by Ann Petry
He lingered in the door, watching her fasten the straps on her high-heeled red shoes, wanting to ask her not to turn the light out when she left and remembering that the bill got bigger and bigger the longer the light burned.
‘Could I read some before I go to sleep?’
‘I should say not. You go right to sleep.’ And when he still stood there, holding one foot up in back of him, she walked over and patted his shoulder. ‘Hurry up, honey. I haven’t got much time.’
He went toward the bathroom reluctantly and spent a long time putting on his pajamas. He examined his shoes and socks with great care as though he had never seen them before and was puzzled as to what they could be used for. He ran water in the bathroom sink and stirred it with a lackadaisical finger, watching the little ripples that formed as his finger moved back and forth, and wishing that he had come right out and told her he was afraid to stay by himself. Perhaps she would have asked him if he wanted Supe to come up and stay until she got back. Supe would come, too. Only she didn’t seem to like Supe very much. He washed his face and hands, picked up his clothes, and went into the living room.
Lutie was turning back the covers on his bed and he stood in the middle of the room looking at the way the long skirt sort of flowed around her as she moved. It looked as though the bottom of it bowed up at her, and as she leaned over and then straightened up, the ends of the red sash moved briskly as though the red sash were dancing. He watched it with delight.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll put my coat on while you’re getting in bed.’
He lay down in the middle of the couch and looked up at the ceiling, trying to think of something that would delay her going out. When she wasn’t there, he was filled with a sense of loss. It wasn’t just the darkness, for the same thing happened in the daylight when he came home from school. The instant he opened the door, he was filled with a sense of desolation, for the house was empty and quiet and strange. At noon he would eat his lunch fast and go out to the street. After school he changed his clothes quickly and, even as he changed them, no matter how quick he was, the house was frightening and cold. But when she was in it, it was warm and friendly and familiar.
There was a kid in school who had to stay home five days with a toothache. He could say he had a toothache. But he wasn’t sure how quickly they came on, and he wouldn’t want her to know the instant she heard him mention it that he was making it up. Or a growing pain might be better—lots of the kids at school had growing pains. He was trying to decide where the growing pain would be when she came back into the room. She walked over to the hall and clicked the light on.
Then she was bending over to kiss him and he smelt the faint sweet smell of her and he hugged her with both arms and all his strength, thinking if only she would stay just long enough for him to go to sleep. It would be just a little while because he would go to sleep quickly, knowing that she was close by.
He relaxed his arms and lay down, afraid that she might be angry if he clung to her like that, for he remembered how angry she was this morning about her blouse being wrinkled and he might wrinkle this one she had on by squeezing her so tightly. She reached toward the light by the bed and he touched her coat in a light, caressing gesture.
‘Good-bye, hon,’ she said and turned the light out.
Instantly the living room was plunged into darkness. He opened his eyes wide in an effort to see something other than this swift blackness. The corners of the room were there, he knew, but he couldn’t see them. They were wiped out in the dark. It made him feel as though he were left hanging in space and that he couldn’t know how much space there was other than that his body occupied.
The overstuffed chair near the couch had become a bulge of darkness so that it no longer looked like a chair. It was a strange, frightening object along with the card table in front of the window and the bookcase. It was as though quick, darting hands had substituted something else in place of them just as the light went off. His eyes slowly became accustomed to the darkness and he saw that the dim light in the hall reached a little way into the living room, leaving a faint yellow square of light on the blue congoleum rug. Even that was disturbing, for he couldn’t quite make out the familiar plaid pattern in the rug.
‘You won’t let anyone in, will you?’ Lutie asked.
He had forgotten she was still in the room and he looked in the direction of her voice, grateful to hear the sound of it. ‘No, ma’am.’
There was a strained, breathless quality in his voice, and Lutie turned toward him. ‘Are you all right, hon?’ she asked.
‘Sure.’ He had hoped she would notice there was something wrong with him. Then, when she did, he suddenly didn’t want her to know he was a coward about the dark and about staying alone. He thought of the hard-riding cowboys, the swaggering, brave detectives in the movies, and the big tough boys in six B in school, and he said, ‘Sure, I’m all right.’
Lutie walked toward the square of light and he saw her clearly for a moment—the shine of the hair on top of her head, the long, soft-flowing black skirt, the short, wide coat.
‘Good-bye,’ she said again, and turned toward him smiling.
‘Bye, Mom,’ he answered. Then the light in the hall went off. She was still there, though, because he heard her open the door and for an instant the dim light from the outside hall came into the room. He leaned toward it because it left pools of black shadows in the corners of the room, even in the small foyer. Then she closed the door.
The whole apartment was swallowed up in darkness. He listened to the sound of her key turning in the lock. Her high heels clicked as she walked down the hall. He sat up straight in order to hear better. She was going down the stairs. Her footsteps grew fainter and fainter until strain as he would he could no longer hear them.
He lay down and pulled the bedcovers up to his chin and firmly closed his eyes. They wouldn’t stay closed. He kept opening them because even with his eyes shut he was aware of the dark all around him. It had a heavy, syrupy quality—soft and thick like molasses, only black.
It was worse with his eyes open, because he couldn’t see anything and he kept imagining that the whole room was changing and shifting about him. He peered into the dark, trying to see what was going on. He sat up and then he lay down again and pulled the covers over his head. There was an even stranger quality to the black under the covers. He shut his eyes and then opened them immediately afterward, not knowing what he expected to find nestling beside him under the sheets, but afraid to look and afraid not to look.
Heavy footsteps came up the stairs and he threw the covers back and sat up listening. Maybe it’s Supe, he thought. The steps went past the door, on down the hall, and he lay down again disappointed. The stairs outside creaked. A light, persistent sound started in the walls, a scuttering, scampering noise that set him shivering and cowering under the covers, for he remembered the vivid stories Lil had told him about the rats and mice that ate people up.
There was a fight in the apartment next door. At first he welcomed the sound of the loud, angry voices because it shut out the sound of the rats in the walls. There was a crash of china. Something heavy landed against the wall and then plaster dropped down. He could hear it trickle down and down. The voices grew more violent and the woman screamed.
He put his fingers in his ears. The covers slipped down from his head with the movement of his arms and instantly the darkness in the room enveloped and enfolded him. He gripped the covers tight over his head and the horrid sound of the voices and the screaming came clearly through the blanket and the sheets.
‘You black bitch, I oughtta killed you long ago.’
‘Don’t you come near me. Don’t you come near me,’ the woman panted.
Someone threw a bottle out of a window on the fourth floor and it landed in the yard below with a tinkling sound that echoed and echoed. There was silence for a moment. A dog commenced to bark and the voices next door started again.
The woman sobbed, and as Bub
listened to the sound he became more and more frightened. It was such a lonesome sound and the room quivered with it until he seemed almost to see the sound running through the dark. There was nothing around him that was familiar or that he had ever seen before. His face tightened. He was here alone, lost in the dark, lost in a strange place filled with terrifying things.
He reached up, fumbled for the light, found the switch, and turned it on. Instantly the room lay all around him—familiar, safe, just as he had always known it. He examined it with care. All of the things that he knew so well were right where they belonged—the big chair, the card table, the radio, the congoleum rug. None of it had changed. Yet in the dark these things vanished and were replaced by strange, unknown shapes.
The sobbing of the woman next door died away. From somewhere downstairs there came the sound of laughter, the clink of glasses. He lay down relaxed, no longer frightened. Mom would be mad when she came home and found him asleep with the light on, but he couldn’t turn it off again.
It occurred to him that she wouldn’t mind the light being on if he could figure out some way of earning money so that he could help pay the electric bill. He frowned. She hadn’t liked the shoeshine box. But there must be some other way he could make money, some way she would approve of. Finally he dropped off to sleep, still trying to think of something he could do to earn money.
At about the same time Bub was falling asleep, Lutie entered the lobby of the Casino where the smell of floor wax and dust and liquor and perfume hung heavy in the air.
At this hour the big dance hall was deserted and lifeless. The bold-eyed girls in the checkroom talked idly to each other. Their eyes constantly shifted to the thick white china plates on the shelves in front of them, as though they were fascinated by the prospect of the change that would be added to the solitary quarter and dime they had placed on the plates earlier in the evening. The rows and rows of empty coat hangers in back of them emphasized the silent, waiting look of the place.
As Lutie pushed her coat toward one of the checkroom girls, she was wondering if Bub was afraid to stay by himself and ashamed to admit it, for she remembered the sudden, frightened look on his face when she woke him up by opening the door last night.
She mechanically accepted a round white disk from the girl and put it in her pocketbook. There was something inexpressibly dreary about the Casino when it was empty, she thought. You could see all of it for what it was worth, and it was never good to see anything like that. The red carpet on the lobby floor was worn. There were dark places on it where cigarettes had been snuffed out. The artificial palms that stood at the entrance in big brass pots were gray with dust. Even the great staircase which led to the dance floor above was badly in need of a coat of paint.
The long black skirt flowed around her feet as she mounted the stairs. She was surprised to discover that she wasn’t nervous or excited about singing with Boots Smith’s band. Now that she was about to do it, she had regained her old feeling of self-confidence, and she walked swiftly, holding her head high, humming as she walked.
The shiny, polished dance floor looked enormous. Though it would be another hour before people arrived to dance, the colored lights were already focused on it—pale blue, delicate pink and yellow—rainbow colors that shifted and changed until the wide, smooth floor was bathed in the soft, moving bands of light.
As Lutie walked across the floor toward the bandstand where the orchestra was playing softly, she noticed that the Casino’s bouncers were already on hand, standing in a small group off to one side. Their tuxedos couldn’t conceal their long arms and brutal shoulders. They had ex-prize-fighter written all over them, from their scarred faces and terrible ears to the way in which their heads drew back into their shoulders as though they were dodging punches.
Boots jumped down from the bandstand when he saw her. He met her midway. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I began to get the feelin’ that you wasn’t coming. Don’t know why.’ His eyes traveled slowly from the curls piled high on top of her head to the red sandals on her feet. ‘You sure look good, baby,’ he said softly.
He linked his arm through hers and walked with her toward the men in the band. ‘Boys, meet Lutie Johnson,’ he said. ‘She’s singin’ with us tonight. What do you want to start with?’ he asked, turning to her.
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She hesitated, trying to think. ‘I guess “Darlin’” would be best.’ It was the song he had heard her sing in the Junto and had liked.
She avoided the eyes of the men in the orchestra because what they were thinking was plain on their faces. The fat pianist grinned. One of the trumpet players winked at the drummer. The others nudged each other and nodded knowingly. One of the saxophonists was raising his instrument in mock salute to Boots. It was quite obvious that they were saying to themselves and to each other, Yeah, Boots has got himself a new chick and this singing business is the old come-on.
Boots ignored them. He patted out the rhythm with his foot and the music started. She walked over to the microphone and stood there waiting for the melody to repeat itself. She touched the mike and then held onto it with both hands, for the silvery metal was cold and her hands were suddenly hot. As she held the mike, she felt as though her voice was draining away down through the slender metal rod, and the idea frightened her.
The music swelled in back of her and she began to sing, faintly at first and then her voice grew stronger, clearer, for she gradually forgot the men in the orchestra, forgot even that she was there in the Casino and why she was there.
Though she sang the words of the song, it was of something entirely different that she was thinking and putting into the music: she was leaving the street with its dark hallways, its mean, shabby rooms; she was taking Bub away with her to a place where there were no Mrs. Hedges, no resigned and disillusioned little girls, no half-human creatures like the Super. She and Bub were getting out and away, and they would never be back.
The last low strains of the melody died away and she stood holding onto the mike, not moving. There was complete silence behind her, and she turned toward the band, filled with sudden doubt and wishing that she had kept her mind on what she was doing, on the words of the song, instead of floating off into a day-dream.
The men in the orchestra stood up. They were bowing to her. It was an exaggerated gesture, for they bowed so far from the waist that for a moment all she could see were their backs—rounded and curved as they bent over. She was filled with triumph at the sight, for she knew that this absurd, preposterous bowing was their way of telling her they were accepting her on merit as a singer, not because she was Boots’ newest girl friend.
‘I—’ she turned to Boots.
‘The job’s yours, baby,’ he said. ‘All yours. Wrapped up and tied up for as long as you want it.’
After he said that, she couldn’t remember much of anything. She knew that she sang other songs—new ones and old ones—and that each time she sang, the smile of satisfaction on Boots’ face increased. But it was something that she was aware of through a blur and a mist of happiness and contentment because she had found the means of getting away from the street.
As the hands of the big clock on the wall moved toward eleven-thirty, the big smooth floor filled with dancing couples. They arrived in groups of nine and ten. The boxes at the edges of the dance floor spilled over with people—young girls, soldiers, sailors, middle-aged men and women. The tuxedoed bouncers moved warily through the crowd, forever encircling it, mingling with it. The long bar at the side of the dance floor was almost obscured by the people crowding around it. The bartenders moved quickly, pouring drinks, substituting full glasses for empty ones.
The soft rainbow-colored lights played over the dancers. There were women in evening gowns, girls in short tight skirts and sweaters that clung slickly to their young breasts. Boys in pants cut tight and close at the ankle went through violent dance routines with the young girls. Some of the dancing couples jitter-bugged, did the rhumba, invented i
ntricate new steps of their own. The ever-moving, ever-changing lights picked faces and figures out of the crowd; added a sense of excitement and strangely the quality of laughter to the dancers. People in the boxes drank out of little paper cups, ate fried chicken and cake and thick ham sandwiches.
Lutie sang at frequent intervals. There was violent applause each time, but even while she was singing, she could hear the babble of voices under the music. White-coated waiters scurried back and forth to the boxes carrying trays heavy with buckets of ice, tall bottles of soda, and big mugs foaming with beer. And all the time the dancers moved in front of her, rocking and swaying. Some of them even sang with her.
The air grew heavy with the heat from the people’s bodies, with the smell of beer and whiskey and the cigarette smoke that hung over the big room like a gray-blue cloud. And she thought, It doesn’t make much difference who sings or whether they sing badly or well, because nobody really listens. They’re making love or quarreling or drinking or dancing.
During the intermission Boots said to her, ‘How about a drink, baby?’
‘Sure,’ she said. For the first time she realized how tired she was. She had come home from work and shopped for food in crowded stores, cooked dinner for herself and Bub, washed and ironed shirts for him and a blouse for herself. The excitement of coming here, of singing, of knowing that she would get this job that meant so much to her had completely blotted out any feeling of fatigue. Now that it was over, she was limp, exhausted.
‘I’d love to have a drink,’ she said gratefully.
He gave the bartender the order and led her to one of the small tables at the edge of the dance floor. A white-coated waiter slid a small glass across the table to Boots. Then he opened the bottle of beer on his tray, poured it into a thick mug and placed the mug so squarely in front of Lutie that she wondered if he had measured the distance.