by Dorothy West
She jerked around and said bitterly: “My God, Charity, I can’t turn my back for five minutes without confusion resulting. You see me standing here trying to think. You’ve got a tongue. Seems to me you could use it to make the children mind. If it weren’t for me, this house would fall down.” She turned to Penny with a very fierce expression. “What in the name of God is the matter with you? I’ll give you something to cry for if you don’t stop.”
Penny went on sobbing because she had gone too far to stop the freshet at will. But she felt comforted. She had Cleo’s attention.
Cleo’s voice was deep and scornful. “You call yourself so grown-up. And look at you.” Her impulse was to take the child in her arms. But she did not know why Penny was crying. If her pain could be endured, she must learn to endure it. Most of her life lay before her, and life was not easy for anybody.
Penny was able to stop now. She gulped once or twice, then assumed an injured expression. “I don’t want this old dinner.”
“Well, then, don’t eat it,” Cleo said calmly, but she held her breath just the same.
Penny was disappointed. “If I do eat it,” she bargained, “may I pick out my own Easter dress?” The subject of Easter clothes had not been broached. Easter was a week away. Penny was beginning to be doubtful. Now seemed a very good time to find out which way the wind was blowing.
“I don’t take bribes,” said Cleo briefly. But she flushed, and her heart lurched a little.
“The Irish children are going to get everything new,” Vicky said smartly. “They brag, and we have to brag back. If we don’t get everything we told them we were going to get, they’ll make fun of us.” She hated new clothes, and knew perfectly well that there wouldn’t be money for four new outfits. But she felt a pleasurable excitement at this chance to cross swords with Cleo.
“Even the Irish boys are getting dressed up,” Tim put in emphatically, with a wild notion that if Cleo took them downtown to shop, she might be persuaded to let him substitute a cowboy suit.
“Nice people,” Judy said soberly, “never wear everything new on Easter Sunday. Only the Irish get all dressed up.” Last Easter, when they only had new hats, and the Irish paraded the neighborhood in full panoply, Cleo had consoled them with the observation that nice people never liked to look as if they had to wear everything new because everything else in their wardrobes was old.
Her cousins gave Judy a little incredulous look. She lowered her eyes. She hadn’t meant to sound disloyal, but she had sensed her mother’s discomfort. Her cousins thought Cleo could stand up to anything. But Judy felt secret pity for her where the others felt secret awe. Cleo made a big noise to scare people into letting her be boss. Judy was beginning to see that Cleo was the boss of nothing but the young, the weak, the frightened. She ruled a pygmy kingdom.
“I want to get all dressed up and go to the colored church in Cambridge,” Penny pouted. “That’s where I’d liefer go at Easter anyway.”
They had gone to a white church the previous Sunday because Cleo said Tim’s Sunday shoes were too old to be seen by people who knew him. Penny was bored in white churches. Everybody was polite, but everybody stared at Tim because he was blond. In the Cambridge church everybody stared at Penny because she was beautiful.
“Easter isn’t for showing off,” Vicky said firmly to Penny. “It’s for Jesus.” She understood now why Judy had lowered her eyes. Cleo was Judy’s real mother. Response stirred in Vicky’s heart. Everybody laughed at Lily for being a fool, but Vicky, too, knew the feeling of secret pity.
“It ain’t only Easter that’s for Jesus. It’s every Sunday,” Charity said unexpectedly. “The way you children run from this church to that, it looks like you’re trying to find God. You were all born good Baptists. You ought to stick to the Baptist Church.”
“You sound like an old ignorant darky,” Cleo said scornfully. She was not a church-goer. It made her nervous to sit in church and be talked to about good and evil. “All the nice colored families send their children to the Episcopal Church in Cambridge. You don’t have to be a shouting Baptist to be a child of God.”
Charity stubbornly pursued her point. “It ain’t that I think any other religion is sinful. It’s just that I think it’s sinful to change from the faith you been baptized in. I was born a Baptist, and I’ll die a Baptist, and nobody could persuade me I’d get to heaven any other way.” Her voice was aggrieved. “Hasn’t nothing to do with my being an ignorant darky. Look at that high-toned friend of yours. You said yourself she’d be dying easier if she could die a Catholic.”
“That’s just what I said,” Cleo countered triumphantly. “I was thinking about poor Lenore when you spoke. Search this city you wouldn’t find a living soul with more love for God. That’s why you sounded so ignorant running down a dying woman.”
Charity was so outraged at this accusation that she could not speak for spluttering. Her face was beet-red with angry blood. She shook like jelly. The children tried hard to pretend they neither heard nor saw her. But Tim caught Vicky’s eye, and a giggle escaped him. The contagion of mirth swept the table. Only Penny felt a strange unidentifiable pain around her frigid little heart. She thought it was because she was laughing so hard. She laughed so hard that, to her surprise, the tears came to her eyes.
The doorbell rang imperiously, a sharp, businesslike sound. Both women reacted nervously. Their petty bickering flew out of their minds. Whoever was ringing rang like a white man.
“I’ll go,” Vicky offered when neither grown-up moved.
“Sit still,” Cleo said in ’cello tones. “Let me think.” Her forehead knitted. “That’s not Serena’s ring. Charity, you suppose —” She let her voice trail off because of the children, and Charity mentally supplied the word “marshal.” “It ought to be too early. Mr. Benjamin gave me till four o’clock. God, I never knew the day would come I’d hate to hear a doorbell ring.” She shouted at the children: “Stop listening so hard. I’ve a good mind to get stoppers for your ears. Charity, you go to the door and say I’m not home. If it’s — him, tell him I’ve just gone to Mr. Benjamin’s with it.”
Cleo tiptoed out behind Charity, shutting the kitchen door behind her, and stood in a dark corner of the back hall, where she could hear.
“Yes, mister?” said Charity, as she opened the door an inch. Her agitated breathing did not subside at sight of the shirt-sleeved stranger’s attire. He might be one of the moving men sent in advance by the sheriff to see how much furniture there was to put on the sidewalk.
“You’re the very lady I want to see,” the stranger said. He put his hand on the doorknob.
Charity held firm to her end of it. “No, I’m not. I’m her sister. She ain’t in. She’s gone to Mr. Benjamin’s with the rent.”
The man looked puzzled and massaged his mustache. “Ain’t you the lady I see at the window so much? That’s the lady I’m after.”
Charity swallowed two or three times. “What you after her for, mister?”
“I’m looking for a cook.”
Charity opened the door all the way. Tears beaded her lashes. “Step in, sir. I’m her.”
Behind her she heard Cleo’s faint hiss. She knew what it meant. Who does that white man think he is coming to my house to look for a cook? Why do you want to say “sir” to white trash?
“Who are you, sir? How you know where to find me? You want to come in the parlor, sir, or you don’t want to take the time?” Her voice was terribly eager. Here was her chance to help, to ease Mr. Judson’s heavy load, to buy a gas stove for Cleo. This man saw her size and did not reject her. Suddenly she was flooded with pride that he would want her to work in his kitchen.
“I’m Mr. Doran from across the way.” His head jerked toward the roadhouse. “We’re opening tonight. And this woman was going to cook for me, she just telephoned she burned her hand bad. I see you at the window so much, I figured you wasn’t working. On account of you’re colored, I figured you could cook.”
�
�Oh, I can, sir, I can! I can cook plain or fancy.” She made a little joke to show she wasn’t sensitive about her size. “You can see by just looking at me I’ll be well at home in a kitchen.”
“That’s fine,” he said briskly. “I’ll give you a try. When you come over, we’ll talk money. Right now I got to get back. Wish you’d come over as soon as you can. The men are there now putting in a new stove. They can show you how it operates.”
“I’ll come as soon as I speak to my sister. I won’t be long behind you.” She took hold of her courage. Her head went up. She felt proud and capable. “Mr. Doran, what you going to do with the small stove? Seeing’s I’m going to be working, I wish you’d sell it to me and take it out of my wages.”
“Hell,” he said, “I guess you can have it.”
“No,” she said quietly, “I wasn’t begging.”
“Two dollars then,” he said impatiently. “I got to get going.” He drew the door nearly shut, then opened it again. “Lady, what’s your name?”
“Charity Reid, sir.”
“I’ll expect you in a few minutes, Mrs. Reid.” He was gone.
Cleo came out of the shadows of the back hall. One part of her wanted to rush forward and kick that white man out of her house. Yet another part of her had known that he had brought her children bread, and she could not hurl a stone.
Charity turned and said slowly: “I reckon you heard. God’s answered my prayers. I got you a gas stove, and I got me a job.”
Cleo said woodenly: “If you know I heard, what you wasting the white man’s time telling me for? Why don’t you hop to the crack of his whip? Go on if you’re going.”
“Well, I did tell him I’d be right behind him. I don’t have to change. I got nothing to change to. Lily and Serena done wore out everything I got too fat to wear. God sure picked the right place for me to work with no coat or shoes.”
She started for the front door. She paused, turned back to Cleo, and said softly, “I kinda hoped you’d be glad.”
Cleo said swiftly, bitterly: “Sure I’m glad. You’re my last sister. Serena sleeps out. Lily’s gone all day. Sure I want to see you go from me, too.”
“Cleo, it’s just across the way.”
“Your breathing’s bad,” said Cleo, her own breath rasping in her throat. “But the white man wants his pound of flesh. You think he’ll let you sit down when you’re tired? Sure I want to see my closest sister kill herself.”
“I aint much with words, Cleo, but I feel newborn. I don’t feel so ashamed of being nothing.”
“You’re still ashamed of being so fat,” Cleo said desperately. “What makes you think you can waddle out that door in carpet slippers and a Mother Hubbard without being the laughing-stock of Brookline? You’ll drop dead with embarrassment before your foot hits the sidewalk.”
In the kitchen the children were laughing at their own foolery. Their laughter overflowed into the hall, swirled about Charity’s feet, rose higher and higher, reached her throat, made her fight for breath like the drowning. She shrank back from the front door and groped her way to the bannister rail that would guide her to some hiding place upstairs.
Cleo yelled savagely toward the kitchen, “You children stop that fool laughing at once, and finish your dinner.”
Gently she loosed Charity’s clinging fingers from the rail. She looked into the empty face, and it swam before her wet eyes like a face under water.
“Charity, for God Almighty’s sake, don’t look like that. You tear my heart apart. If you go up those stairs, you’ll never come down again. You’ll die up there, and I’ll have killed you. I never thought the day would come I’d tell one of my sisters to go to work in the white folks’ kitchen. But I want you to go. Charity, go, for God’s sake, go.”
She opened the door. The sun streamed in, the trolley wires sang, the spring birds lifted persuasive throats, the budding trees stretched out their green arms. The world outside swung in its orbit of light. And Charity wakened from her long night.
Cleo, watching that crazy shuffling walk across the street, seeing her sister hoist herself over the curbstone, then straighten, smile, and open the back door, had not felt such pride when her child took her first faltering step out of her animal state into wholeness.
CHAPTER 31
I TRIED TO GET YOU on the telephone,” Thea said with soft reproach, “but the operator said it was disconnected.”
She settled back in her chair, stripping her graceful hands of her beautiful, slightly soiled gloves, throwing open her handsome coat to expose the lagging hem of its lining, and carefully crossing her silk-clad ankles, unconscious that a run showed. A delicate odor of flowers emanated from her, but the silk shoulder straps that were visible through her shirtwaist were not very clean, and a safety pin protruded in a place or two.
Old Mrs. Hartnett had done the family mending, thus employing her invalid hours. But she had been dead a year now, and Thea’s cluttered bureau was full of unmended underthings. The laundry had piled up, too, for the green girl had left two weeks ago with six weeks’ wages unpaid. With an active two-year-old son to care for, Thea had her helpless hands full.
“Oh, that telephone,” cried Cleo, assembling her features into an expression of high annoyance. “I suppose that means another stupid mix-up about names. There’s another Judson family living near, who, apparently, are very poor payers of their telephone bills. You remember they made this same mistake six months ago. But I assure you,” she said firmly, “I’ll see to it that they never make it again.”
After this there would be Charity’s money to help with monthly emergencies. Oh, Lord, she thought distractedly, maybe that’s why Serena’s so late. Maybe she’s trying to telephone me she can’t come. Jesus, what am I going to do? Lord Jesus, help me, help me.
“I need your help,” sighed Thea. “I don’t know what to do. So often I wish I were more like you. You can speak your mind to anybody. You never try to hide your feelings. I want you to talk to Simeon for me. There’s something troubling my conscience.”
She leaned forward a little, wanting the comfort of Cleo’s hand on hers. But Cleo regarded her coolly. She felt that Thea had tricked her. She had opened the door without stopping to think that it mightn’t be Serena. She was in no mood to be bothered with Thea. Simeon was doing her thinking for her. Let him do her stewing, too. Still her curiosity was pricked a little. What did Thea have to worry about? Simeon was arranging her divorce from Cole. As soon as the Duchess closed her eyes, Thea would move into the Cambridge house. Certainly she was not distressed because the Duchess was dying, even though it could be said that Simeon was morally responsible. Thea should be accustomed to men killing women for her.
Her distress had been of brief duration when Cole took a woman’s life. Simeon had used his influence as an Old Family in Old Boston that never let Old Families down, of whatever color. The daily papers had neither played the episode up nor designated Cole’s race in their careful accounts. After all, the unfortunate girl was an immigrant. The Clarion hadn’t carried the story, though it wouldn’t have mattered much. The spineless sheet was read by almost no one now. The poor found no mention of their poverty. Nice people were reluctant to receive a colored paper through the mails or carry it through the streets, for all to see that they did not wholly identify themselves with the majority race.
Simeon kept the dingy office open and a depressed assistant idling with watered ink mainly to cover his erotic activities in the refurnished top-floor flat. Here came the bored and seeking women to run their fingers through his hair, to try to make his somber eyes smile, and his cold mouth soften with love. But they were Simeon’s blackmail. The understood price of his discretion was Thea’s social leadership.
It had remained his price despite Cole’s trial and conviction. He had been Thea’s representative at the trial. She had never sat in a courtroom in her life. He saw no salutary reason why she should be subjected to so sordid a hearing.
As an act of Provide
nce old Mrs. Hartnett chose to die from shock on the day her son received a five-year sentence. The intimate friends who called on the bereaved could extend their condolences to Thea without actually referring to Cole.
Those less intimate and less socially secure, who had wondered during Cole’s trial what their attitude toward his wife should be if he were sentenced, were profoundly relieved to have it decided for them at the funeral. For it was not Cole’s funeral really. It was his mother’s. And the old lady’s impeccable life demanded their attendance. Thea had been flanked by Simeon and Lenore, whose ash-blond beauty was more startling than ever set off by black. Thea, whom black did not suit, did look a pathetic figure, and everyone had the most generous feelings for her. Thus their first meeting with her after Cole’s imprisonment passed off beautifully in perfect surroundings.
Cole’s name was never mentioned by Thea. Fortunately she had named her son for her brother, and the boy resembled her. There was then no need to think of Cole when she looked at her son or called his name.
Cole had failed his social class. His magnificent scholarship, his brilliant researches in cancer, his growing reputation at the hospital, and his marriage to Althea Binney were the background he brought to the ignominious rank of abortionist.
His aim had been to save life, his end had been its destruction. He had known from the first that he would never recover the lost ground of his honor. He had known, too, from his growing revulsion that there would come a moment when horror would palsy his hand.
He had never discussed his illegal practice with Thea. Whether she knew or suspected, she never revealed. She was not expected to take any unladylike interest in her husband’s occupation. The fact that she wore furs, and could afford a maid and a child, simply meant that Cole was doing his duty by her. His disgrace simply meant that he had failed that duty.
Cleo harbored a dark resentment that Thea still saw herself as impervious to stigma. She could have a jailbird for a husband and not falter in her quiet assumption that being born a Binney was an immunity.