Almost

Willard Motley

The Almost White Boy

By birth he was half Negro and half white. Socially he was all Negro. That is when people knew that his mother was a brownskin woman with straightened hair and legs that didn’t respect the color line when it came to making men turn around to look at them. His eyes were gray. His skin was as white as Slim Peterson’s; his blond hair didn’t have any curl to it at all. His nose was big and his lips were big — the only tip-off. Aunt Beulah-May said he looked just like “poor white trash.” Other people, black and white, said all kinds of things about his parents behind their backs, even if they were married. And these people, when it came to discussing him, shook their heads, made sucking sounds with their tongues and said, “Too bad! Too bad!’ And one straggly#haired Irish woman who had taken quite a liking to him had even gone so far as to tell him, blissfully unmindful of his desires in the matter, “I’d have you marry my daughter if you was white.”

One thing he remembered. When he was small his dad had taken him up in his arms and carried him to the big oval mirror in the parlor. “Come here, Lucy,” his father had said, calling Jimmy’s mother. His mother came, smiling at the picture her two men made hugged close together; one so little and dependent, the other so tall and serious-eyed. She stood beside him, straightening Jimmy’s collar and pushing his hair out of his eyes. Dad held him in between them. “Look in the mirror, son,” he said. And they all looked. Their eyes were serious, not smiling, not staring, just gloom-colored with seriousness in the mirror. “Look at your mother. . . . Look at me.” His dad gave the directions gravely. “Look at your mother’s skin.” He looked. That was the dear sweet mother he loved. “Look at the color of my skin.” He looked. That was his daddy, the best daddy in the world. “We all love each other, son, all three of us,” his dad said, and his mother’s eyes in the mirror caught and held his father’s with something shining and proud through the seriousness; and his mother’s arm stole up around him and around his daddy. “People are just people. Some are good and some are bad,” his father said. “People are just people. Look — and remember.” He had remembered. He would never forget.

Somehow, something of that day had passed into his life. And he carried it with him back and forth across the color line. The colored fellows he palled with called him “the white nigger,” and his white pals would sometimes look at him kind of funny but they never said anything. Only when they went out on dates together; then they'd tell him don’t let something slip about “niggers” without meaning to. Then they'd look sheepish. Jim didn’t see much difference. All the guys were swell if you liked them; all the girls flirted and necked and went on crying jags now and then. People were just people.

There were other things Jim remembered.

. . . On Fifty-eighth and Prairie. Lorenzo with white eyes in a black face. With his kinky hair screwed down tight on his bald#looking head like flies on flypaper. Ruby with her face all shiny brown and her hair in stiff-standing braids and her pipy brown legs Mom called razor-legs. Lorenzo saying, “You're black just like us.”

Ruby singing out, “Yeah! Yeah! You're a white nigger — white nigger!” Lorenzo taunting, “You ain’t no different. My ma says so. You’re just a nigger!” Lorenzo and Ruby pushing up close to him with threatening gestures, making faces at him, pulling his straight blond hair with mean fists, both yelling at the same time, “White _ nigger! White nigger!”

The name stuck.

. . . Women on the sidewalk in little groups. Their lips moving when he walked past with his schoolbooks under his arm. Their eyes lowered but looking at him. “Too bad! Too bad!” He could see them. He knew they were talking about him. “Too bad! Too bad!”

. . . Mom crying on the third floor of the kitchenette flat on Thirty-ninth Street. Mom saying to Dad, “We've got to move from here, Jim. We can’t go on the street together without everybody staring at us. You’d think we’d killed somebody.”

“What do we care how much they stare or what they say?”

“Even when I go out alone they stare. They never invite me to their houses. They say —they say that I think I’m better than they are — that I had to marry out of my race—that my own color wasn’t good enough for me.”

Dad saying, “Why can’t people mind their own business? The hell with them.” Mom crying. No friends. No company. Just the three of them.

. . . Then moving to the slums near Halstead and Maxwell, where all nationalities lived bundled up next door to each other and even in the same buildings. Jews. Mexicans. Poles. Negroes. Italians. Greeks. It was swell there. People changed races there. They went out on the streets together. No more staring. No more name-calling.

He grew up there.

. . . Getting older. And a lot of the white fellows not inviting him to parties at their houses when there were girls from the neighborhood. But they'd still go out of the neighborhood together and pick up girls or go on blind dates or to parties some#where else. He didn’t like to think of the neighborhood parties with the girls and the music and everything, and the door closed to him.

. . . Only once he denied it. He had been going around with Tony for a couple of weeks over on Racine Avenue. They played pool together, drank beer together on West Madison Street, drove around in Tony’s old rattling Chevy. One day Tony looked at him funny and said, point-blank, “Say, what are you anyway?” Jim got red; he could feel his face burn. “I’m Polish,” he said. He was sorry afterwards, He didn’t know why he said it. He felt ashamed. .

. . . Then he was finished with school and he had to go to work. He got a job in a downtown hotel because nobody knew what he really was and Aunt Beulah-May said it was all right to “pass for white” when it came to making money but he’d better never get any ideas in his head about turning his back on his people. To him it was cheating. It was denying half himself. It wasn’t a straight front. He knew how hard it was for colored fellows to find decent jobs. It wasn’t saying I’m a Negro and taking the same chances they took when it came to getting a job.

But he did it.

Jim remembered many of these things; they were tied inside of him in hard knots. But the color line didn’t exist for him and he came and went pretty much as he chose. He took the girls in stride. He went to parties on the South Side, on Thirty-fifth and Michigan, on South Park. He went dancing at the Savoy Balltoom — and the Trianon. He went to Polish hops and Italian fiestas and Irish weddings. And he had a hell of a swell time.

People were just people.

He had fun with the colored girls. But some of them held off from him, not knowing what he was. These were his people.

No — he didn’t feel natural around them. And with white people he wasn’t all himself either. He didn’t have any people.

Then all of a sudden he was madly in love with Cora. This had never happened before. He had sometimes wondered if, when it came, it would be a white girl or a colored girl. Now it was here. There was nothing he could do about it. And he was scared. He began to worry, and to wonder. And he began to wish, although ashamed to admit it to himself, that he didn’t have any colored blood in him.

He met Cora at a dance at the Trianon. Cora’s hair wasn’t as blond as his but it curled all over her head. Her skin was pink and soft. Her breasts stood erect and her red lips were parted in a queer little loose way. They were always like that. And they were always moist-looking.

Leo introduced them. Then he let them alone and they danced every dance together; and when it was time to go home Leo had disappeared. Jim asked her if he could take her home.

“I think that would be awfully sweet of you,” she said. Her eyes opened wide in a baby-blue smile.

She leaned back against him a little when he helped her into her coat. He flushed with the pleasure of that brief touching of their bodies. They walked through the unwinding ballroom crowd together, not having anything to say to each other, and out onto Cottage Grove, still not having anything to say. As they passed the lighted-up plate-glass window of Walgreen’s drugstore Jim asked her, “Wouldn’t you like a malted milk?” She didn’t answer but just smiled up at him over her shoulder and he felt the softness of her arm in the doorway.

She sipped her malted milk. He sat stirring his straw around in his glass. Once in a while she’d look up over her glass and wrinkle her lips or her eyes at him, friendly-like. Neither of them said anything. Then, when Cora had finished, he held the match for her cigarette and their eyes came together and stayed that way longer than they needed to. And her lips were really parted now, with the cigarette smoke curling up into her hair.

In front of her house they stood close together, neither of them wanting to go.

“It was a nice dance,” Cora said; and her fingers played in the hedge-top.

“Yes, especially after I met you.”

“I’m going to see you again, aren’t I?” Cora asked, looking up at him a little.

Jim looked down at the sidewalk. He hoped he could keep the red out of his cheeks. “I might as well tell you before someone else does — I’m a Negro,” he said.

There was a catch in her voice, just a little noise not made of words.

“Oh, you're fooling!” she said with a small, irritated laugh.

“No, I’m not. I told you because I like you.”

She had stepped back from him. Her eyes were searching for the windows of the house to see that there was no light behind the shades.

“Please, let me see you again,” Jim said.

Her eyes, satisfied, came away from the windows. They looked at the sidewalk where he had looked. Her body was still withdrawn. Her lips weren’t parted now. There were hard little lines at the corners of her mouth.

“Let me meet you somewhere,” Jim said.

Another furtive glance at the house; then she looked at him, unbelievingly. “You didn’t mean that — about being colored?”

“It doesn’t matter, does it?”

“No — only —”

“Let me meet you somewhere,” Jim begged.

Her lips were parted a little. She looked at him strangely, deep into him in a way that made him tremble, then down his body and back up into his eyes. She tossed her head a little. “Well — call me up tomorrow afternoon.” She gave him the number.

He watched her go into the house. Then he walked to the corner to wait for his streetcar; and he kicked at the sidewalk and clenched his fists.

Jim went to meet her in Jackson Park. They walked around. She was beautiful in her pink dress. Her lips were pouted a little bit, and her eyes were averted, and she was everything he had ever wanted. They sat on a bench far away from anybody. “You know,” she said, “I never liked nig — Negroes. You're not like a Negro at all.”

They walked to the other end of the park. “Why do you tell people?” she asked.

“People are just people,” he told her, but the words didn’t sound real any more.

Twice again he met her in the park. Once they just sat talking and once they went to a movie. Both times he walked her to the car line and left her there. That was the way she wanted it.

After that it was sneaking around to meet her. She didn’t like to go on dates with him when he had his white friends along. She’d never tell him why. And yet she put her body up close to him when they were alone. It was all right too when she invited some of her friends who didn’t know what he was.

They saw a lot of each other. And pretty soon he thought from the long, probing looks she gave him that she must like him; from the way she’d grab his hand, tight, sometimes; from the way she danced with him. She even had him take her home now and they'd stand on her porch pressed close together. “Cora, I want you to come over to my house,” he told her. “My mother and father are swell. You'll like them.” He could see all four of them together. “It isn’t a nice neighborhood. I mean it doesn’t look — good, but the people are nicer than — in other places. Gee, you'll like my mother and father.”

“All right, I'll go, Jimmy. I don’t care. I don’t care.”

Dad kidded him about his new flame, saying it must be serious, that he had never brought a girl home before. Mom made fried chicken and hot biscuits. And when he went to get Cora he saw Dad and Mom both with dust rags, shining up everything in the parlor for the tenth time; he heard Dad and Mom laughing quietly together and talking about their first date.

He hadn’t told them she was a white girl. But they never batted an eye.

“Mom, this is Cora.”

“How do you do, dear. Jimmy has told us so much about you.”

Dear, sweet Mom. Always gracious and friendly.

“Dad, this is Cora.” Dad grinning, looking straight at her with eyes as blue as hers, going into some crazy story about “Jimmy at the age of three.” Good old Dad. “People are just people.”

Dad and Mom were at ease. Only Cora seemed embarrassed. And she was nervous, not meeting Dad’s eyes, not meeting Mom’s eyes, looking to him for support. She sat on the edge of her chair.

“Y-y-yes, sir . . . No, Mrs. Warner.” She only picked at the good food Mom had spent all afternoon getting ready. And Jim, watching her, watching Dad and Mom, hoping they wouldn’t notice, got ill at ease himself and he was glad when he got her outside. ‘Then they were themselves again.

“Mom and Dad are really swell. You'll have to get to know them,” he said, looking at her appealingly, asking for approval. She smiled with expressionless eyes. She said nothing.

On Fourteenth and Halstead they met Slick Harper. Slick was as black as they come. It was sometimes hard, because of his southern dialect and his Chicago black-belt expressions, to know just what he meant in English. He practiced jitterbug steps on street corners and had a whole string of girls — black, brownskin, high-yellow. Everybody called him Slick because he handed his bevy of girls a smooth line and because he wore all the latest fashions in men’s clothes — high-waisted trousers, big-brimmed hats, bright sports coats, Cuban heels and coconut straws with gaudy bands. Slick hailed Jim; his eyes gave Cora the once-over.

“Whatcha say, man!” he shouted. “Ah know they all goes when the wagon comes but where you been stuck away? And no jive! Man, ah been lookin’ for you. Wis: re throwing a party next Saturday and we want you to come.”

Jim stood locked to the sidewalk, working his hands in his pockets and afraid to look at Cora. He watched Slick’s big purple lips move up and down as they showed the slices of white teeth. Now Slick had stopped talking and was staring at Cora with a black-faced smirk.

“Cora, this is Slick Harper.”

“How do you do.” Her voice came down as from the top of a building.

“Ah’m glad to meetcha,” Slick said. “You sho’ got good taste, Jim.” His eyes took in her whole figure. “Why don’t you bring her to the party?”

“Maybe I will. Well, we’ve got to go.” He walked fast then to keep up with Cora.

Cora never came over again.

Cora had him come over to her house. But first she prepared him a lot. “Don’t ever—ever—tell my folks you're colored. Please, Jimmy. Promise me. ... Father doesn’t like colored people. . . . They aren’t broad-minded like me. . . . And don’t mind Father, Jimmy,” she warned.

He went. There was a cream-colored car outside the house. In the parlor were smoking stands, and knickknack brackets, and a grand piano nobody played. Cora’s father smoked cigars, owned a few pieces of stock, went to Florida two weeks every winter, told stories about the “Florida niggers.” Cora’s mother had the same parted lips Cora had, but she breathed through them heavily as if she were always trying to catch up with herself. She was fat and overdressed. And admonished her husband when he told his Southern stories through the smoke of big cigars: “Now, Harry, you mustn’t talk like that. What will this nice young man think of you? There are plenty of fine upright Negroes —I’m sure, Of course I don’t know any personally. . . . Now, Harry, don’t be so harsh. Don’t forget, you took milk from a colored mammy’s breast. Oh, Harry, tell them about the little darky who wanted to watch your car — “Two cents a awah, Mistah No’the’nah!’ ”

Cora sat with her hands in her lap and her fingers laced tightly together. Jim smiled at Mr. Hartley’s jokes and had a miserable time. And Jim discovered that it was best not to go to anybody's house. Just the two of them.

Jim and Cora went together for four months. And they had an awful time of it. But they were unhappy apart. Yet when they were together their eyes were always accusing each other. Some#times they seemed to enjoy hurting each other. Jim wouldn’t call her up; and he’d be miserable. She wouldn’t write to him or would stand him up on a date for Chuck Nelson or Fred Schultz; then she’d be miserable. Something held them apart. And something puwiled them together.

Jim did a lot of thinking. It had to go four revolutions. Four times a part-Negro had to marry a white person before legally you were white. The blood had to take four revolutions. Mulatto — that’s what he was— quadroon —octaroon— then it was all gone. Then you were white. His great-grandchildren maybe. Four times the blood had to let in the other blood.

Then one night they were driving out to the forest preserves in Tony’s Chevy. “What are you thinking, Jimmy?”

“Oh, nothing. Just thinking.”

“Do you like my new dress? How do I look in it?”

‘Isn’t that a keen moon, Cora?” The car slid along the dark, deserted highway.

They came to a gravel road and Jim eased the car over the crushed stone in second gear. Cora put her cheek against the sleeve of his coat. The branches of trees made scraping sounds against the sides of the car. Cora was closer to him now.

He could smell the perfume in her hair and yellow strands tickled the end of his nose. He stopped the motor and switched the lights off. Cora lifted his arm up over her head and around her, putting his hand in close to her waist with her hand over his, stroking his.

“Let’s sit here like this — close and warm,” she whispered. Then her voice lost itself in the breast of his coat.

For a long time they sat like that. Then Jim said, “Let’s take a walk.” He opened the door and, half supporting her, he lifted her out. While she was still in his arms she bit his ear gently.

“Don’t do that,” he said, and she giggled.

Panting, they walked through the low scrub into the woods. The bushes scratched their arms. Twigs caught in Cora’s hair. Their feet sank in the earth. Cora kept putting her fingers in Jim’s hair and mussing it. “Don’t. _Don’t,” he said. And finally he caught her fingers and held them tight in his. They walked on like this. The moon made silhouettes of them, silhouettes climbing up the slow. incline of hill.

Jim found a little rise of land, treeless, grassy. Far to the north-east, Chicago sprawled, row on row of dim lights growing more numerous but gentler.

The night was over them.

They sat on the little hillock, shoulder to shoulder; and Cora moved her body close to him. It was warm there against his shirt, open at the neck. They didn’t talk. They didn’t move. And when Cora breathed he could feel the movement of her body against him. It was almost as if they were one. He looked up at the splash of stars, and the moon clouding over. His arm went around her, shieldingly. He closed his eyes and put his face into her hair.

“Cora! Cora!” The only answer she gave was the slight movement of her body.

“Cora, I love you.”

“Do you, Jimmy?” she said, snuggling up so close to him that he could feel her heart beat against him.

He didn’t move. But after a while she was slowly leaning back until the weight of her carried him back too and they lay full length. They lay like this a long time. He looked at her. Her eyes were closed. She was breathing hard. Her lips were parted and moist.

“Jimmy.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

She hooked one of her feet over his. A slow quiver started in his shoulders, worked its way down the length of him. He sat up.

Cora sat up.

“There’s nobody here but us,” she said. Her fingers unbuttoned the first button on his shirt, the second. Her fingers crept in on his chest, playing with the little hairs there.

“There’s nobody here but us,” she said, and she ran her fingers inside his shirt, over his shoulders and the back of his neck.

“We can’t do this, Cora. We can’t.”

“Do you mean about you being colored? It doesn’t matter to _me, Jimmy. Honest it doesn’t.”

“No. Not that. It’s because I love you. That’s why I can’t. That’s why I want —” ,

He sat up straight then. His fingers pulled up some grass. He held it up to the light and looked at it. She had her head in his lap and lay there perfectly still. He could hear her breathing, and her breath was warm and moist on the back of his other hand where it lay on his leg. He threw the grass away, watched how the wind took it and lowered it down to the ground. He lifted her up by the  shoulders, gently, until they were close together, looking into each other’s eyes.

“I want it to be right for us, Cora,” he said. “Will you marry  me?”

The sting of red in her cheeks looked as if a blow had left it there; even the moonlight showed that. She sat up without the support of his hands. Her arms were straight and tense under her. Her eyes met his, burning angrily at the softness in his eyes. “You damn dirty nigger!” she said, and jumped up and walked away from him as fast as she could.

When she was gone he lay on his face where he had been sitting. He lay full length. The grass he had pulled stuck to his lips. ““People are just people.” He said it aloud. “People are just people.” And he laughed, hoarsely, hollowly. “People are just people.” Then it was only a half-laugh with a sob cutting into it. And he was crying, with his arms flung up wildly above his head, with his face pushed into the grass trying to stop the sound of his crying. Off across the far grass Cora was running away from him.

The moon, bright now, lacquered the whiteness of his hands lying helplessly above his head; it touched the blondness of his hair.