then head North. The two often paddle down the
Little River, but when Melrose’s condition weak-
ens her, Joseph begins to paddle alone during the
evenings. On one of his outings, he finds himself
seduced by the sounds of piano music and even-
tually by the sight of a woman in the windows of
the mansion that sits on a nearby hill within view
of the river. The woman so resembles Melrose
that Joseph thinks of her as Melrose’s “second
self.” On one of his encounters, the unnamed
woman drops an ornate paddle into his boat. Mel-
rose identifies it as a precious object, one made of
aloe wood with lapis lazuli stones in its handle.
Melrose eventually suspects that the mysterious
woman has entranced her husband. She follows
him more than once and finally confronts the
woman, who has hair that is “[b]lack—deep,
black like crows... gently pushed, red lips...
[and] eyes like dark, melted pansies.” The en-
counter is unsettling because it appears that the
women are in fact mother and daughter. When
they meet, “[t]hey stood like stone, these women.
Stone images reflected in a mirror. Melrose had
not seen her close before. She had not seen Mel-
rose ever. Bout now a look of knowing flitted
across her face, than a look of awful fear, and she
backed to the steps and turned and ran. Leaped
like a frightened deer. Midway she wheeled again.
Melrose had not moved.” The woman flees the
mansion and reappears only when the townspeo-
ple lay her dead body on a porch swing after she
falls into the path of an oncoming horse and car-
riage after attempting to kill a white man. In the
wake of the woman’s demise, the town begins to
generate rumors about the strained family con-
nections among Melrose, Joseph, and the mysteri-
ous woman. The couple attempts to find Granna,
in part to make restitution and also perhaps to un-
derstand the lingering connection that they feel to
the woman from the mansion. Unfortunately,
when they return to Aloe House, “Granna was not
there. Nothing was there.” The story ends here,
without any comforting resolution for the confused
lovers or any clarification about how Melrose’s
long-estranged mother returned to the area.
Graham blended mysticism, folk supersti-
tion, and elements of seduction in her lengthy
tale. “Blue Aloes” is part of the larger oeuvre of
American folktales that writers such as CHARLES
CHESNUTTelevated during the early 20th cen-
tury and the mystical tales of tragic romance
penned by Graham’s peers such as LANGSTON
HUGHES. She hints at the disregarded and under-
estimated powers of matriarchs, especially those
of African descent whose knowledge of plants’
and medicines’ powers hint at their greater pow-
ers of folk magic and intervention. In “Blue
Aloes,” Graham suggests that traditional African
kinship ties can be irrevocably undermined and
lost when brash youth assert themselves and fail
to recognize the ancestral power and influence of
the elders.Blue BloodGeorgia Douglas Johnson(1926)
A riveting, fast-paced, and award-winning one-act
play that GEORGIADOUGLASJOHNSONcompleted
just one year after she became a widow and began
her writing life in earnest. The play was published
first in 1927 by the New York company Appleton-
Century. Eleven years later, the company included
it in the 1938 edition of Fifty More Contemporary
One-Act Plays,edited by Frank Shay. Johnson used
the melodramatic tragic romance form to craft a
memorable exposé of sexual bondage, incest, and
the dangers of color-consciousness within the
black community.
The play opens as Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Temple,
two single mothers, prepare for the marriage be-
tween their daughter and son, respectively. As they
begin to bicker about which child is benefiting
more from the union of two light-skinned people,
the mothers discover that Captain Winfield Mc-
Callister of Atlanta, Georgia, has victimized them
both. They are devastated to realize that a mar-
riage between their children will amount to incest
and that it cannot be allowed. The women con-
centrate on finding a quick and believable way to
prevent the ceremony scheduled for that evening.
May is whisked away by Randolph Strong, an aptly
named, long-suffering, and dark-skinned physician
whom May had spurned because of his color. John-
son provides no heavy-handed critique of intrara-
cial color prejudice, nor does she rage against the
tragic history of sexual concubinage suffered by
black women of the South. Nonetheless, she deliv-
ers a jarring play that succeeds precisely because of
its shocking coincidences.50 Blue Blood