The Living is Easy

by Dorothy West

  Nothing else in the paper met with their approval. Every other word was colored. That this was Simeon’s concession to their sensibilities did not make it any more palatable. Had he used the word Negro, they would have refused to read the paper altogether.

  There was far too much, they complained, about the happenings below the Mason-Dixon line. They could be resolved quite easily. The nice colored people should come North. They needn’t all come to Boston. There were many other large cities among which they could disperse themselves without dispossessing the already established families. As for the other elements, their extermination was the best thing possible. Every locality had its thieves and cutthroats. In the South they happened to be black. That Simeon should waste his time and talent writing long editorials protesting their punishments, urging the improvement of their conditions, was the folly of hotheaded youth. It was thoughtless cruelty to call attention to the dregs of the colored race.

  Simeon, they concluded, was much too race-conscious for a young man who had been brought up exactly as if he were white. His persistence in identifying himself with anybody and everybody who happened to be black just showed what lasting effect those few months of contact with common colored children had had on a growing boy.

  Simeon picked up his pencil. “Carter Burrows Binney was born in Boston in the year this once abolitionist city sent its son to liberate the enslaved black souls of the South . . .”

  Across the sea England was writing the obit of a Kaiser. The world was at war.

  CHAPTER 13

  “SIMEON,” said Cleo. She touched his arm.

  He lifted his head. His face was drawn with the long dreaming. He rose and ran his fingers through his hair. “Hello, Cleo,” he said quietly. “If you mean to stay longer than a minute, shall we go upstairs? There’s so much clatter here.”

  They sat in his dreary sitting room, where the curtains needed washing and everything needed dusting. The furniture had not been considered good enough to take to the Cambridge house, and now it was even older. Simeon was letting it fall apart without the least compunction.

  He leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes. One black curl fell over his forehead. Cleo wished that poor little Judy had lovely curls like that. Braids were fine if they fell to your waist. But two braids bobbing on a colored child’s shoulder looked like pickaninny hair, no matter how you dressed it up with expensive ribbons.

  Simeon said, “Mrs. Hartnett and Cole are with Thea, watching Father die. Have you come to watch with me my paper’s demise?” He opened his eyes and stared at her.

  “You give me the shivers,” Cleo said.

  Simeon was such a fancy talker, she thought, feeling her short patience beginning to ebb. She didn’t have time to hear him speechify. Mr. Judson was home now, trying to worm things out of Judy. Where did you go today, what did you do, who did you see? And Judy was running off at the mouth. It had never occurred to Cleo that these were natural questions. There were so many secrets in her day that any discussion became an exposure.

  Simeon had shut his eyes again. His lips attempted a wry smile. “I suppose I’ve been wanting Father to die for years. I wanted him to die because he was rich. I didn’t know how I would spend his money. But I knew I would spend it differently. Now I shall inherit nothing but two houses. I can’t sell the Cambridge house over Thea’s head. I can’t sell this house either. It is so heavily mortgaged that the sale would net me nothing.” He opened his eyes, and his tired glance swept the dismal room. It had been his world once, his world and Thea’s, before he was five, before he knew that a nursery is a child’s fantasy.

  “The houses are not yours to keep or sell,” Cleo said softly.

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “They belong to the woman they call the Duchess.”

  Simeon said heavily: “Do you mean Father gambled the houses away, too? But Thea,” he asked in a strained voice, “she will have the insurances?”

  “He cashed them in and lost that money, too.”

  Simeon pushed himself to his feet. He strode to Cleo’s side and stood above her. His hand struck the packet on the table beside her, and Cleo could not quite meet his eyes. But her expression was one of sympathy.

  “Why didn’t he tear out Thea’s heart at the same time?” Simeon said savagely. “Why did he raise her like a rich man’s daughter if he meant to die a pauper? You know how hard it’s been for her these last years, trying to make ends meet, trying to keep up appearances. And when she had a chance at happiness with Cole, Father destroyed it along with himself.”

  “Poor little Thea,” said Cleo, feeling genuine indignation.

  “Thea’s grown used to a certain way of life. Father’s tried to bridge three generations in one for her. It would be like throwing her to the wolves to expect her to earn her own living. I cannot face her and tell her that all she has are her health and strength. She had never learned to use them.” He turned away and began a restless walking.

  “The Duchess is willing to bargain,” Cleo said.

  He stopped his pacing and answered shortly over his shoulder, “Thea and I have no medium of exchange.”

  “You have the Binney name.”

  He whirled and looked at her with faint contempt. “Thea and I and our kind are phenomena who have bloomed and will die in one generation. Our fathers built a social class for us out of tailor shops and barber shops and stables and caterers’ coats. We cannot afford its upkeep because they have taught us to think above their profitable occupations. The poor professional is evolving. His sacred shabby circle will be the redcaps who went to Harvard with him. Thea will tell her children, if the fates find a husband able to support her, about their grandfather Binney, and they will be surprised that a man who never went to college could behave like a gentleman.”

  “But he does,” said Cleo stoutly, seeing Mr. Binney’s hat, stick, and gloves.

  The philosophical intent of Simeon’s speech escaped her. She always heard a man out with impatience. A resentment rose in her. If either was going to do the talking, let her do it. When men spoke, she knew that their worlds were larger than hers, their interests broader. She could not bear knowing that there were many things she didn’t know; that a man could introduce a subject, and she would have to be silent. Her defense was to shut out of her mind the didactic sound of their voices. “Whatever else your father is, he’s a perfect gentleman,” she said tartly.

  “I don’t want to hear your specious reason,” Simeon said agreeably. “You’re a colored mother. You want to preserve a non-existent world for your child. Women are well enough, but they interfere with a man’s honesty. Thea is the flaw in mine. She narrows my vision. I don’t hate her helplessness. Perhaps I cherish it because she’s my sister. Her minor predicament seems more important than a paper that speaks for the oppressed. That’s wicked. That’s wrong. I would give my whole soul to see her settled with Cole and off my mind.”

  Cleo said triumphantly, “The Duchess will exchange everything she has of your father’s for your promise to marry her.”

  She saw him stiffen, saw his hands slowly clench, and his eyes grow black with bitterness. He said finally, “The world is too full of women who feed on men. As the devoted brother of one of them, I have no choice but to accept the terms that will enable Thea to feed on Cole.”

  Cleo felt deflated. She had expected Simeon to make a mighty holler. Instead he was going to cut his own throat simply on her say-so. Was it because a woman was no more to him than an old she-cat to whom he would give shelter to spare himself the annoyance of hearing her howl outside his window?

  She said coldly: “You know the woman I mean? A woman not good enough for Thea to wipe her feet on.” This description did not trouble her conscience in the least. She was determined to get a rise out of Simeon.

  He was almost amused. “There are so few people who are good enough for Thea that one more hardly increases the problem of her speaking acquaintances.”

 
“I thought you loved your sister so much,” Cleo taunted.

  “I love her enough to ask the Duchess to be my wife.”

  “Well, I suppose it’s all settled then,” Cleo said indecisively. She still felt that Simeon was far too calm about it. Her dramatic sense was unsatisfied. “But how will Thea accept that woman?”

  “As my wife,” said Simeon simply.

  “Even though your father is dying because she beggared him?”

  “Thea will hide her feelings from me as I will hide mine from her.”

  Cleo felt frightened. Judy is going to grow up like that, she thought. She belongs to me. And already I can see her will to belong to herself. I want her to be a Bostonian, but I want her to be me deep down. Judy, her frightened heart cried, be me as my sisters are Mama. Love me enough to let me live forever.

  The telephone jangled. Simeon sprang across the room. “Thea,” he said. Then tenderly, urgently, “He is happier. Now he has peace. I’m coming at once. Cleo is here. I know she wants to say some word of comfort to you.”

  Cleo took the receiver from him, and her hand shook a little. Mr. Binney was dead, and now Mr. Binney was everywhere, seeing into the packet, even into her mind, knowing she had sacrificed Simeon, knowing she could have spared Thea an hour of anguish.

  “Thea,” she said, in a choked voice, “no need to tell you how grieved I am for you. I’ll come early tomorrow and stay all day.” She could not have stayed in the same house with Mr. Binney’s ghost that night. She would sleep away her sins, and rise the next morning, like a child, with a clear conscience. “There’s nothing for you to worry about. I’m sending you a message by Simeon.” She put the receiver back on the hook.

  She turned to Simeon and said unsteadily, “I’m sorry, deeply sorry.”

  The lines of weariness had deepened in his face. He touched her hand. “Thank you, Cleo.” He tried to straighten his shoulders. “I must change and go. What is your message to Thea?”

  She passed him the packet. “Tell her I saw the Duchess and was successful. You needn’t tell her what a time I had persuading her, and how she wouldn’t put this package in my hand until I had sworn on my honor that I wouldn’t let go of it until I had your sacred promise to marry her. That was the bitterest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

  “Thea has enough with her grief. Do you think I would add to it?” asked Simeon, with a faint smile. “My marriage to Lenore Evans can be a very natural thing. She has money. I haven’t. Thea has always approved of me, even when she didn’t understand me. She will think I am making this marriage to save my paper. She will not see that I may have lost the South End. She doesn’t know that the South End is important. She would never believe that they are the colored population of Boston now.”

  Cleo didn’t either. That was more of Simeon’s odd male talk. Living here in the South End he was getting to think just like these poor darkies. Why, the South End was no longer the colored population at all. All the nice people were moving away along with all the whites. Soon it would be solid black. Get a whole lot of poor colored people together, and what did you have? An eyesore of rundown houses and runny-nosed children. She knew. She came from the South. How many women had been like Mama, who kept her children clean and her house clean and made Pa chink up the holes? The thing about Simeon was he didn’t know the South and its don’t-care-nohow people. You had to be born there . . . And when you were, her thinking ran dreamily, all you remembered were the happy days of your childhood, when being alive was a wild and glorious thing.

  She went to the door. Poor little Judy had been promised a dish of ice cream at a drugstore. That was her idea of an adventure. No wonder Bostonians grew up to be Bostonians.

  CHAPTER 14

  THE WHITE-GOLD MOON rode the summer sky. Cleo lay on her side of the bed, with her face gleaming palely in the soft light. She was dreamily suspended above sleep. In a moment she would slide into the lovely pool of her lost innocence. Down, down she went, feeling the freedom of a wild bird plummeting through time and space. She was hurrying back, falling faster and faster, poised for the swoop into sleep . . . almost . . . there . . .

  A gigantic snore like the thunder of brasses and cymbals jerked her awake. On his side of the bed Mr. Judson began to conduct a full-scale orchestra, and every instrument had sat out in the rain.

  He was lying on his back with his mouth open. She gave him a shove with her elbow and couldn’t budge him. She glared at him furiously, disliking his mustache, his two gold teeth, and his look of supreme good health. He was fifty-two, and he ought to be getting old, but there wasn’t a thread of gray in his hair, nor a line in his face. Nobody looking at his powerful shoulders and hands would have believed that Cleo had expected him to be doddering just about now. He was twenty-three years her senior. She had been ignorant enough at eighteen to think she was marrying an old man who would leave her a rich young widow.

  Bart continued to snore. Cleo hissed at him softly, wanting him to stir and shift without wholly waking. They had had no real conversation since her return home, and she didn’t want to start him up now. She had found him nodding in the easy-chair by the open window where he was on watch. Judy was asleep on his lap, her plump hand cupping the emblem of his trade, a gold banana that dangled from his watch chain.

  Mr. Binney’s death and its accompanying powers of observation were still too fresh in her mind for her to be able to tell Mr. Judson, without an unexplainable display of uneasiness, that a business acquaintance had died. She would feel better when God was through asking Carter Binney about his corner of the earth below, and had turned his attention to another newcomer, who neither knew her nor anything bad to say about her. When supper was ready, she fetched her husband and daughter down, and spun a long story about her childhood to keep Mr. Judson from getting a word in, and Judy too enthralled for him to want to spoil her pleasure.

  After supper it was she who took Judy out for her ice cream, an excursion she would normally have put off with, “When did I say anything about ice cream? You can have some tomorrow.” After the treat she trotted Judy into the neighboring green, where they rarely went nowadays since the sedate little oblong had become the whooping ground for every little heathen whose Southern mammy leaned on her heavy breasts and watched him from between her bunched-up curtains.

  When they came home, Bart had retired, as Cleo had hoped he would. At the height of summer he took his tiredness to bed at sundown. In winter his day began at four of a bitter Boston morning when he hurried downtown to regulate the temperature of his ripening rooms. Whatever the season he was ready for bed the minute he plodded upstairs from supper. He was not a companion. He was a good provider. Had he tried to be a companion, Cleo would have said that he talked her to death. As it was, she said he bored her to death.

  There was no help for it except to wake him.

  “Mr. Judson,” she said furiously. He snorted, stirred. “Wake up and roll over.”

  He opened his eyes, blinked, yawned, scratched. “What’s the matter? Was I snoring?”

  “Ask anybody within five miles.”

  “I was lying on my back,” he observed. “Never could.” He rolled over on his side.

  She settled herself for sleep, hoping to God he wasn’t wholly awake.

  “Cleo,” he said.

  “What?” she said in a resigned voice.

  “Judy said you didn’t go to the doctor.”

  “You’re always picking her, poor little thing. You keep on with that child, and you’ll teach her to be deceitful.”

  “Children don’t lie unless someone puts them up to it. Judy’s a truthful child. I ask her a question. She’s truthful enough to answer it.”

  “Well, what about the doctor?” she asked belligerently.

  “Did you go?”

  “I thought you were telling me,” she said smartly.

  After a moment he said quietly, “There’s not going to be another child, is there?”

  “You’re still telling me
,” she reminded him.

  His voice shook with resignation. “Cleo, a man gets sick of foolishness. You never talk straight——”

  “Now you’re telling me I’m a liar,” she countered.

  “And you always wriggle out of things by talking around them.”

  “Why do you bother to talk to me then?”

  “Because a man has to talk to his wife. A man has to trust his wife or he’s lost. God joined a man and woman together. If they go flying off in different directions, they might as well never have married. You must work with me, Cleo. If you work against me, you’re the child’s enemy, and we might as well give up the ghost.”

  The mention of ghost reminded her. “Did Judy tell you that Thea was here?” Her inventive mind was beginning to function.

  “Yes,” he said cautiously, for Cleo was never straightforward. “She said you went out right after her on an errand of mercy.”

  “Oh,” she said hurriedly. “I’ll tell you about that later. But the news that’ll knock you out of bed is poor Carter Binney’s dead as a haddock.”

  “So Binney’s dead,” Bart marveled. “When did he die? Wasn’t it sudden?”

  “When you get through asking me, I’ll tell you. He had a shock this morning and died this afternoon. That’s why I never got to the doctor’s. I came home to leave Judy. She was complaining about being tired. I was going to ask Miss Johnson to keep an eye on her while I went out again. And Thea was here waiting. That’s how I found out about Mr. Binney. That poor girl had had to leave her dying father to come here to beg me to buy her a black dress.”

  “Is that what Judy was trying to tell me? She said you bought some kind of dress. Wasn’t black, the way she was telling it.”

  “Maybe after this you’ll stop listening when a child talks,” Cleo chided. “They know just enough about grown folks’ affairs to tell it all wrong. I bought a dress for myself today. That’s the dress Judy was talking about. But after Thea left, I rushed downtown to change it for a black one. That’s why I told Judy I had to go on an errand of mercy. I didn’t want to tell her I was going to buy Thea a mourning dress. No sense in making her sad.”