If he hollers let him go

CHAPTER VI

I called the best hotel in town when I got home and made reservations for a deuce at nine o'clock. The head waiter's voice was very courteous: 'Thank you, Mr. Jones.' I grinned to myself; he'd fall out if he knew I was a Negro, I thought.

Then I called Alice. I'd decided to knock myself out and when I told her to wear evening clothes her voice became excited. 'Now I know we're going to the Last Word.' That was a new club out on Central she'd been trying to get me to take her to ever since it opened; I suppose she figured that the people in her class didn't patronize such places and the only way she'd get there was for me to take her.

'Nope,' I said. 'The Avenue's out tonight.'

'You know I want to go to the Last Word,' she said. Her low, well-modulated voice was cajoling.

'That's not the mood,' I said. 'And anyway, nobody dresses for the Last Word.'

'Where, Bob, the Seven Nymphs?' That was a Hollywood joint where Negroes went sometimes.

'Nope, bigger and better,' I said.

'Don't tease me, Bob.' A thread of annoyance had come into her voice. 'I absolutely refuse to go unless you tell me now.'

'It's a secret,' I laughed. 'I'll call for you at eight.' I hung up before she had a chance to reply.

Ella Mae passed through the living room with the baby wrapped in a blanket. She had just finished bathing it. 'You oughta be 'shamed of yourself, teasing Alice like that,' she said.

'Don't you worry about Alice,' I told her. 'Alice can take care of herself.'

She began pinning a diaper on the baby. 'You're going to mess up yet,' she said. 'Alice don't know you like I do.'

I grinned at her. 'Nobody knows me like you do. You're my baby.' She snorted. I began peeling off my sport shirt. 'I'm just playing around with Alice until you and I figure out how to get rid of Henry,' I said. 'Then we're going to get married and I'll keep Alice as my Monday girl.'

She gave me a long peculiar look. Then suddenly she giggled. 'You'll have to raise Emerald.'

'Emerald what?' Then I laughed. 'I forgot her name was Emerald.' It always startled me. 'You sure did your baby a dirty trick,' I added.

'I think Emerald's a pretty name,' she defended. 'Prettier than Alice, anyway.'

'Emerald Brown,' I pronounced, going into my room to finish undressing. 'You must think she's gonna grow up to be one of the green people.'

She didn't reply.

'Well, it's your baby,' I said.

I took another shower and began dressing. When Ella Mae came into the kitchen to heat the baby bottle she said, 'You oughta be clean enough even for Alice now-two baths in one day.' Her voice was ridiculing.

'I'm tryna turn white,' I laughed.

'I wouldn' be s'prised none, lil as it's said,' she cracked back.

'You know how much I love the white folks,' I said; I couldn't let it go.

'You just ain't saying it, either,' she kept on. 'All that talking you do 'bout 'em all the time. I see you got the whitest coloured girl you could find.

'Damn, you sound like a black gal,' I said, a little surprised. 'I thought you liked Alice.'

'Oh, Alice is fine,' she said. 'Rich and light and almost white. You better hang on to her.'

'Okay, baby, I quit,' I said. I wondered what was eating her.

She went into her room and closed the door. I put on dinner clothes, cloth pumps, midnight-blue trousers, white silk shirt with a soft turned-down collar, a pointed-tip dubonnet bow, and a white jacket. I'd bought the outfit a year ago, but the only chance I'd had to wear it was at the Alpha formal at the Elks Hall during the Christmas season, except when I wore it down on the Avenue late at night as if I'd just come from some affair or other. I felt sharp in it.

I stepped out into the parlour and called Ella Mae. 'Come look at your sweet man, baby.'

She looked strictly evil when she stepped into the room. She gave me one look and said, 'All I hope is you don't come home mad and try to take it out on me.' Then she softened. 'You do look fine, sure 'nough.'

I grinned. 'Well, talk to me, baby.'

She stepped forward suddenly and pulled my face down and kissed me. She made her mouth wide so that her lips encircled mine completely, wet and soft; and her tongue came out and played across my lips, forcing itself between my teeth.

I pushed her away roughly, almost knocking her down. 'Goddamnit, quit teasing me!' I snarled.

'Just like a nigger,' she said angrily, blood reddening in her face. 'Get dressed up and can't nobody touch you. Shows you ain't used to nothing.'

'Hell, I wasn't even thinking about my clothes,' I said, stalking out.

Outside the setting sun slanted from the south with a yellowish, old-gold glow, and the air was warm and fragrant. It was the best part of the day in Los Angeles; the colours of flowers were more vivid, while the houses were less starkly white and the red-tiled roofs were weathered maroon. The irritation ironed quickly out of me and I got that bubbly, wonderful feeling again.

I glanced at my watch, saw that it was a quarter to, and hurried to the car. At Vernon I turned west to Normandie, driving straight into the sun; north on Normandie to Twentyeighth Street, then west past Western. This was the West Side, When you asked a Negro where he lived, and he said on the West Side, that was supposed to mean he was better than the Negroes who lived on the South Side; it was like the white folks giving a Beverly Hills address.

The houses were well kept, mostly white stucco or frame, typical one-storey California bungalows, averaging from six to ten rooms; here and there was a three- or four-storey apartment building. The lawns were green and well trimmed, bordered with various local plants and flowers. It was a pleasant neighbourhood, clean, quiet, well bred.

Alice's folks lived in a modern two-storey house in the middle of the block. I parked in front, strolled across the wet sidewalk to the little stone porch, and pushed the bell. Chimes sounded inside. The air smelled of freshly cut grass and gardenias in bloom. A car passed, leaving the smell of burnt gasoline. Some children were playing in the yard a couple of houses down, and all up and down the street people were working in their yards. I felt like an intruder and it made me slightly resentful.

The door opened noiselessly, and Mrs. Harrison said, 'Oh, it's you, Bob. Come right in, Alice will be ready shortly.'

I had to get my thoughts straightened out in a hurry. 'How are you today, Mrs. Harrison?' I said, following her into the small square hallway. 'How is Dr. Harrison?'

She was a very light-complexioned woman with sharp Caucasian features and glinting grey eyes. Her face was wrinkled with countless tiny lines and sagged about the jowls. She wore lipstick but no other make-up, and her fine grey hair was bobbed and carefully marcelled. She was aristocratic-looking enough, if that was what she wanted, but she had that look of withered soul and body that you see on the faces of many old white ladies in the South.

'Oh, the doctor is busy as usual,' she said in a cordial voice, turning left down three carpeted steps into the sunken living room. 'I've told the doctor a dozen times that he's just working himself to death, but there's nothing to do with him. He says there's a shortage of experienced physicians now and he's such a humanitarian at heart.'

I could picture the doctor, a little cheap, small-hearted, lecherous, cushy-mouthed, bald-headed, dried-up, parchment-coloured man in his late sixties, who figured he was a killer with the women. He was probably out chasing some chippy chick right then and I caught myself about to say, 'Strictly a humanitarian.'

Instead I said, 'Yes, he is,' lifting my feet high to keep from stumbling over the thick nap of the Orientals. Their house reminded me of a country club in Cleveland where I worked summers when I was in high school; you knew they had dough, you saw it, it was there, you didn't have to guess about it. 'Of course the money he's making ought to compensate in part,' I added evenly.

'Well, we could do without some of the money,' she began. 'It's so hard on all of us. You know Charles, our chauffeur, was drafted, and Norma left us to take a defence job. We only have Clara now, and she's getting so temperamental, I do declare-' She broke off, looking at me. 'Bob, you look very nice tonight. You wear evening attire very well indeed.'

'Almost as if I was a gentleman-or a waiter.' I grinned, dropping into a chair before the fireplace and fumbling for a cigarette. 'The boys out at the shipyard wouldn't know me now.'

She took a seat across from me and smiled graciously. 'I imagine some of the white young men at the shipyard in some of the more advanced departments are college-trained; but I understand our Negro workers are mostly Southern migrants.'

'Oh, there're quite a few Negro college graduates working in the various yards,' I said, and got my cigarette going.

'Oh, is that so?' She raised her eyebrows slightly. 'However, I don't imagine any of them have much occasion to wear evening attire.'

I blinked at her; I wondered why she was giving me all that. I knew her, I was one of the family, more or less. But I played along with her. 'No, I guess not. You can't be a gentleman and a worker too.'

'The doctor tells me that most working people spend their leisure time at the movies or in bars,' she went on. 'I think that's really a shame. Of course the doctor and I enjoy the legitimate theatre best, but since the war he hasn't been able to leave his practice long enough for us to visit New York City for the season. We have our season tickets to the Hollywood Bowl, of course-we're on the sponsor list, you know-but I do so wish we could go East this fall and see some of the new shows-'

I caught her digging for a breath and put in, 'Can I fix you a highball?' I knew it was crude, but if I had to listen to her I was at least going to have a drink.

'No thanks, dear,' she declined. 'The doctor has stopped me from drinking entirely. It aggravates my high blood pressure, you know. But fix one for yourself, do, if you like-and one for Alice too. She'll be down in just a moment, I'm sure.' When I stood up she added, 'You know where everything is, of course.'

'Yes, thanks,' I said. I went across the hallway into the doctor's pine-panelled study and mixed a couple of Scotch-and-sodas at his built-in bar. Then on second thought I took a couple of slugs straight to get even for the three drinks I'd bought him the last time I met him at a bar. I was grinning when I returned to the living-room.

'You look quite pleased about something today, Bob,' she observed. 'I suppose you're elated at the prospect of returning to college this fall.'

'This fall?' I looked at her.

'Alice tells me you're going to arrange your work so you can attend the university in the mornings,' she informed me.

'Oh yes, that's right.' I didn't want to tell her that was the first I'd heard about it. 'Yes, I'm going to join the ranks of the Negro professionals.'

'It gives me a feeling of personal triumph, too, to see our young men progress so,' she said. 'I like to think that the doctor and I have contributed by setting an example, by showing our young men just what they can accomplish if they try.'

That was my cue to say, 'Yes indeedy.' But she looked so goddamned smug and complacent, sitting there in her two-hundred-dollar chair, her feet planted in her three-thousand-dollar rug, waving two or three thousand dollars' worth of diamonds on her hands, bought with dough her husband had made overcharging poor hard-working coloured people for his incompetent services, that I had a crazy impulse to needle her. The Scotch had gone to work too.

So I said, 'Well now, to tell you the truth, Mrs. Harrison, what I'm so pleased about today is I've just found out how I can get even with the white folks.'

She couldn't have looked any more startled and horrified if I'd slapped her. 'Bob!' she said. 'Why, I never heard of such a thing!' Her hands made a fluttery, nervous gesture. 'Why on earth should you feel you have to get even with them?' But before I could reply she went on, 'Bob, you frighten me. You'll never make a success with that attitude. You mustn't think in terms of trying to get even with them, you must accept whatever they do for you and try to prove yourself worthy to be entrusted with more.' Now she was completely agitated. 'I'm really ashamed of you, Bob. How can you expect them to do anything for you if you're going to hate them?'

'I don't expect them to do anything for me they can get out of doing anyway,' I said.

'You've been talking to those Communist union agitators out at the shipyard,' she accused. 'You mustn't let them influence you, Bob, you mustn't listen to them.' She was genuinely concerned; I felt sorry for her. 'Take the advice of an old lady, Bob. The doctor and I have many, many white friends. They come here and dine with us and we go to their homes and dine with them. We have earned their respect and admiration and they accept us as social equals. But just a few of us have escaped, just a few of us.'

I started to say, 'Maybe they think the few of you are white,' but thought better of it.

'I'm really hurt and worried about you, Bob,' she went on incoherently. 'You must talk to Alice about this. White people are trying so hard to help us, we've got to earn our equality. We've got to show them that we're good enough, we've got to prove it to them. You know yourself, Bob, a lot of our people are just not worthy, they just don't deserve any more than they're getting. And they make it so hard for the rest of us. Just the other day the doctor went into a restaurant downtown where he's been eating for years and they didn't want to serve him. Southern Negroes are coming in here and making it hard for us…' Tears came into her eyes. 'We must pray and hope. We can't get everything we want overnight and we can't expect the white people to give us what we don't deserve. We must be patient, we must make progress…' She was just rattling off phrases now that didn't even make any sense to herself.

'Maybe the white folks can run faster than we can,' I muttered. 'Then what do we do?'

But she didn't even hear me. 'You must read Mrs. Roosevelt's article in the Negro Digest,' she was saying.

The old sister was so sincere I felt ashamed; I had no idea I'd touch her that much. I got up and took her hand. 'You're right, Mrs. Harrison,' I said. 'Perfectly right, you and Mrs. Roosevelt both.' I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying, 'How could you and Mrs. Roosevelt possibly be wrong?' Instead I said, 'I really didn't mean it the way you construed, but you're right about it.'

'Right about what?' Alice said from the foot of the spiral stairway, and fell into the living-room like Bette Davis, bigeyed and calisthenical and strictly sharp. She was togged in a flowing royal-purple chiffon evening gown with silver trimmings and a low square-cut neck that showed the tops of her creamy-white breasts with the darker disturbing seam down between; and her hair was swept up on top of her head in a turbulent billow and held by two silver combs that matched the silver trimmings of her gown-a tall willowy body falling to the floor with nothing but curves. Black elbow-length gloves showed a strip of creamy round arm. I gave her one look and caught an edge like a rash from head to foot, blinding and stinging. She was fine, fine, fine, so help me.

She must have caught it in that instant before I got it under control, for she blushed, and before she cut it off she showed me it was there. Then she smiled complacently and said, 'Thank you, darling. You look very nice yourself.' In her best social worker's voice. Everything went. It really and truly let me down.

'We're certainly going to be the people if we keep on trying,' I said. 'Either that or some reasonable facsimiles.'

Neither of them got it and I let it go. 'We were just talking about the Negro problem, and I was telling your mother she was right,' I explained as Alice came across the room and perched on the arm of my chair. 'I got a drink for you, honey,' I said, handing her the highball from the cocktail table.

Alice wasn't going to be concerned about the Negro problem. 'Mother, Loretta Fischer has bought a new mink coat,' she said as if positively shocked. 'I don't see how she does it.'

'I suppose Loretta will be the grand lady if William goes to Congress at ten thousand a year,' Mrs. Harrison said; then she turned to me. 'You know, Loretta's people never had anything and her mother worked in service to give her an education. Now that William is making a little money she's spending every penny.'

'I suppose she thinks that's what it's for,' I said absently, glancing at my watch. I patted Alice on her thigh. 'We're going to have to go, baby.'

'I think our people who're making money at this time should save it,' Mrs. Harrison said. 'That's all many of us are going to get out of it.'

'Some of us are going to get killed out of it,' I said.

Alice gave me a sharp look. 'You haven't been called, have you, Bob?' she asked.

'No, of course not,' I said too fast, then slowed up some. 'I don't think I'll be called.' I tapped the cocktail table. 'I'm knocking on wood anyway.'

'You won't be called,' Mrs. Harrison said. 'You're what they call a key man.'

'They better not calf him,' Alice said, brushing her fingers lightly down the back of my neck. 'Where are we going, darling?' she asked, standing up.

I grinned at her. 'It's still a secret.'

She made a face at me and ran upstairs after her wrap. Mrs. Harrison looked curious but didn't say anything. Alice returned with a black velvet cape and I held it for her, pressing her shoulders. Mrs. Harrison followed us to the door.

'You both look so nice, it's a pity you're not going to some inter-racial affair,' she said. 'I think now is the time we should make more social contacts with white people.'

'Oh, Mother, I don't want to always be running after white people whenever I go out anywhere,' Alice protested. 'I want to go slumming down on Central Avenue.'

'You sound just like the other white people,' I said to Alice.

Mrs. Harrison followed us out on the porch. 'You shouldn't feel that way about it,' she said to Alice. 'You should take pains to show them that you're not seeking their company, but you should seek more social association with them, I'm sure.'

'I'd really like to see how that's done,' I mumbled under my breath. Alice pinched me.

We said good-night and climbed into the car. At Western I leaned over and said, 'Kiss me, gorgeous.'

She touched my lips lightly with hers so as not to muss her make-up.