by Ann Petry
Yet she couldn’t check the rage that welled up in her. ‘Damn being poor!’ she shouted. ‘God damn it!’
She set the table with a slam-bang of plates and a furious rattling of knives and forks. She put the glasses down hard, so that they smacked against the table’s surface, dragged the chairs across the floor until the room was filled with noise, with confusion, with swift, angry movement.
The next afternoon after school, Bub rang the Super’s bell.
‘I changed my mind, Supe,’ he said. ‘I’ll be glad to help you.’
14
IT WAS ONLY TWO-THIRTY in the afternoon. Miss Rinner looked at the wriggling, twisting children seated in front of her and frowned. There was a whole half-hour, thirty long unpleasant minutes to be got through before she would be free from the unpleasant sight of these ever-moving, brown young faces.
The pale winter sunlight streaming through the dusty windows and the steam hissing faintly in the big radiators intensified the smells in the room. All the classrooms she had ever taught in were permeated with the same mixture of odors: the dusty smell of chalk, the heavy, suffocating smell of the pine oil used to lay the grime and disinfect the worn old floors, and the smell of the children themselves. But she had long since forgotten what the forty-year-old buildings in other parts of the city smelt like, and with the passing of the years had easily convinced herself that this Harlem school contained a peculiarly offensive odor.
At first she had thought of the odors that clung to the children’s clothing as ‘that fried smell’—identifying it as the rancid grease that had been used to cook pancakes, fish, pork chops.
As the years slipped by—years of facing a room swarming with restless children—she came to think of the accumulation of scents in her classroom with hate as ‘the colored people’s smell,’ and then finally as the smell of Harlem itself—bold, strong, lusty, frightening.
She was never wholly rid of the odor. It assailed her while she ate her lunch in the corner drugstore, when she walked through the street; it lurked in the subway station where she waited for a train. She brooded about it at home until finally she convinced herself the same rank, fetid smell pervaded her small apartment.
When she unlocked the door of her classroom on Monday mornings, the smell had gained in strength as though it were a living thing that had spawned over the week-end and in reproducing itself had now grown so powerful it could be seen as well as smelt.
She had to pause in the doorway to nerve herself for her entry; then, pressing a handkerchief saturated with eau de Cologne tight against her nose, she would cross the room at a trot and fling the windows open. The stench quickly conquered the fresh cold air; besides, the children insisted on wearing their coats because they said they were cold sitting under open windows. Then the odors that clung to their awful coats filled the room, mingling with the choking pine odor, the dusty smell of chalk.
The sight of them sitting in their coats always forced her to close the windows, for the coats were shabby, ragged, with gaping holes in the elbows. None of them fit properly. They were either much too big or much too small. Bits of shedding cat fur formed the collars of the little girls’ coats; the hems were coming out. The instant she looked at them, she felt as though she were suffocating, because any Contact with their rubbishy garments was unbearable.
So in spite of the need for fresh air she would say, ‘Close windows. Hang up coats.’ And for the rest of the day she would avoid the clothes closet in the back of the room where the coats were hung.
Thus drearily she would start another day. It always seemed as if by Monday she should have been refreshed and better able to face the children, but the fact that the smell lingered in her nostrils over the week-end prevented her from completely relaxing. And when the class assembled, the sight of their dark skins, the sound of the soft blurred speech that came from their throats, filled her with the hysterical desire to scream. As the week wore along, the desire increased, until by Fridays she was shaking, quivering inside.
On Saturdays and Sundays she dreamed of the day when she would be transferred to a school where the children were blond, blue-eyed little girls who arrived on time in the morning filled with orange juice, cereal and cream, properly cooked eggs, and tall glasses of milk. They would sit perfectly still until school was out; they would wear starched pink dresses and smell faintly of lavender soap; and they would look at her with adoration.
These children were impudent. They were ill-clad, dirty. They wriggled about like worms, moving their arms and legs in endless, intricate patterns, and they frightened her. Their parents and Harlem itself frightened her.
Having taught ten years in Harlem, she had learned that a sharp pinch administered to the soft flesh of the upper arm, a sudden twist of the wrist, a violent shove in the back, would keep these eight- and nine-year-olds under control, but she was still afraid of them. There was a sudden, reckless violence about them and about their parents that terrified her.
She regarded teaching them anything as a hopeless task, so she devoted most of the day to maintaining order and devising ingenious ways of keeping them occupied. She sent them on errands. They brought back supplies: paper, pencils, chalk, rulers; they trotted back and forth with notes to the nurse, to the principal, to other teachers. The building was old and vast, and a trip to another section of it used up a good half-hour or more; and if the child lingered going and coming, it took even longer.
Because the school was in Harlem she knew she wasn’t expected to do any more than this. Each year she promoted the entire class, with few exceptions. The exceptions were, she stated, unmanageable and were placed in opportunity classes. Thus each fall she started with a fresh crop of youngsters.
At frequent intervals the children would bring penknives into the classroom. Her mind immediately transformed them into long, viciously curving blades. The first time it happened, she attempted to get a transfer to another district. Ten years had gone by and she was still here, and the fear in her had now reached the point where even the walk to the subway from the school was a terrifying ordeal.
For the people on the street either examined her dispassionately, as though she were a monstrosity, or else they looked past her, looked through her as though she didn’t exist. Some of them stared at her with unconcealed hate in their eyes or equally unconcealed and jeering laughter. Each reaction set her to walking faster and faster.
She thought of every person she passed as a threat to her safety—the women sitting on the stoops or leaning out of the windows, the men lounging against the buildings. By the time she dropped her nickel into the turnstile, she was panting, out of breath, from the cumulative effect of the people she had met. It was as though she had run a gantlet.
Waiting for the train was a further trial. She searched the platform for some other white persons and then stood close to them, taking refuge in their nearness—refuge from the terror of these black people.
Once she had been so tired that she sat down on one of the benches in the station. A black man in overalls came and sat next to her. His presence sent such a rush of sheer terror through her that she got up from the bench and walked to the far end of the platform. She kept looking back at him, trying to decide what she should do if he followed her.
Despite the fact that he remained quietly seated on the bench, not even glancing in her direction, she didn’t feel really safe until she boarded the train and the train began to pull away from Harlem. After that, no matter how tired she was, she never sat down on one of the benches.
Her thoughts returned to the street she had to walk through in order to reach the subway. It was as terrifying in cold weather as it was in warm weather. On balmy days people swarmed through it, sitting in the doorways, standing in the middle of the sidewalk so that she had to walk around them, filling the length of the block with the sound of their ribald laughter. Half-grown boys and girls made passionate love on the very doorsteps. Discarded furniture—overstuffed chairs thick with grease, couches with b
roken springs—stood in front of the buildings; and children and grown-ups lounged on them as informally as though they were in their own living rooms.
When it was cold, the snow stayed on the ground, growing blacker and grimier with each day that passed. She walked as far away from the curb where it was piled as she could, so that even her galoshes wouldn’t come in contact with it, for she was certain it was teeming with germs. Lean cats prowled through the frozen garbage that lay along the edge of the sidewalk.
The few people on the street in cold weather had a desperate, hungry look, and she shuddered at the sight of them, thinking they were probably diseased as well; for these blacks were a people without restraint, without decency, with no moral code. She refused to tell even her closest friends that she worked in a school in Harlem, for she regarded it as a stigma; when she referred to the school, she said vaguely that it was uptown near the Bronx.
And now, as she watched the continual motion of the young bodies behind the battered old desks in front of her, she thought, They’re like animals—sullen-tempered one moment, full of noisy laughter the next. Even at eight and nine they knew the foulest words, the most disgusting language. Working in this school was like being in a jungle. It was filled with the smell of the jungle, she thought: tainted food, rank, unwashed bodies. The small tight braids on the little girls’ heads were probably an African custom. The bright red ribbons revealed their love for gaudy colors.
Young as they were, it was quite obvious that they hated her. They showed it in a closed, sullen look that came over their faces at the slightest provocation. It was a look that never failed to infuriate her at the same time that it frightened her.
Every day when the classes poured out of the building at three o’clock, she hastened toward the subway, and as she went she heard them chanting a ghastly rhyme behind her:
Ol’ Miss Rinner
Is a Awful Sinner.
When she turned to glare at them, they would be clustered on the sidewalk, standing motionless, silent, innocent. The rest of the rhyme followed her as she went down the street:
She sins all day
She sins all night.
Won’t get a man
Just for spite.
She glanced at her wrist watch and saw with relief that it was now quarter of three. She would have them put their books away and that would occupy them until they got their frowzy hats and coats on.
The order, ‘Put your books away!’ was on the tip of her tongue when Bub Johnson’s hand shot up in the air. The sight of it annoyed her, because she didn’t want even so much as a second’s delay in getting out of the building.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘Bathroom. Got to go to the bathroom,’ he announced baldly.
‘Well, you can’t. You can wait until you get out of school,’ she snapped. All of them said it like that—frantically, running the words together and managing to evoke the whole process before her reluctant eyes.
Bub got out of his seat and stood in the aisle, jiggling up and down, first on one foot and then on the other. All the children did this when she refused them permission to leave the room. It was a performance that never failed to embarrass her, because she couldn’t determine whether they were acting or whether their desperate twisting and turning was the result of a real and urgent need. If one of them should have an accident—and she felt a blush run over her body—it would be horrible. The thought of having to witness one of the many and varied functions of the human body revolted her, and with boys—she looked away from Bub determinedly.
‘No,’ she said sternly. It happened every day with some one of the children and every day she weakened and let them go. Somehow they had cunningly figured out this dangerously soft spot of hers. ‘No,’ she repeated.
Then, in spite of herself, her eyes crept back toward him. He was still standing there beside his desk. He had stopped twisting and turning. His face was contorted with that look she feared—that look of sullen, stubborn, resentful hate.
‘Go ahead,’ she said. She filled her voice with authority, made it cross, waspish, in the hope that the sound would so overawe the class they wouldn’t realize that she had lost again. ‘Take your books and your coat with you and wait for us downstairs.’ He would be gone long before the class got down, but it was just as well. It made one less of them to herd down the stairs. She saw that he had left his books on his desk, but she didn’t call him back to get them.
Thus, Bub Johnson got out of school early and was able to beat all the other kids to the candy store across the street from the school.
He peered into the smoke-hazy showcases, trying to find something pretty to buy for his mother—something shiny and pretty. And as he looked, he murmured, ‘Ol’ Miss Rinner Is a Awful Sinner.’
Last week he had earned three dollars working with Supe—three whole dollar bills that he had put under the radio on the living-room table. Before he left for school in the morning, he put one of them in his pants pocket because he was going to buy Mom a present—today.
He passed by the smooth, fat chocolates; the bright-colored hard candy, the green packages of gum, and came to a dead stop in front of the case that spilled over with costume jewelry: shiny beads and bracelets and earrings and lapel pins.
‘You want something?’ the short, thin woman who ran the store asked.
‘Yup,’ he said. Her nose was sharpened to a point. Even her glasses had a sharp, pointed look. Her mouth was a thin, straight line. He looked at her hard, remembering what Mom had said about white’ people wanting colored people to shine shoes. He would have liked to stick his tongue out at her to show her he wasn’t going to be hurried.
‘What is it you want?’
‘I don’t know yet. I got to look around.’
Each time he moved to look at something in the case she moved, too. Then the store filled up with kids and she walked away from him. By the time she reached the front of the store, he had made up his mind.
‘Hey,’ he called. ‘I want these.’ He pointed to a pair of shiny, hoop earrings. They were gold-colored, and they ought to look good on Mom. They were fifty-nine cents. She counted the change into his hand, put the earrings in a small paper bag. The change made a pleasant clinking.
‘Hey, look, that kid’s got money.’
Bub stole a cautious glance at the front of the store. It was Gray Cap, one of the big six-B boys who had spoken. He had five other big boys with him. They could easily take his change and his earrings, too. He edged near the door.
Gray Cap got up from the counter. Bub was sure they wouldn’t take his money away from him here in the store. If he was quick—he darted out of the door, running fleetly up the street, heart pounding as he heard the hue and cry in back of him.
He fled toward the corner, plunging into the thick of the crowd crossing the street—slipping, twisting, turning in the midst of it, bumping into people, and going on. He ignored the exclamations of anger, of surprise, of chagrin, that followed in his wake.
‘You knocked my groceries!’ ‘Eggs in here—’
‘Boy, watch where you’re going!’ ‘If I get my hands on you, you little black devil—’ ‘Ouch! My foot!’
His pursuers ran head-on into the confusion he left behind him. He turned to look—a large lady had Gray Cap by the ear, was indignantly pointing at the groceries spilling out of a brown-paper bag on the sidewalk. Bub chuckled at the sight and kept running.
Two blocks away, he slowed his pace and looked back. The boys were nowhere in sight. He had thrown them off completely. He walked on, not thinking, merely trying to catch his breath. His heart was thudding so hard, he thought it was just as though it had been running, too. He smiled at the idea. It had been running right alongside of him, so that it had to go faster and faster to keep up with him. He could almost see it—red like a Valentine heart with short legs kicking up in back of it as it ran.
He wondered if he ought to start working in this block. Supe hadn’t said not to go in
other streets, and this one was quite unfamiliar. The sun added a shine and a polish to the buildings; it sparkled on the small muddy streams at the crossings where the snow had melted. Yes, he would try working here where the strangeness of his surroundings offered a kind of challenge, like exploring a new and unknown country. In fact, he would start in that house right across the street—the one where two men were sitting on the steps talking. He felt a quiver of excitement at his own daring.
There was a vast and lakelike expanse of water in the middle of the street. Bub paused to wade through the exact center of it and then ducked out of the way as a passing car sent a shooting spray of water splashing to the curb.
He walked quietly up the steps, past the two men, and paused in the doorway. They weren’t paying any attention to him. They were talking about the war, and they were so engrossed he knew they would soon forget he was there behind them. Water dripped down from the roof, gurgled into the gutters.
‘Sure, sure, I know,’ the man in overalls said impatiently. ‘I been in a war. I know what I’m talking about. There’ll be trouble when them colored boys come back. They ain’t going to put up with all this stuff’—he waved toward the street. His hand made a wide, all-inclusive gesture that took in the buildings, the garbage cans, the pools of water, even the people passing by.
‘What they going to do about it?’ said the other man.
‘They’re going to change it. You watch what I tell you. They’re going to change it.’
‘Been like this all these years, ain’t nothing a bunch of hungry soldiers can do about it.’
‘Don’t tell me, man. I know. I was in the last war.’
‘What’s that got to do with it? What did you change when you come back? They’re going to come back with their bellies full of gas and starve just like they done before—’
‘They ain’t using gas in this war. That’s where you’re wrong. They ain’t using gas—’