Harlem Redux

by Persia Walker

David felt another prickle of annoyance. “But segregation is what we’re fighting against—”

  “We can’t denounce segregation in theory without denouncing the Negro church, the Negro college, or any other purely Negro institution.”

  “It’s one thing for us to choose ethnic privacy; quite another to be forced into—”

  “Simple-minded people try to avoid the issue by distinguishing between voluntary and involuntary segregation. But to put it rather colloquially, we can’t have our cake and eat it, too.”

  David’s temper surged. “Sometimes ‘simple-minded’ people are the most perceptive. They have a mental clarity that many intellectuals seem to lose. They don’t lose sight of priorities and they don’t cloud the issues with irrelevancies. Desegregation is, and was, one of the Movement’s primary goals as a means to an end.”

  “You’re mistaken. Or misled. The Movement has never ‘defined’ its position on segregation, merely taken concrete steps to oppose it in its baser forms.”

  David looked at Canfield, wondering if he had heard correctly. Then he leaned forward, and took a deep breath.

  “Mr. Canfield, I have to be blunt. If the Movement isn’t openly opposed to segregation, then it’s lost all meaning.” His eyes met Canfield’s. “And its leaders have lost all credibility.”

  Canfield stared at him. “How dare you—”

  “Any first-year law student—no, any man in the street—knows that the black man’s desire for ethnic privacy in his lodges and his churches does not exclude his right, his basic human right, to integration and equality in the public sphere.”

  “David, please,” Rachel said.

  She touched him on the elbow. He shrugged her off—he was beyond caution—and pressed on.

  “For the time being, we’ve got to live with Jim Crow’s rule, but it’s an anathema. It must go. You wrote of accommodation, Mr. Canfield, of compromise. Well, you can forget compromise. The Devil doesn’t make compromises. Neither can we. It doesn’t matter whether you or I survive to see Jim Crow die. We have to fight it—to crush it—or we’re all lost. Black and white, we’re all done for.”

  Blistering silence. The two men gazed at one another with open enmity. Finally, Canfield cleared his throat.

  “Thank you for that little lecture. It’s good to know that you haven’t lost your dedication, or your energy for debate. One wonders, you know, about a man who’s been away for so long.”

  Clearly, it was time to leave. David stood and drew Rachel up alongside him. He thanked the Canfields for their hospitality and bade them a good night. Rachel spoke up the moment they left.

  “What did you have to insult him like that for? He’s a powerful man. He could’ve been our friend.”

  “With a friend like that, a man doesn’t need enemies.”

  “So what if you don’t like him. I don’t particularly care for his wife, either. But she knows all the right people. She could make sure that we’re invited everywhere. Now, I’ll have to—”

  In that instant it hit him that Rachel hadn’t been intimidated at all. She’d held her tongue because of her social ambitions. That angered him even more and he rounded on her. “Rachel, you’re my wife and I want to make you happy. But I will not play the hypocrite, not even for you.”

  “But if you’d just—”

  “No, I won’t. So, don’t.” He held up his hand. “Just don’t.”

  31. Lulu’s Home Jam

  Lulu lived in the poorest section of Harlem. ‘Shatter the gloom,’ her card had said. Well, where she lived, one constant source of gloom was the constant fear of being short on the rent. If you didn’t pay the rent by Sunday, you’d be out by Monday. So you’d do just about anything to raise that money. That included rent parties: opening your home to strangers and charging admission, from a dime to a half-dollar.

  Lulu’s place was on 131st Street and Eighth Avenue. David got there at around one in the morning. The door downstairs was broken open. Broken glass, discarded bottles, cigarette butts, newspapers, and one curiously flattened dead cat littered the entryway. From the back of a dark, narrow hallway emerged the distant sounds of a party in full swing. David could make out a piano playing ragtime. He followed the sound to the stairs at the back of the hallway. Lulu’s apartment was on the third floor. The apartment door was ajar. Inside, he found an incredibly fat woman sitting at an itsy-bitsy table behind the door.

  “Come on in!” she said. “Make yourself comfortable! Corn liquor’s in the kitchen. Fifty cents a pitcher. You alone, son? I’m sure we can find you some comp’ny.”

  The room was hot and funky. It stunk of smoke, sweat, and booze, collard greens, chitlins, hog maws, mulatto rice, and hopping john. Scores of folks had paid their nickels and dimes to get in. The place was jumping, packed with young studs looking for mischief and pretty young things out for fun. There were painters, truckers, policemen, and drag queens. David recognized poets, novelists, even a local politician or two. He glanced back at his hostess. She was watching him with amusement.

  “Don’t be shy, sugar, we got something for everybody.”

  “I’m looking for a sax player. Name of Shug Ryan. He playing here tonight?”

  “Baby, I got a box-beater and that’s that. If Shug was supposed to come, I don’t know nothing about it.” She held out a grubby hand. “So you staying or what?”

  He paid his quarter and moved into the crowd. It turned out to be a five-room apartment. A poker and blackjack game was up and running in one bedroom; a “private party” was going on in the next. The parlor and dining room had been nearly cleared of furniture. The music had changed to a slow, bluesy number. A sole red light bulb cast a lurid glow over dancing couples, who shuffled in place, grinding their hips together. From the shadows along the edge of the dance floor came pants and whispers, grunts and groans. The floorboards sagged and creaked as the dancers slow-dragged around the crowded floor.

  The box-beater—or piano player, as he’d be known in more polite society—was a narrow, thin man with tired eyes. He swung into a mad folly of light notes tripping over one another. A fat light-skinned girl with dark eyes and long straight black hair climbed atop a chair. She twisted her top so it exposed her midriff and pushed down her long skirt until it sat on her fleshy hips. Raising her arms, she started to rhythmically jiggle her hips to the music. The piano player picked up speed. One loose key flipped off the keyboard. David couldn’t help but think that if that old piano had been alive, it would’ve rocked on dancing feet. He smiled, shook his head, and tapped his feet. After a while, the music started to wind down. David went and bought two cups of liquor and had one waiting for the box-beater when he took a break. The piano player smiled readily when David asked about Shug.

  “Yeah, he’s here. Over there, in the corner. C’mon. I’ll introduce you.”

  Shug Ryan was in his early forties, a short, bald man with a high forehead and flabby cheeks.

  “Let’s go in the kitchen,” he said.

  David bought Shug some corn liquor and asked a few questions about Paris, thinking he’d gradually lead the conversation back to Gem. Shug was eager to talk. He’d hated the Paris scene as much as he’d loved it.

  “Don’t get me wrong. It’s hot, all right—just sometimes, a tad too hot. Us niggers would head into them nightspots in Montmartre. Pockets full when we got there, pockets empty when we left. Drinking that cheap champagne, making it with the white girls. Them chicks knew how to wheedle free drinks and food out of a man. They’d get hold of a fellah and have him jim-clean before the night was through. But we didn’t care. We wanted fun. Wanted to be out there. We was like kids in a candy shop.” He smiled. “We’d get all hopped up, smoking that bamboo, tucking into some snow—whatever and whenever we wanted it.” Then he shook his head and said to himself again, “Yeah, them streetcorner Sallies fleeced us clean.”

  “What made you decide to get out?”

  Shug took a drink from his cup and set it down. “Well, it was l
ike this. My friend Julian Campbell was playing with the group Jukebox ‘29. One night, he fell down dead while blowing his horn. Had a stroke. Right in the middle of a set. The life did him in. He was young, but the life killed him. Well, that brought me up straight. It sure did. I caught the next boat back.”

  “How long you been back?”

  “about a month.”

  “How’s your luck holding?”

  Shug grinned. “Ain’t got nothing but holes in it, man. Nothing but holes.”

  “So, did you see Gem McKay over there?”

  “Nah, man. Ain’t laid eyes on her in more’n a year.”

  “But I thought you were friends with her.”

  Shug hunched his shoulders and raised his hands in an I-don’t-know gesture. “Hey, a woman like her don’t have no friends. You know that. You say you her brother, so you got to know that.”

  “Well, if you didn’t see her, did you at least hear about her? Where she was, how she’s doing?”

  “Far as I know, ain’t nobody heard nothing. And I do mean nothing.”

  David tucked ten bits in Shug’s hand and turned away. He felt a deepening sense of dread. He’d been so sure that Shug would give him the information he needed. So sure th—

  Wait.

  Shug had given him something, something important. It was odd—No, downright strange––that Shug hadn’t heard anything about Gem. He was part of her crowd.

  David felt a chill.

  Of course, there was always the possibility that she’d left Paris, gone south to Marseilles or off to Madrid or Barcelona if she’d found a new friend.

  But what if she didn’t leave Paris?

  Wasn’t it time he admitted what had been right before his eyes?

  The increasingly overwhelming signs that she never even got there at all?

  32. On the Town

  They’d been married for two days. Every minute that ticked by was borrowed time, time counted against the moment his secret was revealed. Whether that time could be counted in months or weeks or even days, David didn’t know. That was all the more reason to make the most of it. He decided to surprise Rachel with a night out. So earlier that day, he’d reserved tables at a cabaret. When she returned home from work that day (“When are you going to quit?” he kept asking. “I can’t right now,” she’d say, “They still need me”), he told her to get fixed up.

  “We’re stepping out,” he said. “But first, let’s see if you like this.”

  He pulled out a slender blue box. It was tied with a gold ribbon. He set it on the bed and her face lit up like a child’s at Christmastime. He sat nearby and watched her. She tore the ribbons open and lifted off the cover. When she saw what lay within, her mouth formed an O of surprise.

  “My God,” she whispered, and covered her mouth.

  A string of pearls gleamed on a bed of blue velvet. She reached out to touch them, then drew her hand back.

  “Go on,” he said. “They’re yours. Try them on.”

  She couldn’t. She couldn’t move. With a smile, he got up, took the necklace from the box, draped it around her throat, and fastened it. He put his hands on her shoulders and steered her toward the mirror. She stared at her reflection, that of a very beautiful—and wealthy—young wife. She stroked the pearls and regarded her image with wonder.

  He laughed and hugged her. “And now, my dear, you’re supposed to say, ‘Oh, David, you shouldn’t have.’“

  Her gaze moved to his reflection. “Am I supposed to say that?”

  He nodded.

  “All right,” she said, warming to the game. “‘Oh, David, you shouldn’t have.’”

  “And then I say, ‘But aren’t you glad I did?’“

  “And then,” she turned to face him, nuzzled him, kissed him, “And then … I get to show you just how glad I can be.”

  An hour and a half later, they were walking east across 139th Street toward Lenox Avenue.

  “Where we’re going,” he said, “used to be one of my old stomping grounds, Jack Johnson’s Club Deluxe. Of course, it’s got new owners now, and a new name, but I’m sure it’s just as fine.”

  They turned north. When they reached the corner of Lenox and 142nd Street, they saw a long queue of limousines pulled up in front of the club’s marquee. People in ermine and top hats pressed around the entrance, waiting to get in. Rachel and David joined the crowd. He noticed that a few glances were thrown at Rachel, then at him, but he thought nothing of it. After all, Rachel was a pretty woman and the new clothes she’d bought did her justice. The crowd moved forward and soon they were just inside the entrance. He missed the hesitant look the doorman gave them.

  An usher came up, wearing an unctuous smile. He was young, white, and skinny, and already starting to bald. He glanced at Rachel and his smile disappeared.

  “May I help you?” he asked.

  “Why, yes,” David said, “we have reservations—”

  The usher’s eyes again went to Rachel. “I’m afraid that can’t be.”

  Rachel tensed.

  “What do you mean?” David said, perplexed and irritated. “You took my reservation.”

  “You must be mistaken. We’ve been booked out for weeks, months—”

  “Years?” David added.

  The usher shuffled uncomfortably.

  David said, “This is ridiculous. I—”

  “Perhaps it would be better if you spoke with the manager.” The usher bowed himself away, leaving David and Rachel standing there.

  “David, let’s leave,” she whispered.

  He put an arm around her shoulder. She edged closer. The usher reappeared, this time with a large, fat, bullet-shaped man, who was also white. The usher gestured toward David and Rachel, then stepped back. The big guy surged forward with a definite I’m-in-charge attitude. He had Mob written all over him, from the loud checks of his sack suit to the scowl on his face. He jabbed a thick thumb in the direction of the cowering usher behind him.

  “My man here tells me you folks got some kinda problem.”

  “No problem,” David said. “We just want our table.”

  “You’ve made a mistake. All our tables are taken.”

  Rachel’s grip on David’s arm tightened. “Please, let’s go.”

  “No.” He turned to the fat man. “If there’s been a mistake, then you’ve made it. I was here yesterday. I made reservations and your man said everything would be fine. Now we’re going to sit at our table. If somebody else is sitting there, you’ll just have to ask them to leave.”

  The fat man glared at David. “Buddy, you’re the one who’s leaving. You wanna hang out with a spade, that’s fine with me. But you can’t do it here.” Two muscular men appeared at his elbow. “I suggest you don’t ask for trouble.”

  “David—” Rachel tugged at David’s arm. “It’s not worth it. They’ll have us thrown in jail—or worse.” She threw them a terrified look. “Now please. I just want to be with you. It doesn’t have to be here.”

  “Rachel—”

  “I don’t want to stay here!”

  As they left the Cotton Club, they were silent. He could’ve kicked himself. He should’ve known better. He’d heard that some of Harlem’s best clubs had gone white, but it hadn’t really registered. He looked at Rachel. The worst part was that he didn’t know what to say to her. He didn’t know how to make it better.

  I’m protected from all them evil people now. I got you.

  He stopped, took her in his arms, and hugged her. “I’m sorry, Rachel. I should’ve checked. It was my fault.”

  “It’s nothing, David. It don’t matter. Don’t matter at all.”

  But looking down deep into her eyes, he could see that it did.

  33. Augustus

  That next evening found Rachel and David sitting in the parlor, reading. He was deep into J. W. Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. She peeped at him over the top of her magazine. He’d asked her if she wanted to go out again that night and she
’d said no. She could tell that he’d been relieved, but he felt guilty. He assumed that she was still upset over the Cotton Club business. She was, but that’s not why she wanted to stay home. In fact, he was more upset about the Cotton Club than she was. She simply wanted to stay home because she had this sudden desperate desire to keep him all to herself. She didn’t want to share his attention, not with anyone, not even an admiring social circle. She knew this was unreasonable, but the impulse was so strong it didn’t have to make sense.

  He glanced up, caught her staring, and smiled, then went back to his book.

  I can’t believe he belongs to me … that I’m here with him … and that no one, but no one, can ever order me away again.

  Her eyes rose to the painting over the mantelpiece. Augustus McKay’s portrait looked down at her with stern disapproval. She felt a little chill crawl up her spine. For a moment, she actually thought the eyes in the portrait were alive. They seemed so full of displeasure at the sight of her.

  I bet you’re rolling over in your grave to see me here. Well I am here and you can’t do nothing about it.

  Her memories of Daddy McKay were vivid. He’d been one of those successful colored men who were not only proud of their achievements but acutely aware of their responsibility toward other “less fortunate” members of their race. As far as she was concerned, he’d been obsessed with “the race issue.” He’d systematically subscribed to every protest magazine and religiously read every sensationalist newspaper printed by the Negro press. He was always ready to discuss, debate, and deliberate on the injuries and humiliations done to his people.

  “Rachel, I don’t want you over there so often,” her mother had told her one day. “Don’t be hurt when I say this, honey, but I don’t think Daddy McKay likes you.”

  At the time, Rachel was fifteen. She put down the book she was struggling to read––Jane Eyre it was––and scowled. “Well, I don’t like him neither.”

  “Then what you going over there for?” Minnie asked, letting her knitting sink to her lap.

  Rachel felt a surge of impatience. Her mother would never understand. “Leave me alone, Mama. I can’t explain. Just let me be.” She picked up her book and tried to find her place.