Emma Lou began to loathe him, yet ached for his physical nearness. She was lonesome again, cooped up in that solitary room with only Alva Junior, for company. She had lost track of all her old friends, and, despite her new field of endeavor, she had made no intimate contacts. Her fellow colored teachers were congenial enough, but they didn’t seem any more inclined to accept her socially than did her fellow white teachers. There seemed to be some question about her antecedents. She didn’t belong to any of the collegiate groups around Harlem. She didn’t seem to be identified with anyone who mattered. They wondered how she had managed to get into the school system.
Of course Emma Lou made little effort to make friends among them. She didn’t know how. She was too shy to make an approach and too suspicious to thaw out immediately when someone approached her. The first thing she noticed was that most of the colored teachers who taught in her school were lighter colored than she. The darkest was a pleasing brown. And she had noticed them putting their heads together when she first came around. She imagined that they were discussing her. And several times upon passing groups of them, she imagined that she was being pointed out. In most cases what she thought was true, but she was being discussed and pointed out, not because of her dark skin, but because of the obvious traces of an excess of rouge and powder which she insisted upon using.
It had been suggested, in a private council among the Negro members of the teaching staff, that someone speak to Emma Lou about this rather ludicrous habit of making up. But no one had the nerve. She appeared so distant and so ready to take offense at the slightest suggestion even of friendship that they were wary of her. But after she began to be a standard joke among the pupils and among the white teachers, they finally decided to send her an anonymous note, suggesting that she use fewer aids to the complexion. Emma Lou, on receiving the note, at first thought that it was the work of some practical joker. It never occurred to her that the note told the truth and that she looked twice as bad with paint and powder as she would without it. She interpreted it as being a means of making fun of her because she was darker than any one of the other colored girls. She grew more haughty, more acid, and more distant than ever. She never spoke to anyone except as a matter of business. Then she discovered that her pupils had nicknamed her … “Blacker’n me.”
What made her still more miserable was the gossip and comments of the woman in the next room. Lying in bed nights or else sitting at her table preparing her lesson plans, she could hear her telling everyone who chanced in—
“You know that fellow in the next room? Well, let me tell you. His wife left him, yes-sireee, left him flat on his back in the bed, him and the baby, too. Yes, she did. Walked out of here just as big as you please to go to work one morning and she ain’t come back yet. Then up comes this little black wench. I heard her when she knocked on the door that very night his wife left. At first he was mighty s’prised to see her, then started laying it on, kissed her and hugged her, a-tellin’ her how much he loved her, and she crying like a fool all the time. I never heard the likes of it in my life. The next morning in she moves an’ she’s been here ever since. And you oughter see how she carries on over that child, just as loving, like as if she was his own mother. An’ now that she’s here an’ workin’ an’ that nigger’s well again, what does he do but go out an’ get drunk worse than he uster with his wife. Would you believe it? Stays away three and four nights a week, while she hustles out of here an’ makes time every morning. …”
On hearing this for about the twentieth time, Emma Lou determined to herself that she was not going to hear it again. (She had also planned to ask for a transfer to a new school, one on the east side in the Italian section where she would not have to associate with so many other colored teachers.) Alva hadn’t been home for four nights. She picked Alva Junior from out his crib and pulled off his nightgown, letting him lie naked in her lap. She loved to fondle his warm, mellow-colored body, loved to caress his little crooked limbs after the braces had been removed. She wondered what would become of him. Obviously she couldn’t remain living with Alva, and she certainly couldn’t keep Alva Junior forever. Suppose those evil school teachers should find out how she was living and report it to the school authorities? Was she morally fit to be teaching youth? She remembered her last conversation with Gwendolyn.
For the first time now she also saw how Alva had used her during both periods of their relationship. She also realized that she had been nothing more than a commercial proposition to him at all times. He didn’t care for dark women either. He had never taken her among his friends, never given
