Flight, page 17
“Oh, that’s all right,” he assured her. “We doctors are used to waiting for our money. And the Mannings have told me about you, I’m not worried. Pay me when you can—no, I’ll tell you what. Operations like the one I did on your baby are mighty rare. I’ve been practising medicine for fourteen years now and it’s the first one I’ve ever seen outside of a clinic. You pay the hospital bills and I’ll just dismiss the bill. The case is so remarkable a one that I’ll gladly let the fee go—
She protested vigorously against his proposal. She was grateful, so grateful the tears stood in her eyes. But, following so closely upon her confession of poverty, it smacked too much of charity, and she would not, she could not permit that.
“Well, have it your own way,” he finally agreed. “But don’t hurry.”
She was touched by his kindness. He hurried away. When he was gone a dozen phrases of thanks came to her mind, vexing her that she had been too stunned by his generosity to think of them before he had gone …
As if Fate felt ashamed of the blows it had dealt her, there came to Mimi several profitable jobs during the four weeks Jean was in the hospital. One of these lasted more than a week, the making of the trousseau of a girl who belonged to one of the old Philadelphia coloured families. She never knew that she had been recommended by Dr. Newton, but the money she earned enabled her to pay not only the hospital bill but to settle a part of the debt she owed Mrs. Williams. Now that Jean was out of danger and well on the road to recovery, Mimi worked with a song in her heart and happiness in the belief that her darkest days were past. And when he was returned from the hospital she bought little things for his amusement, toys, games, dainty bits of the foods he was allowed to eat. She was envious of everything which separated her from him even for a short time, she begrudged the hours they spent in sleep, for they robbed her, she felt, of so many moments of conscious knowledge of and contact with him.
The acuteness of her desire to be with Jean was rooted not alone in the to her more than miraculous escape he had had. It was, too, in the decision she had reached through that illness and the inevitability of execution of that decision pained her beyond measure. Mimi had faced during her dark hours when Jean’s life hung in the balance the practical situation before her. Ruthlessly she had cut away all the entangling meshes created by her love for Jean and had considered as dispassionately as she could the question as to what course would be for his greatest good. She found she could not approach the Hunters or her stepmother and she would rather have died herself than to have surrendered Jean to either of them. Those contingencies therefore were definitely out of the question.
So too was the possibility of her attempting to carry on the struggle she had now been making for more than a year. If only I could get some money saved and secure a steady income, perhaps start a small dressmaking establishment of my own, I could see my way clear. But these possibilities seemed to her much more remote than the probability of her jumping safely to the moon. Another thing was certain. There was little chance of her making any great progress in Philadelphia. New York to her seemed the only field in which any marked advance could be made, but here again there were the same problems if not greater ones.
Mimi found a certain grim amusement in remembering the tenuous plans she had so confidently builded and which now had tumbled about her. Realizing her own weakness for the first time, comprehending that she could not make the fight alone, she wrote tentatively of her distress to her Aunt Sophie. The second day after her letter was posted there came an answer—a warmingly cordial letter—scolding Mimi because she had not called upon her aunt for aid long before, offering Mimi whatever aid she needed. From the envelope there fell a cheque of generous size. And the letter ended:
“Alone you will have little trouble, especially if you come to New York. But with the baby it will be harder—you would have to be away all day—and people, even here, do talk. I know just how you feel about it, but why don’t you put Jean in a home until you can get on your feet? I don’t urge this—I merely suggest it. Do what you think is wisest and best.”
Finally a decision had been made, the only possible way out, and she wept many bitter tears before she would let herself even consider this solution. Always, however, she had come back to it—the suggestion of Aunt Sophie—the one stable thing in a sea of uncertainties. She would put Jean in a children’s home, work as hard as mortal could toil, save her money until she had accumulated enough to assure herself and him freedom from their more immediate wants, and then get him again when she had gained her objective.
And here she was confronted with another problem. She was unwilling to put him in a Negro orphanage, for their all too-slender resources made it problematical if he would receive the care and attention he needed. She would rather struggle along in her present hopeless way than have him neglected. Nor would she want to place him in a white orphanage as a Negro child—she knew the insults and slights he would be forced to suffer. The only recourse left to her and the one she decided upon was to place him in a Catholic orphanage and say nothing about his Negro blood. This had been done, she knew, even with children not nearly so fair as Jean. His French name would be an additional safeguard to him and further assurance he would be given all the advantages available.
She had had some qualms of conscience about this procedure. She had wondered if she were doing the right thing, if she were not placing Jean at such a disadvantage in the event his coloured blood were discovered that it would be greater than if his race were told of at the beginning. But she soon dismissed these fears from her mind. In the first place, it would be only for a short time, and in the second, he had so little coloured blood there was really little question that could be raised. Overshadowing both of these was the mood of desperation in which her ill fortune had forced her. Just as in the hours of that night when Jean was lying at the hospital she had been willing to go to any length to save him, so now she was willing to take any step, legal or illegal, to secure for him as much security and comfort as was possible. It was the relentless, the ruthless, the uncompromising logic of a mother fighting for its own, and obstacles of whatever size were bowled over in eagerness to gain that end …
She had decided on a home in Baltimore, for she felt that there where so many Catholics lived there would be greater advantages for the unfortunate children of that faith. The bleak November day when she carried Jean there was no more cold and dreary than Mimi’s heart. Petit Jean seemed to feel the impending separation. He clung to Mimi, showering little affections upon her that tore her heart with pain. Her eyes filled with tears, she rushed from the place as though it were plague-stricken to take the train to New York. She had written her Aunt Sophie telling her plans and she had received a letter, short, but warm and sincere. Her aunt had approved her plans and urged her to come to New York and live with her while she was working out a solution to her problems. Mimi had accepted gratefully, glad of the haven to which she could go.
Chapter XV
Just as she had had the feeling on leaving Atlanta that she had closed the pages of a volume in the story of her life, so now did Mimi sense intuitively that the second book was being shut, never to be opened again. Through the fading light of a dreary, cold day the train sped across the desolate Jersey meadows. Just dipping below the horizon, a frigid sun gave a sickly brilliance but no warmth. Mimi shivered. The dreariness of the landscape was relieved only by the lank chimneys of factories belching turgescent billows of smoke. From these dingy buildings poured streams of men as dingy as the factories from which they were emerging. Dinner pails in hand, they plodded wearily across the waste places in knots of twos and threes, home to slatternly, waspish wives.
Into the murky darkness of Newark the train rumbled, paused momentarily, and then went its way into the gathering darkness. Lights began to twinkle in the dusty windows of the factories and the nondescript homes along the tracks. Into Manhattan Transfer and out again, past a fertilizer factory that filled the car with the fetid odours of offal, and the train plunged into the roaring, alarming bowels of the earth beneath the Hudson River. Mimi knew of the tunnel and was prepared for it but the shock coming so suddenly following the dismal screeching of the whistle blowing for the tunnel frightened her. Midway where there is an opening going up from the tunnel to the air above she felt relieved that the ordeal was over but again the train rushed on into darkness after the flash of grey. Her ears pounded. She pressed the heels of her hands against them to relieve the roaring in them. She was glad when at last the electric engine pulled its way into the maze of winding tracks on the New York side …
Bewildered by the hugeness of the Pennsylvania Station, made timid by the rushing throngs all seemingly with some definite destination the reaching of which in the shortest possible time was apparently of vast importance, Mimi with protest yielded her shabby bag to the porter and followed him up the narrow stairs. She peered upwards at the faces which scanned the incoming passengers through iron fences which made her think of prisoners or animals eager to escape. She was gripped with fear—no Aunt Sophie was to be seen, but that fear was changed to happiness when she was inundated with affectionate greeting by her aunt.
“You poor dear, I ought to be angry with you for not coming to me sooner, but I’m so glad to see you I just can’t be;” her aunt welcomed her.
Threading her way deftly through the crowd, she led Mimi, her eyes distended at the bewildering massiveness of the building, down into the earth again. Ashamed of her greenness, Mimi shrank from the roaring monster that leapt upon them from the yawning blackness of a cavern made blacker by dim lights but faintly discernible in the cavern. With a horrible grinding of brakes the creature came to a stop and Mimi found herself shoved into it. Station after station they passed and once more they came to the street, this time in a setting more familiar to her, yet strange, and her bewilderment was decreased but little.
For here was a new life, teeming, exotic, individual. Hurrying along the streets, coming out of restaurants, standing in doorways and on street corners were groups of Negroes, well dressed, jubilant, cheerful. Here and there hurried coloured men in twos and threes, clad in smartly fitting dinner jackets, snow-white bosoms peeping from heavy overcoats, musical instruments, violins, saxophones, mandolins in cases clutched in their hands. They hastened into the subway kiosk Mimi and her aunt had just quitted and were swallowed up. From nearby there came to them the bewitching odours of frying corn and chicken, of pig’s-feet. They came from a stand where a middle-aged coloured woman was serving her wares to passers-by.
“That’s ‘Pig-Foot Mary’—she’s making lots of money at that little stand and she’s saving it, too,” Mrs. Rogers informed Mimi.
She was thrilled by the new scene. Gone was the morbid, morose, worried air of the people she had encountered at the other end of the subway. Here there was spontaneous laughter, shrewd observations which brought loud and free laughter from listeners. There was an exhilarating sense here that these people knew the secret of enjoying life. Black and brown and yellow faces flitted by, some carefree, some care-worn. Mimi sensed again the essential rhythm, the oneness of these variegated colours and moods. It was all vivid, colourful, of a pattern distinctive and apart, and she warmed to the friendliness of it all …
Behind them stood two flashily dressed coloured men as they took it all in. The voice of one worried, the other conciliatory.
“Say, Sam, I sent the fifty dollars and my application to Jim Washington like you told me to,” the worried voice complained, “and I ain’t heard nothing a-tall from him or the Idlehour Social Club either.”
“Ain’t you heard you was blackballed?” the other inquired with a markedly incredulous air.
“No, I ain’t. I wonder who could’ve blackballed me,” he speculated, the worry in his tones increasing. “There’s Pudd’n Jones—he’s a friend of mine and he wouldn’t do that to me. And there’s Babe Carter and Spider and Bill Johnson—they’re friends of mine and they wouldn’t blackball me, I know. Say, was there many black balls in that box?” he inquired, hopefully.
“You’ve seen a bowl of Russian caviare, ain’t you?” his friend asked.
“Yeh—but what’s that got to do with them blackballing, me?”
“Well, boy, just this—that box when they voted on your name looked just like a bowl of caviare.” …
“Come along, Mimi, we can’t stand here all night—dinner’s ready at home,” urged Mrs. Rogers. Mimi could have stood there for hours. The colourful scenes fascinated her, made her want to stay there and watch the comedies, the tragedies, the shifting panorama of life as it flowed, now swiftly, now slowly, by. Down Lenox Avenue they walked. Harlem, which first had been Dutch “Haarlem,” then Irish, afterwards Jewish and German, was in the flood-tide of transition to a Negro city within a city. From the doorway of a former private dwelling in a side street near bustling Lenox Avenue came a resonant flooding swell of music. High above the rest sounded a heavy barytone, chopping off of the words like little sausages, setting the beat like a metronome for the other singers.
“What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear. ”
Verse after verse poured forth, mingling with the clatter and roar of the crowds outside. Mimi and her aunt paused unwittingly outside. The song had ceased. The barytone voice of the preacher was lifted in prayer, his words punctuated by fervent “Amens!” and “Hallelujahs!” and “Praise Gods!”
“We are vile, sinful creatures, O Lord, strayed from the path You tol us to follow. (Ain’t it the Gospel!) Reach down from Thy heaven with a sword of flaming fire and wipe from the face of the earth these hell-holes of vice that’re sending the souls of our boys and girls to damnation! (Yes, Lord, reach down!—Amen!) Wipe out, Jesus, the dance halls and theatres, the gamblers and the drunkards, the wolves in sheep’s clothes who’re workin’ ’gainst Thy cause … Purify us, Lord! Save us! Save us!.
The preacher’s voice swayed and rumbled, excoriating the sinners, pleading for redemption of their souls, damning to everlasting hell-fire those who were unrepentant. The unseen voice was talking to a God who was no mystery to him, a very real and ever present and potent Deity. Down the street his words followed them as they went home …
Mimi looked back on her days of suffering and poverty almost as though it had been a terrible dream. Her aunt deluged her with kindness, delicately drew from her the story of her unsuccessful struggle in Philadelphia against odds that proved too great for her. The one link with that nightmare of pain and worry and anxiety was her aching need of Petit Jean. Night after night she cried herself to sleep. Night after night she awoke when all the rest of the household was asleep, feeling him near her, his warm flesh nestled against her side. She could feel his tiny lips against her own, his hands clutching at her breast, his laugh sounding in her ears. Only the thought that someday soon she would be able to have him with her again comforted her, only the realization that she could not possibly make her way as fast towards that goal if he were with her restrained her from going back to Baltimore and taking him from the home.
Her Aunt Sophie was, she found, gifted with a fund of hard common sense but with it she possessed a warmth of feeling that made Mimi know the older woman understood all her difficulties without the necessity of putting into words her various moods. Mr. Rogers had held for a number of years before his death a responsible position in a bank down town. He had left his widow some money and a few shares of stock in various corporations that brought her a steady, but small, income. By practice of rigid economy Mrs. Rogers could have lived in fairly comfortable circumstances but she was unwilling to do this. She had married young and was of a more progressive nature than her brother, although she understood Jean as well as had Margot. After her husband’s death Mrs. Rogers had taken a course in manicuring, massaging and the treatment of the hair and scalp. She then had opened a small “beauty parlour,” from which she derived a small income after all expenses were paid. Best of all, it kept her busy, and that was of greater importance to her than the money she earned. With a widowed sister of her husband she kept a small flat near Lenox Avenue, and it was to this she welcomed Mimi …
The morning after her arrival Mimi had a long talk with her aunt.
“You’ve had a hard time, Mimi,” the older woman said. “You’ve made what people call a serious mistake—it’s not for me to judge you nor am I going to. If you did, you’ve paid for it—and you’ve done a mighty brave thing, to my way of thinking, in sticking it out as you have. Your problem now as I see it is to forget the past and decide what you’re going to do with your future. You’re young yet—just twenty-one, aren’t you?—you’re much better-looking than the average. The best part of your life’s ahead of you. The question you’ve got to decide is what you’re going to do with it, make it fruitful and full and happy? Or let the past swallow you up?”
She paused while Mimi sat in thought.
“Jean—and his future count much more than mine, Aunt Sophie.”
“Yes, I know how you feel. What I’m going to say may sound mighty hard and unfeeling but you know I don’t feel that way. With Jean you’ll be so handicapped you’ll settle into a rut out of which you’ll probably never emerge. He’s well fed, he’s sheltered, he’s clothed, he’s being trained, educated. He hasn’t your care and training, I know, but working all day, you wouldn’t be able to give him much attention if he were with you … In Philadelphia you by some miracle were able to avoid meddling inquiry about Jean’s parentage. Here you wouldn’t be so successful, I know. There are gossips everywhere—and in every race. So my advice is to let Jean stay there a few years, run down to see him whenever you can afford it, and get to the place where you can have Jean with you again. And—who knows?—perhaps the right man—”
“No, no, Aunt Sophie. That’s all done for now. I’m through with men—”
