The Ways of White Folks (12 page)

“Say, what the hell? Who’s openin’ that room door, peepin’ in here? It can’t be openin’ itself?”

The white man stares intently, looking across the table, past the lamp, the licker bottles, the glasses
and the old woman, way past the girl. Standing in the door from the kitchen—Look! a damn redheaded baby. Standing not saying a damn word, a damn runt of a red-headed baby.

“What the hell?”

“You Clar—- … Mister Clarence, ’cuse me!

 … You hatian, you, get back to you’ bed this minute—fo’ I tan you in a inch o’ yo’ life!”

“Ma, let him stay.”

Betsy’s red-headed child stands in the door looking like one of those goggly-eyed dolls you hit with a ball at the County Fair. The child’s face got no change in it. Never changes. Looks like never will change. Just staring—blue-eyed. Hell! God damn! A red-headed blue-eyed yellow-skinned baby!

“You Clarence!… ’Cuse me, Mister Clarence. I ain’t talkin’ to you suh.… You, Clarence, go to bed.… That chile near ’bout worries de soul-case out o’ me. Betsy spiles him, that’s why. De po’ little thing can’t hear, nohow. Just deaf as a post. And over two years old and can’t even say, ‘Da!’ No, suh, can’t say, ‘Da!’ ”

“Anyhow, Ma, my child ain’t blind.”

“Might just as well be blind fo’ all de good his eyesight do him. I show him a switch and he don’t pay it no mind—’less’n I hit him.”

“He’s mighty damn white for a nigger child.”

“Yes, suh, Mister Clarence. He really ain’t got much colored blood in him, a-tall. Betsy’s papa,
Mister Clarence, now he were a white man, too.… Here, lemme pour you some licker. Drink, Mister Clarence, drink.”

Damn little red-headed stupid-faced runt of a child, named Clarence. Bow-legged as hell, too. Three shots for a quarter like a loaded doll in a County Fair. Anybody take a chance. For Christ’s sake, stop him from walking across the floor! Will yuh?

“Hey! Take your hands off my legs, you lousy little bastard!”

“He can’t hear you, Mister Clarence.”

“Tell him to stop crawlin’ around then under the table before I knock his block off.”

“You varmint.…”

“Hey! Take him up from there, will you?”

“Yes, suh, Mister Clarence.”

“Hey!”

“You little …”

“Hurry! Go on! Get him out then! What’s he doin’ crawlin’ round dumb as hell lookin’ at me up at me. I said,
me
. Get him the hell out of here! Hey, Betsy, get him out!”

A red-headed baby. Moonlight-gone baby. No kind of yellow-white bow-legged goggled-eyed County Fair baseball baby. Get him the hell out of here pulling at my legs looking like me at me like me at myself like me red-headed as me.

“Christ!”

“Christ!”

Knocking over glasses by the oil lamp on the table where the night flies flutter Florida where skeleton houses left over from boom sand in the road and no lights in the nigger section across the railroad’s knocking over glasses at edge of town where a moon-colored girl’s got a red-headed baby deaf as a post like the dolls you wham at three shots for a quarter in the County Fair half full of licker and can’t hit nothing.

“Lemme pay for those drinks, will yuh? How much is it?”

“Ain’t you gonna stay, Mister Clarence?”

“Lemme pay for my licker, I said.”

“Ain’t you gonna stay all night?”

“Lemme pay for that licker.”

“Why, Mister Clarence? You stayed before.”

“How much is the licker?”

“Two dollars, Mister Clarence.”

“Here.”

“Thank you, Mister Clarence.”

“Go’bye!”

“Go’bye.”

——

A
MANDA LEE HAD BEEN A PERFECT SERVANT
. And her husband Arnold likewise. That the Lord had taken them both so soon was a little beyond understanding. But then, of course, the Lord was just. And He had left the Pembertons poor little black Arnie as their Christian duty. There was no other way to consider the little colored boy whom they were raising as their own,
their very own
, except as a Christian duty. After all, they were white. It was no easy thing to raise a white child, even when it belonged to one, whereas this child was black, and had belonged to their servants, Amanda and Arnold.

But the Pembertons were never known to shirk a duty. They were one of New England’s oldest families, one of the finest. They were wealthy. They had a family tree. They had a house in a charming maple-shaded town a few hours from Boston, a cottage at the beach, and four servants. On Tuesdays and Fridays Mr. Pemberton went to town. He had an office of some sort there. But the ladies, Grace Pemberton and her sister, sat on the wide porch at home and crocheted. Or maybe they let James take
them for a drive in the car. One of them sang in the choir.

Sometimes they spoke about the two beautiful Negro servants they once had, Amanda and Arnold. They liked to tell poor little Arnie how faithful and lovely his parents had been in life. It would encourage the boy. At present, of course, all their servants were white. Negroes were getting so unsteady. You couldn’t keep them in the villages any more. In fact, there were none in Mapleton now. They all went running off to Boston or New York, sporting their money away in the towns. Well, Amanda and Arnold were never like that. They had been simple, true, honest, hard-working. Their qualities had caused the Pembertons to give, over a space of time, more than ten thousand dollars to a school for Negroes at Hampton, Va. Because they thought they saw in Amanda and Arnold the real qualities of an humble and gentle race. That, too, was why they had decided to keep Arnie, poor little black fellow.

The Pembertons had lost nobody in the war except Arnold, their black stable man, but it had been almost like a personal loss. Indeed, after his death, they had kept horses no longer. And the stable had been turned into a garage.

Amanda, his wife, had grieved terribly, too. She had been all wrapped up in Arnold, and in her work with the Pembertons (she was their housekeeper)
and in her little dark baby, Arnold, Junior. The child was five when his father went to war; and six when Amanda died of pneumonia a few weeks after they learned Arnold had been killed in the Argonne. The Pembertons were proud of him. A Negro who died for his country. But when that awful Winter of 1919 ended (the Pembertons judged it must have been awful from what they read), when that Winter ended the family was minus two perfect servants who could never come back. And they had on their hands an orphan.

“Poor little black fellow,” said Grace Pemberton to her husband and her sister. “In memory of Arnold and Amanda, I think it is our Christian duty to keep it, and raise it up in the way it should go.” Somehow, for a long time she called Arnie “it”.

“We can raise it, without keeping it,” said her husband. “Why not send it to Hampton?”

“Too young for that,” said Emily, Mrs. Pemberton’s sister. “I have been to Hampton, and they don’t take them under twelve there.”

So it was decided to keep the little black boy right in Mapleton, to send him to the village school, and to raise him up a good Christian and a good worker. And, it must be admitted, things went pretty well for some years. The white servants were kind to Arnie. The new housekeeper, a big-bosomed Irish woman who came after Amanda’s death, treated him as though he were her very own, washed him
and fed him. Indeed, they all treated him as if he were their very own.

Mr. Pemberton took Arnie to Boston once a season and bought him clothes. On his birthday, they gave him a party—on the lawn—because, after all, his birthday came in the Spring, and there was no need of filling the living-room with children. There was much more room on the lawn. In Summer Arnie went to the sea-shore with the rest of the family.

And Arnie, dark as he was, thrived. He grew up. He did well in his classes. He did well at home, helped with the chores about the house, raked the yard in the Fall, and shoveled snow when the long Winters set in. On Sundays he went to church with the family, listened to a dry and intelligent sermon, chanted the long hymns, and loved the anthems in which Miss Emily sang the solo parts.

Arnie, in church, a little black spot in a forest of white heads above stiff pews. Arnie, out of church, a symbol of how Christian charity should really be administered in the true spirit of the human brotherhood.

The church and the Pembertons were really a little proud of Arnie. Did they not all accept him as their own? And did they not go out of their way to be nice to him—a poor little black fellow whom
they, through Christ, had taken in? Throughout the years the whole of Mapleton began to preen itself on its charity and kindness to Arnie. One would think that nobody in the town need ever again do a good deed: that this acceptance of a black boy was quite enough.

Arnie realized how they felt, but he didn’t know what to do about it. He kept himself quiet and inconspicuous, and studied hard. He was very grateful, and very lonely. There were no other colored children in the town. But all the grown-up white people made their children be very nice to him, always very nice. “Poor little black boy,” they said. “An orphan, and colored. And the Pembertons are so good to him. You be nice to him, too, do you hear? Share your lunch with him. And don’t fight him. Or hurt his feelings. He’s only a poor little Negro who has no parents.” So even the children were over-kind to Arnie.

Everything might have been all right forever had not Arnie begun to grow up. The other children began to grow up, too. Adolescence. The boys had girls. They played kissing games, and learned to dance. There were parties to which Arnie was not invited—really couldn’t be invited—with the girls and all. And after generations of peace the village of Mapleton, and the Pembertons, found themselves beset with a Negro problem. Everyone was a little baffled and a little ashamed.

To tell the truth, everybody had got so used to Arnie that nobody really thought of him as a Negro—until he put on long trousers and went to high-school. Now they noticed that he was truly very black. And his voice suddenly became deep and mannish, even before the white boys in Arnie’s class talked in the cracks and squeaks of coming manhood.

Then there had arisen that problem of the Boy Scouts. When Arnie was sixteen the Pembertons applied for him to be admitted to a Summer camp for the Scouts at Barrow Beach, and the camp had refused. In a personal letter to Mr. Pemberton, they said they simply could not admit Negroes. Too many parents would object. So several of Arnie’s friends and classmates went off to camp in June, and Arnie could not go. The village of Mapleton and the Pembertons felt awfully apologetic for American democracy’s attitude to Arnie, whose father had died in the War. But, after all, they couldn’t control the Boy Scout Camp. It was a semi-private institution. They were extra nice to Arnie, though—everybody.

That Summer, the Pembertons bought him a bicycle. And toward the end of the Summer (because they thought it was dull for him at the bungalow) they sent him to a Negro charity camp near Boston. It would be nice for him to come to know some of his own people. But Arnie hated it. He
stayed a week and came home. The charity camp was full of black kids from the slums of Boston who cussed and fought and made fun of him because he didn’t know how to play the dozens. So Arnie, to whom Negroes were a new nation, even if he was black, was amazed and bewildered, and came home. The Pembertons were embarrassed to find him alone in his attic room in the big empty house when they and the servants returned from the beach.

But they wanted so to be nice to him. They asked him if he’d met any friends he’d like to ask down for a week-end. They thought they would give him the whole top floor of the garage that year for a little apartment of his own and he could have his colored friends there. But Arnie hadn’t met anyone he wanted to have. He had no colored friends.

The Pembertons knew that he couldn’t move in the social world of Mapleton much longer. He was too big. But, really, what could they do? Grace Pemberton prayed. Emily talked it over with the mission board at church, and Mr. Pemberton spoke to the Urban League in Boston. Why not send him to Hampton now?

Arnie had only one more year in the high-school. Then, of course, he would go to college. But to one of the nicer Negro colleges like Fisk, they decided, where those dear Jubilee singers sang so beautifully, and where he would be with his own people, and wouldn’t be embarrassed. No, Fisk wasn’t as
good as Harvard, they knew, but then Arnie had to find his own world after all. They’d have to let him go, poor black fellow! Certainly, he was their very own! But in Mapleton, what could he do, how could he live, whom could he marry? The Pembertons were a bit worried, even, about this one more year. So they decided to be extra nice to him. Indeed, everybody in Mapleton decided to be extra nice to him.

The two rooms over the garage made a fine apartment for a growing boy. His pennants and books and skis were there. Sometimes the white boys came in the evenings and played checkers and smoked forbidden cigarettes. Sometimes they walked out and met the girls at the soda-fountain in Dr. Jourdain’s drug-store, and Arnie had a soda with the group. But he always came away alone, while the others went off in pairs. When the Christmas parties were being given, many of the girls were lovely in dresses that looked almost like real evening gowns, but Arnie wasn’t invited anywhere but to the Allens’. (And they really didn’t count in Mapleton—they were very poor white folks.)

The Pembertons were awfully sorry, of course. They were one of New England’s oldest families, and they were raising Arnie as their son. But he was an African, a nice Christian African, and he ought to move among his own people. There he could be a good influence and have a place. The Pembertons
couldn’t help it that there were no Negroes in Mapleton. Once there had been some, but now they had all moved away. It was more fashionable to have white help. And even as a servant in Mapleton, Arnie would have been a little out of place. But he was smart in school, and a good clean boy. He sang well. (All Negroes were musical.) He skated and swam and played ball. He loved and obeyed the Pembertons. They wanted him to find his place in the world, poor fine little black fellow. Poor dear Arnie.