Emma Lou wondered what it was Mrs. Blake seemed to be holding back. She began again:
“My advice to you is that you enter Teachers’ College and if you will stay in New York, get a job in the public school system. You can easily take a light job of some kind to support you through your course. Maybe with three years’ college you won’t need to go to training school. Why don’t you find out about that? Now, if I were you. …” Mrs. Blake talked on, putting much emphasis on every “If I were you.”
Emma Lou grew listless and antagonistic. She didn’t like this little sawed-off woman as she was now, being businesslike and giving advice. She was glad when they finally left Eddie’s, and more than glad to escape after having been admonished not to oversleep, “But be in my office, and I’ll see what I can do for you, dearie, early in the morning. There’s sure to be something.”
Left to herself, Emma Lou strolled south on the west side of Seventh Avenue to 134th Street, then crossed over to the east side and turned north. She didn’t know what to do. It was too late to consider visiting another employment agency, and, furthermore, she didn’t have enough money left to pay another fee. Let jobs go until tomorrow, then she would return to Mrs. Blake’s, ask for a return of her fee, and find some other employment agency, a more imposing one, if possible. She had had enough of those on 135th Street.
She didn’t want to go home, either. Her room had no outside vista. If she sat in the solitary chair by the solitary window, all she could see were other windows and brick walls and people either mysteriously or brazenly moving about in the apartments across the court. There was no privacy there, little fresh air, and no natural light after the sun began its downward course. Then the apartment always smelled of frying fish or of boiling cabbage. Her landlady seemed to alternate daily between these two foods. Fish smells and cabbage smells pervaded the long, dark hallway, swirled into the room when the door was opened and perfumed one’s clothes disagreeably. Moreover, urinal and fecal smells surged upward from the garbage-littered bottom of the court which her window faced.
If she went home, the landlady would eye her suspiciously and ask, “Ain’t you got a job yet?” then move away, shaking her head and dipping into her snuff box. Occasionally, in moments of excitement, she spat on the floor. And the little fat man who had the room next to Emma Lou’s could be heard coughing suggestively—tapping on the wall, and talking to himself in terms of her. He had seen her slip John in last night. He might be more bold now. He might even try—oh no he wouldn’t.
She was crossing 137th Street. She remembered this corner. John had told her that he could always be found there after work any spring or summer evening.
Emma Lou had met John on her first day in New York. He was employed as a porter in the theatre where Mazelle Lindsay was scheduled to perform, and, seeing a new maid on the premises, had decided to “make” her. He had. Emma Lou had not liked him particularly, but he had seemed New Yorkish and genial. It was John who had found her her room. It was John who had taught her how to find her way up and down town on the subway and on the elevated. He had also conducted her on a Cook’s tour of Harlem, had strolled up and down Seventh Avenue with her evenings after they had come uptown from the theater. He had pointed out for her the Y.W.C.A. with its imposing annex, the Emma Ranson House, and suggested that she get a room there later on. He had taken her on a Sunday to several of the Harlem motion picture and vaudeville theaters, and he had been as painstaking in pointing out the churches as he had been lax in pointing out the cabarets. Moreover, as they strolled Seventh Avenue, he had attempted to give her all the “inside dope” on Harlem, had told her of the “rent parties,” of the “numbers,” of “hot” men, of “sweetbacks,” and other local phenomena.
Emma Lou was now passing a barbershop near 140th Street. A group of men were standing there beneath a huge white and black sign announcing, “Bobbing’s, fifty cents; haircuts, twenty-five cents.” They were whistling at three schoolgirls, about fourteen or fifteen years of age, who were passing, doing much switching and giggling. Emma Lou curled her lips. Harlem streets presented many such scenes. She looked at the men significantly, forgetting for the moment that it was none of her business what they or the girls did. But they didn’t notice her. They were too busy having fun with those fresh little chippies.
Emma Lou experienced a feeling of resentment, then, realizing how ridiculous it all was, smiled it away and began to think of John once more. She wondered why she had submitted herself to him. Was it cold-blooded payment for his kind chaperoning? Something like that. John wasn’t her type. He was too pudgy and dark, too obviously an ex-cotton-picker from Georgia. He was unlettered and she couldn’t stand for that, for she liked intelligent-looking, slender, light-brown-skinned men, like, well … like the one who was just passing. She admired him boldly. He looked at her, then over her, and passed on.
Seventh Avenue was becoming more crowded now. Schoolchildren were out for their lunch hour, corner loafers and pool-hall loiterers were beginning to collect on their chosen spots. Knots of people, of no particular designation, also stood around talking, or just looking, and there were many pedestrians, either impressing one as being in a great hurry, or else seeming to have no place at all to go. Emma Lou was in this latter class. By now
