George Schuyler: Black No More

Outside in the hall, squirming uneasily on the window seat, was Matthew, his fists clenched, his teeth biting into his thin lower lip. At another window stood Bunny looking vacantly out into the street, feeling useless and out of place in such a situation, and yet convinced that it was his duty to stay here by his best friend during this great crisis.

Matthew felt like a young soldier about to leave his trench to face a baptism of machine gun fire or a gambler risking his last dollar on a roll of the dice. It seemed to him that he would go mad if something didn’t happen quickly. He rose and paced the hall, hands in pockets, his tall shadow following him on the opposite wall. Why didn’t the doctor come out and tell him something? What was the cause of the delay? What would Helen say? What would the baby look like? Maybe it might be miraculously light! Stranger things had happened in this world. But no, nothing like that could happen. Well, he’d had his lucky break; now the vacation was over.

A nurse, immaculate in white uniform, came out of Helen’s bedroom, passed them hurriedly, smiling, and entered the bathroom. She returned with a basin of warm water in her hands, smiled again reassuringly and reëntered the natal chamber. Bunny and Matthew, in unison, sighed heavily.

“Boy!” exclaimed Bunny, wiping the perspiration from his brow. “If somethin’ don’t happen pretty soon here, I’m gonna do a Brodie out o’ that window.”

“The both of us,” said Matthew. “I never knew it took these doctors so damn long to get through.”

Helen’s door opened and the physician came out looking quite grave and concerned. Matthew pounced upon him. The man held his finger to his lips and motioned to the room across the hall. Matthew entered.

“Well,” said Matthew, guiltily, “what’s the news?”

“I’m very sorry to have to tell you, Mr. Fisher, that something terrible has happened. Your son is very, very dark. Either you or Mrs. Fisher must possess some Negro blood. It might be called reversion to type if any such thing had ever been proved. Now I want to know what you want done. If you say so I can get rid of this child and it will save everybody concerned a lot of trouble and disgrace. Nobody except the nurse knows anything about this and she’ll keep her mouth shut for a consideration. Of course, it’s all in the day’s work for me, you know. I’ve had plenty of cases like this in Atlanta, even before the disappearance of the Negroes. Come now, what shall I do?” he wailed.

“Yes,” thought Matthew to himself, “what should he do?” The doctor had suggested an excellent way out of the dilemma. They could just say that the child had died. But what of the future? Must he go on forever in this way? Helen was young and fecund. Surely one couldn’t go on murdering one’s children, especially when one loved and wanted children. Wouldn’t it be better to settle the matter once and for all? Or should he let the doctor murder the boy and then hope for a better situation the next time? An angel of frankness beckoned him to be done with this life of pretense; to take his wife and son and flee far away from everything, but a devil of ambition whispered seductively about wealth, power and prestige.

In almost as many seconds the pageant of the past three years passed in review on the screen of his tortured memory: the New Year’s Eve at the Honky Tonk Club, the first glimpse of the marvelously beautiful Helen, the ordeal of getting white, the first, sweet days of freedom from the petty insults and cheap discriminations to which as a black man he had always been subjected, then the search for Helen around Atlanta, the organization of the Knights of Nordica, the stream of successes, the coming of Bunny, the campaign planned and executed by him: and now, the end. Must it be the end?

“Well?” came the insistent voice of the physician.

Matthew opened his mouth to reply when the butler burst into the room waving a newspaper.

“Excuse me, sir,” he blurted, excitedly, “but Mister Brown said to bring this right to you.”

The lurid headlines seemed to leap from the paper and strike Matthew between the eyes:

Matthew and the physician, standing side by side, read the long account in awed silence. Bunny entered the door.

“Can I speak to you a minute, Matt?” he asked casually. Almost reluctant to move, Matthew followed him into the hall.

“Keep your shirt on, Big Boy,” Bunny advised, almost jovially. “They ain’t got nothin’ on you yet. That changing your name threw them off. You’re not even mentioned.”

Matthew braced up, threw back his shoulders and drew a long, deep breath. It seemed as if a mountain had been taken off his shoulders. He actually grinned as his confidence returned. He reached for Bunny’s hand and they shook, silently jubilant.

“Well, Doctor,” said Matthew, arching his left eyebrow in his familiar Mephistophelian manner, “it sort of looks as if there is something to that reversion to type business. I used to think it was all baloney myself. Well, it’s as I always say: you never can tell.”

“Yes, it seems as if this is a very authentic case,” agreed the physician, glancing sharply at the bland and blond countenance of Matthew. “Well, what now?”

“I’ll have to see Givens,” said Matthew as they turned to leave the room.

“Here he comes now,” Bunny announced.

Sure enough, the little gray-faced, bald-headed man came leaping up the stairs like a goat, his face haggard, his eyes bulging in mingled rage and terror, his necktie askew. He was waving a newspaper in his hand and opened his mouth without speaking as he shot past them and dashed into Helen’s room. The old fellow was evidently out of his head.

They followed him into a room in time to see him with his face buried in the covers of Helen’s bed and she, horrified, glancing at the six-inch-tall headline. Matthew rushed to her side as she slumped back on the pillow in a dead faint. The physician and nurse dashed to revive her. The old man on his knees sobbed hoarsely. Mrs. Givens looking fifteen years older appeared in the doorway. Bunny glanced at Matthew who slightly lowered his left eyelid and with difficulty suppressed a smile.

“We’ve got to get out o’ this!” shouted the Imperial Grand Wizard. “We’ve got to get out o’ this, Oh, it’s terrible…. I never knew it myself, for sure…. Oh, Matthew, get us out of this, I tell you. They almost mobbed me at the office…. Came in just as I went out the back way…. Almost ten thousand of them…. We can’t lose a minute. Quick, I tell you! They’ll murder us all.”

“I’ll look out for everything,” Matthew soothed condescendingly. “I’ll stick by you.” Then turning swiftly to his partner he commanded, “Bunny order both cars out at once. We’ll beat it for the airport…. Doctor Brocker, will you go with us to look out for Helen and the baby? We’ve got to get out right now. I’ll pay you your price.”

“Sure I’ll go, Mr. Fisher,” said the physician, quietly. “I wouldn’t leave Mrs. Fisher now.”

The nurse had succeeded in bringing Helen to consciousness. She was weeping bitterly, denouncing fate and her father. With that logicality that frequently causes people to accept as truth circumstantial evidence that is not necessarily conclusive, she was assuming that the suspiciously brown color of her new-born son was due to some hidden Negro drop of blood in her veins. She looked up at her husband beseechingly.

“Oh, Matthew, darling,” she cried, her long red-gold hair framing her face, “I’m so sorry about all this. If I’d only known, I’d never have let you in for it. I would have spared you this disgrace and humiliation. Oh, Matthew, Honey, please forgive me. I love you, my husband. Please don’t leave me, please don’t leave me. I love you, my husband. Please don’t leave me, please don’t leave me!” She reached out and grasped the tail of his coat as if he were going to leave that very minute.