Page:The Blacker the Berry - Thurman - 1929.djvu/79

 Emma Lou yet felt that she must manage in some way to escape both home and school. That she must find happiness somewhere else. The idea her Uncle Joe had given her about the provinciality of people in small towns re-entered her mind. After all Los Angeles, too, was a small town mentally, peopled by mentally small southern Negroes. It was no better than Boise. She was now determined to go East where life was more cosmopolitan and people were more civilized. To this end she begged her mother and uncle to send her East to school.

“Can’t you ever be satisfied?”

“Now Jane,” Joe as usual was trying to keep the peace

“Now Jane, nothing! I never saw such an ungrateful child.”

“I’m not ungrateful. I'm just unhappy. I don’t like that school. I don’t want to go there any more.”

“Well, you’ll either go there or else stay home.” Thus Jane ended the discussion and could not be persuaded to reopen it.

And rather than remain home Emma Lou returned to Los Angeles and spent another long miserable, uneventful year in the University of Southern California, drawing more and more within herself and becoming more and more bitter. When vacation time came again she got herself a job as maid in a theater,