Manchild in the Promised Land (56 page)

Someone was talking to her. It was a white fellow. I didn't know just what I should do, whether I should just walk by, wait, or what. She was standing just inside the door to the building. I walked around in the lobby for a little while and tried to get her attention, but she didn't see me.

So I went over into the hall leading outside the building. I just looked at her. She said, “Oh, hi, Claude. Are you ready?”

The fellow looked at her, and he looked at me. She said, “I'll see you around,” and she just walked away from him.

I felt more admiration for this girl right then and there. She had a knack for doing things. She seemed like a chick who could have done anything. She had so much poise and self-confidence. I just knew I was going to enjoy being out with her.

“Look, I'm going to take you to a place down on Fifth Street. Are you hungry?”

“A little.”

“Okay, let's go to the Italian Kitchen and have something for dinner. Do you like wine?” She said she liked Manischewitz, and I said, “Yeah, you would.” She smiled. I felt good being with her; I really felt good.

While we were sitting in the restaurant talking, I said, “Judy, that's a nice dress you've got on.”

“Oh, do you really like this dress?”

“Why do you think I said it was nice?”

“I don't know. I thought you were trying to be nice.”

I said, “No. I like it; I really like it.”

“Look, Claude, if you don't like something I'm wearing, or if you object to something I do, or if something I do displeases you, please let me know. I'll change it. If you don't like my shoes, or if you don't like my handbag, or anything, tell me. Even if you don't like my hairstyle, you tell me that too … because I want to look the way you like me. I want to do what you would like me to do.”

I was sort of moved. Girls had said a lot of things to me that, I suppose, were more meaningful or more emotional, but nothing had ever moved me like this before.

Just about all my life before, most of the girls I had gone with, most of the girls I had taken out, they were bitches. I'd never gotten involved with a white girl before, and I always had all kinds of skepticism about that nigger thing. You could argue with a colored girl anytime, and if she said “nigger,” nobody would mind too much. But I never knew what I would do if I was arguing with a white girl and she called me a nigger. I didn't know how I'd take it, whether I'd want to hit her or something.

But after Judy said what she had, I was certain that it wouldn't
mean a damn thing. It wouldn't mean any more than if a colored girl said it. If you get close enough with people, you can say anything. After the little bit about the dress and what I wanted her to do or wear, I just wanted to grab her, hug her, and just say, “You're wonderful.” She was across the table, so all I could do was squeeze her hand. She looked at me and smiled. I guess she got the message.

We went down to the Five Spot. She was a different sort of girl. She was nice, she was uninhibited, and she had so much self-confidence that it just got next to me. She told me she'd never been in a nightclub before and not to hesitate to tell her if she did something wrong.

“Oh, relax, Judy. Some people, anything they might do wouldn't be wrong. And I feel that you're one of those people.”

She smiled and said, “Thanks, anyway, but don't forget to let me know.”

We went in and sat down. She said she'd never drunk anything but wines before, kosher wines, that sort of thing. I said, “Okay, we can just order your wine.”

She said, “No. I'd like to try something, but I don't know that much about drinks. Why don't you order something for me, something that would be tasty and safe.”

“Okay, I'll do that.” I ordered her a
crime de cacao,
and she thought it was tasty. We sat there and listened to Thelonious Monk and his group play for a couple of hours.

We walked all around Greenwich Village. We walked around the Fountain Circle at Washington Square. It was a real different thing just being with someone like her. I had the funniest feeling that I could never approach her sexually. But she was so unrestrained and so unafraid that I just had to be less inhibited with her. She would grab my arm or my hand. Her eyes just glowed all the time. She could look at me and ask me anything she wanted.

I knew I could never tell Mama anything about this. She and Carole and Margie would have gotten down on me about being “white-woman crazy.” I could hear Mama now. “You stay away from those white women. They ain't never lynched no white man over a colored woman. You just better stay away from those white girls, because you'll get yourself in a whole lot of trouble.”

I showed Judy the restaurant where Eugene O'Neill used to hang out. We went to places where they had cats painting or reciting poetry to jazz.

When I showed her the Circle, I told her how the folk singers would get in the middle, with their banjos and their guitars, and sing on Sundays; how it was mixed—everybody would come down, white and colored. She said she'd have to come and see it.

We walked and walked for most of the night. I hated the thought of having to say good night to her. I wanted to do things. I guess I was just scared. Maybe I was just afraid of the fact that she was white. But this was something new. I was thinking, I don't know what to do with a white girl. But I had a feeling that she didn't think of herself as a white girl. She didn't think of herself as any different from me.

She was so natural-acting, I just had to react to her. When we sat down at the Circle in Washington Square and I told her that I would bring her down there the following Sunday, she said, “It sounds like something marvelous, like something they'd have in foreign countries.” She started getting that faraway look in her eye. I just grabbed her and kissed her.

She sighed and said, “Well! That was nice. You know, I always knew that it would be.”

“How do you mean you knew?”

“I just had that feeling before it happened that when you kissed me, it was going to be something exceptional.”

“Yeah? You're an authority on kissing already?”

“No, but I knew it would give me a feeling like I never had before. I knew it would be a real good feeling.” She just looked at me. I still had my arm around her.

She said, “How about an encore?” I kissed her again. We just sat there and held each other for a while. Then she said she thought she'd better be going home. She was supposed to be out with a friend of hers, and she didn't want her mother to start calling the friend.

I said, “Yeah, well, that's understandable.” She told me she would call me Saturday, which was the following day. I said, “Okay, I'll be looking forward to it.”

I took her to the subway. I wanted to take her home, but I realized I couldn't do that. I rode uptown with her to Eighty-sixth Street and said good night there.

I felt good. I really felt as though I had met something wonderful. I had just never met a girl like that. It was everything. Everything was different about her. Compared with her, most of the colored chicks I'd known seemed crude and harsh. They were chicks who you couldn't be but so sweet to, because they weren't sweet themselves. Her voice
and manner were warm. She seemed to be more feminine than most of the women I knew, and more of everything a woman was supposed to be.

She did call that Saturday, and she talked about the time we'd had and how she'd enjoyed it very much. And she thanked me. She thanked me for asking her out. This was kind of funny. It made me laugh, but these little things made me think of her as more and more beautiful all the time. She seemed to be the sweetest girl in the world. I just kept talking about it, in my head, and every time I thought about it, I would laugh, not just smile, even if I was out in the street someplace. I guess people looked at me and thought I was a little crazy.

I brought Judy down to the Village on Sunday and took her over to the Circle to see the folk singers carrying on. She really thought this was something great. Everybody there seemed so free. She wanted to take off her shoes and go into the Circle too.

I said okay. I had to let her do what she wanted to do, and hope that she wouldn't go too far. She took off her shoes.

I said, “Come on. You want to sing?”

She said, “No, I've got a terrible voice. I don't sing, but I'd like to listen.”

“Come on, you can get closer to the crowd.”

“No, I just want to stand here.”

“Well, aren't your feet hot?”

“No, it feels comfortable. This is something I've wanted to do all afternoon, but there aren't many places like this. Everybody else has their shoes off, so I don't look conspicuous here.”

We both smiled. That thought ran through my head again: Wow! I must have done something good, somewhere in my life, and this must be the goodness I'm reaping for it. We talked about the people in the Village.

She asked me, “Why did you, that time when I told you I was Jewish and my parents were Jewish, why did you say that you suspected it?”

“Look around you, here.”

“Yeah, so what?”

“The Village is like a showplace for interracial couples. You're a square down here if you're going with somebody of the same race. It's all a fad, I think, with these people. I don't think most of them dig
any of the people they're going with. They're just down here trying to be different, and if you're really going to be different, you've got to get you a companion of a different race.”

She said, “I'm not so sure that's true. Maybe it's just that down here all these people have found something good … and people who happen to be of a different race. It's something they wanted, and this is the only place they can come to and not be looked on as something queer. So they all just come down here.”

I said, “Yeah, that's a possibility, too, but I've been living down here now for about three years, and most of the younger people out here, they're just experimenting. They're taking a taste of the different fruits. Every few months, they have different boyfriends, different girl friends.”

“That may be true with many of the people down here. Still, that doesn't answer my question.”

I said, “I don't know exactly what it is, Judy, but there seems to be a strong attraction between Jewish people and Negroes. Most of the white girls who you see around here going with colored fellows will be Jewish. And most of the white guys you see going with colored girls will be Jewish guys.”

“Oh, I didn't know that. I don't know of anybody who has done anything like that. I thought it was a very unusual thing.”

“It is, but when it docs happen, it's with Jewish people.”

“Oh, I thought it was something that rarely happened with Jewish families, because Jewish people have strong family ties. I have a cousin who married this Puerto Rican fellow. Her family just doesn't have anything to do with her any more. I still like her, and I see her. She can come by my house, and my parents say it's okay, but my aunt and my uncle say that she isn't their child any more.”

“Yeah, well, that's the way some parents might take it.”

“If my parents were to do that, and I was in love with somebody, I think we'd be disowning each other, because if they couldn't accept someone I was in love with, it would only indicate to me that they didn't really love me.”

I looked at her, and I tried to smile. I said, “Yeah, that's a big stand to take. It takes big parents to accept it. You'll have a rough way to go.”

We just sat there. Before I'd realized it, we were talking about something new, something different. Suddenly, it had gotten serious.

“You know, Judy, many times I think that if a Negro fellow
really loved a girl … and she was white, he would … if he really loved her … I think he wouldn't want to marry her.”

Judy said, “Why not? I think anybody who loves anybody, regardless of color … if they really love them, they couldn't help but marry them.”

“No. You see, what I'm talking about is most Negroes know that life is hard for a Negro anyway; it's terribly hard unless you've got some money, and most Negroes don't have any money. And if a Jewish person marries a colored person, this is murder. Life is going to be twice as hard for both of them. Then, just think about the kids you'd have. Damn. Can you imagine a kid being born a Jew and a Negro? You've struck out before you even start. It seems like a cruel thing to do to a child, bring a child into the world of Jewish and Negro parents.”

She looked at me silently for a while. Then she said, “Do you really believe this?”

“Sometimes I feel that way.”

“Well, let me tell you that when you feel that way, you're wrong. You're just taking a defeatist attitude. If you loved somebody, and you really loved them, you'd just have to find a way to make it work so you both could be together and be happy.”

“Yeah, well, maybe.” I looked at her for a while. I thought, Wow, this young girl is really on fire, really on fire! I said, “Yeah, Judy, maybe you're right. Then again, I don't know whether I'd be game enough to do something like that myself.”

“Wait a minute, Claude. You mean to tell me that if I were to fall in love with you, there would be no hope for my ever becoming your wife?”

I look at her, and smiled. “Well, you've got us getting married already, huh?”

“No …”

“Don't rush me, lady, please don't rush me to the altar. I've been afraid of this sort of thing all my life.”

She smiled and said, “Oh, no, no, no. I wasn't suggesting anything. I was just trying to find out.”

I just grabbed her around the neck, playfully, and I said, “You just let your parents try and take you away from me, and I'll chase you to the ends of the earth. Just to spite 'em, I'll marry you, and we'll have a houseful of half-breeds. We'll have a houseful of nigger and
Jewish kids running all around. Every Christmas, we'll let them send your parents a Christmas card with their pictures on it.”