by Ann Petry
He was walking toward her. She decided he was going into his apartment. When she started up the stairs, she would have to pass close by him and the thought filled her with dread. She saw again the tight, hard wrinkles in her blouse and thought of how he must have squeezed it between his hands. For a moment she was unable to move. Her throat went dry and tight with fear.
She forced herself to walk toward the stairs, aware as she moved that her gait was stiff and unnatural almost as though her muscles were rebelling against any motion. He wasn’t going into his apartment. He had stopped moving. He was standing motionless in front of her. Somehow she had to pass him, get past him without looking at him, get past him now, quickly, before she thought about it too long.
He side-stepped and blocked her passage to the stairs. He put his hand on her arm. “You’re so sweet. You’re so sweet. You little thing. You young little thing.”
She could barely understand the words, for he was so excited that his voice came out thick and hoarse. But she caught the word “sweet” and she moved away from him. “Don’t,” she said sharply. The street door was in back of her. If she moved fast enough, she could get out into the street.
Instantly his arm went around her waist. He was pulling her back, turning her around so that she faced him. He was dragging her toward the cellar door.
She grabbed the balustrade. His fingers pried her hands loose. She writhed and twisted in his arms, bracing her feet, clawing at his face with her nails. He ignored her frantic effort to get away from him and pulled her nearer and nearer to the cellar door. She kicked at him and the long skirt twisted about her legs so that she stumbled closer to him.
She tried to scream, and when she opened her mouth no sound came out; and she thought this was worse than any nightmare, for there was no sound anywhere in this. There was only his face close to hers—a frightening, contorted face, the eyes gleaming, the mouth open—and his straining, sweating body kept forcing her ever nearer the partly open cellar door.
And suddenly she found her voice. Someone in his apartment must have opened the door or else it was open all the time. For the dog was loose. He came bounding toward them down the length of the dark hall, growling. She felt him leap on her back. The horror of it was not to be borne, for the man was trembling with his desire for her as he dragged her toward the cellar, and the dark hall was filled with the stench of the dog and the weight of his great body landing on her back.
She screamed until she could hear her own voice insanely shrieking up the stairs, pausing on the landings, turning the corners, going down the halls, gaining in volume as it started again to climb the stairs. And then her screams rushed back down the stair well until the whole building echoed and reechoed with the frantic, desperate sound.
A pair of powerful hands gripped her by the shoulders, wrenched her violently out of the Super’s arms, flung her back against the wall. She stood there shuddering, her mouth still open, still screaming, unable to stop the sounds that were coming from her throat. The same powerful hands shot out and thrust the Super hard against the cellar door.
“Shut up,” Mrs. Hedges ordered. “You want the whole place woke up?”
Lutie’s mouth closed. She had never seen Mrs. Hedges outside of her apartment and looked at closely she was awe-inspiring. She was almost as tall as the Super, but where he was thin, gaunt, she was all hard, firm flesh—a mountain of a woman.
She was wearing a long-sleeved, high-necked flannelette nightgown. It was so snowy white that her skin showed up intensely black by contrast. She was barefooted. Her hands, her feet, and what could be seen of her legs were a mass of scars—terrible scars. The flesh was drawn and shiny where it had apparently tightened in the process of healing.
The big white nightgown was so amply cut that, despite the bulk of her body, it had a balloon-like quality, for it billowed about her as she stood panting slightly from her exertion, her hands on her hips, her hard, baleful eyes fixed on the Super. The gaudy bandanna was even now tied around her head in firm, tight knots so that no vestige of hair showed. And watching the wide, full nightgown as it moved gently from the draft in the hall, Lutie thought Mrs. Hedges had the appearance of a creature that had strayed from some other planet.
Her rich, pleasant voice filled the hallway, and at the sound of it the dog slunk away, his tail between his legs. “You done lived in basements so long you ain’t human no more. You got mould growin’ on you,” she said to Jones.
Lutie walked away from them, intent on getting up the stairs as quickly as possible. Her legs refused to carry her and she sat down suddenly on the bottom step. The long taffeta skirt dragged on the tiled floor. Bits of tobacco, the fine grit from the street, puffed out from under it. She made no effort to pick it up. She put her head on her knees, wondering how she was going to get the strength to climb the stairs.
“Ever you even look at that girl again, I’ll have you locked up. You oughtta be locked up, anyway,” Mrs. Hedges said.
She scowled at him ferociously and turned away to touch Lutie on the shoulder and help her to her feet. “You come sit in my apartment for a while till you get yourself back together again, dearie.”
She thrust the door of her apartment open with a powerful hand, put Lutie in a chair in the kitchen. “I’ll be right back. You just set here and I’ll make you a cup of tea. You’ll feel better.”
The Super was about to go into his apartment when Mrs. Hedges returned to the hall. “I just wanted to tell you for your own good, dearie, that it’s Mr. Junto who’s interested in Mis’ Johnson. And I ain’t goin’ to tell you again to keep your hands off,” she said.
“Ah, shit!” he said vehemently.
Her eyes narrowed. “You’d look awful nice cut down to a shorter size, dearie. And there’s folks that’s willin’ to take on the job when anybody crosses up they plans.”
She stalked away from him and went into her own apartment, where she closed the door firmly behind her. In the kitchen she put a copper teakettle on the stove, placed cups and saucers on the table, and then carefully measured tea into a large brown teapot. Lutie, watching her as she walked barefooted across the bright-colored linoleum, thought that instead of tea she should have been concocting some witch’s brew.
The tea was scalding hot and fragrant. As Lutie sipped it, she could feel some of the shuddering fear go out of her.
“You want another cup, dearie?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Lutie was well on the way to finishing the second cup before she became aware of how intently Mrs. Hedges was studying her, staring at the long evening skirt, the short coat. Again and again Mrs. Hedges’ eyes would stray to the curls on top of Lutie’s head. She should feel grateful to Mrs. Hedges. And she did. But her eyes were like stones that had been polished. There was no emotion, no feeling in them, nothing visible but shiny, smooth surface. It would never be possible to develop any real liking for her.
“You been to a dance, dearie?”
“Yes. At the Casino.”
Mrs. Hedges put her teacup down gently. “Young folks has to dance,” she said. “Listen, dearie,” she went on. “About tonight”—she indicated the hall outside with a backward motion of her head. “You don’t have to worry none about the Super bothering you no more. He ain’t even going to look at you again.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I scared him so he’s going to jump from his own shadow from now on.” Her voice had a purring quality.
Lutie thought, You’re right, he won’t bother me any more. Because tomorrow night she was going to find out from Boots what her salary would be and then she would move out of this house.
“He ain’t really responsible,” Mrs. Hedges continued. “He’s lived in cellars so long he’s kind of cellar crazy.”
“Other people have lived in cellars and it didn’t set them crazy.”
“Fol
ks differs, dearie. They differs a lot. Some can stand things that others can’t. There’s never no way of knowin’ how much they can stand.”
Lutie put the teacup down on the table. Her legs felt stronger and she stood up. She could get up the stairs all right now. She put her hand on Mrs. Hedges’ shoulder. The flesh under the flannel of the gown was hard. The muscles bulged. And she took her hand away, repelled by the contact.
“Thanks for the tea,” she said. “And I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come out in the hall——” Her voice faltered at the thought of being pulled down the cellar stairs, down to the furnace room——
“It’s all right, dearie.” Mrs. Hedges stared at her, her eyes unwinking. “Don’t forget what I told you about the white gentleman. Any time you want to earn a little extra money.”
Lutie turned away. “Good night,” she said. She climbed the stairs slowly, holding on to the railing. Once she stopped and leaned against the wall, filled with a sick loathing of herself, wondering if there was something about her that subtly suggested to the Super that she would welcome his love-making, wondering if the same thing had led Mrs. Hedges to believe that she would leap at the opportunity to make money sleeping with white men, remembering the women at the Chandlers’ who had looked at her and assumed she wanted their husbands. It took her a long time to reach the top floor.
Mrs. Hedges remained seated at her kitchen table, staring at the scars on her hands and thinking about Lutie Johnson. It had been a long time since she thought about the fire. But tonight, being so close to that girl for so long, studying her as she drank the hot tea and seeing the way her hair went softly up from her forehead, looking at her smooth, unscarred skin, and then watching her walk out through the door with the long skirt gently flowing in back of her, had made her think about it again—the smoke, the flame, the heat.
Her mind jerked away from the memory as though it were a sharp, sudden pain. She began thinking about the period in her life when she had haunted employment agencies seeking work. When she walked in them, there was an uncontrollable revulsion in the faces of the white people who looked at her. They stared amazed at her enormous size, at the blackness of her skin. They glanced at each other, tried in vain to control their faces or didn’t bother to try at all, simply let her see what a monstrosity they thought she was.
Those were the years when she slept on a cot in the hall of the apartment belonging to some friends of hers from Georgia. She couldn’t get on relief because she hadn’t lived in the city long enough. Her big body had been filled with a gnawing, insatiable hunger that sent her prowling the streets at night, lifting the heavy metal covers of garbage cans, foraging through them for food.
She wore discarded men’s shoes on her feet. The leather was broken and cracked. The shoes were too small so that she limped slightly. Her clothing was thin, ragged. She got so she knew night better than day because she could no longer bring herself to go out in the daytime. And she frequently wished that she had never left the small town in Georgia where she was born. But she was so huge that the people there never really got used to the sight of her. She had thought that in a big city she would be inconspicuous and had hoped that she would find a man who would fall in love with her.
It was a cold, raw night when she first saw Junto. The cold had emptied the street. She was leaning over the garbage cans lined up in front of a row of silent, gloomy brownstone houses. She had found a chicken bone and she was gnawing the meat from it, wolfing it down, chewing even the bone, when she looked up to see a squat, short man staring at her—a white man.
“What you lookin’ at, white man?”
“You,” he said coolly.
She was surprised at the calm way he looked at her, showing no fear.
“You’re on my beat,” he said. “You got here ahead of me.” He pointed toward a pushcart at the curb. It was piled high with broken bottles, discarded bits of clothing, newspapers tied into neat bundles.
“I got as much right here as you,” she said truculently.
“Didn’t say you haven’t.” He went on examining her, the chicken bone in her hand, the ragged coat tied around her, the men’s shoes on her feet. “Seein’s you’re going through this stuff ahead of me, I was thinking you might as well make some money at it.”
“Money?” she said suspiciously.
“Sure. Pick out the bottles and the pieces of metal. I’ll pay you for them. It won’t be much. But I can cover more ground if somebody helps me.”
Thus, Mrs. Hedges and Junto started out in business together. It was she who suggested that he branch out, get other pushcarts and other men to work for him. When he bought his first piece of real estate, he gave her the job of janitor and collector of rents.
It was a frame building five stories high, filled with roomers. Not many people knew that Junto owned it. They thought he came around to buy junk—scrap iron and old newspapers and rags. When he obtained a second building, he urged her to move, but she refused. Instead, she suggested that he divide the rooms in this building in half and thus he could get a larger income from it. And of course she made more money, too, because she got a commission on the rent she collected. She was careful to spend very little because she had convinced herself that if she had enough money she could pick out a man for herself and he would be glad to have her.
The fire had started late at night. She was asleep in the basement and she woke to hear a fierce crackling—a licking, running sound that increased in volume as she listened. There was heat and smoke along with the sound. By the time she got to the door, the hall was a red, angry mass of flame. She slammed the door shut and went over to the basement window.
It was a narrow aperture not really big enough for the bulk of her body. She felt her flesh tear and actually give way as she struggled to get out, forcing and squeezing her body through the small space. Fire was blazing in the room in back of her. Hot embers from the roof were falling in front of her. She tried to keep her face covered with her hands, so that she wouldn’t see what she was heading into, so that she could keep some of the smoke and flame away from her face.
Even as she struggled, she kept thinking that all she needed to do was to get badly burned, and never as long as she lived would any man look at her and want her. No matter how much money she acquired, they still wouldn’t want her. No sum of money would be big enough to make them pretend to want her.
There was nothing but smoke and red flame all around her, and she wondered why she kept on fighting to escape. She could smell her hair burning, smell her flesh burning, and still she struggled, determined that she would force her body through the narrow window, that she would make the very stones of the foundation give until the window opening would in turn give way.
She was a bundle of flame when she finally rolled free on the ground. The firemen who found her stared at her in awe. She was unconscious when they picked her up, and she was the only survivor left from that house full of people.
It was all of three weeks before Junto was permitted to see her at the hospital. “You’re a brave woman, Mrs. Hedges,” he said.
She stared at him from under the mass of bandages that covered her head and part of her face.
“Getting out of that window was wonderful. Simply wonderful.” He looked curiously at the tent-like formation that held the hospital blankets away from the great bulk of her body—a bulk increased by dressings and bandages—marveling at the indomitable urge to live, the absolutely incredible will to live, that had made her force her body through so small a space.
“You’ll be all right, you know,” he said.
“The doctor told me”—her voice was flat, uninterested. “I ain’t going to have any hair left.”
“You can wear a wig. Nobody’ll ever know the difference.” He hesitated, wanting to tell her how amazing he thought she was and that he would have done the same thing, but that there w
ere few people in the world that he had come across who had that kind of will power. He touched one of her bandaged hands gently, wanting to tell her and not knowing quite how to say it. “Mrs. Hedges,” he said slowly, “you and me are the same kind of folks. We got to stay together after this. Close together. We can go a long way.”
She had thought about her scalp—how scarred and terrible looking it would be. The hair would never grow back. She looked steadily at Junto, her eyes unwinking. He would probably be the only man who would ever admire her. He was squat. His shoulders were too big for his body. His neck was set on them like a turtle’s neck. His skin was as gray in color as his eyes. And he was white. She shifted her eyes so that she could no longer see him.
“You’re a wonderful woman,” he was saying softly.
And even he would never want her as a woman. He had the kind of forthright admiration for her that he would have for another man—a man he regarded as his equal. Scarred like this, hair burned off her head like this, she would never have any man’s love. She never would have had it, anyway, she thought realistically. But she could have bought it. This way she couldn’t even buy it.
She folded her lips into a thin, straight line. “Yes. We can go a long way.”
Lutie Johnson made her remember a great many things. She could still hear the soft, silken whisper of Lutie’s skirt, see the shining hair piled high on her head and the flawless dark brown of her skin. She thought of her own scarred body with distaste.
When Junto returned to the hospital after his first visit, he had looked at her for a long time.
“There’s plastic surgery,” he suggested delicately.
She shook her head. “I don’t want no more stays in hospitals. It wouldn’t be worth it to me.”
“I’ll pay for it.”
“No. I couldn’t stay in the hospital long enough for ’em to do nothing like that.”
She would die if she did. As it was, it had been hard enough, and to prolong it was something that would be unendurable. When the nurses and doctors bent over her to change the dressings, she watched them with hard, baleful eyes, waiting for the moment when they would expose all the ugliness of her burnt, bruised body. They couldn’t conceal the expressions on their faces. Sometimes it was only a flicker of dismay, and then again it was sheer horror, plain for anyone to see—undisguised, uncontrollable.