Black Like Me (3 page)

The doctor showed much doubt and perhaps regret that he had ever cooperated with me in this transformation. Again he gave me many firm warnings and told me to get in touch with him any time of the day or night if I got into trouble. As I left his office, he shook my hand and said gravely, “Now you go into oblivion.”

A cold spell had hit New Orleans, so that lying under the lamp that day was a comfortable experience. I decided to shave my head that evening and begin my journey.

In the afternoon, my host looked at me with friendly alarm. “I don’t know what you’re up to,” he said, “but I’m worried.”

I told him not to be and suggested I would probably leave
sometime that night. He said he had a meeting, but would cancel it. I asked him not to. “I don’t want you here when I go,” I said.

“What are you going to do - be a Puerto Rican or something?” he asked.

“Something like that,” I said. “There may be ramifications. I’d rather you didn’t know anything about it. I don’t want you involved.”

He left around five. I fixed myself a bite of supper and drank many cups of coffee, putting off the moment when I would shave my head, grind in the stain and walk out into the New Orleans night as a Negro.

I telephoned home, but no one answered. My nerves simmered with dread. Finally I began to cut my hair and shave my head. It took hours and many razor blades before my pate felt smooth to my hand. The house settled into silence around me. Occasionally, I heard the trolley car rattle past as the night grew late. I applied coat after coat of stain, wiping each coat off. Then I showered to wash off all the excess. I did not look into the mirror until I finished dressing and had packed my duffel bags.

Turning off all the lights, I went into the bathroom and closed the door. I stood in the darkness before the mirror, my hand on the light switch. I forced myself to flick it on.

In the flood of light against white tile, the face and shoulders of a stranger - a fierce, bald, very dark Negro - glared at me from the glass. He in no way resembled me.

The transformation was total and shocking. I had expected to see myself disguised, but this was something else. I was imprisoned in the flesh of an utter stranger, an unsympathetic one with whom I felt no kinship. All traces of the John Griffin I had been were wiped from existence. Even the senses underwent a change so profound it filled me with distress. I looked into the mirror and saw nothing of the white John Griffin’s past. No, the reflections led back to Africa, back to the shanty and the ghetto, back to the fruitless struggles against the mark of blackness. Suddenly, almost with no mental preparation, no advance hint, it became clear and permeated my whole being. My inclination was to fight against it. I had gone too far. I knew now that there is no such thing as
a disguised white man, when the black won’t rub off. The black man is wholly a Negro, regardless of what he once may have been. I was a newly created Negro who must go out that door and live in a world unfamiliar to me.

The completeness of this transformation appalled me. It was unlike anything I had imagined. I became two men, the observing one and the one who panicked, who felt Negroid even into the depths of his entrails. I felt the beginnings of great loneliness, not because I was a Negro but because the man I had been, the self I knew, was hidden in the flesh of another. If I returned home to my wife and children they would not know me. They would open the door and stare blankly at me. My children would want to know who is this large, bald Negro. If I walked up to friends, I knew I would see no flicker of recognition in their eyes.

I had tampered with the mystery of existence and I had lost the sense of my own being. This is what devastated me. The Griffin that was had become invisible.

The worst of it was that I could feel no companionship with this new person. I did not like the way he looked. Perhaps, I thought, this was only the shock of a first reaction. But the thing was done and there was no possibility of turning back. For a few weeks I must be this aging, bald Negro; I must walk through a land hostile to my color, hostile to my skin.

How did one start? The night lay out there waiting. A thousand questions presented themselves. The strangeness of my situation struck me anew - I was a man born old at midnight into a new life. How does such a man act? Where does he go to find food, water, a bed?

The phone rang and I felt my nerves convulse. I answered and told the caller my host was out for the evening. Again the strangeness, the secret awareness that the person on the other end did not know he talked with a Negro. Downstairs, I heard the soft chiming of the old clock. I knew it was midnight though I did not count. It was time to go.

With enormous self-consciousness I stepped from the house into the darkness. No one was in sight. I walked to the corner and
stood under a streetlamp, waiting for the trolley.

I heard footsteps. From the shadows, the figure of a white man emerged. He came and stood beside me. It was all new. Should I nod and say “Good evening,” or simply ignore him? He stared intently at me. I stood like a statue, wondering if he would speak, would question me.

Though the night was cold, sweat dampened my body. This also was new. It was the first time this adult Negro had ever perspired. I thought it vaguely illuminating that the Negro Griffin’s sweat felt exactly the same to his body as the white Griffin’s. As I had suspected they would be, my discoveries were naïve ones, like those of a child.

The streetcar, with pale light pouring from its windows, rumbled to a stop. I remembered to let the white man on first. He paid his fare and walked to an empty seat, ignoring me. I felt my first triumph. He had not questioned me. The ticket-taker on the streetcar nodded affably when I paid my fare. Though streetcars are not segregated in New Orleans, I took a seat near the back. Negroes there glanced at me without the slightest suspicion or interest. I began to feel more confident. I asked one of them where I could find a good hotel. He said the Butler on Rampart was as good as any, and told me what bus to take from downtown.

I got off and began walking along Canal Street in the heart of town, carrying one small duffel bag in each hand. I passed the same taverns and amusement places where the hawkers had solicited me on previous evenings. They were busy, urging white men to come in and see the girls. The same smells of smoke and liquor and dampness poured out through half-open doors. Tonight they did not solicit me. Tonight they looked at me but did not see me.

I went into a drugstore that I had patronized every day since my arrival. I walked to the cigarette counter, where the same girl I had talked with every day waited on me.

“Package of Picayunes, please,” I said in response to her blank look.

She handed them to me, took my bill and gave me change with no sign of recognition, none of the banter of previous days.

Again my reaction was that of a child. I was aware that the
street smells, and the drugstore odors of perfume and arnica, were exactly the same to the Negro as they had been to the white. Only this time I could not go to the soda fountain and order a limeade or ask for a glass of water.

I caught the bus to South Rampart Street. Except for the taverns, the street was deserted when I arrived at the Butler Hotel. A man behind the counter was making a barbecue sandwich for a woman customer. He said he’d find me a room as soon as he finished. I took a seat at one of the tables and waited.

A large, pleasant-faced Negro walked in and sat at the counter. He grinned at me and said: “Man, you really got your top shaved, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, doesn’t it look all right?”

“Man, it’s slick. Makes you look real good.” He said he understood the gals were really going for bald-headed men. “They say that’s a sure sign of being high-sexed.” I let him think I’d shaved my head for that reason. We talked easily. I asked him if this was the best hotel in the area. He said the Sunset Hotel down the street might be a little better.

I picked up my bags and walked toward the door.

“See you around, Slick,” he called after me.

An orange neon sign guided me to the Sunset Hotel, which is located next to a bar. The drab little lobby was empty. I waited a moment at the desk and then rang a call bell. A man, obviously awakened from sleep, came down the hall in his undershirt, buttoning his trousers. He said I would have to pay in advance and that he didn’t allow men to take girls up to the rooms. I paid the $2.85 and he led me up narrow, creaking stairs to the second floor. I stood behind him as he opened the door to my room and saw over his shoulder the desolate, windowless cubicle. I almost backed out, but realized I could probably find nothing better.

We entered and I saw that the room was clean.

“The bathroom’s down the hall,” he said. I locked the door after him and sat down on the bed to the loud twang of springs. A deep gloom spread through me, heightened by noise of talk, laughter and jukebox jazz from the bar downstairs. My room was scarcely larger than a double bed. An open transom above the door
into the hall provided the only ventilation. The air, mingled with that of other rooms, was not fresh. In addition to the bed, I had a tiny gas stove and a broken-down bed stand. On it were two thin hand towels, a half bar of Ivory soap.

It was past one now. The light was so feeble I could hardly see to write. With no windows I felt boxed in, suffocating.

I turned off my light and tried to sleep, but the noise was too much. Light through the open transom fell on the ceiling fan, casting distorted shadows of the four motionless blades against the opposite wall.

A dog barked nearby and his bark grew louder as another tune from the jukebox blasted up through my linoleum floor. I could not shake the almost desperate sadness all this evoked, and I marveled that sounds could so degrade the spirit.

I slipped into my pants and walked barefoot down the narrow, dim-lit hall to the door with a crudely lettered sign reading MEN. When I stepped in, the hollow roar of water beating against the wall of a metal shower filled the room, along with an odor of cold sweat and soap. One man was in the shower. Another, a large, black-skinned man, sat naked on the floor awaiting his turn at the shower. He leaned back against the wall with his legs stretched out in front of him. Despite his state of undress, he had an air of dignity. Our eyes met and he nodded his polite greeting.

“It’s getting cold, isn’t it?” he said.

“It sure is.”

“You talking to me?” the man in the shower called out above the thrumming.

“No - there’s another gentleman here.”

“I won’t be much longer.”

“Take your time - he don’t want to shower.”

I noted the bathroom was clean, though the fixtures were antique and rust-stained.

“Have you got a stove in your room?” the man on the floor asked. We looked at one another and there was kindness in his search for conversation.

“Yes, but I haven’t turned it on.”

“You
didn’t
want to take a shower, did you?” he asked.

“No - it’s too cold. You must be freezing on that bare floor, with no clothes on.”

His brown eyes lost some of their gravity. “It’s been so hot here recently. It feels kind of good to be cold.”

I stepped over to the corner washbasin to rinse my hands.

“You can’t use that,” he said quickly. “That water’ll run out on the floor.” I looked beneath, as he indicated, and saw it had no drainpipe.

He reached beside him and flicked back the wet canvas shower curtain. “Hey, how about stepping back and letting this gentleman wash his hands?”

“That’s all right. I can wait,” I said.

“Go ahead,” he nodded.

“Sure - come on,” the man in the shower said. He turned the water down to a dribble. In the shower’s obscurity, all I could see was a black shadow and gleaming white teeth. I stepped over the other’s outstretched legs and washed quickly, using the soap the man in the shower thrust into my hands. When I had finished, I thanked him.

“That’s all right. Glad to do it,” he said, turning the water on full strength again.

The man on the floor handed up his towel for me to dry my hands. Under the dim light in the tiny room without windows, I realized I was having my first prolonged contact as a Negro with other Negroes. Its drama lay in its lack of drama, in its quietness, in the courtesies we felt impelled to extend to one another. I wondered if the world outside was so bad for us that we had to counter it among ourselves by salving one another with kindness.

“Do you want a cigarette?” I asked.

“Please, sir - I believe I will.” He leaned his heavy body forward to accept one. His black flesh picked up dull highlights from the bare globe overhead. I fished in my pants pocket for matches, and lighted our cigarettes. We talked of local politics. I told him I was new in town and knew nothing about them. He refrained from asking questions, but explained that Mayor Morrison had a good reputation for fairness and the Negroes were hoping he would be elected governor. I sensed the conversation made little
difference, that for a few moments we were safe from the world and we were loath to break the communication and go back to our rooms. It gave us warmth and pleasure, though we talked formally and showed one another great respect. Not once did he ask my name or where I came from.

When the man in the shower finished and stepped out dripping, the larger man hoisted himself up from the floor, tossed his cigarette into the toilet bowl and got into the shower. I told them good night and returned to my room, less lonely, and warmed by the brief contact with others like me who felt the need to be reassured that an eye could show something besides suspicion or hate.

T
he dark room
. The streak of pale light through the transom. I woke to it several times, thinking it a long night. Then it occurred to me that there were no windows, that it might well be day outside.

I dressed, took my bags and walked down the steps. The sun glared brilliantly on Rampart Street. Traffic pushed past the lobby window.