Page:The Blacker the Berry - Thurman - 1929.djvu/140

 Emma Lou had had another inspiration. She had decided to move. Perhaps if she were to live with a homey type of family they could introduce her to “the right sort of people.” She blamed her enforced isolation on the fact that she had made no worthwhile contacts. Mrs. Blake was a disagreeable remembrance. Since she came to think about it, Mrs. Blake had been distinctly patronizing like like her high school principal, or like Doris Garrett, the head of the only Negro sorority in the Southern California college she had attended. Doris Garrett had been very nice to all her colored schoolmates, but had seen to it that only those girls who were of a mulatto type were pledged for membership in the Greek letter society of which she was the head.

Emma Lou reasoned that she couldn’t go on as she was, being alone and aching for congenial companionship. True, her job didn’t allow her much spare time. She had to be at Arline’s apartment at eleven every morning, but except on the two matinee days, she was free from two until seven-thirty P. M., when she had to be at the theater, and by eleven-thirty every night, she was in Harlem. Then she had all day Sunday to herself. Arline paid her a good salary, and she made tips from the first and second leads in the show, who used her spare moments. She had been working for six weeks now, and had saved