Flight, p.19
Flight, page 19
“It’s lucky for the Negro he was given the ability to forget—there are at least a dozen people down there I’ve recognized who probably don’t know where they’ll get money enough to pay their rent. Yet there’s not a soul having a better time than they. He can work all day methodically and steadily as long as he knows there will be opportunities to forget harsh and unpleasant things.” …
Mimi did not see Mrs. Plummer as she descended the stairs when the music began for the next dance. That estimable person had come that afternoon to New York and she now was receiving her first glimpse of New York life. She wore a brilliant purple confection of velvet, adorned with extraordinary little flowers of an indescribable and unknown species and shape. She seized the arm of her cousin, with whom she was staying, and though in the noise there was no need of caution, she whispered:
“Who is that girl with the green dress and red hair—I mean what name does she go by here?”
“That’s Miss Daquin—she’s Mrs. Rogers’ niece and she’s very popular—some of the women don’t like her but that’s because she’s better-looking than most of them. Men like her because she pays no attention to them—”
Mrs. Plummer snorted.
“Miss Daquin! So that’s how she’s getting by, is it?”
She was in her element. New York did not terrify her any more by its hugeness and strangeness. The eyes of her friend picked out Mimi’s form as it appeared and disappeared through the dancing forms. Mrs. Plummer was giving a complete, more than complete, account of Mimi and her life.
“These society coloured folks make me tired,” Mrs. Plummer was saying. “They look down on us ordinary folks but they’re carrying on their deviltry just as much as any of us. And they do some of the craziest things! That girl was carrying on round Atlanta with this Hunter boy and when they found out she was going to have a baby she just went crazy—said she didn’t want to marry the boy! Can you imagine anybody doing such a fool thing?” she demanded rhetorically.
“I always did think there was something funny about her,” her vis-à-vis answered satisfactorily. “You can’t fool me—I can spot ’em a mile off. What became of the baby?”
“The Lord only knows! I heard tell she had it and I don’t know whether it lived or not. Must not of if you say you ain’t never heard about it. Some funny things happen in this world—” …
On and on the thread was unspun. In the years since Mimi had left Atlanta, the stories about her, with the facile growth that age always brings, had gained almost the proportions of a myth. Never had any girl taken so absurd a position as she. Always they had been only too glad to marry even when they had lived with their husbands but a short time. Not understanding, gossip had assumed there was more to the story than appeared on the surface, and various inventive minds speculated as to the untold part.
Rumour had scoffed at the notion Mimi had refused to marry Carl even though he and his parents were willing. That was too improbable, too farfetched. The Hunters had volunteered no information and tongues had run wild. Some had it that the father of the child was uncertain—every man under seventy years of age who had ever been on the most casual terms of friendship with Mimi was discussed as the possible father. Others were firmly convinced Mimi had trapped Carl with an eye on the wealth which his father was credited with possessing. Those of this persuasion were convinced she had been bought off or frightened by the Hunters.
Forgotten except by a few, Hilda and her mother among them, were the derelictions popular report had credited to or charged against Carl. Mimi had fled, therefore she was the guilty one. “The wicked fleeth when no man pursueth,” the wise ones said. The scandal was a juicy morsel that served its purpose well over many back fences and at innumerable parties, at church and on front porches. Only Hilda and Mrs. Adams championed the cause of Mimi, but soon, because their views were well known, the subject was not mentioned to them. Scandal thrives only when it is retailed to those with open ears and credulous minds …
Mrs. Plummer’s friend was well capable of holding her own in the dissemination of interesting news. Mimi alone would have been a target almost too small for the guns of the talkative ones. But as the niece of Mrs. Rogers, in business, well known, and with enemies gained through the frank comment and eyes with which Mimi’s aunt saw readily through pretence and sham, Mrs. Rogers herself could be hurt through the mud plastered on her niece. Mimi found herself being avoided at church, on the street, at the few affairs which she attended. At first she paid no attention to them but in time they were too obvious to be ignored. She had not seen Mrs. Plummer during the two weeks that she had visited in New York. The first intimation Mimi had of the talk which was going on was given her in a weekly publication, The Blabber.
Modelled upon Town Topics, it devoted its pages to not too cryptic references, almost invariably scandalous ones, to persons of prominence. Its editors had been handled roughly several times, the paper had been sued frequently, but seldom were any copies left on Harlem newsstands more than a few hours after it appeared on Thursday mornings.
Mimi read the reference to herself three times before she could realize that once again she was confronted with suspicion.
“All Harlem is agog,” the paragraph ran, “with some hitherto hidden chapters in the life of one of our most attractive and popular young women. She and the relative with whom she lives have been seen often at the smartest affairs and the breath of scandal which has been stirred will undoubtedly prove a nine days’ sensation. Innocence, according to all who know the young lady of French extraction, has been her most evident characteristic. But it seems there has been a coloured gentleman in the firewood. Harlem is asking what the charming miss has done with the baby. Something should really be done about the doors of family closets—they will pop open at the most inopportune moments and permit glimpses of unsuspected and embarrassing skeletons … ”
“What’s the use, Aunt Sophie, of trying to be decent? I don’t see the need of trying—I might as well give up the struggle and admit I’m beaten,” she despairingly told Mrs. Rogers.
“Don’t be silly, Mimi. They’ve talked about everybody. It’ll all blow over in time.”
“No—you’re just trying to console me. People forget decent things—they never forget a thing like this.”
“There’s something in that, but the people you really care about will have sense enough to see this in a broad light. And those who don’t see it and give you credit for trying to atone for your mistake don’t count—you’ll be better off without their friendship.”
They sat at dinner and Mimi could almost hear the tumbling down of the walls she had so confidently been building. For the first time she felt sick at heart, crushed, without hope. She could withstand poverty, physical pain. But the averted glances of those who had been her friends, the ostentatious turning of heads when she passed on the street those with whom she had been on terms of intimate acquaintanceship, the sudden death of conversations at her approach which told her more plainly than if the information had been shouted through a megaphone that they had been talking of her, the boldness in the eyes of some of the men where there had been only respect before, all these and a thousand other little cruelties were the things which hurt. Hurt her painfully, more painfully than mere physical pain. She envied her aunt’s calmness, her philosophical acceptance of people’s habits, whether these habits were good or bad. She tried to keep her mind on the comforting flow of words with which Mrs. Rogers was seeking to bolster her courage.
“People have gossiped from the beginning of time and I suppose they’ll keep right on until Gabriel blows his trump. I don’t know why it is but there’s one thing that’s always true—they tear you to pieces not for what you’ve done but for getting caught. Take some of the biggest men in America—men who everybody knows have stolen railroads and banks but who’ve never been caught at it—why, they’re popular idols. There are lots of magazines with big circulations that fill their pages with stories of how these giants have gained wealth and fame by ‘honesty, hard work, sticking to the job.’ That’s bunk! Do you remember the story of one of these ‘self-made’ men who was telling a college class that his secret of success was ‘pluck! pluck! pluck!’ and the irreverent boy who asked the pompous one who he had plucked? That’s the true story of a lot of these people who haven’t been caught with their hands in the other fellow’s pockets.”
Mimi smiled a wan smile. This was interesting, perhaps, but it didn’t help her much. Mrs. Rogers went on.
“And coloured people are no better than anybody else. The motive is the same everywhere in the world and with all races and sexes and classes. If you aren’t of any importance they don’t gossip about you because nobody’s interested. But they’ve got to have something humiliating, something that’ll bear down a person’s reputation, something malicious and spiteful. It’s got to be about somebody who’s got something to lose, it’ll have to be something that’ll stick, something that’ll be dangerous but not too dangerous for the person who’s gossiping. And above everything else it’s got to be spread with a high and lofty manner—the biggest spreader of tales I ever knew always started her most vile story the same way. She’d say: ‘I stay at home attending to my own business and I don’t meddle in other people’s affairs, but have you heard that—’ and then she proceeds to give you a long account of what some person has done, all of it told in a tone of Christian forbearance and pity and tacit regret.”
“That’s a very interesting and logical analysis but it doesn’t offer much comfort. It’s just like a doctor explaining why your leg broke when you’re lying in a hospital bed.”
“You’re depressed and worried—there’s no need giving in to what these people say. Just face it and it will all blow over. And I’ll stick with you always, Mimi.”
Mrs. Rogers watched Mimi, more worried over the girl’s troubles than she would admit even to herself. In a few months Mimi had become a part and a very important part of the household. Younger people came and she had always preferred associating with young people. “It keeps me young, too,” she would say when the subject was mentioned. The house would be unbearable if Mimi went away or did anything desperate. She feared this though she laughed at her fears. But the set look on Mimi’s face, the despondency which was greater now than when Mimi had first come to New York after putting Petit Jean in the orphanage, the utter dejection so evident in Mimi’s face and body, made her definitely apprehensive.
“You’re a darling, Aunt Sophie, but I just can’t stick it out. I can stand a lot of things I’ve had to—but what’s happened here will just keep on happening every place I go. I’ve tried to go straight—God knows I have. But these meddling people won’t let me have any peace. Do you remember that night at the dance you pointed out a girl to me who was working down town, passing for white?”
Mrs. Rogers admitted she had, but wondered what that had to do with Mimi.
“Just this,” was the answer she received. “I never thought I’d want to leave my own people. I wouldn’t leave them now but they’ve driven me away—driven me to the point where I’ve either got to drop out of sight where I won’t be hounded again or else I’ll do something terrible. If that girl can pass I think I can too. My name is French, I speak French—at least well enough to fool anybody who isn’t French—I can sew, and they’ll never think me anything else but French. I’ll see you, of course, but I’m leaving Harlem, leaving coloured people for good. I’ll live my own life, make more money than I can here, I’ll be able sooner to have Jean with me, and—well, there’s no other way out … ’
Chapter XVII
Again Mimi had the feeling she was closing a book in her life and opening a new one. Just like a novel by Rolland, she thought. Or, better, her life to her was like one of those Harlem apartments of seemingly interminable length, with no hall and with each room opening into the next one. Railroad flats, she had heard them called. She felt she was always opening the door of another room, passing through it, then opening and closing behind her, never to be reopened, the door of the next cubicle. Those years of childhood in New Orleans had been the first one, happy and carefree years when she was more content than ever afterwards. The next had been Atlanta, then Philadelphia, then Harlem. Four separate lives, and here was a new one opening before her. She wondered how many more through which she must pass before the final exit. Sometimes now she wished she could skip all the rest and make that last step, wherever it might lead. In her moments of greatest depression she thought of suicide but these morbid thoughts did not remain with her long. Petit Jean and thoughts of his future would have driven them away even if she had not felt a deep aversion to death by her own hand.
From a newspaper advertisement she was able to secure a small room with a private family, living in the lower Nineties, respectable but commonplace. In the matter of linear feet and rods and miles she was not far distant from Harlem but in other ways she might as well have been halfway round the world from the scenes she had once known. Here the towering apartment houses, most of them five or six stories in height and of cream brick and with terra-cotta or stone trimmings, housed countless numbers of families, belching them forth from seven to nine in the morning as small business men and stenographers and manicurists and clerks dashed madly for the nearest subway or elevated station. At the little newsstands they would snatch, according to tastes, copies of the World or Times, though, more than any other purveyor of the news, they bought issues of “the paper for people who think.” Sleek and well fed, powdered and rouged and lip-sticked with expert hand, they were swallowed up by the yawning and insatiable pits and were whirled to down-town jobs by the rushing, roaring subways.
Later in the day swarms of children poured forth from the same apartments, in winter bound schoolward, in summer to the nearest park or the street, chaperoned by quarrelsome mothers or older sisters. Yet later came elaborately coiffured and gowned young women, invariably pretty, who toiled not nor spun. Evening came and the Gargantuan beehives reversed the process and swallowed again the hordes they had spewed forth in the morning hours. Phonographs blared raucously, voices were raised in babels of song or quarrelling or loud laughter. Midnight, and the din died down. Sleep, engulfing and obliterating as a candle-snuffer, brought peace, broken only when a late and noisy party was quieted momentarily by sleepy, irritated voices shouting: “Hey, cut out the noise down there!”
It was in one of these huge rabbit warrens that Mimi found shelter. The house she lived in looked down upon most of the others in the block—it boasted in the entrance hallway rows of dusty but imposing palms, set in tubs painted a bilious green, and between these tropic relics stood uncomfortable-looking chairs of imitation needlepoint. No one seemed aware of the purpose of these chairs, which always reminded Mimi of the photographs she had seen of the electric chair at Sing Sing, for not even the oldest inhabitant of the house, who had been living there now for a year and a half, had ever seen anyone sitting in them. But they added class, tone, éclat. And they likewise added a few dollars to the rent of each apartment in the house so adorned.
She had not wanted to leave Harlem. Mrs. Rogers had argued, pleaded, almost wept. At times Mimi had been on the point of weakening, had almost thought seriously of trying to stick it out. Each time that she had almost convinced herself that this was the wisest and only course, some new evidence of the ordeal would come to her and make her vow anew that she would not attempt to live it down. Years before she had heard a story which Booker Washington had told in which he likened Negroes to a basket of crabs when one of them had with great energy climbed almost to the top of the basket and freedom, the others less progressive than he would reach up with their claws and pull him back to their own level. This had seemed to her then merely an effective story coined for oratorical purposes, but now its applicability was forced upon her with painful truth.
Though she had to a considerable degree recovered from the intense consciousness of race which her experiences in the riot at Atlanta had engendered in her, yet Mimi, despite the shortcomings which she saw in her own people, had a loyalty to and an affection for them that was almost an obsession. She never spoke of this feeling, for she felt that to those who understood, explanations were unnecessary, while to those who needed an explanation, whatever she might say would have been obscure and difficult of understanding. In other words, to her it was as useless for her to attempt the depiction of her loyalty as it would be for a man to maintain loudly and persistently the faithfulness of his wife. She had always felt an instinctive distrust of those Negroes who boasted of their loyalty and devotion to their race. It had seemed to her that if such faithfulness were genuine and unselfish it needed restatement no more than did the affirmation by a woman that she was respectable.
Thus her passing from the race seemed to Mimi persecution greater than any white people had ever visited upon coloured people—the very intolerance of her own people had driven her from them. And in the deception she would have to practise as one ostensibly white, she felt she was doing a mean and dishonourable thing. She would do so, she determined, for there was no other course open to her. But in her new life she missed the spontaneity, the ready laughter, the naturalness of her own. She saw morose, worried faces. Here there was little of that softness of speech to which she was accustomed. Here there was an obsession with material things that crowded out the naturalness that made life for her tolerable. I’ve made my bed now, she reflected, and there’s nothing for me to do except lie in it …
She did not experience the difficulty in securing employment that she had feared. There had been vague rumblings of discord and war in Europe, but all that seemed very far away, too distant ever to affect America. The mad rush that ushered in Easter and spring, the return like homing pigeons of the wealthy from Palm Beach, the momentary pause in New York before taking wing again for Europe or the mountains or the sea-shore, taxed to the limit the shops of the modistes and milliners, the makers of boots and gowns and habiliments of a thousand kinds for those vaguely classed as “society.”
