by Lisa Alther
He began watching people go in and out of the hotel across the street. Foreigners. Worked at the United Nations. The getups they walked around in was something else—these turban jobs, sometimes these white nightgowns with suit coats. All kinda stuff. Pretty funny-looking. He tried to tell Rochelle about it when he wrote, but he wasn’t no writer. Maybe he’d snap some pictures of them, too.
Two people he’d seen several times walked out the revolving door. They were colored people, but not like any he’d ever laid eyes on. Jet black. And the man wore this loose orange and red and black shirt job. The woman wore a long robe, same colors, and gold jewelry. Her hair kinked a foot out from her head, like she wasn’t ashamed of it or nothing. The sun shining through it made it look like the Burning Bush. Rochelle had spent most of her life with her hair on big rollers, doused in this evil-smelling junk, trying to get it straight. He had to write her about this foreign chick.
They glided along like being pulled on roller skates—with their backs straight as boards and their heads high. The man had scars all over his cheeks. Monty claimed his tribe over at Africa would of did this to him on purpose. Donny ran his fingertips from the corner of his right eye to his jawbone, where Rochelle gouged him with the church key. They didn’t have nothing over at Africa that wasn’t right here in the U.S. of A. Wasn’t never no lack of people who wouldn’t just as soon cut you as look at you, claiming all along how much they loved you. He reckoned Rochelle had to do something to stop him that night, but did she have to be so energetic? She’d laid open the whole side of his face. He’d come out of the emergency room with seventeen stitches. Just lucky she’d missed his eye. Now the scar looked like a permanent stream of tears. People was always thinking he was sad when he wasn’t.
His mother and Arthur were living in an apartment in a row house in Harlem. They’d-gotten hitched, so that made Donny Arthur’s stepson—although Arthur treated him like he was a cockroach. He stayed with them for a while, waiting to get a place of his own until he knew whether or not he’d get the Ford job. He hadn’t wanted to tell his mother about the fight, wanted to tell her the scar was from a machine at the mill or something. But he knew she’d find out anyway. You couldn’t have no secrets in Pine Woods. So he told her the truth. She shook her head and said, “Well, it’s about time you got yourself out of there. Too bad that’s what it took.”
Every evening when Donny came home from the garage, Arthur would lift his bushy grey head from the newspaper, nod sharply, and look Donny up and down in his greasy work clothes. Arthur thought he was something extra special cause he always wore a white shirt and a loosened tie. Shoot, the cat was still a nigger. The first evening, Donny went over to sit on the couch, and Arthur said, “I trust you’re not planning to sit on my brand-new Design Research couch in that outfit?” He always spoke real careful, like he was giving a sermon. Donny had been, but pretended the thought never crossed his mind.
One night after he’d gone to bed, Donny heard Arthur say to his mother in the living room, “Well, when’s he going to get himself a place of his own, Kathryn?”
“Just as soon as he knows where to get one at.”
“And when will that be?”
“Whenever that Ford plant lets him know whether he can work there or not.”
“It’s not right for a grown man to be living with his mother.”
“I assure you, Arthur, he doesn’t like the situation any better than you do.” She was even starting to talk fancy like him. Even though the white nurse’s dress she ran around in all the time wasn’t no different from the maiding uniforms almost every woman in Pine Woods wore. This New York City went to people’s heads. He vowed to make sure it didn’t go to his. He was Donny Tatro from Pine Woods, Tennessee, and he didn’t aim to forget it.
But what she said wasn’t true. Donny loved coming back to this apartment in the evening and having his mother serve him up a home-cooked meal. He had missed out on several years of this back home and felt like that he was making up for lost meals. What he didn’t like was Arthur around all the time, eyeing him like he was a steaming turd. The only time Arthur had treated him halfway decent was once when Donny was sitting watching TV. Arthur walked over, squatted down, and studied his scar.
“White doctor do this?”
Donny nodded yes.
“Figures. Kathryn, come over here and look at this. Looks like he thought he was sewing up a rip in the knee of a pair of old blue jeans.”
As Arthur knelt before him, talking to his mother and touching Donny’s cheek with his fingertips, Donny felt a warm rush of affection. But it hadn’t lasted long.
The first time Leon turned up at the apartment, in a chartreuse suit with his hair all wavy and piled up high on his head, Arthur looked at him the same way he always looked at Donny. Seemed like Arthur believed owning a Design Research couch made you the cat’s ass. He’d of liked to tell Arthur that Leon owned him an El Dorado Cadillac car. But instead he and Leon got out of there quick as they could. “That cat’s bad news,” muttered Leon. They went to a pool hall and played some games of Eight Ball for old time’s sake, then ate some ribs and slaw at the Chicken Coop, and ended up in a bar called Clyde’s drinking Four Roses. Leon introduced him to people as “the farmer.”
“So what’s coming down with you and Rochelle, farmer?” Leon, his elbows on the table, was turning his glass round and round.
Donny sat back and crossed his legs. “Ah, she kicked my ass out.”
“Kicked your ass out?” He laughed. “Out of your own place? That you was paying the rent on? Where does that bitch get off?”
“Well, she didn’t exactly kick me out. We had us a bad fight. She cut me all up.” He traced his scar with his fingertips.
“With a knife?”
“Naw, with a can opener.”
Leon guffawed. “A can opener? Jesus Christ, farmer, you some kind of faggot, getting beat up by a woman?”
“Well, I messed her up pretty good too. But it ain’t something I’m proud of.”
“Ah hell, man, you got to knock them around some. Show em who’s boss.”
“Yeah, well, we know who’s boss around our place. Her.”
“Ah shit, that’s the whole trouble, baby. All our lives they been bossing us around. ‘Leon, you go out and earn you some wages, boy.’ ‘Now don’t be ugly to the white folks, Leon. Do like they wants.’ Should of taught us how to stand up for ourselves. But at least you still had balls enough to get out, man.”
“Yeah, but I want to bring her and the kids up soon as I got us a place to live at.”
Leon looked at him like he was mental.
Donny shrugged. “I love her, man.”
“Love ain’t got nothing to do with nothing, farmer. It don’t put clothes on your back. It don’t put you behind the wheel of no El Dorado car. It don’t even keep a woman in your bed. Cause they want that stuff too. Love is cheap, farmer. Fur coats ain’t.”
“Well, that’s why I’m up here—to get me some cash.”
“Yeah well, you ain’t gon cop no long green getting bored to death on no auto line. When you gon smarten up, farmer?”
“When are you, Leon? I like you, man. But I’m not like you, if you see what I’m saying. Never have been.”
“Too bad for you, baby.”
They got into his white El Dorado. Now and then he’d pull over to the curb, get out, and talk to some woman in a doorway. One he slapped several times. As Donny watched, he felt his guilt toward Rochelle let up a little. Another woman Leon patted on the ass and laughed with.
As they drove across 125th Street, Donny realized he really wasn’t like Leon. It made him mad that Leon kept calling him farmer, but Leon was right. This street was jammed with dudes doing their hustle. Pimping and pushing and running numbers and fencing. They were mostly farmers too, or sons of farmers. They’d left the South, or got run out. Too mean or too itchy to stay put. The ones that stayed, like his grandmaw, were the “clever” ones who could of wa
ited out an Ice Age. The ones who left thought niggers like his grandmaw were just plain backward. Well, Donny didn’t want to do anything wrong or bad up here. He still loved the Lord and meant to do His works. He just wanted a job where they’d pay him enough to save up for a down payment on Rochelle’s ranch house. The bunch in front of Dupree’s congratulated themselves when he said he was leaving. But it wasn’t like they thought. He was leaving so he could make it all up to Rochelle, not to get away from her. He loved that woman.
Monty put his hand over the phone. “Cowboy, you want to deliver Mrs. Marvin’s Mercedes?”
“Who she?”
“That old girl in the dog fur coat.”
“Where at?”
“Fifty-third and Third.”
Donny thought it over.
“You might could get you a big tip come Christmas.”
Donny didn’t like to say he wouldn’t be around at Christmas if he could get the Ford job. “I don’t mind.”
He pulled up in front of a large apartment building. Mrs. Marvin stood outside the glass doors talking to a doorman in a green uniform. As Donny handed her the keys, she slipped him a dollar.
After that, Mrs. Marvin would sometimes be upstairs. The doorman would take the keys and buzz her apartment. On those days Donny didn’t get a tip, but other days she tipped double.
One afternoon the doorman called down the sidewalk after him, “She wants you to bring the keys up, boy.”
Donny walked through the carpeted lobby, which had a fountain, and these chandelier jobs like in the houses on Tsali Street. The elevator was made out of polished wood. He walked down the carpeted hall to her door and rang the bell.
She opened it, took the keys, and handed him a ten-dollar bill. He stared at it. He couldn’t wait to tell Rochelle. This was more than he used to earn for a whole afternoon mowing lawns and clipping hedges for the Princes. All for driving a Mercedes car five blocks. Which he would of done for free. Or even paid to do.
“I owe you for the last several times,” Mrs. Marvin explained in a deep voice.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“You’re welcome, sir,” she said with a mocking smile. “You want a Coke or a cup of coffee or something?”
His glance darted like a snake’s tongue up and down the hall, and past her into a room with thick drapes and low sofas. “Thank you, ma’am, but I got to get back to the garage.”
The keys fell. She and he looked down. He bent over, picked them up and laid them on her outstretched palm.
“Seems a shame to rush off.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He began backing down the hall.
“Wait a minute. I’ll get you a Coke to take with you.”
That night at Clyde’s Leon said, “It sounds like you could of had you some white pussy this afternoon, farmer.”
A long shiver went through Donny.
“Next time go for it, baby.”
Donny shrugged.
“But you know, sometimes with a white woman it’s like sliding into a hunk of ice.”
“Uh huh.” Donny looked down at his hands, unable to confess that he hadn’t been in but one woman his whole life.
Leon laughed abruptly. “Ah shit, farmer, you don’t know, do you?”
“Maybe I do.” Donny glared.
“Honest to God, farmer, I swear I don’t know why I stay up-tight with you. You so dumb you think Fucking is a city in China! Guess I must like to recall my origins.”
“Yes, I guess you must.” Donny’s head was in an uproar. He kept picturing that dying oak tree in the school yard back home and feeling sick. One time some boys from Cherokee Shoals sneaked into the school yard with a doll they’d doused in brown liquid shoe polish. They put a noose around its neck and hanged it in the old oak, for the colored kids to find when they came out for recess. He reminded himself that New York City wasn’t Pine Woods, Tennessee. People didn’t do each other that way up here. But he was still Donny Tatro, and wasn’t studying to go sleeping with no strange women of any color whatsoever, when he was trying to get back into his own wife’s good graces. And into her hot wet pussy.
He felt alarmed. That was how Leon and the men in front of Dupree’s talked about women. Donny never had. And certainly not about Rochelle. He’d better watch himself up here without his grandmaw and the congregation of Mount Zion to keep him in line. No telling what he might find himself doing.
That night he had to lie and listen to Arthur and his mother’s bedsprings creaking and clattering through the wall like the assembly line at the Ford plant. He wrapped his pillow around his ears, but could still hear them. Finally he jerked off in time to the creaking, wondering if some cat was putting it to Rochelle under the willows by the river. There was Tadpole in his Green Beret disguise, with all his medals and shit, his wallet full of bills. And that whole gang in front of Dupree’s in their fancy clothes, drinking all day. Donny had to get him some money, so he could get Rochelle up here and keep his eye on her. So he could get her her ranch house and make her glad again to be his woman. After all his years of trying to do right, he just didn’t believe she’d hold his one slip-up against him forever.
When he told her he was leaving, he was glad to see a look of alarm in her eyes. She hid it right quick and shrugged like she didn’t give a shit, but he’d seen it.
“I’ll get me a good job and find us a ranch house to live in. Then you and Isaac and Nicole can come up, too.” He felt bold telling her this instead of asking. But he could have sworn she was glad. Even though all she said was, “We just see.”
When he got on the bus, she pressed her hips against his like she hadn’t in a long long time.
“I don’t want you running off with Tadpole, now,” he tried to joke.
“I ain’t running nowhere with nobody, Donny.”
Late one night the chocolate Mercedes pulled into the garage. Donny was there with Hitler, Monty’s German shepherd, who carried on something fierce. Out stepped this chubby white man in a coat with a little black velvet collar, and a shiny scarf with fringe. He opened the other door and out came Dog Fur, with these pearls around her neck and hanging from her ears. She smiled and said, “How are you tonight, Donny?”
“Just fine, thank you, ma’am.” He was grinning and wondering how come she knew his name.
They walked up the driveway. Chubby put his arm around her shoulders. Donny got in the car. It smelled like Dog Fur. He’d dress Rochelle up like that once he was on at the Ford plant. A fur coat, and jewels in her ears. Fancy perfume. She could stay home all day fixing up the ranch house if she wanted to. He’d turn into their driveway in the evening in his Chrysler Imperial. The children would leave their color TV to climb up his legs and search his pockets for candy, like Rochelle’s mother’s kids used to before him and Rochelle got married, before he got too wore out to do anything but drag himself from one job to the next. But Rochelle would shoo them away and lead him into their own private bedroom and lock the door. …
On his next afternoon off, he went with Leon to see Leon’s favorite woman, Flo. Flo had auburn hair done up in a bouffant. She wore a silver lamé mini-skirt and high red boots. As Flo and Leon went into her bedroom, Leon said to Flo’s friend Sylvia, “Educate this farmer for me, Sylvia honey.”
Sylvia’s long legs were crossed, and she swung the top leg back and forth rapidly, her spike heel moving like a piston.
“I think you and me is spoze to be getting acquainted here,” she announced in a husky voice.
Donny laughed. “All right, mama. Let’s do it.” He knew what to say. He just didn’t know what to do. He stared at the new alligator shoes Leon had made him buy with some tip money he’d been fixing to send Rochelle. Knobs, Leon called them. Donny heard giggling in the bedroom.
“Where you from?” Donny asked.
Sylvia grimaced. Donny didn’t see why. It was the most natural thing in the world to ask someone you didn’t know. “I’m from the street, sugar.” She studied her long red fingern
ails.
“I’m from Tennessee.”
“Well, I wouldn’t brag about it if I was you.” Donny hadn’t known he was bragging. He was just trying to get acquainted. How did people do that up here anyhow?
She got up abruptly and looked out the window, her hands on her hips. “Look, you want you some pussy or not?”
Donny’s mouth fell open.
“Cause if you don’t, honey, I got better things to do with my afternoon than setting around watching some farmer trying to get up his nerve.”
“But I …”
She plopped down and began undoing his belt, murmuring, “I just know you got you a candy cane in there, farmer. And it’s getting all hard and sticky.”
She didn’t give him a chance to say no. Which he assured Rochelle and the Lord that he would of done. But you couldn’t insult a woman by rejecting her advances. And he didn’t want Leon making any more fun of him than he already had. And yes, all right, after all those months of wanting Rochelle and getting turned down, it felt good pushing himself into a woman again. And feeling the long slow grind of her hips against his as she slid up and down on him murmuring things about her wet pussy sucking on his big hard candy cane. He’d never experienced anything like it. He and Rochelle used to have a pretty good time every now and then. But this was so dirty. He tried to deny to the congregation of Mount Zion, who inhabited his head, that he loved it But shoot, if Rochelle didn’t want him, looked like others did.
Afterward Leon and Donny sauntered down the street past a storefront that had been turned into an office. There was a poster in the window of this cat in a beret sitting with a rifle between his knees. Out front was a bunch of mean-looking motherfuckers with their hair kinking out like dandelions gone to seed.