and here you are crying and fuming like a ninny over some reference made on the stage to a black person.” He was disgusted now. He got up from the bed. Emma Lou looked up.
“But, Alva, you don’t know.”
“I do know,” he spoke sharply for the first time, “that you're a damn fool. It’s always color, color, color. If I speak to any of my friends on the street you always make some reference to their color and keep plaguing me with—‘Don’t you know nothing else but light-skinned people?’ And you’re always beefing about being black. Seems like to me you’'d be proud of it. You’re not the only black person in this world. There are gangs of them right here in Harlem, and I don’t see them going around a-moanin’ ’cause they ain’t half white.”
“I’m not moaning.”
“Oh, yes you are. And a person like you is far worse than a hinky yellow nigger. It’s your kind helps make other people color-prejudiced.”
“That’s just what I'm saying; it’s because of my color. . . .”
“Oh, go to hell!” And Alva rushed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
Braxton had been gone a week. Alva, who had been out with Marie, the creole Lesbian, came home
