Crumbs From the Table of Joy

“We sit and listen to all the white laughter. Seems to us only white folks can laugh on Sunday.”

In the evenings, even in Brooklyn, Godfrey’s grief becomes too much, and he breaks down in tears. The radio is not just forbidden on Sundays by Father Divine; it is a remnant of their mother as it’s a prize she won in a guessing contest. Godfrey refuses to let them listen to it on Sunday nights and laugh, and Ernestine sees this as one more thing that is senselessly forbidden to Black people but allowed for white people.

“Ernie, wouldn’t know these was old, would ya? Would ya now? Hey, hey the boys at the job can’t help eyeing them, smart shoes like these make ’em think you more important than you is.”

Godfrey is polishing his shoes, which he has had for so long that Lily even recognizes them after years of estrangement. They are a remnant of the past that he clings to and cares for lovingly. His speech here emphasizes the gap between appearances and reality, using his shoes as a metaphor. Later, he buys new shoes to wear when he meets Father Divine, and although the Father doesn’t show up, he sees the new shoes as a blessing, tacitly comparing the old and new shoes to his marriages.

“Country folk come up here and turn on each other. That’s what happens when you live piled up on top of each other day in and day out. Ain’t natural.”

Godfrey is concerned about the increased incidents of interpersonal violence in the city, keeping his daughters inside in the evening to keep them safe. He blames the violence on “country folk” whose tempers flare when they are forced to live in close quarters. Although population density is a factor in the increased crime rates of cities, Godfrey doesn’t blame city people. The city represents the future he has chosen for his family, and he opts to blame his fellow “country folks” for also moving there and not behaving properly instead.

“And there now is Aunt Lily the first colored woman we’d seen dressed up like a white lady. Smart looking and posture straight. She’d been to Harlem…For us country folk that is the equivalent of reaching the promised land.”

Although Harlem is only a train ride from Brooklyn, to Ernestine, it’s a separate world. Decades earlier, before World War II, the Harlem Renaissance was a revolutionary moment for Black self-determination and the cultivation of Black culture as legitimate and beautiful. If Harlem is the promised land, Lily’s sudden appearance raises the question as to why she is now out in the cold. While part of political and cultural movements, Lily slips through the gap and doesn’t reach the real promised land of Civil Rights policy change.

“I’m an ‘etymologist’ now. […] Nearly broke my neck with the studies. Well, somebody had to break the barrier, let those white boys know we saying what we please.”

Lily claims to have studied and become an etymologist, but she does not work during the play—while education is presented as a radical act, Lily can’t find a practical way to put her skills to use. When asked what an etymologist does, she also avoids the question, establishing her unreliability through her first appearance.

“It do seem colder in Brooklyn, but don’t it though?…Didn’t see a Negro face between here and 116th. HELLO white peoples! (Lily waves. A moment.) Living in their midst do have a way of wearing down your stamina.”

Lily’s observation about the cold is metaphorical, representing both the lack of Black people in Brooklyn and the chilly reception she receives from Godfrey. She finds it exhausting to live among white people, as a Black person in a white neighborhood must be constantly vigilant, performing compliance and deference to avoid any unwanted attention or violence.

“Don’t none of those crackers want to share any bit of power with us. That’s what it’s about. Red scare, should be called black scare.”

When Godfrey can’t even bring himself to say “communism”—demonstrating that he is caught up in the fear of the Red Scare—Lily explains her interpretation of the Red Scare and how it relates to racism. The Communist Party advocated for civil rights because both Black Americans and the working class were kept in an economic underclass. To preserve capitalism, the government used propaganda to stir up terror about communism, convincing those who might benefit from it to stamp it out themselves.

“GODFREY. What you got in here anyway?

LILY. My life darling, and when ya look at it in those terms them bags ain’t that heavy. Are they now?”

Lily’s quip breezes past the fact that she presumes she can not only stay with the Crumps, but she intends to move in with everything she owns. Her literal baggage is heavy, but her metaphorical baggage turns out to be heavier. She is romantically interested in her sister’s widower, she can’t hold a job, and she is addicted to alcohol.

“Down home when Rosalind’s mother came back from New York smoking cigarettes and her face painted up, the Minister declared it the end of the world, oh I remember the horror he instilled. He preached his longest sermon on the nature of sin. But I’d confronted sin tonight and it didn’t seem half bad.”

Ernestine has been sheltered from what the church calls sin and is too afraid of it to be tempted. She even tries to police her sister’s behavior by reminding her that she isn’t supposed to talk to boys. However, Lily is smart, forward-thinking, and dressed in the type of suit that Ernestine has never seen a Black woman wear, and she suddenly realizes that instilling a fear of “sin” is more about making someone docile than about right and wrong.

“In the movies the clothing is always perfectly ironed the seams even and pointed. In the movies when families argue it is underscored by beautiful music and reconciliation. In the movies, men are heroes, broad shouldered and impervious to danger. Their lives are perfect formulas resolved in 90 minutes. But as Daddy would say, ‘they white.’”

Throughout the play, Ernestine explores her love of movies and why she finds them so pleasurable and satisfying. Her repetition here of “in the movies” reinforces her desire to escape into this perfect world, in contrast to her life’s messiness.

“Then the oak tree at the corner blew down a telephone line and all the neighbors gathered to watch the work men carve up the three hundred year old tree. ‘If that ain’t a sign,’ said Lily. It took them three days to clear it and still no sign of daddy. Our tears salted over, and caked our brown faces gray. Lily chipped away the bits of crust with a butter knife, soothing us with the hope that with the death of a great oak comes life.”

Lynn Nottage builds an extended metaphor here, the girls’ tears calcifying into salt that needs to be chipped away by Lily, their maternal figure. Sorrow turns the girls gray, sapping the life from them, but Lily insists that death is needed for rebirth, comparing the family to the 300-year-old oak tree.

“GERTE. Is so much food necessary? There are starving children in Europe. (She lifts the lids of containers.) Pudding, dumplings —

ERNESTINE (To audience). We’re eating for all mankind.

GODFREY. A communion.”

The family has three interpretations of the feast, showing how food represents different things in the play. Gerte, who has experienced starvation, is immediately anxious about food waste. She sees overabundance as unnecessary rather than special. The Crumps are accustomed to crumbs, and for them, this excess is a blessing. Godfrey sees the feast as holy, an act of communion that has been gifted by God or Father Divine. Ernestine views the meal as symbolic as well, a chance for her to sit at the table rather than hope for crumbs.

“He’d followed an address on a bottle of something that soothed him and supposed that potion would be in abundance up North.”

As Ernestine explains, Godfrey’s decision to move them up north was based on the return address on a soothing potion that made him feel better. The contrast between their grief in the South and his hope for a better life up North emphasizes the different opportunities for Black Americans in different parts of the country. The North was often alluring for people living under Jim Crow, but as the play shows, racism manifested in its own way up north.

“We came together because of Sweet Father, there’s power in that. […] But I’ve been to speakers’ corner, there are a half a dozen messiahs waiting to replace him.”

When Father Divine lets Godfrey down, Gerte highlights the positives and negatives of blind faith. On the one hand, the Mission led to them meeting and marrying. On the other, Father Divine is one of many men claiming to be the messiah.

“GERTE. Are you scared of me Ernie?

ERNESTINE. Yes ma’am.

GERTE. What do you think?…I’m not horrible, really.”

When Godfrey first brings Gerte home to meet everyone, Ernestine sees her as Marlene Dietrich, “a cold bitter whore laughing in our doorway” (37). Only six years after World War II ended, the girls’ understanding of Germans comes from newsreels and war propaganda. Gerte doesn’t understand that the presence of a white woman in their home, especially a German white woman, is intimidating to two Black teenagers.

“It was freeing to know that someone so far away could give a musical shape to my feelings. I wanted to visit America, see the people who create this music. Go West. The pictures. Same dreams everyone has.”

Gerte is describing the dream of Manifest Destiny and, in a roundabout way, the American Dream. After hearing jazz music, she feels a sense of universality that she presumes to be ubiquitous, much like the broken promise of the American Dream. She doesn’t understand that the Black voices she felt were speaking to her have been shaped by their specific circumstances. However, her motives for impulsively picking up and moving to the United States are similar to Godfrey’s motives for moving to Brooklyn. Both received a taste of something that felt good and pursued it.

“I nearly starved to death after the war, I know quite a bit about pain.”

Gerte brings up her experience of near starvation in response to Lily pointing out her privilege and ignorance as a white woman. Gerte’s experience of hardship doesn’t make her more insightful about what it means to be Black in the United States, particularly before the Civil Rights movement. It does explain Gerte’s hunger for food, stability, and love. That hunger is an unspoken commonality with the other characters.

“The world gives you nothing, Ernie. It takes.”

Lily, who grows more and more frustrated with her increasingly desperate situation, takes her angst out on Ernestine, who is pleased to be adding the lace Ermina stole to her graduation dress. Ernestine is feeling optimistic, on the cusp of adulthood and a high school diploma, seeing these things as the biggest steps of her life. Lily thinks lace is childish, scoffing when Ernestine claims not to have the same big ideas as Lily. Lily hurts Ernestine’s feelings, but she also reminds her that naivety will not help her in the real world. Ernestine will need to fight for what’s hers, a task she takes on by becoming an activist.

“GERTE. So where are the warriors in your revolution now? Why don’t they help us? How are we to lead our lives if we can’t go out for a…a picture show on a Saturday night.

LILY. Welcome to our world, Miss Eva. You ain’t supposed to period! Stop! Thought you knew about all these things being from Germany and all.”

Gerte and Lily trade ideological blows, with Gerte critiquing American leftists for not preventing her husband from being beaten. Lily argues that the world is still a hostile place for Black men, especially those who go out with white women, and even if people are fighting for change, that change has not yet arrived. She alludes to Gerte’s background—growing up in Nazi Germany—to indicate how one person’s individual beliefs cannot undo structural inequality.

“You see Ernestine that’s your America. Negro sitting on his couch with blood dripping down his face. White woman unscathed and the enemy not more than five years back. You can’t bring order to this world. You can’t put up curtains and pot plants and have things change. You really thought you could marry a white woman and enter the kingdom of heaven, didn’t ya?”

Lily is referring to a centuries-long history of white women in the United States endangering Black men. Godfrey followed the lead of Father Divine when he married Gerte, ignoring that Father Divine has the financial resources for security and private transportation. While they’ve been making their nest inside the apartment, the world outside hasn’t changed. This is something that Ernestine and Ermina know well, as they’ve dealt with bullying over their new white stepmother.

“You can’t sit here waiting on the world to happen for you, picking up your father’s questions. Let him clean up his own mess.”

Ernestine admits to Lily that she is afraid to face her upcoming graduation and the start of adulthood. Unlike her earlier meanness toward her niece’s naivety, Lily offers advice that pushes Ernestine to make her own choices. She can’t devote her life to making sure that her father is all right or cleaning up the messes he makes, symbolized by his ripped-up notes here. She must be proactive and choose her own path.

“Excuse me. I heard the noise. I thought Godfrey was home. Sometimes I get scared in the dark when he is at work. I fix myself something to eat and I feel better.”

Gerte doesn’t say what scares her, but hunger is central to her anxiety. Eating brings her comfort. Lily offers Gerte a drink, and Ernestine imagines at first that she accepts. Gerte goes back to bed instead, but the fantasy interaction suggests how everything might have turned out differently if she had shared a drink with Lily.

“Bakery? Imagine a life in the bakery by his side with no greater expectation than for the bread to rise. […] I don’t know that’s what I want to do.”

Ernestine has an opportunity to stay where and who she is, taking a good, steady job alongside her father and letting herself forget about Lily’s call to action. To her father’s shock, Ernestine turns it down. She compares a baker’s life to the bread they make—bread rising is reliable, but it’s not revolutionary, and she wants to make a bigger change in the world.