The Glory Field: May 1930

The tall, dark-skinned sixteen-year-old was combing pomade through her godmother's hair.

"If there's anything I can't stand," Miss Etta called up the dumbwaiter shaft, “it's a stupid, skinny, and dirty heifer!"

"If he kept his gas the way he keep his money, he'd be one of those dirigibles!"

Miss Etta came in wearing a green, short-sleeved dress and her good brown shoes. As usual she hadn't rubbed the deodorant in well, and there was the telltale sign of white under her brown arms.

"You ain't ready yet?" Miss Etta's voice registered mild surprise.

It was nearly twelve-thirty already. If they got started exactly at twelve-thirty they would be just about finished with Sunday services by two. Reverend Bradley never skimped on services or cut them short because somebody was in a hurry, and he didn't like the choir members leaving before services were done.

"In ancient times...huh!...in ancient times," Reverend Bradley went on, "a wealthy man had two sons. And the younger son came to the man one day and said to him, 'Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me...'"
The tale of the prodigal son was played out slowly, but Luvenia was glad to hear it.

She had only seen him once in a while when he came around to the neighborhood collecting numbers. In the neighborhood, he did not look like a disreputable character. But in the back of Bethel, he looked like one of the gangsters they had in Ten Nights in a Barroom, a film she had seen in the Regent Theater.

Johnnie Mae turned her back quickly and suppressed a smile.

Luvenia adjusted a crocheted armrest cover.

The front door was open and so were the windows, in the hope that somehow a stray breeze would make the July heat more tolerable.

In the dance she was trying to get off the dance floor, trying to get away from the music, from the jelly glasses of cheap whiskey and out of the cold-water tenement.

At first Luvenia had thought she was just silly, but there was a real vitality to her, a kind of bubbly air that Luvenia had always liked.

Mrs. Deets was active in the arts and local charities and enjoyed the sports of tennis and croquet.

"We study the Negro at the university. She's been listening to a lot of radicals who want to force the Negro on people. I think those Negroes who are deserving will do very well for themselves, and those who aren't, will not. You cannot make people socially and politically equal by noisy rallies or those radical labor unions."

“And how are you getting along these days?" Florenz asked, her voice mellowing and the sudden anger that had flushed her face clearly subsiding.

Precious came into the room, and Florenz, who hated the small brown-and-white fluff of a dog, quickly slipped off a shoe and tossed it at him. The dog scampered quickly away, turned at the doorway, and gave a staccato scolding to his tormentor.

She signaled silence from her co-conspirators with a finger on her lips.

The crushing feeling seemed to rise from her knees, careen through her trembling body, and settle heavily in Luvenia's chest. When the tears came, they came as they never had before, rushing to her eyes and pouring down her cheeks even as she tried to muffle them by pulling the pillow tightly into her face.

It was when her arms began to jerk, when her hands, still clutching the telegram, seemed to move on their own, that she knew she had to get out of the house, to see some person, some thing that would bring sanity back to her.

"It's a shame but that undertaker—that walleyed fool that used to live in the colored 'Y' and whoever heard of an undertaker who lives in the YMCA?— won't be back until tonight when they have the funeral."

Luvenia thought of the fox stole Sister Stovall wore around the neighborhood.

Miss Etta pointed toward the corner of the coffin as a dark man shuffled from an office behind the pulpit.

He gave Luvenia a look and asked if she had finally caught her a beau.

Miss Etta, for some reason, always used white vinegar instead of cider vinegar, and Luvenia poured it liberally over the simmering ribs.

She wasn't much of a dancer, but Miss Etta kept the party swinging with fast tunes, and the men, most of them glad they had a party to go to instead of lying up in their sweltering apartments on a hot Chicago night, just needed a girl in the vicinity.

She wasn't much of a dancer, but Miss Etta kept the party swinging with fast tunes, and the men, most of them glad they had a party to go to instead of lying up in their sweltering apartments on a hot Chicago night, just needed a girl in the vicinity.

"My boyfriend wouldn't like it," she said.
The reaction was a quick "ohh" and a perceptible loosening of his grip.

In the distance the clatter from the overhead train rattled its own raucous rhythm.

A nearby radio answered with an offering of a tinny blues.