She knew what Mrs. Hooper would say: Lorena had led her boy down the path to ruin. She saw it in the letters that Hooper’s mother sent, full of worry and blessings and the occasional dollar bill. Mrs. Hooper was also fond of including clippings from the Crisis, the NAACP magazine—usually the College and School News column and any articles about a Howard graduate who was already making a difference in the world. Thought you’d like to see this, she would write along the top of the page. Or, Wasn’t he in school with you? Even in her antique handwriting, the message came through like a megaphone blast. In the latest packet from Mama Hooper, it wasn’t the article that caught Lorena’s eye but the advertisement on the back of the page: SUMMER CLASSES AT HOWARD STARTING JULY 1. Hooper could be back in DC earning credits toward his degree instead of sweating at the fair for a bunch of tourists who, as Hooper said, didn’t know jazz-all about jazz.
Watching the first of the day’s cars begin to line up, she wondered what would happen if she told him that she wanted to go back, wanted him to finish school, so that they could—what?—settle down in Baltimore? Was Hooper supposed to be a dentist, an insurance man, a minister? Maybe in Mama Hooper’s dreams, but hadn’t they committed themselves to a different dream? Sure they had. It was just that a place in the paper-bag brigade and the Bronx slave market hadn’t been a part of that dream.
“You new around here?” An older woman, thickset and swathed in a floral dress, had edged up next to Lorena.
“Not so new,” Lorena said. “I was here last week.”
“Last week? You were here last week?” The woman tsked and shook her head like she was enjoying a joke Lorena had just told. “I’ve been working this corner for three years!”
Lorena tried to seem unconcerned. She wasn’t going to be bullied to the back of the line today, not when she’d been one of the first women here. She crossed her arms and tightened her grip on the rolled top of the paper bag.
“You’re not one of those Father Divine types, are you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lorena said.
“Sure you do,” the woman said. “Just last week we ran a bunch of them off this corner and the across-the-street corner, too.”
Of course Lorena had seen the followers of Father Divine: they were everywhere in Harlem, on the streets and in front of their restaurants, where you could get dinner with all the trimmings for ten cents less than anywhere else in town. With their shouts of “Father is with us!” they told the world that God walked the earth in the form of a pint-size, bald-headed black man who went by the name Reverend Major Jealous Divine.
“You listen here,” the woman continued. “Last week I had a lady in a Cadillac ready to pay me fifty cents an hour for a full day’s work, and just as I was fixing to get in her car, one of those Father Diviners comes up and says ‘Peace’ and that she’ll do it for thirty cents an hour. So guess who got the ride? Stealing four dollars from me? That ain’t peace! It’s war!”
“I sure am sorry to hear that,” Lorena said. “But I’m not one of them.”
They didn’t seem all bad, the angels of Father Divine. Last month Lorena had signed a petition they were circulating to get an anti-lynching law passed. Lorena didn’t see much use in it—how could a letter signed by black folks get white folks to stop doing something they wanted to do?—but she didn’t see any harm in it either. It was one of the things she liked about Harlem, that everywhere you went you heard preachers and soapbox politicians dreaming out loud about the future. The communists said the workers’ revolution was right around the corner and that the days of the bosses were coming to an end. To the sound of tambourines and praises, the preachers said the news pointed to the End of Days and the coming of the Antichrist, while others saw, just over the horizon, the glorious dawn of the Second Coming. The Father Diviners did them one better and claimed that God had already taken up residence on Long Island. But none of those futures, revolution or revelation, made this morning on 170th Street one whit easier to bear.
The woman who had been robbed by the angels wasn’t done with Lorena. “I’m keeping my eye on you,” she said. “You don’t ask for less than thirty-five cents an hour, you hear?”
“Martha, will you take it easy on that girl?” Another woman had joined their conversation. Alva was, in both age and size, halfway between the stocky Martha and the reedy Lorena. She wore a blue dress with a wide white collar and a simple silver cross on a chain around her neck. With the ease of someone who had known Lorena all her life, she placed a hand on her arm and gave her an auntish pat.
“Oh, I’m fine,” Lorena said.
“Of course you are, dear,” Alva said. “Martha’s having one of her moods. Did she tell you about losing that fifty-cents-an-hour job? I’ll bet she did.”
“I still say that’s why we need a union,” Martha said. “Fifty cents an hour, lunch, and carfare. That shouldn’t be so hard to come by.”
Now it was Alva’s turn to shake her head. She’d been listening to this union talk from Martha for going on a year. But how could you start a union when you were scrubbing and cleaning all day? And how was Martha going to get any of these girls to say no to forty cents an hour? Or forty-five?
“A union sounds good to me,” Lorena said. “Fighting each other for work just makes life easy for the madams.” Good Lord, she thought. I sound like Professor Hooper.
Martha nodded appreciatively. “See? She gets it. And now, if you ladies’ll excuse me, I do believe I’ve got work to do.” Martha lifted her bag from the sidewalk and strode toward a red Buick idling by the curb. This was Mrs. Rubenstein, one of Martha’s regulars, and the other women knew not to bother—not unless they wanted to get an earful tomorrow.
“That must be nice,” Lorena said. “Once the madams know you, off you go.”
“And it only took Martha three years on this same corner to make it happen.” Alva said it kindly, but Lorena got the message: Honey, think before you speak.
Both women craned their necks for signs of cars slowing to the curb. The busiest time was between eight and nine, after the madams’ husbands went to work and the ladies began acting on plans for a clean apartment by dinner. Lorena didn’t want to look too eager, but she didn’t want to miss her turn.
“You’re sure you’ve done this before?” Alva said.
“Cleaned a house?” Lorena stifled a small laugh. “My aunt Hessie wouldn’t abide a speck of dust.”
“That’s a start,” Alva said. “But do you know how this works?” With one hand she indicated the street, the cars, the paper bags.
“No less than thirty-five cents an hour. I heard it loud and clear.”