“‘He is a bricklayer,’ said Joyce, ‘but my mother was a Daughter of the Eastern Star, also a graduate of Fessenden Academy. She always worked around fine white folks. She never did work for no poor white trash. In fact, she wouldn’t. Poor folks have nothing to give nobody—least of all culture. I come by mine honestly.’

“‘Well, you will have to tell me what to ask your father because I am not used to writing no man for a woman’s hand.’

“‘When the time comes, I will put you straight,’ said Joyce. ‘But do not let it be too long. After all, I am only human and June don’t come but once a year.’

“‘Meaning what?’

“‘Meaning I might meet some other man before next year,’ said Joyce.

“That is what hurt me about our conversation, daddy-o. Pulling all them technicalities on me, then talking about she might meet some other man. Joyce better not meet no other man. She better not! Do, and I will marry her right now this June, in spite of my first wife, bigamy, or her old man—I mean, her father. Don’t Joyce know I am not to be trifled with? I am Jesse B. Semple.”

What Can a Man Say?

What Can a Man Say?

SWEEP, rain, over the Harlem rooftops. Sweep into the windows of folks at work, not at home to close the windows. Wet the beds in side bedrooms almost as narrow as the bed against the window. Sweep, rain! Have fun with the brownstone fronts of rooming houses full of people boxed in this room, that room, seven rings, two rings, five, nine.

“Who are they ringing for? It ain’t me, is it? Did you count how many rings?”

Turn into a spring equinox, rain, and blow curtains from Blumstein’s until they flop limp-wet. Dampen drapes. Soak shades until they won’t pull up or down. Make folks mad who come home from work and find everything all wet.

“‘It was so hot this morning any fool might have knowed it was going to rain. What did you leave the windows open for? It ain’t summer yet. You just don’t think,’ says my big old landlady to me.

“Yet and still, it ain’t my fault,” said Simple, “she’s got arthritis-rheumatis so bad she can’t get up the steps to shut the windows when it starts raining. Now she comes blaming me for letting my things get all wet! I come home from work tonight and find a puddle of water in the middle of the floor. Mattress soaked where I pushed the bed up against the window on account of the heat. The Bible my grandma gave me with my birth date writ in it looking like somebody run it through the laundry-mat. Ink all blurred. Nobody’ll ever know when I was borned.

“Old landlady says, ‘Ain’t you got a birth certificate?’