The Richer, the Poorer

by Dorothy West

  JACK IN THE POT

  When she walked down the aisle of the theater, clutching the money in her hand, hearing the applause and laughter, seeing, dimly, the grinning black faces, she was trembling so violently that she did not know how she could ever regain her seat.

  It was unbelievable. Week after week she had come on Wednesday afternoon to this smelly, third-run neighborhood movie house, paid her dime, received her beano card, and gone inside to wait through an indifferent feature until the house lights came on, and a too jovial white man wheeled a board onto the stage and busily fished in a bowl for numbers.

  Today it had happened. As the too jovial white man called each number, she found a corresponding one on her card. When he called the seventh number and explained dramatically that whoever had punched five numbers in a row had won the jackpot of fifty-five dollars, she listened in smiling disbelief that there was that much money in his pocket. It was then that the woman beside her leaned toward her and said excitedly, “Look, lady, you got it!”

  She did not remember going down the aisle. Undoubtedly her neighbor had prodded her to her feet. When it was over, she tottered dazedly to her seat, and sat in a dreamy stupor, scarcely able to believe her good fortune.

  The drawing continued, the last dollar was given away, the theater darkened, and the afternoon crowd filed out. The little gray woman, collecting her wits, followed them.

  She revived in the sharp air. Her head cleared and happiness swelled in her throat. She had fifty-five dollars in her purse. It was wonderful to think about.

  She reached her own intersection and paused before Mr. Spiro’s general market. Here she regularly shopped, settling part of her bill fortnightly out of her relief check. When Mr. Spiro put in inferior stock because most of his customers were poor-paying reliefers, she had wanted to shop elsewhere. But she could never get paid up.

  Excitement smote her. She would go in, settle her account, and say good-bye to Mr. Spiro forever. Resolutely she turned into the market.

  Mr. Spiro, broad and unkempt, began to boom heartily, from behind the counter. “Hello, Mrs. Edmunds.”

  She lowered her eyes and asked diffidently, “How much is my bill, Mr. Spiro?”

  He recoiled in horror. “Do I worry about your bill, Mrs. Edmunds? Don’t you pay something when you get your relief check? Ain’t you one of my best customers?”

  “I’d like to settle,” said Mrs. Edmunds breathlessly.

  Mr. Spiro eyed her shrewdly. His voice was soft and insinuating. “You got cash, Mrs. Edmunds? You hit the number? Every other week you give me something on account. This week you want to settle. Am I losing your trade? Ain’t I always treated you right?”

  “Sure, Mr. Spiro,” she answered nervously. “I was telling my husband just last night, ain’t another man treats me like Mr. Spiro. And I said I wished I could settle my bill.”

  “Gee,” he said triumphantly, “it’s like I said. You’re one of my best customers. Worrying about your bill when I ain’t even worrying. I was telling your investigator …,” he paused significantly, “when Mr. Edmunds gets a job, I know I’ll get the balance. Mr. Edmunds got himself a job maybe?”

  She was stiff with fright. “No, I’d have told you right off, and her, too. I ain’t one to cheat on relief. I was only saying how I wished I could settle. I wasn’t saying that I was.”

  “Well, then, what you want for supper?” Mr. Spiro asked soothingly.

  “Loaf of bread,” she answered gratefully, “two pork chops, one kinda thick, can of spaghetti, little can of milk.”

  The purchases were itemized. Mrs. Edmunds said good night and left the store. She felt sick and ashamed, for she had turned tail in the moment that was to have been her triumph over tyranny.

  A little boy came toward her in the familiar rags of the neighborhood children. Suddenly Mrs. Edmunds could bear no longer the intolerable weight of her mean provisions.

  “Little boy,” she said.

  “Ma’am?” He stopped and stared at her.

  “Here.” She held out the bag to him. “Take it home to your mama. It’s food. It’s clean.”

  He blinked, then snatched the bag from her hands, and turned and ran very fast in the direction from which he had come.

  Mrs. Edmunds felt better at once. Now she could buy a really good supper. She walked ten blocks to a better neighborhood and the cold did not bother her. Her misshapen shoes were winged.

  She pushed inside a resplendent store and marched to the meat counter. A porterhouse steak caught her eye. She could not look past it. It was big and thick and beautiful.

  The clerk leaned toward her. “Steak, moddom?”

  “That one.”

  It was glorious not to care about the cost of things. She bought mushrooms, fresh peas, cauliflower, tomatoes, a pound of good coffee, a pint of real cream, a dozen dinner rolls, and a maple walnut layer cake.

  The winter stars were pricking the sky when she entered the dimly lit hallway of the old-law tenement in which she lived. The dank smell smote her instantly after the long walk in the brisk, clear air. The Smith boy’s dog had dirtied the hall again. Mr. Johnson, the janitor, was mournfully mopping up.

  “Evenin’, Mis’ Edmunds, ma’am,” he said plaintively.

  “Evening,” Mrs. Edmunds said coldly. Suddenly she hated Mr. Johnson. He was so humble.

  Five young children shared the uninhabitable basement with him. They were always half sick, and he was always neglecting his duties to tend to them. The tenants were continually deciding to report him to the agent, and then at the last moment deciding not to.

  “I’ll be up tomorrow to see ’bout them windows, Mis’ Edmunds, ma’am. My baby kep’ frettin’ today, and I been so busy doctorin’.”

  “Those children need a mother,” said Mrs. Edmunds severely. “You ought to get married again.”

  “My wife ain’ daid,” cried Mr. Johnson, shocked out of his servility. “She’s in that T.B. home. Been there two years and ’bout on the road to health.”

  “Well,” said Mrs. Edmunds inconclusively, and then added briskly, “I been waiting weeks and weeks for them window strips. Winter’s half over. If the place was kept warm—”

  “Yes’m, Mis’ Edmunds,” he said hastily, his bloodshot eyes imploring. “It’s that ol’ furnace. I done tol’ the agent time and again, but they ain’ fixin’ to fix up this house ’long as you all is relief folks.”

  The steak was sizzling on the stove when Mr. Edmunds’ key turned in the lock of the tiny three-room flat. His step dragged down the hall. Mrs. Edmunds knew what that meant: “No man wanted.” Two years ago Mr. Edmunds had begun, doggedly, to canvass the city for work, leaving home soon after breakfast and rarely returning before supper.

  Once he had had a little stationery store. After losing it, he had spent his small savings and sold or pawned every decent article of furniture and clothing before applying for relief. Even so, there had been a long investigation while he and his wife slowly starved. Fear had been implanted in Mrs. Edmunds. Thereafter she was never wholly unafraid. Mr. Edmunds had had to stand by and watch his wife starve. He never got over being ashamed.

  Mr. Edmunds stood in the kitchen doorway, holding his rain-streaked hat in his knotted hand. He was forty-nine, and he looked like an old man.

  “I’m back,” he said. “Cooking supper.”

  It was not a question. He seemed unaware of the intoxicating odors.

  She smiled at him brightly. “Smell good?”

  He shook suddenly with the cold that was still in him. “Smells like always to me.”

  Her face fell in disappointment, but she said gently, “You oughtn’t to be walking ’round this kind of weather.”

  “I was looking for work,” he said fiercely. “Work’s not going to come knocking.”

  She did not want to quarrel with him. He was too cold, and their supper was too fine.

  “Things’ll pick up in the spring,” she said soothingly.

  “Not fo
r me,” he answered gloomily. “Look how I look. Like a bum. I wouldn’t hire me, myself.”

  “What you want me to do about it?” she asked furiously.

  “Nothing,” he said with wry humor, “unless you can make money, and make me just about fifty dollars.”

  She caught her breath and stared at his shabbiness. She had seen him look like this so long that she had forgotten that clothes would make a difference.

  She nodded toward the stove. “That steak and all. Guess you think I got a fortune. Well, I won a little old measly dollar at the movies.”

  His face lightened, and his eyes grew soft with affection. “You shouldn’t have bought a steak,” he said. “Wish you’d bought yourself something you been wanting. Like gloves. Some good warm gloves. Hurts my heart when I see you with cold hands.”

  She was ashamed, and wished she knew how to cross the room to kiss him. “Go wash,” she said gruffly. “Steak’s ’most too done already.”

  It was a wonderful dinner. Both of them had been starved for fresh meat. Mrs. Edmunds’ face was flushed, and there was color in her lips, as if the good blood of the meat had filtered through her skin. Mr. Edmunds ate a pound and a half of the two-pound steak, and his hands seemed steadier with each sharp thrust of the knife.

  Over coffee and cake they talked contentedly. Mrs. Edmunds wanted to tell the truth about the money, and waited for an opening.

  “We’ll move out of this hole some day soon,” said Mr. Edmunds. “Things won’t be like this always.” He was full and warm and confident.

  “If I had fifty dollars,” Mrs. Edmunds began cautiously, “I believe I’d move tomorrow. Pay up these people what I owe, and get me a fit place to live in.”

  “Fifty dollars would be a drop in the bucket. You got to have something coming in steady.”

  He had hurt her again. “Fifty dollars is more than you got,” she said meanly.

  “It’s more than you got, too,” he said mildly. “Look at it like this. If you had fifty dollars and made a change, them relief folks would worry you like a pack of wolves. But say, F instance, you had fifty dollars, and I had a job, we could walk out of here without a howdy-do to anybody.”

  It would have been anticlimactic to tell him about the money. She got up. “I’ll do the dishes. You sit still.”

  He noticed no change in her and went on earnestly, “Lord’s bound to put something in my way soon. Things is got to break for us. We don’t live human. I never see a paper ’cept when I pick one up a the subway. I ain’t had a cigarette in three years. We ain’t got a radio. We don’t have no company. All the pleasure you get is a ten-cent movie one day a week. I don’t even get that.”

  Presently Mrs. Edmunds ventured, “You think the investigator would notice if we got a little radio for the bedroom?”

  “Somebody got one to give away?” His voice was eager.

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, seeing how she could check with the party what give it to you, I think it would be all right.”

  “Well, ne’ mind—” Her voice petered out.

  It was his turn to try. “Want to play me a game of cards?”

  He had not asked her for months. She cleared her throat. “I’ll play a hand or two.”

  He stretched luxuriously. “I feel so good. Feeling like this, bet I’ll land something tomorrow.”

  She said very gently, “The investigator comes tomorrow.”

  He smiled quickly to hide his disappointment. “Clean forgot. It don’t matter. That meal was so good it’ll carry me straight through Friday.”

  She opened her mouth to tell him about the jackpot, to promise him as many meals as there was money. Suddenly someone upstairs pounded on the radiator for heat. In a moment someone downstairs pounded. Presently their side of the house resounded. It was maddening. Mrs. Edmunds was bitterly aware that her hands and feet were like ice.

  “’Tisn’t no use,” she cried wildly to the walls. She burst into tears. “’Tisn’t nothing no use.”

  Her husband crossed quickly to her. He kissed her cheek. “I’m going to make all this up to you. You’ll see.”

  By half past eight they were in bed. By quarter to nine Mrs. Edmunds was quietly sleeping. Mr. Edmunds lay staring at the ceiling. It kept coming closer.

  Mrs. Edmunds waked first and decided to go again to the grand market. She dressed and went out into the street. An ambulance stood in front of the door. In a minute an intern emerged from the basement, carrying a bundled child. Mr. Johnson followed, his eyes more bleary and bloodshot than ever.

  Mrs. Edmunds rushed up to him. “The baby?” she asked anxiously.

  His face worked pitifully. “Yes, ma’am, Mis’ Edmunds. Pneumonia. I heard you folks knockin’ for heat last night but my hands was too full. I ain’t forgot about them windows, though. I’ll be up tomorrow bright and early.”

  Mr. Edmunds stood in the kitchen door. “I smell meat in the morning?” he asked incredulously. He sat down, and she spread the feast, kidneys, and omelet, hot buttered rolls, and strawberry jam. “You mind,” he said happily, “explaining this mystery? Was that dollar of yours made out of elastic?”

  “It wasn’t a dollar like I said. It was five. I wanted to surprise you.”

  She did not look at him and her voice was breathless. She had decided to wait until after the investigator’s visit to tell him the whole truth about the money. Otherwise they might both be nervous and betray themselves by their guilty knowledge.

  “We got chicken for dinner,” she added shyly.

  “Lord, I don’t know when I had a piece of chicken.”

  They ate, and the morning passed glowingly. With Mr. Edmunds’ help, Mrs. Edmunds moved the furniture and gave the flat a thorough cleaning. She liked for the investigator to find her busy. She felt less embarrassed about being on relief when it could be seen that she occupied her time.

  The afternoon waned. The Edmundses sat in the living room, and there was nothing to do. They were hungry but dared not start dinner. With activity suspended, they became aware of the penetrating cold and the rattling windows. Mr. Edmunds began to have that wild look of waiting for the investigator.

  Mrs. Edmunds suddenly had an idea. She would go and get a newspaper and a package of cigarettes for him.

  At the corner, she ran into Mr. Johnson. Rather he ran into her, for he turned the corner with his head down, and his gait as unsteady as if he had been drinking.

  “That you, Mr. Johnson?” she said sharply.

  He raised his head, and she saw that he was not drunk.

  “Yes, ma’am, Mis’ Edmunds.”

  “The baby—is she worse?”

  Tears welled out of his eyes. “The Lord done took her.”

  Tears stood in her own eyes. “God knows I’m sorry to hear that. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

  “Thank you, Mis’ Edmunds, ma’am. But ain’t nothin’ nobody can do. I been pricin’ funerals. I can get one for fifty dollars. But I been to my brother, and he ain’t got it. I been everywhere. Couldn’t raise no more than ten dollars.” He was suddenly embarrassed. “I know all you tenants is on relief. I wasn’t fixin’ to ask you all.”

  “Fifty dollars,” she said strainedly, “is a lot of money.”

  “God’d have to pass a miracle for me to raise it. Guess the city’ll have to bury her. You reckon they’ll let me take flowers?”

  “You being the father, I guess they would,” she said weakly.

  When she returned home the flat was a little warmer. She entered the living room. Her husband’s face brightened.

  “You bought a paper!”

  She held out the cigarettes. “You smoke this kind?” she asked lifelessly.

  He jumped up and crossed to her. “I declare I don’t know how to thank you! Wish that investigator’d come. I sure want to taste them.”

  “Go ahead and smoke,” she cried fiercely. “It’s none of her business. We got our rights same as working people.”

  Sh
e turned into the bedroom. She was utterly spent. Too much had happened in the last twenty-four hours.

  “Guess I’ll stretch out for a bit. I’m not going to sleep. If I do drop off, listen out for the investigator. The bell needs fixing. She might have to knock.”

  At half past five Mr. Edmunds put down the newspaper and tiptoed to the bedroom door. His wife was still asleep. He stood for a moment in indecision, then decided it was long past the hour when the investigator usually called, and went down the hall to the kitchen. He wanted to prepare supper as a surprise. He opened the window, took the foodstuffs out of the crate that in winter served as icebox, and set them on the table.

  The doorbell tinkled faintly.

  He went to the door and opened it. The investigator stepped inside. She was small and young and white.

  “Good evening, miss,” he said.

  “I’m sorry to call so late,” she apologized. “I’ve been busy all day with an evicted family. But I knew you were expecting me, and I didn’t want you to stay in tomorrow.”

  “You come on up front, miss,” he said. “I’ll wake up my wife. She wasn’t feeling so well and went to lie down.”

  She saw the light from the kitchen, and the dark rooms beyond.

  “Don’t wake Mrs. Edmunds,” she said kindly, “if she isn’t well. I’ll just sit in the kitchen for a minute with you.”

  He looked down at her, but her open, honest face did not disarm him. He braced himself for whatever was to follow.

  “Go right on in, miss,” he said.

  He took the dish towel and dusted the clean chair. “Sit down, miss.”

  He stood facing her with a furrow between his brows, and his arms folded. There was an awkward pause. She cast about for something to say, and saw the table.

  “I interrupted your dinner preparations.”

  His voice and his face hardened for the blow.

  “I was getting dinner for my wife. It’s chicken.”