The Ways of White Folks Page 4

  But one night he walked out of the house for the last time. The moon had risen and Roy scarcely needed to light the oil lamp to dress by when he got up. The moon shone into his little room, across the white counterpane of his bed, down onto the bags with the bright stickers piled against the wall. It glistened on the array of medicine bottles on the side table. But Roy lighted the light, the better to see himself in the warped mirror of the dresser. Ashy pale his face was, that had once been brown. His cheeks were sunken. Trembling, he put on his suit and spats and his yellow gloves and soft felt hat. He got into an overcoat. He took a cane that he carried lately from weakness rather than from style. And he went out into the autumn moonlight.

  Tiptoeing through the parlor, he heard his mother snoring on the couch there. (She had given up her room to him.) The front door was still unlocked. His brothers, Roy thought, were out with their girl friends. His sister had gone to bed.

  In the streets it was very quiet. Misty with moonlight, the trees stood half clad in autumn leaves. Roy walked under the dry falling leaves toward the center of the town, breathing in the moonlight air and swinging his cane. Night and the streets always made him feel better. He remembered the boulevards of Paris and the Unter den Linden. He remembered Tauber singing Wien, Du Stadt Meiner Traume. His mind went back to the lights and the music of the cities of Europe. How like a dream that he had ever been in Europe at all, he thought. Ma never had any money. Her kids had barely managed to get through the grade school. There was no higher school for Negroes in Hopkinsville. For him there had been only a minstrel show to run away with for further education. Then that chance with a jazz band going to Berlin. And his violin for a mistress all the time—with the best teachers his earnings could pay for abroad. Jazz at night and the classics in the morning. Hard work and hard practice, until his violin sang like nobody’s business. Music, real music! Then he began to cough in Berlin.

  Roy was passing lots of people now in the brightness of the main street, but he saw none of them. He saw only dreams and memories, and heard music. Some of the people stopped to stare and grin at the flare of the European coat on his slender brown body. Spats and a cane on a young nigger in Hopkinsville, Missouri! What’s the big idea, heh? A little white boy or two catcalled, “Hey, coon!” But everything might have been all right, folks might only have laughed or commented and cussed, had not a rather faded woman in a cheap coat and a red hat, a white woman, stepping out of the drug store just as Roy passed, bowed pleasantly to him, “Good evening.”

  Roy started, bowed, nodded, “Good evening, Miss Reese,” and was glad to see her. Forgetting he wasn’t in Europe, he took off his hat and his gloves, and held out his hand to this lady who understood music. They smiled at each other, the sick young colored man and the aging music teacher in the light of the main street. Then she asked him if he was still working on the Sarasate.

  “Yes,” Roy said. “It’s lovely.”

  “And have you heard that marvellous Heifetz record of it?” Miss Reese inquired.

  Roy opened his mouth to reply when he saw the woman’s face suddenly grow pale with horror. Before he could turn around to learn what her eyes had seen, he felt a fist like a ton of bricks strike his jaw. There was a flash of lightning in his brain as his head hit the edge of the plate glass window of the drug store. Miss Reese screamed. The sidewalk filled with white young ruffians with red-necks, open sweaters, and fists doubled up to strike. The movies had just let out and the crowd, passing by and seeing, objected to a Negro talking to a white woman—insulting a White Woman—attacking a WHITE woman-RAPING A WHITE WOMAN. They saw Roy remove his gloves and bow. When Miss Reese screamed alter Roy had been struck, they were sure he had been making love to her. And before the story got beyond the rim of the crowd, Roy had been trying to rape her, right there on the main street in front of the brightly-lighted windows of the drug store. Yes, he did, too! Yes, sir!

  So they knocked Roy down. They trampled on his hat and cane and gloves as a dozen men tried to get to him to pick him up—so some one else could have the pleasure of knocking him down again. They struggled over the privilege of knocking him down.

  Roy looked up from the sidewalk at the white mob around him. His mouth was full of blood and his eyes burned. His clothes were dirty. He wondered why Miss Reese had stopped to ask him about Sarasate. He knew he would never get home to his mother now.

  Some one jerked him to his feet. Some one spat in his face. (It looked like his old playmate, Charlie Mumford.) Somebody cussed him for being a nigger, and another kicked him from behind. And all the men and boys in the lighted street began to yell and scream like mad people, and to snarl like dogs, and to pull at the little Negro in spats they were dragging through the town towards the woods.

  The little Negro whose name was Roy Williams began to choke on the blood in his mouth. And the roar of their voices and the scuff of their feet were split by the moonlight into a thousand notes like a Beethoven sonata. And when the white folks left his brown body, stark naked, strung from a tree at the edge of town, it hung there all night, like a violin for the wind to play.

  4

  ——

  PASSING

  Chicago,

  Sunday, Oct. 10.

  DEAR MA,

  I felt like a dog, passing you downtown last night and not speaking to you. You were great, though. Didn’t give a sign that you even knew me, let alone I was your son. If I hadn’t had the girl with me, Ma, we might have talked. I’m not as scared as I used to be about somebody taking me for colored any more just because I’m seen talking on the street to a Negro. I guess in looks I’m sort of suspect-proof, anyway. You remember what a hard time I used to have in school trying to convince teachers I was really colored. Sometimes, even after they met you, my mother, they wouldn’t believe it. They just thought I had a mulatto mammy, I guess. Since I’ve begun to pass for white, nobody has ever doubted that I am a white man. Where I work, the boss is a Southerner and is always cussing out Negroes in my presence, not dreaming I’m one. It is to laugh!

  Funny thing, though, Ma, how some white people certainly don’t like colored people, do they? (If they did, then I wouldn’t have to be passing to keep my good job.) They go out of their way sometimes to say bad things about colored folks, putting it out that all of us are thieves and liars, or else diseased—consumption and syphilis, and the like. No wonder it’s hard for a black man to get a good job with that kind of false propaganda going around. I never knew they made a practice of saying such terrible things about us until I started passing and heard their conversations and lived their life.

  But I don’t mind being “white”, Ma, and it was mighty generous of you to urge me to go ahead and make use of my light skin and good hair. It got me this job, Ma, where I still get $65 a week in spite of the depression. And I’m in line for promotion to the chief office secretary, if Mr. Weeks goes to Washington. When I look at the colored boy porter who sweeps out the office, I think that that’s what I might be doing if I wasn’t light-skinned enough to get by. No matter how smart that boy’d get to be, they wouldn’t hire him for a clerk in the office, not if they knew it. Only for a porter. That’s why I sometimes get a kick out of putting something over on the boss, who never dreams he’s got a colored secretary.

  But, Ma, I felt mighty bad about last night. The first time we’d met in public that way. That’s the kind of thing that makes passing hard, having to deny your own family when you see them. Of course, I know you and I both realize it is all for the best, but anyhow it’s terrible. I love you, Ma, and hate to do it, even if you say you don’t mind.

  But what did you think of the girl with me, Ma? She’s the kid I’m going to marry. Pretty good looking, isn’t she? Nice disposition. The parents are well fixed. Her folks are German-Americans and don’t have much prejudice about them, either. I took her to see a colored revue last week and she thought it was great. She said, “Darkies are so graceful and gay.” I wonder what she would have said if I’d
told her I was colored, or half-colored—that my old man was white, but you weren’t? But I guess I won’t go into that. Since I’ve made up my mind to live in the white world, and have found my place in it (a good place), why think about race any more? I’m glad I don’t have to, I know that much.

  I hope Charlie and Gladys don’t feel bad about me. It’s funny I was the only one of the kids light enough to pass. Charlie’s darker than you, even, Ma. I know he sort of resented it in school when the teachers used to take me for white, before they knew we were brothers. I used to feel bad about it, too, then. But now I’m glad you backed me up, and told me to go ahead and get all I could out of life. That’s what I’m going to do, Ma. I’m going to marry white and live white, and if any of my kids are born dark I’ll swear they aren’t mine. I won’t get caught in the mire of color again. Not me. I’m free, Ma, free!

  I’d be glad, though, if I could get away from Chicago, transferred to the New York office, or the San Francisco branch of the firm—somewhere where what happened last night couldn’t ever occur again. It was awful passing you and not speaking. And if Gladys or Charlie were to meet me in the street, they might not be as tactful as you were—because they don’t seem to be very happy about my passing for white. I don’t see why, though. I’m not hurting them any, and I send you money every week and help out just as much as they do, if not more. Tell them not to queer me, Ma, if they should ever run into me and the girl friend any place. Maybe it would have been better if you and they had stayed in Cincinnati and I’d come away alone when we decided to move after the old man died. Or at least, we should have gone to different towns, shouldn’t we?

  Gee, Ma, when I think of how papa left everything to his white family, and you couldn’t legally do anything for us kids, my blood boils. You wouldn’t have a chance in a Kentucky court, I know, but maybe if you’d tried anyway, his white children would have paid you something to shut up. Maybe they wouldn’t want it known in the papers that they had colored brothers. But you was too proud, wasn’t you, Ma? I wouldn’t have been so proud.

  Well, he did buy you a house and send all us kids through school. I’m glad I finished college in Pittsburgh before he died. It was too bad about Charlie and Glad having to drop out, but I hope Charlie gets something better to do than working in a garage. And from what you told me in your last letter about Gladys, I don’t blame you for being worried about her—wanting to go in the chorus of one of those South Side cabarets. Lord! But I know it’s really tough for girls to get any kind of a job during this depression, especially for colored girls, even if Gladys is high yellow, and smart. But I hope you can keep her home, and out of those South Side dumps. They’re no place for a good girl.

  Well, Ma, I will close because I promised to take my weakness to the movies this evening. Isn’t she sweet to look at, all blonde and blue-eyed? We’re making plans about our house when we get married. We’re going to take a little apartment on the North Side, in a good neighborhood, out on one of those nice quiet side streets where there are trees. I will take a box at the Post Office for your mail. Anyhow, I’m glad there’s nothing to stop letters from crossing the color-line. Even if we can’t meet often, we can write, can’t we, Ma?

  With love from your son,

  JACK.

  5

  ——

  A GOOD JOB GONE

  IT WAS A GOOD JOB. Best job I ever had. Got it my last year in high school and it took me damn near through college. I’m sure sorry it didn’t last. I made good money, too. Made so much I changed from City College to Columbia my Sophomore year. Mr. Lloyd saw to it I got a good education. He had nothing against the Negro race, he said, and I don’t believe he did. He certainly treated me swell from the time I met him till that high brown I’m gonna tell you about drove him crazy.

  Now, Mr. Lloyd was a man like this: he had plenty of money, he liked his licker, and he liked his women. That was all. A damn nice guy—till he got hold of this jane from Harlem. Or till she got hold of him. My people—they won’t do. They’d mess up the Lord if He got too intimate with ’em. Poor Negroes! I guess I was to blame. I should of told Mr. Lloyd she didn’t mean him no good. But I was minding my own business, and I minded it too well.

  That was one of the things Mr. Lloyd told me when I went to work there. He said, “Boy, you’re working for me—nobody else. Keep your mouth shut about what goes on here, and I’ll look out for you. You’re in school, ain’t you? Well, you won’t have to worry about money to buy books and take your friends out—if you stay with me.”

  He paid me twenty-two dollars a week, and I ate and slept in. He had a four room apartment, as cozy a place as you’d want to see, looking right over Riverside Drive. Swell view. In the summer when Mr. Lloyd was in Paris, I didn’t have a damn thing to do but eat and sleep, and air the furniture. I got so tired that I went to summer school.

  “What you gonna be, boy?” he said.

  I said, “A dentist, I reckon.”

  He said, “Go to it. They make a hell of a lot of money—if they got enough sex appeal.”

  He was always talking about sex appeal and lovin’. He knew more dirty stories, Mr. Lloyd did! And he liked his women young and pretty. That’s about all I’d do, spend my time cleaning up after some woman he’d have around, or makin’ sandwiches and drinks in the evenings. When I did something extra, he’d throw me a fiver any time. I made oodles o’ money. Hell of a fine guy, Mr. Lloyd, with his 40-11 pretty gals—right out of the Scandals or the back pages of Vanity Fair—sweet and willing.

  His wife was paralyzed, so I guess he had to have a little outside fun. They lived together in White Plains. But he had a suite in the Hotel Roosevelt, and a office down on Broad. He says, when I got the job, “Boy, no matter what you find out about me, where I live, or where I work, don’t you connect up with no place but here. No matter what happens on Riverside Drive, don’t you take it no further.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Lloyd,” I said, I knew where my bread was buttered. So I never went near the office or saw any of his other help but the chauffeur—and him a Jap.

  Only thing I didn’t like about the job, he used to bring some awfully cheap women there sometimes—big timers, but cheap inside. They didn’t know how to treat a servant. One of ’em used to nigger and darkie me around, till I got her told right quietly one time, and Mr. Lloyd backed me up.

  The boss said, “This is no ordinary boy, Lucille. True, he’s my servant, but I’ve got him in Columbia studying to be a dentist, and he’s just as white inside as he is black. Treat him right, or I’ll see why.” And it wasn’t long before this Lucille dame was gone, and he had a little Irish girl with blue eyes he treated mean as hell.

  Another thing I didn’t like, though. Sometimes I used to have to drink a lot with him. When there was no women around, and Mr. Lloyd would get one of his blue spells and start talking about his wife, and how she hadn’t walked for eighteen years, just laying flat on her back, after about an hour of this, he’d want me to start drinking with him. And when he felt good from licker he’d start talking about women in general, and he’d ask me what they were like in Harlem. Then he’d tell me what they were like in Montreal, and Havana, and Honolulu. He’d even had Gypsy women in Spain, Mr. Lloyd.

  Then he would drink and drink, and make me drink with him. And we’d both be so drunk I couldn’t go to classes the next morning, and he wouldn’t go to the office all day. About four o’clock he’d send me for some clam broth and an American Mercury, so he could sober up on Mencken. I’d give him an alcohol rub, then he’d go off to the Roosevelt and have dinner with the society folks he knew. I might not see him again for days. But he’d slip me a greenback usually.

  “Boy, you’ll never lose anything through sticking with me! Here,” and it would be a fiver.

  Sometimes I wouldn’t see Mr. Lloyd for weeks. Then he’d show up late at night with a chippie, and I’d start making drinks and sandwiches and smoothing down the bed. Then there’d be a round o’ women, six o
r eight different ones in a row, for days. And me working my hips off keeping ’em fed and lickered up. This would go on till he got tired, and had the blues again. Then he’d beat the hell out of one of ’em and send her off. Then we’d get drunk. When he sobered up he’d telephone for his chauffeur and drive to White Plains to see his old lady, or down to the hotel where he lived with a secretary. And that would be that.

  He had so damn much money, Mr. Lloyd. I don’t see where folks get so much cash. But I don’t care so long as they’re giving some of it to me. And if it hadn’t been for this colored woman, boy, I’d still be sitting pretty.

  I don’t know where he got her. Out of one of the Harlem night clubs, I guess. They came bustin’ in about four o’clock one morning. I heard a woman laughing in the living-room, and I knew it was a colored laugh—one of ours. So deep and pretty, it couldn’t have been nothing else. I got up, of course, like I always did when I heard Mr. Lloyd come in. I broke some ice, and took ’em out some drinks.

  Yep, she was colored, all right. One of those golden browns, like an Alabama moon. Swell looking kid. She had the old man standing on his ears. I never saw him looking so happy before. She kept him laughing till daylight, hugging and kissing. She had a hot line, that kid did, without seemin’ serious. He fell for it. She hadn’t worked in Harlem speakeasies for nothing. Jesus! She was like gin and vermouth mixed. You know!

  We got on swell, too, that girl and I. “Hy, Pal,” she said when she saw me bringing out the drinks. “If it ain’t old Harlem, on the Drive.”

  She wasn’t a bit hinkty like so many folks when they’re light-complexioned and up in the money. If she hadn’t been the boss’s girl, I’d have tried to make her myself. But she had a black boy friend—a number writer on 135th Street—so she didn’t need me. She was in love with him. Used to call him up soon as the boss got in the elevator bound for the office.