The Blacker the Berry (16 page)

But here she was day dreaming when she should be wondering where she was going to move. She couldn’t possibly remain in this place, even if the old lady relented and decided to give her another chance to be respectable. Somehow or other she felt she had been insulted and, for the first time, began to feel angry with the old snuff-chewing termagant.

Her head ached no longer, but her body was still lethargic. Alva, Alva, Alva. Could she think of nothing else? Supposing she sat upright in the bed—supposing she and Alva were to live together. They might get a small apartment and be with one another entirely. Immediately she was all activity. The headache was forgotten. Out of bed, into her bathrobe, and down the hall to the bathroom. Even the quick shower seemed to be a slow, tedious process, and she was in such a hurry to hasten into the street and telephone Alva, in order to tell him of her new plans, that she almost forgot to make the very necessary and very customary application of bleaching cream to her face. As it was, she forgot to rinse her face and hands in lemon juice.

Alva had lost all patience with Braxton, and profanely told him so. No matter what his condition, Braxton would not work. He seemed to believe that because he was handsome, and because he was Braxton, he shouldn’t have to work. He graced the world with his presence. Therefore, it should pay him. “A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” and should be sustained by a communal larder. Alva tried to show him that such a larder didn’t exist, that one either worked or hustled.

But as Alva had explained to Emma Lou, Braxton wouldn’t work, and as a hustler he was a distinct failure. He couldn’t gamble successfully, he never had a chance to steal, and he always allowed his egotism to defeat his own ends when he tried to get money from women. He assumed that at a word from him, anybody’s pocketbook should be at his disposal, and that his handsomeness and personality were a combination none could withstand. It is a platitude among sundry sects and individuals that as a person thinketh, so he is, but it was not within the power of Braxton’s mortal body to become the being his imagination sought to create. He insisted, for instance, that he was a golden brown replica of Rudolph Valentino. Every picture he could find of the late lamented cinema sheik he pasted either on the wall or on some of his belongings. The only reason that likenesses of his idol did not decorate all the wall space was because Alva objected to this flapperish ritual. Braxton emulated his silver screen mentor in every way, watched his every gesture on the screen, then would stand in front of his mirror at home and practice Rudy’s poses and facial expressions. Strange as it may seem, there was a certain likeness between the two, especially at such moments when Braxton would suddenly stand in the center of the floor and give a spontaneous impersonation of Rudy making love or conquering enemies. Then, at all times, Braxton held his head as Rudy held his, and had even learned how to smile and how to use his eyes in the same captivating manner. But his charms were too obviously cultivated, and his technique too clumsy. He would attract almost any one to him, but they were sure to bolt away as suddenly as they had come. He could have, but he could not hold.

Now, as Alva told Emma Lou, this was a distinct handicap to one who wished to be a hustler, and live by one’s wits off the bounty of others. And the competition was too keen in a place like Harlem, where the adaptability to city ways sometimes took strange and devious turns, for a bungler to have much success. Alva realized this, if Braxton didn’t, and tried to tell him so, but Braxton wouldn’t listen. He felt that Alva was merely being envious—the fact that Alva had more suits than he, and that Alva always had clean shirts, liquor money and room rent, and that Alva could continue to have these things, despite the fact that he had decided to quit work during the hot weather, meant nothing to Braxton at all. He had facial and physical perfection, a magnetic body and much sex appeal. Ergo, he was a master.

However, lean days were upon him. His mother and aunt had unexpectedly come to New York to help him celebrate the closing day of his freshman year at Columbia. His surprise at seeing them was nothing in comparison to their surprise in finding that their darling had not even started his freshman year. The aunt was stoic—“What could you expect of a child with all that wild Indian blood in him? Now, our people …” She hadn’t liked Braxton’s father. His mother simply could not comprehend his duplicity. Such an unnecessarily cruel and deceptive performance was beyond her understanding. Had she been told that he was guilty of thievery, murder, or rape, she could have borne up and smiled through her tears in true maternal fashion, but that he could so completely fool her for nine months—incredible; preposterous, it just couldn’t be!

She and her sister returned to Boston, telling every one there what a successful year their darling had had at Columbia, and telling Braxton before they left that he could not have another cent of their money that summer, that if he didn’t enter Columbia in the fall … well, he was not yet of age. They made many vague threats; none so alarming, however, as the threat of a temporary, if not permanent, suspension of his allowance.

By pawning some of his suits, his watch, and diamond ring, he amassed a small stake and took to gambling. Unlucky at love, he should, so Alva said, have been lucky at cards, and was. But even a lucky man will suffer from lack of skill and foolhardiness. Braxton would gamble only with mature men who gathered in the police-protected clubs, rather than with young chaps like himself, who gathered in private places. He couldn’t classify himself with the cheap or the lowly. If he was to gamble, he must gamble in a professional manner, with professional men. As in all other affairs, he had luck, but no skill and little sense. His little gambling stake lasted but a moment, flitted from him feverishly, and left him holding an empty purse.

Then he took to playing the “numbers,” placing quarters and half dollars on a number compounded of three digits and anxiously perusing the daily clearing house reports to see whether or not he had chosen correctly. Alva, too, played the numbers consistently and, somehow or other, managed to remain ahead of the game, but Braxton, as was to be expected, “hit” two or three times, then grew excited over his winnings and began to play two or three or even five dollars daily on one number. Such plunging, unattended by scientific observation or close calculation, put him so far behind the game that his winnings were soon dissipated and he had to stop playing altogether.

Alva had quit work for the summer. He contended that it was far too hot to stand over a steam pressing machine during the sultry summer months, and there was no other congenial work available. Being a bellhop in one of the few New York hotels where colored boys were used called for too long hours and broken shifts. Then they didn’t pay much money and he hated to work for tips. He certainly would not take an elevator job, paying only sixty or sixty-five dollars a month at most, and making it necessary for him to work nights one week from six to eight, and days the next week, vice versa. Being an elevator operator in a loft building required too much skill, patience and muscular activity. The same could be said of the shipping clerk positions, open in the various wholesale houses. He couldn’t, of course, be expected to be a porter, and swing a mop. Bootblacking was not even to be considered. There was nothing left. He was unskilled, save as a presser. Once he had been apprenticed to a journeyman tailor, but he preferred to forget that.

No, there was nothing he could do, and there was no sense in working in the summer. He never had done it; at least, not since he had been living in New York—so he didn’t see why he should do it now. Furthermore, his salary hardly paid his saloon bill, and since his board and room and laundry and clothes came from other sources, why not quit work altogether and develop these sources to their capacity output? Things looked much brighter this year than ever before. He had more clothes, he had “hit” the numbers more than ever, he had won a baseball pool of no mean value, and, in addition to Emma Lou, he had made many other profitable contacts during the spring and winter months. It was safe for him to loaf, but he couldn’t carry Braxton, or rather, he wouldn’t. Yet he liked him well enough not to kick him into the streets. Something, he told Emma Lou, should be done for him first, so Alva started doing things.

First, he got him a girl, or rather steered him in the direction of one who seemed to be a good bet. She was. And as usual, Braxton had little trouble in attracting her to him. She was a simple-minded over-sexed little thing from a small town in Central Virginia, new to Harlem, and had hitherto always lived in her home town where she had been employed since her twelfth year as a maid-of-all-work to a wealthy white family. For four years, she had been her master’s concubine, and probably would have continued in that capacity for an unspecified length of time had not the mistress of the house decided that after all it might not be good for her two adolescent sons to become aware of their father’s philandering. She had had to accept it. Most of the women of her generation and in her circle had done likewise. But these were post-world war days of modernity … and, well, it just wasn’t being done, what with the growing intelligence of the “darkies,” and the increased sophistication of the children.

So Anise Hamilton had been surreptitiously shipped away to New York, and a new maid-of-all-work had mysteriously appeared in her place. The mistress had seen to it that this new maid was not as desirable as Anise, but a habit is a habit, and the master of the house was not the sort to substitute one habit for another. If anything, his wife had made herself more miserable by the change, since the last girl loved much better than she worked, while Anise proved competent on both scores, thereby pleasing both master and mistress.

Anise had come to Harlem and deposited the money her former mistress had supplied her with in the postal savings. She wouldn’t hear to placing it in any other depository. Banks had a curious and discomforting habit of closing their doors without warning, and without the foresight to provide their patrons with another nest egg. If banks in Virginia went broke, those in wicked New York would surely do so. Now, Uncle Sam had the whole country behind him, and everybody knew that the United States was the most wealthy of the world’s nations. Therefore, what safer place than the post office for one’s bank account?

Anise got a job, too, almost immediately. Her former mistress had given her a letter to a friend of hers on Park Avenue, and this friend had another friend who had a sister who wanted a stock girl in her exclusive modiste shop. Anise was the type to grace such an establishment as this person owned, just the right size to create a smart uniform for, and shapely enough to allow the creator of the uniform ample latitude for bizarre experimentation.

Most important of all, her skin, the color of beaten brass with copper overtones, synchronized with the gray plaster walls, dark hardwood furniture and powder blue rugs in the Maison Quantrelle.

Anise soon had any number of “boy friends,” with whom she had varying relations. But she willingly dropped them all for Braxton, and, simple village girl that she was, expected him to do likewise with his “girl friends.” She had heard much about the “two-timing sugar daddies” in Harlem, and while she was well versed in the art herself, having never been particularly true to her male employer, she did think that this sort of thing was different, and that any time she was willing to play fair, her consort should do likewise.

Alva was proud of himself when he noticed how rapidly things progressed between Anise and Braxton. They were together constantly, and Anise, not unused to giving her home town “boy friends” some of “Mister Bossman’s bounty,” was soon slipping Braxton spare change to live on. Then she undertook to pay his half of the room rent, and finally, within three weeks, was, as Alva phrased it, “treating Braxton royally.”

But as ever, he was insistent upon being perverse. His old swank and swagger was much in evidence. With most of his clothing out of the pawnshop, he attempted to dazzle the Avenue when he paraded its length, the alluring Anise, attired in clothes borrowed from her employer’s stockroom, beside him. The bronze replica of Rudolph Valentino was, in the argot of Harlem’s pool-hall Johnnies, “out the barrel.” The world was his. He had it in a bottle, and he need only make it secure by corking. But Braxton was never the person to make anything secure. He might manage to capture the entire universe, but he could never keep it pent up, for he would soon let it alone to look for two more like it. It was to be expected, then, that Braxton would lose his head. He did, deliberately and diabolically. Because Anise was so madly in love with him, he imagined that all other women should do as she had done, and how much more delightful and profitable it would be to have two or three Anises instead of one. So he began a crusade, spending much of Anise’s money for campaign funds. Alva quarreled, and Anise threatened, but Braxton continued to explore and to expend.

Anise finally revolted when Braxton took another girl to a dance on her money. He had done this many times before, but she hadn’t known about it. She wouldn’t have known about it this time if he hadn’t told her. He often did things like that. Thought it made him more desirable. Despite her simplemindedness, Anise had spunk. She didn’t like to quarrel, but she wasn’t going to let any one make a fool out of her, so, the next week after the heartbreaking incident, she had moved and left no forwarding address. It was presumed that she had gone downtown to live in the apartment of the woman for whom she worked. Braxton seemed unconcerned about her disappearance, and continued his peacock-like march for some time, with feathers unruffled, even by frequent trips to the pawnshop. But a peacock can hardly preen an unplumaged body, and, though Braxton continued to strut, in a few weeks after the break, he was only a sad semblance of his former self.

Alva nagged at him continually. “Damned if I’m going to carry you.” Braxton would remain silent. “You’re the most no-count nigger I know. If you can’t do anything else, why in the hell don’t you get a job?” “I don’t see you working,” Braxton would answer.