Suddenly the baby started bawling in the next room and i heard the bed squeak as Ella Mae got up to feed him. I wondered if they knew how well I could hear them through the thin partition. If they did they didn't let it bother them. I heard Henry mutter sleepily, 'Goddamnit! Goddamnit!' Then all I could hear was the sound of the baby sucking greedily, and I thought if they really wanted to give him a break they'd cut his throat and bury him in the back yard before he got old enough to know he was a nigger. Then i was ashamed. Ella Mae loved that baby. If anything happened to him she'd die.from If He Hollers Let Him Go, by Chester Himes.
Saturday, January 23
a break...
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From Chester Himes' The Crazy Kill:
"It was a street of paradox: unwed young mothers, suckling their infants, living on a prayer; fat black racketeers coasting past in bright-colored convertibles with their solid gold babes, carrying huge sums of money on their person; hardworking men, holding up the buildings with their shoulders, talking in loud voices up there in Harlem where the white bosses couldn't hear them; teen-age gangsters grouping for a gang fight, smoking marijuana weed to get up their courage; everybody escaping the hotbox rooms they lived in, seeking respite in a street made hotter by the automobile exhaust and the heat released by the concrete walls and walks."
(it's a run-on sentence, with some grammatically questionable misplaced modifiers... but it really works! I especially like "hardworking men, holding up the buildings with their shoulders, talking in loud voices up there in Harlem where the white bosses couldn't hear them")
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