The Ways of White Folks Page 2

  After ten days, Mrs. Art and her daughter came back. But Jessie was thinner and paler than she’d ever been in her life. There was no light in her eyes at all. Mrs. Art looked a little scared as they got off the train.

  “She had an awful attack of indigestion in Kansas City,” she told the neighbors and club women. “That’s why I stayed away so long, waiting for her to be able to travel. Poor Jessie! She looks healthy, but she’s never been a strong child. She’s one of the worries of my life.” Mrs. Art talked a lot, explained a lot, about how Jessie had eaten the wrong things in Kansas City.

  At home, Jessie went to bed. She wouldn’t eat. When Cora brought her food up, she whispered, “The baby’s gone.”

  Cora’s face went dark. She bit her lips to keep from cursing. She put her arms about Jessie’s neck. The girl cried. Her food went untouched.

  A week passed. They tried to make Jessie eat then. But the food wouldn’t stay on her stomach. Her eyes grew yellow, her tongue white, her heart acted crazy. They called in old Doctor Brown, but within a month (as quick as that) Jessie died.

  She never saw the Greek boy any more. Indeed, his father had lost his license, “due to several complaints by the mothers of children, backed by the Woman’s Club,” that he was selling tainted ice-cream. Mrs. Art Studevant had started a campaign to rid the town of objectionable tradespeople and questionable characters. Greeks were bound to be one or the other. For a while they even closed up Pa Jenkins’ favorite bootlegger. Mrs. Studevant thought this would please Cora, but Cora only said, “Pa’s been drinkin’ so long he just as well keep on.” She refused further to remark on her employer’s campaign of purity. In the midst of this clean-up Jessie died.

  On the day of the funeral, the house was stacked with flowers. (They held the funeral, not at the church, but at home, on account of old Grandma Studevant’s infirmities.) All the family dressed in deep mourning. Mrs. Art was prostrate. As the hour for the services approached, she revived, however, and ate an omelette, “to help me go through the afternoon.”

  “And Cora,” she said, “cook me a little piece of ham with it. I feel so weak.”

  “Yes, m’am.”

  The senior class from the high-school came in a body. The Woman’s Club came with their badges. The Reverend Doctor McElroy had on his highest collar and longest coat. The choir sat behind the coffin, with a special soloist to sing “He Feedeth His Flocks Like a Shepherd.” It was a beautiful Spring afternoon, and a beautiful funeral.

  Except that Cora was there. Of course, her presence created no comment (she was the family servant), but it was what she did, and how she did it, that has remained the talk of Melton to this day—for Cora was not humble in the face of death.

  When the Reverend Doctor McElroy had finished his eulogy, and the senior class had read their memorials, and the songs had been sung, and they were about to allow the relatives and friends to pass around for one last look at Jessie Studevant, Cora got up from her seat by the dining-room door. She said, “Honey, I want to say something.” She spoke as if she were addressing Jessie. She approached the coffin and held out her brown hands over the white girl’s body. Her face moved in agitation. People sat stone-still and there was a long pause. Suddenly she screamed. “They killed you! And for nothin’.… They killed your child.… They took you away from here in the Springtime of your life, and now you’se gone, gone, gone!”

  Folks were paralyzed in their seats.

  Cora went on: “They preaches you a pretty sermon and they don’t say nothin’. They sings you a song, and they don’t say nothin’. But Cora’s here, honey, and she’s gone tell ’em what they done to you. She’s gonna tell ’em why they took you to Kansas City.”

  A loud scream rent the air. Mrs. Art fell back in her chair, stiff as a board. Cousin Nora and sister Mary sat like stones. The men of the family rushed forward to grab Cora. They stumbled over wreaths and garlands. Before they could reach her, Cora pointed her long fingers at the women in black and said, “They killed you, honey. They killed you and your child. I told ’em you loved it, but they didn’t care. They killed it before it was …”

  A strong hand went around Cora’s waist. Another grabbed her arm. The Studevant males half pulled, half pushed her through the aisles of folding chairs, through the crowded dining-room, out into the empty kitchen, through the screen door into the backyard. She struggled against them all the way, accusing their women. At the door she sobbed, great tears coming for the love of Jessie.

  She sat down on a wash-bench in the backyard, crying. In the parlor she could hear the choir singing weakly. In a few moments she gathered herself together, and went back into the house. Slowly, she picked up her few belongings from the kitchen and pantry, her aprons and her umbrella, and went off down the alley, home to Ma. Cora never came back to work for the Studevants.

  Now she and Ma live from the little garden they raise, and from the junk Pa collects—when they can take by main force a part of his meager earnings before he buys his licker.

  Anyhow, on the edge of Melton, the Jenkins niggers, Pa and Ma and Cora, somehow manage to get along.

  2

  ——

  SLAVE ON THE BLOCK

  THEY WERE PEOPLE who went in for Negroes—Michael and Anne—the Carraways. But not in the social-service, philanthropic sort of way, no. They saw no use in helping a race that was already too charming and naive and lovely for words. Leave them unspoiled and just enjoy them, Michael and Anne felt. So they went in for the Art of Negroes—the dancing that had such jungle life about it, the songs that were so simple and fervent, the poetry that was so direct, so real. They never tried to influence that art, they only bought it and raved over it, and copied it. For they were artists, too.

  In their collection they owned some Covarrubias originals. Of course Covarrubias wasn’t a Negro, but how he caught the darky spirit! They owned all the Robeson records and all the Bessie Smith. And they had a manuscript of Countee Cullen’s. They saw all the plays with or about Negroes, read all the books, and adored the Hall Johnson Singers. They had met Doctor DuBois, and longed to meet Carl Van Vechten. Of course they knew Harlem like their own backyard, that is, all the speakeasies and night clubs and dance halls, from the Cotton Club and the ritzy joints where Negroes couldn’t go themselves, down to places like the Hot Dime, where white folks couldn’t get in—unless they knew the man. (And tipped heavily.)

  They were acquainted with lots of Negroes, too—but somehow the Negroes didn’t seem to like them very much. Maybe the Carraways gushed over them too soon. Or maybe they looked a little like poor white folks, although they were really quite well off. Or maybe they tried too hard to make friends, dark friends, and the dark friends suspected something. Or perhaps their house in the Village was too far from Harlem, or too hard to find, being back in one of those queer and expensive little side streets that had once been alleys before the art invasion came. Anyway, occasionally, a furtive Negro might accept their invitation for tea, or cocktails; and sometimes a lesser Harlem celebrity or two would decorate their rather slow parties; but one seldom came back for more. As much as they loved Negroes, Negroes didn’t seem to love Michael and Anne.

  But they were blessed with a wonderful colored cook and maid—until she took sick and died in her room in their basement. And then the most marvellous ebony boy walked into their life, a boy as black as all the Negroes they’d ever known put together.

  “He is the jungle,” said Anne when she saw him.

  “He’s ‘I Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray,’ ” said Michael.

  For Anne thought in terms of pictures: she was a painter. And Michael thought in terms of music: he was a composer for the piano. And they had a most wonderful idea of painting pictures and composing music that went together, and then having a joint “concert-exhibition” as they would call it. Her pictures and his music. The Carraways, a sonata and a picture, a fugue and a picture. It would be lovely, and such a novelty, people would have to like it. And many of th
eir things would be Negro. Anne had painted their maid six times. And Michael had composed several themes based on the spirituals, and on Louis Armstrong’s jazz. Now here was this ebony boy. The essence in the flesh.

  They had nearly missed the boy. He had come, when they were out, to gather up the things the cook had left, and take them to her sister in Jersey. It seems that he was the late cook’s nephew. The new colored maid had let him in and given him the two suitcases of poor dear Emma’s belongings, and he was on his way to the Subway. That is, he was in the hall, going out just as the Carraways, Michael and Anne, stepped in. They could hardly see the boy, it being dark in the hall, and he being dark, too.

  “Hello,” they said. “Is this Emma’s nephew?”

  “Yes’m,” said the maid. “Yes’m.”

  “Well, come in,” said Anne, “and let us see you. We loved your aunt so much. She was the best cook we ever had.”

  “You don’t know where I could get a job, do you?” said the boy. This took Michael and Anne back a bit, but they rallied at once. So charming and naive to ask right away for what he wanted.

  Anne burst out, “You know, I think I’d like to paint you.”

  Michael said, “Oh, I say now, that would be lovely! He’s so utterly Negro.”

  The boy grinned.

  Anne said, “Could you come back tomorrow?”

  And the boy said, “Yes, indeed. I sure could.”

  The upshot of it was that they hired him. They hired him to look after the garden, which was just about as big as Michael’s grand piano—only a little square behind the house. You know those Village gardens. Anne sometimes painted it. And occasionally they set the table there for four on a spring evening. Nothing grew in the garden really, practically nothing. But the boy said he could plant things. And they had to have some excuse to hire him.

  The boy’s name was Luther. He had come from the South to his relatives in Jersey, and had had only one job since he got there, shining shoes for a Greek in Elizabeth. But the Greek fired him because the boy wouldn’t give half his tips over to the proprietor.

  “I never heard of a job where I had to pay the boss, instead of the boss paying me,” said Luther. “Not till I got here.”

  “And then what did you do?” said Anne.

  “Nothing. Been looking for a job for the last four months.”

  “Poor boy,” said Michael; “poor, dear boy.”

  “Yes,” said Anne. “You must be hungry.” And they called the cook to give him something to eat.

  Luther dug around in the garden a little bit that first day, went out and bought some seeds, came back and ate some more. They made a place for him to sleep in the basement by the furnace. And the next day Anne started to paint him, after she’d bought the right colors.

  “He’ll be good company for Mattie,” they said. “She claims she’s afraid to stay alone at night when we’re out, so she leaves.” They suspected, though, that Mattie just liked to get up to Harlem. And they thought right. Mattie was not as settled as she looked. Once out, with the Savoy open until three in the morning, why come home? That was the way Mattie felt.

  In fact, what happened was that Mattie showed Luther where the best and cheapest hot spots in Harlem were located. Luther hadn’t even set foot in Harlem before, living twenty-eight miles away, as he did, in Jersey, and being a kind of quiet boy. But the second night he was there Mattie said, “Come on, let’s go. Working for white folks all day, I’m tired. They needn’t think I was made to answer telephones all night.” So out they went.

  Anne noticed that most mornings Luther would doze almost as soon as she sat him down to pose, so she eventually decided to paint Luther asleep. “The Sleeping Negro,” she would call it. Dear, natural childlike people, they would sleep anywhere they wanted to. Anyway, asleep, he kept still and held the pose.

  And he was an adorable Negro. Not tall, but with a splendid body. And a slow and lively smile that lighted up his black, black face, for his teeth were very white, and his eyes, too. Most effective in oil and canvas. Better even than Emma had been. Anne could stare at him at leisure when he was asleep. One day she decided to paint him nude, or at least half nude. A slave picture, that’s what she would do. The market at New Orleans for a background. And call it “The Boy on the Block.”

  So one morning when Luther settled down in his sleeping pose, Anne said, “No,” she had finished that picture. She wanted to paint him now representing to the full the soul and sorrow of his people. She wanted to paint him as a slave about to be sold. And since slaves in warm climates had no clothes, would he please take off his shirt.

  Luther smiled a sort of embarrassed smile and took off his shirt.

  “Your undershirt, too,” said Anne. But it turned out that he had on a union suit, so he had to go out and change altogether. He came back and mounted the box that Anne said would serve just then for a slave block, and she began to sketch. Before luncheon Michael came in, and went into rhapsodies over Luther on the box without a shirt, about to be sold into slavery. He said he must put him into music right now. And he went to the piano and began to play something that sounded like Deep River in the jaws of a dog, but Michael said it was a modern slave plaint, 1850 in terms of 1933. Vieux Carré remembered on 135th Street. Slavery in the Cotton Club.

  Anne said, “It’s too marvellous!” And they painted and played till dark, with rest periods in between for Luther. Then they all knocked off for dinner. Anne and Michael went out later to one of Lew Leslie’s new shows. And Luther and Mattie said, “Thank God!” and got dressed up for Harlem.

  Funny, they didn’t like the Carraways. They treated them nice and paid them well. “But they’re too strange,” said Mattie, “they makes me nervous.”

  “They is mighty funny,” Luther agreed.

  They didn’t understand the vagaries of white folks, neither Luther nor Mattie, and they didn’t want to be bothered trying.

  “I does my work,” said Mattie. “After that I don’t want to be painted, or asked to sing songs, nor nothing like that.”

  The Carraways often asked Luther to sing, and he sang. He knew a lot of southern worksongs and reels, and spirituals and ballads.

  “Dear Ma, I’m in hard luck:

  Three days since I et,

  And the stamp on this letter’s

  Gwine to put me in debt.”

  The Carraways allowed him to neglect the garden altogether. About all Luther did was pose and sing. And he got tired of that.

  Indeed, both Luther and Mattie became a bit difficult to handle as time went on. The Carraways blamed it on Mattie. She had got hold of Luther. She was just simply spoiling a nice simple young boy. She was old enough to know better. Mattie was in love with Luther.

  At least, he slept with her. The Carraways discovered this one night about one o’clock when they went to wake Luther up (the first time they’d ever done such a thing) and ask him if he wouldn’t sing his own marvellous version of John Henry for a man who had just come from Saint Louis and was sailing for Paris tomorrow. But Luther wasn’t in his own bed by the furnace. There was a light in Mattie’s room, so Michael knocked softly. Mattie said, “Who’s that?” And Michael poked his head in, and here were Luther and Mattie in bed together!

  Of course, Anne condoned them. “It’s so simple and natural for Negroes to make love.” But Mattie, after all, was forty if she was a day. And Luther was only a kid. Besides Anne thought that Luther had been ever so much nicer when he first came than he was now. But from so many nights at the Savoy, he had become a marvellous dancer, and he was teaching Anne the Lindy Hop to Cab Calloway’s records. Besides, her picture of “The Boy on the Block” wasn’t anywhere near done. And he did take pretty good care of the furnace. So they kept him. At least, Anne kept him, although Michael said he was getting a little bored with the same Negro always in the way.

  For Luther had grown a bit familiar lately. He smoked up all their cigarettes, drank their wine, told jokes on them to their friends
, and sometimes even came upstairs singing and walking about the house when the Carraways had guests in who didn’t share their enthusiasm for Negroes, natural or otherwise.

  Luther and Mattie together were a pair. They quite frankly lived with one another now. Well, let that go. Anne and Michael prided themselves on being different; artists, you know, and liberal-minded people—maybe a little scatter-brained, but then (secretly, they felt) that came from genius. They were not ordinary people, bothering about the liberties of others. Certainly, the last thing they would do would be to interfere with the delightful simplicity of Negroes.

  But Mattie must be giving Luther money and buying him clothes. He was really dressing awfully well. And on her Thursday afternoons off she would come back loaded down with packages. As far as the Carraways could tell, they were all for Luther.

  And sometimes there were quarrels drifting up from the basement. And often, all too often, Mattie had moods. Then Luther would have moods. And it was pretty awful having two dark and glowering people around the house. Anne couldn’t paint and Michael couldn’t play.

  One day, when she hadn’t seen Luther for three days, Anne called downstairs and asked him if he wouldn’t please come up and take off his shirt and get on the box. The picture was almost done. Luther came dragging his feet upstairs and humming:

  “Before I’d be a slave

  I’d be buried in ma grave

  And go home to my Jesus

  And be free.”

  And that afternoon he let the furnace go almost out.

  That was the state of things when Michael’s mother (whom Anne had never liked) arrived from Kansas City to pay them a visit. At once neither Mattie nor Luther liked her either. She was a mannish old lady, big and tall, and inclined to be bossy. Mattie, however, did spruce up her service, cooked delicious things, and treated Mrs. Carraway with a great deal more respect than she did Anne.