desk, quietly licking an ice cream cone.
At home the distraught Wilma rocked Sonya in her arms and bathed her with grateful tears. Father went back to his studio, and Mom went back to her meetings. And I had Wilma back again.
Mother loved us, and expressed that love through her determination to improve us, but she was busy. The winds of social change blowing through the middle Teens bestirred her wavy blonde hair. A suffragist since before I was born, an active member of the Godmothers’ League for unwed mothers, she continued to support the socialism-tinged Educational Alliance. When Emile Coué, the French psychotherapist, was all the rage, we had to recite at bedtime, “Every day in every way I’m getting better and better…” Night after night I slipped off to sleep drugged in self-improvement. No doubt about it, Adeline Jaffe Schulberg, our frail little flower of the East Side ghetto, the would-be librarian, was reaching up for every intellectual branch she could close her little hands around. She attended lectures the way the masses who were gradually making us rich lined up for their moving-picture shows.
With Wilma as our full-time nurse and companion, we naturally came to depend on her emotionally. Mothers and fathers were for getting presents from and saying goodnight to. It was through Wilma that I learned, inadvertently, that there was something difficult in having a dark skin in a white world.
I saw very little of my father—as publicity director of Famous Players he was out most nights, dining and drinking with movie stars and directors and visiting firemen—and I suppose I was trying to ingratiate myself with him so he would take more notice of me. I asked him if I could pour the cream into his morning coffee. He had been out late with his company cronies, Al Lichtman, Al Kaufman, and Frank Meyer, the studio manager—they called themselves “The Four Hoarsemen” because in their cramped offices at the studio on 26 th Street they had toshout their business to each other over the din of the Model T’s and the heavy clop-clopping of the horses pulling delivery wagons. Anyway, B.P. had been a little late in rising and he was in a hurry to get to the day’s work. Picturemaking was a passion with him, and Mary Pickford was finishing one of the films he had written. I wasn’t interested in Mary Pickford, nor was I aware that her phenomenal success was helping him to pay for this airy apartment. My personal star was Wilma, and as I poured the cream into his coffee, I said, “L-l-look, D-Daddy, I’m m-making a Wilma c-color.”
My father glanced nervously at Wilma, who was beginning to clear the table. He had exceptionally pale skin, almost porcelain in quality, his fine features and his sandy hair and his high white collar all seeming to blend together. I thought of my mother as pale pink, with faint roses glowing from her cheeks and a pretty mouth that was much redder than the rest of her. Wilma was the only person I had ever seen who looked like rich cream stirred into black coffee. My father turned back from Wilma and his voice was scolding. “Buddy, I want you to remember this. You must never, never mention Wilma’s color again. We are all very fond of Wilma. She’s become like a member of the family. It isn’t nice to talk about people’s color.” This was half a century before “Black Is Beautiful.” It was back in the know-nothing days of “Black Is Invisible,” or “Black Is Unmentionable.”
In a few minutes Dad was rushing off to the studio. To another big, exciting day, another hit movie for “America’s Sweetheart,” whose curls were as yellow as butter and whose skin was as white as snow. All the movie stars were snow-whites. The Pickford sisters and the Gish sisters, and Florence Lawrence, “The Girl of a Thousand Faces,” every one of them white.
I went out on the balcony and stared at the river. Why was it bad to mention Wilma’s color? Especially when it seemed a
At home the distraught Wilma rocked Sonya in her arms and bathed her with grateful tears. Father went back to his studio, and Mom went back to her meetings. And I had Wilma back again.
Mother loved us, and expressed that love through her determination to improve us, but she was busy. The winds of social change blowing through the middle Teens bestirred her wavy blonde hair. A suffragist since before I was born, an active member of the Godmothers’ League for unwed mothers, she continued to support the socialism-tinged Educational Alliance. When Emile Coué, the French psychotherapist, was all the rage, we had to recite at bedtime, “Every day in every way I’m getting better and better…” Night after night I slipped off to sleep drugged in self-improvement. No doubt about it, Adeline Jaffe Schulberg, our frail little flower of the East Side ghetto, the would-be librarian, was reaching up for every intellectual branch she could close her little hands around. She attended lectures the way the masses who were gradually making us rich lined up for their moving-picture shows.
With Wilma as our full-time nurse and companion, we naturally came to depend on her emotionally. Mothers and fathers were for getting presents from and saying goodnight to. It was through Wilma that I learned, inadvertently, that there was something difficult in having a dark skin in a white world.
I saw very little of my father—as publicity director of Famous Players he was out most nights, dining and drinking with movie stars and directors and visiting firemen—and I suppose I was trying to ingratiate myself with him so he would take more notice of me. I asked him if I could pour the cream into his morning coffee. He had been out late with his company cronies, Al Lichtman, Al Kaufman, and Frank Meyer, the studio manager—they called themselves “The Four Hoarsemen” because in their cramped offices at the studio on 26 th Street they had toshout their business to each other over the din of the Model T’s and the heavy clop-clopping of the horses pulling delivery wagons. Anyway, B.P. had been a little late in rising and he was in a hurry to get to the day’s work. Picturemaking was a passion with him, and Mary Pickford was finishing one of the films he had written. I wasn’t interested in Mary Pickford, nor was I aware that her phenomenal success was helping him to pay for this airy apartment. My personal star was Wilma, and as I poured the cream into his coffee, I said, “L-l-look, D-Daddy, I’m m-making a Wilma c-color.”
My father glanced nervously at Wilma, who was beginning to clear the table. He had exceptionally pale skin, almost porcelain in quality, his fine features and his sandy hair and his high white collar all seeming to blend together. I thought of my mother as pale pink, with faint roses glowing from her cheeks and a pretty mouth that was much redder than the rest of her. Wilma was the only person I had ever seen who looked like rich cream stirred into black coffee. My father turned back from Wilma and his voice was scolding. “Buddy, I want you to remember this. You must never, never mention Wilma’s color again. We are all very fond of Wilma. She’s become like a member of the family. It isn’t nice to talk about people’s color.” This was half a century before “Black Is Beautiful.” It was back in the know-nothing days of “Black Is Invisible,” or “Black Is Unmentionable.”
In a few minutes Dad was rushing off to the studio. To another big, exciting day, another hit movie for “America’s Sweetheart,” whose curls were as yellow as butter and whose skin was as white as snow. All the movie stars were snow-whites. The Pickford sisters and the Gish sisters, and Florence Lawrence, “The Girl of a Thousand Faces,” every one of them white.
I went out on the balcony and stared at the river. Why was it bad to mention Wilma’s color? Especially when it seemed a
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