Strivers Row (30 page)

They still hadn't beaten the crowd. The stuffy cars filling up when they got to Second Avenue, and Delancey Street. Jammed with Italians and Jews and Ukrainians, whole families toting picnic baskets filled with coiled, bloody-smelling sausages and huge rounds of bread. Bottles of beer and homemade wine, towels and bicycle inner tubes, wide hats and umbrellas and jars of cold cream—anything to keep the sun off their wintry, greenish-white skin.

Jonah watching out carefully for any packs of white boys, as he always did when he went below 110th Street. But their train was too crowded with people for anybody to do anything but hang on to the dangling leather straps. When it finally emerged from underground and began to rattle through the flatlands of Brooklyn, he had gotten up on his knees, like a little boy, on the punctured straw matting that had been digging into his thighs the whole long trip. Turning his back on the turbulent, overpacked humanity of the car, careful not to disturb Sophia, by now dozing beside him in the stifling heat, but staring out his open window at the trim homes and lawns of Borough Park, and Bensonhurst, sliding by. Amazed as he always was by the vastness, the interminable expanse and endless variety of the greater City outside their own, dense little ghetto.

As the train clamored on through Brighton Beach, the first whiff of beach and the sea air came through the opened windows, and a murmur of pleasure arose spontaneously, ecstatically, from the throats of every family on the train. Then the doors were open at the Stilwell Avenue stop, and they were out and running, laughing and shouting down the broad ramps along with all the rest, the next tidal wave of people breaking over Surf Avenue—racing toward the boardwalk and the exotic wheels and towers of Luna Park, the great, trellised dome of Steeplechase, Funny Place.

Sophia ran with them, revived on a dime by their arrival at the ocean. She had seemed like a girl again, grinning back at him waifishly, as the skirt of her sundress swung up around her knees. Dancing out past the subway change booths, and the big candy stand with its red-and-white-striped peppermint pole. Beckoning to him, grabbing his head with both hands when he came to her, giggling and whispering into his ear:

“Let's be white people today!”

He had done everything that she said—letting her tell him how he should walk and talk, what sort of things he should say, and how to hold himself. They had gone down the boardwalk doing a running, surreptitious, parody of the white people all around them. Walking stiffly, holding their arms down carefully at their sides. Speaking in that strange, self-important nasal way white folks had. They had to cover their mouths with their hands to keep from laughing out loud, and Jonah was afraid they would be caught out, but the whites around them remained as oblivious and superior as ever.

“Most of all, it's the
attitude,
” she had told him.

“What?”

“You've got to
act
like you belong.”

Which had always been the key,
he thought now, remembering, as he prepared to step out of the twilight world under the train tracks and walk east toward Second Avenue. That had been the hardest part for him to learn, and the most exhilarating.
Still was.
Strolling into any place they wanted to—not glancing furtively at the man at the door, or behind the counter to see if they were not wanted. Taking the hands from their mouths, talking and laughing as brazenly as anyone else, acting as if they had a right to be anywhere at all they pleased, not just at the discretion of someone else.

As he could act now, straightening his tie in the glass of the cigar case one more time as he considered his options. The City his oyster for at least another hour. He might go to a gallery on 57th Street, or buy himself a crisp new shirt at Brooks Brothers, or browse through the jewelry cases at Tiffany's—imagining all of the nice things he would like to buy and take home to Amanda. Then maybe some good restaurant, or a hotel bar where he knew a
colored
man would not be served.

But today he already knew where he was going.
The Roanoke Hotel and Restaurant, 53rd and First Avenue.
The lunch hour was nearly over, he knew, the dining room would be emptying out—but the risk only made it all the more irresistible.

It was what Jonah usually ended up doing, going to some smart restaurant, or hotel bar where a colored man would not be served. It made him even more ashamed, thinking of the money he had dropped over the past few years in such silly, pretentious places. Yet it was nearly the only way he could
prove
himself, the only way he could really intrude on the white world, in the short time he had—

He had already been to the Roanoke. This past spring, two women from the church had been turned away from the hotel restaurant outright, told bluntly to their faces that it did not serve colored people. They had gone to Jonah, and he had agreed that he would try to help them, even though he had no idea what he could actually do, and his stomach had churned at the very idea of such a confrontation.

Nevertheless, the following Saturday afternoon he had returned to the Roanoke with the women, demanding to see the manager. Instead, a gentleman who was obviously the maître d' had appeared—a tall, insolent, tired-looking man in a tuxedo, with the thin moustache and brilliantined, black hair of a movie gigolo, who had insisted that he was what he obviously was not.

“I asked to speak to the manager, sir,” Jonah had told him, trying to make his voice as icy as possible.

“I'm the manager,” the man said in a heavy Brooklyn accent, not so much as bothering with a salutation. “What may I do for you?”

“These two ladies were told that you do not serve colored people—”

“That's impossible, we serve everyone.”

The voice a monotone now, not even bothering to affect surprise.

“Do you? Well, then, we'd like to get a table for three, right now,” Jonah had told him.

“I'm sorry but that's impossible, all our tables are booked.”

“I want to see the manager!”

“I am the manager.”

Jonah peered pointedly over the man's shoulder, into the nearly empty dining room, but the maître d' did not even bother to follow his gaze. Jonah shifted his weight uneasily from foot to foot, thrown a little by such open indifference, trying to decide just what he should do—

“All right, then. We'll have a table out here, at the bar.”

Jonah had moved swiftly to one of a set of small tables just off the bar, ushering the women into the other two chairs. Aware even as he did so of how jerky and undignified his movement had seemed.

The maître d' had simply shrugged.

“Certainly, let me get you some menus.”

They had sat and waited then. The two church ladies, older women, in their sixties, willing to follow their minister in whatever he did but clearly mortified to find themselves seated in a bar. Sitting still as mice, not so much as removing their coats. Jonah hadn't removed his, either, not sure of just what was happening, or what he should do—finally deciding, even more absurdly, to remove his hat. Putting it down prominently in the middle of the small table.

There it had remained, a fedora in the middle of the table, for the next hour while they tried to get any kind of service. After the maître d' had walked past them twice Jonah signaled to him, raising his hand like a child in a school room—knowing even as he did it that it looked stupid and ineffectual. The maître d' had ignored it, of course. Finally, on his next pass—increasingly desperate, beginning to sweat in his good camel's hair coat and ever more conscious of the two ladies looking down at their hands on their laps, to save him any further embarrassment—Jonah had reached out and grasped his wrist, the maître d' peering down at his hand as if he had been suddenly seized by a lizard.

“Yes?”

“We would like those menus, please—”

“Oh, yes.”

Jonah had released the man's wrist, smiling stupidly across at the ladies, who smiled brightly, hoping that something, anything might finally happen then—and the maître d' vanished behind the curtains leading to the dining room. They never saw him again. From time to time a waiter went by, each one ignoring them as completely as the maître d' had. Jonah had finally been able to procure some menus by going over and asking the barman directly for them—but this had led to nothing more, no one coming over to take their order. Even the slow trickle of waiters drying up, the bartender disappearing from his post once the last, white customer had drunk up and left.

Jonah had sat where he was, fuming. Wondering if he should have appealed to the white customers at the bar, or to the diners as they were leaving the dining room. But when he had stared pointedly at them, trying to make some sort of appeal with his eyes, they had only looked away.
Just like the people on the train would do.
The two ladies across the table visibly shriveled up into themselves, into the best Sunday coats and the feathered hats they had put on deliberately for this occasion. The both of them doctors' wives, who had probably read about this place in Diana Vreeland's column in
Vogue,
or heard about it at their last meeting of Smart Set, or Girlfriends. Proud women, with some money and position in their own community, who were no longer willing just to let it go when they were kept out of a place but who now sat across from him in sadness and confusion, humiliated twice over.

After an hour of sitting there, with his hat on the table in front of him like some mockery of a meal, Jonah had decided that he had to do something. Determined to go and find the missing maître d' and manager even if he was forcibly ejected. He had raised himself to his feet—soaked in sweat now, beneath the warm coat—and put his hat back on, nodding to the women from church.

“Ladies—just give me a moment—”

He had walked over and flung open the thick drapes veiling the dining room, ready to confront anyone. But all he had seen, far across the restaurant, were a couple more waiters laying out the cloths on the bare tables for the dinner service. They had ignored him, too, staring right through him when they happened to catch his eye. Only unfolding another cloth, flinging it up into the air above their heads, before allowing it to flutter down to the table like a great, white dove.

He realized that he had let the moment go by. Escorting the ladies out of the Roanoke bar in shame and bewilderment, promising them wildly on the bus back home that he would take their case straight to the downtown dailies, and the mayor's office, tell their story all over town until they were
made
to listen. But he had never had the talent for the kind of organizing that Adam did. In the end all he had been able to drum up was a small item in the
Amsterdam Star-News,
one among a dozen other stories detailing the weekly slights and degradations of Negroes.

He had been forced to let it go. But now he was back, stepping across the threshold of the Mayflower as casually as he could. He could feel the sweat pooling up under his arms, and running down his face, but he knew he was covered by the withering heat outside. Calling out for a bar towel as soon as he arrived. Thinking,
One way or the other, might as well get it over.

The barman—
the very same man
—handed one over without protest, or the slightest hesitation. Jonah scrubbed his face with it, rubbing it all over, making sure to soak up every last hint of sweat, before he handed it back. Still nervous, and silently exultant in this little victory, steadying himself with his face in the towel, not knowing what he would see when he looked up.

The bartender took the towel from him immediately, an expectant smirk creasing his face—hoping for a tip, Jonah realized after a long, panicky moment. He smiled slowly back, and flipped a quarter up on the bar.

“Thank you, sir. Hot enough out there for you?”

The man's face ridiculously sincere, and eager to please. Jonah held his smile rigid.

“Hot enough for a thin man,” he said, and the barman gave a big, false guffaw at the meaningless jest.

“We'll have a table for you right away—”

“May I help you, sir?”

There he was, the maître d'. The same man, with his same, tired eyes and slicked-back hair, and that ridiculous, pencil-thin moustache. Making an effort this time to at least appear attentive. Jonah waited half a beat—as much time as he dared pause in a sermon—then turned his head. Letting his eyes meet, then fix on the man's. Daring him to take this moment to question him, to remember who he was.

He waited—but the maître d's eyes only slid submissively away. Producing a single menu from the coat check stand—
so that's where they were!
—after quickly ascertaining that Jonah was alone.

“Table for one, sir? Will you be taking lunch with us today?”

The hint of some undefinable foreign accent in his voice now, French or Latin, or some unlikely amalgam of the two.

“Yes, I believe I will.”

Waiting another half-beat for his voice to reveal him, for him to remember then. But the maître d' was already halfway across the dining room, leading him to a prominent table, where anyone entering the restaurant would see him immediately. Jonah trying to think through the circuitous mysteries of bigotry, as he always did at such moments—
So it's not how we look So it's not how we act So what the hell is it—

“Is this all right for you, sir?” the maître d' murmured.

Jonah could only nod, and sit down in the proffered chair, opening up his menu. The words swam before him—relieved to have passed, yet oddly disappointed, too, at how easily it had gone. He realized that he had been expecting
suspicion,
at least—had even been looking forward to it. The maître d' and the bartender shooting him hard looks, while he innocently ate his meal.