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

by Because It Is Bitter

  Now Iris recalls this conversation, the half she'd heard and the half she hadn't needed to hear, and she swallows hard, thinks, He's so beautiful, or was.

  In the unnamed weed-bordered alley behind the North Bridge Machine Works, which runs parallel with Gowanda Street to the west and Holland Street to the east, Iris can see fairly well by moonlight... isn't afraid to be walking here... though she walks quickly, half running, eyes scanning the shadows. She hears the ping." of a fat raindrop atop the brick wall beside her...

  another ping."... the sound of rain in grass... but is it raining?

  She stops, puzzled. Not quite alarmed, but puzzled. Holds out her hands, glances up at the sky, where there's a filmy halfmoon, a scattering of stars.

  Iris has turned up the alley because she knows it by heart, the crumbling brick wall behind the North Bridge Machine Works, the acre of untended and seemingly unowned land strewn with trash and garbage where children play, the fire-damaged warehouse with its NO TRESPASSING signs-this is an alley that becomes, in another two blocks, the very alley behind 372 Holland Street. It's a shortcut home, a dark place but seemingly deserted, and she'd wanted to avoid the busy intersection of East Avenue and Holland where at this hour the local hillbilly tavern the Horseshoe Bar & Grill will be in full swing.

  But she's stopped, now. Beginning to worry. That sinking sickening sensation that she has made a mistake: in the interstices of the brick wall, which stretches on and on and on, there are myste nous doorways and crevices, she knows; she has explored them herself.

  It comes to her: Bobo Ritchie has run up to the next street, which is Girard, and he's doubled back down the alley to cut her off.

  Iris has seen Bobo and his friends run when they want to run and she knows they are fast. But how would Bobo have known where Iris was going, for certain? She'd looked back several times leaving Chaney's and she hadn't seen anyone going in or coming out...

  or looking after her from the doorway.

  Her legs are strong too, if it comes to that.

  Iris will run, run, run... until her heart bursts.

  She's been standing motionless, head cocked shrewd as a listening animal's, and just when she decides there is nothing, no danger, another ping." sounds against the wall only a few feet away, beside her.

  She takes a quick step backward. "Is someone there?"

  Muffled laughter, laughter of crude childish glee... something familiar about it.

  Not Bobo Ritchie. That isn't Bobo.

  No black boy: the cadences are wrong.

  Not far ahead are the rears, most of them lighted, of several row houses fronting on Holland Street, but Iris's way to them is cut off.

  .. assuming she'd want to pound against someone s back door and scream for help.

  Now a handful of gravel strikes Iris in the face and chest; she cries out more in surprise than pain.

  There's a rustling ahead, in an overgrown stretch of scrub trees, bushes, weeds. Then the low, nearly inaudible croon: "Iiiiiiiiiris!"

  Little Red Garlock.

  It's known in the neighborhood that Little Red prowls the back alleys, peers in windows where he can, trespasses in back yards, the hallways of apartment and office buildings, sometimes walks off with things for which he has no need, or breaks things, no purpose to it except malicious pleasure. Once the janitor of the Courtneys' building discovered him sleeping in the basement; another time Little Red pushed his way into a woman's house, saying he wanted to use her bathroom, and urinated on her kitchen floor; he delights in behaving as he does and in eluding all attempts to guide or reform or punish him... this, Iris has thought, out of a deep animal spite for who he is and to what and whom he belongs.

  Little Red has emerged out of the bushes, loose-limbed, grinning.

  "Hiya, Iiiiiii-ris! Where ya going!"

  He's advancing toward Iris as Iris retreats, stepping backward she doesn't want to turn and run clowning around as if this is a game and Iris really wants to play it; she's just pretending to be frightened and angry.

  Iris says, "I see you too. I know who you are.

  Iris says, trembling with hatred, "I'm going to tell my father he'll call the police on you.

  Little Red laughs, jogging amiably forward. He's crooning obscene words in a singsong Iris doesn't want to hear and making ugly twisting gestures at his crotch she doesn't want to see.

  In this awkward but seemingly coordinated fashion, the one in retreat, the other coming forward, Iris Courtney and Little Red Garlock emerge from the alley onto East Avenue at approximately P.M. of April 2, 1956.

  Evidently no one sees them. Or will remember seeing them, afterward.

  At East Avenue, Iris begins to run.

  Little Red sings out, behind her, "Gonna hurt ya titties!"

  Iris isn't panicked exactly; she's thinking he can't get her here, on the street: there are cars, there are people close by, she can scream.

  She's frightened but not panicked, reasoning that she'll be safest running back to Chaney's; she can hide there, Little Red would never dare follow her inside; there's a pay phone, she can call home-and maybe by now someone is home-she can telephone the police.

  Iris is a good runner, she's good at school sports, basketball, volleyball, elementary gymnastics, she knows how to run without sucking air through her mouth, lifting her knees, keeping to a gait-but she's running clumsily now, her elbows against her sides as, behind her, running too, that pig Little Red Garlock shouts out for anyone to hear who's within earshot, "Titties! titties! hey, titties!"

  Persia's glamour raincoat isn't good for running in. Half sobbing, Iris thinks, I hate hate hate you all.

  At Chaney's, it looks as if Jinx Fairchild is just closing up: no one else is in the store, only a single light is burning above the cash register, Jinx is pulling a green sweatshirt down over his head.

  dark green, boastful white letter II. It's one of Jinx's basketball letters, awards for outstanding performance.

  Uptown at Hammond Central High, the word is that Jinx Fairchild, Sugar Baby's younger brother, is even better than Sugar Baby... whom all but the youngest students remember not for himself, not as a presence at school, but as a great basketball player: best Negro player ever at Hammond.

  Pulling the sweatshirt down over his head, running his big hands through his frizzy hair, Jinx Fairchild is maybe thinking of this, or of some of this, smiling that smile Iris knows... one side of his mouth dented in, as if something is sucking his smile back.

  When Iris Courtney pushes through the door with its tinkly little bell, wild-eyed, white as death, Jinx Fairchild stares at her in utter astonishment as if he has never seen her before.

  Iris won't remember, afterward-the name that comes to her first isn't Jinx but Verlyn.

  But it's Jinx she says, telling him in a breathless spill of words about Little Red Garlock: how he has frightened her, pursued her, she can't get past him to get home, she doesn't know what to do.

  "Him? That peckerhead asshole?" Jinx says, incensed.

  Jinx goes out onto the sidewalk to investigate and, yes, sure enough, there's Little Red Garlock up the block, poised at the curb, watching.

  Jinx calls out, "Hey, you-go on outta here, asshole!

  You gonna get in trouble!" Little Red calls back something mocking and unintelligible. Doesn't budge from where he's standing.

  This continues for a few minutes: Jinx Fairchild shaking his fist and shouting for Little Red Garlock to get on home, Little Red Garlock laughing and hooting in reply.

  Iris stands in the doorway, shivering, not knowing if she should be angry or worried or deeply embarrassed; it seems to her that Jinx Fairchild is disgusted at her too. It strikes her for the first time in her life that, to a black person, two whites might have more in common-more that's deep-cored, familial, ineluctable-than any white might have with him.

  Iris says quickly, "I'll call home. My father can come get me.

  Why is she lying? she wonders. She knows Duke won't be home.<
br />
  "Maybe I can call the police.

  Jinx turns back to her, hardly hearing. "What he done to you, that shithead? He touch you? He done anything?"

  Iris says, "No. He didn't get that close."

  Jinx says, outraged, "That asshole, somebody should break his head for him. Everybody knows he's crazy, gonna hurt somebody one of these days; then it's too late. I'm gonna hurt him serious, he don't go away.

  Iris says, "Can I use the telephone?"

  "Yah," says Jinx, hardly listening. He struts up the sidewalk a few yards, waving his fist at Little Red, who laughs and waves a fist back.

  Iris drops a nickel into the pay phone and dials her home number with a forefinger so chilled and clammy her skin sticks against the plastic surface of the telephone. There's a ringing, ringing, ringing at the other end; through it, Iris can see the lighted living room as she'd left it, seemingly so long ago, on so whimsical an impulse. There is the sadly glamorous sofa with its many pillows, there are the twin lavender-ceramic table lamps with their glossy purple shades always slightly askew, there is the coffee table, its cigarette-scorched surface hidden, heaped with Persia's fashion magazines and paperback books, bright lurid covers, and Duke's unread back issues of Time, Life, Fortune, Racing News, Stanrdbred Illustrated.... Atop one of the tables is the handsome silver-framed photograph of Lodestar taken by Leslie Courtney the previous autumn.

  This room, and the other rooms, empty.

  Iris hangs up, and her nickel is promptly returned.

  Jinx has come back inside, furious. She asks him hesitantly, "Should I call the police? Or... you think they'd just laugh at me?"

  Jinx stares at her as if she's crazy. His eyes are large, whiterimmed, intelligent and glistening, slightly protuberant; his sharpboned face looks warmly suffused with blood. "Nobody needs no cops down here!

  Christ sake! I'm not afraid of that redneck bastard. I ain't no helpless girl!" He snatches the receiver out of her fingers and slams it back into the cradle. Iris has never heard him speak with so pronounced a Negro accent before.

  Jinx locks up the little store. Leaves that single light burning above the cash register.

  Outside, Jinx is naturally headed in Little Red's direction. Iris tugs at his arm, pleads with him; why don't they walk the other way, why don't they avoid him, all she wants is to get home.

  "Please don't get into a fight," Iris says.

  Jinx says angrily, "You live up this way, don't you? Why you want to walk any other way, just 'cause of that asshole?" He's incensed, excited, ready for a fight; Iris can feel the heat coming off him.

  Again Jinx says, as if in contempt, "I ain't no helpless girl some shithead can push around."

  Little Red is waiting... appears to be waiting.

  Iris pulls on Jinx's arm harder, pulls at him with both hands, her voice rising to a little scream. Jinx, please!"

  So Jinx relents. All right, they can walk the other way. It's clear Jinx Fairchild is the kind of boy you have to scream at and beg and tussle with before he'll surrender to what he knows is good sense.

  They're walking north on Gowanda Street out of the district of little shops and tenement buildings, in the direction of the river-an area of warehouses primarily, deserted at this hour-making an effort not to hear Little Red Garlock hooting and crooning after them.

  It's a place of sharp echoes, sharp fishy smells mixed with the odor of diesel oil. Jinx has Iris by the arm, pulling her along, walking her fast, but he seems oblivious of her, he's so angry: cursing Little Red Garlock and muttering to himself. Iris is thinking that she'd seen Jinx Fairchild angry like this one other time, up at Cassadaga Park, the summer before, when she and her uncle Leslie were wandering through the park looking for portrait subjects (Iris accompanies her uncle sometimes; there's an old family notion that she is his "assistant, ' his "apprentice," though in fact he rarely requires her; he's the kind of person who prefers to work alone), photographing people, with their permission of course, whose faces or manner or quality of being Leslie felt drawn to; and they'd stood for a while rapt in fascination watching a group of black boys playing basketball, one of them Jinx Fairchild, struck by the boys' skill, the quicksilver shifts and feints of their play, the shots from odd angles and distances that nonetheless sank through the raggedy-netted rim with such precision... then the game ended abruptly when a boy elbowed Jinx Fairchild, and an ugly exchange followed, and Leslie Courtney and Iris walked hurriedly away.

  And that vision of Jinx Fairchild yelling and pushing at another boy, and being pushed in return, Iris hasn't considered until now.

  Behind them at a distance of about a half block Little Red Garlock trots in the middle of the street, hands cupped to his mouth. A happy lunacy shines in his eyes. His snarled and greasestiffened hair, darkened to brown over the years, sits upon his head like a military helmet. What a game it is! How he loves it!

  Convinced too (for how can it be otherwise?) that the objects of his attention love it as he does.

  Little Red Garlock has gone about for days on end seeing the world out of Jack Palance's slitted steely eyes: Jack Palance as the sleek black-clad killer in Shane. He has been Jerry Lewis, the quintessential retard. But he's happiest as Lou Costello, following his craziness where it leads like a trail of gasoline to which a match is touched, a Costello who does the kicking and pummeling and hurting himself instead of merely absorbing it, pop-eyed, like a fat two-legged cushion.

  Trotting in the street crooning, over and over, "White titties sucks nigger cock-hey! White titties sucks nigger cock-hey! Big juicy-black nigger cock!" Little Red doesn't weary; it's like riding a bicycle, pedal up, pedal down, round and round, the rhythm, the beat, once you get going you never want to stop.

  For all his buffoonery Little Red knows precisely where Iris and the nigger boy are headed. He knows. Iris lives on Holland Street just below Girard (though "Holland" and "Girard" are not meaningful words to him, nor is "Iris," nor even in fact "Little Red"); thus they mean to cut over to Pitt Street at the river, or maybe over to Holland itself, and come up that way and elude him.

  But he's too smart for them.

  He knows every street and alley and path and shortcut in Lowertown-except maybe for the part of Lowertown, stretching off beyond Peach Tree Creek, that's all colored. He knows ways to climb roofs the people who own the very buildings don't know; he knows cellars, back yards, the geography of virtually every vacant lot, trails through the junglelike woods above Peach Tree Creek, trails through the city dump, every twist and turn and hillock and rocky inch of the trail along the river used by fishermen. His strategy now is simply to let the two of them think he's given up while he cuts over to Pitt Street to wait for them.

  Trotting sure as a dog through the alley behind the warehouses, Little Red could navigate this route with his eyes shut, but there's moonlight guiding him, washing around him and on him, luminescent in his eyes.

  Now Pitt Street: that steep hill. That good feeling plunging downhill like someone is pushing you, a hand at the small of the back.

  He's humming to himself, a song without words.

  Seeing Neeley's Diner shut and darkened, a giant sardine can, and the vision comes to him: Little Red and his cousin eating pancakes soaked in maple syrup and catsup, his mouth suddenly watering so hard it hurts.

  Like his cock stiff with blood, pounding and tingling at the tip, it hurts; somebody's got to pay.

  Now he's waiting for them, not even remembering for a moment or two who he's waiting for, just waiting you haul your ass to wherever and when you get there it will come to you, why and sure enough he sights them, those two: the nigger so tall he's freaky, the little girl's hair bouncing like silver, and Little Red hunched and grinning is an Indian scout in the mountains spying on his prey. He's got a bow and arrow in hand; he picks up a handful of gravel and lets fly... Little Red Garlock is so strong, has been blessed with such an aim, the buckshotlike gravel hits its target at a distance of many feet.

  And
hurts: hear them cry out?

  "White titties sucks nigger cock!" he yells.

  He sees in their faces how they hate him and how they're scared of him, knowing they are never never going to escape him; he's standing there hands on his hips grinning and happy as Little Red can be happy at such times, glorying in the pain and humiliation and confusion of others he understands are superior to him; yes, he well knows that and the happiness is in knowing it, that fact.

  For he isn't going to run off like his enemies; he isn't any coward.

  Standing his ground wriggling his hips pretending he's got big balloon breasts wriggling and bouncing too, singing his crooning song White titties, nigger cock, and this time the black boy isn't going to run away, you can see in his face he's trapped he's got to fight, so he comes walking quick and sure, not running but walking, up to where Little Red is waiting, and Little Red is waiting, and the black boy's so desperate he doesn't understand that Little Red Garlock outweighs him by thirty pounds or if he understands he's too desperate to care, just comes at him and Little Red gives a little scream in delight like Lou Costello might do, a mean-hearted Costello, no coward: "You gonna show me, coon?"