Plum Bun

by Jessie Redmon Fauset

  “And a lot of good it will do you,” Angela scoffed. “You know perfectly well that there are no coloured teachers of music in the public schools here in Philadelphia.” But Jinny thought it possible that there might be. “When Mamma was coming along there were very few coloured teachers at all, and now it looks as though there’d be plenty of chance for us. And anyway you never know your luck.”

  By four o’clock the day’s work was over and Mattie free to do as she pleased. This was her idle hour. The girls would get dinner, a Monday version of whatever the main course had been the day before. Their mother was on no account to be disturbed or importuned. To-day as usual she sat in the Morris chair in the dining-room, dividing her time between the Sunday paper and the girls’ chatter. It was one of her most cherished experiences,—this sense of a day’s hard labour far behind her, the happy voices of her girls, her joyous expectation of her husband’s home-coming. Usually the children made a game of their preparations, recalling some nonsense of their early childhood days when it had been their delight to dress up as ladies. Virginia would approach Angela: “Pardon me, is this Mrs. Henrietta Jones?” And Angela, drawing herself up haughtily would reply: “Er,—really you have the advantage of me.” Then Virginia: “Oh pardon! I thought you were Mrs. Jones and I had heard my friend Mrs. Smith speak of you so often and since you were in the neighbourhood and passing, I was going to ask you in to have some ice-cream”. The game of course being that Angela should immediately drop her haughtiness and proceed for the sake of the goodies to ingratiate herself into her neighbour’s esteem. It was a poor joke, long since worn thin, but the two girls still used the greeting and for some reason it had become part of the Monday ritual of preparing the supper.

  But to-night Angela’s response lacked spontaneity. She was absorbed and reserved, even a little sulky. Deftly and swiftly she moved about her work, however, and no one who had not attended regularly on those Monday evening preparations could have guessed that there was anything on her mind other than complete absorption in the problem of cutting the bread or garnishing the warmed over roast beef. But Mattie was aware of the quality of brooding in her intense concentration. She had seen it before in her daughter but to-night, though to her practised eye it was more apparent than ever, she could not put her hand on it. Angela’s response, if asked what was the matter, would be “Oh, nothing”. It came to her suddenly that her older daughter was growing up; in a couple of months she would be fifteen. Children were often absorbed and moody when they were in their teens, too engaged in finding themselves to care about their effect on others. She must see to it that the girl had plenty of rest; perhaps school had been too strenuous for her to-day; she thought the high school programme very badly arranged, five hours one right after the other were much too long. “Angela, child, I think you’d better not be long out of bed to-night; you look very tired to me.”

  Angela nodded. But her father came in then and in the little hubbub that arose about his home-coming and the final preparations for supper her listlessness went without further remark.

  Chapter IV

  THE third storey front was Angela’s bed-room. She was glad of its loneliness and security to-night,—even if her mother had not suggested her going to bed early she would have sought its shelter immediately after supper. Study for its own sake held no attractions for her; she did not care for any of her subjects really except Drawing and French. And when she was drawing she did not consider that she was studying, it was too naturally a means of self-expression. As for French, she did have to study that with great care, for languages did not come to her with any great readiness, but there was an element of fine lady-ism about the beautiful, logical tongue that made her in accordance with some secret subconscious ambition resolve to make it her own.

  The other subjects, History, English, and Physical Geography, were not drudgery, for she had a fair enough mind; but then they were not attractive either, and she was lacking in Virginia’s dogged resignation to unwelcome duties. Even when Jinny was a little girl she had been know to say manfully in the face of an uncongenial task: “Well I dotta det it done”. Angela was not like that. But to-night she was concentrating with all her power on her work. During the day she had been badly hurt; she had received a wound whose depth and violence she would not reveal even to her parents,—because, and this only increased the pain, young as she was she knew that there was nothing they could do about it. There was nothing to be done but to get over it. Only she was not developed enough to state this stoicism to herself. She was like a little pet cat that had once formed part of their household; its leg had been badly torn by a passing dog, and the poor thing had dragged itself into the house and lain on its cushion patiently, waiting stolidly for this unfamiliar agony to subside. So Angela waited for the hurt in her mind to cease.

  But across the history dates on the printed page and through stately lines of Lycidas she kept seeing Mary Hastings’ accusing face, hearing Mary Hastings’ accusing voice:

  “Coloured! Angela, you never told me that you were coloured!”

  And then her own voice in tragic but proud bewilderment. “Tell you that I was coloured! Why of course I never told you that I was coloured. Why should I?”

  She had been so proud of Mary Hastings’ friendship. In the dark and tortured spaces of her difficult life it had been a lovely, hidden refuge. It had been an experience so rarely sweet that she had hardly spoken of it even to Virginia. The other girls in her class had meant nothing to her. At least she had schooled herself to have them mean nothing. Some of them she had known since early childhood; they had lived in her neighbourhood and had gone to the graded schools with her. They had known that she was coloured, for they had seen her with Virginia, and sometimes her tall, black father had come to fetch her home on a rainy day. There had been pleasant enough contacts and intimacies; in the quiet of Jefferson Street they had played “The Farmer in the Dell”, and “Here come three jolly, jolly sailor-boys”; dark retreats of the old market had afforded endless satisfaction for “Hide and Go Seek”. She and those other children had gone shopping arm in arm for school supplies, threading their way in and out of the bustle and confusion that were Columbia Avenue.

  As she grew older many of these intimacies lessened, in some cases ceased altogether. But she was never conscious of being left completely alone; there was always some one with whom to eat lunch or who was going her way after school. It was not until she reached the high school that she began to realize how solitary her life was becoming. There were no other coloured girls in her class but there had been only two or three during her school-life, and if there had been any she would not necessarily have confined herself to them; that this might be a good thing to do in sheer self-defence would hardly have occurred to her. But this problem did not confront her; what did confront her was that the very girls with whom she had grown up were evading her; when she went to the Assembly none of them sat next to her unless no other seat were vacant; little groups toward which she drifted during lunch, inexplicably dissolved to re-form in another portion of the room. Sometimes a girl in this new group threw her a backward glance charged either with a mean amusement or with annoyance.

  Angela was proud; she did not need such a hint more than once, but she was bewildered and hurt. She took stories to school to read at recess, or wandered into the drawing laboratory and touched up her designs. Miss Barrington thought her an unusually industrious student.

  And then in the middle of the term Mary Hastings had come, a slender, well-bred girl of fifteen. She was rather stupid in her work, in fact she shone in nothing but French and good manners. Undeniably she had an air, and her accent was remarkable. The other pupils, giggling, produced certain uncouth and unheard of sounds, but Mary said in French: “No, I have lent my knife to the brother-in-law of the gardener but here is my cane,” quite as though the idiotic phrase were part of an imaginary conversation which she was conducting and appreciating. “She really knows what she’s talking ab
out,” little Esther Bayliss commented, and added that Mary’s family had lost some money and they had had to send her to public school. But it was some time before this knowledge, dispensed by Esther with mysterious yet absolute authenticity, became generally known. Meanwhile Mary was left to her own devices while the class with complete but tacit unanimity “tried her out”. Mary, unaware of this, looked with her near-sighted, slightly supercilious gaze about the room at recess and seeing only one girl, and that girl Angela, who approached in dress, manner and deportment her own rather set ideas, had taken her lunch over to the other pupil’s desk and said: “Come on, let’s eat together while you tell me who everybody is.”

  Angela took the invitation as simply as the other had offered. “That little girl in the purplish dress is Esther Bayliss and the tall one in the thick glasses——”

  Mary, sitting with her back to the feeding groups, never troubled to look around. “I don’t mean the girls. I expect I’ll know them soon enough when I get around to it. I mean the teachers. Do you have to dig for them?” She liked Angela and she showed it plainly and directly. Her home was in some remote fastness of West Philadelphia which she could reach with comparative swiftness by taking the car at Spring Garden Street. Instead she walked half way home with her new friend, up Seventeenth Street as far as Girard Avenue where, after a final exchange of school matters and farewells, she took the car, leaving Angela to her happy, satisfied thoughts. And presently she began to know more than happiness and satisfaction, she was knowing the extreme gratification of being the chosen companion of a popular and important girl, for Mary, although not quick at her studies, was a power in everything else. She dressed well, she had plenty of pocket money, she could play the latest marches in the gymnasium, she received a certain indefinable but flattering attention from the teachers, and she could make things “go”. The school paper was moribund and Mary knew how to resuscitate it; she brought in advertisements from her father’s business friends; she made her married sisters obtain subscriptions. Without being obtrusive or over-bearing, without condescension and without toadying she was the leader of her class. And with it all she stuck to Angela. She accepted popularity because it was thrust upon her, but she was friendly with Angela because the latter suited her.

  Angela was happy. She had a friend and the friendship brought her unexpected advantages. She was no longer left out of groups because there could be no class plans without Mary and Mary would remain nowhere for any length of time without Angela. So to save time and argument, and also to avoid offending the regent, Angela was always included. Not that she cared much about this, but she did like Mary; as is the way of a “fidus Achates”, she gave her friendship whole-heartedly. And it was gratifying to be in the midst of things.

  In April the school magazine announced a new departure. Henceforth the editorial staff was to be composed of two representatives from each class; of these one was to be the chief representative chosen by vote of the class, the other was to be assistant, selected by the chief. The chief representative, said the announcement pompously, would sit in at executive meetings and have a voice in the policy of the paper. The assistant would solicit and collect subscriptions, collect fees, receive and report complaints and in brief, said Esther Bayliss, “do all the dirty work”. But she coveted the position and title for all that.

  Angela’s class held a brief meeting after school and elected Mary Hastings as representative without a dissenting vote. “No,” said Angela holding up a last rather grimy bit of paper. “Here is one for Esther Bayliss.” Two or three of the girls giggled; everyone knew that she must have voted for herself; indeed it had been she who had insisted on taking a ballot rather than a vote by acclaim. Mary was already on her feet. She had been sure of the result of the election, would have been astonished indeed had it turned out any other way. “Well, girls,” she began in her rather high, refined voice, “I wish to thank you for the—er—confidence you have bestowed, that is, placed in me and I’m sure you all know I’ll do my best to keep the old paper going. And while I’m about it I might just as well announce that I’m choosing Angela Murray for my assistant.”

  There was a moment’s silence. The girls who had thought about it at all had known that if Mary were elected, as assuredly she would be, this meant also the election of Angela. And those who had taken no thought saw no reason to object to her appointment. And anyway there was nothing to be done. But Esther Bayliss pushed forward: “I don’t know how it is with the rest of you, but I should have to think twice before I’d trust my subscription money to a coloured girl.”

  Mary said in utter astonishment: “Coloured, why what are you talking about? Who’s coloured?”

  “Angela, Angela Murray, that’s who’s coloured. At least she used to be when we all went to school at Eighteenth and Oxford.”

  Mary said again: “Coloured!” And then, “Angela, you never told me you were coloured!”

  Angela’s voice was as amazed as her own: “Tell you that I was coloured! Why of course I never told you that I was coloured! Why should I?”

  “There,” said Esther, “see she never told Mary that she was coloured. What wouldn’t she have done with our money!”

  Angela had picked up her books and strolled out the door. But she flew down the north staircase and out the Brandywine Street entrance and so to Sixteenth Street where she would meet no one she knew, especially at this belated hour. At home there would be work to do, her lessons to get and the long, long hours of the night must pass before she would have to face again the hurt and humiliation of the classroom; before she would have to steel her heart and her nerves to drop Mary Hastings before Mary Hastings could drop her. No one, no one, Mary least of all, should guess how completely she had been wounded. Mary and her shrinking bewilderment! Mary and her exclamation: “Coloured!” This was a curious business, this colour. It was the one god apparently to whom you could sacrifice everything. On account of it her mother had neglected to greet her own husband on the street. Mary Hastings could let it come between her and her friend.

  In the morning she was at school early; the girls should all see her there and their individual attitude should be her attitude. She would remember each one’s greetings, would store it away for future guidance. Some of the girls were especially careful to speak to her, one or two gave her a meaning smile, or so she took it, and turned away. Some did not speak at all. When Mary Hastings came in Angela rose and sauntered unseeing and unheeding deliberately past her through the doorway, across the hall to Miss Barrington’s laboratory. As she returned she passed Mary’s desk, and the girl lifted troubled but not unfriendly eyes to meet her own; Angela met the glance fully but without recognition. She thought to herself: “Coloured! If they had said to me Mary Hastings is a voodoo, I’d have answered, ‘What of it? She’s my friend.’”

  Before June Mary Hastings came up to her and asked her to wait after school. Angela who had been neither avoiding nor seeking her gave a cool nod. They walked out of the French classroom together. When they reached the corner Mary spoke:

  “Oh, Angela, let’s be friends again. It doesn’t really make any difference. See, I don’t care any more.”

  “But that’s what I don’t understand. Why should it have made any difference in the first place? I’m just the same as I was before you knew I was coloured and just the same afterwards. Why should it ever have made any difference at all?”

  “I don’t know, I’m sure. I was just surprised. It was all so unexpected.”

  “What was unexpected?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I can’t explain it. But let’s be friends.”

  “Well,” said Angela slowly, “I’m willing, but I don’t think it will ever be the same again.”

  It wasn’t. Some element, spontaneity, trustfulness was lacking. Mary, who had never thought of speaking of colour, was suddenly conscious that here was a subject which she must not discuss. She was less frank, at times even restrained. Angela, too young to define her th
oughts, yet felt vaguely: “She failed me once,—I was her friend,—yet she failed me for something with which I had nothing to do. She’s just as likely to do it again. It’s in her.”

  Definitely she said to herself, “Mary withdrew herself not because I was coloured but because she didn’t know I was coloured. Therefore if she had never known I was coloured she would always have been my friend. We would have kept on having our good times together.” And she began to wonder which was the more important, a patent insistence on the fact of colour or an acceptance of the good things of life which could come to you in America if either you were not coloured or the fact of your racial connections was not made known.

  During the summer Mary Hastings’ family, it appeared, recovered their fallen fortunes. At any rate she did not return to school in the fall and Angela never saw her again.

  Chapter V

  VIRGINIA came rushing in. “Angela, where’s Mummy?”

  “Out. What’s all the excitement?”

  “I’ve been appointed. Isn’t it great? Won’t Mother and Dad be delighted! Right at the beginning of the year too, so I won’t have to wait. The official notice isn’t out yet but I know it’s all right. Miss Herren wants me to report tomorrow. Isn’t it perfectly marvellous! Here I graduate from the Normal in June and in the second week of school in September I’ve got my perfectly good job. Darling child, it’s very much better, as you may have heard me observe before, to be born lucky than rich. But I am lucky and I’ll be rich too. Think of that salary for my very own! With both of us working, Mummy won’t have to want for a thing, nor Father either. Mummy won’t have to do a lick of work if she doesn’t want to. Well, what have you got to say about it, old Rain-in-the-Face? Or perhaps this isn’t Mrs. Henrietta Jones whom I’m addressing of?”