My first uniform!
Flip Cromwell said, “We ain’t got no ski shoes to fit your big feets, so you gotta wear socks till we can find some. So, get cleaned up, scrub. Breakfast’s waiting in the break room. Chow down and report to Captain Pin in the lobby. Six sharp.”
The break room was all white, with a long counter, stools, and booths. Photos of celebrities was on every wall. Most of the talk was about the big fight, where the great Joe Louis knocked out Baer in four. When Miss Chimes came in with the maid staff and heard what all them folks was talking about, she banged a fork on her water glass and yelled, “Stop!”
Everybody stopped.
“The fight? The fight!” Miss Chimes said. “What about the colored girl dead by the river? What about her? What about her fight? Why ain’t none a you talking about her?”
Nobody said nothing after that. The only sound was the clinking of forks on plates. Miss Chimes glared at us the whole time. We was happy to run out of there at about a quarter to six.
Uncle Balthazar stood in the middle of the lobby. Wearing glasses, like a professor, and a chocolate tux with a bright-red bow tie. We sat around him on the big leather couches. He called for reports from the top peoples: head chef, bartender, waiter. Then said, “Friends, there is a killer among us. Killing our babies. Discarding them like garbage. The damn cops won’t help us. The damn mayor won’t help us. We alone and must be vigilant. Ever vigilant and ever ready to ensure our homes are safe for our chirrens, our grandmothers, and for our own selves. It’s up to us. So, be careful and be aware.”
A discussion of the murders followed. Once the speakers had their say, Uncle Balthazar turnt to me and said, “On a final note, comrades, I’d like to introduce you to the newest member of the Dunbar family. Master Prometheus Drummond. He my nephew and go by the nickname Theus. I have seen fit to establish the post of factotum for him. That mean he a lackey, lowest rail on the stool. Please spy on him. Torment him. If he slip up and sass back, I’m gonna kick him back to the river where he come from.”
He said these shocking words then looked around at all the faces. All but mine.
“Understand?”
They nodded, yes suh, Captain Pin.
“Okay. Now, get to it,” he said.
They hustled to they posts.
7
Uncle Balthazar sat at his desk signing papers. Cold as an icicle. Ack like he didn’t know me. “So, I took a chance and hired you last night, nephew,” he started off, “but you ain’t legit and on the books, official like, till daybreak Monday. That give you six days to familiarize yourself with your responsibilities as a steward and representative of the greatest colored hotel west of the Mississippi. Or six days to mess up. Got me?”
He pushed the button on his desk and directly Miss Chimes walked in. “Miss Chimes will give you a comprehensive tour of the facilities,” he said. He winked at her and began his rounds.
My uncle wasn’t gone good before Miss Chimes grabbed me by my factotum shirt and jerked me outside, back to the trash bins in the alley on 42nd. She shoved me against a bin. Smiled. Her bottomless brown eyes was especially frightening.
“Now listen, squirt,” she said. “I know Captain Pin said I got to work with you. But I ain’t got to like you. Understand? If you don’t pull your weight, I’ll kick your Black ass myself.” She jerked her hand inside her pocket and took out a pack of smokes. Pulled one out. Perched it between her lips. Stopped fussing long enough to stare at me. “Got a light?” she said finally.
Said it like a girl who don’t want no light but just want to shame you and show you that you ain’t got nothing she can use. So don’t try to ack like you do. You ain’t got nothing I want, Negro, she was saying without saying it.
I searched my pockets and shook my head no. Shamed.
“Thought so,” she said, real mean.
I liked to died when she pulled a lighter out her own pocket and lit the smoke. “You mens is always buttin’ in where you ain’t needed,” she said. “And as for protecting me, I don’t need no damn man, ’specially no half-squirt half-a-worm like you running behind me. If that killer or any-damn-body run up on me, he gonna take his johnson home in a thimble. We clear?”
“Yes, Miss Chimes,” I said.
I was shaking inside, looking for somewheres to run. She blew out a cloud of smoke and said, all serious, “Now, here are the rules, Wormboy. More important, these are my personal laws for getting along with me anytime you walk past me in this fabulous hotel. First, ain’t no cussing on the premises. Got that, mutherfucker? And two, ain’t no smoking, at no time, and that mean from right now till Doomsday, y’understand?” Another toke. She added: “No drinking, no dawdling, no overt familiarity with the guests — they’re our patrons, not your buddies — no offensive or boisterous behavior, no spitting, in the street or nowheres, no stealing. And no sassing your betters, that mean me. Understand?” She flicked the butt into the street.
8
There are a hundred bedroom suites in the Dunbar. Sixty of them luxury, with private bath, sitting room, and gardens. Radio in every suite. Phonographs when requested. Miss Chimes pointed out the quirks in every room. Each flaw and flourish now my personal responsibility. She showed me what she called “hidden nooks” where dust and the occasional spider hid. How the beds must be made, pillows fluffed, linens folded; the daily flowers set out, watered, and arranged.
She showed me lockers lined with mops and brooms; shelves of brushes and rags. Disinfectants, bleaches, candles, soap, scents. I managed to pocket a small box of matches.
When I was ’bout wore out, I followed Miss Chimes into the cool darkness of the ballroom. Seats for a hundred. She summoned the head chef and all the waitstaff. Made me tell my name and shake hands. Our tour took four hours to complete. When we was done, Miss Chimes took me to the entrance on 41st.
“Look down, little Negro,” she said.
My big socks was standing on the threshold of the hotel. The flagstone was imprinted with the words Hotel Somerville.
“They calls it Dunbar now,” Miss Chimes said. “After the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, and that’s all well and good. But every time I say ‘Dunbar’ with my mouth, I say ‘Mrs. Somerville’ in my head. This is her hotel, not his’n. Sure, Mrs. Somerville had a good man — Dr. Somerville — to help her, with love and support and cash like a good man should, but she was a doctor too, and rich as hell, and all this pomp and majesty you see around us is her doing; the work of a single colored woman — Mrs. Vada Somerville. Her husband didn’t do shit but get married to a lady genius. Understand?”
I did.
9
A sharecropper’s boy ain’t no stranger to hard work, and I decided I was gonna make my Uncle Balthazar, Miss Chimes, and all them California Negroes confess I was the hardest-workinest feller, colored or white, any of them ever seen. I shot up at four a.m., threw on my factotum uniform and cap, swallowed a biscuit, and had the bannisters, tables, and main room floors sparkling before the six a.m. meeting. I kept up a hot sweat till well after quitting time. Made sure every wandering eye seen me. I didn’t take no break, nor dawdle, nor cuss, nor sass back at my betters, nor slacken my pace till moonlight rose over the avenue.
To help with my chores, I’d been given a bike, with Dunbar Flyer painted on the frame. My Cadillac. Uncle Balthazar fount me a place downtown, walled in with some Okie tents and run-down shacks for families on the dole. My neighbors was poor and grief-worn. From sunrise to long after sunset, when they wasn’t walkin’ around looking pitiful and stunned, they filled the air with curious sounds and voices; singing and playing mandolins, guitars, fiddles, and accordions, all mixed in.