Joyce Carol Oates - Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart

by Because It Is Bitter

  God, help me to be good.

  God, if there is God... I know I am icy-hearted.

  God, is there God? And who is "Iris," and why?

  Until, in an uncharted instant, the approach of sleep makes a single body of sensation of the awkwardness of her posture at the window, the feel of the splintery wood against her cheek, the voiceless query of which, by day, Iris Courtney would be ashamed.

  "I'm just talking in a normal voice-" "Oh, for Christ's sake "Don't interrupt! You accused me of-" "Who accused who?"

  "Wrong. Flat out wrong. You're inventing-" "Then where were you? And Friday too."

  "I told you."

  'And how much, this time?"

  "Honey, 1 told you." can t stand you lying!"

  "Keep your voice down, will you? You'll wake-" "Will you?... What did you do with the cigarettes?" accusing me. Anyone who knows me, these past few months-" "There's a laugh! Precious friends..

  ."buddies'... you'd have to think I'm crazy if I... where's your lighter? Mine's-" "You want some more ice? I'm going in." should both go in.

  "If you were... reasonable..

  "Well, you're not sleeping here tonight, so"If I wanted to, I-" outrage, the more I think of it. As though I can help it if somebody looks at me. If I didn't have to-" "Since when? You love it there: showing off your ass, your tits fancy silky tits. You think I don't-" "Bastard. You'll wake her." in a normal voice, goddamn it."

  "You going in? I need some ice."

  "Matches?"

  "Uh. On the counter. No, wait"Honey, ifwe..

  "Yes, but you're not sleeping in that bed." just agreed on some principles-" "That bed you defiled-" "Jesus, can't you get off that?

  Broken record.

  "It's just that you lie." fucking broken record."

  "Yes, and then you accuse me! Your own friend Jimmy French thought that was "Leave that asshole out of it."

  "He is an asshole; boy, you said it; for once, Mr. Smart Mouth, you said it: lending you money.

  "Will you keep it down? Her room's right there."

  "Ice?"

  "Your glass?"

  "Need some more.

  "Was some more. I thought.

  "Tomorrow? Or..."

  "Only be reasonable not sleeping under this roof Not."

  "Damned broken record, aren't you? You telling Iris this kind of shit?

  You telling my brother?" worth twice of you. Liar. Bastard."

  "You're drunk. Watch out, those cigarettes-" "You're drunk. Last night, and tonight, and "Keep it down, I said."

  "Hit me, you bastard, and I'll.

  "Just keep it outrage. Saying you love me, then in the next breath "I do love you."

  'And your own daughter."

  "I do love you... love you both."

  "Don't touch."

  "If there wasn't this willful misunderstanding "'Life is serious,' he says, 'deadly serious, 'cause our lives are running out,' he says. Mr. Fancy Mouth says. 'But life is also __also play. Yes, it is! It's self-evident!"

  "Mr. High-on-His-Horse. Mr. Horse's Ass. Mr. Fancy Shit.

  "Life is serious and life is play if you-" "Fancy Shitmouth." willful distortion, reduced to your level... stupidity.

  "Mmmmmmmmmm, listen to him." hysterical cunt."

  "Sunny side of the street. Life can be so sweet."

  "Oh, for Christ's sake, Persia. Will youcoat an' get your hat...

  .

  Leave your worries on..

  "Nothing worse than a female drunk."

  "Mmmmmmmmmm, Mr. Fancy Shitmouth. Now he's-" wake Iris? The neighborhood?"

  "That hurts, damn you. Let go."

  "Is that what you want? Humiliate yourself, and me, and-" "Let go. " hysterical, every fucking-" "Rather see her dead. Like my father said: he'd rather be dead than bankrupt, unable to support"Your father!

  Don't make me laugh! That.

  "You think so? You don't think so?" his ass from a hole in the ground."

  "I'd cut the child's throat and then I'd cut my own, to spare her! You don't believe me?" deliberate misunderstanding, distortion, everything reduced to the level of the cunt.

  believe me?"

  "I'm leaving, then."

  "Yes, leave! Go to hell."

  "Unreasonable. Every fucking time.

  "Leave. Go on.

  "Humiliate yourself, and me, and-" "You're not taking that bottle: you leave that. Right where it is, mister."

  "I brought it, and I'm "Gonna call the police. That's what. Any provocation, threats, they said-" "Just keep it down, will you?

  Jesus!"

  "I'm speaking in a normal voice."

  "Only listen to.

  "More ice? If you're.

  "Your glass?"

  In that room by the outdoor stairway there's a dressing table Duke built Iris for her tenth birthday out of an orange crate, strips of plywood, two mirrors from Woolworth's: a rectangular mirror for the top of the table and an oval mirror for the back. The pink cotton ruffled skirt was made by Aunt Madelyn on her Singer sewing machine.

  Iris's dressing table is a smaller version of Persia's glittering dressing table but she has no cosmetics on it of course, no bottles of perfume, nail polish, moisturizer, only a few dusty glass animals and a little ivory box filled with bobby pins, a child's hairbrush, comb, and mirror set Persia bought for her, and these things Iris pushes neatly to one side as, more and more frequently during her final year at Hayden Belknap Junior High School, Iris hides away in her room to do her homework instead of doing it, as she'd done for years, at the kitchen table; the effort of writing, calculating math, thinking becomes irrevocably bound up in Iris's memory with the distracting presence not only of mirrors mirroring her face but of mirror images overlapping, mocking, challenging one another as in a fun house.

  Sometimes Persia raps sharply on the door, pokes her head inside, asks why Iris doesn't come out and join her... or, if Duke's home, join them. Why's she hiding away here by herself? Little Miss Antisocial?

  Iris says, "It's hard to concentrate out there."

  Sometimes, her homework done, Iris reads the Bible here too.

  During the brief but passionate period of time when, caught up by the religious enthusiasm of one of the prettier, more popular girls at school, or pretending to be caught up, Iris Courtney attended church services at the Presbyterian church on Attica Street-went to church, in fact, with the girl and the girl's family, all of them true Christians who befriended Iris with an eye to bringing all the Courtneys into the church in time.

  The Bravermans. Caroline Braverman is Iris's friend's name.

  And Iris hopes to join the young people's choir to which Caroline belongs; she knows she'd be happy forever if only she could be a part of that group of boys and girls singing with such conviction 'A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," "Jesu, Lamb of God," "Come, Thou Redeemer!"

  ("Ridiculous," Duke Courtney says, and he isn't joking. "No kid of mine is going to fall for such crap," and Persia replies irritably, "Oh, leave her alone: it's just a phase she's going through.") But it isn't a phase, Iris thinks, it's forever.

  Please God help me to be good.

  Please God help Jesus to come into my heart.

  Mostly, Iris is hidden away in her room in dread of Persia and Duke.

  Now the weather has turned, now it's freezing cold almost overnight, they can't sit outside on the stairway drinking and smoking and "discussing" their problems. Unless they go out for that purpose, or Duke is away, her parents are together in the small flat, trapped like animals in a zoo enclosure, and the slightest thing can set off a quarrel: a match struck recklessly close to a flammable fabric and there it goes!

  Lately, Duke has been getting rough. Striking a wall with his fist, threatening to strike Persia, maybe giving her an openhanded slap, shoving her back against a door frame.

  And Persia: what a temper! Suddenly there's glassware being broken, something thrown to the floor, a slamming door.

  If someone leaves the apartme
nt, however, it's always Duke.

  Male prerogative.

  Which leaves Persia behind, shouting and sobbing, "Liar!

  Bastard! How dare you! I hate you!" Unless there's deathly silence, and when Iris finally comes out of her room she'll discover Persia standing frozen, face wet with tears and mouth silently working.

  Sometimes, seeing her, Iris retreats; she's frightened, and she's a coward, and she hates Persia when Persia looks like that, so she retreats back into her room, stares at her pale floating face in the oval mirror, knowing that love between men and women, the love of all the popular songs, is a hunger that mere possession can never quench.

  Still, Iris dreams of bodies.

  Male bodies. Female bodies.

  Mmmmmmmmmmm the things that happen between them, oh sweetie you don't want to know that's not for little girls to know and don't walk swinging your hip's, hide your breasts if you can, there are words like "tits" "ass" "boobs" "cunt" 'prick" you're not supposed to know, never call attention to yourself never lock eyes with any boy or man but they seem to be everywhere suddenly, boys who stare crudely at her, boys who merely glance at her, boys who seem hardly to see her at all.

  White boys. Black boys. Boys at school. Older boys. Men. Two sailors, white duffel bags on their shoulders, striding out of the Greyhound bus terminal, long low wet-sounding whistles, in unison.

  The black boys. The neighborhood boys.

  Little Red Garlock urinating in the alley, standing spreadlegged and deliberate, where Iris couldn't fail to see him.

  the pig.

  That strange man who identified himself only as Al, knocked on the door where Iris was babysitting up the street for a friend of Persia's a few weeks ago, and Iris unthinkingly opened the door, and there was 'Al," who'd come he said to see Persia's friend's husband: Iris's father's age boiled-looking skin, eyes the color of quarters, in his shirt sleeves and the temperature must have been 25 degrees Fahrenheit staring at Iris for just too long a beat before he turned away yet there is something about the man, the slow smile like an insinuating drawl, the working ofhis mouth, something that lodges, poisonous and sweet, in Iris Courtney for weeks.

  Duke says, "These colored kids, you know... don't get too friendly with them. And don't ever be alone with them. The things a black man would like to do to a white girl... Christ, you wouldn't even want to think."

  Duke says, "They'd peel the skin off us if they could, they hate us so.

  But they can't. So they're courteous to our faces when they have to be and we're courteous to them, but don't ever confuse it, Iris, for anything else."

  The neighborhood boys. The black boys. Black men. Hanging in the doorway of the Gowanda Street barbershop, screechylaughing in the doorway of the fish fry place, the barbecue place, Leo's Bar & Grill, Poppa D's, the Cleveland Social Club with its windowless lamade painted electric blue. Don't walk too fast the white girls caution one another, don't walk too slow." scared, tremulous, eyes straight ahead, a tingling in the pit of the belly like minnows darting in shadowy water.

  Sometimes the girls overhear snatches of what these men say to one another; sometimes they have to imagine.

  Young black man, good-looking, a rolling gait like he's actually cruising in his car-headed south on Pitt Street as Iris is headed north-eats her up with his eyes, makes a smile of his teeth like tusks, discards her like a spat-out rind the very moment they pass each other... and all deliberate, and all stylized. Like a new loud popular song Iris hasn't yet heard.

  She'd thought the young man was Sugar Baby Fairchild, decided no, probably not. She remembers Sugar Baby skinnier, friendlier.

  Iris confides in one of her girlfriends, brash, not thinking how it might get repeated at school, "If I was colored... I'd know who I was!"

  Saturday afternoon, a day in March 1956 on the verge of melting, and here's Little Red Garlock in green canvas windbreaker and baseball cap worn reversed on his head, knees out, haunches busy, pedaling a bicycle that's too small for him, in and out of traffic on lower Railroad Street... and every girl he sights between the approximate ages of twelve and twenty who's close enough to the curb to hear, he's got his special message for: delivered with a wide wet grin, a stretch of his worm-skinned lips, heavy-lidded eyes like killers in the movies. Some of the girls Little Red knows by name, some just by their faces; a few will shout back at him, but most just stare in surprise or disbelief or, strangely, a kind of shrinking shame. It's this shame that excites him...

  fun too to see how the same girl responds differently on different days, depending if she sights him in time. Little Red doesn't give a shit for getting into neighborhood trouble-unless it's trouble with the police, 'cause that's going to be trouble with his daddy too but his instinct seems to guide him; he seems to know which girls are the right ones, enjoys his weird power of being able to sing out his message to a girl walking on the sidewalk and she'll hear it for sure while others close by, sometimes her own momma or kid sister with her, won't hear a thing, and even if the girl keeps on walking not looking at him doing her damnedest to pretend she hasn't heard, Little Red knows she has heard. That's his instinct too.

  So sighting the Courtney girl crossing the street Little Red swerves coasting in her direction and croons out, "Hey girlie!

  hey Iiiii-ris!"-in that sly sliding way he's perfected as if it's a song he's singing to himself, no special meanness to it, or nastiness-"hey titties wanna suck my cock?" and as he hurtles by he gives this white-faced little cunt his best toothy grin and locks eyes with her; she's too surprised to look away in time: "Yummmmmmmmmmm mmmm!"

  It's said that Little Red Garlock is a retard but he isn't, maybe just acts that way sometimes for his own reasons.

  Like now. This brightthawing March day. Flying on one of his brothers' bicycles, singing out his message to this girl, and this girl, and this girl, delicious as a sticky handful of Little Red's favorite candy, candy corn, he's the kind of tough-jawed hillbilly kid who when his bicycle's front wheel hits a pothole he hardly feels the jolt and kick in his teeth, just flying along so fast and happy and rightleeling he doesn't need to think where he's going, or why, until he gets there.

  Little Red Garlock has discovered that, if you haul your ass where it's expected, people will tell you what comes next.

  It's the Mayflower Movers warehouse by the river he's headed for..

  .

  yes, where he has a job, started after Christmas.

  Loading and unloading cartons of furniture with his cousin Carly Boback, $ 1.20 an hour, best fucking job Little Red Garlock has had ever in his life.

  It's said that Little Red Garlock got the way he is, mean and crazycunning, by being knocked upside the head one too many times by his daddy Vernon Garlock. Which is maybe true or maybe half true.

  Yes, there are eyewitness accounts of Vernon whupping the boy with his belt, chasing him half naked in the street, even in bad weather: Vernon roaring and drunk, the boy whimpering like an animal. Maybe that was Little Red, or maybe another boy; there's a changeable number of children in the Garlock household, and they're all the kind that need to be whupped now and then.

  By now when the seventh precinct Hammond police get called by neighbors of the Garlocks-and of other troublesome families like the Feneys, the McAleers, the Winnicks half the time they don't bother to send a squad car over. It's domestic trouble, it's not their jurisdiction. A husband beating his wife, a father beating his kids unless somebody kills somebody else it's not their jurisdiction. Vernon Garlock has been jailed several times, his longest stretch thirty days (assault, drunk-and-disorderly), Little Red too has been hauled into the station and slapped around by police and frightened into docility, but in general the seventh precinct is bored with these calls; they have more serious crimes to deal with: murders, armed robbery, nigger punks.

  When Nancy Dorsey's mother telephoned the precinct to complain that the Garlock boy was "touching" and "doing things to" and "threatening" her daughter, then aged eleven, th
e desk sergeant told her maybe she'd better move out of the neighborhood or keep her little girl in the house; he ended by saying, "Could be worse: could be a nigger."

  They say that Little Red was born dirty.

  Not just dirty-minded and dirty-mouthed-he didn't grow into that until aged eight or so but truly dirty: a patina like the grime of years covered him even as a newborn infant rosy-slick and shining out of his momma's womb.

  And he had a full head of carrot-colored hair. A fat husky bawling infant weighing eleven pounds three ounces.