Week 4

Dear Diary,

       I know it has been quite a while since I've last written to you, but in my absence from France I have journeyed West to the glittered continent an ocean away that my niece has written and told me extensively about. The reason for my travels? Why I've been invited to the birthday party of Robert Joseph Pershing Foster!

       When the letter first arrived in my mailbox, embossed on pressed white paper with calligraphic cursive scroll, I could hardly believe my eyes. I hardly knew Robert -- in fact, I knew very little of him other than the success of his practice, and that he and Simone had acquainted themselves on a college campus years ago on one of her grand tours of the country. It seemed that I had been invited by proxy, as though Robert had written anyone with a pearl necklace and an address he knew who he thought might attend. I was just lucky enough to have been on his short list, and a woman of my age and social status would be nothing if not a socialite. In America, of all places! A land so foreign to my eyes but familiar to my ears. How I wished to explore what I had heard so much about!

       I arrived by streetcar, as Simone had arranged, and it pulled up to a great ivory mansion with glittering spires and a circular drive. It appeared as though the world had erupted and from its spout poured forth the dreams of thousands of Americans -- a castle shining in the night, adorned with millions of gemstones gleaming fiery red in the light of the moon, and the casual embrace of a man with a crushed velvet neck tie and cigarette.

      Upon being greeted by Mr. Foster (I know not what other name to call a man with such prestige that I hardly knew personally), I found myself in a foyer more grand that my wildest dreams could have concocted. I was met by vaulted ceilings and the smell of shrimp and shimmering gold curtains and the wonderful drone of drunken strangers making each other's acquaintance. It was also the first I was hearing of this wonderful American jazz -- a man plucking a harpsichord, a trumpet being tooted, and a pianist moving and contorting his body in so many ways and directions at once I began to worry for his safety.
   
   After all of my having heard of America from Simone and from my studies, I was shocked to have seen the social mobility of black people like Mr. Foster. Was it not true that years prior he struggled to put himself up in an apartment, and like many others, fled persecution in a pursuit of safety? If the rumors were true -- that so many black people turned around at the end of their travel north and west -- how had he managed to stay?

    It was only in my travels throughout the grandiose ballrooms, the open bars, and the fleeting conversations on my way to the restroom that I gained clarity. In a room no bigger than a broom closet, I walked into a woman wearing a pressed black and white cocktail dress, frills and lace and accouterments in place, with tears streaming down her face. She was a stout black woman with beautifully pressed hair and eyes that glinted with moisture as she looked up at me and wiped her face.

    "Oh my! Oh my! Excuse me madam!" she began as she plucked from her breast a handkerchief and began to pat at her tear-streaked cheeks. "I must pardon myself." She curtsied, but I stopped her as she tried to brush past me on her exit. I asked her what had happened, and she told me that she spilled cocktail sauce on the dress of one of Mr. Foster's guests, and it was then that I learned she worked in service to the family. She said that the red stain had ruined the night of a woman "in a dress whiter than her skin" and that she feared the repercussions that would come. She was sure to lose her job, but marring the name of someone as influential as Mr. Foster might spell out doom for her ability to live and work in Los Angeles.

     She reluctantly shared her story with me and I listened with eager ears. She told me of her commute 2 hours each way to service the Fosters, of her having "hobo-ed it" across the country from Tampa when she was just a girl, of her three girls, and of the crumbling Brownstone that await her so many miles away as she worked for the mouths to feed that awaited her at home. She told me of her fortunes and misfortunes, and of the many blacks from her community that began as hopeful as Mr. Foster, but along the way hadn't the ability to accomplish what he had.

    Her story upwelled within me, and I began to question all I had known about America. Her words were resonant of Simone's when she visited Harlem. Communities existed, surely, but to what extent were they better off than before? The woman told me of her family members lost to gang violence and police brutality, discrimination in seeking work, and the flight of whites from neighborhoods and public space at what they termed "the spread of the black plague." It was just as my Simone had spoken of women in this country -- there existed hope, a radical desire for betterment that drove all future action, that remained elusive to all but a select few.

    Uproarious, I gave the woman my best. I offered to pay her cab fare home and gave her the money I thought sufficient to pay for a dinner for her and her family. I write now from the restroom, awaiting my descent down the grand marble steps and into the company of Mr. Foster, to inform him of what I had learned and the audacity of the American people in proclaiming the land a promised one filled with hope and opportunity.

    Glasses clink outside, and I know that it is the falsetto of the elite silencing the poor and underserved.

                                                                                                            Disillusioned,

                                                                                                            Margaret de Beauvoir