Yonnondio: From the Thirties

by Tillie Olsen

  Oh he learned all right. He never even got a chance to have a wife and kids hang round his neck like an anchor and make him grovel to God Job. (And I guess it’s just as well, Jim Tracy, because even among the pious who heed and prostrate themselves It’s wrath is visited, for Many Are Called but Few Are Chosen, and are not the Sins of the Fathers (having nothing to sell but their labor power) Visited on the Sons, and it’s no fun to see the old lady nag and worry her life away, no fun to see the younguns pulpy with charity starches drowse and chant the lesson after the teacher: we-are-the-rich-est-coun-try-in-the-worr-uld).

  So (not knowing) he threw it up, the big sap, thinking, the big sap, jobs grew on trees and (believing the old bull) a man didn’t hafta take crap off’n anybody, he renounced God Job—and the tortures of the damned were visited upon him in full measure, he learned all right, all right that last hour writhing in the “piano” in the chain gang down in Florida.

  And there’s nothing to say, Jim Tracy, I’m sorry, Jim Tracy, sorry as hell we weren’t stronger and could get to you in time and show you that kind of individual revolt was no good, kid, no good at all, you had to bide your time and take it till there were enough of you to fight it all together on the job, and bide your time, and take it, till the day millions of fists clamped in yours, and you could wipe out the whole thing, the whole goddam thing, and a human could be a human for the first time on earth.

  Momma was asleep again, falling asleep right in her chair like she was always doin now, with her mouth open, and cryin as if somebody was hitting her, turnin her head and cryin. Ben stood looking at the little worm of water on the floor from the leaking washtub. “Ma,” he called, trying not to cry, “ma.” She moaned and her hands twitched at him. “Ma,” he called again, louder.

  She didn’t wake up. Ben pushed open the kitchen door and ran out; the clothes flapping on the line slapped in his face with a crackling noise, but the wind felt good on his hot cheeks. His finger hurt awful there in the tip, like a heart was beating in it. He put it in his mouth and tried to suck the pain away.

  Jimmie, stirring the ashes on the dump heap with an old broomstick, singing, “Pudding wiv kithes, pudding wiv kithes,” saw him and stood up. “Go bye?” he asked, “Ji go go go bye?”

  “No,” said Ben, “Momma said no.” His finger throbbed and throbbed. He felt so empty inside, like when he was hungry, but the idea of food made him shudder.

  “See car?”begged Jimmie. “Go bye bye, see streetcar?”

  “No, go on play.”He pushed Jimmie down and kicked the piece of stick out of his reach.

  “Go bye?”quivered Jimmie again.

  “No.”The yelling of it made him feel good. “No,” he yelled, “no, no, no.”

  Near the ashes there was a tuft of fur like part of a tail of a cat. “All right, c’mon,” said Ben suddenly, “we’ll go bye-bye, Jimmie, far away bye.”

  “Go go go,” sang Jimmie, collecting his broken bits of wood, “go go go.”

  Up at the corner big men were standing around laughing. Through their legs Ben could see a dog, a dog like Shep. One held him by the collar, and another was sticking nails all over a piece of meat. “The funniest sight you ever did see,” he chortled, “the way a dawg tries to get at the meat.”

  “Shep,” called Ben, “here, Shep, here, Shep.”

  The man in front turned around. “That aint your dog. Scram!”

  “Maybe it is,” faltered Ben. “Shep, here, Shep.”

  “Say, I said beat it, you and your shadow. Go on home and get some titty.”

  “No, I wanna see.”

  “Scram now.” The man pushed his shoe into Ben’s back and gave him a shove. “Go on.”

  Ben ran. But Jimmie tugged back. “See streetcar,” he wept, “see car.” In vain Ben pulled and pulled, finally Jimmie gave. Then tears came, and in the middle of the tears an anger lashing. Ben picked up a rock and smashed it against the telephone pole, he pounded, pounded the pavement. Frightened, Jimmie began to cry too.

  “Aw hush up,” Ben savagely commanded. “Hush up, nuffin to cry about, nuffin. You heard me,” pushing him down. “You heard me.” Then, “I’m sorry, Jimmie, please dont cry, JimJim, we’ll go see a streetcar, we’ll go see a car, we’ll go see a car. Please dont cry.”Seeing Mazie come down the street, slowly, dreamily, a paper clutched in her hand: “See, Mazie’ll take us bye-bye.” But she walked past.

  Bess was wailing. “Ma,” said Mazie, shaking her, “wake up, baby’s cryin, she wants to nurse.”

  With her mouth open (so far in some sharp livid place), Anna slept on, drawing deep hoarse breaths.

  “Ma,” yelled Mazie again, “baby’s cryin, wake up, wake up.”

  Anna’s body became rigid, then convulsed. She sprang out of her chair with a cry, trembling. “What?”she asked in a voice not her own, “What?

  … Oh.”The kitchen, the half-done wash, a glimmering face like Mazie’s. She pushed her hand hard over her brow. “Must’ve been asleep. Now… what did you say, Mazie?”

  “Bess’s cryin, Momma.”

  “Yes, Bess’s cryin.”It seemed Mazie’s face dipped and swayed like a sea. All that heaviness … to batter through. “Better bring her in here.”Sinking again. Then with a start: “My land, you home already? I musta been asleep a long time. And dinner to get, and still clothes to get out on the line. I’m gettin up right now” (but she sank right back in the chair). “Will home yet?”

  “No’m.” An absent smile. “He said he was gonna play ball.”

  The room would not come clear. Such a burning somewhere, such a swimming and a haze. Bess’s cry was lost and struggling somewhere. “Hush, baby,” she said automatically, pulling out her breast. “Hush now.” Calling, “Mazie.”

  With such an effort she managed to find the thought and push it out steady. “Better go get a pail of lard down at the store and tell him to put it on the bill. Say please. Best bring a diaper first.”

  The room swimming, swimming, or was it she? Bess did not seem to be at her breast at all. Soaked, soaked through to the bone, she thought, but her fingers felt no wet. She tried to rise. A great wave of giddiness and illness rose and waited to engulf her; she sank back down. “Them clothes, I guess. Leavin me tired enough not to move for a thousand years.”

  Cleanly, suddenly, she arose and stumbled to the table. There, it was all right now. She lay Bess down and took off her wet diaper and put on another. The paper Mazie had laid there danced before her eyes, so she could not read it. A long while before she made out the words.

  It would have struck her like a blow on the naked heart once, this failure report from school, but now she folded it carefully and put it into her pocket. “You bring another one and I’ll beat you to a pulp,” she said to the empty room. To Bess, “Dont you know learnin’s the only hope a body’s got in this world?”And her lips curved in a smile, remembering the remote dream look in Mazie’s eyes as if she were not there at all. “I aim to see any kids we have happy, Jim, not like we were brought up. Happy and with learnin.” Her hand lifted to caress his cheek.

  Shuddering, she clutched the table edge. “Hold on, Anna old girl,” she said to herself. “Hold on. Get-tin a little teched in the head from the heat, I guess,” she explained carefully. The wave of pain gathered her up, engulfed her, so that she swayed. Where … was … that … chair? God she was sick. Sick enough to die. The quivering in her back and the pounding in her head. “Will,”she called faintly, “Mazie. Oughta know they wouldn’t be around when you want them,”she reminded herself scornfully, “and it was you sent Mazie to the store.”

  A terrible sobbing anguished her ears. Stop it, Anna, she begged, stop it, dont be such a baby. But it was only Bess crying. “Only … Bess, what’s the matter with you anyhow?”There, it was going to happen again, the dizziness and pain. She sank down to the chair, down, down as far as she could go, and the pounding of her heart filled the world.

  After a while she lifted her head. “I’d better jest set her
e a while yet,” she said out loud, “but not for long. I cant let Jim find me like this.”

  Ben’s face was so red and funny. Could he have been listening or watching there at the kitchen door? “It’s about time,” she managed to say as loud as she could. “I thought I told you not to go away.” “Didnt, didnt, dont care.” He turned around to go. “C’mon back here, you … Oh.” It was a cry of anguish. Trying to rise, the waters of pain had closed over her head again, and a terrible something, hovering, had sunk its claws in her back.

  “Oh, Momma,” begged Ben, running back, “dont be sick.”

  “No, Ben, Momma’s not sick.”Faintly, “But can you hold Bess and not—” it was better now—“drop her? Just put her down … in the basket.”

  Jimmie here too. But best dont get up. Sit here and let your strength gather up. (The main thing, not to wander off, not to let the fever bear her away.) “Ben, you and Jimmie want to help Momma make dinner now? You bring me the pan over there and a knife, first, Ben, and you and Jimmie take the potatoes out of the sack, and bring them to me till I tell you to stop. Thats right. Thats right.”

  Clutching a pail of lard, dreaming a sweet dream of twilight on the farm and darkening over a fragrant world, her face not shadowed by the buildings above, her nostrils not twitching with the stink in the air, her eyes not bewildered by the seething of people about her, dreaming the sweet dream unutterable, a hard body crashed into her and a voice thundered: “Whynt you look where you’re going, stinking little bitch,” and she was pushed in the stomach, punched down sprawling, a drunken breath in her nostrils. (Fear remembered such a breath. It seemed a mass pressed itself into her face, wet earth, or something she did not remember. In a minute she would be lifted and carried through a blackness of terror.) A wet was on her cheek, not blood, but a blob of spit she had fallen into. Feeling it, shuddering awoke her veins. She struggled to get up. Harsh, the pavement grated against her. It was real then. She moved her hand over the walk. Yes, it was real.

  A streetcar plunged shrieking down the street, scraping over a naked nerve. Set, intent faces passed by. Terrible faces, masked in weariness and hate and lust, faces that knew her not, that saw her not.

  The long street stretched infinite, a space that could never be finished traveling over, distorted buildings blocking each side. There was no sky, only a slab of one, draining color, vanishing into darkness.

  She put her arm around the lamppost. Its solidity was fearful to her. As for the first time she saw the street and people, and it entered into her like death. A woman was sitting in the basement window in front of her, a great black around her eyes, teeth bared in a terrible smile. A man in a soldier’s uniform, seeing her, staggered down the steps. The window blind went down. Real then, real.

  The trembling, vibrating sound in the lamppost like a wild imprisoned heart. She sprang away. A shriek from behind. Slowly, slowly, with such laboriousness she turned her head. A bum was hurtling out of an eating joint, hitting the sidewalk, and the man coming after, roaring: “Dont ever try that again, you rat, or you wont have a face left or a belly.” He gave him a kick, the body stopped sliding, he kicked him again and again. Faces distorted into laughter, and from the street around a fearful sound of hoarse joy went up into the sky.

  Mazie ran. She fell. Here near the top of the street, she could see the shattered sun die in a sky of bruises over the decayed line of houses and buildings. Way down, like a hog, a great hulk of building wallowed. A-R-M-O-U-R-S gray letters shrieked. Armours, said Mazie over and over: Armoursarmoursarmours. Beautiful, suspended, the farm, softened by twilight floated an instant before her eyes. A new bulk, “C’mon, hand it over,” shattered it forever. It passed her, and Mazie could see it was two people, and the man was twisting the woman’s arm. Armoursarmours. Every step was pain, every look was pain. The spit felt on her face again and the terrible face of the soldier as he ran down the stairs thickened her in horror that over it held the shadow of something mushy, opening in the middle, pressed hard against her cheeks.

  Only a block to home. She began to run, running, trying to run away from the stink, away from the-street, back, back, to something that had never been. Mr. Kryckszi held her arm. He was all stink, all stink, he helped kill cows, cows like Brindle, and Annamae said he washed blood off himself. “Come, little one,” he said in his funny English (he was a furriner), “do not hasten so. Life will catch up with you soon enough. Let us walk together.”

  There was a man with him, something wrong with his shoulders, so he hunched over, misshapen. They walked along in silence. But their shoes made an awful sound. Long shadows lay over the street; the wind—flinging the arc lamp—twitched them as if they were alive. Mazie was glad for Kryckszi’s hand, and she held it tight, tight.

  There was no light in the house, as if nobody was home. But her father sat on the steps, weariness riding his shoulders like despair. Kryckszi called through the windy dark: “You not try to get on at the yards any more, Holbrook?”

  “Naw.”

  “Today they hire.”

  “Damn shame you aint a nigger,” the other man interrupted. “If you was you could get on in a minute.”

  “Today they hire,” Kryckszi said again. “They think you are scissors bill maybe they take you too—that is why they taking blacks—they think they scab if there is strike—have to scab, how else they get job?”

  Mazie went up to her father. He did not even look at her. Flat, inflectionless, he spoke: “Git in there and help your ma git dinner on the table. You might tell her Bess aint the only one in the house that wants to eat.”

  There was something she wanted to say, but she could not remember it. “Go on,” her father harshly ordered, “get in there.”

  The light was not on. In the dirty light of dusk her mother sat motionless, her eyes large and feverish, the baby at her breast asleep. The lifeless hair hung in two black braids, framing her like a coffin, and above a spiral of fire foamed, reflected from the open damper. “Momma,” said Mazie for no reason and went up and kissed her. The cheek was burning to her lips.

  Armoursarmours, her lips said soundlessly, and she slipped to her knees and buried her face in her mother’s lap.

  Her mother did not move. Mazie clutched her closer. The limbs began to tremble. “Yes,” her mother spoke, “I never was much of a hand for tonics, but when it gets you like this, Else …”

  Mazie pushed herself away. The nightmare feeling came back. But the table felt solid against her back (the pavement grated her hand, harsh). In the darkness she brought out the dishes and put them on the table. She opened the oven and fed it wood.

  Up above her mother’s head the swirl of color foamed larger and larger. Suddenly it brought a nausea of fear (the jelly mass pushing against her face, the breath stinking, the shuddering laugh). She ran for the lamp and turned it up and stood there in the sudden light, trembling. There, it was gone now.

  “What?”a hoarse, startled, fear-stricken sound from Anna. “What?”then realizing. “Oh … the light. Musta startled me. Where you been so long, Missy? Better get the table set and the bread cut. Poppa’ll be home any minute now.”

  “Poppa is home,” stubbornly, “he is. The table’s set and Poppa is home.”

  “Yes. Poppa is home. I’ll put Bess to bed and we’ll eat.”Falling on her knees in front of the oven as if she were praying, “I guess nothin burned. You can take the bean pot out and turn the potatoes into a dish. And call your dad…. Why, baby,” sensing her vibrating body, “dont tremble so. You didnt think I was goin to hit you, did you? What made you think that? I wasnt goin to touch you.”

  And Will coming in—Will? This stranger with the dirt on his cheek like a bruise and the sullen gray eyes? “Oh boy, are you goin to get it for flunkin. Oh boy, you’ll be so raw you wont be able to sit down for a millyun years,” without zest. “Oh boy, wait till Ma tells Pa … Who you sayin shut up to,” pushing her against the wall.

  Perhaps it frightens you as you walk by,
the travail of the trees against the dark crouched house, the weak tipsy light in the window, the man sitting on the porch, menacing weariness riding his flesh like despair. And you hurry along, afraid of the black forsaken streets, the crooked streets, and look no more. But there are those who have looked too much through such windows, seeing the pain on everything, the darkening pain twisting and writhing over the faces, over and about the lamp like a wind to blow the flame out.

  The pain, the darkening pain on everything. And it seemed to Mazie that her limbs were crooked in sleep and a nightmare sweat were on her, for only there had she seen such grotesqueness and crooked vision. And Anna struggling to keep her head clear and far above. They sat there at the meal in silence, only Jimmie chattering away, Will choking his food down as if he never expected to eat again. Once Jim pushed his plate away and said clearly, distinctly (against the darkening pain), “Any time I want sewage to eat I can get it on the job,” but it seemed no one heard, and hastily he pulled the plate back and shoved the food down.

  The stink of burning bacon in the air. Reaching for the frying pan, for the burning handle, with a bellow Jim dropped it, and with one kick sent it flying to the door, with another out into the yard, then turned (is the burn in his hand? it seems to be burning far inside, a scorch that will not let him be), facing Anna, facing Will, who laughs louder and louder, facing Mazie, who stares (useless to resist, to cry out, because it all is a voiceless dream to be endured), and Ben, who pales. “So ya think it’s funny, do ya?” not knowing it is a chair he holds in his hand and is crashing toward Will, ducking under the table. She wrenches herself free from the battering pain. “You crazy?” slapping his face savagely. “You gone crazy? You coulda crippled that kid. Set down and finish eatin. It’s all right, kids, everything’s all right. If you hold out your hand—I’ll smear oleo on so it wont blister. Jim? Set down, you hear! Please?” And he sinks down, the madness ebbing. Fearful what it leaves behind, the shame.