Determined to curb her fear, she went out the front door to find the hurt man. On closer inspection, he was about her age. Groping along the strung-out row of rooms, he might have been blind, and sensing something blocking him, lifted his head. He moved to avoid the encounter by stepping off the walkway. He stopped when Amy called, though making no move toward the towel she held out. Slightly suspicious, he stared at her, his head cocked in order to see her more closely. Blood overhung one eye, like a great clot, half closing it. The eye’s swelling dropped the lid, making his face have even a sadder quality. She kept the towel thrust at him without saying anything; her face longed to offer more than something for his cut. Her urgent feeling made her hand tremble, and noticing that, he took the towel. He said, “Thanks,” in almost a whisper. Then he clapped the towel, a great white lump, to one temple.
“You need to go to a doctor.”
About to shake his head, he stopped it, aware any motion would cause it to hurt. Unaware Amy had further interest, he started away, his profile dazzled a moment by lights from the boulevard, revealing a puzzled and lost look. She went quickly after him then.
“You’ve got to go to an emergency room. You might need stitches.”
He had looked around, stiffly, reassuring himself that what he had thought was true was, and she was following him. He looked away first, their eyes having met. How, Amy wondered, could she make him feel all right about talking to her?
“I might see about it,” he said, veering away from the motel, toward the street. Hesitantly, Amy remained, wondering if there were a point to following him, until he slowed. In the slowed walk, in some hunched lift of his shoulders, she knew he would not ignore sympathy. “What happened?” she said, beginning to follow again.
When he stopped to light a cigarette, in the match’s flare, her face reflected concern. “Can you tell me what happened?” she said.
The match almost burned his fingers, before he flipped it to the ground. “Don’t nobody call me a nigger,” he said shortly. Since there was nothing to add to that, Amy said nothing and only tried wearing an appropriate expression of dislike, too. This bordered on sorrow, which seemed to deepen as she frowned. He blew out smoke and watched her and said, “Not nobody.”
“I don’t blame you. And why did he?”
“Niggers don’t eat his steak!” As if it were not already out, he ground out the match again with his heel. His face set angrily, without touching the sadness in his eyes. He looked back at the motel. “He come in the kitchen where we eating and say we can have hamburgers or cheeseburgers or a pork chop. But not to eat his steak.”
“What did you say?” she said, trying to imagine herself into such a situation.
“Said I don’t like steak noway.” He gave her a quick, sidelong glance; they could not help laughing. “He come after me with the butt end of a pistol, say I’m sassing him. I ought to have killed that white man.”
“That wouldn’t do you any good.” Amy peered closer at the cut as he took down the towel and said, with sudden authority, “You have got to get help. You do need stitches.”
“Could you call me a Checkers cab?”
Capably, she urged him down until he sat on the curb. “Don’t move,” she said, and darted back to her room. The thin yellow pages of the phone book were difficult to manage in haste; she turned past the taxi section several times. Then, seeing the number at last, she dialed it. Only when the number was ringing did she read the Checkers cab advertisement. She glanced about the room, in a guilty way, having read the words Colored Taxi. She had flushed and felt hot. Suppose, though, they would not send the cab, hearing her voice. She embarrassed herself, wondering how to explain it was for a Negro. Flooding back were all the times she had played jokes telephoning Negro places of business, as a child; and never once had she been scolded. Let this call be taken seriously, she thought. “This is an emergency,” she said, and her voice trembled on the final word. On the other end, a polite voice answered that a cab would be there shortly. Amy added, feeling the necessity, “Someone’s been hurt.”
Her feeling was that she had to give but how and not be patronizing? She knew he would need money and that conviction outweighed her usual hesitancy. She took all the money she had from her wallet, and was sorry Billy Walter had taken his with him. The boy, rising waveringly when she came back to the curb, did not want to take the money. Amy kept thrusting it toward him. “It’s silly not to if you need it,” she said.
“Well, thanks,” he said, finally allowing her to tuck the folded bills into his breast pocket.
She said, “I’m here with someone, I’ve got to go back. Just wait. The cab will come,” and then as if they had shaken hands, and were reluctant to let go the moment of touching, as if slowly their hands were sliding apart, they remained looking at one another; after that moment, Amy went with a sudden sense of freedom back to the motel, while he turned toward the seasickening motion of lights on the boulevard.
Shivering, she wrapped herself in a curtain and stood at the window, where wet patterns formed. She watched him. Beams of headlights struck him, glanced off, and traffic continued to be heavy in two directions. The boy went in a little aimless pattern up and down the curb, unsteadily. That he might be taken for drunk, and arrested, suddenly terrified Amy—for it was likely to happen. Neither of them had considered calling the police, and that, she thought, if anything had happened to her would be the first thing to be done.
She was relieved when the taxi came, a green light swirling atop it pinwheel fashion. The breath she had released spread over the window, in a frosty snowflake design. She rubbed the glass clear, the boy had gone, and peered down the walkway, anxious for Billy Walter to come back. She felt abandoned to the room, as if she were in the little one in New York. Taking so long, Billy Walter would have fallen into conversation with the woman again, or someone else; Amy felt she waited for some dawdling small boy. His voice preceded him then, as the office door opened. Light slapped brokenly along the sidewalk was erased again as the door was closed. The rattling of ice, whistling, rapid footsteps all ceased as Billy Walter halted, to open the door.
She said, sitting in a prim way on the end of the bed, “I thought you’d left me, after all.”
“No, baby, don’t look so woebegone. I just got involved in there again. My tongue’s hanging out, I need a drink so bad. God, that fat bastard that runs this place,” he said, opening a bottle of bourbon. He slipped paper jackets off glasses on the bureau.
“What happened?” Amy said.
“There was some big ruckus going on in the kitchen. I couldn’t even understand it all. The whole time he was trying to tell me, he kept spitting tobacco juice into an empty pear can. I’ll never eat canned pears again. But he’d hit some Negro with his pistol. Says this boy sassed him. That’s one thing po’ white trash can’t take. What else has he got, but to kick a Negro.”
Amy accepted a drink from him and, sipping, felt calmer. The liquor warmed her, straight downward. She looked more admiringly at Billy Walter. He was going about with little angry strides, gulping at his drink. She said, “You’re not nearly so prejudiced as I thought,” and he looked at her strangely as if she did not think, at all.
“I would take me,” he said, “a Negro over that kind of white man any day. There’s nothing, as they say in the country where I grew up, trashier than a trashy white man. They don’t belong anywhere. And one time a Negro said to me, ‘They must be the loneliest people in the world.’”
“Billy Walter, that’s incredible. You seem so much more in touch than I am. I seem just to know what other people have learned.”
“I doubt that. You probably know a lot more than you think.”
“Somehow, I manage,” she said. “But I really don’t know how. I do know I’ve got to go out to people more. To give of yourself is to learn. But I feel so limited about what I can get into.” She laughed. “Sometimes, I wish I weren’t a girl.”
“I’d sure hate to be
caught in here with you if you weren’t,” he said, with sort of a bellow. He moved to a chair and sprawled in it in a manner lordly and baronial. He commanded her, patting his knee. Amy got up and went to sit on it—being obedient appealed to her. He gave her several unsettling bounces, intending them affectionately. She wondered whether affection were the deepest Billy Walter could know of love. He looked as if he wanted to say something serious, that he knew no words. Instead of saying he loved her, he kept bouncing her on his knee. Amy was unable to keep from her mind the chant about riding a horse to Banbury Cross. She suspected this void of words would always be between them, and that only she would feel their lack.
Billy Walter sat up stiffly. Clearly, he had a speech to make. In pulling back, Amy gave him room, if he wanted, to pull it, prepared, from his pocket. She turned a polite face toward him to listen, her hands folded. He then began to dig into a pocket for something, avoiding looking at her. She began slowly to feel certain about what he was going to say. Her impulse was to avoid the moment, to run out of the room, which clearly was impossible. He had one arm still around her. With a sheepish look equal to his, she stared down at the small blue leather jeweler’s box he presented, in lieu of saying anything. Since there was no mistaking the meaning, she said merely, “Oh,” took it and opened the box.
He said, “It was my grandmother’s ring. I hope it fits. That is, sugar, if you want it.”
Her first thought was that she wanted it because it was beautiful. She said, “It’s beautiful. I love it.” But she let the ring remain inserted in its little slot, until she wondered if Billy Walter noticed this hesitancy. He stared at it as if not quite certain what to do, either.
He said, “Well. Will you marry me?”
She said, “I don’t know what to say,” while tears came to her eyes.
Not understanding them, Billy Walter pretended not to notice. “Say yes or no,” he said, smiling but not quite looking at her.
She said again, “I don’t know what to say,” and burst into tears, hiding her head against his shoulder. He put a hand somewhat cautiously against her head, like a bear trying to be gentle with its paw. Her tears began to dry. She sat up, smiling. Absolutely everyone they knew expected them to, wanted them to get married. She tried to ascertain whether the stubborn little thing inside her which kept her from saying yes was pure perversity. Her mother had always said she had a stubborn streak. Every consideration came to a dead end in her mind. She was tired of being lonely, and was that reason enough to marry?
“Suppose it doesn’t work out?” she questioned.
“Everybody takes a chance getting married,” he said. “By the way, I love you.”
“I love you,” Amy said, loving him a certain way. Criticized as being rather wacky, she supposed there was no such thing as the sort of love she had always imagined. “Could I keep it and wear it around my neck for a while, and decide?” A muscle was set jumping in his neck, which meant the suggestion was not to his liking. But his leg was beginning to go to sleep, and he set her off his knee and said, “All right.”
As they were going out, Amy said, her voice timid but hopeful, “Can we still keep going together if we don’t get married?”
That arrested the muscle’s twitching. With a decisive motion, Billy Walter opened the motel door. He stood over her at an advantage, being so much taller. “Not on your life,” he said. “I don’t have any more time to lose. I’m not getting any younger.” After a moment, with level eyes, he said in his practical way, “Neither are you.”
“I’d give anything I own to get to play bridge more often,” said Cindy, wearing a crushed-velvet hat, which quivered whenever she spoke.
Lydia said, “I take the baby and a folding crib whenever I want to play.”
Meanly, Amy thought Lydia, with her spreading thighs, ought to be taking some other form of exercise. Cindy said, her hat quivering, “Well, you can do that with a baby. But I have a toddler as well!” After sighing enormously, she placed a hand apologetically on Amy’s arm. “We just keep on and on, don’t we, talking about things that bore you to death.”
“I don’t mind,” Amy said, feeling exhausted.
The room was too warm and musky with perfume scents, and those of sherry and cigarettes. Cindy’s hand left Amy to take a tiny cream-cheese sandwich, tinted pink and green, from a silver platter. Offered one, Amy shook her head and watched the tray go around the circle of girls, in which she sat. This afternoon, she had heard how to ice a store-bought cake messily enough that a husband would think it was homemade. A recipe for frozen fish sticks and mushroom soup, which made dinner not quite so obviously quick, was exchanged. Once the crushed-velvet hat had belonged to Cindy’s mother, and Amy thought she remembered that hat. It was the mothers of these girls to whom she had been told to speak when they played bridge with Edith. What had changed? Cindy wore the hat and her breasts now were swelled with milk. Darkness lightly glossed over the girls; purposely no one turned on lights. Only candles on a lacily clothed table lit the room. Amy felt further cast onto the sidelines. Faces of the others seemed more aglow, eagerly animated as they talked about bridge. Once, when she leaned forward to pick up her glass, Amy pressed against the bell on the chain around her neck.
Placing an inclusive hand on Amy, too, another girl said, “I’m going to quit that bridge class though,” explaining, “We started taking lessons with a lot of mother’s friends. But those older women could play all afternoon. We had to go home and fool with kids. We just got so far behind!”
“Oh,” Amy said.
“I’m going to quit it, too,” Lydia said, nibbling a canapé.
“I would give,” Cindy repeated, her hat pitching forward, “almost anything I own to get to play bridge more often.” Asked, Amy confessed that she no longer played bridge at all, and their faces reflected surprise, shock, interest: What did she do instead? Having no satisfactory answer, smiling and looking mysterious, Amy managed to have the question by-passed. Cindy said, her look envious, “Those older women get to play at night, even.” Her girdled thighs rubbing one another made a whispering sound as she stood. “What am I going to have for dinner?”
“We’ve been out every night this week, almost,” Lydia said. “Quill says we’re staying in tonight, he’s tired.” But she pouted.
Have mushroom soup and fish sticks, someone suggested.
The hostess expected to be taken out to dinner, being exhausted from a day making cream-cheese sandwiches and other tidbits for the party. Dully nibbling, she passed a tray. The pink candles on the table, subsided to tiny flames, tenaciously clung to their final moments, as the guests clung to the tag end of the party. No one wanted to return to housewifely duties. Cindy mentioned the hostess’s new curtains, which were then drawn out like cloth to be measured. A careful explanation was given of how they had been lined. The other girls exclaimed over the sewing trick that had made that much simpler, while Amy’s face reflected mystery. Once, while Billy Walter was kissing her, she had tried to tell him she would not make a good wife, that she could not sew on even a button. He did not care whether she could sew! But in her mind had been the solemn warning of her friends: men changed after marriage. The hostess drew the curtains against the deathly greyness of late afternoon. Everyone agreed to one more sherry, and picked over what was left to eat.
“I had,” the hostess continued, passing the decanter, “the worst time deciding on a color for in here.” Thought-filled faces said she had made the right decision. Her eyes, having looked from face to face, paused at Amy. “You’ve hardly said anything all afternoon,” she said.
“I was just wondering how you ever knew what to choose when you have so many choices.” Amy nodded toward the curtains. “They are perfect.” The smile she put on she hoped was winning; she had a need to be liked. Freedom, she had considered, had presented her with an enormous number of indecisions; under that circumstance, freedom either had done her no good, or was not truly freedom. Having put on her coat, sh
e was followed to the door by the hostess.
“A date with Billy Walter tonight?”
“I guess so.”
“Well,” said the hostess, looking older, “have a good time.”
Dear Jeff:
I have finished the book. Thank you so much for wanting to send me a copy, for sending it. I never doubted that it would he what it is; but how lame to use words like great or marvellous. I only hope you can truly know how I feel about it, and I’m sure you do. And it is marvellous that the reviewers all think as I do; then, too, I knew they would. It has always been so touching to me to receive a book from you, one of yours or not, with the wrapping done by you. The first you sent, “Don Quixote,” was all badly wrapped in green tissue paper. Do you remember? And I worried then so over not having a present to give you in return, not realizing, though you told me, that I gave you something. That I did it unconsciously was best. Calculatedly, I’m afraid I never did give much; I wish I could change all that. Why must everything always seem too late; too late, I always think I’ve learned. I can only hope not to keep repeating mistakes, though how can I know I won’t. Life does seem to go on and on and on, harder as you once told me, which I didn’t believe at the time. Maybe my children will never believe anything I say.
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