1. 1. QUESTION

   Discussion post comparing two texts  

   Using either Zora Neale Hurston’s Sweat or Hughes’ “The Blues I’m Playing,” discuss how both race (Blackness) and gender (femaleness) overcome/overturn the oppressive social hierarchy.

   In other words, you’ll be answering the following question(s): How do the Black female protagonists achieve this outcome (of overturning the social hierarchy)? Is it accidental? Do they wield intellectual power? Sexual power? Artistic power? Communal support?

   (no need for any formatting or work cited page, Thanks!)

   Sweat

   by Zora Neale Hurston

   It was eleven o’clock of a Spring night in Florida. It was Sunday. Any other night, Delia Jones

   would have been in bed for two hours by this time. But she was a wash-woman, and Monday

   morning meant a great deal to her. So she collected the soiled clothes on Saturday when she

   returned the clean things. Sunday night after church, she sorted them and put the white things to

   soak. It saved her almost a half day’s start. A great hamper in the bedroom held the clothes that

   she brought home. It was so much neater than a number of bundles lying around.

   She squatted in the kitchen floor beside the great pile of clothes, sorting them into small heaps

   according to color, and humming a song in a mournful key, but wondering through it all where

   Sykes, her husband, had gone with her horse and buckboard.

   Just then something long, round, limp and black fell upon her shoulders and slithered to the floor

   beside her. A great terror took hold of her. It softened her knees and dried her mouth so that it

   was a full minute before she could cry out or move. Then she saw that it was the big bull whip

   her husband liked to carry when he drove.

   She lifted her eyes to the door and saw him standing there bent over with laughter at her fright.

   She screamed at him.

   “Sykes, what you throw dat whip on me like dat? You know it would skeer me–looks just like a

   snake, an’ you knows how skeered Ah is of snakes.”

   “Course Ah knowed it! That’s how come Ah done it.” He slapped his leg with his hand and

   almost rolled on the ground in his mirth. “If you such a big fool dat you got to have a fit over a

   earth worm or a string, Ah don’t keer how bad Ah skeer you.”

   “You aint got no business doing it. Gawd knows it’s a sin. Some day Ah’m goin’ tuh drop dead

   from some of yo’ foolishness. ‘Nother thing, where you been wid mah rig? Ah feeds dat pony. He

   aint fuh you to be drivin’ wid no bull whip.”

   “You sho is one aggravatin’ nigger woman!” he declared and stepped into the room. She resumed

   her work and did not answer him at once. “Ah done tole you time and again to keep them white

   folks’ clothes outa dis house.”

   He picked up the whip and glared down at her. Delia went on with her work. She went out into

   the yard and returned with a galvanized tub and set it on the washbench. She saw that Sykes had

   kicked all of the clothes together again, and now stood in her way truculently, his whole manner

   hoping, praying, for an argument. But she walked calmly around him and commenced to re-sort

   the things.

   “Next time, Ah’m gointer kick ’em outdoors,” he threatened as he struck a match along the leg of

   his corduroy breeches.

   Delia never looked up from her work, and her thin, stooped shoulders sagged further.

   “Ah aint for no fuss t’night Sykes. Ah just come from taking sacrament at the church house.”

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   He snorted scornfully. “Yeah, you just come from de church house on a Sunday night, but heah

   you is gone to work on them clothes. You ain’t nothing but a hypocrite. One of them amencorner

   Christians–sing, whoop, and shout, then come home and wash white folks clothes on the

   Sabbath.”

   He stepped roughly upon the whitest pile of things, kicking them helter-skelter as he crossed the

   room. His wife gave a little scream of dismay, and quickly gathered them together again.

   “Sykes, you quit grindin’ dirt into these clothes! How can Ah git through by Sat’day if Ah don’t

   start on Sunday?”

   “Ah don’t keer if you never git through. Anyhow, Ah done promised Gawd and a couple of other

   men, Ah aint gointer have it in mah house. Don’t gimme no lip neither, else Ah’ll throw ’em out

   and put mah fist up side yo’ head to boot.”

   Delia’s habitual meekness seemed to slip from her shoulders like a blown scarf. She was on her

   feet; her poor little body, her bare knuckly hands bravely defying the strapping hulk before her.

   “Looka heah, Sykes, you done gone too fur. Ah been married to you fur fifteen years, and Ah

   been takin’ in washin’ for fifteen years. Sweat, sweat, sweat! Work and sweat, cry and sweat,

   pray and sweat!”

   “What’s that got to do with me?” he asked brutally.

   “What’s it got to do with you, Sykes? Mah tub of suds is filled yo’ belly with vittles more times

   than yo’ hands is filled it. Mah sweat is done paid for this house and Ah reckon Ah kin keep on

   sweatin’ in it.”

   She seized the iron skillet from the stove and struck a defensive pose, which act surprised him

   greatly, coming from her. It cowed him and he did not strike her as he usually did.

   “Naw you won’t,” she panted, “that ole snaggle-toothed black woman you runnin’ with aint

   comin’ heah to pile up on mah sweat and blood. You aint paid for nothin’ on this place, and Ah’m

   gointer stay right heah till Ah’m toted out foot foremost.”

   “Well, you better quit gittin’ me riled up, else they’ll be totin’ you out sooner than you expect.

   Ah’m so tired of you Ah don’t know whut to do. Gawd! how Ah hates skinny wimmen!”

   A little awed by this new Delia, he sidled out of the door and slammed the back gate after him.

   He did not say where he had gone, but she knew too well. She knew very well that he would not

   return until nearly daybreak also. Her work over, she went on to bed but not to sleep at once.

   Things had come to a pretty pass!

   She lay awake, gazing upon the debris that cluttered their matrimonial trail. Not an image left

   standing along the way. Anything like flowers had long ago been drowned in the salty stream

   that had been pressed from her heart. Her tears, her sweat, her blood. She had brought love to the

   union and he had brought a longing after the flesh. Two months after the wedding, he had given

   her the first brutal beating. She had the memory of his numerous trips to Orlando with all of his

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   wages when he had returned to her penniless, even before the first year had passed. She was

   young and soft then, but now she thought of her knotty, muscled limbs, her harsh knuckly hands,

   and drew herself up into an unhappy little ball in the middle of the big feather bed. Too late now

   to hope for love, even if it were not Bertha it would be someone else. This case differed from the

   others only in that she was bolder than the others. Too late for everything except her little home.

   She had built it for her old days, and planted one by one the trees and flowers there. It was lovely

   to her, lovely.

   Somehow, before sleep came, she found herself saying aloud: “Oh well, whatever goes over the

   Devil’s back, is got to come under his belly. Sometime or ruther, Sykes, like everybody else, is

   gointer reap his sowing.” After that she was able to build a spiritual earthworks against her

   husband. His shells could no longer reach her. Amen. She went to sleep and slept until he

   announced his presence in bed by kicking her feet and rudely snatching the covers away.

   “Gimme some kivah heah, an’ git yo’ damn foots over on yo’ own side! Ah oughter mash you in

   yo’ mouf fuh drawing dat skillet on me.”

   Delia went clear to the rail without answering him. A triumphant indifference to all that he was

   or did.

   *****

   The week was as full of work for Delia as all other weeks, and Saturday found her behind her

   little pony, collecting and delivering clothes.

   It was a hot, hot day near the end of July. The village men on Joe Clarke’s porch even chewed

   cane listlessly. They did not hurl the cane-knots as usual. They let them dribble over the edge of

   the porch. Even conversation had collapsed under the heat.

   “Heah come Delia Jones,” Jim Merchant said, as the shaggy pony came ’round the bend of the

   road toward them. The rusty buckboard was heaped with baskets of crisp, clean laundry.

   “Yep,” Joe Lindsay agreed. “Hot or col’, rain or shine, jes ez reg’lar ez de weeks roll roun’ Delia

   carries ’em an’ fetches ’em on Sat’day.”

   “She better if she wanter eat,” said Moss. “Syke Jones aint wuth de shot an’ powder hit would tek

   tuh kill ’em. Not to huh he aint. “

   “He sho’ aint,” Walter Thomas chimed in. “It’s too bad, too, cause she wuz a right pritty lil trick

   when he got huh. Ah’d uh mah’ied huh mahseff if he hadnter beat me to it.”

   Delia nodded briefly at the men as she drove past.

   “Too much knockin’ will ruin any ‘oman. He done beat huh ‘nough tuh kill three women, let ‘lone

   change they looks,” said Elijah Moseley. “How Syke kin stommuck dat big black greasy Mogul

   he’s layin’ roun wid, gits me. Ah swear dat eight-rock couldn’t kiss a sardine can Ah done

   throwed out de back do’ ‘way las’ yeah.”

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   “Aw, she’s fat, thass how come. He’s allus been crazy ’bout fat women,” put in Merchant. “He’d

   a’ been tied up wid one long time ago if he could a’ found one tuh have him. Did Ah tell yuh

   ’bout him come sidlin’ roun’ mah wife–bringin’ her a basket uh pecans outa his yard fuh a

   present? Yessir, mah wife! She tol’ him tuh take ’em right straight back home, cause Delia works

   so hard ovah dat washtub she reckon everything on de place taste lak sweat an’ soapsuds. Ah jus’

   wisht Ah’d a’ caught ‘im ‘dere! Ah’d a’ made his hips ketch on fiah down dat shell road.”

   “Ah know he done it, too. Ah sees ‘im grinnin’ at every ‘oman dat passes,” Walter Thomas said.

   “But even so, he useter eat some mighty big hunks uh humble pie tuh git dat lil ‘oman he got. She

   wuz ez pritty ez a speckled pup! Dat wuz fifteen yeahs ago. He useter be so skeered uh losin’

   huh, she could make him do some parts of a husband’s duty. Dey never wuz de same in de

   mind.”

   “There oughter be a law about him,” said Lindsay. “He aint fit tuh carry guts tuh a bear.”

   Clarke spoke for the first time. “Taint no law on earth dat kin make a man be decent if it aint in

   ‘im. There’s plenty men dat takes a wife lak dey do a joint uh sugar-cane. It’s round, juicy an’

   sweet when dey gits it. But dey squeeze an’ grind, squeeze an’ grind an’ wring tell dey wring

   every drop uh pleasure dat’s in ’em out. When dey’s satisfied dat dey is wrung dry, dey treats ’em

   jes lak dey do a cane-chew. Dey throws em away. Dey knows whut dey is doin’ while dey is at it,

   an’ hates theirselves fuh it but they keeps on hangin’ after huh tell she’s empty. Den dey hates huh

   fuh bein’ a cane-chew an’ in de way.”

   “We oughter take Syke an’ dat stray ‘oman uh his’n down in Lake Howell swamp an’ lay on de

   rawhide till they cain’t say Lawd a’ mussy.’ He allus wuz uh ovahbearin’ niggah, but since dat

   white ‘oman from up north done teached ‘im how to run a automobile, he done got too biggety to

   live–an’ we oughter kill ‘im,” Old Man Anderson advised.

   A grunt of approval went around the porch. But the heat was melting their civic virtue, and

   Elijah Moseley began to bait Joe Clarke.

   “Come on, Joe, git a melon outa dere an’ slice it up for yo’ customers. We’se all sufferin’ wid de

   heat. De bear’s done got me!”

   “Thass right, Joe, a watermelon is jes’ whut Ah needs tuh cure de eppizudicks,” Walter Thomas

   joined forces with Moseley. “Come on dere, Joe. We all is steady customers an’ you aint set us

   up in a long time. Ah chooses dat long, bowlegged Floridy favorite.”

   “A god, an’ be dough. You all gimme twenty cents and slice way,” Clarke retorted. “Ah needs a

   col’ slice m’self. Heah, everybody chip in. Ah’ll lend y’ll mah meat knife.”

   The money was quickly subscribed and the huge melon brought forth. At that moment, Sykes

   and Bertha arrived. A determined silence fell on the porch and the melon was put away again.

   Merchant snapped down the blade of his jackknife and moved toward the store door.

   “Come on in, Joe, an’ gimme a slab uh sow belly an’ uh pound uh coffee–almost fuhgot ’twas

   Sat’day. Got to git on home.” Most of the men left also.

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   Just then Delia drove past on her way home, as Sykes was ordering magnificently for Bertha. It

   pleased him for Delia to see.

   “Git whutsoever yo’ heart desires, Honey. Wait a minute, Joe. Give huh two bottles uh

   strawberry soda-water, uh quart uh parched ground-peas, an’ a block uh chewin’ gum.”

   With all this they left the store, with Sykes reminding Bertha that this was his town and she

   could have it if she wanted it.

   The men returned soon after they left, and held their watermelon feast.

   “Where did Syke Jones git da ‘oman from nohow?” Lindsay asked.

   “Ovah Apopka. Guess dey musta been cleanin’ out de town when she lef’. She don’t look lak a

   thing but a hunk uh liver wid hair on it.”

   “Well, she sho’ kin squall,” Dave Carter contributed. “When she gits ready tuh laff, she jes’ opens

   huh mouf an’ latches it back tuh de las’ notch. No ole grandpa alligator down in Lake Bell ain’t

   got nothin’ on huh.”

   *****

   Bertha had been in town three months now. Sykes was still paying her room rent at Della Lewis’-

   -the only house in town that would have taken her in. Sykes took her frequently to Winter Park

   to “stomps.” He still assured her that he was the swellest man in the state.

   “Sho’ you kin have dat lil’ ole house soon’s Ah kin git dat ‘oman outa dere. Everything b’longs

   tuh me an’ you sho’ kin have it. Ah sho’ ‘bominates uh skinny ‘oman. Lawdy, you sho’ is got one

   portly shape on you! You kin git anything you wants. Dis is mah town an’ you sho’ kin have it.”

   Delia’s work-worn knees crawled over the earth in Gethsemane and up the rocks of Calvary

   many, many times during these months. She avoided the villagers and meeting places in her

   efforts to be blind and deaf. But Bertha nullified this to a degree, by coming to Delia’s house to

   call Sykes out to her at the gate.

   Delia and Sykes fought all the time now with no peaceful interludes. They slept and ate in

   silence. Two or three times Delia had attempted a timid friendliness, but she was repulsed each

   time. It was plain that the breaches must remain agape.

   The sun had burned July to August. The heat streamed down like a million hot arrows, smiting

   all things living upon the earth. Grass withered, leaves browned, snakes went blind in shedding

   and men and dogs went mad. Dog days!

   Delia came home one day and found Sykes there before her. She wondered, but started to go on

   into the house without speaking, even though he was standing in the kitchen door and she must

   either stoop under his arm or ask him to move. He made no room for her. She noticed a soap box

   beside the steps, but paid no particular attention to it, knowing that he must have brought it there.

   As she was stooping to pass under his outstretched arm, he suddenly pushed her backward,

   laughingly.

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   “Look in de box dere Delia, Ah done brung yuh somethin’!”

   She nearly fell upon the box in her stumbling, and when she saw what it held, she all but fainted

   outright.

   “Syke! Syke, mah Gawd! You take dat rattlesnake ‘way from heah! You gottuh. Oh, Jesus, have

   mussy!”

   “Ah aint gut tuh do nuthin’ uh de kin’–fact is Ah aint got tuh do nothin’ but die. Taint no use uh

   you puttin’ on airs makin’ out lak you skeered uh dat snake–he’s gointer stay right heah tell he

   die. He wouldn’t bite me cause Ah knows how tuh handle ‘im. Nohow he wouldn’t risk breakin’

   out his fangs ‘gin yo’ skinny laigs.”

   “Naw, now Syke, don’t keep dat thing ‘roun’ heah tuh skeer me tuh death. You knows Ah’m even

   feared uh earth worms. Thass de biggest snake Ah evah did see. Kill ‘im Syke, please.”

   “Doan ast me tuh do nothin’ fuh yuh. Goin’ roun’ trying’ tuh be so damn asterperious. Naw, Ah

   aint gonna kill it. Ah think uh damn sight mo’ uh him dan you! Dat’s a nice snake an’ anybody

   doan lak ‘im kin jes’ hit de grit.”

   The village soon heard that Sykes had the snake, and came to see and ask questions.

   “How de hen-fire did you ketch dat six-foot rattler, Syke?” Thomas asked.

   “He’s full uh frogs so he caint hardly move, thass how. Ah eased up on ‘m. But Ah’m a snake

   charmer an’ knows how tuh handle ’em. Shux, dat aint nothin’. Ah could ketch one eve’y day if

   Ah so wanted tuh.”

   “Whut he needs is a heavy hick’ry club leaned real heavy on his head. Dat’s de bes ‘way tuh

   charm a rattlesnake.”

   “Naw, Walt, y’ll jes’ don’t understand dese diamon’ backs lak Ah do,” said Sykes in a superior

   tone of voice.

   The village agreed with Walter, but the snake stayed on. His box remained by the kitchen door

   with its screen wire covering. Two or three days later it had digested its meal of frogs and

   literally came to life. It rattled at every movement in the kitchen or the yard. One day as Delia

   came down the kitchen steps she saw his chalky-white fangs curved like scimitars hung in the

   wire meshes. This time she did not run away with averted eyes as usual. She stood for a long

   time in the doorway in a red fury that grew bloodier for every second that she regarded the

   creature that was her torment.

   That night she broached the subject as soon as Sykes sat down to the table.

   “Syke, Ah wants you tuh take dat snake ‘way fum heah. You done starved me an’ Ah put up

   widcher, you done beat me an Ah took dat, but you done kilt all mah insides bringin’ dat varmint

   heah.”

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   Sykes poured out a saucer full of coffee and drank it deliberately before he answered her.

   “A whole lot Ah keer ’bout how you feels inside uh out. Dat snake aint goin’ no damn wheah till

   Ah gits ready fuh ‘im tuh go. So fur as beatin’ is concerned, yuh aint took near all dat you gointer

   take ef yuh stay ‘roun’ me.”

   Delia pushed back her plate and got up from the table. “Ah hates you, Sykes,” she said calmly.

   “Ah hates you tuh de same degree dat Ah useter love yuh. Ah done took an’ took till mah belly is

   full up tuh mah neck. Dat’s de reason Ah got mah letter fum de church an’ moved mah

   membership tuh Woodbridge–so Ah don’t haf tuh take no sacrament wid yuh. Ah don’t wantuh

   see yuh ‘roun’ me atall. Lay ‘roun’ wid dat ‘oman all yuh wants tuh, but gwan ‘way fum me an’

   mah house. Ah hates yuh lak uh suck-egg dog.”

   Sykes almost let the huge wad of corn bread and collard greens he was chewing fall out of his

   mouth in amazement. He had a hard time whipping himself up to the proper fury to try to answer

   Delia.

   “Well, Ah’m glad you does hate me. Ah’m sho’ tiahed uh you hangin’ ontuh me. Ah don’t want

   yuh. Look at yuh stringey ole neck! Yo’ rawbony laigs an’ arms is enough tuh cut uh man tuh

   death. You looks jes’ lak de devvul’s doll-baby tuh me. You cain’t hate me no worse dan Ah hates

   you. Ah been hatin’ you fuh years.”

   “Yo’ ole black hide don’t look lak nothin’ tuh me, but uh passle uh wrinkled up rubber, wid yo’

   big ole yeahs flappin’ on each side lak uh paih uh buzzard wings. Don’t think Ah’m gointuh be

   run ‘way fum mah house neither. Ah’m goin’ tuh de white folks bout you, mah young man, de

   very nex’ time you lay yo’ han’s on me. Mah cup is done run ovah.” Delia said this with no signs

   of fear and Sykes departed from the house, threatening her, but made not the slightest move to

   carry out any of them.

   That night he did not return at all, and the next day being Sunday, Delia was glad she did not

   have to quarrel before she hitched up her pony and drove the four miles to Woodbridge.

   She stayed to the night service–“love feast”–which was very warm and full of spirit. In the

   emotional winds her domestic trials were borne far and wide so that she sang as she drove

   homeward.

   “Jurden water, black an’ col’

   Chills de body, not de soul

   An’ Ah wantah cross Jurden in uh calm time.”

   She came from the barn to the kitchen door and stopped.

   “Whut’s de mattah, ol’ satan, you aint kickin’ up yo’ racket?” She addressed the snake’s box.

   Complete silence. She went on into the house with a new hope in its birth struggles. Perhaps her

   threat to go to the white folks had frightened Sykes! Perhaps he was sorry! Fifteen years of

   misery and suppression had brought Delia to the place where she would hope anything that

   looked towards a way over or through her wall of inhibitions.

   She felt in the match safe behind the stove at once for a match. There was only one there.

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   “Dat niggah wouldn’t fetch nothin’ heah tuh save his rotten neck, but he kin run thew whut Ah

   brings quick enough. Now he done toted off nigh on tuh haff uh box uh matches. He done had

   dat ‘oman heah in mah house, too.”

   Nobody but a woman could tell how she knew this even before she struck the match. But she did

   and it put her into a new fury.

   Presently she brought in the tubs to put the white things to soak. This time she decided she need

   not bring the hamper out of the bedroom; she would go in there and do the sorting. She picked up

   the pot-bellied lamp and went in. The room was small and the hamper stood hard by the foot of

   the white iron bed. She could sit and reach through the bedposts–resting as she worked.

   “Ah wantah cross Jurden in uh calm time,” she was singing again. The mood of the “love feast”

   had returned. She threw back the lid of the basket almost gaily. Then, moved by both horror and

   terror, she sprang back toward the door. There lay the snake in the basket! He moved sluggishly

   at first, but even as she turned round and round, jumped up and down in an insanity of fear, he

   began to stir vigorously. She saw him pouring his awful beauty from the basket upon the bed,

   then she seized the lamp and ran as fast as she could to the kitchen. The wind from the open door

   blew out the light and the darkness added to her terror. She sped to the darkness of the yard,

   slamming the door after her before she thought to set down the lamp. She did not feel safe even

   on the ground, so she climbed up in the hay barn.

   There for an hour or more she lay sprawled upon the hay a gibbering wreck.

   Finally, she grew quiet, and after that, coherent thought. With this, stalked through her a cold,

   bloody rage. Hours of this. A period of introspection, a space of retrospection, then a mixture of

   both. Out of this an awful calm.

   “Well, Ah done de bes’ Ah could. If things aint right, Gawd knows taint mah fault.”

   She went to sleep–a twitch sleep–and woke up to a faint gray sky. There was a loud hollow

   sound below. She peered out. Sykes was at the wood-pile, demolishing a wire-covered box.

   He hurried to the kitchen door, but hung outside there some minutes before he entered, and stood

   some minutes more inside before he closed it after him.

   The gray in the sky was spreading. Delia descended without fear now, and crouched beneath the

   low bedroom window. The drawn shade shut out the dawn, shut in the night. But the thin walls

   held back no sound.

   “Dat ol’ scratch is woke up now!” She mused at the tremendous whirr inside, which every

   woodsman knows, is one of the sound illusions. The rattler is a ventriloquist. His whirr sounds to

   the right, to the left, straight ahead, behind, close under foot–everywhere but where it is. Woe to

   him who guesses wrong unless he is prepared to hold up his end of the argument! Sometimes he

   strikes without rattling at all.

   Inside, Sykes heard nothing until he knocked a pot lid off the stove while trying to reach the

   match safe in the dark. He had emptied his pockets at Bertha’s.

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   The snake seemed to wake up under the stove and Sykes made a quick leap into the bedroom. In

   spite of the gin he had had, his head was clearing now.

   “‘Mah Gawd!” he chattered, “ef Ah could on’y strack uh light!”

   The rattling ceased for a moment as he stood paralyzed. He waited. It seemed that the snake

   waited also.

   “Oh, fuh de light! Ah thought he’d be too sick”–Sykes was muttering to himself when the whirr

   began again, closer, right underfoot this time. Long before this, Sykes’ ability to think had been

   flattened down to primitive instinct and he leaped–onto the bed.

   Outside Delia heard a cry that might have come from a maddened chimpanzee, a stricken gorilla.

   All the terror, all the horror, all the rage that man possibly could express, without a recognizable

   human sound.

   A tremendous stir inside there, another series of animal screams, the intermittent whirr of the

   reptile. The shade torn violently down from the window, letting in the red dawn, a huge brown

   hand seizing the window stick, great dull blows upon the wooden floor punctuating the gibberish

   of sound long after the rattle of the snake had abruptly subsided. All this Delia could see and

   hear from her place beneath the window, and it made her ill. She crept over to the four-o’clocks

   and stretched herself on the cool earth to recover.

   She lay there. “Delia. Delia!” She could hear Sykes calling in a most despairing tone as one who

   expected no answer. The sun crept on up, and he called. Delia could not move–her legs were

   gone flabby. She never moved, he called, and the sun kept rising.

   “Mah Gawd!” She heard him moan, “Mah Gawd fum Heben!” She heard him stumbling about

   and got up from her flower-bed. The sun was growing warm. As she approached the door she

   heard him call out hopefully, “Delia, is dat you Ah heah?”

   She saw him on his hands and knees as soon as she reached the door. He crept an inch or two

   toward her–all that he was able, and she saw his horribly swollen neck and his one open eye

   shining with hope. A surge of pity too strong to support bore her away from that eye that must,

   could not, fail to see the tubs. He would see the lamp. Orlando with its doctors was too far. She

   could scarcely reach the Chinaberry tree, where she waited in the growing heat while inside she

   knew the cold river was creeping up and up to extinguish that eye which must know by now that

   she knew.

   1926

   ExxonMobil Masterpiece Theatre | American Collection | Cora Unashamed Page 1 of 13

   http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/cora/works_bluesimplaying.html 1/11/2001

   Works by Langston Hughes

   The Blues I’m Playing

   by Langston Hughes

   I | II | III | IV | V

   Oceola Jones, pianist, studied under Philippe in Paris. Mrs. Dora

   Ellsworth paid her bills. The bills included a little apartment on the

   Left Bank and a grand piano. Twice a year Mrs. Ellsworth came over

   from New York and spent part of her time with Oceola in the little

   apartment. The rest of her time abroad she spent at Biarritz or Juan

   les Pins, where she would see the new canvases of Antonio Bas,

   young Spanish painter who also enjoyed the patronage of Mrs.

   Ellsworth. Bas and Oceola, the woman thought, both had genius. And

   whether they had genius or not, she loved them, and took good care

   of them.

   Poor dear lady, she had no children of her own. Her husband was

   dead. And she had no interest in life now save art, and the young

   people who created art. She was very rich, and it gave her pleasure to

   share her richness with beauty. Except that she was sometimes

   confused as to where beauty lay — in the youngsters or in what they

   made, in the creators or the creation. Mrs. Ellsworth had been known

   to help charming young people who wrote terrible poems, blue-eyed

   young men who painted awful pictures. And she once turned down a

   garlic-smelling soprano-singing girl who, a few years later, had all the

   critics in New York at her feet. The girl was so sallow. And she really

   needed a bath, or at least a mouth wash, on the day when Mrs.

   Ellsworth went to hear her sing at an East Side settlement house.

   Mrs. Ellsworth had sent a small check and let it go at that — since,

   however, living to regret bitterly her lack of musical acumen in the face

   of garlic.

   About Oceola, though, there had been no doubt. The Negro girl had

   been highly recommended to her by Ormond Hunter, the music critic,

   who often went to Harlem to hear the church concerts there, and had

   thus listened twice to Oceola’s playing.

   “A most amazing tone,” he had told Mrs. Ellsworth, knowing her

   interest in the young and unusual. “A flare for the piano such as I have

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   seldom encountered. All she needs is training — finish, polish, a

   repertoire.”

   “Where is she?” asked Mrs. Ellsworth at once. “I will hear her play.”

   By the hardest, Oceola was found. By the hardest, an appointment

   was made for her to come to East 63rd Street and play for Mrs.

   Ellsworth. Oceola had said she was busy every day. It seemed that

   she had pupils, rehearsed a church choir, and played almost nightly

   for colored house parties or dances. She made quite a good deal of

   money. She wasn’t tremendously interested, it seemed, in going way

   downtown to play for some elderly lady she had never heard of, even if

   the request did come from the white critic, Ormond Hunter, via the

   pastor of the church whose choir she rehearsed, and to which Mr.

   Hunter’s maid belonged.

   It was finally arranged, however. And one afternoon, promptly on time,

   black Miss Oceola Jones rang the door bell of white Mrs. Dora

   Ellsworth’s grey stone house just off Madison. A butler who actually

   wore brass buttons opened the door, and she was shown upstairs to

   the music room. (The butler had been warned of her coming.)

   Ormond Hunter was already there, and they shook hands. In a

   moment, Mrs. Ellsworth came in, a tall stately grey-haired lady in black

   with a scarf that sort of floated behind her. She was tremendously

   intrigued at meeting Oceola, never having had before amongst all her

   artists a black one. And she was greatly impressed that Ormond

   Hunter should have recommended the girl. She began right away,

   treating her as a protegee; that is, she began asking her a great many

   questions she would not dare ask anyone else at a first meeting,

   except a protegee. She asked her how old she was and where her

   mother and father were and how she made her living and whose

   music she liked best to play and was she married and would she

   take one lump or two in her tea, with lemon or cream?

   After tea, Oceola played. She played the Rachmaninoff Prelude in C

   Sharp Minor. She played from the Liszt Etudes. She played the St.

   Louis Blues. She played Ravel’s Pavannne pour une Enfante Défunte.

   And then she said she had to go. She was playing that night for a

   dance in Brooklyn for the benefit of the Urban League.

   Mrs. Ellsworth and Ormond Hunter breathed, “How lovely!”

   Mrs. Ellsworth said, “I am quite overcome, my dear. You play so

   beautifully.” She went on further to say, “You must let me help you.

   Who is your teacher?”

   “I have none now,” Oceola replied. “I teach pupils myself. Don’t have

   any more time to study — nor money either.”

   “But you must have time,” said Mrs. Ellsworth, “and money, also.

   Come back to see me on Tuesday. We will arrange it, my dear.”

   And when the girl had gone, she turned to Ormond Hunter for advice

   on piano teachers to instruct those who already had genius, and need

   only to be developed.

   back to top

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   II

   Then began one of the most interesting periods in Mrs. Ellsworth’s

   whole experience in aiding the arts. The period of Oceola. For the

   Negro girl, as time went on, began to occupy a greater and greater

   place in Mrs. Ellsworth’s interests, to take up more and more of her

   time, and to use up more and more of her money. Not that Oceola

   ever asked for money, but Mrs. Ellsworth herself seemed to keep

   thinking of so much more Oceola needed.

   At first it was hard to get Oceola to need anything. Mrs. Ellsworth had

   the feeling that the girl mistrusted her generosity, and Oceola did — for

   she had never met anybody interested in pure art before. Just to be

   given things for art’s sake seemed suspicious to Oceola. That first

   Tuesday, when the colored girl came back at Mrs. Ellsworth’s request,

   she answered the white woman’s questions with a why-look in her

   eyes.

   “Don’t think I’m being personal, dear,” said Mrs. Ellsworth, “but I must

   know your background in order to help you. Now, tell me . . .”

   Oceola wondered why on earth the woman wanted to help her.

   However, since Mrs. Ellsworth seemed interested in her life’s history,

   she brought it forth so as not to hinder the progress of the afternoon,

   for she wanted to get back to Harlem by six o’clock.

   Born in Mobile in 1903. Yes, ma’am, she was older than she looked.

   Papa had a band, that is her step-father. Used to play for all the lodge

   turn-outs, picnics, dances, barbecues. You could get the best roast

   pig in the world in Mobile. Her mother used to play the organ in

   church, and when the deacons bought a piano after the big revival, her

   mama played that, too. Oceola played by ear for a long while until her

   mother taught her notes. Oceola played an organ, also, and a cornet.

   “My, my,” said Mrs. Ellsworth.

   “Yes, ma’am,” said Oceola. She had played and practiced on lots of

   instruments in the South before her step-father died. She always went

   to band rehearsals with him.

   “And where was your father, dear?” asked Mrs. Ellsworth.

   “My step-father had the band,” replied Oceola. Her mother left off

   playing in the church to go with him traveling in Billy Kersands’

   Minstrels. He had the biggest mouth in the world, Kersands did, and

   used to let Oceola put both her hands in it at a time and stretch it.

   Well, she and her mama and step-papa settled down in Houston.

   Sometimes her parents had jobs and sometimes they didn’t. Often

   they were hungry, but Oceola went to school and had a regular pianoteacher,

   an old German woman, who gave her what technique she

   had today.

   “A fine old teacher,” said Oceola. “She used to teach me half the time

   for nothing. God bless her.”

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   “Yes,” said Mrs. Ellsworth. “She gave you an excellent foundation.”

   “Sure did. But my step-papa died, got cut, and after that Mama didn’t

   have no more use for Houston so we moved to St. Louis. Mama got a

   job playing for the movies in a Market Street theater, and I played for a

   church choir, and saved some money and went to Wilberforce.

   Studied piano there, too. Played for all the college dances. Graduated.

   Came to New York and heard Rachmaninoff and was crazy about

   him. Then Mama died, so I’m keeping the little flat myself. One room

   is rented out.”

   “Is she nice?” asked Mrs. Ellsworth, “your roomer?”

   “It’s not a she,” said Oceola. “He’s a man. I hate women roomers.”

   “Oh,” said Mrs. Ellsworth. “I should think all roomers would be

   terrible.”

   “He’s right nice,” said Oceola. “Name’s Pete Williams.”

   “What does he do?” asked Mrs. Ellsworth.

   “A Pullman porter,” replied Oceola, “but he’s saving money to go to

   med school. He’s a smart fellow.”

   But it turned out later that he wasn’t paying Oceola any rent.

   That afternoon, when Mrs. Ellsworth announced that she had made

   her an appointment with one of the best piano teachers in New York,

   the black girl seemed pleased. She recognized the name. But how,

   she wondered, would she find time for study, with her pupils and her

   choir, and all. When Mrs. Ellsworth said that she would cover her

   entire living expenses, Oceola’s eyes were full of that why-look, as

   though she didn’t believe it.

   “I have faith in your art, dear,” said Mrs. Ellsworth, at parting. But to

   prove it quickly, she sat down that very evening and sent Oceola the

   first monthly check so that she would no longer have to take in pupils

   or drill choirs or play at house parties. And so Oceola would have faith

   in art, too.

   That night Mrs. Ellsworth called up Ormond Hunter and told him what

   she had done. And she asked if Mr. Hunter’s maid knew Oceola, and

   if she supposed that that man rooming with her were anything to her.

   Ormond Hunter said he would inquire.

   Before going to bed, Mrs. Ellsworth told her housekeeper to order a

   book called Nigger Heaven on the morrow, and also anything else

   Brentano’s had about Harlem. She made a mental note that she must

   go up there sometime, for she had never yet seen that dark section of

   New York; and now that she had a Negro protegee, she really ought to

   know something about it. Mrs. Ellsworth couldn’t recall ever having

   known a single Negro before in her whole life, so she found Oceola

   fascinating. And just as black as she herself was white.

   Mrs. Ellsworth began to think in bed about what gowns would look

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   best on Oceola. Her protegee would have to be well-dressed. She

   wondered, too, what sort of a place the girl lived in. And who that man

   was who lived with her. She began to think that really Oceola ought to

   have a place to herself. It didn’t seem quite respectable. . . .

   When she woke up in the morning, she called her car and went by her

   dressmaker’s. She asked the good woman what kind of colors looked

   well with black; not black fabrics, but a black skin.

   “I have a little friend to fit out,” she said.

   “A black friend?” said the dressmaker.

   “A black friend,” said Mrs. Ellsworth.

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   III

   Some days later Ormond Hunter reported on what his maid knew

   about Oceola. It seemed that the two belonged to the same church,

   and although the maid did not know Oceola very well, she knew what

   everybody said about her in church. Yes, indeedy! Oceola were a right

   nice girl, for sure, but it certainly were a shame she were giving all her

   money to that man what stayed with her and what she was practically

   putting through college so he could be a doctor.

   “Why,” gasped Mrs. Ellsworth, “the poor child is being preyed upon.”

   “It seems to me so,” said Ormond Hunter.

   “I must get her out of Harlem,” said Mrs. Ellsworth, “at once. I believe it

   worse than Chinatown.”

   “She might be in a more artistic atmosphere,” agreed Ormond Hunter.

   “And with her career launched, she probably won’t want that man

   anyhow.”

   “She won’t need him,” said Mrs. Ellsworth. “She will have her art.”

   But Mrs. Ellsworth decided that in order to increase the

   rapprochement between art and Oceola, something should be done

   now, at once. She asked the girl to come down to see her the next

   day, and when it was time to go home, the white woman said, “I have

   a half-hour before dinner. I’ll drive you up. You know I’ve never been to

   Harlem.”

   “All right,” said Oceola. “That’s nice of you.”

   But she didn’t suggest the white lady’s coming in, when they drew up

   before a rather sad-looking apartment house in 134th Street. Mrs.

   Ellsworth had to ask could she come in.

   “I live on the fifth floor,” said Oceola, “and there isn’t any elevator.”

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   “It doesn’t matter, dear,” said the white woman, for she meant to see

   the inside of this girl’s life, elevator or no elevator.

   The apartment was just as she thought it would be. After all, she had

   read Thomas Burke on Limehouse. And here was just one more of

   those holes in the wall, even if it was five stories high. The windows

   looked down on slums. There were only four rooms, small as maids’

   rooms, all of them. An upright piano almost filled the parlor. Oceola

   slept in the dining-room. The roomer slept in the bed-chamber

   beyond the kitchen.

   “Where is he, darling?”

   “He runs on the road all summer,” said the girl. “He’s in and out.”

   “But how do you breathe in here?” asked Mrs. Ellsworth. “It’s so small.

   You must have more space for your soul, dear. And for a grand piano.

   Now, in the Village . . .”

   “I do right well here,” said Oceola.

   “But in the Village where so many nice artists live we can get . . .”

   “But I don’t want to move yet. I promised my roomer he could stay till

   fall.”

   “Why till fall?”

   “He’s going to Meharry then.”

   “To marry?”

   “Meharry, yes m’am. That’s a colored Medicine school in Nashville.”

   “Colored? Is it good?”

   “Well, it’s cheap,” said Oceola. “After he goes, I don’t mind moving.”

   “But I wanted to see you settled before I go away for the summer.”

   “When you come back is all right. I can do till then.”

   “Art is long,” reminded Mrs. Ellsworth, “and time is fleeting, my dear.”

   “Yes, m’am,” said Oceola, “but I gets nervous if I start worrying about

   time.”

   So Mrs. Ellsworth went off to Bar Harbor for the season, and left the

   man with Oceola.

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   IV

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   That was some years ago. Eventually art and Mrs. Ellsworth

   triumphed. Oceola moved out of Harlem. She lived in Gay Street west

   of Washington Square where she met Genevieve Taggard, and

   Ernestine Evans, and two or three sculptors, and a cat-painter who

   was also a protegee of Mrs. Ellsworth. She spent her days practicing,

   playing for friends of her patron, going to concerts, and reading books

   about music. She no longer had pupils or rehearsed the choir, but

   she still loved to play for Harlem house parties — for nothing — now

   that she no longer needed the money, out of sheer love of jazz. This

   rather disturbed Mrs. Ellsworth, who still believed in art of the old

   school, portraits that really and truly looked like people, poems about

   nature, music that had soul in it, not syncopation. And she felt the

   dignity of art. Was it in keeping with genius, she wondered, for Oceola

   to have a studio full of white and colored people every Saturday night

   (some of them actually drinking gin from bottles) and dancing to the

   most tomtom-like music she had ever heard coming out of a grand

   piano? She wished she could lift Oceola up bodily and take her away

   from all that, for art’s sake.

   So in the spring, Mrs. Ellsworth organized weekends in the up-state

   mountains where she had a little lodge and where Oceola could look

   from the high places at the stars, and fill her soul with the vastness of

   the eternal, and forget about jazz. Mrs. Ellsworth really began to hate

   jazz — especially on a grand piano.

   If there were a lot of guests at the lodge, as there sometimes were,

   Mrs. Ellsworth might share the bed with Oceola. Then she would read

   aloud Tennyson or Browning before turning out the light, aware all the

   time of the electric strength of that brown-black body beside her, and

   of the deep drowsy voice asking what the poems were about. And

   then Mrs. Ellsworth would feel very motherly toward this dark girl

   whom she had taken under her wing on the wonderful road of art, to

   nurture and love until she became a great interpreter of the piano. At

   such times the elderly white woman was glad her late husband’s

   money, so well invested, furnished her with a large surplus to devote

   to the needs of her protegees, especially to Oceola, the blackest —

   and most interesting of all.

   Why the most interesting?

   Mrs. Ellsworth didn’t know, unless it was that Oceola really was

   talented, terribly alive, and that she looked like nothing Mrs. Ellsworth

   had ever been near before. Such a rich velvet black, and such a hard

   young body! The teacher of the piano raved about her strength.

   “She can stand a great career,” the teacher said. “She has everything

   for it.”

   “Yes,” agreed Mrs. Ellsworth, thinking, however, of the Pullman porter

   at Meharry, “but she must learn to sublimate her soul.”

   So for two years then, Oceola lived abroad at Mrs. Ellsworth’s

   expense. She studied with Philippe, had the little apartment on the

   Left Bank, and learned about Dubussy’s African background. She met

   many black Algerian and French West Indian students, too, and

   listened to their interminable arguments ranging from Garvey to

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   Picasso to Spengler to Jean Cocteau, and thought they all must be

   crazy. Why did they or anybody argue so much about life or art?

   Oceola merely lived — and loved it. Only the Marxian students seemed

   sound to her for they, at least, wanted people to have enough to eat.

   That was important, Oceola thought, remembering, as she did, her

   own sometimes hungry years. But the rest of the controversies, as far

   as she could fathom, were based on air.

   Oceola hated most artists, too, and the word art in French or English.

   If you wanted to play the piano or paint pictures or write books, go

   ahead! But why talk so much about it? Montparnasse was worse in

   that respect than the Village. And as for the cultured Negroes who

   were always saying art would break down color lines, art could save

   the race and prevent lynchings! “Bunk!” said Oceola. “My ma and pa

   were both artists when it came to making music, and white folks ran

   them out of town for being dressed up in Alabama. And look at the

   Jews! Every other artist in the world’s a Jew, and still folks hate them.”

   She thought of Mrs. Ellsworth (dear soul in New York), who never

   made uncomplimentary remarks about Negroes, but frequently did

   about Jews. Of little Menuhin she would say, for instance, “He’s a

   genius — not a Jew,” hating to admit his ancestry.

   In Paris, Oceola especially loved the West Indian ball rooms where

   the black colonials danced the beguin. And she liked the entertainers

   at Bricktop’s. Sometimes late at night there, Oceola would take the

   piano and beat out a blues for Brick and the assembled guests. In her

   playing of Negro folk music, Oceola never doctored it up, or filled it full

   of classical runs, or fancy falsities. In the blues she made the bass

   notes throb like tom-toms, the trebles cry like little flutes, so deep in

   the earth and so high in the sky that they understood everything. And

   when the night club crowd would get up and dance to her blues, and

   Bricktop would yell, “Hey! Hey!” Oceola felt as happy as if she were

   performing a Chopin étude for the nicely gloved Oh’s and Ah-ers in a

   Crillon salon.

   Music, to Oceola, demanded movement and expression, dancing and

   living to go with it. She liked to teach, when she had the choir, the

   singing of those rhythmical Negro spirituals that possessed the

   power to pull colored folks out of their seats in the amen corner and

   make them prance and shout in the aisles for Jesus. She never liked

   those fashionable colored churches where shouting and movement

   were discouraged and looked down upon, and where New England

   hymns instead of spirituals were sung. Oceola’s background was too

   well-grounded in Mobile, and Billy Kersands’ Minstrels, and the

   Sanctified churches where religion was a joy, to stare mystically over

   the top of a grand piano like white folks and imagine that Beethoven

   had nothing to do with life, or that Schubert’s love songs were only

   sublimations.

   Whenever Mrs. Ellsworth came to Paris, she and Oceola spent hours

   listening to symphonies and string quartettes and pianists. Oceola

   enjoyed concerts, but seldom felt, like her patron, that she was

   floating on clouds of bliss. Mrs. Ellsworth insisted, however, that

   Oceola’s spirit was too moved for words at such time — therefore she

   understood why the dear child kept quiet. Mrs. Ellsworth herself was

   often too moved for words, but never by pieces like Ravel’s Bolero

   (which Oceola played on the phonograph as a dance record) or any of

   the compositions of les Six.

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   What Oceola really enjoyed most with Mrs. Ellsworth was not going to

   concerts, but going for trips on the little river boats on the Seine; or

   riding out to old chateaux in her patron’s hired Renault; or to

   Versailles, and listening to the aging white lady talk about the

   romantic history of France, the wars and uprising, the loves and

   intrigues of princes and kings and queens, about guillotines and lace

   handkerchiefs, snuff boxes and daggers. For Mrs. Ellsworth had loved

   France as a girl, and had made a study of its life and lore. Once she

   used to sing simple little French songs rather well, too. And she

   always regretted that her husband never understood the lovely words

   — or even tried to understand them.

   Oceola learned the accompaniments for all the songs Mrs. Ellsworth

   knew and sometimes they tried them over together. The middle-aged

   white woman loved to sing when the colored girl played, and she even

   tried spirituals. Often, when she stayed at the little Paris apartment,

   Oceola would go into the kitchen and cook something good for late

   supper, maybe an oyster soup, or fried apples and bacon. And

   sometimes Oceola had pigs’ feet.

   “There’s nothing quite so good as a pig’s foot,” said Oceola, “after

   playing all day.”

   “Then you must have pigs’ feet,” agreed Mrs. Ellsworth.

   And all this while Oceola’s development at the piano blossomed into

   perfection. Her tone became a singing wonder and her interpretations

   warm and individual. She gave a concert in Paris, one in Brussels,

   and another in Berlin. She got the press notices all pianists crave.

   She had her picture in lots of European papers. And she came home

   to New York a year after the stock market crashed and nobody had

   any money — except folks like Mrs. Ellsworth who had so much it

   would be hard to ever lose it all.

   Oceola’s one time Pullman porter, now a coming doctor, was

   graduating from Meharry that spring. Mrs. Ellsworth saw her dark

   protegee go South to attend his graduation with tears in her eyes. She

   thought that by now music would be enough, after all those years

   under the best teachers, but alas, Oceola was not yet sublimated,

   even by Philippe. She wanted to see Pete.

   Oceola returned North to prepare for her New York concert in the fall.

   She wrote Mrs. Ellsworth at Bar Harbor that her doctor boy-friend was

   putting in one more summer on the railroad, then in the autumn he

   would intern at Atlanta. And Oceola said that he had asked her to

   marry him. Lord, she was happy!

   It was a long time before she heard from Mrs. Ellsworth. When the

   letter came, it was full of long paragraphs about the beautiful music

   Oceola had within her power to give the world. Instead, she wanted to

   marry and be burdened with children! Oh, my dear, my dear!

   Oceola, when she read it, thought she had done pretty well knowing

   Pete this long and not having children. But she wrote back that she

   didn’t see why children and music couldn’t go together. Anyway,

   during the present depression, it was pretty hard for a beginning artist

   like herself to book a concert tour — so she might just as well be

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   married awhile. Pete, on his last run in from St. Louis, had suggested

   that they have the wedding Christmas in the South. “And he’s

   impatient, at that. He needs me.”

   This time Mrs. Ellsworth didn’t answer by letter at all. She was back in

   town in late September. In November, Oceola played at Town Hall.

   The critics were kind, but they didn’t go wild. Mrs. Ellsworth swore it

   was because of Pete’s influence on her protegee.

   “But he was in Atlanta,” Oceola said.

   “His spirit was here,” Mrs. Ellsworth insisted. “All the time you were

   playing on that stage, he was here, the monster! Taking you out of

   yourself, taking you away from the piano.”

   “Why, he wasn’t,” said Oceola. “He was watching an operation in

   Atlanta.”

   But from then on, things didn’t go well between her and her patron.

   The white lady grew distinctly cold when she received Oceola in her

   beautiful drawing room among the jade vases and amber cups worth

   thousands of dollars. When Oceola would have to wait there for Mrs.

   Ellsworth, she was afraid to move for fear she might knock something

   over — that would take ten years of a Harlemite’s wages to replace, if

   broken.

   Over the tea cups, the aging Mrs. Ellsworth did not talk any longer

   about the concert tour she had once thought she might finance for

   Oceola, if no recognized bureau took it up. Instead, she spoke of that

   something she believed Oceola’s fingers had lost since her return

   from Europe. And she wondered why any one insisted on living in

   Harlem.

   “I’ve been away from my own people so long,” said the girl, “I want to

   live right in the middle of them again.”

   Why, Mrs. Ellsworth wondered farther, did Oceola, at her last concert

   in a Harlem church, not stick to the classical items listed on the

   program. Why did she insert one of her own variations on the

   spirituals, a syncopated variation from the Sanctified Church, that

   made an old colored lady rise up and cry out from her pew, “Glory to

   God this evenin’! Yes! Hallelujah! Whooo-oo!” right at the concert?

   Which seemed most undignified to Mrs. Ellsworth, and unworthy of

   the teachings of Philippe. And furthermore, why was Pete coming up

   to New York for Thanksgiving? And who had sent him the money to

   come?

   “Me,” said Oceola. “He doesn’t make anything interning.”

   “Well,” said Mrs. Ellsworth, “I don’t think much of him.” But Oceola

   didn’t seem to care what Mrs. Ellsworth thought, for she made no

   defense.

   Thanksgiving evening, in bed, together in a Harlem apartment, Pete

   and Oceola talked about their wedding to come. They would have a

   big one in a church with lots of music. And Pete would give her a ring.

   And she would have on a white dress, light and fluffy, not silk. “I hate

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   silk,” she said. “I hate expensive things.” (She thought of her mother

   being buried in a cotton dress, for they were all broke when she died.

   Mother would have been glad about her marriage.) “Pete,” Oceola

   said, hugging him in the dark, “let’s live in Atlanta, where there are lots

   of colored people, like us.”

   “What about Mrs. Ellsworth?” Pete asked. “She coming down to

   Atlanta for our wedding?”

   “I don’t know,” said Oceola.

   “I hope not, ’cause if she stops at one of them big hotels, I won’t have

   you going to the back door to see her. That’s one thing I hate about the

   South — where there’re white people, you have to go to the back door.”

   “Maybe she can stay with us,” said Oceola. “I wouldn’t mind.”

   “I’ll be damned,” said Pete. “You want to get lynched?”

   But it happened that Mrs. Ellsworth didn’t care to attend the wedding,

   anyway. When she saw how love had triumphed over art, she decided

   she could no longer influence Oceola’s life. The period of Oceola was

   over. She would send checks, occasionally, if the girl needed them,

   besides, of course, something beautiful for the wedding, but that

   would be all. These things she told her the week after Thanksgiving.

   “And Oceola, my dear, I’ve decided to spend the whole winter in

   Europe. I sail on December eighteenth. Christmas — while you are

   marrying — I shall be in Paris with my precious Antonio Bas. In

   January, he has an exhibition of oils in Madrid. And in the spring, a

   new young poet is coming over whom I want to visit Florence, to really

   know Florence. A charming white-haired boy from Omaha whose soul

   has been crushed in the West. I want to try to help him. He, my dear,

   is one of the few people who live for their art — and nothing else. . . .

   Ah, such a beautiful life! . . . You will come and play for me once before

   I sail?”

   “Yes, Mrs. Ellsworth,” said Oceola, genuinely sorry that the end had

   come. Why did white folks think you could live on nothing but art?

   Strange! Too strange! Too strange!

   back to top

   V

   The Persian vases in the music room were filled with long-stemmed

   lilies that night when Oceola Jones came down from Harlem for the

   last time to play for Mrs. Dora Ellsworth. Mrs. Ellsworth had on a gown

   of black velvet, and a collar of pearls about her neck. She was very

   kind and gentle to Oceola, as one would be to a child who has done a

   great wrong but doesn’t know any better. But to the black girl from

   Harlem, she looked very cold and white, and her grand piano seemed

   like the biggest and heaviest in the world — as Oceola sat down to

   play it with the technique for which Mrs. Ellsworth had paid.

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   As the rich and aging white woman listened to the great roll of

   Beethoven sonatas and to the sea and moonlight of the Chopin

   nocturnes, as she watched the swaying dark strong shoulders of

   Oceola Jones, she began to reproach the girl aloud for running away

   from art and music, for burying herself in Atlanta and love — love for a

   man unworthy of lacing up her boot straps, as Mrs. Ellsworth put it.

   “You could shake the stars with your music, Oceola. Depression or no

   depression, I could make you great. And yet you propose to dig a

   grave for yourself. Art is bigger than love.”

   “I believe you, Mrs. Ellsworth,” said Oceola, not turning away from the

   piano. “But being married won’t keep me from making tours, or being

   an artist.”

   “Yes, it will,” said Mrs. Ellsworth. “He’ll take all the music out of you.”

   “No, he won’t,” said Oceola.

   “You don’t know, child,” said Mrs. Ellsworth, “what men are like.”

   “Yes, I do,” said Oceola simply. And her fingers began to wander

   slowly up and down the keyboard, flowing into the soft and lazy

   syncopation of a Negro blues, a blues that deepened and grew into

   rollicking jazz, then into an earth-throbbing rhythm that shook the lilies

   in the Persian vases of Mrs. Ellsworth’s music room. Louder than the

   voice of the white woman who cried that Oceola was deserting beauty,

   deserting her real self, deserting her hope in life, the flood of wild

   syncopation filled the house, then sank into the slow and singing

   blues with which it had begun.

   The girl at the piano heard the white woman saying, “Is this what I

   spent thousands of dollars to teach you?”

   “No,” said Oceola simply. “This is mine. . . . Listen! . . . How sad and

   gay it is. Blue and happy — laughing and crying. . . . How white like you

   and black like me. . . . How much like a man. . . . And how much like a

   woman. . . . Warm as Pete’s mouth. . . . These are the blues. . . . I’m

   playing.”

   Mrs. Ellsworth say very still in her chair looking at the lilies trembling

   delicately in the priceless Persian vases, while Oceola made the

   bass notes throb like tomtoms deep in the earth.

   O, if I could holler

   sang the blues,

   Like a mountain jack

   I’d go up on de mountain

   sang the blues,

   And call my baby back.

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   “And I,” said Mrs. Ellsworth rising from her chair, “would stand looking

   at the stars.”

   back to top

   — From The Ways of White Folks, originally published in 1933, Vintage

   Classics Edition, 1990.

   Works by Langston Hughes

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