"If you don"t get away from there I"ll call the police and have you put underneath the jail," she said in a fierce whisper as if standing close to the door.
"Call the police then," I growled, rattling the k.n.o.b.
"I"ll scream," she threatened.
"Scream then," I said.
She didn"t reply and I started hammering on the door.
"Well, wait a minute, can"t you?" she whispered, unlocking the door. She opened it a crack. "You wanna wake up everybody and let "em see what"s happening?"
I pushed inside, said, "I don"t give a d.a.m.n."
She quickly closed and locked the door, then wheeled toward me. "You can"t stay here, you"ll get us both in trouble."
"To h.e.l.l with the trouble," I muttered, turning to face her. "Have a drink?"
She backed against the door. "Well, wait till I get dressed, can"t you? Are you in all that big a hurry?"
I put the bottle on the floor by the bed and stood looking at her a moment. She had on a nubby maroon robe and her blonde hair, dark at the roots, was done up in metal curlers tight to her head. Without lipstick or make-up she looked older; there were deep blue circles underneath her eyes and blue hollows on each side of the bridge of her nose. Tiny crow"s-feet spread out from the outer corners of her eyes and hard slanting lines calipered obliquely from her nostrils, dropping vertically from the edges of her mouth. Her mouth was big, hard, brutal, with lips almost colourless; and her eyes were wide, blue, staring, almost popping, but now there was a muddy look in them. Beneath her robe her b.r.e.a.s.t.s seemed lower, big and loose, and her hips lumped out from her waist like half-filled sacks. For bedroom slippers she wore a pair of worn-out play shoes that had once been red. She had big feet and her ankles were very white, laced with blue veins, and dirty on the bone.
Then I moved in, trapped her against the door.
She jerked to one side, turning, and went half across the room. I lunged, grabbed for her, caught her wrist, and pulled her back. She got rougher and began struggling in earnest. I got her by both arms, put my one-eighty pounds into it, and pushed her down across the bed. She twisted out from underneath me, turned on her stomach. I grabbed her by the shoulder and tried to turn her over toward me; but she rolled clear over me on the other side, and then started fighting with her fists. I grabbed her arms again and pinned them to her sides. She Started kicking at me. We tussled silently back and forth across the bed until we were both panting for breath.
She was big, strong, and quick, and it was all I could do to hold my own. "Gawdd.a.m.n you!" she grated once, but that was the only time she spoke. I didn"t say anything. We stopped for a moment by common accord, resting. Her face was a hard, glowing red and her blue eyes were dark and furious. Her mouth was a hard brutal line.
I relaxed my hold and she s.n.a.t.c.hed a hand loose and hit me in the face. I made a sudden rough grab for her and we both rolled over on the floor. We kept rolling until we were in the middle of the floor and I got her flat on her back and pinned her down.
She stopped struggling and went limp, and the strangest look came into her eyes.
"I dare you to, n.i.g.g.e.r," she said. "Just go "head. I"ll get you lynched right here in California."
"Aw, go to h.e.l.l," I growled.
"My Gawddd, now you wanna beat me," she said, and all of a sudden started crying. "I don"t know what made me let you in, you cruel black b.a.s.t.a.r.d."
She looked like h.e.l.l. She was really a beat biddy, trampishlooking and pure rebbish; and since I"d already lost my livewire edge, I wondered what the h.e.l.l I"d seen in her in the first place. I just stood there and looked at her and wondered.
And on top of all of that she began acting coy. "Take off my shoes," she said, holding out her feet.
"Take off your own G.o.dd.a.m.ned shoes."
"You think "cause I let you in you can do anything you want," she flared. "Well, let me tell you--"
"Aw, go wash your face," I said. "You look beat."
That startled her. She must have thought her being white made her look good to me under any circ.u.mstances.
"Wanna drink?" I offered, waving toward the bottle on the floor by the bed.
"That"s all you n.i.g.g.e.rs do," she said, getting up. "Lie up and get drunk and dream of having white women."
"Now listen, don"t start that--"
"I don"t drink noway," she cut in. "I"m a Christian woman."
I started laughing.
She opened her robe. She was naked except for her shoes.
"Ain"t I beautiful?" she said. "Pure white."
She had a big mature body With. large sagging b.r.e.a.s.t.s and brownish-pink nipples the size of silver dollars. Her stomach was soft and puffy and there were bulges at the top of her big wide thighs. Once upon a time she had had a good figure, but age was in it now.
"This"ll get you lynched in Texas," she said.
Just the notion; just because she was white. But it got me, set me on edge again. I sat down on the bed and reached for the bottle.
She kicked off her shoes and ran across the room, big, gawky, awkward, and grotesque, but with a certain wild grace in her every awkward motion.
"You can"t have none unless you catch me," she teased.
I watched her through lowered lids. My tongue was thick and swelling and my stomach was hollow and weak.
"Sit down," I choked in a thick voice. "This ain"t Texas."
She came over and stood beside the bed. "You know what I"ll do?" she began. I didn"t answer and she started laughing. "You dare me." I still didn"t say anything.
"The preacher said n.i.g.g.e.rs were full of sin," she said. "That"s what makes you black. Take off your clothes."
I laid there and called her everything but a child of G.o.d, talking in a slow, slightly slurred voice.
When I reached for her, she jumped back and wriggled free. "You know what you got to do first," she teased.
Then I grabbed her and we locked together in a test of strength in the middle of the floor; I had her by the wrists, trying to break her down.
"Take it, you can have it," she hissed, bunching her shoulders and trying to break my hold by bulling.
Someone knocked at the door and said in a low, hard voice, "Cut out that racket or I"ll throw you out."
We didn"t pay any attention. I took a deep breath and bore down. She began getting blood-red all down from the face in her neck and shoulders. She was almost as strong as I, but not quite. I slowly broke her down to the floor, and she looked me in the eyes, hers buck-wild.
"All right, rape me then, n.i.g.g.e.r!" Her voice was excited, thick, with threads in her throat.
I let her loose and bounced to my feet. _Rape_--just the sound of the word scared me, took everything out of me, my desire, my determination, my whole build-up. I was taut, poised, ready to light out and run a crooked mile. The only thing she had to do to make me stop was just say the word.
I gave her one last look, saw her mouth come open as though she were going to scream. Then I got the door unlocked, hit the stairs fast, and was just getting in my car when I heard her call my name.
I looked up. She had the blinds drawn back from the window.
"Wait," she whispered.
I climbed in the car without replying, snapped on the juice and mashed the starter, then snapped it off just as the motor caught. My pa.s.sion was gone; I was tired, sore, and deflated; a hangover was taking ahold fast. I hated her guts. But I waited anyway.
In a few minutes she came down, made up like a hustler, and putting her foot on the running board fluttered her mascaraed lashes at me. "Gawd," she said peevishly, "you"re sure a scary n.i.g.g.e.r. Let me in."
That one really burned me. I was through and I knew it; the white folks had won again and I wanted out. But I couldn"t let her get away with it. I didn"t want her to have that satisfaction. So I said coldly and deliberately in a hard, even voice: "You look like mud to me, sister, like so much dirt. Just a big beat b.i.t.c.h with big dirty feet. And if it didn"t take so much trouble I"d make a wh.o.r.e out of you."
She turned a dull dirty red and I could see her eyes getting ugly even in that light. I saw her look up and down the street, then she said, "Just let me see a policeman, you n.i.g.g.e.r. . ."
I dug off and didn"t even look back.
CHAPTER XVIII.
That night I dreamed that a white boy and a coloured boy got to fighting on the sidewalk and the coloured boy pulled out a long-bladed knife and ran at the white boy and began slashing at him and the white boy broke and ran across the street digging into his pocket and at a grocery store on the other side the coloured boy caught up with him and it looked as if he was going to cut him all to pieces but the white boy brought his hand out of his pocket and every time the coloured boy slashed at him he hit at the back of the coloured boy"s hand. The white boy was crying and hitting at the back of the coloured boy"s hand with his fist and the coloured boy was screaming and cursing and jumping in at the white boy to slash at him with the knife; but he couldn"t cut the white boy because the white boy kept ducking and dodging and hitting at the back of his hand. Finally the white boy hit the back of the coloured boy"s hand that held the knife and made a slight cutting movement and the knife fell from the coloured boy"s hand. When I saw the blood start flowing from the back of the coloured boy"s hand I knew the white boy had a smallbladed knife gripped in his fist. The coloured boy picked up the knife with his left hand and began slashing again and the white boy kept on ducking and dodging until he hit the back of the coloured boy"s left hand and cut the tendons in that one also. Then the white boy began chasing the coloured boy down the Street stabbing him all about the head and neck with the tip of the small-bladed knife. Everybody standing around looking at the white boy chasing the coloured boy down the street thought he was beating him with his fist, but I knew he was digging a thousand tiny holes in the coloured boy"s head and neck and that it was only a matter of time before the coloured boy fell to the street and bled to death; but the white boy wasn"t crying any more and he wasn"t in a hurry any more; he was just chasing the coloured boy and stabbing him to death with a quarter-inch blade and laughing like it was funny as h.e.l.l.
I woke up and I couldn"t move, could hardly breathe. The alarm was ringing but I didn"t have enough strength to reach out and turn it off. My hangover was already with me and my body trembled all over as if I had the ague.
Somewhere in the back of my mind a tiny insistent voice kept whispering, _Bob, there never was a n.i.g.g.e.r who could beat it_. I blinked open my eyes, closed them tight again. But it kept on saying it. And I knew it was a fact. If I hadn"t had the hangover I might have gotten it out my mind. But the hangover gave me a strange indifference, a weird sort of honesty, like a man about to die. I could see the whole thing standing there, like a great conglomeration of all the p.e.c.k.e.rwoods in the world, taunting me, _n.i.g.g.e.r, you haven"t got a chance_.
I agreed with it. That was the h.e.l.l of it. With a strange lucid clarity I knew it was no lie. I knew with the white folks sitting on my brain, controlling my every thought, action, and emotion, making life one crisis after another, day and night, asleep and awake, conscious and unconscious, I couldn"t make it. I knew that unless I found my niche and crawled into it, unless I stopped hating white folks and learned to take them as they came, I couldn"t live in America, much less expect to accomplish anything in it.
It wasn"t anything to know. It was obvious. Negro people had always lived on sufferance, ever since Lincoln gave them their freedom without any bread. I thought of a line I"d read in one of Tolstoy"s stories once--"There never had been enough bread and freedom to go around." When it came to us, we didn"t get either one of them. Although Negro people such as Alice and her cla.s.s had got enough bread--they"d prospered from it. No matter what had happened to them inside, they hadn"t allowed it to destroy them outwardly; they had overcome their colour the only way possible in America--as Alice had put it, by adjusting themselves to the limitations of their race. They hadn"t stopped trying, I gave them that much; they"d kept on trying, always would; but they had recognized their limit--a n.i.g.g.e.r limit.
From the viewpoint of my hangover it didn"t seem a hard thing to do. You simply had to accept being black as a condition over which you had no control, then go on from there. Glorify your black heritage, revere your black heroes, laud your black leaders, cheat your black brothers, worship your white fathers (be sure and do that), segregate yourself; then make yourself believe that you had made great progress, that you would continue to make great progress, that in time the white folks would appreciate all of this and pat you on the head and say, "You been a good n.i.g.g.e.r for a long time. Now we"re going to let you in." Of course you"d have to believe that the white folks were generous, unselfish, and loved you so much they wanted to share their world with you, but if you could believe all the rest, you could believe that too. And it didn"t seem like a hard thing for a n.i.g.g.e.r to believe, because he didn"t have any other choice.
But my mind kept rebelling against it. Being black, it was a thing I ought to know, but I"d learned it differently. I"d learned the same jive that the white folks had learned. All that stuff about liberty and justice and equality. . . . All men are created equal.. . . Any person born in the United States is a citizen. . . Learned it out the same books, in the same schools. Learned the song too: ". . . o"er the land of the free and the home of the brave. .. ." I thought Patrick Henry was a hero when he jumped up and said, "Give me liberty or give me death," just like the white kids who read about it. I was a Charles Lindbergh fan when I was a little boy, and thought George Washington was the father of my country--as long as I thought I had a country.
I agreed with the Hearst papers when they lauded the peoples of the conquered European countries for continuing their underground fight against "n.a.z.i oppression"; I always bought the Los Angeles Sunday _Times_ too, and the _Daily News_; read the _Sat.u.r.day Evening Post_ and _Reader"s Digest_ sometimes out at Alice"s house while I was waiting for her to dress; I even got taken in by Pegler plenty times. Like the guys said out at the yard, "Ah believe it." - That was the h.e.l.l of it: the white folks had drummed more into me than they"d been able to scare out.
I knew the average overpatriotic American would have said a leaderman was justified in cursing out a white woman worker for refusing to do a job of work in a war industry in time of war--so long as the leaderman was white. Might have even called her a traitor and wanted her tried for sabotage.
It was just that they didn"t think I ought to have these feelings. They kept thinking about me in connection with Africa. But I wasn"t born in Africa. I didn"t know anyone who was. I learned in history that my ancestors were slaves brought over from Africa. But I"d forgotten that, just like the aristocratic blue bloods of America have forgotten what they learned in history--that most of their ancestors were the riffraff of Europe--thieves, jailbirds, beggars, and outcasts.
So even though the solid logic of my hangover told me that Alice"s way was my only out, I didn"t have anything for it but the same contempt a white person has for a collaborator"s out in France. I just couldn"t help it. That much of the white folks" teaching was still inside of me.
I knew I could marry Alice--the chick loved me. Could marry her, go back to college and get a degree in law, go on to become a big and important Negro. I knew that most people would consider me a lucky black boy.
I knew I would be lucky too. Lying there with the hangover beating in my head like John Henry driving steel, I could see it from every angle--I couldn"t keep from seeing it. I didn"t have the strength to keep it from my mind.
In the first place my old man had been a steel-mill worker at National Malleable in Cleveland, Ohio, when I was born, and my mother had died when I was three. I had two brothers older than I, and we"d been poor boys. My old man had married again and had three other children by our stepmother and I lived in a cole attic room for twelve long years. Shep, my oldest brother, went East when he finished Central High and the last I heard of him he was in the rackets in Washington, D.C. d.i.c.k wanted to be an artist and fooled around with the group at Karamu; he"s still in Cleveland, some sort of politician. I was the ambitious one, I"d wanted to be a doctor. I"d gotten my two years at Ohio State by washing dishes in the white fraternity houses about the campus. But when my old man took sick in "38 I had to stay home and dig in with the rest; and I never got back. I puttered about with pottery at Karamu and worked with the theatre group for a time--met some fine chicks, too, but none like Alice.
All I had when I came to the Coast was my height and weight and the fact I believed that being born in America gave everybody a certain importance. I"d never had two suits of clothes at one time in my life until I got in this war boom.
In the three years in L.A. I"d worked up to a good job in a shipyard, bought a new Buick car, and cornered off the finest coloured chick west of Chicago--to my way of thinking. All I had to do was marry her and my future was in the bag. If a black boy couldn"t be satisfied with that he couldn"t be satisfied with anything.
But what I knew about myself was that my desire for such a life was conditional. It only caught up with me on the crest of being black--when I could accept being black, when I could see no other out, such a life looked great.
But I knew I"d wake up someday and say to h.e.l.l with it, I didn"t want to be the biggest Negro who ever lived, neither Toussaint L"Ouverture nor Walter White. Because deep inside of me, where the white folks couldn"t see, it didn"t mean a thing. If you couldn"t swing down Hollywood Boulevard and know that you belonged; if you couldn"t make a polite pa.s.s at Lana Turner at Ciro"s without having the gendarmes beat the black off you for getting out of your place; if you couldn"t eat a thirtydollar dinner at an hotel without choking on the insults, being a great big "Mister" n.i.g.g.e.r didn"t mean a thing.
Anyone who wanted to could be n.i.g.g.e.r-rich, n.i.g.g.e.r-important, have their Jim Crow religion, and go to n.i.g.g.e.r heaven.
I"d settle for a leaderman job at Atlas Shipyard--if I could be a man, defined by Webster as a male human being. That"s all I"d ever wanted--just to be accepted as a man--without ambition, without distinction, either of race, creed, or colour; just a simple Joe walking down an American street, going my simple way, without any other identifying characteristics but weight, height, and gender.
I liked my job as leaderman more than I had ever admitted to myself before. More than any other job I could think of; more than being the first Negro congressman from California. But it was just the same as all the rest: if! couldn"t have everything that went along with it, if I couldn"t be in authority over white men and women just the same as any other leaderman, to h.e.l.l with it too.
I knew that that was at the bottom of it all. If I couldn"t live in America as an equal in the minds, hearts, and souls of all white people, if I couldn"t know that I had a chance to do anything any other American could, to go as high as an American citizenship would carry anybody, there"d never be anything in this country for me anyway.
And I knew I was a fool. That was the h.e.l.l of it. All it did was give me a grinding headache to go along with the rest of my hangover, and a blinding sense of confusion. I didn"t know whether I was going or coming. If it hadn"t been for my riders I wouldn"t even have made the effort to get out of bed. I took a couple of anacins and some coffee and that helped some.
When I went outside some of the confusion left me. It was a clear morning; the sun was coming up and the air smelled good. It was one of those mornings that ought to have made me feel good to be alive. But as soon as I got behind the wheel I began remembering all the crazy things I had done the night before. Fighting with Madge until I"d already gotten her down, then jumping up running at the sound of the word "rape," letting her go untouched. I"d set out to grind her down but in the end I was the one who was defeated. Maybe I would have been anyway. Maybe there just wasn"t any way of winning. Like the man said, "I can"t win for losing."
No wonder I dreamed such crazy dreams and woke up full of philosophy. I felt chagrined, as foolish as a chump in a prost.i.tute"s room without the price of a lay.
But I made up my mind not to let it ride me. I had done it and that was that. All I could do now was try not to think about it, try to get through the day. I never wanted to see her again as long as I lived.
And then as soon as I got inside the yard I found myself looking at the white women, long-faced and urgent, thinking of Madge again. I wanted to see her, to meet her eyes--even if it wasn"t any more than just walking past her. It was so strong I had to stop dead still and fight it out in my mind before I took another step.
I turned around and went back to Mac"s office to quit. I wanted to clear my tools and get out of the yard as fast as possible. But Mac kept me waiting while he talked to six white guys who came in after me. He just didn"t want to talk to me. I didn"t get sore. I felt too low. Ijust left because! got sick standing there in the stuffy, smoky office and my stomach started peeling in my mouth.
When I got on the job I found Tebbel cursing out the Jews. I didn"t want to listen, didn"t want to argue. But I knew if I left I"d start looking for Madge. That woman spelled trouble, and trouble was on my mind.
Tebbel said the Jews controlled all the money in the world; that the Jews had started the war to make money; and that all Jews were Communists.
"That I gotta see," I said.
But no one paid any attention to me. I supposed they were so happy to find somebody cursing out somebody else besides the "n.i.g.g.e.rs" they didn"t want it interrupted.
He said that F.D.R. was a Jew, that his real name was Rosenveld; that almost all movie actors were Jews; that Eddie Cantor"s real name was Izzy Iskowitz; Jack Benny"s was Jack Kubelsky; Charles Chaplin"s was Tonstein; Douglas Fairbanks" was Ullman; that Nelson Eddy"s old man was a rabbi.
"You left out Jesus Christ," I said. "What was his real name?" But n.o.body paid any attention to that either.
He looked about him furtively to see if any Jews were within earshot, then produced several faded coloured circulars from an old envelope he had in his pocket. "Here"s where you get the facts," he said.
We gathered about to look. They were circulars distributed by Pelley Publishers, Box 2630, Asheville, North Carolina, advertising anti-Semitic booklets. "_Hidden Empire--The Complete Story Of Jewish World Control_," one read, "6 for $1.00... 100 copies, $12.50." Then another: ""_Dupes of Judah"--How Jews Launched the World War_." A third read: "_Stop Being Fooled by Jewish Wailings! Open Door to Knowing. The Christian-Gentile people of the United Stales have the right to know what the nation"s Jews are doing and planning, to destroy Const.i.tutionalism and subst.i.tute an Asiatic Sovietism_. . .
I stopped looking after that. I wanted to laugh but my head was splitting with a hundred-degree headache and I was scared of jarring loose my brains.
Ben gave him a contemptuous look. "Now show us what you got hidden in that other pocket about Negroes," he said.