WASTED
TRAVAIL
By
SADIE MAE ROSEBRJDUGH , «
Loruley ("~'onsal
Universitv c.. "
v'-'-:r\
VANTAGE PRESS, Inc., NEW YORK


Preface
The theme of Wasted Travail needs few words to intro-
duce it in a country founded on the principle of liberty,
as ours is. In fact, it takes us back through the years to
that Greek world where the idea of freedom was inwardly
accepted but not always outwardly practiced.
My reason for writing it is twofold: first, to acquaint
people who believe wholeheartedly that we should live
together, fight together, and die together, with conditions
prevailing in some parts of our cherished America; sec-
ond, to aid people who find themselves in the depressing
situation of having to contend hopelessly against disagree-
able assumptions of superiority to adopt attitudes towards
life which lead to the doing of things that are fair, honest,
and elevating; and for those who live their lives in a
partial atmosphere of freedom, to approach the confusing
problems in that hopeful frame of mind which comes
from a tolerance born of intelligence, good will, and
understanding.
I have set forth my experiences in fictional form so that
I might write with "malice toward none." I am deeply
indebted to my doctor, who truly lives by the creed: "All
men are created equal." I also am glad to acknowledge
my obligation to Professor Hugh Skinner for his encour-
agement, and particularly his assistance in evaluating and
arranging the material, and to all my other teachers whose
helpful suggestions have aided me in my attempt to win
a place for myself in the highly competitive field of fic-
tion writing.
S. R.


"N


WASTED
TRAVAIL
-





CHAPTER
ON THE CREST OF A ROLLING HILL IN THE DEEP AND Dis-
obliging South stands a house, an old house. The low,
pine-paling fence in front of it has lost its coat of lime-
and-chalk whitewash, and the grayness of its boards adds
to the forlorn look of the worn and weathered structure.
Nothing very important has ever happened there, nothing
that could justly give it a place in history; the ghosts of
no famous people haunt it, and no Paul Revere rode by
it, but it is there that I was born and named Taffy.
It is the place where I was introduced to the words
"racial supremacy," the deceptive method of share-crop-
ping, crop-lien, and lynching—where I learned that Sher-
man and his aides were lousy Yankees because they dared
to fill their canvas bags with hickory-cured Southern hams,
and satisfy their gullible lusts on the unyielding bellies of
pompous Southern maidens, finally leaving a trail of fire,
ashes, and backened ruin through the proudest cities of
the shameless empire—where men boldly use the epithets
"nigger," "dagoes," "crazy Jews," and "poor white trash,"
without a single embarrassed flicker of an eyelash. It is
also where the Southern fields are swamped with mulat-
toes who sometimes work for their fathers, but whose
mothers dare not tell them who they are, or where and
how they were conceived.
Such are the surroundings I came stubbornly into. Be-
cause I was a girl, my mother hated me. I was a twin;
my brother was born six hours before me, and my painful
mother was overjoyed when the midwife told her, "It's
m


patchwork quilts with the baby on her lap, or bustling
about in the dark kitchen with a resentful look in her
eyes.
At such times my father would be reading the Bible
aloud, pausing to look over his spectacles when he had
finished a verse which he thought ought to make us sit
up with excitement. I can see Bloomer the cat, heavy with
her litter, stretched out on the uneven bricks of the hearth,
stirring only when my father's well-aimed Bruton snuff
spittle missed the burning oak logs and fell on her soft,
furry stomach. As I look back on those years I can now
realize that the beginning of my life was not a total loss,
although it was neither a continuously happy experience
nor an event of total sadness.
My father was a country schoolteacher and a brick
mason for many years before I was born, and for a few
afterwards. He was, or I should say is, almost a mathe-
matical genius. I sometimes think that solving problems
for the neighborhood children is the only true joy that
makes life worth while for him. The days of his career
as a teacher are far behind him; the faint memory of the
coming and growing up of nine hungry children who
robbed him of that joy seems to be more vivid.
The things I could now say for my overworked mother
are many and varied, but considering the time and the
place of her life I shall only remark that for all her short-
comings she was a wonderful mother. It was my grand-
father, however, who taught me to talk, read, and write
long before I should have. In fact, I can hardly remember
when I could not read, although much of what I read did
not make sense to me at the time. Grandfather was a
hard-working man. He bought two hundred and forty
acres of fertile land when it was cheap, which he planted
and worked as though, if he stopped one minute before
the darkness of night appeared, or started one minute after
the blazing sun came over the hill with thousands of "time
£9}


flies" accompanying it, he would not survive.
His rewards were good crops and a comfortable liveli-
hood; in fact, it was far better than that of the neighbor-
ing landowners, or the sharecroppers and renters. He also
practiced dentistry on all who felt that a saving of fifty
cents was worth a little pain. I was afraid of this one-man
medical center; the room was oblong with a small window
at one end, and another in the middle. A long bench
occupied one side of the room and a kerosene lamp hung
from the wall, making the room dungeonlike. In the
middle stood an awesome barber's chair. It was here that
men, women, and children alike came to him to pry their
teeth back and forth, until one final yank finished the job
and they left, feeling a little more pain and misery than
they had felt before.
But Grandfather's world was an entirely different world
from ours. My father owned no land at that time; there-
fore, we were renters, cotton-pickers, and what have you,
living on a hilltop near two white families who were
outcasts of their race and neighborhood. They gave you
a peculiar feeling—you knew that the older boys of one
of the families thrilled to the velvety touch of Guernsey
heifers, and that the younger boys satisfied their newly
felt lust with the hairy feel of Hampshire shoats; also that
the father spent many erotic hours in the pasture with
his horse Daisy, she in a shallow ditch, he on its banks,
patting her hindmost part—but you also knew that it
was a hush-hush subject. The Botts were one of those
families born without mental discipline; they were the
product of a tenacious environment and an inheritance
of racial sophistry, but with no guiding principles or am-
bitious ideas; just hate for those they termed "niggers"
and a sincere desire that no harm should come to their
livestock.
I recollect the first day I put a question to one of the
Botts boys, Freddie. It was Saturday evening, and the
{10}


dilapidated wagon-bed was filled with blocks of pine
wood, painstakingly cut into lengths to fit the hairy old
storekeeper's greedy old range. I sat in front with the
reins in my hands, listening to the creaking of the mules'
trace-chains, my mind stirring like a churn of unripened
cream. I passed their shabby house, rounded the corner
of the leaning barn, and headed for the sand-embedded
road. He was kicking and scolding the pig as she ran
around the fence.
"What did she do?" I asked.
"Acted like a nigger," he said, "so I'm treating her as
I would a nigger. I should swing her to a limb. If I had
some dynamite I'd blow her to hell. See here, a nigger
ain't no good," he bellowed at her, "and no damn pig
I tote feed to is going to act like one."
I gaped at him but said nothing, because I had no
desire to see what I had heard the preacher call the
"Pearly Gates of Heaven," even though he had said there
would be plenty of milk and honey there. I wanted to tell
Mr. Rub, the storekeeper, what I had seen and heard; I
wanted to cry, say things, many things, but I thought
about my mother and what she had said. Who would want
to hear anything a patched-clothing Negro girl in a wood-
filled wagon on a lonely country road had to say? Who'd
believe me? Anyway, Grandfather had said to me the last
time I spent an evening at his house that even the black-
birds we saw soaring overhead would always defend their
kind. I poked around in my mind in quest of words to
say to myself, some amusing thought to take my mind off
ugly scenes, but I couldn't find any; I wanted revenge.
There were many more days like this to follow, times
when I seemed almost on the brink of an enlightening
footing, with some answer to the perplexing problems of
life; yet I found neither happiness nor mild comfort in
my tender conclusions. The sweaty mules pulled hard
over the deep sucking sand as I mused to myself that even
£11}


the Southern soil seemed to dole out the wrong portions in
the most hateful way and in the most hazardous places.
My repressed ideas and words, and the haughty deeds of
men, worried me; I couldn't understand this thing called
life. I was uneasy, sad; I had dreams in which I cried out
to God—if there was one—to remove the seething, sapping,
ceaseless drudgery. But the wounds still grew; sank deeper
and spread like a spiteful hog-sand adder; they bled and
festered; they seared; they pained and seared some more.
I groped nightly in a horrible world; my dreams were
like suddenly waking up in hell alone, surrounded by a
scorching fire, without even a single wicked soul to share
your horror. I formed the habit of talking to myself,
preaching, swearing at the dozing cows, which I hated
because of the Botts. As they stood, unmindfully chewing
their cuds, I shouted at them: "You meek heifers; fight
back! You have horns, tails; why do you stand for it? You
can run and kick, you can hook, you do not have to work
from morning until darkness stops you; furthermore,
you're not a nigger girl whom nobody wants to hear say
anything. Fight, you fools! Run! Moo! Moo! Loud as hell;
fight with your tails! Look at you standing there, letting
the beastly flies gnaw your hairy backs and suck your
lousy blood. I can see by the way you act that if you
belonged to the Botts' you'd swish your tails and let them
pat you as much as they wished."
I bellowed at the lean-necked mules, the cackling hens,
the scaly-legged roosters; I screamed at them: "You proud,
feathery, foolish cocks! What have you to strut and crow
about, while we suffer? The least you can do is keep
quiet and stop your wicked crowing."
I built a grotesque altar in the pasture with dried corn-
stalks, in the center of a cluster of stubby pines. This was
for years my sanctum. Around the altar I placed make-
believe people, which were really bunches of grass with
their thick roots braided around them. Sometimes I would
£12}


be the minister; I would reprimand my followers, and
pray for them afterwards. I told God that they were not
wanted because they were Negroes, and it seemed to me
as if he should not have made them. I wept, and asked
him what was wrong with Negroes. "Didn't you make all
peoples?" I asked pleadingly. "Then why," I continued,
"doesn't the world want to hear anything a Negro girl
has to write, but will buy and read what a white girl
has to write?"
Sometimes my meetings were court sessions and at those
times one of the bunches of grass would be my secretary;
two sticks with rags tied to them would be Mr. Botts and
Freddie: the others were the spectators of the court, and
I would be the judge. I swore at them, I pounded them
with sticks, I kicked them and sentenced them to long
terms at hard labor. I yelled, I sobbed, sobbed until often
the pounding in my brain stopped and I was happy for
a few days; but the rebellion and sadness returned, bore
on, and beat down like a hot sun whose rays never shift.
The house was demolished by a tornado that year: the
wind blew hard and recklessly until it lifted the entire
roof and scattered it about the orchard; the lightning
reached out two long flashing streaks and set a fiery
tongue to the remainder of it. I can still see those vicious
flames as they reached out and lapped up the shabby
structure. They scorched, they raved; they lapped up the
yard, the barn (till even the tears of the lonely weeping
willow tree were no more), the grass, the brave flowers
that dared to bloom and look cheerfully up at the sun.
Those fiery arms reached out for the lean-necked mules,
but once those animals' heels struck the rotten boards that
had fooled them and kept them confined within the
smelly walls, they knew that they were free; they kicked
up their scrawny legs, flipped their unsheared tails, and,
with a snicker that showed all their yellow teeth, they fled.
The family went to live with an aunt until a house
{13}


could be built on Grandfather's place for us, but this
aunt did not want a gloomy-faced girl in her house, who
ran about swearing at roosters and pigs. I was sent to live
with Grandfather, and spent many happy hours there;
also many hours trying to figure out why it was so wrong
to be born a girl, and, as Mama said, to be so much like
my grandfather. I wanted to stay on, and on, but un-
fortunately Grandmother also favored my brother. She
said little to me, and, when she did say a few words, her
conclusion was usually: "I can't see to save my life where
Son and his wife got you, anyhow; you're just like an
ugly parrot among a bunch of canaries."
I was happy the day Sister sent for me to visit her in
Memphis. I was more ladylike then, that is, as ladylike
as a fifteen-year-old could be; but there were still days
during which I told myself: "Your mammy didn't want
you, the world rejects you, so why not end it all? Go
drown yourself. Don't talk; keep quiet; nobody wants to
hear anything you have to say. Draw into your black
shell like the homely turtle." However, Memphis was
heavenlike to me. I scoured the broad streets, looking at
almost all the passers-by to see if they seemed any kinder. I
felt lost, unwanted. I fought with myself; I wasn't satis-
fied, I had to prove that my mother's words were wrong,
untrue. I did not know how I should go about it, but
I knew it had to be done; I wanted to make her sorry,
weep, cringe. I dedicated myself to finding a solution.
I'd get an answer to my problems; I'd get results swiftly,
huge and lasting results.
That was a search that later took me to New York City,
where I walked about and thought—like Jean Labadie,
when he and his followers settled on Bohemia Manor—
that Utopia must be somewhere near. I went to the Statue
of Liberty, about which I had read so much. I looked up
at it and wished that the lady with the beckoning look
could speak to me. I milled around it, trying to see
(14}


Grandfather had died then and my twin brother had
tried to take his place in my heart, but I did not like him
at that time. I felt that he was to blame for all my
troubles. He ran away from home and worked as a water
carrier for a railroad crew to help my sister take care of
me, but my father found him and brought him back
home. However, he sent what money he had earned and
what I had hidden under the house to my sister. Grand-
father had given it to me and told me to keep it until
I needed it very badly, but my brother wanted me to find
a happy home somewhere with someone who would
love me and be like a mother to me. But I was young,
inexperienced, and shy; therefore, the visits to the cousins
in New York and Washington had brought me no home.
I did not stay with any of them although I had no place
to go back to and I could not live with my parents; my
father had adopted a further downward attitude and
quarrelsome way of life. I couldn't stand it, of that my
brother was sure. He found a place for me with a distant
cousin whose wife was a schoolteacher. I went to live
with them to work for my board and a chance to walk to
the County Training School to finish my high-school edu-
cation. Nine miles each day seemed a short distance to
walk at first, but the heavy, continuous farmwork left
me little free time, and I became a sad, overworked young
lady. I was older than most of my classmates by that time,
more shabbily dressed, and perhaps more sorrowful than
anyone in the whole school. Nevertheless, I studied faith-
fully and graduated from high school. That brought me
a little happiness, but, as college was out of the question,
I had little reason to remain on the farm. I left and went
back to my sister's. As the years moped and skidded ahead,
I became a living part of the uneasy impatience, the un-
rest and fear, which the disordered world paraded.
I waited, and looked for the clean sheets of true democ-
racy, but each time I turned back the covers of pretense
{17}


the damp spots seemed to grow bigger and bigger. I was
tossed and driven by the winds of justice, which came
encouragingly up from the half-tolerating Northerners,
but once they met the hot air of the Dixiecrat-infested
South, they quickly shifted directions without even rust-
ling their dirt-concealing garments. I watched, read, and
listened, while the justice for all of which Lincoln spoke
squatted, strained, and spewed in its effort to divert its
own conscience-haunted eyes, and the eyes of others, from
its sectional freedoms. Like the bulbar garlic, it slept and
slumbered with its fleshy portion underneath the earth,
growing more offensively odorous each day.
There were no promising situations; it was a grievous
vision. While America gazed responsible-eyed upon the
borders of foreign lands, tolerance and understanding in
the South were like rolling things before a whirlwind.
Then came the Second World War, and there arose anew
the question of civil rights, and the questioning of fascism,
socialism, communism, and what should rightly have been
termed "falsism." I had no faith in the talk, nor in the
halfhearted actions of my fellowmen, but I had not given
up the idea of trying to to become well educated in order
that I might at least gain a one-man audience to hear my
story, as I saw it.
£18}


return, those who are fortunate enough to return, things
will be in as much of a tangle as ever, and people will be
as full of hellish evils, and as intolerant as ever, if not a
little worse."
"Perhaps you're right," he said. "But are you sure you
should expect normal conditions at a time like this? To
me, that is shallow optimism and this is certainly no time
for such optimism. Tell me, just what are you trying to
say anyway; are you saying that you live in America, a
land of opportunity and advancement for all who choose
to make it their home, and yet sow seeds of hopelessness?
If that's what you're doing, then—what harvest do you ex-
pect to reap?"
I thought about that last sentence before I spoke; I
looked down at my hands and then glanced at his. He had
two hands, a head, arms, ears, fingers, as I had. I looked
at the color of his hands, the shape of his nose, and won-
dered what difference they made between our lives. It
surely hadn't lessened the amount of work required of
both of us, nor had it lessened the offensive odor of the
steaming solution we both detested. I was then tempted to
tell him that the pigmentation of my skin made those
glorious opportunities of which he spoke impossible for
me to enjoy; and that I could not advance, that is, more
than one step in a number of years. And the pigmentation
was created by the same almighty hand that created all
men in his image. Instead, I tried to sum up a portion of
my life during the few minutes I waited for him to finish
talking. I decided that my life as a whole was a cheat, and
the only advancement I could claim was a job that had
been created by the horrors of war and the memory of a
meager country home from which I had escaped before it
was too late, with a few other scant scenes that might be
sorted out and called pleasant.
A bit of this, a bit of that, on the pleasant side, but big
hunks of heartache and what might be rightfully termed
{22}


an ocean of tears! Yes, that was my advancement, and
someone had said that every tub must stand on its own
bottom. I wondered what he or she intended or allowed
for the unfortunate tub which found its bottom pricked
and heaved asunder every time it tried to take a stand.
"Have you," he asked, "ever tried to figure out how to
challenge the world and really become boss of your own
destiny? Of course, it can't be done at once; but it can be
done. Take now, today. No one seems to have much faith
in the future of anything. We're all a little jumpy, mud-
dled, and frightened, but it shouldn't be like that. We
should be looking forward to better days and using our
energy toward bringing them about. We should be full of
faith in the ultimate success of our efforts, whether it is a
family problem, a racial issue, or a national war we are
facing."
"That may be true," I answered, "but I have never felt
that there was very much for me to hope for. When I
think of America I see again a group of frightened slaves
forced aboard a ship and sold into the hands of greedy
masters, who tied and whipped them until they were so
humbled and cowed that the offspring whom they begat
among themselves, and from the loins of their lust-crazed
masters, came into the world beaten before they had a
chance to poke their dusty faces into the crowded life of
humanity. For you it is different, because for you there is
really a harvest to be expected. You say, take the world as
it stands today. Suppose we do. What do we find?
"Let me tell you—deadly bombs on the verge of being
hurled back and forth to destroy the God-given habitation
of the country-sides; men and women living and prosper-
ing under the protecting arms of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence, yet betraying their country at the slightest
nudge of a foreign elbow; men and women being hauled
into court and called fascists, socialists, communists, be-
cause one day some ideologist searched various books on
{23]


semantics and defined someone's attitude or thoughts as
such; Negroes being mobbed collectively by men whose
hearts are full of violence and who justify themselves with
their own demarcated mouths. And all because some pub-
licity-seeking white women flaunt their bare legs, thighs,
and midriffs before their dusty eyes, and as soon as one
turns his head they start screaming, 'Rape! Rape! A nig-
ger did it. Two of them, three of them, six of them; no
it was nine—all nine of them attacked me!' Men and
women of every land elevating themselves like eagles
building nests behind the moon. My people, your people,
acting like fools, walking in danger-shrouded shadows!
That is what we have today in the land of opportunity.
That's why it's so hard to believe in anything!"
"It's a damn shame, I know," he replied, "but let's put
it this way. Suppose you have some much-needed advice to
give the country. Telling me alone, or keeping it pent up
within yourself is not going to solve the problem. You'll
have to do something about it; of course, it won't be an
easy job, but a little trail-blazing would certainly hasten
the procedure, and the difficulties are not so enormous.
"If you feel that there is something wrong in the world,
go and find out what it is; examine it carefully, cease-
lessly, critically; take it apart, then fit it together again;
ponder over it and, if you want, say one of your wasted
prayers over it, but be sure to fight for it, hold to it, and
purge it like hell. Then it won't matter so much what
color your eyes are, or how much weak men look with
growing emotion at the naked parts of tradition-craving
women; nor will the shape of your nose seem like a stamp
of inferiority. But, fellow, you must have guts enough to
purge your ideas until you are sure they are free from all
impurities; then fight with all your hard-earned knowl-
edge to put them across. Somebody will listen, don't fool
yourself; somebody is waiting for the birth of new and
sounder notions."
(24}


dred per cent."
When he had gone, I went back into the restaurant. It
seemed a little incongruous to me that, after all the things
I had heard about Russians, this man should be so pleas-
antly human. (I had heard that he was Russian, although
he neither affirmed nor denied it. But our foreman had
said it was true.) I thought seriously about him for a few
minutes. There was crispness in his voice, and a sugges-
tion of power in the broad, swift hands, but I couldn't
visualize him as coldhearted; in fact, I couldn't place him,
for example, as a teacher, or a lawyer, by any means of
scheming characterization; therefore I gave up the idea.
A half-hour passed without my realizing it. I arose and
left the restaurant. I had arrived at no definite conclusion,
but somehow I knew at last that what had befallen me dur-
ing my life so far was not the end of the world.
I would perhaps be faced with insults and injustices
reaching far into the years, but I would stop seeking
Utopia, or a change to be brought about by magic, and
fight to make the ugliness of the world dissolve into in-
credible beauty.
[26}


CHAPTER
I MAPPED OUT A COURSE FOR MYSELF THAT DAY. I LOOKED
into the faces of the customers as I passed out of the res-
taurant and told myself, "These men are your friends; feel
free, smile, and be content; perhaps they have already ex-
amined the things you do not seem to understand and have
found a new perspective of life."
I decided that I would see if this thing called justice
could be found anywhere in America for all alike; of one
thing I was sure, that the idea certainly hadn't been born
in the South. I decided that I would begin as my Russian
friend had suggested. I would cease the eternal mountain-
out-of-a-molehill complaints, ignore the snarl of destiny,
the unending insults, old burdens, old vexations of every-
day living—stop clasping them like roots holding the rain
for gentle seepage. I would talk to people, ask them in my
meek way what they thought about justice for all as prac-
ticed in America.
I was making a trip to the doctor that evening; I would
ask him about it—just ask him casually how he felt, and if
he thought I was being overemotional, or was it my grow-
ing tendency toward self-distrust that was sapping my
faith? My mind went back to the recent conversation
which had been such a disturbing influence that it led to
my newly planned outlook. I thought about life, my life,
in terms of a road. I wondered if my travels over the roads
of life would be wasted. I thought about my friend and
work partner and wondered if others also found him of an
uncertain quantity. I wondered if the customers I had just
(27}


room. A woman and a man sat on the sofa. I approached
it and started to sit down, and they slid over to the far
end like scared kittens. They snuggled close together and
peered at me, as if afraid I would fade on the sofa and mar
their tinted whiteness. I looked at the woman and tried to
think of a way to assure her that I also was human. I tried
smiling, whereupon her companion turned his head and
looked at me like a bull viewing his grown-up offspring,
and turned away.
Presently the door opened and the doctor asked,
"Who's next?" They popped up and disappeared behind
the quickly closed door. I sat looking out of the window,
trying to determine how I had benefited by leaving the
Klansland. Just then the door opened, and the two people,
accompanied by the doctor's wife, emerged. Mrs. Brunch
was explaining, "I don't see why Doctor insists on keep-
ing his practice in this section. I hate it. All these old Ne-
groes coming in with their filth and silly ideas! If they
tried keeping themselves clean for a change they wouldn't
have to run to the doctor so much, anyway." The couple
nodded in my direction and I jerked my head back toward
the window, pretending not to have heard. I thought of
leaving, but the door opened the next minute and Dr.
Brunch beckoned me to enter. I followed him into his con-
sultation room and sat down, feeling very dejected and
irritable. His wife had entered radiating smiles, and busied
herself by helping him with the examination. I extended
my arm for the customary blood test and thought about
what I had heard. I wondered how many times she had
scolded him about treating Negro patients.
The examination was over and he was saying, "Your
blood deficiency has not improved. You'll have to spend
a couple of weeks in the hospital; at the company's ex-
pense, of course. Lead poison can be very dangerous if
neglected, you know. We'll take you off your feet for a
while and treat you; if that doesn't help we'll give you a
£29]


belles, and two others whom I could not connect with any
race. From the color of their eyes, hair and skin, they
might have been German, Spanish, or a mixture of the
carelessly sown seed of several fair and dark races.
Between pains, my inquisitive brain wondered, but they
never betrayed themselves in any manner; just lay there
still and in misery. Occasionally a frantic jerk on the bell
cord stirred ether-smelling patients out of a fitful slumber
and sent a nurse scurrying to the supply closet for a sheet,
a gown, or a belated bedpan. I lay there, turning my head
in different directions, observing the activities. "This is,"
I thought, "what Grandfather would have called a stink-
ing mess. Look at us, a pathetic collection of pain and
deathly stares." However, most of us sometimes felt like
talking to someone or listening to someone talk to us.
The woman (shall we call her Mary?) just lay on her
back and looked up at the ceiling continuously. Although
I felt as lifeless as one of my mother's ragged dishcloths, I
thought about her each day. I thought surely she must feel
worse than I did, and I wished that I could do or say some-
thing that would give her a little peace of mind—even if it
had to be something like trying to believe the story of
Chicken Little after coming of age—something that she
could put faith in and hold to.
The doctors and nurses said she would never walk
again. I thought about it pityingly and tried asking her
questions in an effort to cheer her up, but she just grunted
and stared. I remember trying to say something about
God's healing power, as mentioned in the Bible, but she
didn't seem at all interested, just moved her puffy arms
from one position to another, and shamelessly performed
like a jug of wine suddenly visited by a strong whiff of air.
I finally decided that she either wished to be left entirely
alone to nurse her bitterness, or she wasn't given to talking
very much, and let it go at that.
After many restless nights and days of feverish pain and
£31]


hypodermics, I felt better; that is, well enough to try to
figure out how to determine which of my conclusions fitted
her manner. As long as I live I shall remember the inci-
dent which gave me the correct answer. It was a Sunday
morning near visiting hour. The hospital staff was scant
that morning, and the two nurses moved hurriedly among
the beds in our ward, jerking the curtains together behind
them, not bothering to see whether they were completely
closed. Relatives and friends were beginning to tiptoe to
the bedsides of hollow-eyed patients; some solemnly con-
soling, some cheerful and smiling before friends or rela-
tives on the progressive road to recovery, or lingering be-
tween the puzzling forks, waiting and uncertain.
The nurse passed around my bed, stopped long enough
to pull my upturned toes, and hurried to brave the task of
creating a more rose-scented atmosphere than the fever-
clad ward then offered. "Relax," she said, as her soft
fingers rolled the yellow, flabby figure over to the other
side of the bed. I lay there watching her, thanking God
that she and others like her had chosen the profession of
nursing. I was not irritable that day. I was in what might
be called a jovial mood. I had not been thinking of the
boldly exhibited racial demarcation of the South, nor of
my pent-up hatred of my mother. I was thinking of home,
and the warm sunshine. And although I wasn't entirely
free from pain, the picture of a scarecrow-guarded water-
melon patch kept rising up before me.
I smiled to myself as I remembered the times we had
stolen into the fields, plucked a melon, and walked back-
wards from the patch, being careful to step precisely in
the tracks we made entering. It was a long time before my
mother figured that simple one out. She had called my
older sister and nervously explained that the tracks led the
culprit into the melon patch but that he seemed to have
vanished after pulling the melon.
I realized I was feeling lively; perhaps I was acquiring
{32}


they might escape the presence of others whom they
thought had no right to enjoy the privileges they enjoyed.
It was too much of a strain on my energy trying to think.
I wished that my brain would cease to function and leave
me in peace. I must be mad, I thought. It was like a mile-
long, algebraic problem—it was swelling out of all pro-
portion. I buried my face in the pillow and wept. I sud-
denly needed to know myself badly, and as thoroughly as
my Russian friend had suggested. The sobs grew in my
breast like a live thing trying to free itself from some
confinement as I fell drowsily into a troubled, comalike
sleep.
(34}


CHAPTER
IT WAS AN UNUSUALLY STICKY LATE SUNDAY AFTERNOON
during the early part of my stay in Buffalo; a jumble of
wails, gurgles, and smells filled the air; and the children
in the tenement were exceedingly noisy and irritable. The
whole scene oppressed me.
I came out of the house and walked slowly along the
littered sidewalk to Main Street. I was painting inner pic-
tures of confusion, chaos, and torment; words kept intrud-
ing between each attempt I made at pleasant thoughts.
When I came to the corner of Lower Main and Perry
streets, I paused to decide which way to take. Glancing in
the direction of the dock, I walked on toward it. As I
walked, my eyes moved over the scenes before me. Typical
waterfront, it was; hungry-looking, former shiphands—
drunk, hairy, ragged, and sweaty; twenty-five-cent-a-night,
bedbug-infested hotels; and a few overrouged women. A
panhandler stepped in front of me and begged for a dime.
As I reached into the pocket of my slacks in search of one,
suddenly a crowd gathered around me. Ducking away
from their poverty-haunted faces, I ran across the street to
the ship-landing and sat down, disgusted beyond words.
As the quiet of the evening fell on the shallow water of
the canal, the hue was little changed. The day was dying
like a wilting plant. A faint rank odor hung in the air.
The Lake Erie wind began to move gently along the
banks. I gazed across the water and singled out a big ship
with the name Greater Detroit on it. There was a man on
deck, a man who appeared to be about fifty. The boat
{351


pulled in to anchor and the stranger made his way to the
dock. His serious glance rested on me.
"Good evening, madam/' he said. "Didn't your expected
party arrive?"
My eyes brushed him with a suspicious glance. "Do you
always go around intruding on the privacy of strangers?"
I retorted.
He laughed amusedly, and sat down beside me. "Nor
do I always sit down beside haughty young ladies who ap-
parently would rather that I be on my way."
"Then why not heed your conscience?" I replied, edg-
ing over to the end of the bench.
He went on talking in his clear, slow, deep voice. "Be-
cause that would be conforming to general behavior," he
returned, "and I'm not a true conformist."
I told him that, although the world was a free one, I
was sure he could find another place to sit, and looked out
across the water. He talked on. I half listened, and pur-
posely made inappropriate answers to his questions, wish-
ing he would leave me alone with my thoughts. Perhaps
that was the reason people became hermits; they wished
to separate themselves from meddling talkers like this.
"You're rather a sad-looking being. What are you
thinking of?" he finally asked.
"My life, which is no business of yours, nor interesting,"
I said brusquely.
He checked a smile. "Tell me about that tragic life; I
like excitement," he teased.
His words struck me and stung like a blow. I felt the
blood rush to my face. I was wretched and desolate, but
what right had he—? I just sat there; feeling as if I had
lifted the latch of a secret door and suddenly encountered
violent greetings at the threshold. I groped for something
to steady my senses. I started to jump up and run. I tried
to summon a reply, but succeeded in capturing none. I
looked at him searchingly and haughtily and, as if
£36}


prompted by an unfamiliar tongue, I dug my fingers into
my palms and began:
"Perhaps I ought to explain to begin with that almost
all the things I've known have been sorrows instead of
pleasures, defeats instead of joys—the whole pattern of my
life seems from the beginning to have been anchored to a
drifting stump. Fear and delusion have been with me as
far back as I can remember, holding me like entangling
sheets after a sweaty, frightening session with a night-
mare. The why of these things is not important. The fact
that they are real and crawling and strike back into my life
like a camouflaged two-tongued scorpion, putting things
I had previously forgotten or refused to acknowledge
daily in my path, barricading and silencing my spirit and
swirling desires, is the frustrating important part of it."
I paused, looking at him and questioning his solemn
attention, but the words rushed on and dropped from my
lips like hastily thrown pebbles. I told him about the old
farm, about dark, lonely hills; hounds of wind close on my
heels on a wintry day; fertile-terraced Alabama fields;
plodding workers, and a wind-leaking farmhouse on a
lonely knoll; about the haughty-spirited South; of North-
ern men and women wearing vague costumes of tolerance
but taking crafty counsel, and covering the blood of the
innocent with their skirts. I didn't find it hard to tell it to
this stranger; I was hot with old familiar bruises and puls-
ing sores, old griefs, old shame, and lurking, stinging
words. Suddenly I felt a desire to weep. I crushed it down
and got to my feet, feeling desolate, yet at the same time
experiencing a queer sensation of relief. I had no more to
say, and so was silent.
After what seemed an eternity of knee-deep silence, he
said, "Well, madam, those were sad experiences, but
you're no longer a teen-age girl and should therefore have
found happiness in at least a part of your daily life."
I looked at him again, this time questioning his con-
£37}


ception of human lives. "I think I ought to be going now,"
I said, and started in the direction of Dandy Place, to the
shabby tenement in the drab Italian-owned section.
"I'll walk with you," he said, taking my arm quickly.
We walked on in silence. At the door he gestured a brief
farewell and the dusk swallowed him up completely.
I went upstairs, remembering for the moment his seem-
ingly rapt attention and silence, but soon shoved him out
of the door of my mind and latched it, or so I thought.
Maybe my ever-searching thoughts would have better
sense than to try to bring him back to a door that had been
shut against him. But during the evening my mind wan-
dered back to him. I did not mean to waste any more
thought on him, but his face had interested me. Now I
thought about him with real attention—his voice had been
calm and—yes, reassuring. He had a good figure, strong
and upright, though middle-aged. He wore a neat con-
servative suit with careful grace. His graying hair grew
back from a slightly frowning forehead. He had an ex-
pressive mouth, and kind but highly penetrating eyes.
Grandfather would have said, "He seems to stand out," I
thought.
The soft breeze swept in from Lake Erie and stirred the
calm of the night. I lay staring out the window, thinking
that before this man came I had been only half-remember-
ing, and then the years were like the lash of a whip in my
face and I felt that I had betrayed myself. The almost
wasted moon gazed down from the clear sky, and moved
slowly on its nightly journey. As it floated on I watched its
course, while thoughts that were partly dreams slipped
through my mind. My mood was now half-lulled and re-
laxed. My eyes followed the moon; there was something
soothing in the glitter of the semicircled object.
The image swelled before me and I found satisfaction
in the subsided growth in my breast. I imagined that the
moon was telling me, "The more desperate the struggle
£38}


toward any end, the more valuable the victory. All scars
are honorable after the war is successfully ended." Trou-
bles and heartaches were then no more; my brooding
mood was past. I realized vaguely that I would drop this
idealized world again and yet again, but this afternoon a
stranger had interested me. His calm words and silences
were kind. The night was meant for just such pleasant
reminiscences, and I had every right to drop practical
thinking and indulge in fantasies. A sudden star darted
across the sky. I watched its mad dash and the moon a
moment longer, then slipped into a peaceful, untroubled
sleep.
r
(39}


"Harvest of what?" I asked. "Insults, prejudice, and
oppression!"
My heart was hot within me as I talked. I cannot re-
member what I said during the time I stood there taking
fares and transfers and issuing them mechanically, before
someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Madam,
what on earth are you murmuring about? I'd like to make
connections with the South Park bus, if you don't mind."
"Sure, mister," I said. "I'm sorry, but we'll make it—"
No, this no job for me, I thought, as I drove hastily down
Delaware Avenue.
{43}


way. Tears flooded my eyes, blinding me; the snow flew
at me, filling my shoes, my eyes; the wind snatched at my
breath and raved on, pushing me roughly. I began to cry
out bitterly.
"Hey," said a masculine voice. "What's wrong? Haven't
you any more sense than to try to go to work today? I sup-
pose that's where you're headed. I'm sure you're not that
desperate."
"You and your meddling tongue can go to hell!" I said,
gasping for breath. "Whoever you are, I'm sure you can
do that for me."
I brushed the snow from my eyes and opened my mouth
to say more, but looked up and saw the steady-eyed
stranger who had walked home with me some months
before. He stared down at me, reached out his hand, and
drew me out of the snow, steering me to the side of the
department store. We looked at each other.
"Haven't you stopped speaking harshly to people?" he
asked. "Well, let's not stand here and freeze. Shall we go
back to your room?"
"Apartment now," I corrected him. We began the trek
back.
"Don't be afraid of me," he said. "I'm a gentleman;
also a minister, if the fact will help any."
Then he started talking about himself, how he had first
run away from home and gone to the city as a youth. "My
name is Evergreen," he ended.
"My name is Taffy," I said as I unlocked the door. "Do
come in, Reverend, and please excuse my uncivil tongue."
Inside, he sat down. I removed my things and placed his
on the hall rack, and kept on talking.
"I came to Buffalo sometime ago to find both a job and
happiness, but, although I found the job, the confusion
of the busy city has netted me little happiness."
"I remember your story of woe quite well, but it won't
seem like that after you are acquainted with the place,"
£45]


he answered pleasantly. "I suppose I shall be snowbound
here a few days," he said, rising to his feet, "but, if you'll
permit me, I assure you I'll beat a path from my hotel to
your door despite the heavy-handed tricks of the sneaking
snow, as well as speak to St. Peter about your hasty
tongue."
"Since you put it that way, the favor is gladly granted,"
I rejoined. The snow continued to fall for three days,
paralyzing wires and vision, stunning everything with its
soft blows. Bill, as I soon began to call him, visited me
often. After about ten days of these visits and talks, I knew
that something different would eventually come into the
relationship between us. Talking to him was satisfying;
I felt completely at ease, comfortable with him. I felt gay
for the first time in a long while; but he lived in Detroit,
and when he left everything seemed empty and more
lonely.
The months wore on. We wrote often and he paid me sev-
eral enjoyable visits. But, although I felt as flushed and
foolish as a schoolgirl at times, I was moody and I felt
that the love and role of wifehood had no place in my
justice-seeking program.
I was sitting up in bed with a book in my hand; the
nurse had partly drawn the curtains so my bedside lamp
would not disturb the other patients. He came slowly and
stood beside the bed. I extended my hand; he took it and
held it gently between his strong ones. Then he began
talking abruptly.
"Taffy," he said, "let's get married. I have listened to
you complain and find excuses for refusing me long
enough. They come to me in my dreams, in my sermons.
Yet they don't make sense. So I've decided to do some-
thing about it. Your moods, your fears, your memories,
and your desired isolation cannot undo what has grown
{.46}


into something beautiful and big for me. And you
shouldn't allow them to take your happiness away. Put
them behind you and give your heart a chance for once in
your life. Let it rule you and your decision. You say you've
never had a home; no one to love you. Well, I'm standing
ready to give you my love forever; and my home will be
your home, our home, yours and mine. We'll share our
sorrows and happiness. We'll live."
I started to speak. He raised his hand and silenced me.
"Go ahead and be moody if you must. Do all the things
you want—go to school if you care to, go as long and as
much as you wish, but these things shouldn't stand in the
way of a happy marriage for us."
I had meant to refuse again, but the sentences got mixed
up and I said simply, "I'll marry you, but first I must tell
you a secret—"
"Another experience of love and loss?" he asked.
"Yes, and of life," I answered.
"Forget it," he said. "We'll be married soon; as soon as
you get out of here. Yes, very soon—! 'For love is strong
as death; many waters cannot quench love, neither can the
floods drown it.' " He jumped to his feet. "But you're
tired," he said, stroking my hand. "And I'm behaving like
a country schoolboy memorizing his first poetry. Get some
sleep, dear. We'll be married soon, very soon!"
£47}


ocean of rainbows.
Somewhere back of a saloon a record-player peeled out
"Open the door, Richard," in a snappy tone. The slush-
slusb of many feet could be heard as they trampled the
dirty snow. My brain seemed to function only in the sense
of slush-slush; "Open the door, Richard," slush-slush;
"Richard, Richard—" I looked about me in a feeble attempt
to find something to draw me out of this mood. My thoughts
went back to my childhood days and I almost wished that
I were back in a pair of faded overalls, heavy with patches,
and that I could run down the street and yell at these peo-
ple: "You fools, snap out of your ruts! Come on, wake
up! Think, damn you, you husky, drunk-eyed weaklings!
No eyes pity you, you travail with ignorance and degrada-
tion!" I turned around and started to go home. I boarded
a passing bus and sat down, still lost in thought.
At the next stop a woman boarded the bus. When she
stepped inside, smoke came gushing from her nostrils and
I was reminded of our bull, long ago, when he came snort-
ing after me angrily. Two pie-shaped circles intersected
two reddish-colored spots on her well-outlined cheeks. She
hoisted herself upon the seat with a powerful sigh, deter-
mined to take advantage of her thirteen-cent fare.
Back of me two men sat talking. I do not know how long
they had been talking, nor what they had said before I
overheard, with a shock: "What are we coming to next?
As if the niggers in the South did not already have too
much liberty, Truman brings up some damn civil-rights
bill. I was born and reared in the South and I say they
should be kept out of places they have no business in. I
remember when they were afraid to sass white folks, but
look what they do now—come here and other places, stay
a little while, sit and woller up against our women, then
go back home, bragging and gloating over their escapades.
I'm for voting Truman out. To hell with 'im!" His com-
panion nodded and opened his mouth to speak, but I gaped
/-
(49}


at them and they stopped talking.
I got off the bus at the next stop and walked toward the
house. When I came to the cross street a little girl and a
woman were standing on the pavement. The woman shook
her finger and scolded: "I bet I'm going to break your durn
neck about fooling off your time with that old messy crayon.
When I get back home I'm going to bust you open. If that's
all you're learning in school, I'll get you some day work
along with me. I didn't bury myself in the house nine
months, wagging with you and toting an ugly belly, for
you to grow up a good-for-nothing. I don't know why I
was fool enough to have you anyway. You're just like your
daddy—not worth a damn."
I stood there a few minutes, as if trying to decide some-
thing, then hurried on. Memories gouged into my senses,
not those memories that make the heart glad and bring
smiles to the lips, but memories of another woman who
said that all her travail was wasted, and of a little girl who
nursed a beautiful dream. I wondered if the child dreamed
of being an artist or a designer, or was she really just
creating a little beauty to satisfy an ambitious spirit and
a love-starved heart?
I went into the house, but images of my mother and
her horrid words kept looming up before me. I took off
my coat, and hurried to the kitchen where I put the coffee
on to perk. This done, I picked up the paper and read
a few sentences about Russia's stand in world politics,
King Cole's unrestrained spending, the Dixiecrats and
their anti-Trumanology, and the Duke of Kent and his
berry-swallowing act, but none of these items appealed
to me. I thrust the paper from me and sat silent a moment.
The headlines glared. "President Truman, the lone
fighter." I read a word or two, then sat thinking of Mr.
Truman.
"All energy wasted," I said aloud. "Mr. President," I
continued, "the bed of Justice is too broad; the color-
{50]


sprinkled patchwork quilts of humanity are too confused
and fickle; the naked, spent, and raped body of Democ-
racy crouched upon it, too weighty for you to move alone.
You need help to tidy it; besides, the moist spots of in-
tolerance, indifference, and ignorance need many soakings
and thorough scrubbings to make them clean. Don't try
it alone; not by yourself, please! Even a faithful daughter's
aid is not enough; you'll be jeered and booed beyond en-
durance; they'll break you. Wait! The public-pleasing
politicians are behind closed doors, fondling and easing
out their rigid tools of cowardice, and shunning facts.
They'll rush out, challenge and overpower you, and leave
you half-clothed before a bold-eyed, tinted-rights country."
I wished that I were facing him. I'd tell him that as
long as Rankinism spread out two netlike, demarcated
feet, shod with only two per cent of the eligible votes,
into the heart of the nation's capital and formulated laws,
his volleys were like whiffs of smoke against a swelling
wind; that the Talmadge sermons of white supremacy
were too palatable to the conscience-hiding soul of the
half-democratic system; that, although his coat might be
the exact cut of Lincoln's, and although he admired the
broad, rugged seams, the criticism-threatening pants of
Johnson's were too long and baggy for hasty progress.
I'd also tell him that his travel southward was wasted,
because the Southernists, the Bilboists, the communists,
the Wallaceites would pour out their deep-seated oppo-
sition upon him, unmindful that their skirts were over
their faces and their secret parts bare and protruding. I
jumped up and tried to staunch my flow of words, but
they rushed on. I started pacing the floor, my blood fer-
menting with the remembrance of insults. I shook my
head and beat my fist against the palm of my hand as
old burdens, old tears, and old rebellions swelled before
me. I sobbed and talked to myself.
"There are many in the North, the East, the West, and
.-.
{51}


perhaps the South who sanction your policy," I said, "but
they are like the glazed-eyed, stiff-fingered, sunken body
of my grandfather that lay powerless and rigid upon his
death-cloaked bed."
I wanted to shake his hand and say to him with the
same strength of utter confidence and courage as that of
my Russian friend and of my doctor, "You are my fellow
countryman." I wondered what he would say. If he had
time to spare, would he listen to what a Negro woman
had to say?
"Someday," I told myself, "I'll ask him about the cramp-
ing pains of freedom as felt in America by my people and
other peoples; someday, somehow, I'll do that, if I have
to stand among the crowd and touch the hem of his coat
to see if the gentle tugging of a true, freedom-seeking
Negro woman could bring forth a tolerant glance from a
true, democratic-spirited leader.
"A Missouri mule, the cartoonist depicted him," I went
on, half-aloud. "Well, the shod hoofs of the determined
mule may kick hard in the light of the freshened morn,
but in the heat of a long, unclouded day the spirit wanes,
and his blows lose their drive.
"Calm yourself, you're acting like a nervous jackass,"
I told myself sternly. "This is America—my home—the
land of the free, the half-free, the brave, and the half-
brave.
"But, the differences!" I argued. "His nose is not judged,
nor his color analyzed, in an effort to test his intelligence
and rightful place in the world. Therefore he can afford
to shout, talk, talk fast, loud, loud as hell; the world does
not reject him, and I imagine his mother thought of this
day when she first held his infant body in her happy arms.
"However," I ended, "I shall not give up the search for
complete rights for all peoples! Though I walk through
the welcome and unwelcome streets of Northern cities,
over the hills of the domineering South, I fear no evil,
£52}


that I should see a doctor. But I decided that I was letting
my emotions get the better of me.
I snatched my glance back and sent it around the library,
and noticed the expressionless librarian move stealthily
toward the table where two students had begun to talk.
I glanced in his direction, half expecting him to pull out
a concealed club or blackjack. "Cut that out," he roared,
in his usual startling manner. I quickly stood my tired
legs on the^floor and left the room. The little incident
reminded me of feeding the hungry pigs on my grand-
father's farm long ago. I recalled the scene clearly. The
pigs knew it was feeding time, and that each would receive
its just share; yet they placed themselves in the trough,
under it, ran around it, again and again, their noisy squeal-
ing filling the air. And Grandfather had said that it took
a lot of yelling to feed those greedy swine; in fact, he
said, "It takes more than a little girl can do, so I'll feed
them and you watch how I go about it."
I came out of the building, walked across Witherell
Street to Woodward Avenue and joined the rushing crowds.
Not wanting to go home, I walked a long time. I went
from place to place, hating everything I saw; noisy crowds,
teeming department stores, clanging streetcars, and crazily
driven buses. The unrest crept on; it was like a steaming
pot of tough troubles; or huge corns, each sinking hardened
roots boldly into the structure of tender, much-used feet.
Once they become infected, although nursed back to a
degree of normal health, they are never entirely free of
the deep-seated, disturbing corns. Why, I wondered, did
the beastly things not sweep past the unfortunate indi-
vidual who must tramp the streets, burdened with bulky
salesman's bags, or tools, in order to earn his daily bread.
I thought about that for a moment, then about a time
now long past when I came, tender feet foremost, into a
turbulent, blossom-scented world. My arrival had brought
forth no joyous celebration, no surprising shower of tiny
{55}


selves out and lap up all the moving things upon their
shores, churning them viciously within their deep damp
walls, and finally spitting them out again lifeless upon
a sand-washed bank.
Instead, I said, "Life is certainly one big mess, doctor.
Illnesses and troubles far outnumber the pleasures, al-
ways."
"Nonsense," he answered, snapping his blue eyes.
"Young lady, if you had fought and dared death to come
by stalking into the lives of groping, courageous men and
women as many times as I have, and then, sometimes, had
stood back with sweaty brow and watched it destroy your
carefully built-up handiwork, you'd appreciate the gift
of life, and think it a very precious possession. I do not
like to encounter cowards," he continued. "I like to see
people want to live on and on; I feel that the story behind
a person who holds on to life until he is sure he must give
up and then bravely departs is the answer to why God
is so merciful to people who do not appreciate the blessed-
ness of living as well as to a tired death-challenging
doctor."
He had finished the examination; he then removed his
rubber gloves, threw them onto the stool, and left the
room. I dressed hastily and went outside. He sat at his
desk. When I sat down, he said, as if sensing the force of
my disturbance and as if he hadn't ceased talking: "It is
evident that something is bothering you. Suppose you sit
there and tell me all about it. Is it the grief of disappoint-
ment over your expected child?" I opened my mouth to
say something, but I remembered that there were things
to be done hastily if I had to go to the hospital, and changed
my mind.
"Oh, well. I guess you can call it that," I said. "I'm
very sorry my attitude irritated you; I am just feeling up-
set and worried these days."
"Forget it, it's quite all right," he replied. As I went
£58]


out the door, my eyes felt like a slowly seeping pool that
had been imprisoned by a mud-chinked dam without a
single trace of an outlet. I hurried down Woodward
Avenue to the bus stop, boarded the bus, and sat down,
only half aware of my surroundings. The darting, familiar
scenes brought me frantically to my feet. I jerked the
cord hastily, but the driver kept on to the next stop. I
jerked the cord again, silently calling him a dirty cracker,
stepped off the bus, and walked angrily toward the house.
{59}


CHAPTER
THE ERECT YOUNG MAN PULLED A PAIR OF LONG, BONY
legs through the doorway, poked them hastily between
the narrow openings of the seats, pushed them into the
half-desk, and dropped down. He dumped his bulky brief-
case onto the opposite seat and leaned back with the air
of a globe-peeping seer imbued with a gushing flame of
utter confidence.
It was a typical winter day; all day long the sharp
river-born wind had briskly fingered Witherell Street and
felt its way down Woodward Avenue, slapping and fan-
ning the flushed-faced crowds, sending them hurriedly on
their ways.
Just outside the window the muffled monotone which
is ever present in the city was speared by the irritable
sputt-sputt of the street workers' machines. Inside the room
a lone, fading ray of the cold-faced sun shone dimly
through the smudged window and fell full upon the
professor's varnish-shedding desk.
I sat uncomfortably in the half-desk, wishing with all
my might that the sun would finish its date with the day-
light, kiss it passionately, and ride away on its bluish
sea, dragging a blanket of twilight and quietness after
it. I glanced around the student-filled room ponderingly,
sighed, and just sat there measuring the students with my
eyes. I noticed that some sat with open books in quiet
study, some talked pleasantly together in a leisurely man-
ner, others dipped their heads up and down lazily as they
yielded to the lusty pull of sleep; while still others drew
£60}


doo-dads on open-faced notebooks, or lived a few minutes
of mindlessness.
I dragged my eyes toward the door and directed them
at the young man sitting next me. "That guy!" I thought.
"Who does he think he is? Bernard Baruch?" I rested my
glance on him and almost wished the shoot of a likable
young man would sprout from that deer-legged character.
My expression, I'm sure, was scornful and haughty; it
shocked me. "So that's how far my dislike for him has
gone," I rebuked myself sternly.
My eyes remained on him. I neither lowered them nor
raised them, but I broke off my spiteful thoughts long
enough to reflect that it seemed a little incongruous that
a lean, culture-seeking young man could be so unpleasant
and act so important! You found him stiffly struggling to
impress you with his superiority and to convey that he
was an expert in the writing field, or maybe he wanted
you to feel that he, as my grandfather had once phrased
it, "belonged to the upper crust."
Just then the young man drew up his legs and straight-
ened his shoulders with a self-righteous toss of his head.
I smiled ironically. Oh, well! Why should I bother my
head about a young man who reminded me of an angry
wasp which once sank poisonous stings into my grand-
father's innocent bald head, just because I had knocked its
nest from the pine-shingled farmhouse roof. My eyes rested
for a second on the young man, my reason assuring me
that his manner was his own affair; yet I could not dispel
the peculiar irritation that possessed me.
I was thinking slowly now how odd it was that I should
become so disturbed about a classmate who evidently did
not want to be at all friendly. I wanted to tell myself
that it was just an uncomfortable day for me and that I
was irritable; instead, I began debating with myself about
the proper way in which a young man should act, and
.■
{61}


the young man who sat erect and attentive now, his long
legs hunched against the desk.
He was sunk in thought. For a fleeting moment I
thought I detected a hint of sadness, a trace of suffering
that had once been felt by a now stubborn, hardened
heart. I searched closely. No, I was mistaken; none of
these things were written on that bony structure which
seemed too lean and hollow, yet in balance with the other
parts of his figure. I glanced around the room, giving
full sway to my writing fever; I searched for something
to create a proper setting, and hastily constructed it in
my mind—Witherell Street, workmen below a dirty win-
dow, a group of college students in Room 407, and a
helpful professor behind a boxlike desk—well, it would
have to do; it was all I saw.
Before I had time to plan further, the bell clanged
loudly, announcing the end of the class period. It jostled
me to awareness of my surroundings, whereupon I recalled
that I hadn't heard a word that had been said during
the entire period. "You're a spiteful witch, Taffy," I re-
proached myself. "One of these days you'll be sorry for
your catlike actions." I sent a final glance around the
room, said good-by to the two girls next me, and left
the room.
I felt amazingly cheerful, as I hurried down the cor-
ridor; in fact, stimulated. The fresh wind stung my face
and hoisted my thin hair above my thought-weary head
like the bushy tail of a frightened, angry mink as I came
out onto the street. Presently I was climbing into the
streetcar, my thoughts glued to the minor episodes of an
emotionally provoking day. The ambling streetcar jour-
neyed homeward, shaking and tossing its victims to and
fro as they clung tiredly to the dangling straps. "One of
these days it'll surely curdle my inner linings if it keeps
this up," I mused humorously. "It would be a fine thing
if it were the other end and my silly brain could be given
(63}


a firm shake." I made a serious attempt to smile, pushed
my way to the door, and left the rocking car.
I was seated behind my desk now, pencil and pad in
hand, yet I sat motionless. I no longer felt the urge to
describe a haughty young man in a dingy classroom; in
fact, I no longer hated him. "This isn't going to work,"
I thought. "I should have left the classroom and written
it out while I had it within my reach." Just then a voice
came through the window, high-pitched and acid. "You're
a fool, hussy. Who do you think you are? Mrs. Ford?
Buying a high-priced shack and a Chevrolet car don't
make you any better than anyone else, you slut." Lucy
Taylor and Mary Smith were in each other's hair about
the children again. "Some day I'll leave this hateful
neighborhood," I snapped, as I reached up and closed
the blinds.
I picked up my pencil and hastily started to write.
Half way through I realized that I could never present
the story to the class. Why, even the professor would
guess that I was being little and haughty. It was the
young man, all right, and at his worst. With sharp dis-
may I regretted that I could never read it to the class,
because it gave me a feeling of pride. I felt that I was
learning the knack of creative writing; in fact, it sounded
good to me.
I was clearing my desk now. I paused, listening to Bill
humming softly as he crossed the porch. I closed my pad
and turned to greet him. He threw his Bible-stuffed brief-
case onto the sofa, and came over to kiss me.
"How's Mrs. Shakespeare tonight?" he inquired pleas-
antly. "What is the tale about; a chicken snake, or St.
Peter?"
"Neither," I replied, "but it's all finished, and it's very
short. You can read it."
He walked around the desk, slid into a chair, and began
reading. I waited, searching his face for an amused or
164}


pleased smile. He was halfway through now.
"So that's how you feel about a classmate," he said,
turning to me. "I'm afraid you're a long way from the
Christian pathway. Is he really that bad? Sounds pretty
mean to me, but then I don't know the young man."
"No, you don't," I replied. "And besides, you're acting
and sounding just as annoying as he does."
"Probably so, probably so, I am a little tired," he said,
as he closed the pad. "I'll read it again tomorrow, if I
may, madam. But drop story-writing tonight, Mrs. Shake-
speare," he continued pleasantly. "Let's go out."
"I think we most certainly should," I snapped. I reached
over and closed my pad, turned out the friendly glow of
the desk lamp, and left the room.
r
£65}


I collected myself, mumbled something about writing the
things you feel, and stumbled to my seat.
The next sound that filtered clearly up to me came from
the rear of the room; someone was saying he didn't agree
with Mr. Truman on his Bill of Rights theory. I said no
more, but the talk droned on. I reminded myself that we
were college adults, trying to prepare ourselves to become
leaders in the world and therefore we should act the part,
but I couldn't get it straightened out. Other things kept
coming before me, things like the picture of a beastly
hawk that swooped down and sank his vicious claws into
my pet chicken; or Rock, the dog, with a well-filled belly,
snatching at a meatless bone to keep Bloomer, the cat,
from licking it. He couldn't eat it, but he could bury it
and keep it from snooping black cats. I looked at my in-
structor who was talking now, calmly explaining the pos-
sibilities of the story and suggesting changes here and
there. I searched his face pleadingly, wondering why he
did not say something to assure me that I hadn't done a
terrible thing. But he acted in his usual helpful manner,
talking about the errors and what might be made high
points, in the same way that he had handled other stories,
on other class days. I decided that he must be sincerely
interested in us and our problems—perhaps he had out-
grown the effects of the unimportant trifles in life that
stung and infected some people. "Well," I told myself,
"you cannot take him apart; he is too deep and broad for
you." I looked away, not listening. I just sat there and told
myself over and over that I would leave this writing busi-
ness alone and settle down to a career of housekeeping. I
thought about it once more and resolved to ask my in-
structor how he felt about segregation. Maybe he would
have something to say.
I turned my head and looked out the window. Across
Witherell Street, the sunlight seemed cold and unfriendly.
I felt chilly; fragments of thoughts, regrets, and heartaches
■
(68}


went bolting through my head. I tried to extend my imag-
ination past the park, the stores, the theaters, the apart-
ment buildings, and the streets, to a future which my class-
mate had the leading role in creating, but I could not make
it balance.
I looked back at him and suddenly I wanted to yell at
him, to shout: "You simple fool! You insulting fool! Why
are you sitting here between these confining walls if you
have no better solution to offer a fellow American than
to pack up and go to Africa, where white men are greedily
wresting the heritage of wild black men lustingly from
under their bare, dusty feet, like a pack of hungry wolves
in a pasture of fattening sheep?"
I wanted to tell him that "this is America, the home of
no particular race, but of many peoples from various
lands, all in search of the same ideal—freedom; a land of
opportunities and advancement, with plenty for all, a
home for me, or him, as much for me as for him, as much
for all of us as for any of us. Why should I flee from the
land of the free and the brave?" But I said nothing. The
sound of shuffling feet in the outside corridor grew louder.
I got up and surveyed the room—why, this was a glorious
world! Who said I wasn't an American? I smiled, said
good-by to my classmates and left the room.
r
£69}


prejudiced; favoring full human rights for Negroes, yet
in their opinions, thinking of them as "niggers."
I realized that I liked this man, not only as my instruc-
tor, but because his very manner was that of the true type
of American citizen—sincere, sagacious, and sanguine. I
rang for the elevator; presently I found myself outside. A
warm moist wind came leisurely down from the Detroit
River, giving the air a tinge of spring. There was no hint
of winter in its breath. As I stood there on the street, wait-
ing for an empty taxicab to pass, I was suddenly reminded
of the day long ago when Grandfather died. In life he
had been so full of vigor, so tempered with mellow wis-
dom. Yes, in his battle of life he had seemed so wonder-
fully energetic, so powerfully earnest, and so well fortified
against even the heavy-handedness of death. But that day
he lay there calm and collected, without even a tiny hint
of his former vitality.
I stood there gazing pop-eyed into his wrinkled face
until he turned his head and gave up forever his realistic
role in the drama of human experience and human emo-
tions. My tender years had not prepared me for that tre-
mendous ordeal. I was horrified and helpless. I cried pite-
ously for my uncle to tell me that he was not really dead,
but instead he took me to the kitchen and left me to soothe
my broken heart after my own fashion. I tore at the wall,
beating against it until my young blood dotted the pine
boards; I kicked it, I tried to cry but I could not. I felt as
if I were being pushed through the round, pawlike rollers
of Grandfather's syrup mill. As the salty tears rolled down
my tender, timid face, I swore that I would surely make
God pay for what he had done to me.
After some time had passed I became outwardly quiet,
but felt sick, very sick—sick unto my little soul. I hated
everyone; I went back into the unfriendly room, pulled
back the sheet and looked at him intently. I thought about
his pet phrase, "a stinking mess," which he had always
{71}


Streets a long time. I was sick—this return to school after
my recent illness was almost too much for me.
I hailed a cab, got in, gave the driver my address, and
sat back against the seat wearily. The cab driver was talk-
ing. I did not know how or when he started, or hardly when
he stopped, but he was saying something about pumpkin
papers, and what should be done to those hideous Rus-
sians. All at once I was reminded of my former friend in
Depew in the defense plant, and the hurry and bustle of
the war days. He was Russian, yet he had seemed able to
see the cruel side of life so clearly; he could hardly have
been called hideous, or murderous.
I wondered how many people of his race were really
hideous, or how many were like myself, groping bewild-
eredly in a confused world, without any guide by which
they could resolve the problems of life, or means of bal-
ancing good with bad; without even a thread of light by
which to interpret such words as freedom, human rights,
honor, or democracy. It was like an incorrect account,
with a padded statement of profit and loss and a tricked-
up balance sheet; and although an inventory had been
taken at the beginning, many decades before, among the
men who worked and fought, suffered and died for true
democracy, there were no surpluses, and no equalized divi-
dends, yet the account had been neatly, double-line ruled,
and filed for future reference.
Suddenly I hated myself, my classmates, and my flimsy
story. I'd not suffer this uproar of emotions. I'd burn it
in the furnace. I hated my thoughts, and the beastly urge
that kept tugging at my brain, like a half-starved hog
under an acorn tree. Why, I'd been a fool sitting up
through the cold wintry nights writing sentence after
sentence, as flushed and heated as an opossum hunter's
torch which spat out black, hot-pitch droplets.
I felt crazily insecure; this time the feeling was like the
"pummings" of carefully squeezed sugar cane. But, try as
{73}


I might, I could not stop this feeling of hate from grow-
ing within me. Most of all, I hated the balmy Southern
hills, the black cloddy soil, the hot sooty-breathed, plant-
laden cities, the rugged, muddy, sandy roads, the weak
human beings—black men, white men, women and chil-
dren—both races for what they were; one standing nerv-
ously in the shoes of a man with a million ants in his
breeches, or the already condemned man; the other like
an insecure judge, who keeps the respect of his criminal-
infested courtroom by pounding his gavel and angrily
threatening to cite them all for contempt. I hated and
loved Detroit in a single thought. It was a wonderful
place to live; I found joy and contentment here. Yet there
was no such thing as a taint-free atmosphere gushing from
its motor-producing, human-crammed veins. I wished that
I could copy nature and sprout a thick protecting verdure
to cover the scars and gashes that lay open in my deeply
emotional breast.
But hadn't my doctor said that there were no quick
cures for smelly cancers once they had a firm hold on the
victims? He had also said that cancers were the result
of one's own cells going wrong, together with the laxity
of an unobservant, careless doctor who wanted only to
maintain his powerful position in a community, plus the
ignorance of the victim. But this problem concerned more
than my emotions. It was something about people, people
who lived together, fought together, people who tradi-
tionally set up standards for other nations across the eager
seas to live by, and how much they were part of something
else. It sounded something like the Philistines with the
Ark of God in their midst, and hemorrhoids in their sec-
ret parts.
I tried to remember whether or not it had mattered to
me if, when I saw a snake, it was a rattlesnake, a thunder-
snake, or a long, shiny, black snake—well, they all repre-
sented snake to me, and not humans. I went back to com-
[74]


paring life with the cancerous tissue, and I remembered
that the doctor had said that one crooked cell often de-
stroyed the whole cell body of a once robust individual.
This then must be the secret of conquering life philosoph-
ically—to probe and search out the diseased areas of the
world while they were only tiny affected spots, then to
fight with all the modern methods of efficient, effective,
earnest ideas and ideals to halt their flaunting progress. It
was too much like trying to thresh peas by hand, a chore
I did as a little girl; therefore I gave up. I had tried hard
to follow Grandfather's instructions; to hold the pans
high, one above the other, and gradually pour the peas
from one to the other, remembering always to follow the
path of the elusive wind, but it seemed either to blow just
beyond me, or it was weak and hushed, or it just rushed
madly in no particular direction and passed over me, leav-
ing me with as much chaff as I had peas. When I cried and
gave up the task in despair, Grandfather had said, "Well,
you just keep growing. You'll be able to clean those nasty
old peas some day."
I opened the door of my house and walked in; the room
was warm and cozy, the chair felt heavenly. Who cared
about pea threshings, crawly snakes, word-fixing, or pain-
ful hemorrhoids in the secret parts of men? My! how I
wished I could write a book! It would be a honey—inter-
mixtures of Southern sun, greedy hogs, and the prosperous
city of Detroit. I got to my feet and straightened my
shoulders. I must get over this sickness and I must do it
in a hurry!
r
{75}


CHAPTER
12
I AWOKE WITH A JOLT OUT OF A FITFUL SLEEP. I HAD NOT
slept well. Too many dreams had haunted my subconscious
mind; too many scenes had reappeared, revealing the
shabby, dejected past. The sun, warm and glowing, glared
into my disorderly bedroom; the bold rays told me that I
had overslept, but I dressed listlessly. What need was
there to hurry? It was just another day; another day of
looking backward, without hope, before it ended, of being
able to look forward to the future. I felt sodden and
beaten clear through; it seemed that until now I had
lived all my years in the past, my thoughts rarely visiting
the present or promising to spend any definite portion of
my time thinking farther than the next moment. "Is this
what people call going nuts?" I asked myself. I thought
about that for a moment, and then began a vigorous at-
tack on my housework in an attempt to escape the mad
spell of remembering.
But I kept remembering times past, and apparently for
no reason at all; besides I saw no conclusions, no spe-
cial blessings to claim. I saw those days in disheartening
clarity—so many things crept up and blinded me; the few
joys, and the many, many sorrows; faces; a child grieving
for a dead grandfather; a poor family on a hilly Alabama
farm performing burdensome tasks; four little boys and a
degenerate father satisfying their lusts with the hairy
backs of shoats and mares; my workworn, nerve-racked
mother in a star-lighted farmhouse and a yelling, stub-
born-born infant. It was almost as if some of the old days
[76]


were back, the old scenes and old wishes that made the
world I used to know.
As I recalled things and times, I felt as if the years had
pushed me into a special path and left me to dwell alone
among my sorrows. "Surely I am going mad," I thought,
as months of sad experiences stretched into years—two,
three, four, ten, twenty, thirty years — creeks, wagons,
mules and gullies kept coming after me. "They call this
a holiday," I mused to myself sarcastically, "a time for
quiet enjoyment, of remembering man's blessing and
God's greatest gifts to a turbulent world. It is not strange,"
I thought, "that contemplation on the life of Christ should
also bring other visions, but why can't I take joy in the
fact that he died for one and all, regardless of religion,
creed or color?" I looked down at the hands in my lap as
I thought about that, and suddenly began to weep with
a desperate grief.
I couldn't shake the picture from me—it was a sad,
twisted confused trail that my tender mind had started
treading years ago, and traveled for a long, long time—
until even the balmy Southern winds or a white face were
hateful things to me. I sat up and wiped my eyes, and
searched my brain in an attempt to find a logical reason
why an intelligent college woman should sit on a sofa in
a comfortable living room and behave like a lost calf in
a lonely pasture.
I again questioned my judgment of humanity. I decided
that I was boiling in my own oil. "Maybe I am sick," I
told myself; "maybe some small portion of my brain has
lost control. I am not in the South any more; I am in
Michigan living a comfortable, interesting life; I am en-
gaged in schoolwork, civic work, and above all I am mak-
ing progress toward my cherished dream of becoming a
novelist, or so my teachers seem to think." I felt like an
old woman starved for friendship. I would call my doctor
and ask him to see me; maybe I was overnervous and an
£77}


that should have been explained during my early life; that
is, the procedure of it, if not the methods by which it
could be solved. But I continued explaining, although
there seemed no need of it now.
"It really begins the day I was born; the day my tired
mother decided that I should not have been born to bring
her added work and misery."
Then I was telling him all about it without reserve; the
old home place; my grandfather; my uncorrected emo-
tional habits; my dislikes; concerts in a country school
room; a ragged girl seated on an unpainted old wagon
drawn by two sweaty mules; a shabby farmhouse. Of all I
said I cannot give account, but when I drew my thoughts
back from a desolate past I noticed that I felt relieved. Of
course, I had talked to others, but no one had heard me
out so completely and thoroughly before. I no longer felt
as if I were going mad, or was wholly rejected because of
my color. I had been insulted many times, yes, and per-
haps would be insulted many times more, but it wasn't the
end of life, nor had everyone insulted me.
I opened my mouth to apologize for my childish be-
havior, but he motioned to me to keep quiet and just sat
there in the uneasy stillness, looking out the window.
After what seemed like a long time, he spoke.
"Now, Mrs. Evergreen, I suppose you know the old
adage about it always being the sick animal that seeks iso-
lation. Well, isolation can be helpful, yet in many cases it
can be considered as a deadly disease, or maybe I should
say it is sometimes desired because of a disease, which may
or may not be contagious. It is necessary sometimes for
self-analysis, and in that sense it is helpful, but it should
never be cherished or lived in too long, because one can-
not live permanently in a disturbed state of mind and
keep healthy.
"It is a wonderful thing to be able to remember things
so vividly, to keep track of man's injustice to his fellow-
£80}


man. But the mere recollection of past events is not what
counts; it is the courage, common sense, and tolerance
gained through experience that matters, and finally the
strong faith in the real purpose of life. You've had a rug-
ged life, far too rugged, but the one important thing you
should have been able to gain from your open view is
utter confidence.
"Try to recall a day long ago when a frightened group
of black-skinned men and women were forced aboard a
ship, protesting and cowering. You were not there, but
it happened. You should see them laboring in the South-
ern fields and crying out the injustices they felt; but you
should also recall a day that a country with a heart laid
down a principle that to me is almost sacred: 'All men are
created equal.' In the chaos of these eruptive times there
is not much sense in trying to build up pretty imaginary
systems, I know, but sorrow and tears will not settle the
problems created by men who suppress and disregard the
rights of other men, or by prejudiced, narrow minds; such
problems must be faced nakedly, squarely, and frankly.
I cannot tell you that you have no problem, but I can tell
you that you are not alone in facing it. I am sorry you feel
so close to it, because it flourished even in Greece, where
the idea of democracy was born."
I looked down at my watch, and immediately stood up.
"I can't take up your time like this," I said.
"But you haven't had your examination," he reminded.
"If you could spare another fifteen minutes—"
"Not another minute today," I said. "Anyway, I feel
better. However, I should like to come back for a checkup
next week if I may."
"Of course, of course," he said. He walked with me to
the door and offered me his hand. "It was good of you to
listen," he said. "You'll come back for that checkup,
won't you?"
I nodded. "Next Tuesday."
{81}


i
His hand pressed mine and both his voice and eyes
seemed to soften a little as he said, "I didn't mean to sound
preachy, but it helps sometimes to be reminded that life
wouldn't be life without problems, and the fact that we
somehow survive them. I'm sure unreasonable prejudices
will be overcome some day if given time."
"I suppose so," I said, feeling instinctively that he was
remembering something in his own life; that he was re-
membering some tragic thing long past. As I made my
way toward the elevator and home, I wondered what it
had been.
{82]


CHAPTER
13
WHEN I ARRIVED HOME I SAT DOWN AND LET THE HOUSE-
work go. A half hour passed without my realizing it. For
me time stood still, and I told myself that it would con-
tinue to stand still until I arrived at some notion of how
I could stop this self-probing. Talking to the doctor had
pressed the emotion down, but I felt it coming back now
as an aching emptiness. Yet he would never know what
he had done for me, I thought; he had directed my atten-
tion to something else, a different angle of the entire situ-
ation, in the South and elsewhere, and now, coming back
to it, I was able to see that the incidents which I had faced
were being faced by countless numbers of men of differ-
ent races everywhere. It was something to which you must
adjust yourself, with a continuous hope for it to end as
quickly as possible.
This was definitely the end of a part of my life, I de-
cided. During the last few months I had become too de-
spondent, too moody, thinking of life only in terms of its
sourness, of immeasurable prejudices, without viewing the
situation judiciously. My mind had been kept busy con-
juring up images, and my emotions had worked overtime
reacting to them.
I told myself that in order to live a full and happy life
one shouldn't allow the rudeness of the existing practices
of men to weigh so heavily upon his mind that it dimmed
his thought and glutted his vision with rage, scorn, and
sizzling evaluations. This word democracy I had been
lamenting over came to America abounding in associa-
(83}


tions which were created in Greece in days past, and ever
since those days men had suffered, fought, and died for
what it stood for. It had flourished and taken permanent
root in America. There were exceptions, of course, but
they were gradually being replaced by fairer practices in
many communities of the land.
There were no cut-and-dried methods of meeting ade-
quately every situation, but the basic solution remained
the same in all ages—freedom and equality in the proper
sense of the words. I decided that I would concentrate on
that end as a practical guide to my future conduct. I would
quench the fire I had kindled in my veins and which had
caused me so much unhappiness and made me sick almost
of life. I thought about the rising tide of communism and
wondered if this was the way it had planted its bold and
trenchant purposes into the core of weak hearts, and dug
deep, deeper, and deeper still, until it took hold of the
susceptible individual like an acute, feverish disease. And
the poor, half-hearted citizen found himself advocating
the forceful overthrow of tried and trusted principles.
I continued wondering about life, about people, about
laws, rules, order and disorder. These were the elements
which, when totaled, made life worthless or worth while,
and finally led to sensible living. I felt as if the waters of
reality were closing in around me and those of my child-
hood world were subsiding to their proper level. I at-
tempted to enumerate the reasons why I should be proud
to be an American. I saw again my old, sweaty, frightened,
suffering forefathers as they moaned, groaned, and died to
make a secure place for me. I remembered that, although
colored, they alone did not die. A clear-cut picture of the
Civil War flashed up before me. I decided that one of the
major reasons it came to pass was that someone like my-
self, perhaps, had become too eager for quick results and
had thereby gotten only partial results.
The dreadful event took time, effort, and lives as its toll.
£84}


How much better it would have been had it taken only
time and effort! Regardless of the consequences, long after
the dismal days of slavery, Southerners still had the wrong
slant on life. They still failed to realize that people were
people regardless of the color of their skin, or the shape
of their noses.
The April sunlight slanted through the window,
touched the maple desk, and blinked at me. I looked
about me for something to sustain my new resolutions.
The lifeless portraits on the wall looked out courageously
into their confining space. An ashtray with the picture of
our nation's Capitol embossed on it caught my attention
and stirred my thoughts vigorously. I saw every event of
my life distinctly. I closed my eyes and relaxed as the
scenes again rose before me. I was surprised to see the
old homestead stand out like a strong, solid root from
which sprang tender oaks prepared to weather many fierce
storms. The lone old house stood on a Southern hill, lovely
in its quaint setting. I saw the wooded, flower-scented hill-
sides, the warm Southern sun; whippoorwills calling out
in the yellow moonlight, blackbirds singing over the head
of a small girl with tear-swollen eyes and heavy heart,
dressed in ragged overalls. My mother's face was there
now, and I could see her, tired, worn, confused, and dis-
couraged, as she struggled to rear nine hungry children
on a rocky hillside. My! what a harrowing experience
those bleak times must have been to her as she fought the
engulfing sordidness and threatening poverty!
I saw my mathematically minded father in his old age—
his days almost past and gone. I smiled as I remembered
how he had enjoyed solving problems in fractions—none
had stunted him. I now saw how carelessly he had wasted
his life, and lost my bearings. I became engrossed in an-
guished thought as I slipped into a clearing on the border
of a groundless land where all things came to me as one
hears sounds from a long way off. From somewhere in the
{85}


thick silence my grandfather's voice came to me, sympa-
thetic and unearthly.
It came through the window like a tinkle of tiny rhyth-
mical chains. I felt the blood run swift through my veins.
I sat still; the silence poised itself on one leg and continued
its action like the mood of the imperfect tense. His voice
drawled on at the pace of a heavily laden hearse; I lis-
tened attentively as it floated up from some place vague and
shadowy, like a land of perpetual sleep.
"The world almost whipped you," he said. "And it won
its rounds while you stood viewing life with a dull eye.
As you stumbled along the rugged path of life there in
your world, you opened your ears only to the rude up-
heavals and, although you picked yourself up, you har-
bored bitter thoughts so long that no tears could soothe
them. You should make a firm decision, today, now; vices
are inherent in human nature. Decide today that you will
stop living through seasons of fear and expurgation."
I jerked my head around, half expecting to see his face.
I opened my mouth to reply, whereupon soundless words
tore loose from my tongue like so many wild boars.
"What on earth are you talking about? What are you
trying to say?" I gasped. "That those practices are to be
expected because of the erring nature of mankind, and
therefore should be soft-pedaled? A decision! Suppose I
ask you for one. What will your answer be? You who de-
livered all your wonderful, self-constructed theories. You
who said that the bold, intruding currents could not budge
the prolific fruit of the seeds of good work planted in
America in its infancy; yet you saw them uprooted and
left to wither and rot in the wild heat of Southern democ-
racy.
"Would you tell me that although slavery was re-
nounced thirty-three years before Lincoln's day, the law
that publicly declared it was constructed like the laws
that brought the corporation into existence, just as invis-
£86}


ible and intangible? Let me tell you the true reason why
I can't make a definite, final decision, or call it resolution
if you wish—it is that as long as my country and what was
your country tolerate men who burn fiery crosses before
the tumble-down shacks of the South, as long as men and
women are forced to speak up like a child using his pret-
tiest manners and answer 'yessif' a°d 'yessam' to every
man, woman, and half-grown child of the South, whether
he or she is middle class or upper class, half-breed, whole
breed, or low class; as long as lines of dark-skinned men
and women must queue up like herded, leprosy-infected
victims to spend their hard-earned money in business
places; as long as men excuse the practices of the evil
Southland by saying that progress is being made and good
will eventually win out; as long as men skirt the injus-
tices, as the document-bearing Freedom Train skirted
some Southern cities; as long as those few men and women
living in the South sit back on their weak, extenuating
heels and witness the low deeds and practices of their fel-
lowmen; as long as men fail to fill their hearts with God-
fearing fealty and brotherly love, and go among the dis-
graceful areas and talk about the prevailing evils of the
land—the mothers of Wesley, Lincoln, Wilberforce,
Booker T. Washington, my mother, and others, wasted
their sweaty bloody travail!
"Don't ask me in your dead voice how to begin—as my
friend from the depths of the Iron Curtain suggested. We
must talk to people, talk loud but pleadingly, each saying
to his fellowman, 'Our country was founded upon the
sturdy rocks of a welcoming freedom, the freedom of
which Lincoln spoke, which Christ preached. Let us put
aside these lofty, sophistical ideas and live wisely, reli-
giously, and tolerantly.' Ask each racially prejudiced per-
son to search himself and try to find the rotten seed in the
seat of his Hitler-slanted heart. Ask him why he sent his
sons and daughters into a bomb-drenched war to fight for
{87}


crowd, my eyes beheld men and women running from
their doorways like rats from damp holes. I gaped at
them as they came nearer. I made one more attempt to halt
their ignorant war-march. "My God!" I yelled. "Don't
you know that this is not Alabama, Georgia, or Missis-
sippi? Please go home. Break up this silly mess and let's
not parade our lack of understanding and"—the world
almost choked me—"prejudice! In Heaven's name!"
I thought, as I ran from the porch, "The horrible sit-
uation balances! Who am I to lament while those silly
Judases who are my people display their uncontrolled
thinking?"
At that moment I painfully understood what Grand-
father had meant about "six in one hand and half a dozen
in the other." I slammed the door, covered my face with
my hands, fell to my knees, and cried out in silent agony
to God. After what seemed like a century had passed, I
realized that I had been exaggerating the pathos of one
side of the picture, while the other side remained shadowy
in the background. I had made myself a biased mouth-
piece in my passionate endeavors to remedy the evils of
the world, and as soon as the sympathetic veil had been
fiercely torn away, I saw the hollowness of my wailing. I
saw it plainly in its incompleteness.
I felt as if I had just awakened from a deep sleep in
which nightmares had stolen my senses; yet my spirit rose
swiftly and calmly. I felt a surge of pride; not just a feel-
ing of well-being, but something far deeper. A smile
broke through to my lips as my cleared brain felt a surge
of fresh understanding and tolerance. Outside, the night
wind stirred in the lone tree, rustling the traffic sign hang-
ing from a leafless branch with its mild whisper.
I walked briskly into my study, leafed through my files
for my manuscript, and, turning to the last page, wrote:
NO TRAVAIL WASTED. Suddenly I felt a deeper calm-
ness and satisfaction, not as if it were merely the night
(89}


before Easter, nor as if the night had been born just for
me, but like someone who had suddenly ended a life of
searching and adventure and had arrived safely home.
The End.
{90}