The Ways of White Folks (11 page)

Oceola returned North to prepare for her New York concert in the fall. She wrote Mrs. Ellsworth at Bar Harbor that her doctor boy-friend was putting in one more summer on the railroad, then in the autumn he would intern at Atlanta. And Oceola said that he had asked her to marry him. Lord, she was happy!

It was a long time before she heard from Mrs.
Ellsworth. When the letter came, it was full of long paragraphs about the beautiful music Oceola had within her power to give the world. Instead, she wanted to marry and be burdened with children! Oh, my dear, my dear!

Oceola, when she read it, thought she had done pretty well knowing Pete this long and not having children. But she wrote back that she didn’t see why children and music couldn’t go together. Anyway, during the present depression, it was pretty hard for a beginning artist like herself to book a concert tour—so she might just as well be married awhile. Pete, on his last run in from St. Louis, had suggested that they have the wedding at Christmas in the South. “And he’s impatient, at that. He needs me.”

This time Mrs. Ellsworth didn’t answer by letter at all. She was back in town in late September. In November, Oceola played at Town Hall. The critics were kind, but they didn’t go wild. Mrs. Ellsworth swore it was because of Pete’s influence on her protegee.

“But he was in Atlanta,” Oceola said.

“His spirit was here,” Mrs. Ellsworth insisted. “All the time you were playing on that stage, he was here, the monster! Taking you out of yourself, taking you away from the piano.”

“Why, he wasn’t,” said Oceola. “He was watching an operation in Atlanta.”

But from then on, things didn’t go well between
her and her patron. The white lady grew distinctly cold when she received Oceola in her beautiful drawing room among the jade vases and amber cups worth thousands of dollars. When Oceola would have to wait there for Mrs. Ellsworth, she was afraid to move for fear she might knock something over—that would take ten years of a Harlemite’s wages to replace, if broken.

Over the tea cups, the aging Mrs. Ellsworth did not talk any longer about the concert tour she had once thought she might finance for Oceola, if no recognized bureau took it up. Instead, she spoke of that something she believed Oceola’s fingers had lost since her return from Europe. And she wondered why any one insisted on living in Harlem.

“I’ve been away from my own people so long,” said the girl, “I want to live right in the middle of them again.”

Why, Mrs. Ellsworth wondered further, did Oceola, at her last concert in a Harlem church, not stick to the classical items listed on the program. Why did she insert one of her own variations on the spirituals, a syncopated variation from the Sanctified Church, that made an old colored lady rise up and cry out from her pew, “Glory to God this evenin’! Yes! Hallelujah! Whooo-oo!” right at the concert? Which seemed most undignified to Mrs. Ellsworth, and unworthy of the teachings of Philippe. And furthermore, why was Pete coming up
to New York for Thanksgiving? And who had sent him the money to come?

“Me,” said Oceola. “He doesn’t make anything interning.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Ellsworth, “I don’t think much of him.” But Oceola didn’t seem to care what Mrs. Ellsworth thought, for she made no defense.

Thanksgiving evening, in bed, together in a Harlem apartment, Pete and Oceola talked about their wedding to come. They would have a big one in a church with lots of music. And Pete would give her a ring. And she would have on a white dress, light and fluffy, not silk. “I hate silk,” she said. “I hate expensive things.” (She thought of her mother being buried in a cotton dress, for they were all broke when she died. Mother would have been glad about her marriage.) “Pete,” Oceola said, hugging him in the dark, “let’s live in Atlanta, where there are lots of colored people, like us.”

“What about Mrs. Ellsworth?” Pete asked. “She coming down to Atlanta for our wedding?”

“I don’t know,” said Oceola.

“I hope not, ’cause if she stops at one of them big hotels. I won’t have you going to the back door to see her. That’s one thing I hate about the South—where there’re white people, you have to go to the back door.”

“Maybe she can stay with us,” said Oceola. “I wouldn’t mind.”

“I’ll be damned,” said Pete. “You want to get lynched?”

But it happened that Mrs. Ellsworth didn’t care to attend the wedding, anyway. When she saw how love had triumphed over art, she decided she could no longer influence Oceola’s life. The period of Oceola was over. She would send checks, occasionally, if the girl needed them, besides, of course, something beautiful for the wedding, but that would be all. These things she told her the week after Thanksgiving.

“And Oceola, my dear, I’ve decided to spend the whole winter in Europe. I sail on December eighteenth. Christmas—while you are marrying—I shall be in Paris with my precious Antonio Bas. In January, he has an exhibition of oils in Madrid. And in the spring, a new young poet is coming over whom I want to visit Florence, to really know Florence. A charming white-haired boy from Omaha whose soul has been crushed in the West. I want to try to help him. He, my dear, is one of the few people who live for their art—and nothing else.… Ah, such a beautiful life!… You will come and play for me once before I sail?”

“Yes, Mrs. Ellsworth,” said Oceola, genuinely sorry that the end had come. Why did white folks think you could live on nothing but art? Strange! Too strange! Too strange!

The Persian vases in the music room were filled with long-stemmed lilies that night when Oceola Jones came down from Harlem for the last time to play for Mrs. Dora Ellsworth. Mrs. Ellsworth had on a gown of black velvet, and a collar of pearls about her neck. She was very kind and gentle to Oceola, as one would be to a child who has done a great wrong but doesn’t know any better. But to the black girl from Harlem, she looked very cold and white, and her grand piano seemed like the biggest and heaviest in the world—as Oceola sat down to play it with the technique for which Mrs. Ellsworth had paid.

As the rich and aging white woman listened to the great roll of Beethoven sonatas and to the sea and moonlight of the Chopin nocturnes, as she watched the swaying dark strong shoulders of Oceola Jones, she began to reproach the girl aloud for running away from art and music, for burying herself in Atlanta and love—love for a man unworthy of lacing up her boot straps, as Mrs. Ellsworth put it.

“You could shake the stars with your music, Oceola. Depression or no depression, I could make you great. And yet you propose to dig a grave for yourself. Art is bigger than love.”

“I believe you, Mrs. Ellsworth,” said Oceola, not turning away from the piano. “But being married won’t keep me from making tours, or being an artist.”

“Yes, it will,” said Mrs. Ellsworth. “He’ll take all the music out of you.”

“No, he won’t,” said Oceola.

“You don’t know, child,” said Mrs. Ellsworth, “what men are like.”

“Yes, I do,” said Oceola simply. And her fingers began to wander slowly up and down the keyboard, flowing into the soft and lazy syncopation of a Negro blues, a blues that deepened and grew into rollicking jazz, then into an earth-throbbing rhythm that shook the lilies in the Persian vases of Mrs. Ellsworth’s music room. Louder than the voice of the white woman who cried that Oceola was deserting beauty, deserting her real self, deserting her hope in life, the flood of wild syncopation filled the house, then sank into the slow and singing blues with which it had begun.

The girl at the piano heard the white woman saying, “Is this what I spent thousands of dollars to teach you?”

“No,” said Oceola simply. “This is mine.… Listen!… How sad and gay it is. Blue and happy—laughing and crying.… How white like you and black like me.… How much like a man.… And how like a woman.… Warm as Pete’s
mouth.… These are the blues.… I’m playing.”

Mrs. Ellsworth sat very still in her chair looking at the lilies trembling delicately in the priceless Persian vases, while Oceola made the bass notes throb like tomtoms deep in the earth.

sang the blues,

sang the blues,

“And I,” said Mrs. Ellsworth rising from her chair, “would stand looking at the stars.”

——

“D
EAD, DEAD AS HELL
, these little burgs on the Florida coast. Lot of half-built skeleton houses left over from the boom. Never finished. Never will be finished. Mosquitoes, sand, niggers. Christ, I ought to break away from it. Stuck five years on same boat and still nothin’ but a third mate puttin’ in at dumps like this on a damned coast-wise tramp. Not even a good time to be had. Norfolk, Savannah, Jacksonville, ain’t bad. Ain’t bad. But what the hell kind of port’s this? What the hell is there to do except get drunk and go out and sleep with niggers? Hell!”

Feet in the sand. Head under palms, magnolias, stars. Lights and the kid-cries of a sleepy town. Mosquitoes to slap at with hairy freckled hands and a dead hot breeze, when there is any breeze.

“What the hell am I walkin’ way out here for? She wasn’t nothin’ to get excited over—last time I saw her. And that must a been a full three years ago. She acted like she was a virgin then. Name was Betsy. Sure ain’t a virgin now, I know that. Not after we’d been anchored here damn near a month,
the old man mixed up in some kind of law suit over some rich guy’s yacht we rammed in a midnight squall off the bar. Damn good thing I wasn’t on the bridge then. And this damn yellow gal, said she never had nothing to do with a seaman before. Lyin’ I guess. Three years ago. She’s probably on the crib-line now. Hell, how far was that house?”

Crossing the railroad track at the edge of town. Green lights. Sand in the road, seeping into oxfords and the cuffs of dungarees. Surf sounds, mosquito sounds, nigger-cries in the night. No street lights out here. There never is where niggers live. Rickety run-down huts, under palm trees. Flowers and vines all over. Always growing, always climbing. Never finished. Never will be finished climbing, growing. Hell of a lot of stars these Florida nights.

“Say, this ought to be the house. No light in it. Well, I remember this half-fallin’-down gate. Still fallin’ down. Hell, why don’t it go on and fall? Two or three years, and ain’t fell yet. Guess
she’s
fell a hell of a lot, though. It don’t take them yellow janes long to get old and ugly. Said she was seventeen then. A wonder her old woman let me come in the house that night. They acted like it was the first time a white man had ever come in the house. They acted scared. But she was worth the money that time all right. She played like a kid. Said she liked my red hair. Said she’d never had a white man before.… Holy Jesus, the yellow wenches I’ve had,
though.… Well, it’s the same old gate. Be funny if she had another mule in my stall, now wouldn’t it?… Say, anybody home there?”

“Yes, suh! Yes, suh! Come right in!”

“Hell, I know they can’t recognize my voice.… It’s the old woman, sure as a yard arm’s long.… Hello! Where’s Betsy?”

“Yes, suh, right here, suh. In de kitchen. Wait till I lights de light. Come in. Come in, young gentleman.”

“Hell, I can’t see to come in.”

Little flare of oil light.

“Howdy! Howdy do, suh! Howdy, if ’tain’t Mister Clarence, now, ’pon my word! Howdy, Mister Clarence, howdy! Howdy! After sich a long time.”

“You must-a knowed my voice.”

“No, suh, ain’t recollected, suh. No, suh, but I knowed you was some white man comin’ up de walk. Yes, indeedy! Set down, set down. Betsy be here directly. Set
right
down. Lemme call her. She’s in de kitchen.… You Betsy!”

“Same old woman, wrinkled as hell, and still don’t care where the money comes from. Still talkin’ loud.… She knew it was some white man comin’ up the walk, heh? There must be plenty of ’em, then, comin’ here now. She knew it was some white man, heh!… What yuh sayin’, Betsy, old gal? Damn if yuh ain’t just as plump as ever. Them same
damn moles on your cheek! Com’ere, lemme feel ’em.”

Young yellow girl in a white house dress. Oiled hair. Skin like an autumn moon. Gold-ripe young yellow girl with a white house dress to her knees. Soft plump bare legs, color of the moon. Barefooted.

“Say, Betsy, here is Mister Clarence come back.”

“Sure is! Claren—Mister Clarence! Ma, give him a drink.”

“Keepin’ licker in the house, now, heh? Yes? I thought you was church members last time I saw yuh? You always had to send out and get licker then.”

“Well, we’s expectin’ company some of the times these days,” smiling teeth like bright-white rays of moon, Betsy, nearly twenty, and still pretty.

“You usin’ rouge, too, ain’t yuh?”

“Sweet rouge.”

“Yal?”

“Yeah, man, sweet and red like your hair.”

“Yal?”

No such wise cracking three years ago. Too young and dumb for flirtation then: Betsy. Never like the old woman, talkative, “This here rum come right off de boats from Bermudy. Taste it, Mister Clarence. Strong enough to knock a mule down. Have a glass.”

“Here’s to you, Mister Clarence.”

“Drinkin’ licker, too, heh? Hell of a baby, ain’t
yuh? Yuh wouldn’t even do that last time I saw yuh.”

“Sure wouldn’t, Mister Clarence, but three years a long time.”

“Don’t Mister Clarence
me
so much. Yuh know I christened yuh.… Auntie, yuh right about this bein’ good licker.”

“Yes, suh, I knowed you’d like it. It’s strong.”

“Sit on my lap, kid.”

“Sure.…”

Soft heavy hips. Hot and browner than the moon—good licker. Drinking it down in little nigger house Florida coast palm fronds scratching roof hum mosquitoes night bugs flies ain’t loud enough to keep a man named Clarence girl named Betsy old woman named Auntie from talking and drinking in a little nigger house on Florida coast dead warm night with the licker browner and more fiery than the moon. Yeah, man! A blanket of stars in the Florida sky—outside. In oil-lamp house you don’t see no stars. Only a white man with red hair—third mate on a lousy tramp, a nigger girl, and Auntie wrinkled as an alligator bringing the fourth bottle of licker and everybody drinking—when the door … slowly … opens.