"seven o’clock"

The title is mysterious and she is mysterious. Is it seven AM or PM? Is she a working woman or a working girl? Has she been working all night? Or working all day? She is definitely tired. I don’t think she’s a real Harlemite. I think she’s newly arrived from the South. She hasn’t quite got the Harlem style. The real Harlem style—the girls I worked with at the Cotton Club had no money, but they had it. She looks worn down by life and can’t afford to get her hair done. She looks a little defeated. She reminds me of Langston Hughes’ “Miss Blues’es Child”:

If the blue would let me.
Lord know I would smile.
If the blues would let me,
I would smile, smile, smile.
Instead of that I’m cryin’—
I must be Miss Blues’es child.

-Lena Horne