The Novels of Lisa Alther

by Lisa Alther

  In front of the Palace Theater some boys and girls from high school were flirting and bad-mouthing each other. The boys kept glancing at the men in front of Dupree’s, copying the way they stood, the way they held their cigarettes, the way they examined and commented on each woman who passed, as though judging a dog show. Donny and Rochelle as they strolled past didn’t even merit a glance. Although those kids were only three or four years younger than him, Donny felt like their father. He smiled.

  “What you grinning about, nigger?” asked Rochelle.

  “Those boys, they all think they gon be big heroes.” He recalled sitting in the Castle Tree confidently planning to be a commando trooper in a camouflage uniform, a penthouse dweller in New York City. “They gon turn around all of a sudden and find out they ain’t nothing but ordinary niggers like all the rest of us.”

  “What’s funny about that?”

  “What you want me to do, woman, cry?” They strolled down the street of ranch houses belonging to Mr. Dupree, to the mortician, to the principal at the high school, to several of the teachers, to Reverend Stump. The houses were freshly painted, with shutters and shiny brass door knockers. Their gleaming windows reflected the spring sun.

  “Wouldn’t you just love a place like that, Donny? You reckon we’ll have us one someday?”

  “Don’t see a way in the world.”

  She looked at him. “Mr. Can’t never could do nothing.” A bigger apartment wasn’t enough. Now she had to have her a house. He couldn’t hardly keep up with her. What about the car he wanted? She wanted to settle in. Well, maybe he wanted to be all set to cut out. The street ended abruptly in a faintly greening cow pasture. They stood by the fence and watched a Holstein bull mount a heifer.

  Rochelle asked, “How come you ain’t like that ole bull, honey?”

  “If you look real close, you’ll see he ain’t knocking off the same heifer time after time.”

  Rochelle glanced at him. “I was just teasing, hon.”

  “What you on about sex all the time for anyhow? Before we got hitched, it was all I could do to get me a kiss off of you.”

  “Well, I didn’t want to go getting pregnant.”

  “And now you do?”

  “Twice is enough.”

  “OK, so just shut up about sex then.”

  She looked at him.

  He saw things different from her. He didn’t think much beyond this evening. Tomorrow he’d do pretty much what he’d done today, last month, last year. Next year he’d still be doing it. Whereas she seemed to see him rising into jobs that paid more. She hadn’t been able to turn herself into no librarian. How did she expect him to turn himself into someone who could buy her a ranch house? She’d been so excited when Mr. Prince phoned and told him to start work. The first colored person taken on at the mill—and even white people poured out of the hills when word got out that the mill was hiring. But here she still wasn’t satisfied. He yanked Isaac’s fingers out of his mouth. Isaac whimpered. He thrust him into Rochelle’s arms and began shoving the stroller so savagely that Nicole began whimpering.

  Raymond Tatro in his denim coveralls came up at Donny at work, glanced around, held out a blue card, and said, “Here you go, Donny. You want to sign this?”

  Donny took the card. “What is it, Mr. Raymond?”

  Raymond grimaced. “Just call me Raymond like everybody else, OK?”

  Donny shrugged. “Sure. Whatever you say, Mr. Raymond. Raymond.”

  “It’s a union card. You want to join the union?”

  “I don’t know nothing bout no union, sir.”

  “It’s sort of like a club. With meetings and things.”

  Donny looked at him. Since when did whites want coloreds at their club meetings? Not since the Castle Tree.

  “We working to get higher wages and health benefits and a pension plan and all like that.”

  “How you do that?”

  “Well, we all join together and ask for them. And if we don’t get them, we stop working.”

  “Mr. Prince, he won’t like that, will he?” He felt gratitude toward Mr. Prince and wasn’t studying to go doing nothing that might upset the man.

  “Mr. Prince won’t care. He’s got him his big house on the hill. He don’t own this company anymore anyhow. A bunch of rich men up North do.”

  “You sure about that? Mr. Prince, he all the time talking about us being one big happy family.”

  Raymond laughed. “Yeah, we one big happy family, all right. But Big Daddy, he’s up in New York City running around on us. But we gon get us our share.”

  “Yeah, all right. I’m with you, Raymond.” He signed the card and handed it back, feeling proud to be asked to join.

  “Don’t talk about this to nobody. We just trying to get going. I’ll let you know what’s happening.”

  “It ain’t dangerous or nothing like that? I don’t want no trouble.”

  “Huh-un. It’s just a little bit secret for right now.”

  He watched Raymond walk away. Didn’t know what to make of the man. He turned up at the mill last fall, seeming rushed and tense. Just like Donny’s mama. Going off up North did weird things to people. His grandmaw told how Emily had come down to her apartment last Christmas after just a few months up at New York City and had stood around squinting and frowning and shifting from foot to foot like a nutcase. It’d be real interesting to know just what went on up there, to make folks act so strange.

  At supper Donny announced, “We might could start looking around for a bigger place, mama. I gon get me a raise.”

  Rochelle looked at him, delighted, and ushered the four children into the bedroom after finishing up the dishes. They made love on the sofa, like when they were first married.

  The next day as Donny was pushing a broom through the card room, he heard Raymond and Al Grimes talking behind some machines.

  “… ain’t setting at meetings next to no lazy, stinking, stupid niggers, Tatro. Lots of others feel the same.”

  “… motherfucking bigots …”

  “… new here, Tatro … ain’t running this show …”

  Mr. Al tracked Donny down in the spinning room and handed him his blue card, torn in half. “I’m real sorry, Donny. Mr. Tatro didn’t know colored people ain’t allowed to join no union.”

  Raymond walked up later, averted his eyes, and mumbled, “… really disgusted … won’t always be like this …”

  Donny grinned. “Don’t you worry none, Mr. Raymond. I be just fine.”

  Raymond walked away. What was the matter with that man? Donny was the one not allowed in the union. What was it to Raymond anyhow? Donny didn’t need his sympathy. Sympathy didn’t pay the rent on no bigger apartment.

  Donny propped open the door to the ladies’ room with a trash can and began cleaning the toilets. As he scrubbed, he wondered how come white folks thought niggers was lazy and dirty. Seemed like that him and Rochelle, his grandmaw and mama, most of his neighbors spent their whole lives working at trying to keep things neat and clean. The dirt went from the white folks’ homes and factories onto you, and then you toted it home. But where did it come from in the first place? He scrubbed at a toilet bowl ferociously.

  Back home Donny studied his face in the bathroom mirror. His mother’s almost white features, his father’s darker coloring. He used to go for months without being aware of himself as a colored man. But lately, seemed like he was always seeing his dark nose from the inner corner of his eye. What would it be like to look down there and see a pink nose?

  He turned away. His skin stretched taut over his cheekbones like a mask of badly tarnished copper, a mask that marked him for life. Ah, shit. All he wanted was to earn enough money to move his family into a bigger goddam apartment. Buy himself a crumbling junkheap of a secondhand Dodge. He stared at Rochelle’s jars of vanishing cream and bottles of hair oil and remembered taking a jar of vanishing cream up to the Princes’ one day. The Five had slathered themselves with it, then waited to vanish. Th
at dumb Sally had been scared to death she wouldn’t reappear. They’d finally had to accept that it was the cream that vanished, not the people wearing it. Donny saw his dark face smile in the mirror, felt himself relax a little.

  Rochelle was sitting on the sofa in the lamplight watching “Wagon Train.” He plopped down in the armchair and gazed at her. The woman was beautiful. Like his mother and grandmother, she had light skin. Almost like the women in magazines and on television and in movies. Unlike himself. Her father might have been a white man. Maybe one of the cats who didn’t want his unknown colored son-in-law to join his motherfucking union. He felt the tension building again.

  “What you staring at, nigger?”

  He smiled faintly. “You.”

  “See anything you like?”

  He said nothing.

  “Well, don’t just set there looking. Come on over here and do something about it.” She stretched out her arms and he went, but was unable to fulfill the rest of her request. She ran her hand over his rough head and cooed, “Don’t matter none, sugar. Don’t get all upset now.” But he already was.

  At Saturday morning breakfast Rochelle asked, “When you reckon that raise is coming through, Donny?”

  “Ain’t sure it is no more.”

  A long silence. “Well, I sure do hate to hear that.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure you do.”

  “Don’t be like that, honey.”

  “Like what?”

  “Mean-mouthed.” She burst into tears.

  “Ah, hell, don’t, mama. Listen, I’m sorry.”

  She sniffled. “I’m sorry honey. It’s just that my monthly’s a couple of weeks late. What we gon do?”

  “We be all right,” he said, touching her hand. A car horn sounded out front. Mr. Prince picking him up for yard work.

  “I got to go,” he said, kissing her quickly. “Be good now.”

  In the car he nodded to Mr. Prince. “Mighty fine day, sir?”

  “Yes, sir, sure is. Thought I might play some golf.”

  As they drove under the railroad bridge, Mr. Prince cleared his throat. “Donny, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  “Yes sir?”

  “This union business.”

  “Yes sir?”

  “Mr. Mackay is thinking about letting some of those people go.”

  “Yes sir.” .

  “They were doing union business on company time.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “It’s not that he minds employees considering being represented by a union.”

  “No sir.”

  “But he does mind their doing it on company time.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Now Donny, I hear you signed up to join. Is that right?”

  “They told me you wouldn’t care none.”

  He sighed. “Not unless it’s on company time.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “My son-in-law, Jed Tatro, says he doesn’t believe you understood what was going on. Is that correct?”

  “They say if you join the union, you get you a raise in pay.” Goddam that Raymond Tatro anyhow. Promised him he wouldn’t get in no trouble.

  “Well, it’s not quite that simple. But do you really feel you’re not being paid enough for the work you do?”

  “Well sir, Mr. Prince, sometimes it’s hard to make ends meet, with two babies and another on the way.”

  “Another baby? Congratulations. That’s wonderful.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Well, if you need more income, I can speak to my neighbors about yard work. I can certainly recommend you.”

  “Yes sir. Thank you, Mr. Prince. I surely would predate that.”

  “But let’s not have any more union stuff on company time, all right?”

  “Yes sir. But they wouldn’t let me join anyhow, sir.”

  “They wouldn’t?”

  “No sir.”

  “Ah.”

  As Mr. Prince turned into his driveway, Donny felt a surge of gratitude. It was the same gratitude he felt when Mr. Prince paused on his tours of the shop floor in his shirtsleeves to remark to Donny on the weather. The white people at their machines noticed and sometimes made a point of talking to Donny themselves later the same day. With the sleeve of his work shirt he polished a dirty spot on the front fender of Mr. Prince’s Mercury as he walked past. Mr. Prince nodded his thanks.

  After a day cutting grass, Donny went to the back door of the big yellow house. Mrs. Prince was wearing a flowered dress that kind of clung around her hips. Her long dark hair, curling up on the ends, bounced and swung as she handed him a glass of lemonade, a jar of bacon grease for Ruby, and his eight dollars. He stood far away from her as he drank, feeling his green work shirt with sweat stains the size of cow piles under the arms would be offensive. Rochelle’s maid dresses were always stained like this at the end of a day, but did white women sweat? Not that he’d ever seen. Mrs. Prince he always thought of as standing at a third-floor hospital window in a white gown, tossing foil-wrapped chocolate-covered cherries to The Five on the lawn below, after giving birth to Robby. He smiled at her shyly, then ducked his head.

  “You look all tired out, Donny.”

  “Naw, ma’am. I be just fine. Just a little hot is all.”

  Walking from the bus stop to his apartment, he turned down the street of ranch houses that Rochelle coveted. He wished he could get her one. The Princes’ big yellow house, colored people didn’t live in places like that. But these here ranch houses had been built, were owned by colored people. How’d they done it? They owned businesses, were teachers, a dentist, preachers. Most had been to college. He could have gone. He had good grades, could have won a basketball scholarship. Instead he dropped out his junior year to marry Rochelle. He remembered being obsessed with not letting Leon steal her away from him. Leon, with his wallet stuffed with bills from pimping in New York. Donny had to find a job, get some cash. But how come nobody warned him what life was really all about?

  Then he remembered he had been warned. But since the advice came from his mama, who’d left him and Pine Woods behind, he hadn’t been able to hear it. So here he was with a pregnant wife and two babies in a two-room apartment. His mother was disgusted when she found out he’d dropped out of school to get married and had hardly been in touch since. But he was doing it, goddam it. Between the mill job and the yard work, he was supporting this show. Lots of men in Pine Woods just gave up after a while, and hung out in front of Dupree’s, or left the area. But he wouldn’t never give up.

  He stopped off to give Ruby her bacon grease. She was sitting in an armchair in a head cloth, quilted bathrobe, and high-topped tennis shoes, watching “Wild Kingdom” on television. The doctors had decided she had leukemia, but it was OK now. “In transmission,” she’d reported.

  “Hey, Grandmaw. What you know good?” This was another phrase Leon had brought down from New York. He kissed her.

  “Humph. Don’t know nothing good,” she growled. “How you, baby boy?”

  “Well, I ain’t no baby no more, that’s for sure.” He laughed.

  “Poor old thing. Got yourself tied down too early, if you want to know what I think.”

  “Can’t afford to hear that, Grandmaw. I in it now up to my neck. Just got to keep on treading water.”

  “The cross, and the strength to tote it, Donny. Look to your Lord.”

  There was a dance that night at the Masonic Hall with a live band from Charlotte. Tadpole was home from Fort Campbell and turned up in his uniform with badges and braid and shit all over him. He and Rochelle danced to “Reach Out, I’ll Be There,” while Donny watched, too worn out from yard work to cut in. Rochelle strutted and batted her false eyelashes, her fat swaying. Tadpole stomped his paratrooper boots in time to the music. Rochelle threw back her red wig and laughed a throaty laugh, her eyes meeting Tadpole’s and narrowing suggestively. Donny never saw her like this anymore himself. She was always rinsing diapers in the toilet, hollerin
g at the kids, nagging him for a bigger place, or busting the seams of her maiding outfit. He watched her prancing around in her high heels and stockings and felt himself getting hard for the first time in a couple of weeks. He wondered if he should jump up and drag her out back and stuff it in her, with her leaning up against the wall in the alley, as Leon had been known to do.

  Shit, he didn’t even have the energy to get up out of his chair. He’d spent all day earning money to pay their bills, trying to figure out how to get her her ranch house—and there she was moving her hips against Tadpole’s. He smashed his fist down on the table so that all the glasses jumped, but no one noticed. Goddam, what did that woman want, anyhow? He almost started crying, but Rochelle and Tadpole were on their way back to the table. Instead he smiled and said, “Yall looked real sharp together.”

  He was still thinking about Rochelle’s hips moving against Tadpole’s the next morning as he stood with his hand folded at the end of a pew waiting for the offering basket. Rochelle stood up front in a white robe with the rest of the choir singing, “Don’t Call the Roll Yet, Jesus, Cause I’m Coming Home.” Leon could make money better than him, and Tadpole could make love better. Well, if Rochelle wanted to be married to Donny, she’d just have to find herself some other reason. The Reverend Mr. Stump had just preached on some verses from Ecclesiastes about the need to remember the Lord even when you was young and didn’t have the threat of decay and death hanging over you to reveal the vanity of all things of the flesh. “Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” Mr. Stump had pointed out how you couldn’t run a church on shouting because the spirit came and went, but the electric bills was always with you. You had to run a church on your sense of duty, fortified at random times by the shouting. Donny figured it was the same with marriage. Hard-ons came and went, but the rent didn’t vary. Children had to get fed and washed. But did that mean that sex went out the window once you got hitched? He’d thought being married meant you’d get it regular. It never occurred to him you might not want it regular. Did it mean you got it somewhere else, from somebody not all wore out by all that duty? He glanced at Rochelle’s familiar face and felt loss. But as far as he knew, she wasn’t gone yet. All he had to do to keep her was to get him a raise and get it up. Both of which he aimed to do.