doing. Her back ached and her arms felt as though they had been pulled out of their sockets. But she finally acquired enough speed so that she could take a civil service examination. For she had made up her mind that she wasnât going to wash dishes or work in a laundry in order to earn a living for herself and Bub.
Another year dragged by. A year in which shepassed four or five exams each time way down on the list. A year that she spent waiting and waiting for an appointment and taking other exams. Four years of the steam laundry and then she got an appointment as a file clerk.
That kitchen in Connecticut had changed her whole lifeâthat kitchen all tricks and white enamel like this one in the advertisement. The train roared into 115th Street and she began pushing her way toward the doors, turning to take one last look at the advertisement as she left the car.
On the platform she hurried toward the downtown side and elbowed her way toward the waiting local. Only a few minutes and she would be at 116th Street. She didnât have any illusions about 116th Street as a place to live, but at the moment it represented a small victoryâone of a series which were the result of her careful planning. First the white-collar job, then an apartment of her own where she and Bub would be by themselves away from Popâs boisterous friends, away from Lil with her dyed hair and strident voice, away from the riff-raff roomers who made it possible for Pop to pay his rent. Even after living on 116th Street for two weeks, the very fact of being there was still a victory.
As for the street, she thought, getting up at the approaching station signs, she wasnât afraid of its influence, for she would fight against it. Streets like 116th Street or being colored, or a combination of both with all it implied, had turned Pop into a sly old man who drank too much; had killed Mom off when she was in her prime.
In that very apartment house in which she wasnow living, the same combination of circumstances had evidently made the Mrs. Hedges who sat in the street-floor window turn to running a fairly well-kept whorehouseâbut unmistakably a whorehouse; and the superintendent of the buildingâwell, the street had pushed him into basements away from light and air until he was being eaten up by some horrible obsession; and still other streets had turned Min, the woman who lived with him, into a drab drudge so spineless and so limp she was like a soggy dishrag. None of those things would happen to her, Lutie decided, because she would fight back and never stop fighting back.
She got off the train, thinking that she never felt really human until she reached Harlem and thus got away from the hostility in the eyes of the white women who stared at her on the downtown streets and in the subway. Escaped from the openly appraising looks of the white men whose eyes seemed to go through her clothing to her long brown legs. On the trains their eyes came at her furtively from behind newspapers, or half-concealed under hatbrims or partly shielded by their hands. And there was a warm, moist look about their eyes that made her want to run.
These other folks feel the same way, she thoughtâthat once they are freed from the contempt in the eyes of the downtown world, they instantly become individuals. Up here they are no longer creatures labeled simply âcoloredâ and therefore all alike. She noticed that once the crowd walked the length of the platform and started up the stairs toward the street, it expanded in size. The same people who had madethemselves small on the train, even on the platform, suddenly grew so large they could hardly get up the stairs to the street together. She reached the street at the very end of the crowd and stood watching them as they scattered in all directions, laughing and talking to each other.
3
AFTER she came out of the subway, Lutie walked slowly up the street, thinking that having solved one
Another year dragged by. A year in which shepassed four or five exams each time way down on the list. A year that she spent waiting and waiting for an appointment and taking other exams. Four years of the steam laundry and then she got an appointment as a file clerk.
That kitchen in Connecticut had changed her whole lifeâthat kitchen all tricks and white enamel like this one in the advertisement. The train roared into 115th Street and she began pushing her way toward the doors, turning to take one last look at the advertisement as she left the car.
On the platform she hurried toward the downtown side and elbowed her way toward the waiting local. Only a few minutes and she would be at 116th Street. She didnât have any illusions about 116th Street as a place to live, but at the moment it represented a small victoryâone of a series which were the result of her careful planning. First the white-collar job, then an apartment of her own where she and Bub would be by themselves away from Popâs boisterous friends, away from Lil with her dyed hair and strident voice, away from the riff-raff roomers who made it possible for Pop to pay his rent. Even after living on 116th Street for two weeks, the very fact of being there was still a victory.
As for the street, she thought, getting up at the approaching station signs, she wasnât afraid of its influence, for she would fight against it. Streets like 116th Street or being colored, or a combination of both with all it implied, had turned Pop into a sly old man who drank too much; had killed Mom off when she was in her prime.
In that very apartment house in which she wasnow living, the same combination of circumstances had evidently made the Mrs. Hedges who sat in the street-floor window turn to running a fairly well-kept whorehouseâbut unmistakably a whorehouse; and the superintendent of the buildingâwell, the street had pushed him into basements away from light and air until he was being eaten up by some horrible obsession; and still other streets had turned Min, the woman who lived with him, into a drab drudge so spineless and so limp she was like a soggy dishrag. None of those things would happen to her, Lutie decided, because she would fight back and never stop fighting back.
She got off the train, thinking that she never felt really human until she reached Harlem and thus got away from the hostility in the eyes of the white women who stared at her on the downtown streets and in the subway. Escaped from the openly appraising looks of the white men whose eyes seemed to go through her clothing to her long brown legs. On the trains their eyes came at her furtively from behind newspapers, or half-concealed under hatbrims or partly shielded by their hands. And there was a warm, moist look about their eyes that made her want to run.
These other folks feel the same way, she thoughtâthat once they are freed from the contempt in the eyes of the downtown world, they instantly become individuals. Up here they are no longer creatures labeled simply âcoloredâ and therefore all alike. She noticed that once the crowd walked the length of the platform and started up the stairs toward the street, it expanded in size. The same people who had madethemselves small on the train, even on the platform, suddenly grew so large they could hardly get up the stairs to the street together. She reached the street at the very end of the crowd and stood watching them as they scattered in all directions, laughing and talking to each other.
3
AFTER she came out of the subway, Lutie walked slowly up the street, thinking that having solved one
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