Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart Read online

  As Hammond eases downward toward the river, as Uptown shifts to Lowertown and the buildings and houses and even the trees become shabbier, there is an increase of dark faces, an ebbing of white faces; and Persia sighs, runs a hand through her hair, says, "You can tell we're getting near home, can't you. Uh-huh."

  They've moved again. From Java Street to Curry, from Curry to Holland.

  Each time the moves are sudden and rapidly expedited "expedited" is Duke's word, one of his favorites.

  Now they live on the very edge of Lowertown. (You would not want to say Niggertown; the only people Iris has heard say that have been drunk.) The Courtneys don't go to church, but around them many others go to church. Sunday mornings on East Avenue are amazing: the streams of churchgoing Negroes.... The gorgeous colors of the women, their hats, dresses, like peonies, big luscious plumphearted flowers. Men with their slicked-down pomaded hair. (And how it strikes Iris's eye, the strangeness of Negroes with gray or silver or white hair.) The boys in suits, white shirts, neckties.

  Are these the sloe-eyed boys Iris sees in the park the boys she knows she should be wary of and avoid? And the pretty little girls Iris's age in starched cotton dresses, sashes tied in bows and bows in their hair...

  like dolls. Walking self-consciously in their dressy shoes. Little white anklet socks.

  Iris stares greedily. These skins like cocoa... milk chocolate bittersweet chocolate. A darkish purple sheen like the sheen of fat Concord grapes. And shoe polish: the rich black oily polish Daddy allows her to dab on his good shoes with a rag, then rub, rub, rub until the leather "shines like a mirror... can you see your own face?"

  Dark dark eyes flashing slantwise to her.

  Strange nappy woolly hair.

  "Don't stare, I said," Persia whispers, giving her a poke.

  Iris starts to ask, "Why" and Persia says, "Just don't."

  But the question Iris wants to ask is too abstruse for the few words in her vocabulary. Why are they... the way they are?

  Different from us? The same, but different?

  Iris wonders why, if the Negro children stare frankly at her, at her pale drained-looking skin, her pale greenish-gray eyes, her hair that isn't brown or blond or any precise color at all, she can't stare right back?

  Persia says, "They don't know any better, some of them. But we do. " Iris has been taught that "Negro" is the proper word, in two equally stressed syllables: "Negro Say it too fast, or carelessly, and you get words you don't want: "nigra," "nigger."

  "Colored" is acceptable too, sometimes; it's the word Aunt Madelyn prefers. (Madelyn Daiches, whom Iris loves, isn't Iris's aunt, really, but a cousin-twice-removed of Persia's.) Aunt Madelyn has many "colored" friends, she says, women friends, and fine people they are too, but the race as a whole... "the-race-as-a-whole".

  can t be trusted.

  And there is Iris's Uncle Leslie (Duke Courtney's older, bachelor brother), who speaks uncomfortably of "minority populations," of 'African-American people," sometimes, even more uncomfortably, of 'African-American peoples"... as if, though he knows what he wants to say, he is at a loss to find the words to express it.

  Thus Leslie Courtney hesitates to say even "Negro Will never say "colored." Or "black." (Says Leslie vehemently, "They are no more black than I am white.") When he is robbed of his camera, his wallet, and his wristwatch one summer evening in Cassadaga Park, Leslie is pained to describe his assailants to the police in terms of the pigmentation of their skin. It becomes a family joke, or one of Duke's family jokes: "Did y'all hear about the time my brother was mugged by three African-American' jigs?"

  "Jig" is one of the words Iris has been told she must not say, ever.

  Like "nigger," "coon," "spade," "spook," "shine." Yet when Duke uses the word everyone laughs, it's so... unexpected.

  Not that Duke would say such things in his elder brother's presence; he wouldn't. To Leslie, racial and ethnic slurs, as he calls them, are an insult to all.

  Leslie Courtney is a photographer with a meager income. He lives alone at the rear of a cavelike little shop at the derelict end of Main Street... a soft touch, as Duke observes, for every deadbeat who wants his or his children's pictures taken but can't afford to pay.

  Leslie has been taking photographs of Iris... sometimes Iris and Persia, if Persia will consent... for many years. His weakness is for children generally; he has hundreds of photographs of Negro children, singly or in groups, since he lives in a Negro neighborhood (a "mixed" neighborhood is the slightly disapproving term Aunt Madelyn uses), of no commercial value; these, he sometimes displays in his shop window as if he were proud of them.

  It has become a familiar issue, whether Leslie Courtney with his gifts should become known in Hammond as a "Negro photographer" that is, a photographer with a predominantly Negro clientele or whether, as Duke thinks, he is damaging his reputation irrevocably. If Leslie drops by for a visit and stays late, Duke will shift to this subject, painful as it is to him, for, as he sees it, his reputation too is involved. The brothers "discuss" the issue, don't exactly "quarrel," sipping Duke's whiskey... for both Courtneys like to drink and give evidence, as even a small child can observe, of liking each other, and themselves, just perceptibly more when they are drinking. Leslie says he takes photographs of human subjects with no particular reference to their race; an artist must seize beauty in what's close at hand, and certainly there is beauty in children, children of any "color," and in any case, as a so-called Caucasian, he shares in the unspeakable burden of guilt Caucasians must feel for their exploitation, over the centuries, of the African-American peoples. "Slavery," says Leslie, "is the great abomination of our country," staring and blinking as if this abomination were before him, palpable, terrible, incontestable, and Duke cannot resistlor Duke Courtney, sometimes against the grain of his own best interests, is a man who cannot resist-saying slyly, "Y'know, Les, the Caucasians didn't invent slavery, in fact: the black Africans did."

  Leslie's eyes shift their focus behind the round lenses of his eyeglasses framed in thin, bright gold. He says in a trembling voice, "Yes. All right. But one abomination does not excuse, or even mitigate, another. The chain of evil must be broken at some point."

  'And so it has been, and so it remains," Duke says soothingly.

  "Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on New Year's Day, 1863."

  Says Leslie, "De facto, there remain slaves."

  Says Duke, "De facto, they have put themselves in that category.

  The crashing sound of ice cubes being dislodged from a freezer tray.

  Another time, after Leslie has gone home sullen and muttering, Persia asks Duke why on earth his brother is so emotional about Negroes; is it some sort of Christian sentiment? And Duke sighs in annoyance and says, "No. Worse. The poor bastard identifies with them...

  'niggers."" But what is "black blood"?

  Everyone in Hammond is talking about the custody case in which a local justice took away the two children, aged nine and four, of a woman who, divorced from her "white" husband, married a mulatto" and took up residence in a "colored neighborhood," the judge's decision being based on the premise that such a marriage was detrimental to the children's well-being. Says Aunt Madelyn, "It's a sad thing for a woman to lose her children, but you have to draw the line somewhere."

  Says Persia, "They'd have to kill me before they'd take my children away.

  Iris, staring at the newspaper photographs of scared-looking people, asks, "What is a 'mulatto'?"pronouncing the word with a strong "u," as in "mule," a word she knows. "Is this him? Here?"

  Persia tells her it isn't anything she has to worry about.

  Duke tells her it's a white person with Negro blood or a Negro with white blood "mixed blood."

  Iris asks gravely, How does that happen?

  Duke says, "Sweetheart, all kinds of things happen when people get careless!"

  Blood, Iris Courtney learns, is everything.

  Blood. Bloodlines. Pedigree. "Purity."
>
  At the Batavia Downs racetrack Duke Courtney explains patiently (to a woman: but not to Persia, who scarcely needs to be told) how in champion horses, power descends through bloodlines exclusively: "In predicting the performances of horses," he says, "bloodlines are everything. Nature favors the aristocrat! These beautiful creatures, in the flesh, are but the embodiment of an idea."

  Grizzled-gray-haired Mr. Jacky Barrow mayor of Hammond on the Republican ticket, high-ranking "secret" officer in the local Masonic Lodge (which, at last, Duke Courtney is invited to join), explains his private views on race to a gathering of friends..

  . as they are being borne choppily eastward on his yacht Erin Maid, on the Cassadaga River, to the New York State Fair in Albany, a gay noisy rowdy group of adults with here and there a wide-eyed child in tow like nine-year-old Iris Courtney. "We must keep this a White Man's country, whatever we do. These are difficult years, and this is our trust.

  This is the sacred foundation laid by our forefathers.

  The Republic was founded by White Men... it was established by White Men. Look: nobody, least of all me, wants to deprive the colored population of their rights, but it is a proven law on this earth. The opposite of purity is mongrelization."

  The pop! of a fresh champagne bottle being uncorked.

  This dazzling-bright Sunday afternoon on the river, Persia and Be urtney, the most strikIng couple in the mayor"s circle, demonstrate their dreamy stylized foxtrot as "My Foolish Heart" blares from the radio, followed by a snappy syncopated "Buttons and Bows" as everyone applauds. Then Mr. Barrow yachting cap on his head, stubby legs swaying, dances with tall lovely Mrs. Courtney, grips her so sweatily tight his fingers permanently crease her peach-colored chiffon dress.

  Iris is staring as if memorizing but unaccountably falls asleep in the overhead sun, wedged between rubberized cushions as Duke Courtney's long limber legs in white linen trousers cavort across the deck..

  .

  and when she's wakened, her tender skin smarting as if, in sleep, she'd been soundly slapped, it's to the identical voices, shrieks of laughter, happy music she had heard hours before.

  Her mommy and daddy's friends, having a good time together.

  A party. On the Erin Maid.

  And that night in Albany, in the plush-carpeted hotel room where the Courtneys are guests ('All expenses paid!" gloats Duke), Persia trundles her feverish little girl off for a bath, rubs cold cream-yes, deliciously cold on her sunburnt face and shoulders.

  Persia has done up her heavy red-gold hair in quick pincurls smelling of setting gel, and there's a mask of cold cream too on her beautiful face... gives her a queenly haughty look. She says, "There's nothing so nice, baby, as being clean, is there. Clean outside and in." Pronouncing her words with care, not wanting to slur syllables, eyes eating up her drowsy little girl in the tub as ifthough Duke is waiting impatiently for her, there's a party in full swing in Jacky Barrow's suite, Where the hell are the Courtneys?she'd love to throw off her clothes and slip into the sudsy bubbly bathwater tart as lemon juice, herself. "Wish I had time to be clean as my little darling, always," Persia whispers, leaning dizzily to kiss Iris on her snubbed-button nose, "outside and in. Always.

  Another episode the adults talk about, for a while, is how John Ritchie died.

  John Elmore Ritchie, thirty-eight years old at the time of his death at Hammond City jail, August 1952, Negro, U.S. Army veteran of World War II, wounded in the Philippines and walked with a drag to his left foot... married, six children, one grandchild... worked for the Orleans County Sanitation Department, a frozen-faced black man with some mental worry he might provoke violence or harm to others if he spoke too loudly; thus he rarely raised his voice above a whisper outside of his home or church (he sang in the men's chorus at Second Calvary Zion Baptist), nor did he make abrupt unpremeditated movements with his body or look too directly at people whether black or white, and especially white.

  So John Ritchie is coming home on East Avenue about 6 P.M. this latesummer day and a Hammond City police car pulls over and two policemen get out yelling to him to "stop and identify yourself," their billy clubs out and their voices raised, as if there was already some trouble, some threat.

  On account of this poor sad-faced Ritchie wears eyeglasses with thick lenses, and eyeglasses on a six-foot burly Negro with a scar or a birthmark on his forehead like a fossil imprinted in rock is an extreme look close to answering the description a white woman gave police earlier that day of a coal-black Negro who threatened to assault her.

  .. stopped her car turning off the Oldwick Road yelling and cursing at her pounding the hood of her car with his fist tried to smash the windshield with that same bare fist... a "stone-blind drunk" nigger with coal-black greasy oily skin and hair in tufts like "greasy black soap"... a "raving" madman.

  and he's wearing dark sunglasses. And it's John Elmore Ritchie's bad luck he resembles this Negro, or anyway it seems so: the size of him, and the glasses, and the "suspicious behavior" the white cops are alerted to, just spying him there on the street walking along dragging his leg like he didn't want to call any attention to himself.

  So they stop him. Ask him what's his name where's his identification where's he going where's he coming from is he drunk?

  high on weed? what're you doing, boy, with that knife? "concealed weapon" on your person?

  Not that John Ritchie has got any knife, concealed or other wise, nor ever did, not being that kind. It's just cops' jive talk and shit like that.

  So John Ritchie's too scared to answer, or too frozen.

  frozen-faced. Like already he'd been slammed over the head, stunned like a steer going to slaughter.

  They said, the Ritchies, when he came back from wherever he'd been, in the Pacific, from the army hospital there, he wasn't the same man who'd been shipped out... didn't even look the same, entirely. And he'd be fearful of doing injury to his children by touching them or even looking too direct at them, looking anybody too direct in the eye out of terror a wicked thought could leap from one mind to another; and sometimes too, when he was sleeping, or singing in the chorus, his hands would move and wriggle on their own like something out of the deep sea you d expect to have claws, capable of quick darting movements and lethal attacks. So these hands he kept down at his sides when he was conscious of the need to do so, and when the white cops yelled at him he went stony still in the street like at attention in the army and seemed almost not to hear them, the things they said to him, nor even, at first, to feel their billy clubs prodding and poking and tapping.

  .

  . until finally his glasses flew off and they had him spreadeagled leaning against a wall using their billy clubs some more, for maybe it seemed in their eyes this weird nigger was stubborn or sullen or "resisting" police officers in some special sly fashion of his own, judging from the scrunched-up look of his ugly black face, that look like something hacked in stone, a terror so deep it has turned into something else, too subtle and elusive to be named.

  Now John Elmore Ritchie is bleeding from the nose and mouth and some neighborhood people have stopped to watch.

  from across the street. This is the unpaved end of East Avenue, Lowertown as it shifts into Niggertown; neighborhood folks know not to get too close, in such circumstances, and to keep their mouths shut.

  The cops are striking John Ritchie, asking him questions the man can't or won't answer... never says a word except grunting when he's hit.

  .. then suddenly he covers his face with his hands and turns and butts with his head lowered like some maddened bull or something, hits one of the cops in the chest and sends him six feet backward and now there's sure hell to pay.

  A second patrol car pulls up. A police van pulls up. There's sirens, walkie-talkies, men with pistols. And they have John Ritchie on the ground in the dirt and the man is fighting, he's fighting like some crazy old bull, so they wallop him over the head and kick him till he stops... drag him into the rear of the van.

  t
he cops yelling to the black people watching, "You want trouble?

  Which one of you wants trouble?" with their pistols leveled and primed to use, and John Ritchie they claimed died in the Hammond City jail early in the morning of the following day banged his head against the bars of his cell they said and this was corroborated by police witnesses and two or three inmates and after John Ritchie's funeral at Zion Church and for two nights following black people gather in the street on East Avenue and Pitt, and word goes through Hammond there's going to be trouble... going to be a black uprising... and there's a small army of city cops and New York State troopers...

  police barricades set up in the street and traffic rerouted and a 9

  P.M. curfew in effect all weekend... young black men mainly are the disturbers-of-the-peace the cops are alert to, and disperse. And they disperse them, and others. And there are no arrests. And that's how John Elmore Ritchie dies and gets buried in Peach Tree Cemetery.