XXIX
Elevator
The following day Sandy went to work as elevator-boy at the hotel in the Loop where Mr.¬ÝHarris was head bellman, and during the hot summer months that followed, his life in Chicago gradually settled into a groove of work and home‚ÅÝ‚Äîwork, and home to Annjee‚Äôs stuffy little room against the elevated tracks, where at night his mother read the war news and cried because there had been no letter from Jimboy. Whether Sandy‚Äôs father was in Brest or Saint-Nazaire with the labor battalions, or at the front, she did not know. The Chicago Defender said that colored troops were fighting in the Champagne sector with great distinction, but Annjee cried anew when she read that.
“No news is good news,” Sandy repeated every night to comfort his mother, for he couldn’t imagine Jimboy dead. “Papa’s all right!” But Annjee worried and wept, half sick all the time, forever reading the death lists fearfully for her husband’s name.
That summer the heat was unbearable. Uptown in the Black Belt the air was like a steaming blanket around your head. In the Loop the sky was white-hot metal. Even on the lake front there was no relief unless you hurried into the crowded water. And there were long stretches of beach where the whites did not want Negroes to swim; so it was often dangerous to bathe if you were colored.
Sandy sweltered as he stood at the door of his boxlike, mirrored car in the big hotel lobby. He wore a red uniform with brass buttons and a tight coat that had to be kept fastened no matter how warm it was. But he felt very proud of himself holding his first full-time job, helping his mother with the room rent, and trying to save a little money out of each pay in order to return to high school in the fall.
The prospects of returning to school, however, were not bright. Some weeks it was impossible for Sandy to save even a half-dollar. And Annjee said now that she believed he should stay out of school and work to take care of himself, since he was as large as a man and had more education already than she‚Äôd had at his age. Aunt Hager would not have felt that way, though, Sandy thought, remembering his grandmother‚Äôs great ambition for him. But Annjee was different, less farseeing than her mother had been, less full of hopes for her son, not ambitious about him‚ÅÝ‚Äîcaring only for the war and Jimboy.
At the hotel Sandy‚Äôs hours on duty were long, and his legs and back ached with weariness from standing straight in one spot all the time, opening and closing the bronze door of the elevator. He had been assigned the last car in a row of six, each manned by a colored youth standing inside his metal box in a red uniform, operating the lever that sent the car up from the basement grill to the roof-garden restaurant on the fifteenth floor and then back down again all day. Repeating up-down‚ÅÝ‚Äîup-down‚ÅÝ‚Äîup-down interminably, carrying white guests.
After two months of this there were times when Sandy felt as though he could stand it no longer. The same flow of people week after week‚ÅÝ‚Äîfashionable women, officers, business men; the fetid air of the elevator-shaft, heavy with breath and the perfume of bodies; the same doors opening at the same unchanging levels hundreds of times each innumerable, monotonous day. The L in the morning; the L again at night. The street or the porch for a few minutes of air. Then bed. And the same thing tomorrow.
‚ÄúI‚Äôve got to get out of this,‚Äù Sandy thought. ‚ÄúIt‚Äôs an awful job.‚Äù Yet some of the fellows had been there for years. Three of the elevator-men on Sandy‚Äôs shift were more than forty years old‚ÅÝ‚Äîand had never gotten ahead in life. Mr.¬ÝHarris had been a bellhop since his boyhood, doing the same thing day after day‚ÅÝ‚Äîand now he was very proud of being head bellboy in Chicago.
“I’ve got to get out of this,” Sandy kept repeating. “Or maybe I’ll get stuck here, too, like they are, and never get away. I’ve got to go back to school.”
Yet he knew that his mother was making very little money‚ÅÝ‚Äîserving more or less as an apprentice in the hairdressing-shop, trying to learn the trade. And if he quit work, how would he live? Annjee did not favor his returning to school. And could he study if he were hungry? Could he study if he were worried about having no money? Worried about Annjee‚Äôs displeasure?
‚ÄúYes! I can!‚Äù he said. ‚ÄúI‚Äôm going to study!‚Äù He thought about Booker Washington sleeping under the wooden pavements at Richmond‚ÅÝ‚Äîbecause he had had no place to stay on his way to Hampton in search of an education. He thought about Frederick Douglass‚ÅÝ‚Äîa fugitive slave, owning not even himself, and yet a student. ‚ÄúIf they could study, I can, too! When school opens, I‚Äôm going to quit this job. Maybe I can get another one at night or in the late afternoon‚ÅÝ‚Äîbut it doesn‚Äôt matter‚ÅÝ‚ÄîI‚Äôm going back to my classes in September.‚ÅÝ‚Ää‚Å݂Ķ I‚Äôm through with elevators.‚Äù
Jimboy! Jimboy! Like Jimboy! something inside him warned, quitting work with no money, uncaring.
‚ÄúNot like Jimboy,‚Äù Sandy countered against himself. ‚ÄúNot like my father, always wanting to go somewhere. I‚Äôd get as tired of travelling all the time as I do of running this elevator up and down day after day.‚ÅÝ‚Ää‚Å݂Ķ I‚Äôm more like Harriett‚ÅÝ‚Äînot wanting to be a servant at the mercies of white people forever.‚ÅÝ‚Ää‚Å݂Ķ I want to do something for myself, by myself.‚ÅÝ‚Ää‚Å݂Ķ Free.‚ÅÝ‚Ää‚Å݂Ķ I want a house to live in, too, when I‚Äôm older‚ÅÝ‚Äîlike Tempy‚Äôs and Mr.¬ÝSiles‚Äôs.‚ÅÝ‚Ää‚Å݂Ķ But I wouldn‚Äôt want to be like Tempy‚Äôs friends‚ÅÝ‚Äîor her husband, dull and colorless, putting all his money away in a white bank, ashamed of colored people.‚Äù
‚ÄúA lot of minstrels‚ÅÝ‚Äîthat‚Äôs all niggers are!‚Äù Mr.¬ÝSiles had said once. ‚ÄúClowns, jazzers, just a band of dancers‚ÅÝ‚Äîthat‚Äôs why they never have anything. Never be anything but servants to the white people.‚Äù
Clowns! Jazzers! Band of dancers!‚ÅÝ‚Ää‚Å݂Ķ Harriett! Jimboy! Aunt Hager!‚ÅÝ‚Ää‚Å݂Ķ A band of dancers!‚ÅÝ‚Ää‚Å݂Ķ Sandy remembered his grandmother whirling around in front of the altar at revival meetings in the midst of the other sisters, her face shining with light, arms outstretched as though all the cares of the world had been cast away; Harriett in the backyard under the apple-tree, eagle-rocking in the summer evenings to the tunes of the guitar; Jimboy singing.‚ÅÝ‚Ää‚Å݂Ķ But was that why Negroes were poor, because they were dancers, jazzers, clowns?‚ÅÝ‚Ää‚Å݂Ķ The other way round would be better: dancers because of their poverty; singers because they suffered; laughing all the time because they must forget.‚ÅÝ‚Ää‚Å݂Ķ It‚Äôs more like that, thought Sandy.
A band of dancers.‚ÅÝ‚Ää‚Å݂Ķ Black dancers‚ÅÝ‚Äîcaptured in a white world.‚ÅÝ‚Ää‚Å݂Ķ Dancers of the spirit, too. Each black dreamer a captured dancer of the spirit.‚ÅÝ‚Ää‚Å݂Ķ Aunt Hager‚Äôs dreams for Sandy dancing far beyond the limitations of their poverty, of their humble station in life, of their dark skins.
“I wants you to be a great man, son,” she often told him, sitting on the porch in the darkness, singing, dreaming, calling up the deep past, creating dreams within the child. “I wants you to be a great man.”
“And I won’t disappoint you!” Sandy said that hot Chicago summer, just as though Hager were still there, planning for him. “I won’t disappoint you!” he said, standing straight in his sweltering red suit in the cage of the hotel elevator. “I won’t disappoint you, Aunt Hager,” dreaming at night in the stuffy little room in the great Black Belt of Chicago. “I won’t disappoint you now,” opening his eyes at dawn when Annjee shook him to get up and go to work again.