Invisible man

            I saw her across the room when I awoke, reading a newspaper, her glasses low across the bridge of her nose as she stared at the page intently. Then I realized that though the glasses still slanted down, the eyes were no longer focused on the page, but on my face and lighting with a slow smile.

            "How you feel now?" she said.

            "Much better."

            "I thought you would be. And you be even better after you have a cup of soup I got for you in the kitchen. You slept a good long time."

            "Did I?" I said. "What time is it?"

            "It's about ten o'clock, and from the way you slept I suspects all you needed was some rest . . . No, don't git up yet. You got to drink your soup, then you can go," she said, leaving.

            She returned with a bowl in a plate. "This here'll fix you up," she said. "You don't get this kind of service up there at Men's House, do you? Now, you just sit there and take your time. I ain't got nothing to do but read the paper. And I like company. You have to make time in the morning?"

            "No, I've been sick," I said. "But I have to look for a job."

            "I knowed you wasn't well. Why you try to hide it?"

            "I didn't want to be trouble to anyone," I said.

            "Everybody has to be trouble to somebody. And you just come from the hospital too."

            I looked up. She sat in the rocking chair bent forward, her arms folded at ease across her aproned lap. Had she searched my pockets?

            "How did you know that?" I said.

            "There you go getting suspicious," she said sternly. "That's what's wrong with the world today, don't nobody trust nobody. I can smell that hospital smell on you, son. You got enough ether in those clothes to put to sleep a dog!"

            "I couldn't remember telling you that I had been in the hospital."

            "No, and you didn't have to. I smelled that out. You got people here in the city?"

            "No, ma'm," I said. "They're down South. I came up here to work so I could go to school, and I got sick."

            "Now ain't that too bad! But you'll make out all right. What you plan to make out of yourself?"

            "I don't know now; I came here wanting to be an educator. Now I don't know."

            "So what's wrong with being an educator?"

            I thought about it while sipping the good hot soup. "Nothing, I suppose, I just think I'd like to do something else."

            "Well, whatever it is, I hope it's something that's a credit to the race."

            "I hope so," I said.

            "Don't hope, make it that way."

            I looked at her thinking of what I'd tried to do and of where it had gotten me, seeing her heavy, composed figure before me.

            "It's you young folks what's going to make the changes," she said. "Y'all's the ones. You got to lead and you got to fight and move us all on up a little higher. And I tell you something else, it's the one's from the South that's got to do it, them what knows the fire and ain't forgot how it burns. Up here too many forgits. They finds a place for theyselves and forgits the ones on the bottom. Oh, heap of them talks about doing things, but they done really forgot. No, it's you young ones what has to remember and take the lead."

            "Yes," I said.

            "And you have to take care of yourself, son. Don't let this Harlem git you. I'm in New York but New York ain't in me, understand what I mean? Don't git corrupted."

            "I won't. I'll be too busy."

            "All right now, you looks to me like you might make something out of yourself, so you be careful."

            I got up to go, watching her raise herself out of her chair and come with me to the door.

            "You ever decide you want a room somewhere beside Men's House, try me," she said. "The rent's reasonable."

            "I'll remember that," I said.