Neither, though, seemed interested in what they were doing. Both were feverishly apprehensive at all times. They quarrelled frequently, but would hasten to make amends to one another, so afraid were they that the first one to become angry might make a bolt for freedom. Alva drank more and more. Geraldine worked, saved and schemed, always planning and praying that she would be able to get away first.
Then Alva was taken ill. His liquor-burned stomach refused to retain food. The doctor ordered him not to drink any more bootleg beverages. Alva shrugged his shoulders, left the doctor’s office and sought out his favorite speakeasy.
Emma Lou was busy, and being busy, had had less time to think about herself than ever before. Thus, she was less distraught and much less dissatisfied with herself and with life. She was taking some courses in education in the afternoon classes at City College, preparatory to taking the next public school teacher’s examination. She still had her position in the household of Campbell Kitchen, a position she had begun to enjoy and appreciate more and more as the master of the house evinced an interest in her and became her counsellor and friend. He encouraged her to read and opened his library to her. Ofttimes he gave her tickets to musical concerts or to the theater, and suggested means of meeting what she called “the right sort of people.”
She had moved meanwhile into the Y.W.C.A. There she had met many young girls like herself, alone and unattached in New York and she had soon found herself moving in a different world altogether. She even had a pal, Gwendolyn Johnson, a likable, light-brown-skinned girl, who had the room next to hers. Gwendolyn had been in New York only a few months. She had just recently graduated from Howard University, and was also planning to teach school in New York City. She and Emma Lou became fast friends and went everywhere together. It was with Gwendolyn that Emma Lou shared the tickets Campbell Kitchen gave her. Then on Sundays they would attend church. At first they attended a different church every Sunday, but finally took to attending St. Mark’s A.M.E. Church on St. Nicholas Avenue regularly.
This was one of the largest and most high-toned churches in Harlem. Emma Lou liked to go there, and both she and Gwendolyn enjoyed sitting in the congregation, observing the fine clothes and triumphal entries of its members. Then, too, they soon became interested in the various organizations which the church sponsored for young people. They attended the meetings of a literary society every Thursday evening, and joined the young people’s bible class which met every Tuesday evening. In this way, they came into contact with many young folk, and were often invited to parties and dances.
Gwendolyn helped Emma Lou with her courses in education and the two obtained and studied copies of questions which had been asked in previous examinations. Gwendolyn sympathized with Emma Lou’s color hypersensitivity and tried hard to make her forget it. In order to gain her point, she thought it necessary to down light people, and with this in mind, ofttimes told Emma Lou many derogatory tales about the mulattoes in the social and scholastic life at Howard University in Washington, DC. The color question had never been of much moment to Gwendolyn. Being the color she was, she had never suffered. In Charleston, the mulattoes had their own churches and their own social life and mingled with darker Negroes only when the Jim Crow law or racial discrimination left them no other alternative. Gwendolyn’s mother had belonged to one of these “persons of color” families, but she hadn’t seen much in it all. What if she was better than the little black girl who lived around the corner? Didn’t they both have to attend the same colored school, and didn’t they both have to ride in the same section of the streetcar, and were not they both subject to be called nigger by the poor white trash who lived in the adjacent block?
She had thought her relatives and associates all a little silly, especially when they had objected to her marrying a man just two or three shades darker than herself. She felt that this was carrying things too far even in ancient Charleston where customs, houses and people all seemed antique and far removed from the present. Stubbornly she had married the man of her choice, and had exulted when her daughter had been nearer the richer color of her father than the washed-out color of herself. Gwendolyn’s father had died while she was in college, and her mother had begun teaching in a South Carolina Negro industrial school, but she insisted that Gwendolyn must finish her education and seek her career in the North.
Gwendolyn’s mother had always preached for complete tolerance in matters of skin color. So afraid was she that her daughter would develop a “pink” complex that she wilfully discouraged her associating with light people and persistently encouraged her to choose her friends from among the darker elements of the race. And she insisted that Gwendolyn must marry a dark brown man so that her children would be real Negroes. So thoroughly had this become inculcated into her, that Gwendolyn often snubbed light people, and invariably, in accordance with her mother’s sermonisings, chose dark-skinned friends and beaux. Like her mother, Gwendolyn, was very exercised over the matter of intra-racial segregation and attempted to combat it verbally as well as actively.
When she and Emma Lou began going around together, trying to find a church to attend regularly, she had
