On the screen a man danced with a hat rack, holding it like some tender thing and twirling it over his back. He danced his feet around while it circled like a saucer on its side. Tippling its fluted legs, tippling it turned a long brown liquid in his arms in his thin arms. His shiny heels clicked and spun, his mouth a perfect kiss. He was supple and dapper and his smooth face rippled in the shaking of the trains. Callie was not afraid in the dark because the man was dancing. He danced over the rumble of the blunt-nosed engine and the clack of the boxcar wheels. He danced the tiled cement in front of the old theater and the steamy sidewalk grate. He danced the long cracked Spenser streets under the droop-haired trees, up the hill to the house where Callie’s father sat with clinched hands, listening to Chopin in the dark. Callie dreamed them together in the dark house; his mother in the thin hallway, her white dress, her legs clear through the cloth. His father sitting with his music by the rainy window and they were all safe with the dancing man.
It went black and the lights came up. Callie waited for his mother to know, and they walked up the slanted floor to the lobby. It looked smaller to him now, gauzy as a cataract. Night, said the sweeping man. His broom went round and round. They pushed open the double doors and the soft fatal whish of his moving followed them away.
Laura put Callie down to sleep when they got home. She wondered why sleep is down. She thought it was like a sinking. Callie was afraid to sleep. She sat by him until he slept and put his glasses where he could reach them.
She pressed herself against the straight back of the wooden chair and touched her face with her hands. She felt the round covered balls of her eyes, the boned sockets, the hard line of her jaw. Her face felt old to her when she touched it; when she was alone and touched it. She hadn’t seen her face since she was a child. She remembered seeing it that night in the mirror; the hall light a sudden blindness, her mother laughing, the sweet sick smell as she leaned close to tie a red ribbon too loose in Laura’s hair. It fell lopsided in her light hair, in the mirror. She saw her own eyes, then her mother looking at her. And the man laughed, holding them both, and the car was warm, moving. She crawled into the back and rolled against the seat. They laughed, her mother dangling the discarded ribbon from the rearview mirror, the wrinkled raveled satin, and the car lurched and they laughed.
Laura’s head was aching. She would not think of it. She would go and lay in the snow. Behind her mother’s house the snow was deep. Laura move your arms up and down like this And your legs, there, like this … Laura would close her eyes under the pines in her warm clothes, feel snow falling on her face … all sounds went away. And her mother lifted her laughing Silly don’t fall asleep in the snow …
Laura got up and walked through the quiet house to the bedroom. Clocks ticked. She took off her clothes and folded them neatly across a chair. A car went by. She thought it must be dark by now. She was very tired. She got between the covers, feeling the wide empty bed with her legs. It seemed to open, the sheets opening and covering. In the snow they lay down to make women in gowns whose arms had exploded. No Laura, those are angels with wings like the angel in the tree … Snow fell from the trees in clumps, filled the angels up. Laura stamped the exploded arms. Again, in her dreams, she saw the shadow with the open mouth, falling all in fire. It had the sweet sick smell of her mother’s words; it crooned, falling the crackling black. Good black and the words said hush. Laura slept. She was sinking and the sounds went away.
On Wednesdays Randal took Molly to the diner. It was a long aluminum room with yellow stools and a red counter. Ralph was a man near fifty whose rubbery face ran with sweat. He shook Molly’s hand and called her a lady. Randal and Molly sat up front near the grill. Behind the counter Ralph’s flaccid daughter Sylvie smiled her sideways smile and nodded her head again and again.
Ralph made a bowl of batter for their pancakes. Sylvie shambled blond and big, reaching under the counter for the silverware. How you, she nodded, placing each utensil carefully beside the other. When he heard her turn to get the water glasses, Randal turned the silverware right side up. Molly watched Sylvie put three ice cubes in each glass, one at a time, with her big silver dipper. She put the glasses in front of them and smiled, her mouth twitching. Her father liked the blind man and told her to wait on him good. Her eyes rolled to the door, swept the wall and the square clock, swept it all to the far end of the red counter. Her hand moved on her thigh as if she held the rag that wiped the Formica clean. Her hands smelled like the rag. Its wilted pungence mixed with an oily peanut smell when she lifted her arms.
Her baby, Howard, was on the floor like always, playing with straws or spoons. He was a fat towheaded baby who never cried. Sylvie picked him up and held him on her lap while Randal and Molly ate pancakes. Uh huh, huh, Sylvie laughed slow, the baby rocking. Randal thought: she is like a cow burning. He asked her how the week had been, feeling Molly watch her.
Ralph scraped the grill with his iron spatula. Welfare people been to see my girl again, he said, but she can count to twenty now. She ain’t the first one been taken advantage of—Look here, Mr. Collier, I got new berries and cream for them pancakes.
The syrup was warm in Randal’s mouth. Molly’s fingers curled on his wrist were sticky, her small nails sharp. Her stolid hands weren’t Laura’s. Laura’s hands (the school that first month, his quarters a room in the tower; savage thumps of pigeons on the ledge. The psychiatrist crossed and recrossed his legs. Laura is a special case Her blindness, he said, Is to some extent hysterical … thrown free, the car … her mother crawled out burning, he said. We think Laura was, he said, Conscious. Gloves at night for years, he said, To keep from hurting … herself in her sleep. I’m not qualified, he said, To deal with her).
Later, Laura gave Randal the gloves. They were white cotton gloves like young girls wear to church, but they knotted around the wrists with string. Her hands, thought Randal. Sylvie went on with her sounds.
Laura came to his rooms on the grounds. He hadn’t been near her for several weeks. I’m seventeen, she’d said, today I’m seventeen. She came near him, pulling at his hands his chest his hair. He was afraid her aunt would find out and take her away (She’s a slut like her mother. You’re not the first or last. I did what I could now she’s your affair). He lived in fear she would be gone or pregnant too soon; still he wanted her so badly he shook. By the time her pregnancy showed, she was eighteen and they were married. Randal was thirty-eight, moving in her arms in their empty house. On the blond wood floors she taught him to waltz. They turned, turning until he was dizzy and he pressed her to him and they lay down on the floor she—
Take your time, said Ralph. Just sweeping up. Randal reached in his pocket for the money.
Outside, the diner’s purple lights made the wet street pink. The door clicked behind them and did its slow sigh shut. Molly listened. Sylvie pushed her ragged mop and chanted. Nine, ten, eleven.
Callie heard them come in. His father scuffed his feet and then they were in the room. They all went out to the kitchen. His mother had soup for them and the steam came up. His father’s face above him was wide and lost in the steam. Callie reached through and touched him and left his hand there.
When Callie was in the white room, his father’s face had been too wide and frightened him. Then he couldn’t pull the light on by himself and the woman with the cool hands picked him up to put him in the bed. Things were different before he went to the white room; a face sat on top of a face and blurred where they came together. There were angles of light and two prismed doors in the wall. There were two of everything. Nothing was ever by itself because everything faded its edges into something else. Callie was lonely when he saw that his mother had only one face. She had seemed to be all around him. Her arms legs hips breasts hands hair had been in his sight a milky atmosphere. Now he saw that everyone was separate.
Callie ate his soup. Their separate faces moved around him in the steam. They receded, each one behind a single veil. Their voices shimmered behi
nd the colors and broke.
Callie’s mother broke eggs. She held one in the curve of her hand and clicked it against the bowl. She felt for the crack and she pulled it apart; there was a suck of air to break your heart.
No, Callie, she said. That’s cracks in the sidewalk, to break your back. But you can say it any way you want to, especially on your birthday.
She gave him an egg to break. It sat in his hand all round and full. No eyes no ears no arms, it was a poor thing. He wanted to keep it.
No, his mother said. It’s for your cake. But he ran away with it and put it in a box.
They had a party. They sang the birthday song and it had the same words over and over. They sang it again and again, so slow to the burning candles. Callie blew them to sleep. He walked his fingers around them and made marks in the icing like tiny feet. There was a fire engine in the bag. It screamed when it ran. Callie hated it crying. His father did something to it and then it ran quietly, whispering its wheels. His mother gave him a small gold circle hung with slender pipes. She said they were chimes and they talked in the dark. She hung them in his window and brushed his eyes with her mouth.
Then it was night. They left him alone in his bed. From nowhere there was a sound that flew; the tiny pipes sang when they touched. The fire engine stayed very still. Callie held the egg in his hand. He moved it; he felt something twirl inside the shell.
Molly’s father said his own rhymes to Callie and her:
Molly Molly Pumpkin Polly
How does your garden growl
With seahorse bells and turtle shells
And midget men all in the aisle
Somewhere, she thought, little men held seahorses in their arms like dogs; seahorses with bells inside them like the bells in the clock on the wall. In that place, the wind left all the hours growling in the grass, soft and scared like Sylvie’s repetitive laugh. Molly asked her father where the garden was. He said he would try to remember, but when you try to find some things, there is a snow comes down.
Once it snowed in Spenser. Callie was six but he never went to school. Their father carried him out to see the snow. Molly looked up and the air was falling apart. Callie couldn’t see the flakes in the white sky. They melted in his face, in his wide eyes. Oh, he said. Their father took him back into the house.
Callie was so white in bed. Molly read him her arithmetic book and he learned to multiply. He didn’t wear his glasses anymore. The doctors said he could have them back in a year. When Callie bled, Molly ran and told. Her mother and father held ice wrapped in cloths to his nose. When they tried to lay him out flat, Callie screamed.
Molly, her mother said. Has it stopped?
No, Molly said.
And then they felt it, warm, all over them.
Don’t let my head touch down, Callie said. Don’t let my head touch down.
The last time they took him to the hospital, it was night. Callie was wrapped tight in a blanket. It was spring it was raining it was the ambulance almost pretty in the dark. A neighbor came and stayed the night. That poor little fella, she said, had no business at the movies with his eyes so weak.
He hasn’t been to the movies, Molly said. Not for a long time. He stays in bed. We only talk about the movies.
The neighbor said nothing. She stirred the hot chocolate but it burned. The scalding made a taste like dirt.
Molly’s father came back and woke her up. It was almost light. He was by the window, pressing his hands on the glass. He said Callie was mighty sick; something in his head kept bleeding. They were going to the park, then to the hospital to see him.
The park was empty. By the pond, the carousel was already rusting under its pink and yellow roof. There was one black horse with its hooves in the air and its wild tongue slathering out. Her father lifted her up and put a quarter in the box. He sat on the bench. Every time Molly came around, his face was looking where she was. Her hands wouldn’t move. She was crying with no sound and finally the music stopped. Her father sat on the bench in the rain with his head tilted, looking with his luminous eyes.
Satisfaction
SHE WAS my best friend, we slept together on weekends. She lived in town and I lay awake hearing her father hack in the bathroom, cars in the street passing lights on the wall. At Halloween we dressed like old men. She streaked my mouth with coal and laughed in her black teeth. Walking the south streets we hid our faces in hats and dragged one leg. Down alleys women with their hair in kerchiefs tied up garbage bags. They were only shadows against the light. We walked scratching soap on windows of the deserted bakery. I wrote those women’s names. Wilhelmina, Charlotte, Vera Mae. Safety pins in their skirts and mottled cheeks. I watched them lounge against record racks in Murphey’s, slanting their hard eyes at the girls in the lipstick ads.
It was cold now. Past the old bakery the houses got farther apart. Dogs howled, ran at us till chains clicked at their necks. Sudden sucked breath; they were always fooled. In a house by woods a radio blared a gospel show. Bring down the Banner my sistuhs and brothuhs. Evry road leads back to Him. Make your request and Jesus in His sweet blindness hears. An old woman nodded like a sleeper in her chair. We stood watching her through the torn screen door. Her head swiveled and she saw us in our fathers’ hats.
Her eyes were hooded in their lids. She stood up slow, leaned on the table and the crackling radio. He is our consolation He is our light. Give us our Savior Give us our Lord. At the door she gripped the splintered frame. We held up paper bags. What? she said. What? She leaned out at us smelling cheesy as old sex. I saw we were standing in a mess on the porch. Dogs kill them rabbits, she muttered. Brings em here. Hands jerking in her hair, she faded back into the house. Her braid had come down she was twisting it her shawl dropped. In blue light she stood moving stick arms in her long dried hair. Let thou Holy hands lift up. Do not be Ashamed to hear. She forgot us. She felt for the table. He can quench the fire in your hearts He. She fumbled her hands into a bowl of butter, held them out smeared. Then calm she combed them through her hair. She tilted her head like a girl at a dance and waited to be asked. Do not doubt my sistuhs Rise. And Take the Lord in your arms. God is all over you.
I crouched by the window, drew my white X on the glass. Your soul is forged in His fire Yes He can satisfy. Inside, the old woman moaned like a wind at a door.
Country
WE WENT DOWN there because she was easy. She was always easy, watching us later across the stubbled field, dried-out West Virginia winter and she stood by the window braiding that long swatch of hair that smelled of smoke and fruit, of burnt apples. Sixteen, she was sixteen, moving on you, rolling flat and hard against you like some aging waitress. Feeling that hard scissored grip, you smelled her mechanical musk; her mouth on your face opened and her soft sounds spilled out empty and sugared in that filthy room. Her sheets were gray with men’s dust, heavy black dust of the tunnels, and sweats mixed on her skin.
Shifts changed, that long empty whistle howling like a dog. Wizard dog, empty whirling dog. The light was flat, broken on the hills. We walked to the truck and burned up that dirt road to her house. House so close the mine she heard that doggy moan and waiting for us on the porch, knife in her hand, she peeled potatoes around and around. Eyed skins dropping limp and curled on faded boards. She thin-legged in her man’s boots. Budded breasts and that dark, high-boned face. Mouth petulant but its hardness in it, behind it. Looking at that mouth you felt her teeth in you, hard white negroid teeth, and the town looked on the whole family as niggers. This in ’59, dark beauties taunted in schools. In that old brick school on dented river land, governor’s picture in the hall smelled of river sop and the dark tiger-eyed were taunted as they are, I guess, still, in those towns. She had that gaunt full-hipped Appalachian stance till she opened those lips and spoke, moving in flimsy cotton dresses, her voice singsong like she was sleeping. She moving smooth-bellied in fields, swell-thighed, and the harsh nettled grass gone bleached behind her.
He, Billy, found h
er first. Said she was down at the company store with her pap and a string of brats. Said she was standing sucking her scarf, them hauling those thirty-pound bags of staples to the truck. Flour filmed in her napped hair and he said he like to burn up looking at her. Billy and me came down from Youngstown when the mills closed. For months I watched Billy grind at pouty women in gritted Ohio bars, us working those hot mills too long, going lean in a nothing town. Him a city boy working steel and ships, tired of going back broke to married girl friends, Lower East Side sweat-handed girls afraid of their dock-worker husbands. Said he had an uncle, mine boss in the South, and when the mills laid off we came down in his truck, me having sold my junk car to get him out of jail. Drunken Billy ended his good-bye bender smashing windows and the jaws of some fat Puerto Rican pimp. We rolled all night into no-man’s-land West Virginia, and gas pumps alone by the side of the road went gray. Winter then. Deserted early-morning towns dusted gauzy; wooden-eyed perpetual thirties and Mail Pouch barns. This ain’t the South, Billy muttered, hung over, his head in his arms on the steering wheel, This is the goddamn past. And passing, just passing through, rolls you like a smoke train. Those heaped mountains lower the sky and roll you like some slow-limbed heavenly whore. And she, Billy said, that day at the store, carried bags a man would feel. Her face was hard and passive, the sensual hard of those women. He looked at her, thinking half-breed and sexual tales. She knew it, seeing him look as men look.
Her pap worked the Century mine down at Hundred, worked the swing shift. Billy said he stood in the woods at the edge of their fifteen acres of farm, waited, watched him swing his pail and hat up the seat of that broken bed truck. Truck started up and her pap just sat there in the shaking cab, a brawny-armed man near fifty touching his sandy hair. Billy said he watched him there so long he forgot the girl in the house. Something about the way he only sat, fingers edging his face. They lived, she told us later, in Detroit a few years when he tried to leave the mines. Said he came home from the Chevy plant stretched tight those nights. She cooked whatever she could get for the kids, his woman having left him by then. The mines, he told her, has got that dust settled in you and the black in your gut down deep. You work in small light to tear the wall, chink it out, then suddenly comes the monster clack of the cars. And when they’re gone, coal-heavy, the picks make the same hard ticking up and down the rails, ticking the muffled black. In Detroit that factory city oil smelled all night, motors on the assembly line going till there’s no rest from it. Nothing has a weight there on the line. Just smooth whir of motors in your head. He told her this, kneading his big hands, late nights drunk in their neon-windowed place. Touching her, saying, Them lines gets tight, thin cat gut lines like ties off bellies. Them workers in line by the belts got such nothing in their chests, after a while even the black coal dust, stealing air, is a relief. That way he could see, he said, his years leaving him—at least he could feel them going. He felt it mornings in his broken truck, listening. Hounds bayed the light and field smoke rose off the frost. The truck caught low and rumbled and he in the shaking cab touched his face. Like something pulled his hand and its laced black cuts to his face.
Black Tickets Page 15