“You poor dear, I ought to be angry with you for not coming to me sooner, but I’m so glad to see you I just can’t be,” her aunt welcomed her.
Threading her way deftly through the crowd, she led Mimi, her eyes distended at the bewildering massiveness of the building, down into the earth again. Ashamed of her greenness, Mimi shrank from the roaring monster that leapt upon them from the yawning blackness of a cavern made blacker by dim lights but faintly discernible in the cavern. With a horrible grinding of brakes the creature came to a stop and Mimi found herself shoved into it. Station after station they passed and once more they came to the street, this time in a setting more familiar to her, yet strange, and her bewilderment was decreased but little.
For here was a new life, teeming, exotic, individual. Hurrying along the streets, coming out of restaurants, standing in doorways and on street corners were groups of Negroes, well dressed, jubilant, cheerful. Here and there hurried coloured men in twos and threes, clad in smartly fitting dinner jackets, snow-white bosoms peeping from heavy overcoats, musical instruments, violins, saxophones, mandolins in cases clutched in their hands. They hastened into the subway kiosk Mimi and her aunt had just quitted and were swallowed up. From nearby there came to them the bewitching odours of frying corn and chicken, of pig’s-feet. They came from a stand where a middle-aged coloured woman was serving her wares to passersby.
“That’s ‘Pig-Foot Mary’—she’s making lots of money at that little stand and she’s saving it, too,” Mrs. Rogers informed Mimi.
She was thrilled by the new scene. Gone was the morbid, morose, worried air of the people she had encountered at the other end of the subway. Here there was spontaneous laughter, shrewd observations which brought loud and free laughter from listeners. There was an exhilarating sense here that these people knew the secret of enjoying life. Black and brown and yellow faces flitted by, some carefree, some careworn. Mimi sensed again the essential rhythm, the oneness of these variegated colours and moods. It was all vivid, colourful, of a pattern distinctive and apart, and she warmed to the friendliness of it all. …
Behind them stood two flashily dressed coloured men as they took it all in. The voice of one worried, the other conciliatory.
“Say, Sam, I sent the fifty dollars and my application to Jim Washington like you told me to,” the worried voice complained, “and I ain’t heard nothing a-tall from him or the Idlehour Social Club either.”
“Ain’t you heard you was blackballed?” the other inquired with a markedly incredulous air.
“No, I ain’t. I wonder who could’ve blackballed me,” he speculated, the worry in his tones increasing. “There’s Pudd’n Jones—he’s a friend of mine and he wouldn’t do that to me. And there’s Babe Carter and Spider and Bill Johnson—they’re friends of mine and they wouldn’t blackball me, I know. Say, was there many black balls in that box?” he inquired, hopefully.
“You’ve seen a bowl of Russian caviar, ain’t you?” his friend asked.
“Yeh—but what’s that got to do with them blackballing, me?”
“Well, boy, just this—that box when they voted on your name looked just like a bowl of caviar.” …
“Come along, Mimi, we can’t stand here all night—dinner’s ready at home,” urged Mrs. Rogers. Mimi could have stood there for hours. The colourful scenes fascinated her, made her want to stay there and watch the comedies, the tragedies, the shifting panorama of life as it flowed, now swiftly, now slowly, by. Down Lenox Avenue they walked. Harlem, which first had been Dutch “Haarlem,” then Irish, afterwards Jewish and German, was in the flood-tide of transition to a Negro city within a city. From the doorway of a former private dwelling in a side street near bustling Lenox Avenue came a resonant flooding swell of music. High above the rest sounded a heavy baritone, chopping off of the words like little sausages, setting the beat like a metronome for the other singers.
“What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear.”
Verse after verse poured forth, mingling with the clatter and roar of the crowds outside. Mimi and her aunt paused unwittingly outside. The song had ceased. The baritone voice of the preacher was lifted in prayer, his words punctuated by fervent “Amens!” and “Hallelujahs!” and “Praise Gods!”
“We are vile, sinful creatures, O Lord, strayed from the path You tol’ us to follow. (Ain’t it the Gospel!) Reach down from Thy heaven with a sword of flaming fire and wipe from the face of the earth these hellholes of vice that’re sending the souls of our boys and girls to damnation! (Yes, Lord, reach down!—Amen!) Wipe out, Jesus, the dance halls and theatres, the gamblers and the drunkards, the wolves in sheep’s clothes who’re workin’ ’gainst Thy cause. … Purify us, Lord! Save us! Save us! …”
The preacher’s voice swayed and rumbled, excoriating the sinners, pleading for redemption of their souls, damning to everlasting hellfire those who were unrepentant. The unseen voice was talking to a God who was no mystery to him, a very real and ever present and potent Deity. Down the street his words followed them as they went home. …
Mimi looked back on her days of suffering and poverty almost as though it had been a terrible dream. Her aunt deluged her with kindness, delicately drew from her the story of her unsuccessful struggle in Philadelphia against odds that proved too great for her. The one link with that nightmare of pain and worry and anxiety was her aching need of Petit Jean. Night after night she cried herself to sleep. Night after night she awoke when all
