A Rage in Harlem Read Online Free PDF

already four patients waiting. He kept moving back in line, after the doctor had arrived, letting everybody go ahead of him.
    The receptionist kept looking at him from time to time. Finally she asked in a hard voice, “Are you sick or aren’t you?”
    By then it was almost noon.
    “I was, but I feel better now,” he said and put his hat on and left.

4
    The plate-glass front of Blumstein’s Department Store, exhibiting eye-catching items of wearing apparel and house furnishings for the residents of Harlem, extended from the back of the Theresa Hotel a half block down 125th Street.
    A Sister of Mercy sat on a campstool to one side of the entrance, shaking a round black collection-box at the passersby and smiling sadly.
    She was dressed in a long black gown, similar to the vestments of a nun, with a white starched bonnet atop a fringe of gray hair. A large gold cross, attached to a black ribbon, hung at her breast. She had a smooth-skinned, round black cherubic face, and two gold teeth in front which gleamed when she smiled.
    No one paid her any special attention. There were many black Sisters of Mercy seen throughout Manhattan. They solicited in the big department-stores downtown, on Fifth Avenue, in the railroad stations, up and down 42nd Street and throughout Times Square. Only a few persons knew the name of the organization they belonged to. Most of the Harlem folk thought they were nuns, just the same as there were black, kinky-headed, frizzly-bearded rabbis seen about the streets.
    She glanced up at Jackson and whispered in a prayerful voice, “Give to the Lawd, Brother. Give to the poor.”
    Jackson stopped to one side of her stool and examined the nylon stockings on display in the window.
    A colored drunk staggering past, turned around and leered at the Sister of Mercy.
    “Bless me, Sistah. Bless old Mose,” he mumbled, trying to be funny.
    “ ‘Knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked,’ sayeth the Lawd,” the Sister quoted.
    The drunk blinked and staggered hurriedly away.
    A little black girl with witch-plaited hair ran up to the nun and said in a breathless voice, “Sister Gabriel, Mama wants two tickets to heaven. Uncle Pone’s dyin’.”
    She stuck two one-dollar bills into the nun’s hand.
    “ ‘Buy of me gold tried in the fire,’ sayeth the Lawd,” the nun whispered, tucking the bucks inside her gown. “What do she want two for, child?”
    “Mama say Uncle Pone need two.”
    The nun slipped a black hand into the folds of her gown, drew out two white cards, and gave them to the little girl. Printed on the cards were the words:
    ADMIT ONE
Sister Gabriel
    “These’ll take Uncle Pone to the bosom of the Lawd,” she promised. “ ‘And I saw heaven opened, and beheld a white horse.’ ”
    “Amen,” the little girl said, and ran off with the two tickets to heaven.
    “Shame on you, Goldy. Blaspheming the Lord like that,” Jackson whispered. “The police are going to get you for selling those tickets.”
    “Ain’t no law against it,” Goldy whispered in reply. “They just say ‘Admit One.’ They don’t say to where. Might be to the Savoy Ballroom.”
    “There’s a law against impersonating a female,” Jackson said disgustedly.
    “You let the police take care of the law, Bruzz.”
    A couple approached to enter the store. Goldy rattled his coin box.
    “Give to the Lawd, give to the poor,” he begged prayerfully.
    The woman stopped and dropped three pennies into the box.
    Goldy’s saintly smile went sour.
    “Bless you, Mother, bless you. If three little pennies is all the Lawd is worth to you, then bless you.”
    The woman’s dark brown skin turned purple. She dug up a dime.
    “Bless you, Mother. Praise be the Lawd,” Goldy whispered indifferently.
    The woman went inside the store, but she could feel the eyes of the Lord pinned on her and the angels in heaven whispering among themselves, “What a cheapskate!” She was too