AP English Literature Prose Analysis Essay Practice

Jake was going crazy. A hot fever was burning him up.⁠ ⁠… Where was the singing gal that had danced to him? That dancing was for him all right.⁠ ⁠…

A crash cut through the music. A table went jazzing into the drum. The cabaret singer lay sprawling on the floor. A raging putty-skinned mulattress stamped on her ribs and spat in her face! “That’ll teach you to leave mah man be every time.” A black waiter rushed the mulattress. “Git off’n her. ’Causen she’s down.”

A potato-yellow man and a dull-black were locked. The proprietor, a heavy brown man, worked his elbow like a hatchet between them.

The antagonists glowered at each other.

“What you want to knock the gal down like that for, I acks you?”

“Better acks her why she done spits on mah woman.”

“Woman! White man’s wench, you mean. You low-down tripe.⁠ ⁠…”

The black man heaved toward the yellow, but the waiters hooked and hustled him off.⁠ ⁠… Sitting at a table, the cabaret singer was soothing her eye.

“Git out on the sidewalk, all you troublemakers,” cried the proprietor. “And you, Bess,” he cried to the cabaret singer, “nevah you show your face in mah place again.”

The cabaret was closed for the rest of the night. Like dogs flicked apart by a whipcord, the jazzers stood and talked resentfully in the street.

“Hi, Jake”⁠—Zeddy, rocking into the group with a nosy air, spotted his buddy⁠—“was you in on the li’l fun?”

“Yes, buddy, but I wasn’t mixed up in it. Sometimes they turn mah stomach, the womens. The same in France, the same in England, the same in Harlem. White against white and black against white and yellow against black and brown. We’s all just crazy-dog mad. Ain’t no peace on earth with the womens and there ain’t no life anywhere without them.”

“You said it, boh. It’s a be-be itching life”⁠—Zeddy scratched his flank⁠—“and we’re all sons of it.⁠ ⁠… But what is you hitting round this joint? I thought you would be feeding off milk and honey tonight?”

“Hard luck, buddy. Done lose out counta mah own indiligence. I fohgit the street and the house. Thought I’d find her heah but.⁠ ⁠…”

“What you thinking ’bout, boh?”

“That gal got beat up in the Baltimore. She done sings me into a tantalizing mood. Ahm feeling like.”

“Let’s take a look in on the Congo, boh. It’s the best pick-me-up place in Harlem.”

“I’m with you, buddy.”

“Always packed with the best pickings. When the chippies¹ come up from down home, tha’s where they hangs out first. You kain always find something that New York ain’t done made a fool of yet. Theah’s a high-yaller entertainer there that I’se got a crush on, but she ain’t nevah gived me a encouraging eye.”

“I ain’t much for the high-yallers after having been so much fed-up on the ofays²,” said Jake. “They’s so doggone much alike.”

“Ah no, boh. A sweet-lovin’ high-yaller queen’s got something different. K‑hhhhhhh, K‑hhhhhhh. Something nigger.”

The Congo was thick, dark-colorful, and fascinating. Drum and saxophone were fighting out the wonderful drag “blues” that was the favorite of all the low-down dance halls. In all the better places it was banned. Rumor said it was a police ban. It was an old tune, so far as popular tunes go. But at the Congo it lived fresh and green as grass. Everybody there was giggling and wriggling to it.

And it is ashes to ashes and dust to dust,

Can you show me a woman that a man can trust?