only one concerned about his problem? Or with a problem?
Hunger and this constant refusal of employment brought about his fear.
Afraid at first of giving in and working as a servant just to live. Then afraid of what would happen to him if he didn’t. Of becoming a thief, a panderer, or worse, an Uncle Tom.
Afraid that some day when he felt on the ragged edge of desperation one of the rife blond receptionists with the revealing blouses, who had let him stand unattended before her desk while she carried on a quarter-hour telephone conversation, would look up and say impatiently: “Why in heaven’s name can’t you people realize we cannot use you?”
And he would lean across the table and slap her.
Afraid of the sudden, fearful penalty that he would have to pay. The entire Negro race would have to pay it with him. And if he was still alive when the police got through with him, he would feel like a traitor to a cause.
Just a pure and simple fear of the white folks and the days.
He met Ruth in March 1935. He had stopped to get cigarettes in a drugstore on Central Avenue. A former classmate from the university looked up from his soda.
“Hey, Lee, whataya know, boy?”
Lee turned. “Hello, Hank, what’s new?”
“The white folks on the top and the niggers on the bottom. But that ain’t new.”
“Make ‘em kill you,” Lee said with a laugh.
“They doing that without my help,” Hank replied dryly, then added: “Say, I want you to meet this gal. Ruth Roberts, Lee Gordon.”
She turned from beside Hank on the soda fountain stool and smiled. Both she and Lee knew at that moment that they were made for each other, as it is given to some people to know.
“Ruth and her mother are here on a visit; she’s a St. Louis gal,” Hank went on. “Pretty, isn’t she?”
But they were not listening. She looked at Lee through eyes like two lighted candles in a darkened church, and in them he was seeing the end of loneliness and the faintest stir of meaning in a meaningless world. They were together then in wonder, and in time following they were together in each other’s hearts.
One night in April as they stood in the hard, cold rain where Skid Row crosses Main Street aching with desire for each other, he reached for her hand and said spontaneously:
“We could get married.”
She was the first girl whom he had loved, and the only one. But he had not intended to ask her to marry him. She was a college graduate with at least the promise of a better future than himself.
But her reply: “Yes! Yes!” had been waiting for the question.
Her mother disapproved. It was not that she disliked Lee. Only that she could see no future for a Negro of Lee’s temperament. After all, most Negro college graduates had served an apprenticeship with mop and pail before they got ahead, she pointed out. Once during a dinner party at a dentist’s convention in Atlantic City, which she and her late husband had attended, some prankster had shouted: “Front, boy!” and all but one of the successful dentists stood quickly to attention, she related laughingly.
Nevertheless, the following day she went with her daughter to the Justice of the Peace where Ruth and Lee were married. And the following day she went home.
At first their marriage was like a tale by Queen Scheherazade set to music in a blues tempo, the bass keys sounding out a series of shabby rooms that somehow anchored their sordid struggle for existence—room rent when it was due and and enough food for each meal coming up. Not once during that time did they buy any salt, or sugar either, until each landlady in turn learned to keep hers put away. And the treble keys sounded laughter in the night.
Marriage made him break his promise to himself. He worked at many jobs that he had refused before—bus boy in a hotel dining-room, porter in a downtown drugstore, laborer in a cannery during the spinach season. And as often, he did not work at all.
For two months Ruth was
Hunger and this constant refusal of employment brought about his fear.
Afraid at first of giving in and working as a servant just to live. Then afraid of what would happen to him if he didn’t. Of becoming a thief, a panderer, or worse, an Uncle Tom.
Afraid that some day when he felt on the ragged edge of desperation one of the rife blond receptionists with the revealing blouses, who had let him stand unattended before her desk while she carried on a quarter-hour telephone conversation, would look up and say impatiently: “Why in heaven’s name can’t you people realize we cannot use you?”
And he would lean across the table and slap her.
Afraid of the sudden, fearful penalty that he would have to pay. The entire Negro race would have to pay it with him. And if he was still alive when the police got through with him, he would feel like a traitor to a cause.
Just a pure and simple fear of the white folks and the days.
He met Ruth in March 1935. He had stopped to get cigarettes in a drugstore on Central Avenue. A former classmate from the university looked up from his soda.
“Hey, Lee, whataya know, boy?”
Lee turned. “Hello, Hank, what’s new?”
“The white folks on the top and the niggers on the bottom. But that ain’t new.”
“Make ‘em kill you,” Lee said with a laugh.
“They doing that without my help,” Hank replied dryly, then added: “Say, I want you to meet this gal. Ruth Roberts, Lee Gordon.”
She turned from beside Hank on the soda fountain stool and smiled. Both she and Lee knew at that moment that they were made for each other, as it is given to some people to know.
“Ruth and her mother are here on a visit; she’s a St. Louis gal,” Hank went on. “Pretty, isn’t she?”
But they were not listening. She looked at Lee through eyes like two lighted candles in a darkened church, and in them he was seeing the end of loneliness and the faintest stir of meaning in a meaningless world. They were together then in wonder, and in time following they were together in each other’s hearts.
One night in April as they stood in the hard, cold rain where Skid Row crosses Main Street aching with desire for each other, he reached for her hand and said spontaneously:
“We could get married.”
She was the first girl whom he had loved, and the only one. But he had not intended to ask her to marry him. She was a college graduate with at least the promise of a better future than himself.
But her reply: “Yes! Yes!” had been waiting for the question.
Her mother disapproved. It was not that she disliked Lee. Only that she could see no future for a Negro of Lee’s temperament. After all, most Negro college graduates had served an apprenticeship with mop and pail before they got ahead, she pointed out. Once during a dinner party at a dentist’s convention in Atlantic City, which she and her late husband had attended, some prankster had shouted: “Front, boy!” and all but one of the successful dentists stood quickly to attention, she related laughingly.
Nevertheless, the following day she went with her daughter to the Justice of the Peace where Ruth and Lee were married. And the following day she went home.
At first their marriage was like a tale by Queen Scheherazade set to music in a blues tempo, the bass keys sounding out a series of shabby rooms that somehow anchored their sordid struggle for existence—room rent when it was due and and enough food for each meal coming up. Not once during that time did they buy any salt, or sugar either, until each landlady in turn learned to keep hers put away. And the treble keys sounded laughter in the night.
Marriage made him break his promise to himself. He worked at many jobs that he had refused before—bus boy in a hotel dining-room, porter in a downtown drugstore, laborer in a cannery during the spinach season. And as often, he did not work at all.
For two months Ruth was
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