“—a long way off! Let’s party!” a young man shouted to the laughing, back-smacking approval of his friends.
“Should we darken my skin?” I asked.
Marguerite looked at me like Mrs Irving did. “No, we should not.”
“So how—”
“It’s about how we style your hair, how we dress you. How you walk, how you talk.”
I nodded but I couldn’t never move all elegant like Marguerite or talk like her neither.
“Look at the whites. Compare them to the Harlemites.”
I watched a white couple weaving their way past the people lined up to buy tickets to the movies. The man in a tall hat, the woman in a satin gown. They seemed bothered.
“Well?” Marguerite asked.
“The whites’ve got ants in their pants.”
Marguerite laughed. “They’re shaky in their own skins.”
“I don’t walk like that.”
“No, Dulcie, you walk like a farmer.”
She slipped her arm in mine. “Match my step. Speak like I speak—how I speak out on the town, not how I speak for Mama. You talk too much like that, we might as well give up.”
She blew a familiar kiss at two black men gliding by. “Those are Selma’s brothers. I’ve known them since they were babies.”
Selma was Marguerite’s closest friend. I hadn’t met her yet.
“Light steps, Dulcie. Walk lighter, walk taller.”
Lighter, taller, I told myself. I stumbled. Marguerite giggled.
“Girl,” she said. “Relax. Tread light. Don’t clomp. You don’t have no glide at all.”
She waved at another couple.
“You know just about everyone,” I exclaimed. “More than Joshua even.”
“I’m a lawyer. Everyone needs me.”
Marguerite smiled at young boys, running past, chasing a ball. “Their mama won’t be best pleased. Sway your hips, land softer on your feet.”
“Why does everyone keep calling me Miss Anne?”
She burst out laughing,
“What?”
Marguerite was hugging herself, crying. “I’m sorry,” she gasped.
“I make Joshua laugh too.”
“It’s an expression, like ofay. It means you’re a white gal.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling dim all over again. “Why are there so many white people here? I thought Harlem was—”
“The Capital of Black America?”
I nodded because I’d heard Joshua and his friends say so.
“It is and it isn’t. This is Black Broadway, Seventh Avenue. This is where we promenade.”
Marguerite nodded at three women passing, arm in arm, in fancy clobber and shiny lipstick.
“Look at the theatres, restaurants, billiard halls, speakeasies, saloons, nightclubs. Entertainment and joy everywhere. Sparkling glass, gleaming chrome, and the hottest jazz on the planet. Negro Heaven!”
I’d never seen folks dressed so fine, automobiles so shiny. In the Hills there were more horses and carts than motor cars. Horse dung piled high in the streets.
“White people come to Harlem because we dance, we sing, jive and strut better than them. We’re color, they’re grey. We’re movement, they’re stasis. We’re fire, they’re ashes.”
Marguerite’s cheeks were flushed, her hands flying. I wanted to tell her she should be a writer like Joshua.
“Who do you think owns all this? Who owns the Renaissance? The Lafayette? The Cotton Club? Who owns Negro Heaven?”
“Your pa?”
“White people, that’s who. Blumstein’s is the biggest store and we can’t work there, not behind the counters, smiling and selling those fine wares. They charge us sky-high rents, won’t give us jobs, and won’t let us in the best clubs, excepting as the floor show! Black Harlem? We live here, but it ain’t ours.”
I wanted to ask her about Mr Irving. He owned their huge house and the funeral home. Eula said he owned an apartment block and two stores as well.
“But why—”
A white man grabbed Marguerite’s arm hard.
“Hey,” I said.
“What’re you doing with this one?” he said, looking at me. “Pretty little white gal like you.”
“She’s my sister!” I said. “Let her go!”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but my sis ain’t white,” Marguerite said, being polite, even though he was hurting her.
He wasn’t half as fancy as Marguerite. His teeth were yellow, his eyes bloodshot.
“Look at her hair,” Marguerite said. “You know she didn’t come by those curls any place white.”
“White people can have curly hair!” he protested.
“No, sir. Show me a white with curls; I’ll show you a coloured passing.”
He didn’t know what to say to that.
“She sounds British.”
“She’s from the islands, sir.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Sir.”
Marguerite slid from his grasp, kept walking, pulling me along, kicking up her heels. I did likewise, swaying my hips.
I snuck a peek behind. The horrible white man was staring.
“You’ll do,” Marguerite said. “Just don’t leave Harlem. Can you imagine? Us strolling along 42nd Street holding hands? They’d quail. Are they both coloured or both white?, they’d be thinking, how can we tell the difference?”
“I can’t,” I confessed.
“White people can rarely tell light from white.”
“Joshua says being white is a state of mind.”
“Hardly. It’s a matter of law and power.”
“And the colour of your skin.”
“Sometimes that too.”
* * *
Marguerite took me to see her brother, Otis, and his wife, Jesse. They lived in a two-room apartment, up three flights of rickety stairs.
Otis was tall and handsome like Joshua, with an even bigger smile.
“We’ve been hearing about you.” He pulled me into a bear hug. No one in my family had ever hugged me like that. Otis was affectionate and protective mixed together. It made me want to cry.