I could not bear the air for miles around. It was too personal and pressing, and humid with memories of what used to be.
So I went off to another town to find work. It was the same as at home so far as the dreariness and lack of hope and blunted impulses were concerned. But one thing did happen that lifted me up. In a pile of rubbish I found a copy of Milton’s complete works. The back was gone and the book was yellowed. But it was all there. So I read Paradise Lost and luxuriated in Milton’s syllables and rhythms without ever having heard that Milton was one of the greatest poets of the world. I read it because I liked it.
I worked through the whole volume and then I put it among my things. When I was supposed to be looking for work, I would be stretched out somewhere in the woods reading slowly so that I could understand the words. Some of them I did not. But I had read so many books that my reading vocabulary at least was not too meager.
A young woman who wanted to go off on a trip asked me to hold down her job for two months. She worked in a doctor’s office and all I had to do was to answer the telephone and do around a little.
The doctor thought that I would not be suitable at first, but he had to have somebody right away so he took a deep breath and said he’d try me. We got along just very well indeed after the first day. I became so interested and useful that he said if his old girl did not come back when she promised, he was going to see to it that I was trained for a practical nurse when I was a bit older.
But just at that time I received a letter from Bob, my oldest brother. He had just graduated from Medicine and said that he wanted to help me to go to school. He was sending for me to come to him right away. His wife sent love. He knew that I was going to love his children. He had married in his Freshman year in college and had three of them.
Nothing can describe my joy. I was going to have a home again. I was going to school. I was going to be with my brother! He had remembered me at last. My five haunted years were over!
I shall never forget the exaltation of my hurried packing. When I got on the train, I said goodbye—not to anybody in particular, but to the town, to loneliness, to defeat and frustration, to shabby living, to sterile houses and numbed pangs, to the kind of people I had no wish to know; to an era. I waved it goodbye and sank back into the cushions of the seat.
It was near night. I shall never forget how the red ball of the sun hung on the horizon and raced along with the train for a short space, and then plunged below the belly-band of the earth. There have been other suns that set in significance for me, but that sun! It was a book-mark in the pages of a life. I remember the long, strung-out cloud that measured it for the fall.
But I was due for more frustration. There was to be no school for me right away. I was needed around the house. My brother took me for a walk and explained to me that it would cause trouble if he put me in school at once. His wife would feel that he was pampering me. Just work along and be useful around the house and he would work things out in time.
This did not make me happy at all. I wanted to get through high school. I had a way of life inside me and I wanted it with a want that was twisting me. And now, it seemed I was just as far off as before. I was not even going to get paid for working this time, and no time off. But on the other hand, I was with my beloved brother, and the children were adorable! I was soon wrapped up in them head over heels.
It was get up early in the morning and make a fire in the kitchen range. Don’t make too much noise and wake up my sister-in-law. I must remember that she was a mother and needed the rest. She had borne my brother’s children and deserved the best that he could do for her, and so on. It didn’t sound just right. I was not the father of those children, and several months later I found out what was wrong. It came to me in a flash. She had never borne a child for me, so I did not owe her a thing. Maybe somebody did, but it certainly wasn’t I. My brother was acting as if I were the father of those children, instead of himself. There was much more, but my brother is dead and I do not wish to even risk being unjust to his memory, or unkind to the living. My sister-in-law is one of the most devoted mothers in the world. She was brave and loyal to my brother when it took courage to be that way. After all she was married to him, not I.
But I made an unexpected friend. She was a white woman and poor. She had children of my own age. Her husband was an electrician. She began to take an interest in me and to put ideas in my head. I will not go so far as to say that I was poorly dressed, for that would be bragging. The best I can say is that I could not be arrested for indecent exposure. I remember wanting gloves. I had never had a pair, and one of my friends told me that I ought to have on gloves when I went anywhere. I could not have them and I was most unhappy. But then, I was not in a position to buy a handkerchief.
This friend slipped me a message one day to come to her house. We had a code. Her son would pass and whistle until I showed myself to let him know I heard. Then he would go on and as soon as I could I would follow. This particular day, she told me that she had a job for me. I was delighted beyond words.
“It’s a swell job if you can get it, Zora. I think you can. I told my husband to do all he can, and he thinks he’s got it hemmed up for you.”
“Oooh! What is it?”
“It is a lady’s maid job. She is a singer down at the theater where he is electrician. She brought a maid with her from up north, but the maid met up with a lot of colored people and looks like she’s going to get married right off. She don’t want the job no more. The lady asked the men around the theater to get her somebody, and my husband thought about you and I told him to tell the rest of the men he had just the right girl for a maid. It seems like she is a mighty nice person.”
I was too excited to sit still. I was frightened too, because I did not know the first thing about being a lady’s maid. All I hoped was that the lady would overlook that part and give me a chance to catch on.
“You got to look nice for that. So I sent Valena down to buy you a little dress.” Valena was her daughter. “It’s cheap, but it’s neat and stylish. Go inside Valena’s room and try it on.”
The dress was of navy blue poplin with a box-pleated skirt and a little round, white collar. To my own self, I never did look so pretty before. I put on the dress, and Valena’s dark blue felt hat with a rolled brim. She saw to it that I shined my shoes, and then gave me car-fare and sent me off with every bit of advice she could think of.
My feet mounted up the golden stairs as I entered the stage door of that theater. The sounds, the smells, the back-stage jumble of things were all things to bear me up into a sweeter atmosphere. I felt like dancing towards the dressing room when it was pointed out to me. But my friend was walking with me, coaching me how to act, and I had to be as quiet and sober as could be.
The matinee performance of H.M.S. Pinafore was on, so I was told to wait. In a little while a tenor and a soprano voice quit singing a duet and a beautiful blonde girl of about twenty-two came hurrying into the dressing room. I waited until she went inside and closed the door, then I knocked and was told to come in.
She looked at me and smiled so hard till she almost laughed.
“Hello, little girl,” she chanted. “Where did you come from?”
“Home. I come to see you.”
“Oh, you did? That’s fine. What did you come to see me about?”
“I come to work for you.”
“Work for me?” She threw back her head and laughed. That frightened me a great deal. Maybe it was all a joke and there was no job after all. “Doing what?” she carolled on.
“Be your lady’s maid.”
“You? Why, how old are you?”
“Twenty,” I said, and tried to look serious as I had been told. But she laughed so hard at that, till I forgot and laughed too.
“Oh, no, you are not twenty.” She laughed some more, but it was not scornful laughter. Just bubbling fun.
“Well, eighteen, then,” I compromised.
“No, not eighteen,
either.”
“Well, then, how about sixteen?”
She laughed at that. Instead of frowning in a sedate way as I had been told, here I was laughing like a fool myself.
“I don’t believe you are sixteen, but I’ll let it go at that,” she said.
“Next birthday. Honest.”
“It’s all right; you’re hired. But let’s don’t bring this age business up again. I think I’m going to like you. What is your name?”
I told her, fearing all the time she was going to ask questions about my family; but she didn’t.
“Well, Zora, I pay ten dollars a week and expenses. You think that will do?”
I almost fell over. Ten dollars each and every week! Was there that much money in the world sure enough? Com-press-ti-bility!! It wouldn’t take long for me to own a bank at that rate.
“Yes, ma’am!” I shouted.
“Well, change my shoes for me.”
She stuck out her foot, and pointed at the pair she wanted to put on. I got them on with her tickling me in the back. She showed me a white dress she wanted to change into and I jumped to get it and hook it up. She touched up her face laughing at me in the mirror and dashed out. I was crazy about her right then. I washed out her shoelaces from a pair of white shoes and her stockings, which were on the back of a chair and wrung them out in a bath towel for quick drying, and sat down before the mirror to look at myself. It was truly wonderful!
So I had to examine all the curious cosmetics on the table. I was sort of trying them out when she came in.
That night, she let me stand in the wings and hear her sing her duet with the tenor, “Farewell, my own! Light of my life, farewell!” It was so beautiful to me that she seemed more than human. Everything was pleasing and exciting. If there was any more to Heaven than this, I didn’t want to see it.
I did not go back home, that is to my brother’s house, at all. I was afraid he would try to keep me. I slept on a cot in the room with Valena. She was almost as excited as I was, had come down to see me every night and had met the cast. We were important people, she and I. Her mother had to make us shut up talking and go to sleep every night.
The end of the enchanted week came and the company was to move on. Miss M———whom I was serving asked me about my clothes and luggage. She told me not to come down to the train with an old dilapidated suitcase for that would make her ashamed. So the upshot of it was that she advanced me the money to buy one, and then paid me for the week. I paid my friend the six dollars which she had spent for my new dress. Valena gave me the hat, an extra pair of panties and stockings. I bought a comb and brush and tooth brush, paste, and two handkerchiefs. Miss M———did not know when I came down to the station that morning that my new suitcase was stuffed with newspapers to keep my things from rattling.
The company, a Gilbert and Sullivan repertoire, had its own coach. That was another glory to dazzle my eyes. The leading man had a valet, and the contralto had an English maid, both white. I was the only Negro around. But that did not worry me in the least. I had no chance to be lonesome, because the company welcomed me like, or as, a new play-pretty. It did not strike me as curious then. I never even thought about it. Now, I can see the reason for it.
In the first place, I was a Southerner, and had the map of Dixie on my tongue. They were all northerners except the orchestra leader, who came from Pensacola. It was not that my grammar was bad, it was the idioms. They did not know of the way an average southern child, white and black, is raised on simile and invective. They know how to call names. It is an every day affair to hear somebody called a mullet-headed, mule-eared, wall-eyed, hog-nosed, gator-faced, shad-mouthed, screw-necked, goat-bellied, puzzle-gutted, camel-backed, butt-sprung, battle-hammed, knock-kneed, razor-legged, box-ankled, shovel-footed, unmated so and so! Eyes looking like skint-ginny nuts, and mouth looking like a dishpan full of broke-up crockery! They can tell you in simile exactly how you walk and smell. They can furnish a picture gallery of your ancestors, and a notion of what your children will be like. What ought to happen to you is full of images and flavor. Since that stratum of the southern population is not given to book-reading, they take their comparisons right out of the barn yard and the woods. When they get through with you, you and your whole family look like an acre of totem-poles.
First thing, I was young and green, so the baritone started out teasing me the first day. He waylaid me down the coach aisle away from Miss M———and told me I looked like a nice girl and he wanted to help me out. He was going to tell me just how to get along. I was very glad and thanked him. He told me to sit down by him and let him give me a few pointers. I did and he asked me a few very ordinary questions about where I was born and so on. Very sober-faced. All of a sudden he yelled so the whole coach could hear him. “Porter! A flock of hand towels and a seven o’clock call!”
Nearly everybody burst out laughing. I couldn’t see what for. I knew the joke was on me somehow, but I didn’t know what it was. I sat there blank-faced and that made them laugh more. Miss M———did not laugh. She called me and told me to sit down by her and not to listen to dirty cracks. Finally she let me know what the joke was. Then I jumped up and told that man to stop trying to run the hog over me! That set everybody off again. They teased me all the time just to hear me talk. But there was no malice in it. If I got mad and spoke my piece, they liked it even better. I was stuffed with ice cream sodas and coca-cola.
Another reason was that it was fun to them to get hold of somebody whom they could shock. I was hurt to my heart because the company manager called me into his dressing room and asked me how I liked my job. After I got through telling him how pleased I was, he rushed out with his face half-made up screaming, “Stop, oh, Zora! Please stop! Shame on you! Telling me a dirty story like that. Oh! I have never been so shocked in all my life!”
Heads popped out of dressing-rooms all over. Groans, sad head-shakings and murmurs of outrage. Sad! Sad! They were glad I had not told them such a thing. Too bad! Too bad! Not a smile in the crowd. The more I tried to explain the worse it got. Some locked their doors to shield their ears from such contamination. Finally Miss M———broke down and laughed and told me what the gag was. For a long while nobody could get me inside a dressing room outside of Miss M———’s. But that didn’t stop the teasing. They would think up more, like having one of the men contrive to walk down the aisle with me and then everybody lift shocked eyebrows, pretend to blush and wink at each other, and sigh, “Zora! Zora! What would your mother say?” I would be so upset that I wouldn’t know what to do. Maybe they really believed I wasn’t nice!
Another sly trick they played on my ignorance was that some of the men would call me and with a very serious face send me to some of the girls to ask about the welfare and condition of cherries and spangles. They would give me a tip and tell me to hurry back with the answer. Some of the girls would send back word that the men need not worry their heads at all. They would never know the first thing about the condition of their cherries and spangles. Some of the girls sent answers full of double talk which went over my head. The soubrette spoke her mind to the men about that practice and it stopped.
But none of this had malice in it. Just their idea of good backstage gags. By the time they stopped, it seemed that I was necessary to everybody. I was continually stuffed with sweets, nut meats, and soft-drinks. I was welcome in everybody’s coach seat and the girls used to pitch pennies to see who carried me off to their hotel rooms. We played games and told stories. They often ordered beer and pretzels, but nobody offered me a drink. I heard all about their love affairs and troubles. They were all looking forward to playing or singing leads some day. Some great personage had raved about all of their performances. The dirty producers and casting directors just hadn’t given them their chance. Miss M———finally put a stop to my going off with the others as soon as she was ready for bed. I had to stay wherever she stayed after that. She had her own affairs to talk about.
She pai
d for a course for me in manicuring and I practiced on everybody until I became very efficient at it. That course came in handy to me later on.
With all this petting, I became as cocky as a sparrow on Fifth Avenue. I got a scrap book, and everybody gave me a picture to put in it. I pasted each one on a separate page and wrote comments under each picture. This created a great deal of interest, because some of the comments were quite pert. They egged me on to elaborate. Then I got another idea. I would comment on daily doings and post the sheets on the call-board. This took on right away. The result stayed strictly mine less than a week because members of the cast began to call me aside and tell me things to put in about others. It got to be so general that everybody was writing it. It was just my handwriting, mostly. Then it got beyond that. Most of the cast ceased to wait for me. They would take a pencil to the board and set down their own item. Answers to the wisecracks would appear promptly, and often cause uproarious laughter. They always started off with either “Zora says” or “The observant reporter of the call-board asserts”—Lord, Zora said more things’ I was continually astonished, but always amused. There were, of course, some sly digs at supposedly secret love affairs at times, but no vicious thrusts. Everybody enjoyed it, even the victims. This hilarious game came to a sudden end. The company manager had been a member of the cast. One day he received a telegram offering him a fat part in a Broadway show, and of course, he left us. So a new manager was sent on from New York.