by Ann Petry
“A scar don’t mean nothing,” Boots said.
“What was it—a fight?”
“Naw. A dame. I beat her up and she gave me this for a souvenir.”
There had been a lot of other women since Jubilee. He didn’t remember any of them except that he had kicked most of them around a bit. Perhaps as vengeance now that he came to think about it. He only thought about Jubilee when he happened to see a pair of curtains blowing in a breeze. The scar on his face had become a thin, narrow line. Most of the time he forgot it was there, though somehow he had got into the habit of touching it when he was thinking very hard.
He looked across at Junto patiently waiting for an answer. He wasn’t quite ready to answer him. Let him stew in his own juice for a while. There wasn’t any question in his mind about Lutie Johnson being worth the price he would have to pay for her, nor worth the doubts that he would always have about her.
Riding back and forth between New York and Chicago he used to look forward to dropping into Junto’s place. He was perfectly comfortable, wholly at ease when he was there. The white men behind the bar obviously didn’t care about the color of a man’s skin. They were polite and friendly—not too friendly but just right. It made him feel good to go there. Nobody bothered to mix a little contempt with the drinks because the only thing that mattered was whether you had the money to pay for them.
One time when he stopped in for a drink, he was filled up to overflowing with hate. So he had two drinks. Three drinks. Four drinks. Five drinks. To get the taste of “you boy” out of his mouth, to shake it out of his ears, to wash it off his skin. Six drinks, and he was feeling good.
There was a battered red piano in the corner. The same piano that was there right now. And he was feeling so good that he forgot that he had vowed he’d never play a piano again as long as he lived. He sat down and started playing and kept on until he forgot there were such things as Pullmans and rumpled sheets and wadded-up blankets to be handled. Forgot there was a world that was full of white voices saying: “Hustle ’em up, boy”; “Step on it, boy”; “Hey, boy, I saw a hot-looking colored gal a couple of coaches back—fix it up for me, boy.” He forgot about bells that were a shrill command to “come a-running, boy.”
Someone touched him on the shoulder. He looked up frowning.
“What do you do for a living?”
The man was squat, turtle-necked. White.
“What’s it to you?” He stopped playing and turned on the piano bench, ready to send his fist smashing into the man’s face.
“You play well. I wanted to offer you a job.”
“Doing what?” And then, angered because he had answered the man at all, he said, “Sweeping the joint out?” And further angered and wanting to fight and wanting to show that he wanted to fight, he added, “With my tongue, mebbe?”
Junto shook his head. “No. I’ve never offered anyone a job like that,” saying it with a seriousness that was somehow impressive. “There are some things men shouldn’t have to do”—a note of regret in his voice. “I thought perhaps you might be willing to play the piano here.”
He stared at Junto letting all the hate in him show, all the fight, all the meanness. Junto stared back. And he found himself liking him against his will. “How much?”
“Start at forty dollars.”
He had turned back to the piano. “I’m working at the job right now.”
It had been a pleasure to work for Junto. There hadn’t been any of that you’re-black-and-I’m-white business involved. It had been okay from the night he had started playing the piano. He had built the orchestra slowly, and Junto had been pleased and revealed his pleasure by paying him a salary that had now grown to the point where he could afford to buy anything in the world he wanted. No. Lutie Johnson wasn’t that important to him. He wasn’t in love with her, and even if he had been she didn’t weigh enough to balance the things he would lose.
“Okay,” he said finally. “It doesn’t make that much difference to me.”
Junto’s eyes went back to an examination of the bar. There was nothing in his face to indicate whether this was the answer he had expected or whether he was surprised by it. “Don’t pay her for singing with the band. Give her presents from time to time.” He took his wallet out, extracted a handful of bills, gave them to Boots. “All women like presents. This will make it easier for you to arrange for me to see her. And please remember”—his voice was precise, careful, almost as though he were discussing the details of a not too important business deal—“leave her alone. I want her myself.”
Boots pocketed the money and stood up. “Don’t worry,” he said. “That babe will be as safe with me as though she was in her mother’s arms.”
Junto sipped his soda. “Do you think it will take very long?” he asked.
“I dunno. Some women are”—he fished for a word, shrugged his shoulders and went on—“funny about having anything to do with white men.” He thought of the curtains blowing back from the fire-escape window and the white man going swiftly down, down, down. Not all women. Just some women.
“Money cures most things like that.”
“Sometimes it does.” He tried to decide whether it would with Lutie Johnson. Yes. She had practically said so herself. Yet there was something—well, he wasn’t sure a man would have an easy time with her. She had a streak of hell cat in her or he didn’t know women, and he felt a momentary and fleeting regret at having lost the chance to conquer and subdue her.
He looked down at Junto seated at the table and swallowed an impulse to laugh. For Junto’s squat-bodied figure was all gray—gray suit, gray hair, gray skin, so that he melted into the room. He could sit forever at that table and nobody would look at him twice. All those people guzzling drinks at the bar never glanced in his direction. The ones standing outside on the street and the ones walking back and forth were dumb, blind, deaf to Junto’s existence. Yet he had them coming and going. If they wanted to sleep, they paid him; if they wanted to drink, they paid him; if they wanted to dance, they paid him, and never even knew it.
It would be funny if Junto who owned so much couldn’t get to first base with Lutie. He wasn’t even sure why Junto wanted to lay her. He couldn’t quite figure it out. Junto was kind of nuts about that black woman on 116th Street, talked about her all the time. He had never forgotten the shock he got when he first saw Mrs. Hedges. He hadn’t really known what to expect the night he went there with Junto, but he was totally unprepared for that hulk of a woman. He could have sworn from the way Junto looked at her that he was in love with her and that he had never been able to get past some obstacle that prevented him from sleeping with her—some obstacle the woman erected.
“How was the crowd tonight?” Junto asked.
“Packed house. Hanging from the ceiling.”
“No trouble?”
“Naw. There’s never any trouble. Them bruisers see to that.”
“Good.”
“That girl sings very well,” he said. He watched Junto’s face to see if he could get some clue from his expression as to what it was about Lutie Johnson that had made him want her. Because there had been all kinds of girls in and out of Junto’s joints and he had never been known to look twice at any of them.
“Yes, I know. I heard her.” And Junto’s eyes blinked, and Boots knew instantly that Junto wanted her for the same reason that he had—because she was young and extraordinarily good-looking and any man with a spark of life left in him would go for her.
“You heard her tonight?” Boots asked, incredulous.
“Yes. I was at the Casino for a few minutes.”
Boots shook his head. The old man surely had it bad. He had a sudden desire to see his face go soft and queer. “How’s Mrs. Hedges?” he asked.
“Fine.” Junto’s face melted into a smile. “She’s a wonderful woman. A wonderful woman.”
&nb
sp; “Yeah.” He thought of the red bandanna tied in hard, ugly knots around her head. “She sure is.”
He turned away from the table. “I gotta go, Junto. I’ll be seein’ you.” He walked out of the bar, cat-footed, his face as expressionless as when he came in.
Chapter 12
* * *
JONES, THE SUPER, closed the door of his apartment behind him. He was clenching and unclenching his fists in a slow, pulsating movement that corresponded with the ebb and flow of the rage that was sweeping through him.
At first it was rage toward Mrs. Hedges and her barging into the hall, shoving her hard hands against his chest, ordering him about, threatening him. If she hadn’t been so enormous and so venomous, he would have knocked her down.
He frowned. How had the dog got out? Min must have let him out. Min must have stood right there where he was standing now, just inside the door, looking out into the hall, and seen what was going on and let the dog loose. A fresh wave of anger directed at Min flooded through him. If she hadn’t let the dog out, he would have had Lutie Johnson. The dog scared Lutie so she screamed and that brought that old sow with that rag tied around her head out into the hall.
He could feel Lutie being dragged out of his arms, could see Mrs. Hedges glaring at him with her baleful eyes rammed practically into his face, could see the bulk of her big, hard body under the white flannel nightgown, and could feel all over again the threat and menace in her hands as she slammed him against the cellar door.
All of it was Min’s fault. He ought to go drag her out of bed and beat her until she was senseless and then toss her out into the street. He walked toward the bedroom and stopped outside the door, remembering the cross over the bed and unable to get over the threshold despite his urge to lay violent hands on her. He couldn’t tell by the light, rhythmic sound of her breathing whether she was asleep or just pretending. She must have scuttled back to bed the minute she saw him start toward the apartment door.
His thoughts jumped back to Mrs. Hedges. So that was why he couldn’t have her locked up that time he went to the police station. He remembered the police lieutenant, “What’s her name?” and his eyes staring at the paper where it was already written down. Junto was the reason he couldn’t have her arrested that time. Sometimes during the summer he had gone to the Bar and Grill for a glass of beer and he had seen him sitting in the back—a squat, short-bodied white man whose eyes never apparently left the crowd drinking at the bar. The thought of him set Jones to trembling.
He moved away from the bedroom door and walked aimlessly around the living room. Finally he sat down on the sofa. He ought to go to bed, but he’d never be able to sleep with his mind swirling full of thoughts like this. Lutie’s body had felt soft under his hands, her waist had just fitted into the space between his two hands. It was small, yielding, pliant.
His face smarted where she had scratched him. He ought to put something on it—get something from the medicine cabinet, but he didn’t move. The reason she had scratched him like that was because she hadn’t understood that he wasn’t going to hurt her, that he wouldn’t hurt her for anything. He must have frightened her coming at her so suddenly.
He could feel his thoughts gather themselves together on Lutie, concentrate on her, stay put on her. Those scratches on his face were long, deep. She hadn’t been frightened that bad. It wasn’t just fright. It must have been something else. She had fought him like a wildcat; as though she hated him, kicking, biting, scratching, and that awful wild screaming. But she screamed because of the dog, he told himself. But even after Mrs. Hedges came out and the dog left, even after Mrs. Hedges had pulled her out of his arms, she had gone on screaming. He could hear the despairing, desperate sound of her screams all over again, and he listened to them, thinking that they sounded as though she had found his touching her unbearable, as though she despised him. No. It wasn’t just fright.
The full significance of what Mrs. Hedges had said to him came over him. That was why Lutie had fought like that and screamed and couldn’t stop. She was in love with the white man, Junto, and she couldn’t bear to have a black man touch her.
His mind rebelled against the idea, thrust it away. It wasn’t true. He refused to admit it was remotely possible. He tried to rid himself of the thought and it crept back again quietly establishing itself. He quivered with rage at the thought of Junto’s squat white body intimately entwined with Lutie’s tall brown body. He saw Junto’s pale skin beside Lutie’s brown skin. He created situations and placed them together—eating, talking, drinking, even dancing.
He tortured himself with the picture of them lying naked in bed together, possibly talking about him, laughing at him. He attempted to put words into their mouths.
“Can you imagine, Mr. Junto, that Jones making love to me?”
He couldn’t get any further than that because his mind refused to stay still. It seemed to have become a livid, molten, continually moving, fluid substance in his brain that spewed up fragments of thought until his head ached with the effort to follow the motion, to analyze the thoughts. He no sooner started to pursue one of the fragments than something else took its place, some new idea that disappeared just as he began to explore it.
Mrs. Hedges and Min. They were the ones that had frustrated him. Just at the moment when he had Lutie in his arms they had fixed it so she was snatched away from him. If only he could have got her down into the cellar, everything would have been all right. She would have calmed down right away.
Now he would have to begin all over again. He didn’t know where to start. Maybe a little present would make her feel better toward him. He must have frightened her a lot. He was certain she had been smiling at him when she stood there in the doorway, holding the door in her hand, the long skirt blowing back around her legs as she looked toward the cellar door.
What ought he to give her? Earrings, stockings, nightgowns, blouses—he tried to remember some of the things he had seen in the stores on Eighth Avenue. It ought to be something special—perhaps a handbag, one of those big shiny black ones.
Junto probably gave her presents. His mind stood still for a moment. What present could he give her that could compare with the things Junto could give her? Junto could give her fur coats and—— He got up from the couch wildly furious, so agitated by his anger that his body trembled with it.
She was in love with Junto. Of course. That was why she had fought him off like a she-cat, clawing at him with her nails, kicking at him, filling the hall with that howl that still rang in his ears. She was in love with Junto, the white man.
Black men weren’t good enough for her. He had seen women like that before. He had had women like that before. Just off the ship, hungry for a woman, dying for a woman, seeking and finding one he had known before. A door opened a narrow crack, “No. You can’t come in.” The door slammed tight shut in his face. He had waited and waited outside and seen some replete, satiated white tramp of a sailor emerge from the same room hours later.
Yes. He’d seen that kind before. No use for men their own color. Well, he’d fix her. He’d fix her good. He searched his mind for a way to do it and was surprised to find that his thinking had grown cool, quiet, orderly. Her fighting against him as though he was so dirty she couldn’t bear to have him touch her, her never looking at him when she went in and out of the building, her being frightened that night when she came to look at the apartment and they were up there together—all of it proved that she didn’t like black men, had no use for them.
So she belonged to a white man. Well, he would get back at both of them. Yes. He’d fix them good.
He strained his eyes in the dark of the room as though by looking hard enough in front of him he would be able to see the means by which he would destroy her. He walked up and down thinking, thinking, thinking. There wasn’t anything he could think of, no way he could reach her.
But there was the kid. He paused in
the middle of the room, nodding his head. He could get at the kid. He could fix the kid and none of them could stop him. They would never know who was responsible. He finally went to sleep, still not knowing what it was he would do, but comforted by the knowledge that he could hurt her through the kid. Yes. The kid.
When he woke up the next morning, Min was standing by the couch looking down at him with a curious expression on her face.
“What you looking at?” he asked gruffly, wondering what she had been able to read on his face while he lay there asleep, unaware of anyone watching him, perhaps unconsciously revealing the things he had been thinking about just before he went to sleep. “How long you been there?”
“I just come,” she said. “Breakfast is ready”; and then she added hastily: “I ate mine already. You can have the kitchen to yourself.”
“How come you ain’t gone to work yet?”
“I overslept myself. I’m gettin’ ready to go now.”
She went into the bedroom. The worn felt slippers made a slapping, scuffing sound as she walked. It was a hateful sound and his anger of the night before returned so swiftly that he decided it must have stayed on the couch with him waiting for him to awaken. He thought of Lutie’s high heels clicking on the stairs, of her long legs, and immediately he began puzzling over a way of fixing the kid.
In the kitchen he ate hungrily. Min had made rolls for breakfast. They were light and fluffy. He ate several of them, drank two cups of coffee and was starting on a third cup when his eyes fell on a slender glass vial almost full of a brilliant scarlet liquid. It was lying flat between the bottle of ketchup and a tin of evaporated milk right near the edge of the shelf over the kitchen table.
He stood up for a better look at it, uncorked it, and sniffed the contents. It had a sharp, acrid odor. There was a medicine dropper lying beside it.
He had never seen either of them before. And for no reason at all he thought of the candles that Min burned every night, of the sudden unexpected appearance of the cross over the bed, of her never explained absence one evening.