by Marge Piercy
“Then its people live in that history like a cage.”
“We’re each living in our own heavy history.”
“Speak for yourself. I’m inviting you out.”
“Ever see a turtle out of its shell? Only in the kitchen, when it’s about to be cooked.”
“More folks die of boredom than pleasure, I think.”
“How come you shaved off your moustache? I was teasing.” Her widest eyes probed cautiously, with distrust but also with curiosity. “It amused you. Made you feel superior to yourself.” She rubbed the fur cuff of her glove against her chin. “You have such simple desires. Can’t you want something more interesting in this world than my poor black ass?”
“That you’re not too respectable to say that cheers me up.”
“You forget I’m a farm girl.”
“Yes. I do forget that.”
“Think, then. Every morning I used to milk my two cows while Sylvia was on the other two. I’d go out with a pail and a pail of water to wash their bags. The cow would be eating, I’d be milking and day-dreaming. I used to like it except in the winter, because I could take a long time and daydream, against the warm hide. It was my secret time of the day—”
“What do you think you’re doing?” The voice cut the air with a plainsman’s nasal sneer. “Get over here. Come on.”
The police car had stopped on the service road between two mausoleums. She tensed and rose stiffly. She gave him one look of fury before her face stretched blank.
“We were visiting Sullivan’s grave,” he said as they approached the cop car. “That’s it.”
“Ya relatives?” The second cop snuffled at the joke.
“This is private property. Got a good mind to take you in.” His eyes were bored and lewd, his mouth worked around some small obstacle (gum?), sucking and mauling and ruminating. “This ain’t lovers’ lane. Some kind’ll do anything. Let’s see your ID.”
Vera never turned her face, set in a mask. She took out her teacher’s ID and handed it over. When the cops had both pored over it, the first said, “You’re lucky she’s not underage.”
“Considering I didn’t touch her, I don’t see why.” A slow rage built in his chest. But his balls shrinking hard in his crotch remembered the going over they’d given him at the last antiwar march.
“Too bad.” The second cop snickered again. “Where’s your ID?”
A few years ago he would have known what to do from the beginning, but these days it was hard to tell. If the cops took them in, it would be ugly. If he risked a bill, that might clinch it. Or it might be what they were looking for, besides their idea of fun. He folded the ten under his license and handed it across.
They both looked at his license, but mostly they were staring at Vera. How she must feel it, the simple threat of rape. Anytime you ran into the cops, it was encounter with power pure and simple. If you had clout, if you were somebody or knew somebody or somebody owned you, then you won. But otherwise it was their game to play you. They might want money, they might want a little fun, they might just want an arrest, they might want to kill you.
“Keep your lip buttoned and haul you ass out of here,” the first cop said finally. “Some people got no respect. Now move.”
It was humiliating to feel so relieved. Relieved that they had taken his ten bucks instead of a couple of his teeth or ribs, instead of Vera’s job or skin. Vera did not walk quickly but she remained frozen inside herself, even when he had brought her back to the car.
Tuesday: He finally tracked down Black Jack’s old girlfriend Teena to a rambling house on the near West Side. It was big like a farmhouse, extended in all directions till the end of its small plot or some neighboring structure brought it up short, wedged between a drycleaning plant and a cannery. He had looked over several possible doors with an equal appearance of disuse, when he saw a sign pointing back to a side entrance in a cul-de-sac between the house and the drycleaning plant, under the heavy whoosh of escaping steam. Reverend Roger Bates, Spiritual Psychologist, Healer of Souls, Divine Doctor: Help on Love, Business, Vice Habits, Health, Marriage, Lawsuits. Classes & Private Sessions. Strictly Confidential.
Should ask him how to find Jack Custis, how to make it with Vera, how to halt the renewal bulldozer, how to preserve his community from dispersal. The waiting room had the drab misery soaked discomfort of a welfare office or clinic. A tall august black woman in nurse’s uniform except for the veiled headdress viewed him from the corridor with suspicion and disdain. He explained his errand. She stood impassive until he had gone through the story again, then disappeared. Middle-aged women clutching their handbags came and went. A young man reading, rereading a letter was called and dismissed.
The Reverend Bates greeted him from a long immaculate topped desk, a light smallboned man with pale brown eyes, hands with long still fingers poised together. The top of the desk was highly polished. On its walnut finish the face of Bates floated upsidedown. The room was in contrast with the anterooms: thick beige carpet, rich brown draperies, Danish office furniture with orange accents. On a wall hung a degree—an MA in psychology dated fifteen years before, labeled indeed Roger Bates.
The Reverend Bates listened in silence, his graceful hands touching his temples. His smile when Rowley finished was milk chocolate but mocking. “Mr. Custis came by to see us himself, not too long after Sister Teena joined our organization. You want to find him? Drag the river bottom. Dredge the sewers.” A sweet smile with a touch of almond. He slanted his long hands together. A ring of turquoise and silver glinted. “Sister Teena used to play the piano herself. Infrequently she favors us with a gospel tune.”
Rowley found his eyes returning to the diploma. The Reverend Bates remarked gently, “Yes, as I’m sure you’re aware, the day of the white collar Afro-American is upon us, somewhat. I was ahead of my time. Growing weary of running an elevator, I have found a way to make myself useful, if not inside the research or welfare system, then outside. There are sufficient unhappy clients for all of us … I see no reason why you might not have a chat with Sister Teena, briefly. We are all busy with the Lord’s work here—understaffed and overburdened. I’m sure you wish to leave a contribution for our good work?”
Rowley did not ask what that was but produced a five, and was led off by the same woman who had brought him in, angular and deliberate in her walking as a heron. He followed her stately journey through the high drafty halls, the doors open and shut with an air of dormitory or camp. Sister Teena was located down on her knees scrubbing the floor of the huge kitchen.
Her hair grew in tight natural curls conforming to her Nefertiti head. Her back was long and muscular, moving under the loose maid’s dress. Her headdress hung neatly on the back of a chair standing high on a workbench out of the way of her scrubbing. Her legs were slender, her feet shapely in spite of old sneakers. Crooning softly she scrubbed at the linoleum punishing it rhythmically, and her buttocks firm, wellturned as bakery bread, jiggled.
“Sister Teena,” the heron-woman said in a low grating voice. “You got a visitor. You stop a while. The Reverend says talk to him if you want to.”
She turned to look over her shoulder. His throat closed. Her face was old. Worn, twisted. Her cheek was seamed with a purplish-pink scar. Her eyes hung in loose pouches clinker cold on him. He began to speak. She let him talk on for a long time, holding the brush while slow drops gathered on the end and trickled down her arm. She and the heron-woman exchanged a long look, and then the other tapped briskly away.
Oh yeah, she remembered Jack Custis, yes indeed. With a slow, pinched smile. She didn’t think she’d forget him. But she didn’t follow that old life any more. She was saved and meant to stay saved. Jack had come here for her and the Reverend had let him in, that was his way. The Reverend knew she was born again, he wasn’t scared of Jack. She had never seen Jack again, after that time he came and made the ruckus. She didn’t go out.
“Not ever? You don’t go outside this house?”
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br /> “Out there?” She shuddered. Drops fled the brush down her arm. “No!”
A chill touched him. Vera. She had been a user, she said flatly and described her habit. He had the feeling she had said this all many times, the phrases were worn to her tongue. The scar she’d got in prison, when another woman attacked her and nobody would help. And why? Because they were all lost, all blind. The blind can’t lead the blind … She paused, drying her arm on her loose dress. Out there she couldn’t get a job. Who did he think would hire her? She laughed sourly. She couldn’t live. They’d lock her back up and throw away the key.
She seized the scrubbrush and began working again. “Black Jack, he was on welfare a long time. Try them. They keep track of everybody. They don’t have no respect for you, but they sure like to write things down. That time he come, he try to drag me out of here. Even after he see my face is all messed up. I told him, I told him, Jack, I’m through, I’m worn out, and he hit me upside of my head. He never bring nothing but trouble.” Lowering her head she worked furiously, purifying the floor, and he left. Around the next bend of the hall the heron-woman waited aloof under her veil to guide him out.
He had come on the bus, for the snowplow had buried his car. For five, ten minutes he waited on the corner. Getting dark. The air creaked with ice. Suddenly he turned and began walking on Grand Street, he did not know why. Aimless lately. He might have pressed Teena to remember old addresses, details, but a sickening indifference had come over him. He kept disconnecting. He forgot for a moment how to talk. He was used to enjoying his job, used to working because he enjoyed it. Now he had no ideas. All was labor.
As he walked east on Grand past the Salvation Army, the emblem on the watertower caught the last light. Wooden bridge over railroad. With the passing of trucks the old planks jigged under his soles. An iron bridge followed, crossing the North Branch. He leaned over the railing toward the Loop. Intricate web of railroad and car bridges, high buildings which did not at this point compose so much a skyline as a sharply lit compacted maze. Blunt hulk of the Merchandise Mart. Along the mushy shores stripped sumacs and cottonwood saplings stood ankledeep in frozen gray scum. Fish reeked from a processing plant on the bank he had left, and overlying all floated a strong aroma of chocolate from a factory a couple of blocks south. Streetlights cast his reflection on the garbage laden water. Sluggish, peristaltic. Would anyone drown himself in that?
He struck his gloved hands on each other, rubbed his numb nose. Could not move. Will had dwindled. What was eating him? From boredom he read the plaque on the bridge. Carter H. Harrison, Mayor. Historians’ favorite. Handsome and less the gouger than most. To contemplate mayors of American cities is to get a bellyache. He too owned real estate in the vice districts. Simple empire of the First Ward based on an army of whores and control of booze and gambling: the first innocent syndicate of Hinky Dink and Bathhouse John. Convenient, centralized vice district with its own newspapers—pimps’ house organs—its annual ball, its social leaders.
He leaned over his reflection that crept and shuddered on the oily surface. The past. Which did not exist. Catching him in a stupid error yesterday, Cal had said with his ordinary sarcasm, you must be in love. Watching the river ooze past, the lights from the Loop austere on the condensing dark, he leaned against a bridge support and something in the pressure against his side jogged him.
Smell of grass phantom on the fish and chocolate. Fireflies. A day when idyllic summer floated over the prairie miles, the cottonwood streets, when the cliffs of glass fronted a crisp serene sea. He had spent the day staring into the blue with Harlan and family. Their transistor radio pumped out the summer blood beat. They drank beer from cans in a bag and Shirley had brought chicken and potato salad.
He had got it out of Marcia that Anna was going with her to a concert at Ravinia to escape from Asher, her indecision, him. He had let them get settled. Then casually in the dusk he had come over to their blanket. He could makes Ives’ Second Symphony sound in his head and feel the nubby worn blanket where he lay, his hip grazing hers through the soft cloudy dress. Tunnel of green and hilly sideroad. Walking in the tall grass. The green was new and fresh, the city was new and breathing, the ground was under their feet. Twelve gates to the city, hallaloo. The city, the woman open to him, new, alive, to take and shape. His life before him warm and mapped like a hand. Prairie with sunflowers eight feet tall the settlers found. She was a sunflower turning to him, seedy and warm and coarse and strong. Love was a map. She had come to him and his life was in his hands like a woman. Vision of the city of long prairie streets and sunflowers, of his friendship with Harlan, of her summer body, him knowing and about to act of his fullness. Himself in his life in his city.
Icy water slid by, filmy, slow. Vera had cast him loose. He had felt brutal impatience for people who couldn’t find a thing in the world to give themselves to. Now he was flat except for his desire. Nothing he did had meaning to her. She was in tangent, in one quick bounce of judgment off again. Before her he stood a bloated clown, wearing the lewd gross self-loving mask of Mr. Charley.
Well, sun going down, moon begin to rise in blood,
Well, sun going down, moon begin to rise in blood,
Well, now, life ain’t worth livin’ if you ain’t with the woman you love.
The formlessness. That he could not grasp himself as actor. Could not grasp his own actions or possible actions. That his society appeared as a series of masks and obfuscations and hidden forces. He cursed and leaned over the filth to spit. Jammed his hands in the pockets of his hunting jacket and walked off.
Monday, the hearings started.
They had a good turnout from the neighborhood. The hearings room downtown was rapidly filled. Harlan argued with the officials to move it to a bigger room, but he was told that would be impossible, and some of their people who had not signed up in time to testify but who wanted to be present were not allowed to stand inside and had to leave. Shirley, with Tommy squirming on her lap, sat between Harlan and him, with Blanche on Harlan’s left side. Blanche was being very circumspect. She was wearing a black wool dress with white collar and cuffs and gloves and only two bracelets. She sat there clutching her purse and looked straight ahead. J.J. had parked his burly self on a folding chair just behind them, and he was leaning forward to talk in Harlan’s ear. Beside him was the little man whose name Rowley had never learned, but who had brought his soft mild insistence on justice to every meeting and every strategy session. Mrs. Samson, the widow with six kids who’d been relocated twice already, was present with the three oldest wearing somebody else’s suits. They all leaked nervousness, they all had little bits of paper with what they wanted to say written down, they all kept looking anxiously around to try to judge the enemy.
First came the Corporation testimony. The chairman of the division of social sciences of the University was called first. This was not the announced order, but Lederman hopped up to explain that Chairman Wangler had flown in especially to testify and he was needed back in Washington where he was working very hard on the President’s committee on crime in the streets. He shook hands with the commissioners, beamed around and launched, into a smooth exposition. He was followed by a demography expert from ISS.
The experts proved by census data and their own surveys that population density in the area under consideration was greater than in white middle-class areas to the east. Ages of structures were higher (smartly printed up comparative tables were distributed), and their potential obsolescence militated against soundly financed renovation. The area showed the perfect type of a sector in transition. Most inhabitants had arrived recently: such high transience destroyed stability.
“How’d they enjoy it if we talked about them that way? Those professors always picking up and going where they make more!” Blanche was prickling with anger. Harlan reached over to quiet her, then pulled his hand off her arm as if he’d been stung. Tommy was whining and Shirley was trying ineffectually to quiet him.
B
light was widespread, the experts reported. Inspectors working under Corporation auspices had found violations in building after building. In its racial composition the area resembled other districts of blight. Conversions by use were common. Let alone, the area could only hasten downhill, infecting property values in adjacent areas and further depressing the urban tax base.
The Corporation testimony was clear, vigorous and backed up by table after table of statistics (Table I through VIII). When the hearings broke for lunch, nobody in their group was feeling lively. Their mood was not improved by watching Lederman and Wangler go off with the commissioners to lunch. The Defense Committee people ate in a $1.39 steak place down the block, pulling three of the formica tables together. Tommy collected the foil from everybody’s baked potatoes and made a big ball of it.
“Maybe we made a mistake not finding out more who these commissioners are. Rowley, think you could check them out tonight?” Harlan had eaten quickly and shoved his plate away, sat tracing figures in spilled salt.
“The business library’s closed tonight, and besides, I have to be at the studio by six.”
“Okay, get what you can this afternoon.”
“Come on, man, I want to be at those hearings as much as you do.”
“I don’t want to be there at all. We need some discipline. Blanche, you go with him. He’ll show you what to do.”
“What’s come over you, Harlan? You know I got to testify.”
“We aren’t getting a chance to testify today. Can’t you see that?”
Testy and insistent Harlan sent them off. “You give in to a man one way, and pretty soon he’s bossing you all around the map,” Blanche said. She was as pissed off as he was at being exiled. They played round robin all afternoon through the library shelves: Polk’s Directory, Poor’s Register, Who’s Who in Illinois. One of the commissioners was a member of the real estate board. He had his offices in the Midwestern Title and Trust’s building, but they could not figure out his connection with the bank. The other white commissioner was a middle-level executive of a world agribusiness corporation, active in his church. His wife had furniture store money (People’s Friend Discount, active in the ghettoes). The black commissioner owned a small paper box plant.