He slipped it into his side pocket. Then he began to scheme how he could make the trip without Lupe discovering his destination. At dinner he told her he'd have to spend a week in Cincinnati to complete his engineering course. She thought it strange but said nothing.

  Then she noticed the tip of the letter extending from his pocket. This surprised her more than the other. She had never known him to receive a letter before.

  That night, after he was asleep, she got out of bed and read the letter. To her complete astonishment she learned that he had Negro blood. In fact, he was from the same little town in Tennessee where she'd been born. As she continued to read she recognized his family. She had known them well. They were distantly related to her family. She even recalled having seen him when she was a child, but he was ten years older and wouldn't remember her.

  She was so happy and jubilant over the discovery she awakened him. Waving the letter, laughing and crying at the same time, she cried, "I'm one, too, Ferdy! I'm one, too, darling." She fell on the bed and began kissing him passionately.

  But he pushed her roughly aside and jumped to his feet. His face was white and stricken: he was shaken to the core. "One what?" he yelled. "What are you talking about?"

  "I'm like you," she said, laughing at him. "See, I read the letter. I'm from Pinegap, Tennessee; I'm a Williams, too. My Mamma was Dora Williams. I'm Sadie. I even remember you—you're Clefus."

  The color came back into his face. He sat down on the side of the bed. "Well, what do you know!" he exclaimed.

  For the first few days they were jubilant over the discovery that they both had Negro blood. Now they would not have to live in a constant state of dread and apprehension. They would not have to take so many baths or spend so much on bleach preparations. They could go together uptown on Saturday afternoons, he to the barbershop, she to the hairdresser. Afterwards they could stop at the Savoy and dance to the good hot rhythm of the Negro bands.

  They felt they had discovered the happy combination of being white and colored too.

  Of course, he took her with him on the trip to Tennessee. They visited their families and told them the whole story. Everything worked out perfectly.

  On their return they looked forward to a life of bliss. It was such great fun fooling all the white people with whom they worked. They laughed about it at night and felt like great conspirators.

  But after the jubilance wore off, and they had settled down to the daily routine of living, a strange disillusionment came. They began feeling betrayed by each other. Each experienced bitter disappointment in the knowledge that the other was not "pure white." They realized that had they known of the other's Negro blood they would not have become married.

  Each became furious at the other's deceit. In fact, they got so mad at each other they quit speaking and are now suing for divorce on the grounds of false pretenses.

  RALPH ELLISON

  from invisible man

  1952

  At first i had turned away from the window and tried to read but my mind kept wandering back to my old problems and, unable to endure it any longer, I rushed from the house, extremely agitated but determined to get away from my hot thoughts into the chill air.

  At the entrance I bumped against a woman who called me a filthy name, only causing me to increase my speed. In a few minutes I was several blocks away, having moved to the next avenue and downtown. The streets were covered with ice and soot-flecked snow and from above a feeble sun filtered through the haze. I walked with my head down, feeling
the biting air. And yet I was hot, burning with an inner fever. I barely raised my eyes until a car, passing with a thudding of skid chains whirled completely around on the ice, then turned cautiously and thudded off again.

  I walked slowly on, blinking my eyes in the chill air, my mind a blur with the hot inner argument continuing. The whole of Harlem seemed to fall apart in the swirl of snow. I imagined I was lost and for a moment there was an eerie quiet. I imagined I heard the fall of snow upon snow. What did it mean? I walked, my eyes focused into the endless succession of barber shops, beauty parlors, confectioneries, luncheonettes, fish houses, and hog maw joints, walking close to the windows, the snowflakes lacing swift between, simultaneously forming a curtain, a veil, and stripping it aside. A flash of red and gold from a window filled with religious articles caught my eye. And behind the film of frost etching the glass I saw two brashly painted plaster images of Mary and Jesus surrounded by dream books, love powders, God-Is-Love signs, money-drawing oil and plastic dice. A black statue of a nude Nubian slave grinned out at me from beneath a turban of gold. I passed on to a window decorated with switches of wiry false hair, ointments guaranteed to produce the miracle of whitening black skin. "You too can be truly beautiful," a sign proclaimed.

  "Win greater happiness with whiter complexion. Be outstanding in your social set."

  I hurried on, suppressing a savage urge to push my fist through the pane. A wind was rising, the snow thinning. Where would I go? To a movie? Could I sleep there? I ignored the windows now and walked along, becoming aware that I was muttering to myself again. Then far down at the corner I saw an old man warming his hands against the sides of an odd-looking wagon, from which a stove pipe reeled off a thin spiral of smoke that drifted the odor of baking yams slowly to me, bringing a stab of swift nostalgia. I stopped as though struck by a shot, deeply inhaling, remembering, my mind surging back, back. At home we'd bake them in the hot coals of the fireplace, had carried them cold to school for lunch; munched them secretly, squeezing the sweet pulp from the soft peel as we hid from the teacher behind the largest book, the World's Geography. Yes, and we'd loved them candied, or baked in a cobbler, deep-fat fried in a pocket of dough, or roasted with pork and glazed with the well-browned fat; had chewed them raw—yams and years ago. More yams than years ago, though the time seemed endlessly expanded, stretched thin as the spiraling smoke beyond all recall.

  I moved again. "Get yo' hot, baked Car'lina yam," he called. At the corner the old man, wrapped in an army overcoat, his feet covered with gunny sacks, his head in a knitted cap, was puttering with a stack of paper bags. I saw a crude sign on the side of the wagon proclaiming YAMS, as I walked flush into the warmth thrown by the coals that glowed in a grate underneath.

  "How much are your yams?" I said, suddenly hungry.

  "They ten cents and they sweet," he said, his voice quavering with age.

  "These ain't none of them binding ones neither. These here is real, sweet, yaller yams. How many?"

  "One," I said. "If they're that good, one should be enough."

  He gave me a searching glance. There was a tear in the corner of his eye. He chuckled and opened the door of the improvised oven, reaching gingerly with his gloved hand. The yams, some bubbling with syrup, lay on a wire rack above glowing coals that leaped to low blue flame when struck by the draft of air. The flash of warmth set my face aglow as he removed one of the yams and shut the door.

  "Here you are, suh," he said, starting to put the yam into a bag.

  "Never mind the bag, I'm going to eat it. Here . . ."

  "Thanks." He took the dime. "If that ain't a sweet one, I'll give you another one free of charge."

  I knew that it was sweet before I broke it; bubbles of brown syrup had burst the skin.

  "Go ahead and break it," the old man said. "Break it and I'll give you some butter since you gon' eat it right here. Lots of folks takes 'em home.

  They got their own butter at home."

  I broke it, seeing the sugary pulp steaming in the cold.

  "Hold it over here," he said. He took a crock from a rack on the side of the wagon. "Right here."

  I held it, watching him pour a spoonful of melted butter over the yam and the butter seeping in.

  "Thanks."

  "You welcome. And I'll tell you something."

  "What's that?" I said.

  "If that ain't the best eating you had in a long time, I give you your money back."

  "You don't have to convince me," I said. "I can look at it and see it's good."

  "You right, but everything what looks good ain't necessarily good," he said. "But these is."

  I took a bite, finding it as sweet and hot as any I'd ever had, and was overcome with such a surge of homesickness that I turned away to keep my control. I walked along, munching the yam, just as suddenly overcome by an intense feeling of freedom—simply because I was eating while walking along the street. It was exhilarating. I no longer had to worry about who saw me or about what was proper. To hell with all that, and as sweet as the yam actually was, it became like nectar with the thought. If only someone who had known me at school or at home would come along and see me now. How shocked they'd be! I'd push them into a side street and smear their faces with the peel. What a group of people we were, I thought. Why, you could cause us the greatest humiliation simply by confronting us with something we liked. Not all of us, but so many. Simply by walking up and shaking a set of chitterlings or a well-boiled hog maw at them during the clear light of day! What consternation it would cause! And I saw myself advancing upon Bledsoe, standing bare of his false humility in the crowded lobby of Men's House, and seeing him there and him seeing me and ignoring me and me enraged and suddenly whipping out a foot or two of chitterlings, raw, uncleaned and dripping sticky circles on the floor as I shake them in his face, shouting:

  "Bledsoe, you're a shameless chitterling eater! I accuse you of relishing hog bowels! Ha! And not only do you eat them, you sneak and eat them in private when you think you're unobserved! You're a sneaking chitterling lover! I accuse you of indulging in a filthy habit, Bledsoe! Lug them out of there, Bledsoe! Lug them out so we can see! I accuse you before the eyes of the world!" And he lugs them out, yards of them, with mustard greens, and racks of pigs' ears, and pork chops and black-eyed peas with dull accusing eyes.

  I let out a wild laugh, almost choking over the yam as the scene spun before me. Why, with others present, it would be worse than if I had accused him of raping an old woman of ninety-nine years, weighing ninety pounds . . . blind in one eye and lame in the hip! Bledsoe would disintegrate, disinflate! With a profound sigh he'd drop his head in shame. He'd lose caste. The weekly newspapers would attack him. The captions over his picture: Prominent Educator Reverts to Field-Niggerism! His rivals would denounce him as a bad example for the youth. Editorials would demand that he either recant or retire from public life. In the South his white folks would desert him; he would be discussed far and wide, and all of the trustees' money couldn't prop up his sagging prestige. He'd end up an exile washing dishes at the Automat. For down South he'd be unable to get a job on the honey wagon.

  This is all very wild and childish, I thought, but to hell with being ashamed of what you liked. No more of that for me. I am what I am! I wolfed down the yam and ran back to the old man and handed him twenty cents. "Give me two more," I said.

  "Sho, all you want, long as I got 'em. I can see you a serious yam eater, young fellow. You eating them right away?"

  "As soon as you give them to me," I said.

  "You want 'em buttered?"

  "Please."

  "Sho, that way you can get the most out of 'em. Yessuh," he said, handing over the yams, "I can see you one of these old-fashioned yam eaters."

  "They're my birthmark," I said. "I yam what I am!"

  "Then you must be from South Car'lina," he said with a grin.

  "South Carolina nothing, where I come from we really go for yams."

  "Come back tonight or tom
orrow if you can eat some more," he called after me. "My old lady'll be out here with some hot sweet potato fried pies."

  Hot fried pies, I thought sadly, moving away. I would probably have indigestion if I ate one—now that I no longer felt ashamed of the things I had always loved, I probably could no longer digest very many of them. What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do? What a waste, what a senseless waste! But what of those things which you actually didn't like, not because you were not supposed to like them, not because to dislike them was considered a mark of refinement and education—but because you actually found them distasteful? The very idea annoyed me. How could you know? It involved a problem of choice. I would have to weigh many things carefully before deciding and there would be some things that would cause quite a bit of trouble, simply because I had never formed a personal attitude toward so much. I had accepted the accepted attitudes and it had made life seem simple . . .

  But not yams, I had no problem concerning them and I would eat them whenever and wherever I took the notion. Continue on the yam level and life would be sweet—though somewhat yellowish. Yet the freedom to eat yams on the street was far less than I had expected upon coming to the city. An unpleasant taste bloomed in my mouth now as I bit the end of the yam and threw it into the street; it had been frost-bitten.

  CHARLES WRIGHT

  from the wig

  1966

  One magnificent rat, premium blue-gray, and at least twenty-five inches long, walked boldly into the center of Nonnie Swift's cluttered living room, its near-metallic claws making a kind of snaredrum beat on the parquet floor.