Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker

by David Remnick

  “Oh, no, no, no,” said her host. “No, no.”

  “I am,” she said. “I know I am. Poor Burton! Now, me, I don’t feel that way at all. I haven’t the slightest feeling about colored people. Why, I’m just crazy about some of them. They’re just like children—just as easy-going, and always singing and laughing and everything. Aren’t they the happiest things you ever saw in your life? Honestly, it makes me laugh just to hear them. Oh, I like them. I really do. Well, now, listen, I have this colored laundress, I’ve had her for years, and I’m devoted to her. She’s a real character. And I want to tell you, I think of her as my friend. That’s the way I think of her. As I say to Burton, ‘Well, for Heaven’s sakes, we’re all human beings!’ Aren’t we?”

  “Yes,” said her host. “Yes, indeed.”

  “Now this Walter Williams,” she said. “I think a man like that’s a real artist. I do. I think he deserves an awful lot of credit. Goodness, I’m so crazy about music or anything, I don’t care what color he is. I honestly think if a person’s an artist, nobody ought to have any feeling at all about meeting them. That’s absolutely what I say to Burton. Don’t you think I’m right?”

  “Yes,” said her host. “Oh, yes.”

  “That’s the way I feel,” she said. “I just can’t understand people being narrow-minded. Why, I absolutely think it’s a privilege to meet a man like Walter Williams. Now, I do. I haven’t any feeling at all. Well, my goodness, the good Lord made him, just the same as He did any of us. Didn’t He?”

  “Surely,” said her host. “Yes, indeed.”

  “That’s what I say,” she said. “Oh, I get so furious when people are narrow-minded about colored people. It’s just all I can do not to say something. Of course, I do admit when you get a bad colored man, they’re simply terrible. But as I say to Burton, there are some bad white people, too, in this world. Aren’t there?”

  “I guess there are,” said her host.

  “Why, I’d really be glad to have a man like Walter Williams come to my house and sing for us, some time,” she said. “Of course, I couldn’t ask him on account of Burton, but I wouldn’t have any feeling about it at all. Oh, can’t he sing! Isn’t it marvelous, the way they all have music in them? It just seems to be right in them. Come on, let’s us go on over and talk to him. Listen, what shall I do when I’m introduced? Ought I to shake hands? Or what?”

  “Why, do whatever you want,” said her host.

  “I guess maybe I’d better,” she said. “I wouldn’t for the world have him think I had any feeling. I think I’d better shake hands, just the way I would with anybody else. That’s just exactly what I’ll do.”

  They reached the tall young Negro, standing by the bookcase. The host performed introductions; the Negro bowed.

  “How do you do?” he said. “Isn’t it a nice party?”

  The woman with the pink velvet poppies extended her hand at the length of her arm and held it so, in fine determination, for all the world to see, until the Negro took it, shook it, and gave it back to her.

  “Oh, how do you do, Mr. Williams,” she said. “Well, how do you do. I’ve just been saying, I’ve enjoyed your singing so awfully much. I’ve been to your concerts, and we have you on the phonograph and everything. Oh, I just enjoy it!”

  She spoke with great distinctness, moving her lips meticulously, as if in parlance with the deaf.

  “I’m so glad,” he said.

  “I’m just simply crazy about that ‘Water Boy’ thing you sing,” she said. “Honestly, I can’t get it out of my head. I have my husband nearly crazy, the way I go around humming it all the time. Oh, he looks just as black as the ace of—er. Well, tell me, where on earth do you ever get all those songs of yours? How do you ever get hold of them?”

  “Why,” he said, “there are so many different—”

  “I should think you’d love singing them,” she said. “It must be more fun. All those darling old spirituals—oh, I just love them! Well, what are you doing, now? Are you still keeping up your singing? Why don’t you have another concert, some time?”

  “I’m having one the sixteenth of this month,” he said.

  “Well, I’ll be there,” she said. “I’ll be there, if I possibly can. You can count on me. Goodness, here comes a whole raft of people to talk to you. You’re just a regular guest of honor! Oh, who’s that girl in white? I’ve seen her some place.”

  “That’s Katherine Burke,” said her host.

  “Good Heavens,” she said, “is that Katherine Burke? Why, she looks entirely different off the stage. I thought she was much better-looking. I had no idea she was so terribly dark. Why, she looks almost like— Oh, I think she’s a wonderful actress! Don’t you think she’s a wonderful actress, Mr. Williams? Oh, I think she’s marvelous. Don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do,” he said.

  “Oh, I do, too,” she said. “Just wonderful. Well, goodness, we must give some one else a chance to talk to the guest of honor. Now, don’t forget, Mr. Williams, I’m going to be at that concert if I possibly can. I’ll be there applauding like everything. And if I can’t come, I’m going to tell everybody I know to go, anyway. Don’t you forget!”

  “I won’t,” he said. “Thank you so much.”

  The host took her arm and piloted her firmly into the next room.

  “Oh, my dear,” she said. “I nearly died! Honestly, I give you my word, I nearly passed away. Did you hear that terrible break I made? I was just going to say Katherine Burke looked almost like a nigger. I just caught myself in time. Oh, do you think he noticed?”

  “I don’t believe so,” said her host.

  “Well, thank goodness,” she said, “because I wouldn’t have embarrassed him for anything. Why, he’s awfully nice. Just as nice as he can be. Nice manners, and everything. You know, so many colored people, you give them an inch, and they walk all over you. But he doesn’t try any of that. Well, he’s got more sense, I suppose. He’s really nice. Don’t you think so?”

  “Yes,” said her host.

  “I liked him,” she said. “I haven’t any feeling at all because he’s a colored man. I felt just as natural as I would with anybody. Talked to him just as naturally, and everything. But honestly, I could hardly keep a straight face. I kept thinking of Burton. Oh, wait till I tell Burton I called him ‘Mister’!”

  [1927]

  WILLIAM MELVIN KELLEY

  CARLYLE TRIES POLYGAMY

  FOR A WHILE ANYWAY an Africamerican man named Carlyle Bedlow lived in one large, sunny room in a brownstone on lower Edgecombe Avenue in Harlem, U.S.A. Like many men he had a polygamous nature, which did not make him promiscuous. And neither had he married. But over the years he usually seemed to have two or three steady lady friends.

  Often they overlapped, and sometimes they repeated. First he would have one woman, for example Glora Glamus. Then he would meet another one, like Senegale Miller. Then he would shuttle back and forth between the two. On the way he might meet a third. Then he would shuttle around among the three, traveling from the Bronx to Manhattan to Brooklyn. Then the first woman would get tired of his intermittency and break it off. Then he would meet another woman shuttling back and forth between the second two. Occasionally he would disappear to his room in Harlem, where he lived alone and never let anyone visit except his brother and his widowed mother, who rarely came because she did not like climbing the three flights of steps to his room.

  Carlyle Bedlow kept his room neat and clean. Since he never entertained any women there, he had a firm narrow bed, which he made up into a couch each morning. His clothes he kept in a large closet and three black footlockers. A high-grade Navajo rug (handmade by the Etcitty sisters) covered the polished-wood floor. In the corner near the window sat an EzeeGuy chair, where by sunlight or lamp he would relax and read science fiction novels, a pile of which he stacked beside the chair.

  Sometimes he would look up from his reading and think about the two more or less steady lady friends he had kept fo
r the past ten years. Actually Glora had occupied a place in his heart for about thirty years. In the beginning he loved her madly but could not win her because she loved Carlyle’s mentor in the hustling life, the society baker and contract killer C. C. (Cooley) Johnson. Eventually, when she realized that Cooley Johnson would never love anybody, she and Carlyle began a relationship that produced a daughter, Carlotta, now twelve years old. Carlyle and Glora had broken it off fifty times, but had made up fifty-one times. Besides, they both adored Carlotta. So did Carlyle’s mother, though she did not like professional barmaid Glora, considering her barky and brassy and boastful.

  The second lady friend in Carlyle’s life had a child for him as well, an eight-year-old daughter named Mali. He had met Mali’s mama, Senegale Miller, at a jump-up given by the Rastafarian bredda who supplied high-quality cannabis that Carlyle sold to his high-society clientèle, affluent former Woodstockians who had returned to the lap of luxury but secretly still smoked the blessed herb and did not want the world to know it.

  Senegale Miller possessed luxuriant glistening black dreadlocks reaching to the small of her back which had never known scissors or comb. Raised in the cockpit country of Arawaka and descended from Maroons (who fought their way out of slavery in the seventeen-thirties), she had not worn shoes until coming to America. She stood six feet tall in her smooth cocoa-buttered chocolate-colored skin and had the grace of a seal in water. Carlyle’s mother did not like Senegale either, mostly because she could not understand her thick accent, but, as she did with Carlotta, she showered Mali with gifts.

  Carlotta and Mali got along very well, better than most big and little sisters. Sometimes Carlyle borrowed his brother’s RoadStar sedan and without telling their mothers took the two girls anywhere they wanted to go, the beach or zoo or circus or rodeo or amusement park. He walked behind them, an unobtrusive shepherd, enjoying the sight of them whispering, cavorting, holding hands.

  RECENTLY their mothers had become jealous of each other. They had known of each other for the past three years, when Senegale had tracked him down to Glora’s house in the Bronx, demanding money for Mali’s school uniforms. Before that, he had kept them separated in different parts of the city, Senegale in Brooklyn and Glora in the Bronx. Once they learned about each other, they did not stop talking and asking about each other.

  In the Bronx, Glora might inquire, “When you getting your monkey woman to cut off that bush of hair and get a regular look, baby?”

  In Brooklyn, Senegale would comment, “Is only a foolfool woulda make him babymudda to work into said wicked atmosphere, man no see it.”

  In the Bronx, Glora might wonder, “Why you don’t go to court for custody of that cute little Mali, then report that bitch to immigration?”

  In Brooklyn, Senegale would ponder, “Why you must keep on with the old woman when you kyan find rest and fulfillment in I-arm of this daughter of King Solomon?”

  At times the verbal struggle they waged in his ears became so intense that Carlyle would retreat to his sunny Harlem room and rest in his EzeeGuy until his ears repaired themselves. He would not see either woman for a week. His brother, who knew something of his dilemma, told him that the blessed Koran gave a man permission to maintain four women, which did not help. Carlyle could barely manage two.

  “Then you must cut one loose, my brother. Keep the relationship with your offspring, but call it off with one of the mothers.” His brother had decided to wait till the Provider sent him a woman, abstaining from sex for several years, though Carlyle suspected he had a woman stashed somewhere. “You must choose!”

  But Carlyle loved both women, Glora for her mocha beauty and her fast mouth, Senegale for her chocolate beauty and her independent spirit, and could not choose between them. Reclining in his EzeeGuy, he would puff a spliff and try to envision life without one or the other of them. He had always loved Glora; Senegale had stomped into his life with her goofy belief in the divinity of Ethiopia just when he had started to get sour, making him aware of some motivating force in the world besides money. Until Senegale came along he had not known how much he loved Glora, because falling in love with Senegale reminded him that he had love inside himself to give. So suddenly he also found himself in love with Glora again.

  Carlyle could not decide between them. But something had to change. Then one day he encountered Brother Ben selling juice and astrology books at the corner of 125th Street and Frederick Douglass, and the brother launched into his tired polygamy rap, which goes:

  Vietnam + Homosexuality + Prison + Heroin + AIDS + Crack had so reduced the male Africamerican population as to make polygamy the only way for Africamerican culture to sustain itself. Each man had to accept his responsibility. Each woman had to realize that only by accepting the other women in her man’s life could she get a man to call her own. Then of course once a man had gathered his women together he might organize them to make dried-flower arrangements or some such product—

  “But Brother Ben,” Carlyle interrupted. “You have a nuclear family under your own roof, a wife you’ve loved for years and two beautiful daughters like mine. And besides, no other woman would have you!”

  Brother Ben blinked, but continued his rap undeterred as Carlyle ambled away. But Brother Ben had made one usable point: perhaps Carlyle should bring together his two warring lady friends for a sitdown. Give them the opportunity to say bad things to each other face to face without making Carlyle’s brain the battleground. Perhaps they could work out what he could not. At least they might blow off some bad gas.

  CARLYLE arranged to have both meet him on a Tuesday evening at one of Harlem’s few surviving gems, the Golden Grouse Bar & Restaurant. He liked breakfast better than dinner at the Grouse but did not expect anybody to eat very much. However, red-clad Glora tipped in first and quickly ordered an immense fried-chicken dinner with scalloped potatoes and tossed salad and peach cobbler and the Grouse’s special punch. Before her food had arrived, Senegale appeared in olive drab, her dreadlocks wrapped (out and back like a praying mantis) in the Nationalist colors. She carried various tubs of her own I-tall delicacies because she did not trust the cook at the Grouse to keep the bacon grease out of the peanut oil.

  The two women sat silently glaring across the table at each other and consumed all that the waitress and Senegale had carried to the table, near the end of the thirty-minute meal Senegale sampling the peach cobbler and Glora quenching her thirst with the homemade ginger beer. Together they covered their belches and tittered.

  Then they both put fire under his sorry brown butt! Thought the sight of this simple country cow pie would do what? But make I tell all the world that I-woman never fear no old higgler till yet, no see it! Sure don’t see what jive hustle he think he pulling with this tired B.S. but this sister came a long way to tell ev’rybody that this just won’t hardly go down! Because I-love that I-woman keeping for said man spring from the most high mountain of New Zion! Besides this brother have deluded himself into thinking that because I love him that mean I need him when he be too dim to see I got my own house on Barnes Avenue in the Bronx all bought and paid for with mops and tips, and also got by far the best of his never-do-nothing buttocks in his daughter Carlotta. Which I-sister kyan strenuously affirm and illustrate as him give I-woman nothing of value but sweet likkle Mali, and she quite valuable. They glowered at him.

  So now what, bumbasukka?

  “I just wanted to see if we all couldn’t maybe find a way to get along,” Carlyle said simply. “I can’t help myself but I love you both. And I been mainly true to you two for the past ten years.” He heard and despised the quiet desperation in his voice. “I mean, the kids don’t seem to defend each other.”

  The women agreed. Dem two pickney hitch up like sea and sand, no see it. Looking so cute and fly in they little matching outfits, hooking it up on the phone when this fool think he sneaking them out on the sly to take them someplace like my child don’t come tell her mama ev’rything that be goin’ on, turkey! All
the while dem aburn up phone wire, no see it, talkin’ bout my sister dis and my sister dat, Carlotta why and Carlotta what for. And many times Carlotta have said, “Mama, why can’t Mali spend the night?”

  Well they could certainly agree to arrange that. Senegale expressed her gratitude that Mali would spend time on safer Bronx streets than those in the part of Brooklyn in which she presently resided where posses marauded in broad daylight and as soon as she found suitable accommodations, perhaps with members of her extended family in New Jersey, she would willingly offer similar hospitality to Carlotta. Strangely enough, Glora’s aforementioned two-family semidetached featured a smaller second-floor space, which she had recently listed with Sister Edward’s Realty, seeking tenants, five hundred dollars a month for two-bedrooms-kitchen-living-room-bath, use of washer-dryer, easy walking distance to the I.R.T.—but Senegale knew the way because she had already visited there at least once. They shook on it, bracelets and bangles jangling.

  On the first of the following month, two jaunty I-dren driving a yellow van, puffing spliffs and blasting St. Donald Drummond and the Skatalites on their trunk-size cassette player, delivered Senegale and Mali Miller, along with two mahogany beds, a sofa and an over stuffed chair, a dish cabinet, a kitchen table and chairs, large cartons of clothes, books, utensils, dishes and pots, a cast-iron Dutchie, tools, raffia, leather hides for belts and sandals, and one calico puss cat named Kiki, to chez Glora Glamus, Bronx, N.Y. Soon the house filled with incessant female activity. Carlotta and Mali and their girlfriends (neighborhood pre-teens quickly forming a crew) seemed to make no distinction between upstairs and downstairs, roaming freely throughout every room under the roof, as likely to sleep in one as in the other of their two bedrooms, eating wherever hunger and opportunity struck them, though both avoided Glora’s rhubarb pie as well as Senegale’s steamed okra. And the two women began to take the step-aerobics class and do weights at the local NUBODi exercise salon on White Plains Road, working off their stress and excess energy with the rest of the sisters. Around the corner on Paulding Avenue, Carlyle’s mother loved living near to both of her two darlings, though she still barely tolerated their mothers.