IX
Jake Makes a Move
Coming home from work one afternoon, Jake remarked a taxicab just driving away from his house. He was quite a block off, but he thought it was his number. When he entered Rose’s room he immediately detected an unfamiliar smell. He had an uncanny sharp nose for strange smells. Rose always had visitors, of course. Girls, and fellows, too, of her circle. But Jake had a feeling that his nose had scented something foreign to Harlem. The room was close with tobacco smoke; there were many Melachrino butts in a tray, and a half-used box of the same cigarettes on a little table drawn up against the scarlet-covered couch. Also, there was a half-filled bottle of Jake’s Scotch whisky on the table and glasses for two. Rose was standing before the dresser, arranging her hair.
“Been having company?” Jake asked, carelessly.
“Yep. It was only Gertie Blake.”
Jake knew that Rose was lying. Her visitor had not been Gertie Blake. It had been a man, a strange man, doubtless a white man. Yet he hadn’t the slightest feeling of jealousy or anger, whatever the visitor was. Rose had her friends of both sexes and was quite free in her ways. At the Congo she sat and drank and flirted with many fellows. That was a part of her business. She got more tips that way, and the extra personal bargains that gave her the means to maintain her style of living. All her lovers had always accepted her living entirely free. For that made it possible for her to keep them living carefree and sweet.
Rose was disappointed in Jake. She had wanted him to live in the usual sweet way, to be brutal and beat her up a little, and take away her money from her. Once she had a rough leather-brown man who used to beat her up regularly. Sometimes she was beaten so badly she had to stay indoors for days, and to her visiting girl pals she exhibited her bruises and blackened eyes with pride.
As Jake was not brutally domineering, she cooled off from him perceptibly. But she could not make him change. She confided to her friends that he was “good loving but” (making use of a contraction that common people employ) “a big Ah-Ah all the same.” She felt no thrill about the business when her lover was not interested in her earnings.
Jake did not care. He did not love her, had never felt any deep desire for her. He had gone to live with her simply because she had asked him when he was in a fever mood for a steady mate. There was nothing about Rose that touched and roused him as his vivid recollection of his charming little brown-skin of the Baltimore. Rose’s room to him was like any ordinary lodging in Harlem. While the room of his little lost brown lived in his mind a highly magnified affair: a bed of gold, fresh, white linen, a magic carpet, all bathed in the rarest perfume. … Rose’s perfume made his nose itch. It was rank.
He came home another afternoon and found her with a bright batik kimono carelessly wrapped around her and stretched full-length on the couch. There were Melachrino stubs lying about and his bottle of Scotch was on the mantelpiece. Evidently the strange visitor of the week before had been there again.
“Hello!” She yawned and flicked off her cigarette ash and continued smoking. A chic veneer over a hard, restless, insensitive body. Fascinating, nevertheless. … For the moment, just as she was, she was desirable and provoked responses in him. He shuffled up to the couch and caressed her.
“Leave me alone, I’m tired,” she snarled.
The rebuff hurt Jake. “You slut!” he cried. He went over to the mantelpiece and added, “Youse just everybody’s teaser.”
“You got a nearve talking to me that way,” said Rose. “Since when you staht riding the high horse?”
“It don’t take no nearve foh me to tell you what you is. Fact is I’m right now sure tiahd to death of living with you.”
“You poor black stiff!” Rose cried. And she leaped over at Jake and scratched at his face.
Jake gave her two savage slaps full in her face and she dropped moaning at his feet.
“There! You done begged foh it,” he said. He stepped over her and went out.
Walking down the street, he looked at his palms. “Ahm shame o’ you, hands,” he murmured. “Mah mother useter tell me, ‘Nevah hit no woman,’ but that hussy jest made me do it … jest made me. … Well, I’d better pull outa that there mud-hole. … It wasn’t what I come back to Gawd’s own country foh. No, sirree! You bet it wasn’t. …”
When he returned to the house he heard laughter in the room. Gertie Blake was there and Rose was telling a happy tale. He stood by the closed door and listened for a while.
“Have another drink, Gertie. Don’t ever get a wee bit delicate when youse with me. … My, mah dear, but he did slap the daylights outa me. When I comed to I wanted to kiss his feet, but he was gone.”
“Rose! You’re the limit. But didn’t it hurt awful?”
“Didn’t hurt enough. Honey, it’s the first time I ever felt his real strength. A hefty-looking one like him, always acting so nice and proper. I almost thought he was getting sissy. But he’s a ma‑an all right. …”
A nasty smile stole into Jake’s features. He could not face those women. He left the house again. He strolled down to Dixie Red’s poolroom and played awhile. From there he went with Zeddy to Uncle Doc’s saloon.
He went home again and found Rose stunning in a new cloth-of-gold frock shining with brilliants. She was refixing a large artificial yellow rose to the side of a pearl-beaded green turban. Jake, without saying a word, went to the closet and took down his suitcase. Then he began
