“That’s the gospel trute indeed,” agreed Susy. “I done have a mess of knowledge ’bout men tucked away heah.” Susy tapped her head of tight-rolled kinks knotted with scraps of ribbon of different colors. “I pays foh what I know and I’ve nevah been sorry, either. Yes, mam, I done larned about mah own self fust. Had no allusions about mahself. I knowed that I was black and ugly and no-class and unejucated. And I knowed that I was bohn foh love. … Mah mammy did useter warn me about love. All what the white folks call white slavery theseadays. I dunno ef theah’s another name foh the nigger-an’-white side ovit down home in Dixie. Well, I soon found out it wasn’t womens alone in the business, sposing thimselves like vigitables foh sale in the market. No, mam! I done soon l’arned that the mens was most buyable thimselves. Mah heartbreaking high-yaller done left me sence—how miny wintahs I been counting this heah Nothan snow? All thim and some moh—dawggone ef I remimber. But evah since I been paying sistah, paying good and hard foh mah loving feelings.”
“Life ain’t no country picnic with sweet flute and fiddle,” Miss Curdy sighed.
“Indeed not,” Susy was emphatic. “It ain’t got nothing to do with the rubbish we l’arn at Sunday school and the sweet snooziness I used to lap up in thim blue-cover story books. My God! the things I’ve seen! Working with white folks, so dickty and high-and-mighty, you think theyse nevah oncet naked and thim feets nevah touch ground. Yet all the silks and furs and shining diamonds can’t hide the misery a them lives. … Servants and heartbreakers from outside stealing the husband’s stuff. And all the men them that can’t find no sweet-loving life at home. Lavinia, I done seen life.”
“Me, too, I have seen the real life, mixing as I used to in real society,” said Miss Curdy.
“I know society, too, honey, even though I only knows it watching from the servant window. And I know it ain’t no different from us. It’s the same life even ef they drink champagne and we drink gin.”
“You said it and said it right,” responded Miss Curdy.
Zeddy discovered that in his own circles in Harlem he had become something of a joke. It was known that he was living sweet. But his buddies talked about his lady riding him with a cruel bit.
“He was kept, all right,” they said, “kept under ‘Gin-head’ Susy’s skirt.”
He had had to fight a fellow in Dixie Red’s poolroom, for calling him a “skirt-man.”
He was even teased by Billy Biasse or Billy, the Wolf, as he was nicknamed. Billy boasted frankly that he had no time for women. Black women, or the whole diversified world of the sex were all the same to him.
“So Harlem, after the sun done set, has no fun at all foh you, eh, boh?” Billy asked Zeddy.
Zeddy growled something indistinct.
“Sweet with the bit in you’ mouf. Black woman riding her nigger. Great life, boh, ef you don’t weaken.”
“Bull! Wha’s the matter with you niggers, anyhow?” Zeddy said in a sort of general way. “Ain’t it better than being a wolf?”
“Ise a wolf, all right, but I ain’t a lone one,” Billy grinned. “I guess Ise the happiest, well-feddest wolf in Harlem. Oh, boy!”
Zeddy spent that evening in Harlem drinking with Jake and two more longshoremen at Uncle Doc’s saloon. Late in the night they went to the Congo. Zeddy returned to Myrtle Avenue, an hour before it was time for Susy to rise, fully ginned up.
To Susy’s “Whar you been?” he answered, “Shut up or I’ll choke you,” staggered, swayed, and swept from the dresser a vase of chrysanthemums that broke on the floor.
“Goddam fool flowers,” he growled. “Why in hell didn’t you put them out of the way, hey, you Suze?”
“Oh, keep quiet and come along to bed,” said Susy.
A week later he repeated the performance, coming home with alarming symptoms of gin hiccup. Susy said nothing. After that Zeddy began to prance, as much as a short, heavy-made human could, with the bit out of his mouth. …
One Saturday night Susy’s gin party was a sad failure. Nobody came beside Miss Curdy with Strawberry Lips. (Zeddy had left for Harlem in the afternoon.) They drank to themselves and played coon-can. Near midnight, when Miss Curdy was going, she said offhandedly, “I wouldn’t mind sampling one of those Harlem cabarets now.” Susy at once seized upon the idea.
“Sure. Let’s go to Harlem for a change.”
They caught the subway train for Harlem. Arrived there they gravitated to the Congo.
Before Susy left Myrtle Avenue, Zeddy was already at the Congo with a sweet, timid, satin-faced brown just from down home, that he had found at Aunt Hattie’s and induced to go with him to the cabaret. Jake sat at Zeddy’s table. Zeddy was determined to go the limit of independence, to show the boys that he was a cocky sweetman and no skirt-man. Plenty of money. He was treating. He wore an elegant nigger-brown sports suit and patent-leather shoes with cream-light spats such as all the sweet swells love to strut in. If Zeddy had only been taller, trimmer, and well-arched he would have been one of Harlem’s dandiest sports.
His newfound brown had a glass of Virginia Dare before her; he was drinking gin. Jake, Scotch-and-soda; and Rose, who sat with them when she was not entertaining, had ordered White Rock. The night before, or rather the early morning after her job was done, she had gone on a champagne party and now she was sobering up.
Billy Biasse was there at a neighboring table with
