I was promoted to bellboy, which meant a small increase in income. But I soon learned that the substantial money came from bootlegging liquor to the white prostitutes in the hotel. The other bellboys were taking these risks, and I fell in. I learned how to walk past a white policeman with contraband upon my hip, sauntering, whistling like a nigger ought to whistle when he is innocent. The extra dollars were coming in, but slowly. How, how, how could I get my hands on more money before I was caught and sent to jail for some trivial misdemeanor? If I were going to violate the law, then I ought to get something out of it. My larcenous aims were modest. A hundred dollars would give me, temporarily, more freedom of movement than I had ever known in my life. I watched and waited, living with the thought.
While waiting for my chance to grab and run, I grew used to seeing the white prostitutes naked upon their beds, sitting nude about their rooms, and I learned new modes of behavior, new rules in how to live the Jim Crow life. It was presumed that we black boys took their nakedness for granted, that it startled us no more
than a blue vase or a red rug. Our presence awoke in them no sense of shame whatever, for we blacks were not considered human anyway. If they were alone, I would steal sidelong glances at them. But if they were receiving men, not a flicker of my eyelids would show.
A huge, snowy-skinned blonde took a room on my floor. One night she rang for service and I went to wait upon her. She was in bed with a thickset man; both were nude and uncovered. She said that she wanted some liquor, and slid out of bed and waddled across the floor to get her money from the dresser drawer. Without realizing it, I watched her.
“Nigger, what in hell are you looking at?” the white man asked, raising himself upon his elbows.
“Nothing, sir,” I answered, looking suddenly miles deep into the blank wall of the room.
“Keep your eyes where they belong if you want to be healthy!”
“Yes, sir.”
I would have continued at the hotel until I left had not a shortcut presented itself. One of the boys at the hotel whispered to me one night that the only local Negro movie house wanted a boy to take tickets at the door.
“You ain’t never been in jail, is you?” he asked me.
“Not yet,” I answered.
“Then you can get the job,” he said. “I’d take it, but I done six months and they know me.”
“What’s the catch?”
“The girl who sells tickets is using a system,” he explained. “If you get the job, you can make some good gravy.”
If I stole, I would have a chance to head northward quickly; if I remained barely honest, piddling with pints of bootleg liquor, I merely prolonged my stay, increased my chances of being caught, exposed myself to the possibility of saying the wrong word or doing the wrong thing and paying a penalty that I dared not think of. The temptation to venture into crime was too strong, and I decided to work quickly, taking whatever was in sight, amass a wad of money, and flee. I knew that others had tried it before me and had failed, but I was hoping to be lucky.
My chances for getting the job were good; I had no past record of stealing or violating the laws. When I presented myself to the Jewish proprietor of the movie house I was immediately accepted. The next day I reported for duty and began taking tickets. The boss man warned me:
“Now, look, I’ll be honest with you if you’ll be honest with me. I don’t know who’s honest around this joint and who isn’t. But if
you
are honest, then the rest are bound to be. All tickets will pass through your hands. There can be no stealing unless you steal.”
I gave him a pledge of my honesty, feeling absolutely no qualms about what I intended to do. He was white, and I could never do to him what he and his kind had done to me. Therefore, I reasoned, stealing was not a violation of my ethics, but of his; I felt that things were rigged in his favor and any action I took to circumvent his scheme of life was justified. Yet I had not convinced myself.
During the first afternoon the Negro girl in the ticket office watched me closely and I knew that she was sizing me up, trying to determine when it would be safe to break me into her graft. I waited, leaving it to her to make the first move.
I was supposed to drop each ticket that I took from a customer into a metal receptacle. Occasionally the boss would go to the ticket window and look at the serial number on the roll of unsold tickets and then compare that number with the number on the last ticket I had dropped into the receptacle. The boss continued his watchfulness for a few days, then began to observe me from across the street; finally he absented himself for long intervals.
A tension as high as that I had known when the white men had driven me from the job at the optician’s returned to live in me. But I had learned to master a great deal of tension now; I had developed, slowly and painfully, a capacity to contain it within myself without betraying it in any way. Had this not been true, the mere thought of stealing, the risks involved, the inner distress would have so upset me that I would have been in no state of mind to calculate coldly, would have made me so panicky that I would have been afraid to steal at all. But my inner resistance had been blasted. I felt
that I had been emotionally cast out of the world, had been made to live outside the normal processes of life, had been conditioned in feeling
against
something daily, had become accustomed to living on the side of those who watched and waited.
While I was eating supper in a near-by café one night, a strange Negro man walked in and sat beside me.
“Hello, Richard,” he said.
“Hello,” I said. “I don’t think I know you.”
“But I know
you
,” he said, smiling.
Was he one of the boss’s spies?
“How do you know me?” I asked.
“I’m Tel’s friend,” he said, naming the girl who sold the tickets at the movie.
I looked at him searchingly. Was he telling me the truth? Or was he trying to trap me for the boss? I was already thinking and feeling like a criminal, distrusting everybody.
“We start tonight,” he said.
“What?” I asked, still not admitting that I knew what he was talking about.
“Don’t be scared. The boss trusts you. He’s gone to see some friends. Somebody’s watching him and if he starts back to the movie, they’ll phone us,” he said.
I could not eat my food. It lay cold upon the plate and sweat ran down from my armpits.
“It’ll work this way,” he explained in a low, smooth tone. “A guy’ll come to you and ask for a match. You give him five tickets that you’ll hold out of the box, see? We’ll give you the signal when to start holding out. The guy’ll give the tickets to Tel; she’ll resell them all at once, when a crowd is buying at the rush hour. You get it?”
I did not answer. I knew that if I were caught I would go to the chain gang. But was not my life already a kind of chain gang? What, really, did I have to lose?
“Are you with us?” he asked.
I still did not answer. He rose and clapped me on the shoulder and left. I trembled as I went back to the theater. Anything might
happen, but I was used to that. Had I not felt that same sensation when I lay on the ground and the white men towered over me, telling me that I was a lucky nigger? Had I not felt it when I walked home from the optical company that morning with my job gone? Had I not felt it when I walked down the hallway of the hotel with the night watchman pointing a gun at my back? Had I not felt it all a million times before? I took the tickets with sweaty fingers. I waited. I was gambling: freedom or the chain gang. There were times when I felt that I could not breathe. I looked up and down the street; the boss was not in sight. Was this a trap? If it were, I would disgrace my family. Would not all of them say that my attitude had been leading to this all along? Would they not rake up the past and find clues that had led to my fate?
The man I had met in the café came through the door and put a ticket in my hand.
“There’s a crowd at the box office,” he whispered. “Save ten, not five. Start with this one.”
Well, here goes, I thought. He gave me the ticket and sat looking at the moving shadows upon the screen. I held on to the ticket and my body grew tense, hot as fire; but I was used to that too. Time crawled through the cells of my brain. My muscles ached. I discovered that crime means suffering. The crowd came in and gave me more tickets. I kept ten of them tucked into my moist palm. No sooner had the crowd thinned than a black boy with a cigarette jutting from his mouth came up to me.
“Gotta match?”
With a slow movement I gave him the tickets. He went out and I kept the door cracked and watched. He went to the ticket office and laid down a coin and I saw him slip the tickets to the girl. Yes, the boy was honest. The girl shot me a quick smile and I went back inside. A few moments later the same tickets were handed to me by other customers.
We worked it for a week and after the money was split four ways, I had fifty dollars. Freedom was almost within my grasp. Ought I risk any more? I dropped the hint to Tel’s friend that maybe I would quit; it was a casual hint to test him out. He grew
violently angry and I quickly consented to stay, fearing that someone might turn me in for revenge, or to get me out of the way so that another and more pliable boy could have my place. I was dealing with cagey people and I would be cagey.
I went through another week. Late one night I resolved to make that week the last. The gun in the neighbor’s house came to my mind, and the cans of fruit preserves in the storehouse of the college. If I stole them and sold them, I would have enough to tide me over in Memphis until I could get a job, work, save, and go north. I crept from bed and found the neighbor’s house empty. I looked about; all was quiet. My heart beat so fast that it ached. I forced a window with a screwdriver and entered and took the gun; I slipped it in my shirt and returned home. When I took it out to look at it, it was wet with sweat. I pawned it under an assumed name.
The following night I rounded up two boys whom I knew to be ready for adventure. We broke into the college storehouse and lugged out cans of fruit preserves and sold them to restaurants.
Meanwhile I bought clothes, shoes, a cardboard suitcase, all of which I hid at home. Saturday night came and I sent word to the boss that I was sick. Uncle Tom was upstairs. Granny and Aunt Addie were at church. My brother was sleeping. My mother sat in her rocking chair, humming to herself. I packed my suitcase and went to her.
“Mama, I’m going away,” I whispered.
“Oh, no,” she protested.
“I’ve got to, mama. I can’t live this way.”
“You’re not running away from something you’ve done?”
“I’ll send for you, mama. I’ll be all right.”
“Take care of yourself. And send for me quickly. I’m not happy here,” she said.
“I’m sorry for all these long years, mama. But I could not have helped it.”
I kissed her and she cried.
“Be quiet, mama. I’m all right.”
I went out the back way and walked a quarter of a mile to the
railroad tracks. It began to rain as I tramped down the crossties toward town. I reached the station soaked to the skin. I bought my ticket, then went hurriedly to the corner of the block in which the movie house stood. Yes, the boss was there, taking the tickets himself. I returned to the station and waited for my train, my eyes watching the crowd.
An hour later I was sitting in a Jim Crow coach, speeding northward, making the first lap of my journey to a land where I could live with a little less fear. Slowly the burden I had carried for many months lifted somewhat. My cheeks itched and when I scratched them I found tears. In that moment I understood the pain that accompanied crime and I hoped that I would never have to feel it again. I never did feel it again, for I never stole again; and what kept me from it was the knowledge that, for me, crime carried its own punishment.
Well, it’s my life, I told myself. I’ll see now what I can make of it…
I arrived in Memphis on a cold November Sunday morning, in 1925
, and lugged my suitcase down quiet, empty sidewalks through winter sunshine. I found Beale Street, the street that I had been told was filled with danger: pickpockets, prostitutes, cutthroats, and black confidence men. After walking several blocks, I saw a big frame house with a sign in the window: R
OOMS
. I slowed, wondering if it was a rooming house or a whorehouse. I had heard of the foolish blunders that small-town boys made when they went to big cities and I wanted to be very cautious. I walked past the house to the end of the block, then turned and walked slowly past it again. Well, whatever it was, I would stay in it for a day or two, until I found something I was certain of. I had nothing valuable in my suitcase. My money was strapped to my body; in order for anyone to get it, they would have to kill me.
I walked up the steps and was about to ring the bell when I saw a big mulatto woman staring at me through the window. Oh, hell, I thought. This
is
a whorehouse…I stopped. The woman smiled. I turned around and went back down the walk. As I neared the street, I looked back in time to see the woman’s face leave the window. A moment later she appeared in the doorway.
“Come here, boy!” she called to me.
I hesitated. Goddamn, I’ve run into a whore right off…
“Come here, boy,” she commanded loudly. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
I turned and walked slowly toward her.
“Come inside,” she said.
I stared at her a moment, then stepped into a warm hallway. The woman smiled, turned on a light, and looked at me from my head to my feet.
“How come you was walking past this house so many times?” she asked.
“I was looking for a room,” I said.
“Didn’t you see the sign?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then how come you didn’t come in?”
“Well, I don’t know. You see, I’m a stranger here…”
“Lord, and don’t I know it!” She dropped heavily into a chair and went into a gale of laughter that made her big bosom shake as though it were going to fly off. “Anybody could tell that.” She gasped, giggled, and grew quiet. She said: “I’m Mrs. Moss.”
I told her my name.
“That’s a real nice name,” she said after a moment’s serious thought.
I blinked. What the hell kind of place was this? And who was this woman? I stood with my suitcase in my hand, poised to leave.
“Boy, Lord, this ain’t no whorehouse,” she said at last. “Folks get the craziest notions about Beale Street. I own this place; this is my home. I’m a church member. I got a daughter seventeen years old, and, by God, I sure make her walk a straight chalk line. Sit down, son. You in safe hands here.”
I laughed and sat.
“Where might you be from?” she asked.
“Jackson, Mississippi.”
“You act mighty bright to be from there,” she commented.
“There are bright people in Jackson,” I said.
“If there is, I got yet to see some of ’em. Most of ’em can’t talk. They just stand with their heads down, with one foot on top of the other and you have to guess at what they’re trying to say.”
I was at ease now. I liked her.
“My husband works in a bakery,” she rattled on pleasantly, openly, as though she had known me for years. “We take in roomers to help out. We just simple people here. You can call this home, if you got a mind to. The rent’s three dollars.”
“That’s a little high,” I said.
“Then give me two dollars and a half till you get yourself a job,” she said.
I accepted and she showed me my room. I set my suitcase down.
“You run off, didn’t you?” she asked.
I jerked in surprise.
“How did you know?”
“Boy, your heart’s like an open book,” she said. “I know things. Lotta boys run off to Memphis from little towns. They think they gonna find it easy here, but they don’t.” She looked at me searchingly. “You drink?”
“Oh, no, ma’am.”
“Didn’t mean no harm, son,” she said. “Just wanted to know. You can drink here, if you like. Just don’t make a fool of yourself. You can bring your girl here too. Do anything you want, but be decent.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at her in amazement. It was on reputedly disreputable Beale Street in Memphis that I had met the warmest, friendliest person I had ever known, that I discovered that all human beings were not mean and driving, were not bigots like the members of my family.
“You can eat dinner with us when we come from church,” she said.
“Thank you. I’d like to.”
“Maybe you want to come to church with us?”
“Well…” I hedged.
“Naw, you’re tired,” she said, closing the door.
I lay on the bed and reveled in the delightful sensation of living out a long-sought dream. I had always flinched inwardly from the lonely terror that I had thought I would feel in a strange city, and
now I had found a home with friendly people. I relaxed completely and dozed off to sleep, for I had not slept much for many nights. Later I came awake with a sudden start, remembering the fright and tension that had accompanied my foray into crime. Well, all that was gone now. I could start anew. I did not like to feel tension and fear. I wanted something else, to be human, to be caught up in something meaningful. But I must first get a job.
Late that afternoon Mrs. Moss called me for dinner and introduced me to her daughter, Bess, whom I liked at once. She was young, simple, sweet, and brown. Mrs. Moss apologized for her husband, who was still at work. Why was she treating me so kindly? It made me self-conscious. We were eating dessert when Bess spoke.
“Mama’s done told me all about you,” she said.
“I’m afraid that there isn’t much to tell,” I said.
“She said you was walking up and down in the street in front of the house, and didn’t know whether to come in,” Bess said, giggling. “What kind of place did you think this was?”
I hung my head and smiled. Mrs. Moss went into a storm of laughter and left the room.
“Mama says she said to herself soon’s she saw you out there on that street with your suitcase, ‘That boy’s looking for a clean home to live in,’” Bess said. “Mama’s good about knowing what folks feel.”
“She seems to be,” I said, helping Bess to wash the dishes.
“You can eat with us any time you like,” Bess said.
“Thanks,” I said. “But I couldn’t do that.”
“How come?” Bess asked. “We got a plenty.”
“I know. But a man ought to pay his own way.”
“Mama said you’d be like that,” Bess said with satisfaction.
Mrs. Moss returned to the kitchen.
“Bess’s going to be married soon,” she announced.
“Congratulations!” I said. “Who’s the lucky man?”
“Oh, I ain’t got nobody yet,” Bess said.
I was puzzled. Mrs. Moss laughed and nudged me.
“I say gals oughta marry young,” she said. “Now, if Bess found a nice young man like
you
, Richard…”
“Mama!” Bess wailed, hiding her face in the dishcloth.
“I mean it,” Mrs. Moss said. “Richard’s a heap better’n them old ignorant nigger boys you been running after at school.”
I gaped at one and then the other. What was happening here? They barely knew me; I had been in the house but a few hours.
“The minute I laid eyes on that boy in the street this morning,” Mrs. Moss said, “I said to myself, ‘That’s the kind of boy for Bess.’”
Bess came to me and leaned her head on my shoulder. I was stunned. How on earth could she act like this?
“Mama, don’t,” Bess pleaded teasingly.
“I mean it,” Mrs. Moss said. “Richard, I’m worried about whose hands this house is going to fall into. I ain’t too long for this old world.”
“Bess’ll find a boy who’ll love her,” I said uneasily.
“I ain’t so sure,” Mrs. Moss said, shaking her head.
“I’m going up front,” Bess said, giggling, burying her face in her hands, and running out.
Mrs. Moss came close to me and spoke confidently.
“A gal’s a funny thing,” she said, laughing. “They has to be tamed. Just like wild animals.”
“She’s all right,” I said, wiping the table, thinking furiously, not wanting to become involved too deeply with the family.
“You like Bess, Richard?” Mrs. Moss asked me suddenly.
I stared at her, doubting my ears.
“I’ve been in the house only a couple of hours,” I said hesitantly. “She’s a fine girl.”
“Now. I mean do you
like
her? Could you
love
her?” she asked insistently.
I stared at Mrs. Moss, wondering if something was wrong with Bess. What kind of people were these?
“You people don’t know me. I didn’t exist for you five hours ago,” I said seriously. Then I shot at her: “I could be a robber or a burglar for all you know.”
“Son, I know you,” she said emphatically.
Oh, Christ, I thought. I’ll have to leave this place.
“You go on up front with Bess,” Mrs. Moss said.
“Look, Mrs. Moss, I’m just a poor nobody,” I said.
“You got something in you I like,” she said. “Money ain’t everything. You got a good Christian heart and everybody ain’t got that.”
I winced and turned my head away. Her naïve simplicity was overwhelming. I felt as though I had been accused of something.
“I worked twenty years and bought this house myself,” she went on. “I’d be happy when I died if I thought Bess had a husband like you.”
“Oh, mama!” Bess shrieked with protesting laughter from the front room.
I went into a warm, cozy front room and sat on the sofa. Bess was sitting on a little bench, looking out the window. How must I act toward this girl? I did not want to be drawn into something I did not want, and neither did I wish to wound anybody’s feelings.
“Don’t you wanna set here with me?” Bess said.
I rose and sat with her. Neither of us spoke for a long time.
“I’m the same age as you,” Bess said. “I’m seventeen.”
“Do you go to school?” I asked to make conversation.
“Yes,” she said. “Wanna see my books?”
“I’d like to.”
She rose and brought her schoolbooks to me. I saw that she was in the fifth grade.
“I ain’t so good in school,” she said, tossing her head. “But I don’t care.”
“Well, school’s kind of important, you know,” I said cautiously.
“Love is the important thing,” she countered strongly.
I wondered if she were demented. The behavior of the mother and the daughter ran counter to all I had ever seen or known. Mrs. Moss came into the room.
“I think I’ll go out and look for a job,” I said, wanting to escape them.
“On a Sunday!” Mrs. Moss exclaimed. “Wait till in the morning.”
“But I can learn the streets tonight anyway,” I said.
“That’s really a good thought,” Mrs. Moss said after a moment’s reflection. “You see, Bess? That boy thinks.”
I felt awkward, embarrassed, called upon to say something.
“I’ll be glad to help you with your lessons, Bess,” I said.
“You think you can?” she asked, doubting.
“Well, I used to take charge of classes at school last year,” I said.
“Now ain’t that nice?” Mrs. Moss said in a honeyed tone.
I went to my room and lay on the bed and tried to fathom out the kind of home I had come to. That they were serious, I had no doubt. Would they be angry with me when they learned that my life was a million miles from theirs? How could I avoid that? Was it wise to remain here with a seventeen-year-old girl eager for marriage and a mother equally anxious to have her marry me? What on earth had they seen in me to have made them act toward me as they had? My clothes were not good. True, I had manners, manners that had been drilled into me at home, at school, manners that had been kicked into me on jobs; but anybody could have manners. I had learned to know these people better in five hours than I had learned to know my own family in five years.
Later, after I had grown to understand the peasant mentality of Bess and her mother, I learned the full degree to which my life at home had cut me off, not only from white people but from Negroes as well. To Bess and her mother, money was important, but they did not strive for it too hard. They had no tensions, unappeasable longings, no desire to do something to redeem themselves. The main value in their lives was simple, clean, good living and when they thought they had found those same qualities in one of their race, they instinctively embraced him, liked him, and asked no questions. But such simple unaffected trust flabbergasted me. It was impossible.
I walked down Beale Street and into the heart of Memphis. My body was thin, my overcoat shabby, and each gust of wind chilled my blood. On Main Street I saw a sign in a café window:
Dish Washer Wanted
I went in and spoke to the manager and was hired to come to work the following night. The salary was ten dollars for the first week and twelve thereafter.
“Don’t hire anyone else,” I told him. “I’ll be here.”
I would get two meals at the café. But how would I eat in the daytime? I went into a store and bought a can of pork and beans and a can opener. Well, that problem was solved. I would pay two dollars and a half a week for my room and I would save the balance for my trip to Chicago. All my thoughts and movements were dictated by distant hopes.
Mrs. Moss was astonished when I told her that I had a job.
“You see, Bess,” she said. “That boy’s got a job his first day here. That’s get-up for you. He’s going somewhere. He just don’t sit and gab. He moves.”
Bess smiled at me. It seemed that every move I made captivated her. Mrs. Moss went upstairs to bed. I was uneasy.
“Lemme rest your coat,” Bess said.
She took my coat and felt the can in the pocket.
“What you got in there?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing,” I mumbled, trying to take the coat from her.
She pulled out the beans and the can opener. Her eyes widened with pity.
“Richard, you hungry, ain’t you?” she asked me.
“Naw,” I mumbled.
“Then let’s eat some chicken,” she said.
“Oh, all right,” I said.
Bess ran to the stairway.
“Mama!” she called.