Ann Petry

by Ann Petry

  Half-angrily she decided he would lend it to her because she would make him. It didn’t matter that she had neither seen nor heard from him since the night he had told her she wouldn’t be paid for singing. It didn’t matter at all. He was going to lend her two hundred dollars because it was the only way to keep Bub from going to reform school and he was the only person she knew who could lay hands on that much money at one time.

  She went into the cigar store across the street, thumbed through the phone book, half-fearful that he wouldn’t have a telephone, or if he had one that it wouldn’t be listed. There it was. He lived on Edgecombe Avenue. She memorized the address, thinking that she would call him and then go up there now, tonight, because she didn’t want to tell him what she wanted over the phone. It was best to go and see him and if he looked as though he were going to refuse, she could talk faster and harder.

  She dialed the number and no one answered. There was only the continual insistent ringing of the phone. He had to be home. She simply would not hang up. The phone rang and rang and rang.

  “Yeah?” a voice said suddenly; and for a moment she was too startled to reply.

  The voice repeated, “Yeah?” impatiently.

  “This is Lutie Johnson,” she said.

  “Who?” His voice was flat, indifferent, sleepy.

  “Lutie Johnson,” she repeated. And his voice came alive, “Oh, hello, baby. Christ! where you been?”

  He didn’t understand what she was saying and she had to begin all over again, going slowly, so slowly that she thought she sounded like a record that had got stuck on a victrola. She said she had to see him. It was very important. She had to see him right away. Because it was very important. And instantly he said, “Sure, baby. I been wanting to talk to you. Come on up. It’s apartment 3 J.”

  “I’ll be right there. I’ll take the bus,” she said. And thought again that she sounded like a victrola, but not one that had got stuck, like one that had run down, that needed winding.

  “Where are you now?”

  “116th Street and Seventh Avenue.”

  “Okay, baby. I’ll be waitin’ for you.”

  It took her a few minutes to get the receiver back on the hook. She made futile, fumbling dabs at it, missing it because her hands were taut and tense and unmanageable.

  She waited impatiently for the bus and when it came and she got on it, it seemed to her it crawled up Seventh Avenue; and each time it halted for a red light, she could feel her muscles tighten up. She tried to erase the hopes and fears that kept creeping into her mind and couldn’t. Finally the bus turned and crossed the bridge, and she remembered that it didn’t stop at Edgecombe Avenue. If she wasn’t careful, she’d ride beyond it and have to walk back a long way.

  But there was no mistaking the apartment house where Boots lived. It loomed high above all the other buildings and could be seen for a long distance. She pulled the stopcord hastily and got off the bus.

  As she walked toward the awninged entrance, she recalled the stories she’d heard about the fabulous rents paid by the people who lived here. She remembered when Negroes had first moved into this building and how Pop had rattled the pages of the paper he was reading and muttered, “Must have gold toilet seats to charge that much money.”

  Her only reaction to the sight of the potted shrubs in the doorway and to the uniformed doorman was that if Boots could afford to live here, then lending her two hundred dollars would present no problem to him.

  Inside there was a wide, high-ceilinged hall. An elevator with gleaming red doors opened into it. The elevator boy took her up to the third floor, and in answer to her inquiry said, “It’s the fourth door down the hall,” before he closed the elevator doors.

  She pressed the bell harder than she’d intended and drew her hand away quickly, expecting to hear the loud shrilling of a bell. Instead there was the soft sound of chimes and Boots opened the door. His shirt was open at the throat, the sleeves rolled up.

  “Sure is good to see you, baby,” he said. “Come on in.”

  “Hello,” she said, and walked past him into a small foyer. The rug on the floor was thick. It swallowed up the sound of her footsteps.

  The living room was a maze of floor lamps and overstuffed chairs. The same kind of thick, engulfing carpet covered the floor. Logs in an imitation fireplace at the far end of the room gave off an orange-red glow from a concealed electric light. The winking light from the logs was like an evil eye and she looked away from it. Ponderously carved iron candlesticks flanked the mantel.

  She couldn’t go on standing here, taking an inventory of the room. She had to tell him what she wanted. Now that she was here, it was difficult to get started. There was nothing encouraging about his appearance and she had forgotten how tough and unscrupulous his face was.

  “Let me take your coat,” he said.

  “Oh, no. I’m not going to stay that long. I can’t.”

  “Well, sit down anyway.” He sat on the arm of the sofa, one leg dangling, his arms folded across his chest, his face completely expressionless. “Christ!” he said. “I almost forgot what a warm-looking babe you are.”

  She sat down at the far end of the sofa, trying to think of a way to start.

  “What’s on your mind, baby?” he said.

  “It’s about my son—Bub——”

  “You got a kid?” he interrupted.

  “Yes. He’s eight years old.” She talked swiftly, afraid that if she stopped, if he interrupted her again, she wouldn’t be able to finish. She didn’t look at him while she told him about the letters Bub had stolen and the lawyer and the two hundred dollars.

  “Go on, baby,” he said impatiently when she paused.

  His face had changed while she talked to him. Ordinarily his expression was unreadable; now he looked as though he had suddenly seen something he had been waiting for, seen it spread right out in front of him, and it was something that he wanted badly. She puzzled over it while she repeated what the lawyer had said and then decided the expression on his face was due to surprise. He hadn’t known about Bub. She had forgotten that she hadn’t told him she had a child.

  “Can you let me have it? The two hundred dollars?” she asked.

  “Why, sure, baby,” he said easily. “I haven’t got that much on me right now. But if you come by here tomorrow night about this same time I’ll have it for you. Make it a little later than this. About nine.”

  “I can’t ever thank you,” she said, standing up. “And I’ll pay you back. It’ll take a little while, but you’ll get every cent of it back.”

  “That’s all right. Glad to do it.” He stayed on the arm of the sofa. “You ain’t going so soon, are you?”

  “Yes. I have to.”

  “How about a drink?”

  “No, thanks. I’ve got to go.”

  He walked to the door with her, held it open for her. “See you tomorrow night, baby,” he said, and closed the door gently.

  The thought that it had been very easy stayed with her all the way home. It wasn’t until she opened the door of her apartment and was groping for the light in the hall that it occurred to her it had been too easy, much too easy.

  She turned on all the lights in the house—the ceiling lights in the bedroom and the bathroom, the lamp in the living room. The flood of light helped thrust away the doubts that assailed her, but it did nothing to relieve the emptiness in the rooms. Because Bub wasn’t sprawled in the middle of the studio couch, all the furniture had diminished in size, shrinking against the wall—the couch, the big chair, the card table.

  The lights made no impression on the quiet in the apartment either and she switched on the radio. Bub usually listened to one of those interminable spy hunts or cowboy stories, and at night the living room was filled with the tumult of a chase, loud music and sudden shouts. And Bub would yell, “Look out! He’s in back
of you.”

  This lavish use of light is senseless, she thought. You used to lecture him about leaving lights on at night because the bill would be so big you couldn’t pay it. He left them burning because he was frightened, just like you are now. And she wondered if he was afraid now in that strange place—the Children’s Shelter—and hoped there were lights that burned all night, so that if he woke up he could see where he was. It was easy to picture him waking in the dark, discovering that he wasn’t here where he belonged, and then feeling as though he had lost himself or that the room he knew so well had changed about him while he slept.

  She sat down near the radio, tried to listen to a news broadcast, but her thoughts kept twisting and turning about Bub. What would happen to him after this was over? The lawyer had assured her he could get him paroled in her care. But he would have a police record, and if he played hookey from school two or three times and broke a window with a ball and got into a fight, he would end up in reform school, anyway.

  Even his teachers at school would have a faint but unmistakable prejudice against him as a juvenile delinquent and they would refuse to overlook any slight infraction of the rules because he had established himself in their minds as a potential criminal. And in a sense they were right, because he didn’t have much chance before living in this street so crowded with people and children. He had even less now.

  They would have to move away from here. She would get a job cooking for a family that lived in the country. Unfortunately, the idea didn’t appeal to her. She knew what it would be like. He would become “the cook’s little boy,” and expected to meet some fantastic standard of behavior. He would have to be silent when he was bursting to talk and to make noise. “Because Mrs. Brentford or Mrs. Gaines or Mrs. Somebody Else has guests for dinner.”

  She didn’t want him to grow up like that—eating hurried meals at a kitchen table while he listened to “the family” enjoying a leisurely meal in a near-by dining room; learning young the unmistakable difference between front-door and back-door and all that the words implied; being constantly pushed aside because when he came home from school running over with energy, she would be fixing salads and desserts for dinner and only have time to say, “Get a glass of milk out of the icebox and go outside and play and be quiet.”

  It was quite possible that he wouldn’t have much opportunity for playing. Lil had painted a grim picture of what it could be like, based on the experience of one of her friends. “That poor Myrtle said they counted practically every mouthful that poor boy child of hers ate. And wanted him to work, besides. Little light tasses the madam said like cleaning the car and mowing the lawn.” Lil had taken a big swallow of beer before continuing, “And Myrtle and that poor child of hers had to sleep together because the madam said, well, of course, you all wouldn’t expect me to buy another bed and he’s small and don’t take up much room.”

  The pay would be miserable because of Bub, and the people she worked for would subtly or pointedly, depending on what kind of folks they were, demand more work from her because they would feel they were conferring a special favor by permitting his presence in their home.

  Perhaps it wouldn’t be like that. Even if it was, it was the best she could do for him. Somebody else’s kitchen was a painfully circumscribed area for a kid to grow up in, but at least it would be safe. She would be with him all the time. He wouldn’t come home to a silent, empty house.

  She switched off the radio, put out all the lights except the one in the bedroom, thinking that tomorrow she wouldn’t go to work. Instead, she would go to the Children’s Shelter and see Bub.

  While she undressed, she tried to remember if she had been afraid of the dark when she was Bub’s age. No, because Granny had always been there, her rocking chair part of the shadow, part of the darkness, making it known and familiar. She was always humming. It was a faint sound, part and parcel of the darkness. Going to sleep with that warm sound clinging to your ears made fear impossible. You simply drifted off to the accompaniment of a murmured “Sleepin’, Sleepin’, Sleepin’ in the arms of the Lord.” And then the gentle creak of the rocking chair.

  She had never been alone in the house after school. Granny was always home. No matter what time she reached the house, she knew in the back of her mind that Granny was there and it gave her a sense of security that Bub had never known.

  When there was no one in a house with you, it took on a strange emptiness. This bedroom, for instance, was strangely empty. The furniture took up the same amount of room, for she bumped her knee against the corner of the bed. But the light in the ceiling reached only a little way into the living room. She stared at the shadows beyond the brief expanse of light. She knew the exact size of that room, knew the position of every piece of furniture, yet it would be easy to believe that beyond the door, just beyond that oblong of light, there stretched a vast expanse of space—unknown and therefore dangerous.

  After she turned out the light and got into bed, she kept listening for sounds, waiting to hear the stir of some movement from the shadows that enveloped the bed and turning her head from side to side in an effort to make out the familiar outline of the furniture.

  When people are alone, they are always afraid of the dark, she thought. They keep trying to see where they are and the blackness around them keeps them from seeing. It was like trying to look into the future. There was no way of knowing what threat lurked just beyond tomorrow or the next day, and the not knowing is what makes everyone afraid.

  She woke up at seven o’clock and jumped out of bed, reaching for her dressing-gown and thinking that today they had assembly at school and she had forgotten to iron a white shirt for Bub and she would have to hurry so he wouldn’t be late.

  Then she remembered that Bub was at the Children’s Shelter. She wasn’t going to work today. She was going to see him.

  It was her fault he’d got into this trouble. No matter how she looked at it, it was still her fault. It was always the mother’s fault when a kid got into trouble, because it meant she’d failed the kid somewhere. She had wanted him to grow up fine and strong and she’d failed him all the way along the line. She had been trying to get enough money so that she could have a good place for him to live, and in trying she’d put so much stress on money that he’d felt impelled to help her and started stealing letters out of mail boxes.

  Lately she had been so filled with anger and resentment and hate that she had pushed him farther and farther away from her. He didn’t have any business in the Children’s Shelter. He didn’t have any business going to court. She was the one they ought to have arrested and taken to court.

  Pulling the cord of the robe tight around her waist with an angry jerk, she went into the kitchen where she put coffee into an enamel pot on the stove. While she waited for it to boil, she raised the window shade and looked out. It was a dark, grim morning. The blackness outside pressed against the panes of glass, and she drew the shade hastily.

  She scrambled eggs and made toast, but once she was seated at the kitchen table she thrust the food away from her. The very sight and smell of it was unpleasant. The coffee didn’t go down her throat easily; it kept sticking as though an ever-tightening band were wrapped around her neck, constricting her throat.

  Getting dressed for the trip to the Center was a slow process, for she found herself pausing frequently to examine all kinds of unrelated ideas and thoughts that kept bobbing up in her mind. Pop had never got anywhere in life and certainly Lil hadn’t ever achieved anything, but neither one of them had ever been in jail. Perhaps it was better to take things as they were and not try to change them. But who wouldn’t have wanted to live in a better house than this one and who wouldn’t have struggled to get out of it?—and the only way that presented itself was to save money. So it was a circle, and she could keep on going around it forever and keep on ending up in the same place, because if you were black and you lived in New York and you could on
ly pay so much rent, why, you had to live in a house like this one.

  And while you were out working to pay the rent on this stinking, rotten place, why, the street outside played nursemaid to your kid. The street did more than that. It became both mother and father and trained your kid for you, and it was an evil father and a vicious mother, and, of course, you helped the street along by talking to him about money.

  The last thing she did before she left the apartment was to put the stiff, white paper in her pocketbook. And on the subway she was so aware of its presence that she felt she could see its outline through the imitation leather of the bag.

  It was just nine o’clock when she got off the subway. She asked the man in the change booth which exit was nearest the Shelter.

  “You shoulda took another line,” he said. “Walk five blocks that way”—he pointed to the right-hand exit. “And then two down.”

  The crosstown blocks were long. She started walking rapidly and then, tired by the effort, she slowed down. She had never been in this section of the city before. The streets were clean and well-swept, and the houses and stores she passed had a shine and a polish on them. Immediately she thought of Bub leaning out of the kitchen window playing a game that involved the inert dogs sleeping amidst the rubbish in the yard below.

  This was, by comparison, a safe, secure, clean world. And looking at it, she thought it must be rather pleasant to be able to live anywhere you wanted to, just so you could pay the rent, instead of having to find out first whether it was a place where colored people were permitted to live.

  The Children’s Shelter was housed in a tall brick building. And as she approached it, she kept thinking, But it can’t be full of children. She walked up the steps, conscious of a hollow, empty feeling in the pit of her stomach. A uniformed guard stopped her just inside the door.