III: Black Renaissance
Diagnosis
That evening I was invited to dinner at Louise Thompson’s house in Harlem. There were other guests, and her mother had prepared a wonderful meal. But suddenly, in the midst of dinner, the conversation at table floated a million miles away from me, off into space. I could see everyone clearly, hear everything that was said, but I didn’t seem to be there at all. Still, if anyone spoke to me or looked toward me, I nodded, answered something in a monosyllable, smiled automatically, and tried to keep on eating. But I couldn’t eat any more. Not a mouthful. I felt as if I was going to die.
As soon as dinner was over, I excused myself, saying I had forgotten I had an important appointment, and that I would have to leave right away. Outside, I hailed a taxi and drove to my doctor’s office in the Dunbar Apartments. It was about eight o’clock at night, clear and starry.
On entering the courtyard of the Dunbar Apartments, I met E. Simms Campbell and his aunt, Miss Allie Simms, coming out. I hadn’t seen them for a long time. They spoke to me pleasantly and asked when I would come to dinner with them.
I said: “Sometime in the next two or three years.”
I meant to say, two or three weeks. I knew I said years, but I couldn’t correct myself. My voice seemed far away and the whole thought lost in such a void that I couldn’t correct myself, although I was conscious of my error. So I left them standing there astonished and went on into my doctor’s office.
The doctor was just about to leave. He asked me what was the matter, and I said I felt as if I had gone to the other world. He smiled, gave me some ammonia to drink, made me take off my clothes and stretch out on a long table covered with black leather. The coldness of the table and the sharpness of the ammonia water brought me back to life. And then I really felt very sick—the way I had felt in Mexico when my father said: “Hurry up,” and anger like a tidal wave had laid me in my bed for a week.
All that day I had kept trying not to feel angry or hurt or amazed or bewildered over the morning on Park Avenue—and I didn’t feel any of those things consciously—for I had loved very much that gentle woman who had been my patron and I wanted to understand what had happened to us that she had sent me away as she did. But now I was violently and physically ill, with my stomach turning over and over each time I thought about that morning at all. And there was no rationalizing anything. I couldn’t. The doctor felt my pulse and listened to my heart a long time. He took my temperature. Then he said he found nothing seriously the matter. He advised rest and a light diet.
“Have you been eating in cheap restaurants of late?” he asked.
No, I hadn’t. I smiled. I had been eating very well. But I couldn’t, for the life of me, tell the doctor about Park Avenue, or why I was ill. I couldn’t open my mouth about it. At the very thought, nausea swept over me! I thought she’d liked me, my patron. But I gues