Black Like Us

by Devon Carbado

  “I wish they were all like you, Constancia,” Herbert assured her. “I’d know then that they had some intelligence, and that when they condemned my book they had something to back up their dislike, and that when they said they liked it they were really doing something more sincere than making conversation with me. Half a dozen of them tonight have already asked me what the white people will think about the race when they read my book. Good God! I wasn’t writing a history about the Negro. I was trying to write a novel.”

  “Yes,” agreed Constancia as she waved to the duchess and to Lady Hyacinth Brown, who had just come in, “I suppose there are any number of us who pass perfectly wretched nights sleeping on our backs instead of on our stomachs, which we would find more comfortable, because we fear what the white world might say about the Negro race.”

  “Sometimes it makes me feel like I should like to chuck it and pass for something else,” said Herbert, seriously, although a nearby glass which gave back his countenance showed one which was far too sable to pass as anything Caucasian, not even excepting the Italian and the Spanish.

  “I never feel like that,” said Constancia. “God knows there is nothing chauvinistic about me. I often think the Negro is God Almighty’s one mistake, but as I look about me at white people, I am forced to say so are we all. It isn’t being colored that annoys me. I could go white if I wanted to, but I am too much of a hedonist; I enjoy life too much, and enjoyment isn’t across the line. Money is there, and privilege, and the sort of power which comes with numbers; but as for enjoyment, they don’t know what it is. When I go to so-called white parties sometimes and look around me, I have a feeling that the host has been very wise in breaking down color conventions, and that in most cases his reason is selfish instead of being due to an interracial complex. I have seen two Negroes turn more than one dull party, where I was longing for home and Harlem, into a revel which Puck himself would find it hard to duplicate. As for variety, I think I should die if I were obliged to look into the mirror daily and to see nothing but my own parchment-colored skin, or to turn and behold nothing but George’s brown visage shining back at me all day long, no matter how much adoration it reflected. When I get tired of George and myself I have simply to phone for Stanley Bickford—and Greenland’s icy mountains couldn’t send me anything more Nordic, with a nose more aquiline, with more cerulean eyes, or with hair one bit more prickly and blond. Let me dial another number and I have the Duchess of Uganda, black as the ace of spaces and more beautiful than Lucifer, or Lottie Smith, brown as a berry and with more real vivacity than a twirling dervish. No, thanks, I wouldn’t change. So long as I have my happiness to consider, I’ll not go to the mountain. If the mountain wants me, let it come to me. It knows where I am.”

  “I am going to write a book about you some day, Constancia,” threatened Herbert.

  “If you call it Nice People, it will be a terrible misnomer,” said Constancia, turning to greet the duchess and Lady Hyacinth Brown, who were rushing over to their hostess in concerted excitement, if the floating undulation of Lady Hyacinth, a mode of ambulance which she never abandoned even in her most tense moments, and the waddling propulsion of the duchess may be termed rushing. Behind them like a lost shadow stalked Donald Hewitt.

  Some day Lady Hyacinth and the duchess, the latter more deservedly, will find a chronicler worthy of recounting their adventures and of properly fixing their status in Harlem society. They were an excellent foil to one another; yet each was so much the other’s complement that since the inception of the Back-to-Africa movement, and since the laying of the accolade upon them, they had been inseparable companions, both working for the same cause, each respecting the power of the other, and neither in the least jealous of her sister’s attainments.

  By way of explaining the duchess and Lady Hyacinth, it may be noted that the Back-to-Africa movement was the heart and entrails of a society whose aim it was to oppose to the American slogan of “The United States for the White Man” the equally non-inclusive shibboleth of “Africa for the Black Man,” in this case, the favored descendant of Ham being the American branch. The society held its meetings in a large barn-like building which had once been a church, and certainly one not dedicated to the gods of Africa. Credit must be given the society for realizing the importance of something which most organizations for civic or racial betterment are inclined to ignore, namely an appeal to the pleasurable instincts of man. With the Back-to-Africa movement went costumes that rivaled those of the private guard of the king of England; parades up and down the broad avenues of Harlem every Sunday and once or twice during the week; thunderous orations at the seat of the cabal; and wild, heady music blared forth by a specially trained, constantly practicing brass band. Added to this was the beautifully naïve and romantic way in which the society marched forward to meet the future. Its members were not doomed, like the Israelites, to sweat and toil and perish many in the wilderness before tasting any of the joys of their Canaan. The Back-to-Africa movement realized that it was simply a matter of constantly lessening time before Africa should be back in the hands of its rightful sons and daughters; therefore, in order to speed the zeal of the members, the officers began to parcel out what they already considered as properly, even if only remotely, theirs. Out of deference to the existing powers they did not proclaim an Emperor of Africa, but they did elect a President for the Nonce. With his election their deference to lesser dignitaries ceased, and the far-off, unsuspecting African territories were parceled out left and right, as dukes, counts, and marquises of Africa were created without stint and without thought of the complications which might arise should the Negroes, once returned to their ancestral home, decide upon a republican form of government.

  It had been a bright day indeed for her who had been born simple Mary Johnson (as she was often reminded by Constancia when the spirit of the malicious was upon her) when the President for the Nonce of the African Empire, in recognition of fifteen thousand dollars which her argumentative talents had garnered for the general coffers of the society, had bidden her kneel, had laid his accolade upon her, and then had bidden her rise, Mary Johnson no longer, but Mary, Duchess of Uganda, first of her line, and spiritual and temporal head of the house of Uganda.

  It had been a day no less luminous and no less marked of Heaven when she whose husband was a mere government employee, too stubbornly entrenched in the monthly assurance of a government check to see rising into the future the glorious edifices of the New Africa, had also knelt to rise, in recognition of ten thousand dollars raised for the general coffers, Mrs. Hyacinth Brown no longer but Lady Hyacinth Brown, undisturbed by the social complications of a mulish husband who must continue to be introduced as plain Mr. Brown.

  With their advent into the nobility, there came a rise in social importance if not in actual social status. Few Harlem hostesses could forbear the pleasurable thrill of including on their guest lists the names of the duchess and of Lady Hyacinth. To be sure, as the wife of a railway mail clerk, Lady Hyacinth had already possessed a not unenviable niche in Harlem society; whereas the duchess, as a once-talented, if now slightly declining elocutionist, had also been greatly in demand; but the glories of governmental patronage and of elocution were shabby indeed in comparison with those of nobility. Lady Hyacinth, being the less complicated personage, is the more quickly disposed of. She was a special type from which a well-known and disturbing generality has been drawn for almost every play or novel written to combat miscegenation. Any young Englishman, colonial expatriate, or Southern aristocrat left unprotected with her for five minutes was certain to develop an incurable case of mammy palaver. Her elongated languorous body, deep-sunken eyes shaded with heavy velvet lashes, the perfect blending of colors in her skin, and her evident consciousness of her seductive powers, would have arrested any author in search of the perfect half-caste siren. The only drawback was that one soon tired of Lady Hyacinth; she was neither witty, amusing, nor intelligent; she was merely disturbingly beautiful. She
was clever enough, however, to ally herself with the duchess and, when the moment presented itself, to shine by silent comparison.

  But the duchess was a character, a creation, a personage in whose presence one felt the stir of wings and heavenly vibrations. Constancia declared the duchess was as beautiful as Satan; but she erred; there was nothing Satanic or diabolic about the duchess, not even when she was descanting upon the beauties of that Africa which she had never seen. Indeed, looking at her, one was apt to feel, if he could forget the body to which it was attached, that some divine sculptor had taken a block of the purest black marble and from it had chiseled that classic head. She reminded one of beautiful Queen Nefertiti. In her youth, when her figure, trim and lissom, was a perfect adjunct to the beauty of her face, the duchess had been the toast of half of Negrodom, including many who until they gazed upon her had never felt that beauty could reside in blackness unadulterated. Now in her fortieth year, only in the shapelessness of that bulk with which the years had weighted her down, did she give evidence of the cruelty of time; her face still retained the imperishable beauty of black marble.

  The duchess had come along in a day and time when the searing flare for the dramatic which gnawed at her entrails had had no dignified outlet. There was little which a black girl, however beautiful, might do on the stage; and because Mary Johnson, even as a girl, had been the soul of dignity, she had put the stage out of her mind as something unattainable, and had decided to be an elocutionist. Even so, the way had been hard and thorny. The duchess was not one to truckle; she certainly had not forsworn the stage in order to lend herself as a diseuse to anything less than dignified, and to little less than might be labeled classic. Therefore to Negro audiences which might have rallied to her support, had she regaled them with the warm dialect of “When Malindy Sings” and “The Party,” she chose to interpret scenes from “Macbeth,” “Hamlet,” and “The Merchant of Venice.” To audiences and intelli-gences to whom it was utterly unimportant whether the quality of mercy was strained or not, she portrayed in a beautiful and haunting voice the aspirations of a dark Lady Macbeth, the rich subtleties of a sable Portia, and the piteous fate of a black Desdemona.

  And success had not been hers.

  Finally, as many another artist has turned from the dream of his youth to something baser but more remunerative, the duchess, in the face of want, had turned from elocution to dressmaking. Her nimble fingers and inventive mind had done for her what her voice had failed to accomplish; money had rolled in until she had finally been able to open two shops, and to do nothing herself save supervise.

  But the worm of an unfulfilled ambition lay tightly curled at the root of material success; and at the dropping of a handkerchief the duchess would willingly recite for any club, charity benefit, or simple social gathering. With the passing of the years she had developed a decided predilection for martial pieces and had added to her standard Shakespearian repertoire such hardly perennials as “I am dying, Egypt, dying,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” and “The Black Regiment.” The recital of the gallant doings at Balaclava had once thrown her into a state of embarrassment from which only Constancia’s quick wit had saved her. The members of the United Daughters of African Descent still chuckle at the memory of it.

  It happened at the annual meeting of the Daughters, a conclave at which Constancia, in the guise of mistress of ceremonies, had finally heeded the duchess’ importunings, and had called upon her for a recitation. The duchess was charmed, and she looked to Tennyson’s poem to help her to eclipse totally all other participants on the program. She began beautifully, her “Half a league, half a league, half a league onward” soaring over the benches into the gallery of the auditorium and completely terminating every whisper. Never before had the Daughters given such gracious attention. But midway of the glorious account, at what would seem the crucial moment, something went blank in the duchess’ mind, or, to be more exact, her memory failed her absolutely. Her right arm was raised, her right foot extended and pointed, as she proclaimed “Cannon to right of them.” Twice she repeated the designation of that particular section of cannon. Her memory still in abeyance, she was so discountenanced and flustered at the fourth repetition that even her usual beautiful diction suffered, with the result that she uttered unmistakably, “Cannern to right of them.” It was then that Constancia, who was seated behind her, pulled the duchess’ sleeve, at the same time importuning her in a whisper which escaped no one, “For God’s sake, Duchess, genuflex and sit down.”

  A singular comradeship had sprung up between the duchess and Donald Hewitt, and Harlem soon became accustomed to the sight of the tall, fair-haired, imbibing Englishman, more often tottering than maintaining that dignity which is held synonymous with his nationality, accompanied by the short, hard-breathing, elocutionist. They complemented one another’s educations admirably. Into dens and retreats of which she had never dreamed the duchess followed Donald, squeezed her gargantuan form into diminutive chairs, and bravely sipped at strange, fiery beverages while Donald gulped down others by the score. Impervious to the imprecations hurled at them by those with whom they collided, they would often dance everyone else from the floor until they alone were left, free to dip and glide and pirouette from one end of the dance space to the other. Then back at their seats, just as his head began to sag and his eyes to glaze, Donald would lean across the table, plant the blond refractory head firmly on his crossed elbows, and beseech the duchess to recite. It is to be doubted that the melancholy soliloquy of Denmark’s prince or the gentle pleadings of Portia have ever been uttered under stranger auspices. Over the savage blare of brass and the shrill screeching of strings, cutting into the thick, sickening closeness of cabaret smoke, drowning the obscene hilarity of amorous women, reprimanding the superimposed braggadoccio of inebriated males, the beautiful voice of the duchess would rise, clear and harmonious, winging across the table to Donald. “To be or not to be…” The pure sweet voice of African nobility would go on soothing one of England’s disillusioned children with the divine musings of England’s best. “Nymph, in the orisons, Be all my sins remembered.” Often as not when the last soft syllable fell from the duchess’ lips, England’s son would be peacefully sleeping; for always when the duchess began a Shakespearian recitation, Donald was forced to veil his eyes. With the most charming frankness he had explained his reason for this seeming discourtesy to Constancia, one evening when she came upon him with covered eyes while the duchess, as Ophelia, was declaiming, “O heat, dry up my brains! tears seven times salt, Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!”

  “I adore the duchess,” Donald had apologized, “but I simply cannot look at her when she does Shakespeare. Her voice is as divine as any I have ever heard, but her color and form collide with all my remembered Ophelias and Portias. I cannot get those tall, flaxen-haired women of my

  race out of my mind; they linger there so obstinately that the duchess, so physically dissimilar, for all the ebony loveliness of her face, looms like a moving blasphemy on the horizon of my memory. But you won’t tell her, Constancia, will you?”

  Constancia had promised to keep his secret; so Donald continued, whenever it was a question of the duchess’ Shakespearian repertoire, for which he himself often asked, to shade his eyes, thereby gaining for himself the reputation of being her most sincere and enamored admirer.

  It was never a question of anything more between them than open and candid comradeship; they amused one another, and life seemed more pleasant to them because of the acquaintance. Such a mild state of affairs irked Lady Hyacinth, who looked upon Donald with a favorably prejudiced eye which, alas! found no answering gleam in those blue orbs so childishly centered upon the duchess.

  It was give and take between Donald and the duchess. If he dragged her off nightly to mushroom-growth cabarets, or insisted upon taking her to Park Avenue teas where she was lorgnetted and avoided by all except her constant companion and a few daring males, she also had her hour. Docilel
y Donald followed her to Back-to-Africa meetings, where he sat, hot and uncomfortable, beneath the hostile gaze of thousands for whom he was but another inquisitive and undesired representative of all that was bleached and base; and it was only the duchess’ extended scepter that secured him grace and safety. The duchess piloted him in and out of dark, mysterious hallways, made him climb innumerable flights of creaking stairs as she went her rounds soliciting funds for the movement. Never did he balk, for always he envisioned the evening’s close—music, dancing, the slow fumes from forbidden beverages insinuating their wily passage into his brain, and across the table from him a beautiful black, middle-aged sybil ready to lull him to sleep with the opium of the world’s dramatic wisdom.

  Constancia, although ordinarily charity itself, had no sympathy with the duchess’ nostalgia for Africa, and had never opened her purse to the duchess’ insistent and plaintive pleadings for a donation to the cause. “I am in favor of back-to-nature movements,” she excused herself, “for everybody except George and myself. George knows nothing about African diseases, and I can’t abide tsetse flies, tarantulas, and dresses made out of grass. No, thank you, I wouldn’t change Seventh Avenue for the broadest boulevard along the Congo.”

  “You are totally devoid of race pride, Constancia,” the duchess had complained, bitterly, an indictment against which Constancia knew it was useless to defend herself.

  Donald, equally unsympathetic to the Back-to-Africa movement, and marveling how any inhabitant of Harlem could look forward with relish to life in Africa, had been less impervious to his comrade’s entreaties. He had capitulated by giving the duchess a princely check, accompanied by the ungentlemanly and unphilanthropic wish that it might do the movement no good whatever, and that, should it ever be used toward the purchase of a ship, that unholy conveyance might get no further than New York Harbor.