Page:The Blacker the Berry - Thurman - 1929.djvu/88

 fried and warmed-over breakfast, by the raucous early morning wranglings and window to window greetings, and by the almost constant squeak of those impudent hall floor boards as the various people in her apartment raced one another to the kitchen or to the bathroom or to the front door. How could Harlem be so happily busy, so alive and merry at eight o’clock. Eight o’clock? The alarm rang. Emma Lou scuttled out of the bed and put on her clothes.

An hour later, looking as “pert” as possible, she entered the first employment agency she came to on 135th Street, between Lenox and Seventh Avenues. It was her first visit to such an establishment and she was particularly eager to experience this phase of a working girl’s life. Her first four weeks in Harlem had convinced her that jobs were easy to find, for she had noticed that there were three or four employment agencies to every block in business Harlem. Assuring herself in this way that she would experience little difficulty in obtaining a permanent and tasty position, Emma Lou had abruptly informed Mazelle Lindsay that she was leaving her employ.

“But, child,” her employer had objected, “I feel responsible for you. Your—your mother! Don’t be preposterous. How can you remain in New York alone?”