Authors: Chester B Himes
“It’s not! It’s in the knees!” shrieked a young woman’s excited voice.
Lee turned to look at the speaker. She was a medium-sized girl showing small, pointed breasts in a tight yellow sweater. Her hips were too broad even in the dark blue skirt. And the saddle-leather loafers made her legs seem too large and her ankles too thick. From the neck down she was any girl Lee might see anywhere. But there was something in her face, the zestful mobility of finely cut, sensitive features framed by brown windblown hair, that was arresting—more than just the vitality of large brown eyes, the irresistible challenge of a candid mouth. There was an unconscious maternalism that seemed to come from within, as if she not only mothered the meek, but had given birth to them.
Lee was at that stage of drunkenness where the mind is a tricky thing. For he did not realize how long he had stared at her with an intense concentration until the recording had played to the end and, surprisingly, he found himself crossing the room to light the cigarette in her hand.
“Thank you,” she said courteously, without coyness, and seemingly without curiosity.
Erskine Hawkins blew the room full of high trumpet notes and they found themselves doing something like a jitterbug waltz to the beat of Don’t Cry Baby. Lee found her young in his arms but stiff with what seemed an inner reserve.
“If you ride out the beats, the breaks will catch you,” he told her.
“I do it from the knees,” she persisted.
He laughed indulgently. “That’s as good a way as any.”
The dance finished and she went to someone else. Then Mollie took Lee for a dance and they did her special crawl. Between laughs she said: “Everybody is for you, dear.”
“In what way?”
“In every way.”
“They don’t act like it.”
“You must co-operate.”
“I am co-operating.”
“That is what I am saying. They are all for you.”
He shook his head to clear it. “I must be getting drunk.”
Next he danced with a tall, willowy, dark-haired woman who seemed inexpressibly beautiful.
“Last year at this time I weighed two hundred pounds,” she informed him.
“You did? What do you weigh now?”
“One hundred and twenty-two pounds.”
“That’s remarkable.”
“You shouldn’t worry so about the Negro problem. The Negro is a nation, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“It is. Are you familiar with Marx’s scientific formula?”
“Not very.”
“You should read it. I’m one of Smitty’s secretaries, you know.”
“You are? Maybe I’ll be seeing you.”
“Watch out for Mollie. She’s a fink. They won’t have her in the Party.”
“No? Why?”
“Oh, she’s a capitalist stooge. And she doesn’t work. Don’t you know who she is?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Her husband is a big Hollywood producer.”
“Oh, is that so?”
His next dance was with Mollie again.
“What was Sophia saying about me?”
“Who is Sophia?”
“The cow you were dancing with.”
“She said you were rich.”
Mollie laughed. “They’re a jealous bunch of bitches.”
“What’s the pretty girl’s name?”
“You can’t mean Jackie?”
“Maybe not. The girl in the yellow sweater.”
“That’s Jackie. Stay away from her. She’s bait.”
“That’s kinda hard to believe.”
“Then take her home. But we may as well be realistic about it. Use a prophylactic.”
“Thank you. But I will use dialectics instead.”
When he went to buy another drink he was told the whisky was all gone and there was only rum left. Behind him someone proposed a toast to Stalin.
“I will take a shot of rum to drink to Stalin,” Lee said to the girl selling drinks.
Several others came up and bought rum to drink to Stalin. Then someone proposed a toast to Roosevelt. Lee and the others refilled to drink to Roosevelt. Twelve Russian heroes were toasted next by name, but Lee could not toast more than three of them, whose names he soon forgot.
After that he found himself out in the kitchen solemnly telling Don that when a Negro raped a white woman, that was a crime, but when a white man raped a Negro woman, that was a joke.
“Speaking of jokes, I will bet you that I can give a dirtier toast than you, Lee,” Don challenged.
“Go ahead, it’s a bet.”
“Here’s to two old whores out on the block—”
“One white and one colored,” Lee cut in.
“An interracial meeting,” Don laughed.
Lee started to say “a Communist get-together” but thought better of it.
Ed came into the kitchen on the tail end of it and remarked seriously: “You know, I will be happy when the day comes when a white man can kick a Negro in the ass without being called a nigger-hater.”
“I agree with you,” Lee replied solemnly. “And I will be glad when the day comes when a Negro can kick a white man in the ass without being called a frustrated homicidal maniac.”
“I will buy you comrades a drink,” Don said.
“The man’s a capitalist,” Ed observed.
“Don’t call me a capitalist. A capitalist is a man who panders for his mother, rapes his children, and buys bonds. I’m a Communist.”
“Then what is a Communist?” Lee asked.
“A Communist is a person with the head of a capitalist, the heart of a capitalist, the soul of a capitalist, and no money,” Ed replied.
Silently they turned to the girl selling drinks and had three rounds of rum. Then Lee staggered into the bathroom and was sick for a long time. When he turned to leave he found that he could not stand. On his hands and knees he crawled through the back hall and out onto the back stoop.
It was raining. He sat in the rain and the water soaked through his clothes and felt cool and clean on his head and face and refreshing to the heat of his skin. Lights in the movie stars’ mansions way up in the Hollywood Hills looked like little stars in the darkness—“And the stars shone down over the lot of man—” Some half-remembered line from some forgotten book.
In the cold, clean rain his thoughts cleared and his mind took him back to a party in New York. He had run into an old Los Angeles acquaintance, Al Roberts, in the Hotel Theresa. Al had said: “Let’s go up to Mamie’s.”
“Where’s that?”
“Up at 940.”
“Is she having a party?”
“She’s always having a party.”
“Oh, like that. Look, Al, I’m broke.”
“You don’t need any money. She gives her liquor away. Got an old man making good money and she spends it.”
They went up to St. Nicholas Avenue on the bus and climbed to the top floor of an apartment house. A fat, light-complexioned woman with black hair and sleepy eyes, clad in flaming red lounging pajamas, let them into an apartment filled with people getting drunk.
“Mamie, this is Lee. He’s a home boy.”
She had murmured something incoherently. As Lee was to learn before he left, incoherence was her only charm. He had wandered about and met the people. There had been as many white persons present as there had Negroes, but the whites were inconsequential while most of the Negroes were people of importance who held high positions and were known throughout the nation as leaders of their race. But he had listened in vain for anyone, white or Negro, to make a single statement that had any meaning whatsoever. The Negroes were being niggers in a very sophisticated manner as tribute to their white liberal friends. And the whites were enjoying the Negroes’ tribute as only white liberals can.
It would have had some meaning to Lee if the purpose of the party had been sex. A prelude for adultery, or even suicide. But there at Mamie’s, sex had been but a vulgar joke. And drinking for drinking only, like tonight—as it had always been, it seemed.
Now as he began to sober up, before the dull aching remorse of hangover settled in, he wondered about this drunkenness. As an aphrodisiac, it would have meaning, yes—or for digestion, as he had heard the Italians drank—or for verve, as the French did. But everywhere he had ever been in America, drinking was for getting drunk, as an anodyne for some great hurt, or for oblivion.
And this was one thing they could not hang on the nigger, he thought with sharp disdain. The nigger loved his watermelon, even though the white folks ate most of them. And the nigger loved his chicken—what little the white folks left. But everybody got drunk—nigger, white man, gentile, Jew.
Maybe the Communists knew something after all. In a nation where so many millions of people kept getting drunk for drunkenness, there must be something deeply wrong. Some gnawing dissatisfaction was too great to endure, because they were not only Negroes and they were not only Communists.
And then he thought, as his sharp sardonic thoughts turned inward: “I ought to go back and have another drink.”
Chapter 8
N
OW EVERYBODY
was drunk. Many had reverted to what they had been before they had become Communists. And Mollie had reached that twilight stage of self-deceit where there was no longer need to clown. The laugh was off and in its place the small-eyed glitter of predaciousness. Mind, body, and spirit were given to uninhibited speculation upon the hard, vibrant quality of virility. A growing, almost uncontrollable warmth crept slowly up her thighs and was actually seizing her.
“Where is Lee?” Ed asked.
“Lee has gone home,” she replied shortly.
“Well, where is Jackie? Has she gone, too?”
“With Lee? No. She is hiding in the bathroom.”
Ed stumbled to the bathroom and banged on the door. “Jackie, let me in.”
There was no answer.
He stepped back and hit the door with his shoulder. Luther came up and restrained him. “Don’t break down my house, man.”
Ed drew erect with aggrieved dignity. “Where is my hat? I am leaving.”
“Well, leave then.”
Mollie went to the bathroom and knocked on the door. “Ed is leaving.”
She received no answer. “Everybody is leaving,” she continued.
“The party is breaking up.” Though her voice was gentle and sweet, her face was marked with an angry malevolence. “Are you ill, dear?”
Still there came no reply.
“He has gone too.”
“I am a little sick, Mollie, dear,” Jackie finally replied. “I hope you won’t mind too much if I use your bathroom a little longer.”
“You are welcome to spend the night, darling.”
Now all were leaving and Mollie’s impatience for them to be gone was scarcely civil. She was tired of them, tired of stifling her frenzy, tired of this sneaking little slut in her bathroom. When all the others had gone she called to Jackie again: “Dear, you are the only one left—and I am occupying Luther, if that is what you are waiting for.”
Jackie unlocked the door and came out. “All I can say to you is that you are a dirty-minded, vulgar old bitch.”
“Not in my own house, darling.”
“Then I will get out of your house. I would have gone a long time ago if I hadn’t been ill.”
“If you had known he had gone so soon. You should have been watching instead of pretending.”
“I was not waiting for anyone.”
“The liquor is all gone too.”
“Oh! Oh! You are—”
“Not in my house.”
Observing a hat and coat bundled on a chair, Jackie remarked: “Oh, someone left their coat and hat.”
“It’s Luther’s.”
“I wonder if it’s raining,” Jackie said, and walked to the kitchen door. “Oh, someone’s out on the back porch!” she exclaimed. It’s Lee! He’s sitting in the rain.” Her voice was accusing.
“Now that you have found him, you can have him,” Mollie mocked.
“You are vicious,” Jackie said, and went outside.
When Lee heard the door opening, he knew it would be Jackie. For now he realized that underneath all of his other thoughts had been the thought of her, not lustfully or even curiously—just there.
“It’s in the mind, Jackie.”
“No, Lee, it’s in the knees.”
They laughed together.
“I was waiting for you to come in and take me home.” In the rain her face was a blurred white pattern. But her voice was velvety.
“I didn’t think about it.”
“Didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did. But I didn’t know I was thinking about it until you came out.”
They were silent, sitting in the rain.
“I believe in being honest with myself,” she finally said. “Are you married, Lee?”
“Yes.”
A cat came hurrying up the stairs, saw them, and scampered back.
“Kitty-kitty-kitty,” she called. But the cat did not return.
“Are you?” he asked.
“No.”
“I would like to ask you something. Will you answer it?”
“I think so.”
“Did they send you out?”
“They?”
“The party. Someone in the party?”
“No, we don’t do that.”
He let the silence run on.
“Not now—not since the war. We’re not interested in recruiting colored people. It causes disunity—”
After a time she added: “I never did.”
“I don’t think I like Communists,” he said.
“I don’t particularly like them either. But I believe in Communism. That comes from being honest with myself. If you were honest with yourself, you would believe in it too.”
“Perhaps.” The silence between them was nice.
“The lights look like stars, don’t they?” he asked.
“The wild grass will be coming up soon and late afternoon in the sunshine the hills will look like emeralds. Have you been up there and looked over the Pacific?”
“Where’s your home, Jackie?”
“Everybody asks me that.”
“Well—you look different.”
She told him that she was from the state of Washington. In 1940 she had come to San Francisco to look for work and had become interested in the movement. From there she had come down to Los Angeles.
“I work at Comstock, you know.”
“You do? Well, well! In what department?”
“In Foster’s office.”
“Is that so? For Foster, eh? Say, what kind of a guy is he?”
“Oh, as a man he’s swell. He’s so good-looking—really handsome—and considerate too. I don’t think he gets along well with his wife, though.”
“Does he favor the union?”
“Oh, no, he’s a capitalist, of course.”