Celeste's Harlem Renaissance (20 page)

I jumped up, clapping my hands. “The library, too? And go shopping at a real department store with a candy section? And maybe Coney Island, where I can meet some girls?”

“You can’t see New York in one day, so we got to be picky,” she reminded me.

“I’ll just toodle along to be sociable,” Miss D said. She and I smiled so wide we nearly split our lips.

“You promised to take me to Madam Walker’s, too,” I threw in.

“I can’t swing the cost of that right now,” Aunti said, looking uncomfortable.

“I’ve got some money. How much will it cost? If you don’t want me there because you and Miss A’Lelia aren’t friends anymore, I can go by myself and not mention your name.”

Miss D let out a whoop. “Celeste Lassiter Massey, you’ve learned the delicate Harlem art called ‘tricks of the tongue.’ And she learned it from you, Val! Make an appointment for the girl.”

“All right, all right.” Aunti looked at me with a mixture of what I interpreted to be pride and frustration. “I got to take the path of least resistance on this one, I guess. Now can I get my beauty rest?”

“Yes, ma’am,” we said, laughing.

Miss D winked at me. “Come get some sweet tea for your aunt,” she said. I followed her over to her place. She reached into her icebox and poured out glasses of tea for my aunt and me. “I think you won that round. We’re old friends and I love her dearly, but Val likes to put things off too much. Chile gets downright lazy sometimes. But don’t tell her I said that.”

“All right. You sound just like how I do with my girlfriends when one of them talks about the other,” I told her.

Sipping on my tea, I carried my aunt’s glass to her. She took it and started talking about places I specifically wanted to see. That was a good sign. She was going along with something that I wanted to do. Was it the beginning of Aunti’s change of heart — like eventually returning home?

I was up early the next morning so I could take a real bath in the lavatory down the hall. When
Aunti
wanted to go somewhere, she moved fast and didn’t like to wait on anybody. That is, provided she didn’t wake up with an excuse about how she couldn’t go. When I came back, I could hear Miss D moving around next door, but Aunti was still asleep. I settled on my nice white waist, a pretty blue skirt that had once belonged to Aunti, and my comfortable old Buster Browns. I wanted my dogs to stand up to the hard walking I was sure we’d do.

With a deliberate clatter, I placed a fresh pot of coffee on the hot plate, and parked myself at the table to wait. Just as the coffee got hot, and I was getting that way, too, Aunti sat up, glanced at me, groaned, and flopped back down. I held my breath. Then she jumped out of bed — “Hi, Miss Thing! You ready?” — drank her coffee, dressed, and was ready to go just as Miss D came knocking on our door.

“Where you ladies flouncing off to?” asked Mrs. Tartleton when we reached the lobby. I told her. “Well, good. Tell Miss Liberty I said hello!”

Our first stop was at the One Hundred Thirty-fifth Street branch library. I walked around, my mouth open, marveling at the sight of so many stacks and stacks of books. Aunti said the main library was bigger than the capitol building in Raleigh. I got down to business and searched around for medical books. I finally chose one on women’s ailments and cures, and another on healing herbs. Aunti checked them out for me.

“Who reads all those books in that place?” Miss D asked as we stepped back into the hot Harlem sun.

“I do, when I have time,” Aunti replied.

I kept quiet. I’d never seen her read anything but theater and fashion sections of the
New York Amsterdam News
newspaper, movie handbills, the
Shuffle Along
script, and Monsieur’s menus.

I saw lots of girls in short skirts and waists and boys in knickers and caps my age walking, running, and staring back at me. I waved at some of them. A few waved back. Other boys slouched against stores and flirted with the girls, or shined shoes for customers.

We took the subway again. I decided I liked it all right, because of the speed, but I still preferred to see what we were passing. Back up on street level, we walked some more. Soon I saw the Statue of Library in the distance, surrounded by water. “Is it sitting in the Atlantic Ocean?” I asked, pointing excitedly.

“No, no, it’s on an island in New York Harbor. We take a ferry over to it,” Aunti said.

“I ain’t getting on no ferry,” Miss D declared. “Y’all go on; I’ll wait.”

“But you’re from South Carolina, Ripsey.” Aunti laughed. “Didn’t you say you waded in swamps and creeks, and cast nets for shrimp and jumping mullet with water moccasins swimming around your legs? How could you be scared of water?”

“I ain’t scared of water; I’m scared of boats,” Miss D huffed. “When those things sink, they trap people underwater, even folks who can swim. You remember that
Titanic,
the ship that couldn’t be sunk? It dropped like a rock in the river, and all those folks drowned.”

I’d been nervous about that ferry myself, so I was glad Miss D spoke up first. We were close enough anyway for me to get a good eyeballing of Miss Liberty. All around us stores sold postcards, books, statue replicas, and so many other Miss Liberty trinkets I almost passed out trying to window-shop. I wanted to buy everything, but in the end I chose a small metal Miss Liberty statue and some New York postcards to send back to friends, Aunt Society, and Poppa.

“Miss Liberty’s head is over seventeen feet long, and her hand is over sixteen feet long,” I read from a postcard.

“That’s a bigheaded gal there,” Miss D said, and laughed.

At one place a man snapped a photograph of Miss D and me standing on each side of a cardboard Statue of Liberty. Aunti flirted with a Colored policeman watching us until she persuaded him to take a photograph with her. Then all four of us had a picture taken together. Aunti promised us that she would give us each a copy of the photographs when they were ready.

We stopped at a food cart and gobbled down hot dogs and Pepsi-Colas. “Pepsi-Cola was first made in New Bern, North Carolina,” Aunti said. “A man named Caleb Bradham invented it in his pharmacy there in 1898. I know because your momma and I were just wild about it. I still love it.”

“That hot dog might have come from there, too,” Miss D added. “North Carolina is a big pig state.”

Well, ain’t that the bee’s knees! Here I was in New York drinking and eating food from North Cacky Lacky!

We walked and walked, and Aunti and Miss D identified different sights for me, like the Flatiron Building in the distance. I craned my neck, amazed at its size even so far away. It looked like it reached the top of the world! We didn’t go any closer, though. Aunti insisted that she needed her nap. Miss D was getting tired, and I was, too. But now I’d seen with my own eyes so much of what I’d only read about before! I planned to remember how to use that fine art of “tricks of the tongue” to get more things done my way.

A few days later Aunti gave me money to go get my hair styled at Madam Walker’s. I had my first real morning out in Harlem on my own! I decided to return the library books first, and found the library easily. I wanted to take out more books but I had to have Aunti Val with me to do it. I decided I’d have to come back soon and spend the day.

The hairdressers were very friendly, especially after I mentioned Miss Almadene Hardy, the agent I’d met on the train. I didn’t mention Aunti Val’s name, though. A sweet-faced hairdresser named Vernice gave my hair a fine shampooing, drying, and dressing, and then styled it in something called a “French braid.” It was sort of like the old cornrowing, but the weave was different. Besides the bun and just plain straight back, now I could fix my hair another way. Some of the other customers complimented me on how nice I looked. Remembering Aunti’s instruction, I gave Miss Vernice an extra quarter for a tip. She seemed happy to get it.

Feeling like a sophisticated Harlemite, I left the salon and looked at myself in almost every store window I passed. When I walked through packs of folks, people smiled and nodded. I heard one woman say, “Oh, I love her hair. I got to find somebody to do mine like that.”

Don’t you know that really made my head get big! Couldn’t be anything nicer than to feel and look pretty in Harlem! I put more strut in my step and actually switched my hips more. I wished I’d worn those pumps and not my old Buster Browns! And maybe a shorter skirt! When I got back to the boardinghouse, Mrs. Tartleton clapped her appreciation.

Upstairs, Aunti turned me around and around, scrutinizing my hair and murmuring praise. “You look fabulous! Was Miss Vernice your hairdresser? She’s done my hair, too. Be sure to keep wrapping that scarf around your head to keep your hair looking good, hear? You look just like me and your momma when we were your age.”

Of all the words said to me that day, Aunti’s were the best.

When I woke up the next morning, I discovered that the back of my nightgown was wet. Then I saw blood. I hadn’t fallen! How could I have cut myself
down there
? I ran to the lavatory in the hallway with my nightgown pressed up against me. More blood dripped. Was I going to die?

Oh.
Was it my womanhood that had arrived?

I duckwalked back to the room and woke up my aunt. “Welcome to the womanhood club,” she said, and yawned. She put on her coffee, matter-of-factly told me what to do, and helped me get situated. Then we drank coffee and tea at the table like grown women while she explained what Aunt Society never had. Aunti Val didn’t make having my womanhood sound like a frightening curse like I’d heard my girlfriends say. They’d said I couldn’t take a bath or get my feet wet or be around people much. I’d been a little worried that I’d never get to do anything while I was having my monthly, except sit in the house. When I told all this to Aunti, she just laughed and said those were old wives’ tales, like Gertie’s getting tapeworms from milk.

But this business of wearing — and washing — thick strips of cloth four or five days a month was going to be a major inconvenience. On the other hand, I’d noticed that my bosom had started to poke out more, and my behind was a bit bigger. I’d been yearning for that to happen. So maybe there was something positive to it.

“Now listen, you ain’t grown yet,” Aunti warned me. “But you
can
get a baby if you let a boy do his business with you,” she said. “Please don’t let that happen, at least not while you’re with me!”

“Oh, no! I want to get a baby, but I have to go to medical school and get married first. Aunt Society warned me ever since I could remember that after my womanhood starts to ‘keep your dress down and your legs crossed!’ “

“Good. Remember that. That’s one piece of advice she gave you that makes sense.”

I knew that a boy’s “business” had something to do with
down there,
but when I asked what a boy did to give me a baby, Aunti mumbled something into her coffee and changed the subject. I reckoned I’d have to return to the library and read up on that to find out for sure.

The June days were passing, with me staying busy passing out
Shuffle Along
programs at night and going with Aunti to the Café Noir Le Grande during the day.
Shuffle Along
was getting good reviews in the important White theatrical newspapers and in the Colored press, which made the cast happy. Most important, Aunti was being paid for her
Shuffle Along
performances. She also began giving me twenty-five cents a night for passing out programs, and that was a blessing!

I’d hint that she should save her money for emergencies and she’d agree. Then we’d go to the Twice As Nice, “just to look,” and return with a bag of cute shoes and a dress for her, and a waist for me. I was hitting up Schwartz’s regularly for red and black licorice, so I couldn’t fuss too much with her for not saving.

July in Harlem was even hotter than July in Raleigh. Maybe that was because we lived around so much concrete and brick here. Since we didn’t have windows in our room, we didn’t get any breeze unless we left our door open, and then that was just hot air. While Aunti slept upstairs in the afternoon — the hottest part of the day — I sat on the porch and read, wrote in my journal, played my violin, or just watched folks pass by.

But upstairs was so hot that one afternoon Aunti dozed in the swing on the porch. I fanned myself and read an
Amsterdam
newspaper that Mrs. Tartleton kept on her desk. I could hear band music in the distance, probably coming from someone’s Victrola. When I saw Miss D walking toward us from her day’s work with bags of clothes from Miz Sheehan in her arms, I hurried to her and took one.

“Thanks, baby. It’s hot enough to bake bread without a stove today.” She sat down by Aunti and wiped her face with her apron.

I picked through the bags, hoping to find something I liked and that might fit, before Miss D fixed them up and sold them to the Twice As Nice. “Miss D, how’s Gertie?”

“My boy wrote me that she’s drinking goat milk now, she’s discovered green beans, and she’s got a front tooth coming in.”

“South Carolina must be good for her. You know, I miss her.” I held up a pink blouse.

“But there’s more to it. He said Netta Lee and Gertie stay with
her
momma, and that that woman spanks poor little Gertie every morning, soon’s she gets up. Says she wants Gertie to start her day out right. I’m gonna pray for the Lord to make a way to help my grandbaby. That ain’t right.” She patted her lap nervously.

Aunti and I murmured our concerns, but I couldn’t help thinking that frankly Gertie could use a few more spankings to make her behave. Still, that was a strange way to do it.

“I’m going on up. I’m tired.” Miss D stood up. “Oh, a Marcus Garvey parade’s going down Seventh Avenue. He ain’t in it, though.”

Aunti stood up. “Oh, how I love a parade! C’mon, Cece! We can wear what we got on.” She swung her arms and legs like she was marching, and I stood up, too. “His parades are so grand,” Aunti said. “I saw him in one once. He wore this cap with plumes, rode in an open-air motorcar, and looked so stern in his uniform! I love a man in a uniform.”