Like One of the Family

by Alice Childress

  “Yes, reverend,” I said, “and if you could find it in your heart to preach a sermon like that it would make Sunday a day of real meaning and inspiration.”

  And it would, wouldn’t it, Marge?

  I HATE HALF-DAYS OFF

  GIRL, PEOPLE HAVE GOT some crust! Some folks’ notion of what’s fair is all out of whack, and it takes your friend Mildred to tell it! You know, Marge, I told you how I was sick and tired of runnin’ from hither to yon in order to make a bare livin’? … That’s right, days work can carry you all over town, workin’ first for this one and then the other. There’s some mornin’s that it takes me a good five minutes to remember just where I’m goin’ to work. So I decided to try steady time once more and look me up a permanent place to work…. Yes, I got it out the newspaper and telephoned the lady before the print was dry.

  Honey, you never heard such a interview as she put me through. You shoulda heard her! “Now, Mildred, why do you want this job?” Don’t laugh, I know you want to but try and listen. Did you ever hear such a simple question? I could of told her the truth and make mention of that nasty word money, but I knew that would make her sad, so I said very prettily, “Because I’d like a nice steady job with a good family.”

  Hot dog! I struck pay-dirt, her smile was the sunshine of a May afternoon. Sure she asked me some more things. I had to give her references, the name of my minister and my doctor, how long I worked in my last three places and how come this and why not that until we was both fair worn out with talk and more talk. Finally she seems all satisfied and made the summin’ up, “I think you’ll do just fine, and I hope we can make some satisfactory arrangement that’ll make us both happy.” Marge, before I can get in a word about what’ll make me happy she takes a sheet of paper out of her desk and starts readin’ off how things will go. “Mildred,” she says, “on Monday you will report at eight o’clock in the mornin’ and after the breakfast dishes you will do the washin’. Of course we have a machine,” “Naturally,” I says, then she starts runnin’ her finger down this devilish list: “After the washin’ you will take care of the children’s lunch, prepare dinner, clean the baby’s room thoroughly and leave after the supper dishes, that’s Monday.” “So much for Monday,” I says, “and how about Tuesday?” “Well,” she says, “you don’t come in until noon on Tuesday, then you fix the children’s lunch, iron, give the kitchen a thorough cleaning, prepare dinner and leave after the supper dishes.” “Well,” I says, “here we are at Wednesday already.” “Yes,” she says, “on Wednesday you come in at eight in the mornin’ and do all the floors, fix the children’s lunch, do the mendin’, give the foyer and the baths a thorough cleanin’, prepare the dinner …” “… and leave after the supper dishes,” I says. “That’s right,” she says, “and the schedule remains pretty much the same for the rest of the week; on Thursday you thoroughly clean the bedrooms, on Friday the livin’ room, on Saturday the pantry shelves, silver, and clothes closets and on Sunday you fix early dinner and leave after one-thirty.”

  Marge, I must have looked pure bewildered because she adds, “Do you have any comment?” “A little,” I says, “when is my off-time?” “Oh that,” she says. “Yes mam,” I says, and then she begins to run her finger down the list again. “Well, you have one half-day off every Tuesday and one half-day off every Sunday and every other Thursday you get a full day off, which makes it a five and a half day week.”

  How ’bout that Marge! I was never too good at arithmetic, but I really had to tip my hat to her. Even somebody as smart as Einstein couldn’t have figured nothin’ as neat as that. Before I could get a word in on what I considered the deal of the year, she played her trump card, “I will pay you two weeks pay on the first and fifteenth of each month.” “But that way,” I says, “I lose a week’s pay every time the month has five weeks,” Well, she repeats herself, “I pay on the first and fifteenth.”

  No, Marge, you know I wasn’t comin’ on that! In the first place I could see me workin’ myself into such a lather that there wouldn’t be nothin’ to do but crawl into the doctor’s office on the first and fifteenth and give every blessed nickel I had in order that he could try and straighten me out in time to meet the second and the sixteenth. In the second place … oh, well, what’s the use? You get the picture! I backed out of there so fast ’til I bet she’s not sure that I was ever there.

  But it set me to thinkin’. How come all of them big-shots in Washington that can’t balance the budget or make the taxes cover all our expenses, how come they don’t send for that woman to help straighten them out? Why, in two or three weeks she’d not only get everything on a payin’ basis, but she’d have enough money left over to buy every citizen a free ice cream cone for the Fourth of July, not countin’ all the loot we’d have left over to bury at Fort Knox! Genius like that just pure takes your breath away. It’s almost beautiful in a disgustin’ sort of way, ain’t it?

  WHAT DOES AFRICA WANT? … FREEDOM!

  MARGE, YOU CAN’T UNDERSTAND anything if you don’t get up and go in order to keep in the know…. Now, you take all this talk about Africa—what do you know about Africa? … That’s right—nothin’! Or even worse than nothin’ because we don’t know anything but a pack of fancy lies.

  All our education about Africa comes from bad moving pictures. You know how they show us bunches of “wild folk” goin’ crazy and bein’ et up by lions, tigers and snakes. We see pictures about Africans dancin’ all day and drummin’ all night … and ain’t it funny, Marge, how the animal always eats the African and not the white man?

  Yes, girl, I went to an African meetin’ tonight. No, it wasn’t given by African people, but it was all about Africa…. Well, the evenin’ started out with speakers tellin’ things about Africa and how Africans are different groups of people and not all one single thing…. Well, like in Europe—you know there’s English, French, Italians and Germans but yet you can plainly hear how they are different even though these people are all Europeans…. That’s right, there are even more groups of Africans than there are different Europeans.

  Then someone explained all about African art and sculpture, and they showed us beautiful photographs of the things.

  … No, Marge, we didn’t get to see any of the real stuff. How could we when it’s all in the British Museum?

  Another speaker told us about history and slavery and all such as that, finally ending up with today and what’s going on now. And believe me when I say THINGS ARE POPPIN’! …

  Wait, Marge, don’t get excited. Save that for later. It seems that the South Africans are breakin’ the Jim Crow laws! … Just like if you was to walk in a Mississippi waitin’ room, tear down the “white” sign and sit yourself down! HOW ’bout THAT AFRICA! … Oh, honey, thousands of ’em are doin’ that in trains, in the parks and everywhere.

  But what bugged me was the “discussion” they had at the meetin’. Marge, you should have been there to hear the people arguin’ back and forth about “WHAT THE AFRICAN WANTS” and “WHAT THE AFRICANS DON’T WANT.” … Yes, that took up all the discussion time, and it kept battin’ around from one person to the other: “The African wants this and not that” … and on and on it went….

  All of a sudden I jumped straight up and hollered, “There ain’t no mystery about that! Africans want to be free! … How in the devil can you sit and hear how they’re starved, whipped, kept out of schools, jailed and shot down and then ask WHAT the African wants?” … I went right on…. “You folks been talkin’ so uppity ’bout ‘Are Africans fit to govern themselves?’ … ‘are they educated enough?’ and all such trash…. Let me tell you one thing,” I says: “If educated folk can’t do anything but jail, whip, starve and abuse, what in the devil makes you think they are anything but unfit to rule!”

  Yes, I did! … I squared right off: “There’s two schools of thought over there: One says privileges for white folk alone, while the other says FREEDOM FOR ALL.” I shook my fist at them, Marge. “Shame, shame, shame!” I
cried.

  And I tell you, they got quiet when I laid down the law…. “Stop all this pussyfootin’ pretense about ‘you can’t understand’…. Right is right and wrong is wrong, FREE AFRICA! Then I turned and asked, “Now who don’t understand that?”

  … Well, maybe I did make a scene, Marge, but I’m sick and tired of folks pretendin’ they don’t know the score just so they can duck the issue, ’cause we all got to go when the wagon comes and it behooves each and every one of us to “put up or shut up” as the gambler said…. Sure, Marge, the truth is just pure beautiful!

  I WISH I WAS A POET

  MARGE, I WISH I was a poet…. Now that’s no cause for you to stop stringing the beans and lookin’ at me like you was struck by lightnin’…. No, I don’t wish it on account of I want to be famous, but I do wish it because sometimes there are poetry things that I see and I’d like to tell people about them in a poetry way; only I don’t know how, and when I tell it, it’s just a plain flat story.

  Well, for an instance, you know my cousin Thelma stopped in town for a few days, and she stayed at a downtown hotel…. Yes, I dropped by to see her last night…. Now, Marge, when I walked up to the desk to get her room number, all of a sudden the folks in the lobby cleared a path on both sides of me and I was about to get real salty about their attitude when I chanced to look behind me and saw two old people walkin’ up to the desk….

  No, they were white, and you’ve never seen such a couple in your life—a man and his wife, and they must have been in their seventies. They were raggedy and kinda beat. The old lady wore men’s shoes and trousers and an old battered raincoat and on her head a man’s hat. From under the hat her white hair hung in curly wisps—and she was pretty….

  Yes, mam, she was pretty and still she was seventy and bent and dragged her feet along instead of liftin’ them. The man was dressed just as sorry as her and in his hand he carried a paper bag…. Marge, he was lookin’ at her like every woman on earth dreams of bein’ looked at, and her eyes were doin’ the same thing back at him.

  Honey, everyone was standin’, just starin’. There was a giggle from some kid and one well-dressed woman looked like she was goin’ to faint, but the old man walked up to the clerk with the old lady follerin’ behind him and he said in a quavery voice, “We’d like a room for the night.”

  Well, you could cut the silence with a knife. The clerk hemmed and hawed while they stood there lookin’ back at him real innocent and peaceful, and finally he said, “You’ll have to pay in advance.” “How much is the cheapest room?” the old man asked. The clerk breathed a little easier and said: “Three-fifty.” The old man went in his coat pocket and brought out four crumpled up dollar bills and put them on the desk.

  The clerk turned red in the face and said real loud, “You can’t have a room without carryin’ baggage—where’s your baggage?” You could hear a pin drop when the old man placed the paper bag on the desk, opened it and pulled out two rough dry shirts…. Well, with that the clerk took the money, gave him a key and fifty cents change and said, “Top floor rear!”

  The couple smiled in such a dignified way, and it seemed like they hadn’t noticed a thing. They started over toward the elevator and then the old lady turned away from the man and made her way over to the receptionist’s desk. Everyone kept their eyes dead on her, and the receptionist, who was awfully young and pretty, was almost scared out of her wits. The old lady kept makin’ straight for her, and I could see that the young lady was gonna scream any second….

  When the old woman reached the desk, she leaned over a bowl of red roses that was there and, ever so gently, breathed in the sweet smell, and then she turned away and quickly joined her husband at the elevator, and nobody moved until the doors closed and they were gone from sight….

  That’s all, Marge. Of course, there was buzzin’ and hummin’ after that, but I got to wonderin’ about who they were and where they came from … and did they have children … and how much work they both done in their lifetime … and what it must feel like to be old and draggin’ around in the cold.

  That’s all there is to the story and it sure don’t sound like much the way I tell it, but if I was a poet, I would sing a song of praise for the love in their eyes and I would make you see the sight of a lifetime when that ragged lady bent over those roses, and I would tell how awful it is to be old and broke in the midst of plenty…. And that’s what I mean when I say—sometimes I wish I was a poet.

  ECONOMY CORNER

  MARGE, as sure as my name is Mildred, I’m tellin’ you that we should improve ourselves…. No, we are not all right as we are. We’re in a rut. Here we sit watchin’ the television and idlin’ along with no thought of betterment…. Of course, it’s all right to watch T.V., but we ought to be more particular about what we look at. Now instead of watchin’ “Gory Story,” we should find something here in the paper that will be beneficial…. Now, here’s a show, “Economy Corner.” That’s a cookin’ program. You know, it’s all about stretchin’ leftovers and fixin’ up new dishes to tempt your appetite and makin’ the food look more pleasin’ and things like that.

  … All right, here it is. My, isn’t that a pretty kitchen with the oven in the wall and everything? We better watch sharp so’s not to miss trick…. How to fix leftover stringbeans. That oughta be a nice recipe because we got some leftover beans…. Get a pencil, Marge…. You know, the only thing I do with the beans is warm them up again and eat ’em…. First thing she says is take one pint of heavy cream…. Marge, don’t be that way! No, she didn’t say where to take it from. Just take it! … No, she is not suggestin’ that you be dishonest and lift it from the store…. Now take this down: one half cup of butter…. I don’t know…. Maybe you could use margarine. Now you need one half pound of sliced mushrooms and one-fourth of a cup of sherry wine and … and four chicken breasts…. Girl! Leftovers can get you into some debt! Leave the dial alone! Don’t turn it off. I want to see how she fixes this recipe. Oh oh, one more thing: one cup of chopped parsley…. No, Marge, she didn’t forget the stringbeans. They’re over there in that little bowl. See, now she fries the chicken in the butter…. Girl, don’t be silly, you do not have to buy four chickens in order to get four chicken breasts. You can buy it in parts in one of those poultry stores that sell choice pieces…. I know it’s expensive! Who you tellin’! … Wait, don’t touch that dial! Now she’s addin’ the mushrooms. Now the wine and cream is mixed together for the sauce and she pours that right over the bird breasts. There now! Don’t it look pretty all turned out on the platter? That’s the parsley that she’s bunchin’ up at each end…. No, Marge, I’m sure she hasn’t forgot the beans ’cause after all that’s what it’s all about…. Well, I’ll be dog…. ! She’s layin’ them stringbeans across the top of the whole mess! Ain’t that cute how they look just like little flowers? So that’s how you use leftover beans! … Aw shucks! I know we can’t afford to make that! … Go ahead. I don’t care if you turn it off. No, girl, I just can’t take any more “Gory Story” tonight…. I’m agreein’ with you…. Let’s just heat up our stringbeans and talk chit-chat…. Ain’t it the truth! I guess we’d learn more by lookin’ out the window than by watchin’ all this nonsense…. You know one thing, I’ll predict you this much, one of these days somebody with a little sense is gonna make a big success on T.V. by puttin’ on somethin’ that’s good…. I wonder why nobody has thought of it?

  IN THE LAUNDRY ROOM

  MARGE … Sometimes it seems like the devil and all his imps are tryin’ to wear your soul case out…. Sit down, Marge, and act like you got nothin’ to do…. No, don’t make no coffee, just sit….

  Today was laundry day and I took Mrs. M …’s clothes down to the basement to put them in the automatic machine. In a little while another houseworker comes down—a white woman. She dumps her clothes on the bench and since my bundle is already in the washer I go over to sit down on the bench and happen to brush against her dirty clothes…. Well sir! She gives me a kinda sick
ly grin and snatched her clothes away quick….

  Now, you know, Marge, that it was nothin’ but the devil in her makin’ her snatch that bundle away ’cause she thought I might give her folks gallopin’ pellagra or somethin’. Well, honey, you know what the devil in me wanted to do! … You are right! … My hand was just itchin’ to pop her in the mouth, but I remembered how my niece Jean has been tellin’ me that poppin’ people is not the way to solve problems…. So I calmed myself and said, “Sister, why did you snatch those things and look so flustered?” She turned red and says, “I was just makin’ room for you.” Still keepin’ calm, I says, “You are a liar.” … And then she hung her head.

  “Sister,” I said, “you are a houseworker and I am a houseworker—now will you favor me by answering some questions?” She nodded her head…. The first thing I asked her was how much she made for a week’s work and, believe it or not, Marge, she earns less than I do and that ain’t easy…. Then I asked her, “Does the woman you work for ask you in a friendly way to do extra things that ain’t in the bargain and then later on get demandin’ about it?” … She nods, yes…. “Tell me, young woman,” I went on, “does she cram eight hours of work into five and call it part time?” … She nods yes again….

  Then, Marge, I added, “I am not your enemy, so don’t get mad with me just because you ain’t free! … Then she speaks up fast, “I am free!” … All right,” I said. “How about me goin’ over to your house tonight for supper?” … “Oh,” she says, “I room with people and I don’t think they …” I cut her off…. “If you’re free,” I said, “you can pick your own friends without fear.”

  Wait a minute, Marge, let me tell it now…. “How come, I asked her, “the folks I work for are willin’ to have me put my hands all over their chopped meat patties and yet ask me to hang my coat in the kitchen closet instead of in the hall with theirs?” … By this time, Marge, she looked pure bewildered…. “Oh,” she said, “it’s all so mixed up I don’t understand!”