If He Hollers Let Him Go (8 page)

‘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.

It was just turning dark when I pulled to the curb in front of the hotel. Alice clutched my arm and whispered, ‘Oh, no, Bob, no! I don’t feel like being refused. I’m not in the mood for it.’

‘What the hell!’ I said, startled. Some other girl, but not Alice; she was always going to some luncheon or dinner conference at the downtown hotels. Not so long before, one of the Negro weeklies had carried a picture of her knocking herself out down there with a bunch of city big shots. Then I got annoyed.

‘You couldn’t be getting cold feet after all the bragging you’ve been doing about never being refused at all the hotels you’re supposed to’ve stayed in all over the world? What’re you tryna do, make it light on me? You don’t have to feel you got to look out for me. These folks don’t worry me, not today.’

‘It’s not that,’ she argued tensely. ‘It’s just that it’s uncomfortable and it takes too much out of me.’

‘I got reservations,’ I said. ‘You don’t think I’m taking you in cold.’

‘It isn’t that,’ she tried again. ‘It just takes an effort, Bob, and I wanted to let my hair down and have some fun.’

I was getting sore. ‘You seem to have enough fun with the other people you go here with. Scared because you haven’t got the white folks to cover you?’

‘Shhhh!’ she cautioned under her breath. ‘Here comes the doorman.’

‘Goddamn, let him come!’ I said. ‘Am I supposed to shut up for the help?’ I knew I was being loud-mouthed but she’d shaken my poise and I was trying to get it back.

A big, paunched man in a powder-blue uniform with enough gold braid for an admiral and a face like a red-stained rock put a white-gloved hand on the car door and pulled it open. He helped Alice to the curb, touched my elbow as I followed her.

‘ ‘Tis a lovely evening,’ he said in a rich Irish brogue. His small blue eyes were blank.

‘Fine,’ I echoed, giving Alice my arm. ‘I’ll pick the car up after dinner.’

He didn’t bat an eye. Beckoning to his assistant, a tall, sallow-faced youth in the same kind of uniform, he said, ‘Park the gentleman’s car,’ then walked with us to the glass door and held it open. That went off all right.

But when we mounted the red-carpeted stairs and stepped into the full view of the lobby we brought on a yellow alert. The place was filled with solid white America: rich-looking, elderly couples, probably retired; the still active executive type in their forties and fifties, faces too red and hair too thin, clad in expensive suits which didn’t hide their paunches, mostly with wives who refused to give up; and the younger folks no more than half of whom were in uniform, with their brittle young women with rouge-scarred mouths and hard, hunting eyes. There was a group of elderly Army officers, a brigadier-general, two colonels, and a major; and apart from them a group of young naval officers looking very white—ensigns perhaps. I didn’t see but one Jew I recognized as a Jew, and nobody of any other race at all. And I only noticed a few couples in evening dress.

It seemed that to a person everyone froze. It started at the front where we were first noticed, and ran the length and breadth of the room, including the room clerks, the porters, the bellmen, the people behind desks. Many were caught in awkward positions, some in the middle of a gesture, some with their mouths half open. Then suddenly there was a concerted effort to ignore us and only a few continued to stare.

‘The great white world,’ I said flippantly, leaning slightly toward Alice as we walked the gauntlet of the room. ‘Strictly D-Day. Now I know how a fly feels in a glass of buttermilk.’

She moved like a sleepwalker, her nails biting into my arm as she clung to it. Her shoulders were high, square, stiff, and her face was set in rigid lines, making her seem a hard, harried thirty. She didn’t speak.