Page:The Blacker the Berry - Thurman - 1929.djvu/31

 made her feel it, to say nothing of the way she was regarded by outsiders. As early as she could remember, people had been saying to her mother, “What an extraordinarily black child! Where did you adopt it?” or else, “Such lovely unniggerish hair on such a niggerish-looking child.” Some had even been facetious and made suggestions like, “Try some lye, Jane, it may eat it out. She can’t look any worse.”

Then her mother’s re-marriage had brought another person into her life, a person destined to give her, while still a young child, much pain and unhappiness. Aloysius McNamara was his name. He was the bastard son of an Irish politician and a Negro washerwoman, and until he had been sent East to a parochial school, Aloysius, so named because that was his father’s middle name, had always been known as Aloysius Washington, and the identity of his own father had never been revealed to him by his proud and humble mother. But since his father had been prevailed upon to pay for his education, Aloysius’ mother thought it the proper time to tell her son his true origin and to let him assume his real name. She had hopes that away from his home town he might be able to pass for white and march unhindered by bars of color to fame and fortune.

But such was not to be the case, for Emma Lou’s prospective stepfather was so conscious of the Negro