by Marge Piercy
“You’re George Rowley?” The thin lips opened just enough to emit the words. Piss on the tongue. “I’m Liggott. Bruce Liggott.”
He waited, puzzled. Guy wanting to pick a fight?
“Bruce Liggot, Caroline’s fiancé.”
“Oh.” He looked into the blue eyes squinched with anger. He wanted to laugh, but invisibly.
“Are you coming outside, or do I hit you here?”
“Sure. Outside we go.” He finished the shot he didn’t want and waved at Gus. Paid him. Followed the back of that handsome tweed overcoat out. Man to man. The jerk kept marching around the corner, toward the alley. On the way they passed a Jag at the curb. Caroline lowered the window as they went by and opened her mouth. Under the greenish streetlight her face looked pale, her open mouth very dark. She did not speak. Her breath stirred the fur of her collar. Rowley followed the jerk into the alley.
Anna
Friday, December 19–Saturday, December 27
“It was a goddamn madass stupid thing to do. Get yourself kicked out of school. Find yourself drafted next, cannon fodder. Jesus, you were thinking with your elbows!”
“It’s not clear I’ll be kicked out. And those people are losing their homes.”
“So you want to be a hero,” Leon muttered. “Fight cops, look for a little action. Fed up with your own life and problems. Time to run around the streets and feel like a man.”
“If a student isn’t a man, what am I? Come on, these are my problems. I’m as black as anybody in those streets.”
“How much you got in common with a numbers runner? Think you could talk to him for five minutes? He’s going to find you white. It’s like I decided to identify with the Jews in the Mea Shearim who throw rocks at tourists.”
“Maybe I have to talk to him. Maybe he has to talk to me. Maybe that’s the problem.” Paul slipped down on the couch with his legs stuck way out, his hands in fists.
Leon rubbed his hands against the cold. “Look, maybe I’m no one to talk. I got myself tossed out for boosting books. But—”
“It’s not the same thing!”
“Damn straight it’s not. I needed the bread.”
“Look. You’re telling me I was raised lucky.” Paul felt for the words. “The cost of being black has eaten me less maybe than the cost of being a Jameson. Of course people have kicked me in the face and so on—”
“Has anybody ever kicked you in the face, I mean for real?”
“Of course not,” Paul said. “You know what I mean.”
“You know what I mean too,” Leon drawled.
Oh god. She stared from one to the other. What was eating Leon?
“I was trying to say that being black had worked to my advantage too. Not for Vera, even. I could choose my school. I got a good scholarship. Frats approached me. The first thing I liked about you was that you didn’t come any further for me than for anybody else—you came that far for everybody.”
“But now you don’t listen. You don’t ask advice. You go around with plans in your head you’re not open about—”
“A thing I had to do. Since I went to those hearings.”
“With your sister and Rowley. He’s all for dashing around. If he’s a sort of sloppy pink it’s because it runs in his family, like being Baptist or Lutheran. Sing him ‘Solidarity Forever’ and he takes off his cap. Mushy politics, mushy thinking, mushy feeling.”
Paul was drawn up now, staring. “Who cares about my inner hangups? Haven’t you said time and again you can tell a person’s real ideas by what they do? What they put on the line?”
“What did you put on the line playing tag with a bulldozer? Throwing rocks at a wrecking ball, is that what you think?”
Paul shook his head helplessly. “The bad part was, there were some black guys on the wrecking crew. They felt like we were trying to take their jobs away. They were ready to fight us.”
“‘I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.’ Jay Gould. A favorite quote of Rowley’s. Throwing yourself at a bulldozer can’t do anything only because the wrong man is driving it.”
They looked at her blankly. Intruding in their private quarrel. Leon felt betrayed because Paul had acted without him. Paul felt betrayed because Leon could not understand his act. They nursed their betrayals. It ended with Paul walking out, slamming the big door so the glass rattled.
Leon sat in a thick brutish silence, picking his nose. On the sagging couch she skimmed the newspaper fat with Christmas ads. “Why are you taking it this way?”
He gave her a grimace deploring stupidity. He looked sunk into his chair. His depression yellowed the air.
“Want to go to a movie?”
“We’ve seen everything twice.”
“We could go to Woody’s.”
“Alcohol is a notorious poison.”
“Are you hungry? How about a pizza?”
“We’re always feeding our faces. You never think of anything else.”
“So get out the projector.”
“Why don’t you just ask me to slit my throat?”
“It’s a pity you don’t have music,” she said helplessly.
“Joye took the hi fi. That bitch.”
She did the supper dishes and read and worried. The rooms were cold and she fiddled with the stove. Then it was late and Leon stirred himself and they went to bed: like husband and wife, unspeaking, indifferent, in the double bed.
After five minutes of dark he poked her with his elbow. “Hey, you want to?”
She laughed and put her arm around him. She had no sense of doing a new thing. His warm, blocklike, somewhat inert hairy body was familiar. Worry had left acid in her muscles, and she could not gather herself into great excitement. The room was cold and its iron air pressed on them. They huddled under the full load of covers awkward, fumbling, patient. Like children, children figuring it out. They were quiet. She felt a little shy. He was gentle, his hands and mouth light, cool, careful—leaves on her.
They wriggled out of their clothes. Side by side they lay under the blankets and quilt and shifted here and gave there and poked around until he had come into her and still they were side by side facing. Slowly he moved in her and she seconded him cautiously. The bed hardly creaked. Every once in a while he would slip out. Each time he fitted himself back she grew more excited. Coming into her freshly he felt hot. Side by side they lay at ease except for the slow cautious fuck with its more and more but still localized excitement.
It was a game: that each scarcely moved. That she held her breath tightly controlled and never let it break from her. That his hands on her and hers on him were casual open palms that did not close. The roots of the game ran into childhood furtive curiosities and explorations, into the attics and basements and garages and tents of that first green and snotty sex. They did not challenge or threaten. Side by side they met in subtle exercise and the excitement was local and intense as an itch and full of teasing.
He worried about everyone, she thought, but no one took care of him. She would love him gently, almost remotely. What came off him more and more strongly as she knew him was a sense of waste, of good human material and strength and caring and willingness, wasting. She must stop tending her independence, stop worrying so much about herself, and see what happened.
She woke before him. She was already bathed and dressed and making coffee when the phone rang. She stood over it biting her lip, then answered.
Paul asked her, “Is he still mad?”
“Wait a second.” Going quietly to the door she looked in. He slept on his stomach with his hands tucked under. “He’s still sleeping. Why don’t you call back in a couple of hours?”
“I’ll be gone. I’m on disciplinary probation—a drag but could have been worse. But I’d better go home and explain it to the old man. I’ve been talking to Vera and she thinks we can put it across to him in a way he can take … What’s wrong with Leon anyhow?”
“You didn’t discuss it with him first.
He can’t see any way to act himself, so he can’t help jumping when somebody else gets moving.”
“I’ll have it out with him when I get back. Hey, how come you answered? Suppose I’d been his exwife or his mother?”
What the hell, Paul was on her side. “Think I’ll move in. Might as well.”
“Does that mean what I think?”
“You have a dirty mind. Anyhow, we can try it. So don’t worry about him.”
“Because you’ll take care.”
“I will try, baby.”
“He’s come to his senses. Don’t get married till I get back, okay?”
Later she was glad she had talked to Paul, because that confirmed her memory. Nothing else did. Leon got up groggy and dawdled over breakfast. Then scowling into the mirror at length and squeezing imaginary pimples on his nose, he listened to her tell him part of the phonecall from Paul.
“Back into that bag again. Jesus Christ. Hopeless kid. He’ll be back, but if he thinks I’m going to sit here and listen to him rap about his independence with a straight face …”
Probably she would not have brought up moving in except that when he took her home, Matt Fenn opened his door as if he had been waiting and put out his still bandaged head.
“Well! I’m not the only victim, and now they’re not waiting till the middle of the night! That poor old pensioner Mrs. What’s-her-name who’s always coughing. Well! When she came in yesterday evening, no later than seven-thirty, she was knocked down right in the hall. She was pushed to the floor and her purse snatched from her hand. How do you like that?”
Leon turned a face of disgust. “You got to get out of here. What are you waiting for, to get raped?”
She left most of her things, for she was by no means sure she could live with him. With only a suitcase, a few cookbooks and a box of toiletries, she shifted roofs.
Monday she edited interviews: A noted Negro urologist, happy owner of an early Frank Lloyd Wright, pointed out that the planners were professionals and just as when a person grew ill he must call on top professional advice, thus when a neighborhood ailed and grew blighted …
A lady high in UNA spoke of the pains and pleasures of working with various officials, the planners, and Sheldon Lederman, that wise and slippery facilitator. If he respected one, she implied, he revealed charm and even honesty. His most dubious maneuvers were carried out with a twinkle, so to speak—and without his ability and contacts and political acumen, where would they be? The neighborhood had lost more of its important families than it could afford, but since Sheldon and his superiors had entered the scene, new confidence had been infused among the stable elements.
Certainly the planners had revealed themselves responsive to the public. When she and her neighbors had noticed certain homes belonging to desirable elements were scheduled for demolition, they had gone to the planners. Not just to carry on, mind. It was wise to have alternate proposals when dealing with busy people, and the offstreet parking problem had to be dealt with. They suggested tearing down the Tyler Hotel—a place with a poor reputation and a late hours bar, and the planner had obliged.
It was her feeling that local groups could accomplish much if they didn’t imagine that officials were against them but saw them as busy hardworking people. Instead of shouting one should sit down and work through the problems on an unofficial basis in a mutually considerate way. Her father, Judge Alwyn, had often said, Never push someone by taking a public stand if you can avoid it, and she thought it good advice.
The last interview was with an organizer working for a grubby tenant organization in a nearby area. He fenced with the interviewer, who tried to get him to admit he was involved behind the scenes with the Defense Committee. He delighted in going off in long explanations of what his group was doing in their own neighborhood. He was, the interviewer noted, young, shaggy, dressed in a work shirt. He left abruptly to keep an appointment with a building inspector, saying he was sorry he couldn’t throw the bull longer as he always enjoyed meeting people from the University when they came into his area for any other reason than to tear it down.
“Something wrong?” asked Miss Cavenaugh.
“Maybe not. See you later.” She put on her coat, picked up an envelope at random from her out-basket and headed for a payphone. She asked for the name from the interview. He was not in.
“Look,” she said to the young suspicious voice in the receiver. “From the interview I just wanted to pick up on what you’re doing.” Only she did not even know what questions to ask. She got the address, another name, left the phonebooth feeling silly and vaguely expectant.
The next day she called in sick to ISS and went over. The office was a storefront—a couple of desks and tables, posters of Che and Malcolm, a phone, a mimeograph machine and a hot plate. Except for a Puerto Rican woman from the neighborhood, everybody was younger. She talked mainly to Rick, a short pudgy growly-voiced kid with rimless glasses and an intense brown stare. They were living off the neighborhood, occasional contributions and what they made on a paper they put out.
“You couldn’t live on less than what I used to get downtown, believe me.”
But they did. She shuddered and persisted. They were organizing a tenant’s union, there was a day-care community school project, they had picketed a few landlords and held a rent strike. They were keeping an eye on the University’s real estate dealings. They were starting some draft work. There was a staff meeting late in the afternoon and she stayed for it. It was agreed she would start coming in on weekends. In the meantime she would give notice. By the first week in January if she still wanted and worked out, she could come on staff, a mix of students, neighborhood people and two organizers. “But everybody’s an organizer,” they said. “You’ll see.”
The street outside was crowded. The squat weight of the El kept off the mean sky and kept in the precious heat of cars and bodies. At four it was dark. Neon sputtered under the girders, spicy barbecue smoke, roasted chicken. A player’s street where boys and girls learned young what they could sell and what they could buy.
As she turned north into a sidestreet the air felt colder, harder. The day was stiff and windless with a light dry snow flaking down on patches of slick ice or black heaps of rocky old snow. Going home to Leon she felt good and stopped to buy a chucksteak, ripe bananas and sourcream and a french-bread.
The kids working for the project were most of them living close by the office, and in the back of her head she could hear Harlan’s sarcastic voice, “Yes, them poor sentimental old maids at Hull House didn’t comprehend how social work had to be done. They done it social-like. Moved right into the neighborhood, soaked themselves in it. No wonder they got to agitating for new laws. They didn’t comprehend the first thing about how you treat a client, and how people turn into cases and how many cases make a load. If the client wasn’t sick, would he be a client? The problem is obviously with him.”
Fall, a year ago. The Gypsys were arriving in Maxwell Street for the winter, setting up in storefronts. Pushcarts heaped with old toasters and chipped pots and transistor radios and doublebreasted suits and patched galoshes. Parodies of her father tugged at her, wizened, insistent. The old ghetto. From a Mexican lunch wagon they’d brought long green banana peppers that had been so burning hot she had cried out with pain and had to drink soda while Harlan and Rowley laughed at her and ate more of the damned fiery things, showing off.
Nearby on Blue Island they used to go to a Greek place that had good cheap lamb and retsina. Sailors in from Greek ships would get up to dance to the funky wailing clarinets, when the bellydancer or the sturdy fatlegged singer wasn’t on. She had been by lately: gone. Another institution had expanded. The people living there had shown a sense of possession and roots hard for the power structure to credit. But their misfortune was that their roots were set into land too near the Loop, part of that coming golden girdle of high rise, high income apartments, new glass office buildings, institutional complexes and expressways to seal o
ff the financial heart from the festering human stockyards. Hull House was a redbrick sore thumb amputated in the failure of what it stood for.
Should she really quit her job and the University matrix? Cross to the other side. Exactly what did she still fear? They weren’t bribing her with much. The difference of a couple of new dresses and a coat. Better to get a new mind and a new body. It was her only life spending in their cycle of the meaningless into the pernicious. The job was aging her into a toady, a technical serf, a cog squeaking and grinding as the machine turned out its nets of social control.
Lights on. With packages in her arms she did not fish for her key but banged until Leon came. He looked at her blankly. His face was blotchy with excitement. His orange hair stood on end. Caroline sat sharply erect on the couch gaping. A twinge went through Anna at her breast. Nodding she went directly into the kitchen to put the groceries away. “Stay to supper. We’d love to have you.”
“Oh dear no, I can’t,” Caroline said. “It must be late. How the afternoon went. I had a million things to do, too.”
Anna turned to see her come close to Leon and pat his cheek. “You’ve been tremendous, really. After all!”
“Let me know what you decide, hey?” He stood awkwardly. His face was heavy with feeling, his voice thick. “Don’t forget!”
“I have to talk to him again. He has to reconsider, I mean—”
He gave a harsh laugh like a bag popping. “Listen, forget him. Don’t let it get you down.” Lightly he hit her shoulder. “Don’t panic. Above all, don’t panic.”
“You’ve been a darling, Leon.”
“So call. Let me know what’s happening. If you feel down—”
“Thanks, love. I don’t know what I’ll do, I just don’t know.” She held out her cashmere trenchcoat, and after a moment he grabbed it and helped her in. When she had left he rubbed steam from the plateglass and squinted out. His face was a mask of interesting pain. He looked years younger and shriveled.