Home To Harlem

Jake’s first sight of Pittsburgh is of a smoky, gray place with “Southern-European children” (140) running around in front of the shops. From there, Jake seesWiley Avenue, the black district, which is just as dirty and gray as the first neighborhood he saw. As Jake walks down the street, he sees a pretty, brown-skinned woman standing in the doorway of a basement restaurant. After a brief flirtation, he sleeps with her.

He meets up with the waiter later that night at a pool hall where the railway men write letters and where black dolls and Christian pictures with black figures such as black angels are for sale. Like most of the railroad men, the waiter hates the dirty town of Pittsburgh, which he calls “Soot-hill”(143). Jake has plans to go to a show with the woman he encountered earlier, but as always, there is nothing the waiter wants to do in Pittsburgh. Jake learns his name is Ray, short for Raymond, then departs. Ray reads all the black newspapers, drinks a sherry, then goes to bed.

Sometime after midnight, Jake comes in and discovers that Ray has saved a bunk above him in the bedbug-infested sleeping quarters for the railroad men. Disgusted by the snoring and bedbugs, Jake convinces Ray to go out for a drink.

They head out to a speakeasy known by a waiter who accompanies them. The waiter who goes out with them is immediately accosted by an acquaintance who offers him snow (slang for cocaine or heroin), which he takes. When they see him again, he is so high that he looks like a “smiling wax figure” (149). Jake accepts the waiter’s offer to try cocaine, but Ray declines. Jake buys the cocaine and is convinced to go back to the sleeping quarters by Ray.

Back at the sleeping quarters, Jake falls asleep quickly, but Ray does not. Instead, he thinks back on the tropical sights and sounds of his home in Haiti. Ray thinks about how alienated he feels from every black man in the room (except Ray) despite the supposed racial kinship he shares with them. He thinks with longing about what it would be like to be a proud citizen of a black nation, something he can never have again in the world as it is.

He describes himself as “black and impotent” (154), in contrast to the white American forces who invaded Haiti. He envies whites their white privilege and thinks about how they take for granted their place in civilization and empire, built on the backs of black and brown people, whom Ray describes as “simple earth-loving animals” who have no aspirations. Before the invasion of Haiti by the Americans, Ray had pitied both African natives and African Americans from his perspective as a “son of free nation”(155). He hates that he is now just another oppressed black person.

Despite this commonality, Ray is different because of this history of freedom, his language, and his hope that one day Haiti will escape the U.S. so hecan “retire behind the natural defenses of his island, where the steam-roller of progress could not reach him” (155). He wonders what will become of the people of color who do not have such a hope, however.

His nerves on edge because of his chaotic thoughts, Ray is recalled to the filthy sleeping quarters by the snoring of the chef. He sees Jake—handsome and at peace—sleeping soundly above him. He grabs the packets of drugs from Jake’s bag and eventually takes all of them, hoping he will be able to sleep. After taking the drugs, he has wild visions of himself back homeas a prince in a palace in “a blue paradise” where he is in complete ecstasy (158).

Jake, having guessed from the empty drug papers what happened, attempts to wake Ray from his vision but is unable to get him moving. Jake decides to stay and take care of Ray, despite the contempt of the chef, who blames the overdose on reading too many books. Jake takes Ray to the hospital and remarks, “We may all be niggers aw’right, but we ain’t nonetall all the same” (159).

The chef in Jake’s car is respected bythe steward, his superior, for how well he performs his job but hated by the cooks and the waiters. He is a repulsive man who nevertheless is scrupulously honest about not stealing provisions to take home to his family, a common occurrence in most dining cars. He makes a great show of disliking anything black people are stereotyped as liking, even when whites eat the same food with relish. His poor treatment of the men makes life difficult in the car, but his honesty makes it almost impossible for the men to sabotage him.

Jake, who despises the chef’s treatment of the railroad men, only stays on because Ray begs him to since he is the “only decent man in the kitchen” (163). Jake does treat Ray decently, refusing to ridicule him like the others, and calls him “‘chappie’ in a genial, semi-paternal way” (165). Jake’s only other knowledge of educated black people is secondhand information he gleaned from Ms. Curdy and Ginhead Susy, both of whom despise such people as arrogant.

Aconflict between the pantry and the kitchen starts because the chef insists on ridiculing the fourth waiterwith insulting nicknames. Tired of the chef’s bullying, the fourth waiter makes a mild complaint one day about receiving dirty ice from the chef. When the chef continues to insult him, the fourth waiter, egged on by the other waiters, responds by calling the chef a “‘dirty rhinoceros’”(167).

The first waiter, also the pantry man because he is charged with managing the pantry on his side, gets involved and is deeply upset when the chef calls him a “‘bastard-begotten dime-snatcher’” (169), an insult that hits too close to home because he was born out of wedlock and hates having to serve whites for tips. His first chance to revenge himself on the chef comes one day when the chef is late in serving the waiters their meal.

When the chef’s superior, the steward, intervenes by chiding the chef for the delay, the chef is furious and heaps even more insults on the waiters’ heads, including a threat to spit in their food before serving it. The angry first waiter goesback to the steward, Farrell, to complain. The chef manages to smooth over the conflict temporarily by serving an excellent meal and eating with the men to show that he has not spit in the food.

Their satisfaction— “Feeding, feeding, feeding” (173)—makes them forget all about the chef’s behavior, but Ray is repelled by the sight. He asks Jake if he should be on guard in case the chef really does spit in the food. Jake tells him he keeps a close eye on the chef and wouldn’t put it past a person who is as “‘good and mean way down in his heart” (174) like the chef. The chef puts on a good show when the Pullman porters—the most respected men on the train’s hierarchy—come back to eat with the waiters. He puts on his chef’s cap, cooks fine food at their request, and is polite in his treatment of them.

Ray is surprised one day when he overhears the first waiter and the chef engaging in friendly talk. The first waiter tells Ray he has to get along with the chef to do his job of managing the pantry, but he will never forgive the chef for calling him a bastard. He is taken aback when Ray tells him that Jesus was a bastard as well, so there is no need to be so upset about being called one. He warns Ray that his blasphemy will lead to retribution from God one day and that perhaps all his book knowledge hasn’t taught him much.

Meanwhile, the chef decides to make peaceful overtures to the first waiter both because he is unsure of how to deal with open opposition from the waiters and because he wants to avoid having the waiters and kitchen staff uniting against him. He tries to serve the headwaiter the same food he gives to the steward, but the waiter refuses to accept the offerings because his men don’t receive the same. His actions anger the chef, who begins to hate the headwaiter with a “profound African hate” (178).

The chef’s next chance to get back at the first waiter comes when the first waiter forgets to get ice for the dining car on a run from Washington to New York. By the time he remembers, the ice cream has softened. When the headwaiter asks the chef to borrow ice from the kitchen, the chef claims he only has enough for the kitchen. The lack of ice and the melting ice cream earn the headwaiter a reprimand, much to the chef’s satisfaction.

The headwaiter finally gets a chance at revenge one day when the chef has to leave the kitchen because two of his cooks fail to show up at work. The chef goes with the headwaiter to the pantry as usual to get provisions, including a box of eggs that the chef carries back to the kitchen in his own hands. While they are unpacking the provisions in the kitchen, the chef is distracted by the flirtation of one of the pretty, fair-skinned women working in the rail yard. The chef, never one to pilfer provisions to give such women, nevertheless is attracted to these women because of their light skin color.

When he steps out of the kitchen to talk to one of these girls on this particular day, the headwaiter takes advantage of the situation. Once the train departs, orders for egg dishes begin to come in. The chef discovers after several orders that he cannot find the eggs, so he asks the first waiter to tell the steward. The first waiter fails to do so, and the angry steward later comes to the kitchen to ask why the egg dishes are delayed.

The chef asks the steward to remove the egg dishes from the menu because he cannot find the eggs. The steward knows he saw the eggs among the provisions, but the chef tells him he cannot figure out what happened to them. No one else has been in the kitchen since the chef brought them in, however. Despite searching the pantry, the chef cannot find the eggs. He forgets all about having stepped off the train to talk to the woman in the yard.

Despite the chaos, Jake keeps his cool by serving as second cook. The fourth cook is overwhelmed and gets a tongue-lashing from the chef. The first waiter asks the chef what happened to the eggs. The chef’s response—that he gave them to the man’s mama—is met with an equally rude response from the waiter, who insults the chef’s masculinity by implication. The chef loses his temper and throws a hambone at the first waiter, but his aim is so bad that the bone flies into the pantry, narrowly missing the steward.

The steward reprimands him, and the chef is so overwrought that he yells at the steward to leave him alone or he will jump off the train. The steward leaves the car without responding. The next morning, the steward gets some eggs at one of their stops, and all is cordial between him and the chef. On the next run, however, the chef has been demoted to second cook on a different car by the superintendent. The headwaiter later overhears the steward telling one of his peers about the punishment.

When Jake asks the headwaiter how he pulled it off, the head waiter implies that he threw the eggs in the railyard while the chef was talking to the woman in the yard that day, but he refuses to confirm that he did it. When Jake tells the headwaiter that he hopes that the black men working on the train will get along now, the headwaiter assures him that they will since there isn’t another man like the chef. With his arrogance, the chef was bound to fall sooner or later.

One night during a stopover in Philadelphia, Jake convinces Ray to go with him to a brothel in North Philadelphia. Ray is reluctant to go because he has a girlfriend, but Jake tells him this place is different. When they arrive, a well-preserved woman, Laura, greets them and tells Jake she is going to have to have a “bust-up” (189) with him because he has been gone so long. Ray is shocked to find that the house looks like an ordinary boarding house except for all the pretty women. Jake introduces Ray and tells his host that he wants his friend treated right since he is not used to such places.The promised bust-up turns out to be a bottle of champagne.

Ray feels a sense of revulsion when Madame Laura gives champagne to her eleven-year-old son. Ray believes the little boy should not be in a brothel. All around Ray, couples are flirting with each other, while the single people play cards. Ray feels out of place and lonely, wishing he could be more at ease like Jake. He notices that Jake and Madame Laura are gone from the room at some point. He accepts a drink from one of the girls eventually, and notices how exotic and striking the bright red rouge looks on the faces of the women.

In the background, the house is dominated by the rhythms of jazz, and beneath that rhythm is the sound of Africa that catches up the lovers in the room “in their own free native rhythm, threaded to a remote scarce-remembered past, celebrating the midnight hour…in a house in Fifteenth Street, Philadelphia” (197).

This idyll is interrupted when a white policeman comes in and the patrons assume he is there to raid the house. He isn’t. He shares a toast with Madame Laura and another woman who works in the house, then goes back on duty. Madame Laura explains to Jake that the cop has a relationship with the woman with whom he shared the drink and provides protection for Madame Laura’s house. Jake cannot find Ray.

When Jake goes back to quarters, he finds Ray asleep. The next morning as they head back to the train yard, Jake asks Ray if the raid scared him off. Ray tells him that he left because he was repelled by the smell of the cheap perfume on one of the girls who approached him. When Ray asks Jake if he ever feels how Ray felt last night—isolated and unable to focus outward—Jake tells him he never does in the company of young, pretty women and shows Ray the fine tie Madame Laura gave him.

Jake tells Ray he could be a kept man if he wanted, but he prefers not to. Aside from that, Madame Laura is an enjoyable womanand not all the women working in her house are professional sex workers. Jake prefers the casual nature of the interactions in Madame Laura’s to the business-like nature of brothels over in Europe. Ray says he doesn’t see the difference in the sex trade. Jake gently tells him he doesn’t know what he is talking about. There are all kinds of set-ups and only the character of the madams makes the difference between rough, street trade and more refined trade.

Jake has a pass to another house they can use next time they are in Philadelphia and promises to show Ray some “real queens” if they are lucky; Ray remarks that Jake is always lucky in this way (203). They are out of time now, but Jake promises to tell him about the time he was lucky enough to meet that girl from his first night back in Harlem.