Snatch

by Gregory Mcdonald

  Through the window Robby watched them in the street. Some were hurrying to the school, not to be late. Others were playing in the snow schoolwards, to sit in wet skins all day.

  Mrs. Clearwater was on her hands and knees looking in a corner cupboard. “Where are my snowshoes?”

  Watching her, Robby was sure no snowshoes could fit in such a small cupboard. He knew no snowshoes which would fit Mrs. Clearwater could fit in such a small cupboard. He doubted snowshoes which would fit Mrs. Clearwater would need looking for at all.

  “Here they are!”

  Out of the closet she pulled a pair of floppy overshoes so holey, cracked and torn, Robby knew them incapable of either keeping snow out or her feet in. As galoshes they were as illusory as a Thadeus Lowry meal.

  Mrs. Clearwater sat in the rocking chair to pull on her boots.

  Watching her, Robby said, “You genuinely like children, ma’am?”

  “Well, I love ’em,” she said. “Why you ask?”

  “A man I know once said if I ever meet an adult who genuinely likes children I should let him know and he’ll build a statue to that person.”

  “Hunh!” said Mrs. Clearwater. “People do love to turn each other into stone statues. It’s one more way of ignorin’ the flesh and the blood of us.”

  There was a thump and a bump and a stamping from downstairs and a giggle all the way up the stairs.

  Randolph was the first to burst into the room. “No school! I told you so! I told you no white teacher could make it through that snow to the school!”

  “You’ll catch your deaths!” exclaimed Mrs. Clearwater. “Get your clothes off and on the radiators to dry this minute, you hear?”

  “White teachers can’t get through the snow to school,” said Franklin. “Us little black kids can!”

  “White teachers aren’t from around here,” muttered Mrs. Clearwater. “They got a longer way to go.”

  It was then, while Mrs. Clearwater was taking off her galoshes again, while Ugly Mary (after she had placed her pants on the radiator to dry) crawled into her corner with her book, while Arthur, Franklin and Randolph were wringing out their clothes over the kitchen sink, while there were children playing inside the apartment and children playing outside in the street and children playing on the stairs between the inside and the outside, that a woman appeared in the apartment’s door.

  Invisible to those who zoomed past her and around her, in and out, up and down the stairs, she was the first person sensibly dressed for the frozen tundra Robby had seen. Her boots were tall and thick and encrusted with snow. Her skirt was a heavy tweed, hemmed with snow. Her coat was quilted and belted and ran from her knees to her throat. Her gloves were lined leather. An enormous scarf was wound twice around her neck; the ends hung below her waist. On her head, pulled down over her ears, was a knitted cap. Only her nose was exposed to the atmosphere, and it was red. She carried a briefcase.

  Standing in the door, soundlessly her lips said, “Seven.” Her eyes widened as she looked around the room. Red and white splotches appeared on her face. Her lips said, “Eight, nine, ten.” Her look softened as she spotted Ugly Mary reading in the corner, yet still her lips said, “Eleven.” Upon seeing Robby her face turned entirely red. Her eyes narrowed. Her lips said, “Twelve.”

  Mrs. Clearwater looked up from where she was bending over her boots in the chair. “Well, Miss Maisie! You made it through the snow after all! You’re a credit to your race and as regular as the curse!”

  “I’m glad to find you in,” the woman said.

  “In what?” asked Mrs. Clearwater. She got up and brought her boots to the cupboard, dropped them in, and closed the cupboard’s door.

  “At home.” Miss Maisie sat in the rocking chair. “Obviously I have to talk to you.” She pulled off her gloves. “This is an intolerable situation. It can’t go on.”

  “But it do seem to,” said Mrs. Clearwater. “It do.”

  Mrs. Clearwater’s accent became more inflected, Robby noticed, more rhythmical, more mellifluous. And, Robby noticed, Mrs. Clearwater smiled at herself frequently, as if at hearing the way she was saying things, as she had the night before when she had referred to the Atlantic Ocean as the Land o’ Goshen.

  Miss Maisie took a large notebook and pen from her briefcase and opened both for use. Snow from her boots was making a puddle on the floor.

  “Really,” she said in disgust, indicating Arthur, Randolph and Franklin with the rear end of her pen. “Can’t you make those boys stop that?”

  “Here, you bo’ weevils, stop that,” Mrs. Clearwater said. “Can’t you see the charitable lady’s here? Your clothes are dry now. Go outdoors.”

  “Our clothes ain’t dry yet,” said Franklin. “We just put ’em on the radiator one minute ago.”

  “Then sit still, there.”

  “Disgusting,” said Miss Maisie. “Three near-naked boys and there’s a girl sitting right there in the corner.” Miss Maisie made a note in her book. “She’s near-naked, too.”

  Mrs. Clearwater laughed. “That’s all right, Miss Maisie. You put this many people in a room small as this, and there ain’t much they end up not knowin’ ’bout each other.”

  “Those boys were wrestling near-naked.”

  “They just warmin’ theyselves up. They ain’t got no fine, quilted snow-coats. No, sir!”

  “This certainly will go in the morals section of my report.”

  “Why, Miss Maisie, you makin’ another report?”

  “I certainly am.”

  “You know what, Miss Maisie? You make up reports and give ’em in somewhere downtown where they chew ’em up in some big machine and put ’em in boxes and next day I go to the store and buy ’em back as cornflakes.”

  “Perhaps if you had more respect for what we’re trying to do for you, cooperate a little more, we could solve some of the problems you seem incapable of solving yourself.”

  “What problems I got, Miss Maisie? I got my children, my health and just enough money to keep goin’ to the store and buyin’ your reports as cornflakes.”

  Miss Maisie used the blunt end of her pen again. “You must tell those boys to cover up! If you don’t find their nakedness objectionable in front of the little girl, I most certainly do!”

  “The only clothes they got is wet.”

  “Have them do something! They’re exposed!”

  “Here, Franklin. Get a blanket and put yourselves under it. The charitable lady says she don’t want to see so much of you until you’re older.”

  “Mrs. Clearwater, I will not continue to put up with your insults.”

  “I hope not.”

  “And if you think by insulting me and abusing me you can get rid of me, you’re badly mistaken. I am a trained social worker, a city employee, here to help you, and help you we will, even if our straightening out this intolerable situation means your ending up in jail. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Jail! Hunh! Wouldn’t that be somethin’. Mrs. Clearwater in jail. Anythin’ else you can think to do for me, Miss Maisie?”

  “It’s not impossible. We have enough evidence to bring moral charges against you, charges for neglect, abuse, hampering a city official in the discharge of her duty—”

  “And it’s not impossible I’m gonna shut my door in your face! Think of you comin’ here and talkin’ that way in front of my children!”

  “They’re not your children, Mrs. Clearwater, and we will institutionalize them all, as soon as we can complete some paperwork. Then you’ll see what we do to you.”

  “You’re gonna institutionalize us all? Lordy Lord, we’re goin’ to jail, for makin’ do. You keep doin’ your paperwork, Miss Maisie, and we’ll keep eatin’ it up as cornflakes, and if anybody comes up with solutions better’n what we got, I’ll go to jail quick enough to praise the Lord and get some rest.”

  “We’ll begin by your addressing me by my proper name. I am Miss Caldwell, as you well know. Miss Carol Caldwell. I have reviewed reports about
you going back years. Your penchant for calling your social worker, every one of us, Miss Maisie, has been noted with increasing irritation.”

  “That what your reports say? I’ve always wondered what you all spend the rest of the week writin’ down about us.”

  “Whatever humor this appellation has had in your mind has been perceived by no one else, and must have worn thin in whatever mind you have.”

  “Lord, Miss Maisie, you’ve beaten me down.” Mrs. Clearwater fluttered her hands in the air. “I’m cut and bleedin’ on the groun’. You done put me in my place and stepped on my face. You’re gonna take my children and put me in jail, and move on to make some other po’ nigger wail!”

  From under the blanket came giggles, and a very quiet cheer. “Yeah, Mrs. Clearwater!”

  Contrary to her words, Mrs. Clearwater stood over Miss Maisie, hands on her hips, feet planted wide apart. “How come I never see no white people in Harlem except those what got jobs with the city? How come no black people got jobs with the city?”

  Miss Maisie cleared her throat and looked down.

  “How come they’re no black social workers? You ever send me a black social worker, and I’ll never call her Miss Maisie. That’s a promise!”

  “Jobs are available to black social workers. It’s just that so few have the education—”

  “So few have the education ’cause all the social workers is white! Ain’t that right?”

  “Mrs. Clearwater, you and I can’t solve all the problems of the world—”

  “Miss Maisie, you can’t even solve your own problems!” Mrs. Clearwater pointed to the floor at Miss Maisie’s feet. “You seem to be leakin’ some.”

  Miss Maisie looked down at the puddle the snow from her boots had made.

  Mrs. Clearwater said, “You expect me to clean that up? You expect me to come into your house and leave a puddle? You don’t expect me to come into your house at all. My children might come into the house and take off their clothes to dry and wrassle around to get warm, but they take the snow off them before they come in and they don’t leave no puddles for Mrs. Clearwater to clean up. They don’t come in here and insult me and threaten me with no pen and leave no puddles on my floor. You hear me, Miss Maisie?”

  “I hear you, Mrs. Clearwater,” said Miss Maisie. “I realize I probably did insult you, and if I did I apologize heartily. If you’d just explain where all these children came from—”

  “I’ve explained! Not once but one thousand times. The night I found Ambrose sleepin’ in a packin’ case I went to the police station and explained about it, and they said, ‘It’s late, now, you bring that boy home and somebody from the city will be in touch with you.’”

  Miss Maisie flicked through her notebook to a list. “Ambrose?”

  “That was years ago! Ambrose is now gone to the Army. Within a week, he brought home Billy and John.”

  “Billy and John?”

  “Billy’s already dead in the fightin’ in North Africa. The world’s full of bo’ weevils, Miss Maisie.”

  “I see. I don’t think I understand.”

  “I been explainin’ all along! And once a month some Miss Maisie’s been comin’ along as if she had a right, comin’ right in, sittin’ in my chair, askin’ me the same questions, gettin’ the same answers, insultin’ me, threatenin’ me no matter what I say, makin’ up reports and it never done no good. No truck full of food to feed my children never pulled up at my door. No car never come by with clothes and blankets and enough mattresses. Nobody never gave me no cash money this close to Christmas to buy no stockin’s for my children. Nobody never found better homes for my children than the one they got. All you Miss Maisies ever done is come by regular like clockwork to insult what we got, to insult what we are, make up reports and go away leavin’ puddles on the floor for me to clean up.”

  “Burned,” said a voice from under the blanket.

  “I see,” said Miss Maisie. “I see how it can look from your perspective. With the war there really isn’t much room in the orphanages—”

  “There ain’t no perspective to it. It’s a fact. It’s also a fact the city orphanages are a disgrace. My minister went and looked. He said they line naked boys who’ve acted up some against a wall and play fire hoses on them full force! That’s lovin’ ’em!”

  “With so many children, there is a need for extraordinary measures of discipline.”

  “Some fine citizens they’re makin’. Hunh!”

  Miss Maisie’s face, even her forehead, was entirely red. She looked up at Mrs. Clearwater. “It’s also a fact, Mrs. Clearwater,” Miss Maisie said, “that you are a prostitute.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” Mrs. Clearwater said joyously. “You better believe it!”

  “You admit it.”

  “Never think otherwise, Miss Maisie.”

  Miss Maisie looked down at her notebook. “Our agency has had you on file for more than ten years now. No one has ever reported seeing a Mr. Clearwater. No record of your marriage has ever been found.” Miss Maisie sighed. “Yet clearly you have children here, even now, who are only five and six years old.”

  “That’s right.”

  Miss Maisie sighed much more deeply. “In fact, if I just counted correctly, you have twelve children here, all roughly between the ages of five and twelve.”

  Mrs. Clearwater laughed. “You figure it out, Miss Maisie. You think I got more’n my share of children.”

  “I think you have.”

  “But as long as you got me down in your book as a prostitute,” chortled Mrs. Clearwater, “you can’t figure out which are my natural children, can you?”

  Miss Maisie asked tiredly, “Mrs. Clearwater, which are your natural children?”

  “They’re all natural children, sure enough.”

  Miss Maisie looked at Robby Burnes. “Are all these children your children, Mrs. Clearwater?”

  “They ain’t no one else’s.”

  “When I visited you last month, I counted ten children.”

  “You must have counted wrong.”

  “As of last Friday you have eleven children enrolled in the local school—all under the name Clearwater.”

  “They must be slow in their paperwork down there.”

  “There are twelve children here, Mrs. Clearwater, and we can’t find birth records for any of them.”

  “Well, Miss Maisie, they were all born, sure enough. It’s just that slow paperwork. Terrible slow paperwork. No wonder the cornflakes is stale.”

  “I know you have a job cleaning the Baptist church, Mrs. Clearwater.”

  “Bowin’ low before the Lord.”

  “You are willing to be thought a prostitute simply to obstruct the law…is that it?”

  “You ain’t goin’ to find no partial solutions for us, Miss Maisie. You ain’t goin’ to take some of my children and throw ’em in front of no fire hose. I’d like to see these children well cared for. You find a solution for all of us, or none of us. I needs to help these children out, Miss Maisie. Not once a month, makin’ out reports. I needs to help them out twenty-four hours a day. I’m doin’ the best I can.”

  Miss Maisie laid tired eyes on Robby Burnes. “That white boy isn’t your child.”

  “Robert? Sure enough, he’s my bo’ weevil.”

  “Mrs. Clearwater, he is blond, blue-eyed, and he wasn’t here last month.”

  “I got white blood in me. I can have a white child. Why, you should have seen the john who was that boy’s father! He was extra-white. Even whiter than you are, Miss Maisie! Last month while you were here, Robert was ’round the corner buyin’ up your cornflakes.”

  Miss Maisie said to Robby, “What is your name, son?”

  “Robert, miss.”

  “Robert what?”

  “Robert Clearwater, miss.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Eight years old, miss.”

  “You look bigger than that. Do you go to school?”

  “Yes, miss. I go to th
e local piss.”

  “What? What did you say?”

  “I said, ‘Yes, miss.’”

  “How long have you been here, Robert, living with Mrs. Clearwater?”

  “I was born here, miss.”

  “You don’t talk like Mrs. Clearwater.”

  “I don’t have much to say, miss.”

  “I mean, you seem to have an English accent.”

  “If I were any more English I couldn’t talk at all, miss.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, I have a toothache, miss.”

  “Why do you look so familiar to me, Robert?”

  “You’ve seen me here before, miss.”

  “I’ve never seen you here before. But I’ve seen you someplace before. I’ll figure it out.”

  A new wrestling match was going on under Arthur’s, Randolph’s and Franklin’s blanket.

  Miss Maisie pointed the blunt end of her pen at it. “Make those boys stop that!”

  Mrs. Clearwater said, “Here, you! Get dressed and go out in the snow now. Before the plows come.”

  Happily they popped up from under the blanket and began to pull on steaming clothes.

  Miss Maisie screwed the cap on her fountain pen. “Well, at least, Mrs. Clearwater, I think our little chat helped clear the air.”

  Mrs. Clearwater shrugged. “Air’s never been smoky, in this room.”

  Miss Maisie picked the briefcase up from the puddle and put it in her lap. “I’ll make my report and then we’ll just see what shall be done.”

  “You won’t do nothin’, Miss Maisie. You Miss Maisies never have.”

  “Not me, precisely.” Miss Maisie closed her notebook and put it in the briefcase and closed the briefcase and stood up. “I’m being reassigned—to another district. Out of Harlem, thank God. I’ve had just about all I can take of you black women and your unaccountable children.”

  “You’re just earnin’ a wage, Miss Maisie. I know that. We all have to earn a livin’.”