If He Hollers Let Him Go (19 page)

‘I suppose you know you got me demoted,’ I said finally, realizing instantly it was the worst possible thing I could have said. It acknowledged her power over me, and that was wrong.

Now she could play it any way she wanted, magnanimous or condescending. Instead she played it true to form. ‘You oughtn’ta called me no slut,’ she slurred. ‘You don’t know me that well.’

I jerked around and looked at her. She wore a maddening, teasing smile and her eyes were laughing at me. I went so blind mad I was petrified. Not mad at her; at myself for being pushed around by a notion. If you could just get over the notion, women were the same, black or white.

I knew that getting mad was bad, it gave her the lead. So I dug myself out, got a smile to match her own, and said, ‘You’ll make a man slap you one of these days, do you know that?’

‘Now you know, I don’t hardly understand you,’ she said, taking a bite of pork-chop sandwich and fluttering her mascaraed lashes. ‘You talk so funny.’ She giggled. ‘Is this the first time you ever talked to a white lady?’

‘Look, baby, let Texas rest. You know the score, probably better than me. Let’s stop clowning and get together—’ I broke off. ‘Look, what you doing tonight? How ‘bout running with me? I know some fine spots where it’ll be okay.’ I could see her drawing in a little and I rushed on. ‘You won’t be the only white girl there.’ Then I said, ‘Look, baby, you really get me.’

At that she turned and said, ‘You talks so fast, first you wanna jump on me and now you wanna date me.’ Then she killed me with her smile.

‘Look—’ I began again, broke off as the other woman came up with a piece of pie and two cups of coffee.

‘I brung you some coffee, Madge. I declare, how you eat those dry poke-chop sandwiches is—’ She was rattling off in a Southern dialect broader than Madge’s when suddenly she caught sight of me. She had seen me without seeing me. She had thought I was just sitting there eating my lunch, as close to a white girl as I could get, and she’d been prepared to endure it since the joint wasn’t Jim Crowed. But when she realized that I was among those present she stopped abruptly, her voice suspended in mid-air and her mouth hanging open. Her eyes went quickly to Madge’s, seeking an explanation.

Madge took the coffee and placed it on the ground beside her. ‘I’d rather choke than stand in that durn line,’ she said casually, and then as if it was the most commonplace thing in the world, she introduced me. ‘Elsie, this is Bob. He’s a leaderman with the sheet-metal gang. Me and him had a fight but we done made up. Elsie is my sister-in-law,’ she said to me.

‘Hello, Elsie,’ I said.

Elsie gave me a sharp quick glance, then looked away. She set her coffee carefully on the ground, then carefully sat herself down. Her actions were slightly dazed, as if she was trying to acquaint a slow mentality to the situation. Finally, when she got it all straightened out, she gave me a perfunctory smile.

‘Howdedo,’ she said, fanning herself with a piece of newspaper. ‘Sho is hot.’ She laid the paper down and opened her lunch. ‘Lotta coloured boys working in ‘dustry nowadays, right ‘long with white people,’ she observed, taking out a ham sandwich and nibbling at it daintily. ‘You frum the South?’

I could feel Madge’s gaze on me, and although I didn’t look I knew she still wore that teasing smile. ‘No, I’m from Ohio,’ I said.

Elsie brushed it aside. ‘I always says it ain’t no more’n right. Coloured folks got much right to earn these good wages as white while we fighting this war. It’s partly their country too, I always says. I was telling Lem—your uncle,’ she said to Madge, ‘just the other day that coloured folks got just as much right to earn these wages as we has. We believe in democracy over here and as I says to Lem, if we can just keep these Reds frum getting hold of the country we can keep our American way of living so everybody’ll be happy.’

‘Elsie is a democrat,’ Madge put in. I couldn’t tell whether to lessen the tension or prepare myself for the worst.

‘So am I,’ I said; I didn’t want any argument either, but I couldn’t help but add, ‘Not a Southern one, however.’

‘There’s some mighty good coloured boys frum the South,’ Elsie went on through a mouthful of food. She washed it down with coffee. ‘I declare, the coffee they make… .’ She grimaced. ‘Now me and Madge are from Texas—Breckenridge, Texas. We went to Houston when the war broke out, then we got an itching to come to California.’

‘I hear there’re shipyards in Houston,’ I began, but she didn’t give anybody a chance to talk.

‘Course it’s different in Texas. The coloured folks there like to be by themselves, so we just let ‘em go ahead and don’t bother with ‘em. Don’t have no trouble and everybody is happy. I used to tell my husband—that’s Madge’s brother, he was killed in an automobile accident in Amarillo—I used to tell Henry that if everybody understood coloured folks like we do in the South there wouldn’t be all this trouble.’ She gave them a bright, toothy smile. ‘Now tell the truth, you’d rather be with your own folks any day, wouldn’t you?’

I got salty. ‘If you’re trying to tell me in a nice way you don’t want my company—’

She threw up her hands and cut me off. ‘I declare, you coloured folks frum California is so sensitive. Coloured boys in Texas know better’n to sit beside a white woman. Not that I mind if Madge don’t. It’s just that most coloured folks like to stay to themselves. That’s why we ain’t never had no trouble in Texas. All these riots in Detroit and New York and Chicago—it come from all this mixing up. I always say it ain’t because white people is all that much better’n coloured folks—there’s some mighty good coloured folks and some white people ain’t worth their salt. And it ain’t because white people hate coloured folks neither. We love coloured folks in Texas, and I bet you a silver dollar coloured folks love us too. I even know coloured folks what’s educated. There’s a coloured doctor in Amarillo went to school and graduated. It’s just that white people is white. We’re different frum coloured people. The Lord God above made us white and made you folks coloured. If He’da wanted to, He coulda made you folks white and us people coloured. But he made us white ‘cause he wanted us the same colour as Him. “I will make thee in My Image,” He said, and that’s what He done. And the sooner you coloured folks learn that, the sooner you understand that God made you coloured ‘cause he wanted to, ‘cause when He made us in His Image He had to make somebody else to fill up the world, so He made you. Not that I say coloured folks should have to serve white people, but you know yo’self God got dark angels in heaven what serve the white ones—that’s in the Bible plain enough for anybody to see. And the sooner you coloured folks learn that, then the better off you’ll be.’

‘Don’t pay no ‘tention to Elsie,’ Madge said to me as soon as she caught an opening. ‘She just homesick, that’s all.’

‘Yes, I’m homesick, I’ll tell anybody,’ Elsie confessed. ‘Too many Jews and Mexicans in this city for me, and if there’s any folks I hate it’s—’

‘Your husband Elsie’s brother?’ I asked Madge, cutting Elsie off.

Madge gave me a startled, sidewise glance, then laughed. ‘No, Elsie married my brother. My husband’s in the service in—’

‘Tell the truth!’ Elsie broke in. ‘You know well as you sitting there George is in Arkansas with another woman. He’s too old for the service anyhow.’

Madge didn’t like that. ‘I heered he joined up. Lem told me—’

‘Lem ain’t told you no such thing,’ Elsie snapped. ‘I declare—’

I had to break it up again. ‘You and Elsie live together?’ I asked.

‘No, Elsie lives with—’ Madge began, but Elsie hunched her. ‘Don’t go telling your business to ev’ybody come along,’ she said, then turned to me. ‘I declare, boy, you ain’t et a thing, and lunchtime is almost—’ The whistled stopped her that time.

‘Just like a clock,’ I said.

‘Now you got to slip off and eat on the job when you oughta be working,’ she said.

‘I’m not hungry anyway,’ I said.

Elsie closed her lunch pail and got up, but Madge took a moment to gather up the scrap paper. When Elsie turned away I leaned over and whispered to Madge, ‘I’m coming up to see you tonight.’

‘You better not,’ she threatened, looking panicky for an instant, then she giggled. ‘You don’t know where I live anyway.’

Elsie heard us whispering and turned back. ‘Come on,’ she said peevishly. ‘I do declare, I don’t know what’s come over you since you come to California.’

Madge moved slightly, blocking Elsie from view, and I formed the words with my lips: ‘Look for me around eight.’

‘You go ‘head!’ Madge snapped at Elsie, wanting her to get away so we could have a last moment together. ‘You know we can’t leave no paper laying around.’ Then she leaned over me to pick up a scrap of newspaper and I could see her breasts hanging loose inside her waist. She gave me plenty time to get my gaper’s bit, then fluttered her eyelashes, straightened up, and went off with Elsie, pitching her hips. I sat there and watched them shake, too weak to move.

After a moment Ben, Peaches, and Conway came by on their way back to the dock. ‘What you doing, taking your vacation?’ Ben asked.

I picked up the stew, pie, and coffee, dumped them into a trash container, then joined the three of them.

‘He’s dreaming ‘bout his white chicks,’ Peaches said slyly.

I gave her a sharp look, wondering if she had seen me talking to Madge. Then I laughed and leaned over toward her. ‘If you Negro women would give a man a break now and then we wouldn’t have to—’

But she cut me off. ‘That’s what you all say. You niggers make me sick.’ It must have been her pet peeve. ‘If a coloured girl asks one of you niggers to take her to the show you start grumbling ‘bout money—liable even ask her to pay the way. And then the raggedest-looking old beat-up white tramp can come by and get your whole pay check. You dump like a dumping truck.’

Ben saw that she was half-way serious and started teasing her. ‘That’s just what’s wrong with you Negro women—always fighting and fussing. A man takes his life in his hands just to live with you. Always got your mouth stuck out and mad about something. Now take a white woman—all she wants you to do is love her.’

‘I like big fat white women,’ Conway started, ‘ ‘cause there’s so much of ‘em that’s white. An’ I like old white women ‘cause they been white so long. An’ I like young white women ‘cause they got so long to be white. An’ I like skinny white women ‘cause—’

A couple of white fellows passed and glanced at Conway, and Peaches snapped scornfully, ‘Oh, shut up, Conway. You’ll be up there begging me for some all afternoon.’

Ben gave a loud guffaw and Conway looked embarrassed. We started talking about the work and Ben got on Tebbel. Conway looked like he wanted to say something about me but thought better of it. When we came to the landing stairs Madge was standing at the fountain. I half turned towards her and winked, but she must have thought I was going to say something to her, for she gave me one glance and went into her frightened act again. I gritted my teeth. That’s okay, baby, I thought; you don’t scare me now.

‘What the hell’s matter with that woman?’ Ben asked. ‘Is she—’ He broke off and looked at me. ‘That the cracker you had the trouble with?’

I nodded.

‘What the hell is she trying to do, make as if she’s scared of Negroes?’

‘If she knew what I know ‘bout you three she better be scared,’ Peaches cracked.

‘Bob don’t want no stuff ‘bout the woman,’ Conway growled. Then he asked me, ‘Hear any more ‘bout it yet?’

‘Not yet,’ I said.

They didn’t ask any more questions.

On the way home I stopped at a café and had a couple of fried pork chops, some French fries, and baked beans. I was sitting at the counter with a bunch of other workers and all of a sudden I thought of Madge and had to laugh. The people turned and looked at me like I was nuts. But I couldn’t stop laughing; every now and then I’d break out again. I really didn’t know whether I was laughing at Madge or myself; we were both very funny people.

I got through, got up, paid the girl, and went out. The chops were heavy in my stomach but they gave me drive. I knew what I was going to do; I was going down to the hotel and see the dame. But I didn’t want to think about it; I didn’t want to get mixed up with a lot of crazy thoughts. So I kept looking at the people on the street as I drove home. I pulled up in front of the house and cut the motor before I realized I was there. I gave a little laugh and went inside.

I took so long bathing and getting dressed, Ella Mae said, ‘So you got another heavy on tonight.’

‘I’m just a playboy at heart,’ I laughed, trying on another sport shirt.

I was wearing my beige gabardine pumps, grey flannel slacks, camel’s-hair jacket, but I couldn’t find a shirt that satisfied. I wanted to look sharp but I wanted to feel comfortable too. I could wear an outfit over on the Avenue and feel strictly fine, but if I went downtown in it I felt gaudy. Now I was trying to get a combination I’d feel all right in if I had to take the dame out somewhere. I finally decided on an aqua gabardine shirt. Then I stepped into the kitchen to let her gape me.

‘See what I mean?’ I said.

She tried to look scornful. ‘You just think you look cute. You’ll stumble in here ‘bout four o’clock all messed up and wanna kill everybody.’

I grinned. ‘I’m going out with my white chick tonight. She takes good care of me.’

‘You’re saying it for a joke,’ she said derisively, ‘but I believe you, you’re just the type.’

‘You know I like my white women, baby,’ I teased. ‘Couldn’t get along without ‘em.’

‘You just like all the other niggers,’ she came back. ‘Get a white woman and go from Cadillacs to cotton sacks.’ Then she added offhandedly, ‘Alice called while you were in the tub,’ and gave me a sharp look, catching me off guard. ‘Oh, so, it’s like that now. Just last week you were bragging ‘bout how you were gonna marry her.’

I got my face under control again and said, ‘Now you know I’m waiting for Henry to die so I can marry you, baby. What do you say we bump him off?’

She went on washing the baby’s diapers, ignoring me. I stepped into the front room and called Alice. She answered the phone.