I would say, “What kind of peace are you talking about? That is the trouble with you white folks, always wanting peace, and I ain’t got no privileges. You are always keeping the best of everything for yourself. All the peace is on your side.”

Then the old head desk clerk would say, “Get out of here before I call the law.” And the manager would reach for the phone.

Whereupon I would pull my Spanish on him. I would say, “No entiendo.”

Then they would both get all red in the face and say, “Oh, I beg your pardon! Are you Spanish?”

But by that time I would be mad, so I would say, “I will not accept a room here.” And walk stalking out. I would say, “Where I cannot spend my money if I speak American, I will not if I speak Spanish. You white folks act right simple. Good-by!” I would leave them with their mouths wide open. “Adíos!”

Then, if I was an artist, I would put all that into a comic book. I wonder why somebody don’t make comic books out of the funny way white folks in America behave—talking democracy out of one side of their mouth and, “Negro, stay in your place,” out of the other. I wish I could draw, I would make me such a book. I would start a whole series of comics which I bet would sell a million copies—Jess Simple’s Jim Crow Jive, would be the title. I would make my books in both English and Spanish so the Puerto Ricans could laugh, too. Because it must tickle them to see what a little foreignness will do. Just be foreign—then you don’t have to be colored.

Minnie Again

Minnie Again

“YOU know I wish my Cousin Minnie would leave New York and go on back down home to Virginia where she come from,” allowed Simple. “Even if she did come North looking for freedom, Harlem is too much for her.”

“Why? What’s happened now?” I asked.

“Last week Minnie got behind in her rent and was about to be evicted from the house where she rooms at,” said Simple. “So she come calling me up from a pay phone to ask me am I going to let her get put out in the street.”

“What did you say?”

“I told Minnie I has nothing to do with the matter, being as I’m neither her landlord, her husband, her father, nor her brother. I am just an off-cousin—not even by marriage.”

“Minnie said, ‘Jess, I did not waste my time and my dime to call you up to listen to no such talk as that concerning our cousinship, which is by blood, if not by law. I needs me some money.’