Home To Harlem

They wander across Manhattan, eventually making their way to the “Block Beautiful,” the last holdout against white flight from a growing Harlem. A Presbyterian church, “a fortress against the invasion” of black people massed against “respectability,” looms over it all (300). The clearest sign of the losing battle against Harlem is that black courting couples now promenade under its shadow.

Jake and the woman caress each other. When the woman asks why he never came back, an embarrassed Jake admits that he celebrated with his friends after finding the money she gave back to him and couldn’t find her address afterward. He didn’t even know her name. He introduces himself at last as Jake Brown, and she in turn tells him her name is Felice. Jake tells Felice he kept going back to the Baltimore to find her, but she never showed up.

Felice tells Jake she can’t hang out at night because she has to work. She went to Palm Beach to work after meeting him because she was sick of Harlem. She knows Jake thinks she sells sex, but she never was much good at it because she can’t bring herself to sleep with men she doesn’t like and won’t take money from those she does. She would have worked like a dog for the right man if he had ever come along, though. Jake tells her that she is the one for him. He then takes Felice back to his room, Felice’s worry about his landlady notwithstanding. Felice finds the room to be nice, like many of those in the new homes for African Americans in Harlem. They embrace.

Felice suddenly remembers that she needs to pick up her things from her room. Jake asks to go with her in case her date from the Sheba Palace is there, but Felice tells him she should be fine and doesn’t want any trouble. Jake relents only once Felice agrees to let him walk with her a part of the way. Felice is not bothered at all by having left her date. She knows that men and women sometimes fight over each other.

She remembers the time she saw two West Indian women, one a laundress from the Panama and one from rural Jamaica, fight each other over a man in Harlem. The laundress had immigrated to New York and later sent for her lover, with whom she had lived a wild life before around the Panama Canal. Their relationship didn’t thrive when her lover came over, however, and the man blamed it on the laundress, claiming that she “was too aggressive and mannish and had harried the energy out of him” (307). The Jamaican woman, however, revitalized him.

Although it was clear that the laundress had lost the man, she was so angry with the Jamaican woman that she challenged her to a fight over the man. These two women lived in the same lodging house as Felice. One day, she was called to witness the battle between the two women in the backyard of their lodging house. The whole neighborhood turned out to watch the titillating spectacle. The women were naked in accordance with a custom that might be African in origin by way of the West Indies. Although the landlord threatened to call the police, the battle did not end until the more powerful countrywoman from Jamaica pinned the Panamanian laundress. The women lodgers remarked that fighting naked made great practical sense since it preserved clothing and allowed more freedom of movement.

While Felice thinks about battles between women, Jake waits blissfully on the corner where she left him and imagines their future together. “She was a prize to hold,” he thinks, and he instinctively knows that she is the one woman for him (311). Felice finally returns with her heavy case and the two of themgo shopping for food, candy, and cigars.

Back in Jake’s room, Felice discovers that she left her “luck” (312)—a plaited necklace with a blue bead—behind in her room. Her grandmother gave it to her after dipping it in the water from the first bath she took on the day she was born. Felice had worn it around her neck every day and had only moved it to her ankle once she started wearing low-cut dresses that would have made it visible. Before heading to the Sheba, she put it on a nail. It was still hanging there. Jake dismisses her concern by pointing out that they had all the luck they needed because they’d found each other again that night at the Sheba.

For a week, the couple honeymoons. Felice cooks their meals in the kitchen of the lodging house, they go on picnics, and they watch movies. The black actors on the screen present a distorted image of the life the two lovers are actually living. The lovers on the screen are simply imitations of wealthy white people. The black actors on the screen laugh at themselves and the black audience laughs at the actors, a commentary on the absurdity of what the moviemakers offerthem.

A week after the reunion, Felice declares that they need to celebrate. Jake wants to go to Aunt Hattie’s, but they end up at the Nile Queen in Harlem, Felice’s choice. After, they watch a movie from the segregated balcony seats to which African Americans are confined. They decide to go dancing afterward, and once again, Felice’s choice—a new, Jewish-run cabaret that is opening that night—wins out over Jake’s choice, the Sheba Palace where they had run into each other again.

The new cabaret is set to outperform other Harlem cabarets. Its secret is that it caters to the black working class rather than focusing on the slumming whites who get premium service in the other cabarets. The manager is a black college graduate and the cashier is a fair-skinned black woman.

On opening night, the cabaret is full of black actors invited there by the owner, and free champagne is on offer. White patrons—eager for some sensation now that the war is over—have also shown up. This cabaret also distinguishes itself by having a men’s only bar with stools that allows the male clientele to relax by spending time away from their female companions.

Black society is represented in full on that night. Madame Mulberry, an aging beauty and the wife of a famous show promoter is there. Maunie Whitewing, the scandalous wife of a very private black artist, is there with another man. An editor for a sports magazine is there. Even James Europe Reese, who had made jazz and ragtime international at the head of the 369th Regiment’s band during the war, is there (he was killed shortly thereafter by a black man at a performance in Boston).Prohibition was coming, so everyone who canbe there is.

The interior of the cabaret is lavishly decorated. The assembled crowd of well-dressed African Americans representsevery color on the spectrum. Felice’s bright makeup and clothing fit in perfectly against this backdrop.

When Felice and Jake enter the club, the song that had been playing that night at the Sheba Palace is playing once again; they move right onto the dance floor. The music stops playing for a performance bya singer who transforms a blues song into something with the “melancholy charm of Tchaikovskyin the melody” (322). The audience members—black and white—applaud and throw money at him.

Billy comes over to toast the new couple with champagne. The group is later joined by the second cook with whom Jake worked on the railroad. Jake and the cook talkabout the chef, who is still mean but less obvious with it now that he is an underling. Later, the men go to the bar for a drink of liquor and time away from the women in their party. As they head out, Madame Mulberry and Maunie Whitewing droolover Jake, angering Felice.

The three men are sitting at the table when they hear a scream. When they go back to the main room, they see Zeddy attempting to drag Felice away, loudly proclaiming that she is his woman. Felice denies this and insults Zeddy for his black skin. Jake intervenes, telling Zeddy he met Felice first;hetells Zeddy to leave before they have to fight. This angers Zeddy, so he lets go of Felice and pulls a razor on Jake. The frightened crowd runs for the exits.

Jake, however, responds by pointing a gun atZeddy. He disarms Zeddy and, after patting him down, threatens to end him then and there. Zeddy tells him he isn’t capable of doing it. After all, he tells Jake and the onlookers, Jake deserted during the war, too scared to fight the Germans. Jake is hurt and humiliated by these words, and the onlookers look at him a new way. Zeddy leaves, telling Jake that since Jake is a wanted deserter, he has nothing to fear from Jake.

Jake is sickened by the idea that his love for Felice has devolved into an almost fatal fight over sex. Up until that point, Jake “had always managed to delight in love and yet steer clear of the hate and violence that steer it in his world” (328). He had seen it in Brest, in London, and now in Harlem. He feels no better than the white men who lynched black men over the bodies of white women.

Jake goes home and sits on the porch thinking morosely about the happenstance of Felice having been with Zeddy and wishing that he had seen Zeddy first, so he could have smoothed things over. Zeddy always was a loose cannon, though, so maybe the night would have gone poorly in any case.

Felice arrives andapologizes to Jake, who tries to assure her that it was not her fault and that it was just a coincidence that she was with Zeddy for a time. Felice asks Jake to imagine what would have happened without the gun. Jake tells her he would be dead. He hadn’t even wanted the gun, but Billy had forced it on him.

Felice tells Jake that after she got back from Palm Beach, she had taken up with Zeddy, who plied her with gifts, making her feel obligated to sleep with him. She never loved him, though. What are they going to do, she asks, since Jake is a deserter or draft dodger? Jake tells her he didn’t run away from fear. He left because he knew he was never going to get a chance to fight and would be forced to spend the war in menial labor. Felice agrees that he did the right thing. Why should black people fight white Germans for other white people? Nevertheless, Felice thinks they have to leave Harlem now that people know Jake is a deserter.

When Jake says he might go back to sea, Felice is hurt since she knows she can’t go with him. What’s the point, she asks, of being an exile moving from country to country over the years, when America is his home? America is big. They should go to Chicago, Felice argues, and start again. Jake instantly agrees and says they should leave that night.

Before they can go into their room, Zeddy appears, alarming both of them until Zeddy explains that he is there to make up with Jake rather than allow their friendship to break up over a woman. Jake is his buddy, and he knows Jake isn’t a draft dodger or a deserter. Noone, not even the people who overheard Zeddy’s earlier accusation, is likely to say anything since they were all drunk. The two men shake hands, and Zeddy leaves. Felice is slightly annoyed that Zeddy didn’t bother to tell her goodbye. She insists that they still need to leave Harlem since the news that Jake is down as a deserter is likely to travel fast.

After the couple packs up their things, they go to the Baltimore, now re-opened. When they get there, the Baltimore is packed, and the refrain from their song— “Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you’ ma-ma” (296)—is playing. They dance. The music and the scene are an odd mixture of opposites—happiness and sadness, frivolity and deep feeling—that would never appear in the respectable world. The whites mingled in the crowd can only see the more positive side of those opposites. The emotions on display are authentic and primitive and thus repellant to the respectable.

Later that night at closing time, Jake can’t find Felice. He looks outside, but she isn’t there, and he can’t understand how they got separated. Just as he picks up his case to leave, Felice comes running down the street toward him. It turns out Felice went back to the place she shared with Zeddy to get her lucky charm. If she had remembered to wear the luck that night, Felice says, the fight between Zeddy and Jake might never have happened.She will always keep it with her from now on. When Jake asks her if she is sure, she tells him she is. They walk toward the Lenox Avenue subway to catch the train to Chicago.