Early Cinema

Early Cinema

by Elizabeth Alexander

According to Mister Hedges, the custodian

who called upon their parents

after young Otwiner and young Julia

were spotted at the matinee

of Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik

at the segregated Knickerbocker Theater

in the uncommon Washington December

of 1922, "Your young ladies

were misrepresenting themselves today,"

meaning, of course, that they were passing.

After coffee and no cake were finished

and Mister Hedges had buttoned his coat

against the strange evening chill,

choice words were had with Otwiner and Julia,

shame upon the family, shame upon the race.

How they'd longed to see Rudolph Valentino,

who was swarthy like a Negro, like the finest Negro man.

In The Sheik, they'd heard, he was turbaned,

whisked damsels away in a desert cloud.

They'd heard this from Lucille and Ella

who'd put on their fine frocks and French,

claiming to be "of foreign extraction"

to sneak into the Knickerbocker Theater

past the usher who knew their parents

but did not know them.

They'd heard this from Mignon and Doris

who'd painted carmine bindis on their foreheads

braided their black hair tight down the back,

and huffed, "We'll have to take this up with the Embassy"

to the squinting ticket taker.

Otwiner and Julia were tired of Oscar Michaux,

tired of church, tired of responsibility,

rectitude, posture, grooming, modulation,

tired of homilies each way they turned,

tired of colored right and wrong.

They wanted to be whisked away.

The morning after Mister Hedges' visit

the paperboy cried "Extra!" and Papas

shrugged camel's hair topcoats over pressed pajamas,

and Mamas read aloud at the breakfast table,

"No Colored Killed When Roof Caves In"

at the Knickerbocker Theater

at the evening show

from a surfeit of snow on the roof.

One hundred others dead.

It appeared that God had spoken.

There was no school that day,

no movies for months after.