Read Online Celeste's Harlem Renaissance by Eleanora E. Tate - Free Book Online

my spine. You have to come help me work.”
    “I’m going to the theater to help you dance? Or sing?” Thrilled and alarmed, I tried to imagine myself onstage kicking up my legs with a feather boa around my shoulders. No, indeedy! Not Miss Mouse! “Oh, I couldn’t do that, Aunt Valentina. But maybe we could ride in your car to ease your back? Mr. Smithfield said it was a Pierce-Arrow.”
    “I don’t have a car anymore. No more questions!” she snapped, to my surprise, then mumbled, “We’re going to scrub floors and wash walls.”
    Scrub floors? No car? Was she joshing with me? She sure didn’t look joshed. What was going on? What was next? A hog slop supper? If I saw a little man with a beard dancing around with wooden feet, then I would know I was still on the train. Dreaming. But that cold wind gnawing my face and fingers let me know I was wide awake.
    Finally we came to a monstrous building with a million stone steps. I groaned. Like climbing one of Big Willie’s mountains! But Aunt Valentina hurried us around in the dark to a back door, and knocked.
    A man opened it. “You keep coming and going like this and I’ll get somebody else,” he said.
    “I’m sorry, Mr. Hartwig,” my aunt said meekly. “It won’t happen again. I’ve brought my niece here to help.”
    “All right, but it’s two for the price of one. Get it?”
    What did that mean? Aunt Valentina said, “Yes, sir,” and motioned for me to follow her. We entered a small, dimly lit lobby. My aunt removed her coat and hat, set them on a bench, and told me to set my things there, too. I hesitated. “It’s all right. It’s just us here and the doors are locked. Now, let’s get to work.”
    “Can we sit down for a minute?” I begged.
    “No. Well, for one minute.” She sat down, rubbing her back and making a face. I set my schoolbag and my violin down, then placed her coat on top of them. I had hardly sat down when she eased back up. “Mr. Hartwig’s the head janitor, and my boss,” she whispered. She nodded toward a short White man standing by some double doors. He smiled a little when we passed through.
    I gasped. Rows of seats stretched before me to a massive stage, where gold brocade curtains cascaded down on each side. Ornate balcony seats were suspended above both ends of the stage. Marble pillars decorated with carved figures of fat babies toting harps, bows, and arrows lined the walls. Chandeliers with hundreds of yellow electric lightbulbs glittered from the ceiling. I reckoned the room was five times as big as our capitol’s rotunda, and the capitol was the biggest building I’d ever been in. Mouth open, I turned to Aunt Valentina.
    “Yes, isn’t it fabulous?” she said without smiling. “You’re in the Abyssinian Theater. Fabulous productions in a fabulous place, for Harlem.”
    I still tried to see her in furs and jewels on the stage singing grand songs. “And where you work?” I asked hopefully.
    “Yes, scrubbing floors. Right now.”
    “Oh.” My vision collapsed. I followed her into a small room. She picked out scrub brushes, soap, water buckets, and long stained aprons, and gave one of each to me. We tucked bunches of dry rags into the apron pockets. “I scrub and you rinse, then we both dry.”
    “But, Aunt Valentina —”
    “Shush your mouth and come on.”
    I hated to admit it, but Aunt Society was right about one thing: Aunt Valentina was going to work me to death. When we began our trek to the stage, I tripped on my apron, and the heavy water bucket I carried struck my leg. Water splashed onto the velvety red carpet. Aunt Valentina set down her bucket and quickly dropped rags on the wet spots. Squatting, I patted the carpet with my rags, too. “It’s all right, we got it up,” she called to Mr. Hartwig, who was watching from back at the doors. “Be more careful, Celeste!” she snapped at me under her breath.
    Holding up my apron with one hand, I carried the heavy bucket with the other. It