“She nice to work fo’?”
Linda saw that the way to prevent Mrs. Fuller from talking herself to death was to keep her asking questions. “Well,” she answered, “she could be worse. Nicest part is she lives all alone and that makes the work light. But she get sick over the least little thing and she spends a lot o’ time in bed. She just got over a three weeks’ spell yesterday—only reason she got up was because this friend from Baltimore was coming last night. You can’t imagine what made her sick this time.”
“Is this visitor a gen’leman friend?”
“Nope.”
“Then what?” Linda could sense that Mrs. Fuller was merely nosing for an opening through which she could break for a long unobstructed run of speech.
“She found out that your boss was a jig, and it put her in bed for three weeks. I didn’t know what the trouble was till last night and I heard her talking to this Baltimore woman. The way she’s carrying on you’d think the house had turned to a hospital for smallpox. ’Deed it wouldn’t surprise me to see it burnt down any time.”
“What you mean, chile?”
“Well, you know how much fays like to have jigs move in next door to ’em.”
“Deed I do. I remember years ago—”
“Specially if it’s a nice neighborhood. They’d do most anything to get ’em out. Look at what they did to that man in Staten Island last fall. Ku-Kluxed him. It was even in the fay papers, how they burnt the man’s house down while he was out. I believe Miss Cramp is wild enough to do the selfsame thing—or have it done.”
“Have it done—how you mean?”
“Pay somebody to do it.”
“No!”
“Bet she’d offer to pay you to do it.”
“And I bet I’d smack her from hyeh to yonder, too!”
“Well, there’s plenty of fay toughs around here—not right on this street but near enough—and I bet she could get somebody to get them. Then she wouldn’t be suspected. Everybody’d think it was like that house on 149th Street somebody put dynamite under.”
“What!”
“Didn’t you read about it?”
“No!”
“It was in The Black Issue—oh, a long time ago now. Man bought a house on 149th Street and they dared him to move in. Sent letters and all. But he went on in. And less’n a week after he moved in, they blew him out—bajooey!—just like that.”
“Well I never in all my life!”
“Deed they did. And Miss Cramp is worried and mad and everything. You ought to ’ve heard her last night talking to this southern woman.”
Linda decidedly had the floor now and she did not intend to relinquish it.
“She’s from some little dump in Maryland, but she swears she lives in Baltimore—as if even that was anything to brag about. She’s just like Miss Cramp, only more so. Well, you know one time Miss Cramp asked me a lot o’ dumb questions about shines and I gave her a lot o’ dumb answers and she went and joined the G.I.A. to find out for herself. And for doing it!”
“Say what?”
“Last night she was telling this other one all about it, and I mean they just carried on. Miss Cramp says, ‘My dear, I’m in the most awful trouble—you simply must tell me what to do.’
“This other one is the funniest thing—talks like a jig fresh from down home. First time I ever heard a fay talk like a shine—I was never so surprised—She says, ‘Deed, honey, with all yo’ money Ah cain’t imagine what could worry you.’
“Then Miss Cramp says, ‘If something isn’t done pretty quick this whole neighborhood’s going black!’
“ ‘What?’ says this Mrs. Parmalee—that’s the other one.
“ ‘And that isn’t the worst of it,’ Miss Cramp sniffles. ‘The worst of it is that I’ll get the blame for it.’
“ ‘You’ll get the blame fo’ it?’
“ ‘I’m not responsible, really. But I got int’rested in the welfare of Negroes and joined a mixed organization for the improvement of conditions among them, you know. Well, naturally, I had to go about among them—’
“ ‘Ah’ve always tole yuh yo’ cha’ity’d get y’ in trouble.’
“ ‘Well it certainly has. I went, on a friend’s advice too, to see how they acted in their own surroundings and there were both white and colored people in the box with me—’
“ ‘What!’
“ ‘And one of them was the man that has bought a house almost next door to me here on Court Avenue—and Irene, he intends to live in it!’
“And Irene says, just like a jig for the world—‘Well, bless mah soul!’
“ ‘But my dear,’ says Miss Cramp, ‘that isn’t the worst of it. You can’t imagine. My dear, I asked him to call!’
“ ‘You what!’
“ ‘I thought he was white. He looked like it. He’s blonder than I am.’
“ ‘How’d you find out he wasn’t?’ says Irene.
“ ‘Someone else told me after he’d gone.’
“ ‘Well, Agatha,’ says Irene, ‘if you didn’t have no better sense’n to invite a strange man to call—’
“ ‘But he was so nice, Irene—’
“ ‘Agatha!’ ”
“ ‘I mean—you wouldn’t have suspected, yourself. And, Irene, he swore he was coming, too.’ ”
“ ‘You don’ mean you ackshally think he will?’ ”
“ ‘Why won’t he?’ ”
“ ‘A nigger ought to know better.’ ”
“ ‘Well, this is New York, you know.’ ”
“ ‘Ah don’ care what this is—’ ”
“ ‘Anyway, suppose neighbors of mine see my name on the literature of this organization. As soon as this man moves in, I’ll be accused.’ ”
“Then Mrs. Parmalee looks real evil and says, ‘He wouldn’t move in down in Balt’mo’ City, I bet y’.’ ”
“ ‘He will here though,’ Miss Cramp says. ‘And if he does, I declare I’ll move out. I couldn’t bear the shame.’
“ ‘Thought you so anxious t’ uplift ’em?’ Irene says, and I nearly split.
“ ‘Well,’ answers Agatha, ‘it’s one thing to help them and quite another to live beside them as equals. And to have everyone in the street blaming me—I simply couldn’t bear it.’
“ ‘Mean to move?’
“ ‘What else—?’
“ ‘Move all these hyeh beautiful old things you’ve accumulated and yo’ daddy befo’ yuh? Leave this house he left yuh, where you’ve lived all
