Primary Source
“Evelina laughed happily to herself: it was pleasant out, and tonight she and Paul were very close to each other.
He held the door open for her—instead of going on around to the driving side, getting in, and leaving her to get in at her side as best she could. When he took this way of calling her lady and informing her of his love, and he took it only on special occasions such as these movie Saturdays, she felt precious, protected, delicious. She gave him an excited look of gratitude. He smiled indulgently.
‘Want it to be the Eagle again?’
‘Oh, no, no, Paul. Let’s not go there tonight. I feel too grand inside to be going there tonight. Gum-smacking. Haw-hawing. Cursing. Feet. Let’s go downtown?’
She had to suggest that with a question mark at the end, always. He usually had three protests. Too hard to park. Too much money. Too many white folks. And tonight she could really expect a no because he had come out in his blue work shirt. There was a spot of apricot juice on the collar, too. His shoes were not shined—But he nodded!
. . . It wasn’t like other movie houses. People from the Studebaker Theatre which, as Evelina whispered to Paul, was ‘all locked-arms’ with the World Playhouse, were strolling up and down the lobby, laughing softly, smoking with gentle grace.
‘There must be a play going on in there and this is probably an intermission,’ Evelina whispered again.
‘I don’t know why you feel you got to whisper,’ whispered Paul. ‘Nobody else is whispering in here.’ He looked around, resentfully, wanting to see a few, just a few colored faces. There weren’t any—other than his own.
Evelina laughed a nervous, defiant little laugh, and spoke loudly this time. ‘There certainly isn’t any reason to whisper. Silly, huh?’
The strolling women were cleverly gowned. Some of them had flowers or ‘flashers’ (Evelina) in their hair. They looked—cooked. Well-cared-for. And as though they had never seen a roach or a bed bug or a rat in their lives. Or gone without heat for a week. And the men had even edges. They were men, Evelina thought, who wouldn’t stoop to fret over less than a thousand dollars.
‘We’re the only colored people here,’ said Paul.
She got mad at him—a little. ‘Oh, hell. Who in hell cares?’
‘Well, what I want to know is, where do you pay the damn fares.’
‘There’s the box office. Go on up.’
He went on up. It was closed.
‘Well,’ sighed Evelina, ‘I guess the picture has already started. But we can’t have missed much. Go on up to that girl at the candy counter and ask her where we should pay our money.’
He didn’t want to do that. The girl was lovely and blonde and cold-eyed, and her arms were akimbo, and the set of her head was elegant. No one else was at the counter.
‘Well. We’ll wait a minute. And see—’
Evelina almost hated him. Coward! She ought to flounce over to the girl herself—show him up. . . .
They were able to go in.
And the picture! Oh, Evelina was so glad that they had not gone to the Eagle! Here was technicolor. And the love story was sweet. And there was classical music that silvered its way into you and made your back cold. And the theater itself! It was no palace, no such great shakes as the Tivoli out their way, for instance (where many colored people went every night). But you felt good sitting there, yes, good, and as if, when you left it, you would be going home to a sweet-smelling apartment with flowers on little gleaming tables. . . . Instead of back to your kit’n’t apt., with the garbage of your floor’s six families in a big can just outside your door, and the gray sound of little gray feet scratching away from it as you drag up those flights of narrow complaining stairs.”
- Gwendolyn Brooks, “We’re the Only Colored People Here,” 1945 (Reprinted by consent of Brooks Permissions.)