by Ann Petry
He had never been guilty of violent reactions against people, but he found himself referring to Al, mentally, as the Nazi. The Nazi never spoke to him. If Powther had to give him a message from the Madam, the Nazi stared at him with those pale, cold eyes, did not answer, turned his round hardlooking head away.
One morning, the Nazi did not show up when he was supposed to take the Madam to the munitions works. She waited in the hall, tapping her foot, while Powther rang the garage and rang and rang and got no answer.
“Where could Albert be?” the Madam said. “What on earth is the matter with him?”
“I’ll go and see what the trouble is, madam,” Powther said.
Al lived in quarters over the garage. He ran to the garage, climbed up the inside stairs, quickly, knocked at the door of Al’s bedroom, got no answer, and went inside. Al was in bed, eyelids covering the pale blue bulging eyes. He seemed drowsy. He was muttering under his breath.
He touched Al’s forehead lightly. It was hot. He was obviously running a temperature. He looked somehow vulnerable, lying there, pajama coat unbuttoned, thick blond hair covering his chest, a big man with broad thicklooking shoulders, formidable when dressed and on his feet, but diminished now, weaklooking.
He said, “Al, Al. Who else drives?” and had to repeat it, “Al, who can drive for you?”
“Jenkins,” Al said, with an effort.
In a few minutes the limousine was at the door, Jenkins was at the wheel wearing one of Al’s caps. The Madam said, “You managed this so quickly, Powther. Thank you.”
He managed more than that. He nursed Al through a four-day illness and looked after his own work as well, running out to the garage to sponge him off, to give him the liquids and the medicine the doctor had ordered. Al was grateful, he was more than grateful, he insisted that Powther had saved his life.
He said, “Mal, I got to explain to you. I never had worked with a colored feller before. And you was the butler and that meant you was over me. And I didn’t like it. But you’re just like a white man, Mal. That don’t sound right.” He rubbed his forehead. “I mean you’re okay, Mal. You musta knew I didn’t like you but you come in there and looked after me like you was my mother. Anybody ever bother you, you let me know. Anything you ever want, you let me know, Mal. I mean that.”
Ever since then Al had been driving him to the trolley line or all the way home.
They were getting near the small factories now. Workmen were boarding the car; and every now and then a pretty young woman would get on. He liked to watch these little stenographers and typists and bookkeepers. If a workman in overalls with heavy jacket and cap was sitting in a seat, the girls would move along until they found an empty seat, or one occupied by a fairly well-dressed man or another woman. It amused him that they should maintain some sort of class line on a trolley, a class line based on appearance, because the workmen unquestionably earned twice as much as the stenographers. You didn’t see many workmen on the trolleys anyway. Most of them drove their own cars to and from the plants. Al was always suggesting that he buy a car.
“You get yourself a car, Mal, and I’ll keep it in firstclass shape for you. You ain’t even got to buy a new one. I’ll help you pick out a good second. A man oughtta have a car when he lives as far from his work as you do.”
He said, “Thanks, Al. But I can’t afford one.” And maybe for a month or so Al wouldn’t say anything about it.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t afford a car. He could. But if he had one, Mamie would use it, and he would never know where she was, never know. As it was, he often found Kelly and Shapiro and J.C. in the house by themselves. He’d say, “Where’s your mother?” The answer was always the same, “Mamie’s out.”
She liked to go to the movies, and she loved to go shopping but— He sighed, and then frowned, wondering if Mamie was still on a diet. He hoped not.
Once again he reminded himself, as he always did whenever he felt a little low in his mind, that though he was constantly defeated at home, he was a conqueror, a victor, at Treadway Hall. His predecessor at the Hall had been an Englishman, and though he knew he was the equal if not the superior of the Englishman, he also knew that he would have to fight and win a war against the other servants before he was accepted. Mrs. Treadway had never had any colored help, which made it a little difficult at first.
But he had worked for Old Copper, who was just about the richest man in the country. Thus he could, in all truth, look at the Treadway plate, the Treadway porcelain, the Treadway Aubussons and prayer rugs and Persian carpets, the Treadway mahogany with a slightly contemptuous air because he had seen better, handled better, and the other servants knew it. A war of the kind that he was involved in had to be won quickly, and the ammunition consisted largely of a way of looking down one’s nose, and a good stock of stories about the tremendously rich, fabulously rich, families one had worked for.
He won hands down. It wasn’t really a war. Just a skirmish or two. Except, of course, for Al. The housekeeper, Mrs. Cameron, who was Scotch, made it clear that she liked and admired him. She was always saying, “Now, Mr. Powther, that youngest Copper, whatever became of him and the coal miner’s daughter he married. She was Polish, wasn’t she?”
Then Powther, sure of his audience, would tell all over again the world’s favorite fairy story, how Cinderella (twentieth century so she was the daughter of a coal miner) and the prince (youngest son of the richest man in the United States) were married. The housekeeper and the maids, all the female help, would lean forward, listening, listening.
Fortunately, Old Copper was not only rich, he was eccentric too, so that Powther was never at a loss for a good story about his racehorses, his airplanes, his yachts, his adulteries, his private railroad car, his town houses and country houses. Treadway Hall seemed a thin, anemic sort of place by comparison; just the Madam and the one young lady, Miss Camilo, in the family. Then Miss Camilo got married, so that left just the Madam.
Old Copper had five sons. The five sons married big buxom women; and in an age when most women felt they had made the supreme sacrifice if they had one child, let alone two, the women who married Old Copper’s boys had five and six children apiece. So the town house in Baltimore was filled with life, fecund, uproarious life.
The trolley stopped at the corner of Dumble Street. Powther got off. Drummond said, “Good night, Mr. Powther.” Powther said, “Good night, Drummond,” and hurried down the street. He always hurried down Dumble Street, hurrying home to Mamie. Uncertainty urged him on. He was afraid that some time, some night, he would open the door of that apartment upstairs in Mrs. Crunch’s house, and find that Mamie had gone, leaving no note of explanation, nothing, just darkness, silence, emptiness. He could picture himself blundering around in the rooms, searching for a note that he knew he would never find because Mamie was not the kind who would write a note. Writing didn’t come easy to her, and even if it had, she would have preferred the direct contact offered by speech, not the impersonal business of using a pen or a pencil to inscribe an explanation or an apology, or an apologetic explanation, on a piece of paper, thus foregoing the pleasure and the excitement of an explosive violent scene.
And so, hurrying home through this early winter night, darkness already set in, cold in the street, the kind of night when J.C. would be able to “see” his breath, wind blowing straight from the river, blowing the fine rain against his face, cold sting of the rain making him lower his head, he stopped when he got near the house, and looked up toward the windows, to see if they were lighted.
When he saw, through the bare branches of The Hangman, that familiar pinkish light, warm, glowing light, in the windows of that room he shared with Mamie, he knew a sense of delight, of anticipation. He felt as though he could see into the room, see Mamie, laughing, her head thrown back, see all the soft brown flesh waiting for him, see himself laying his head between her breasts, soft, soft, soft, an
d smell the strong sweet perfume she used.
That strong sweet smell came from a stick, a graywhite stick, wrapped in tinfoil, the whole thing encased in a round glass bottle. He loved to watch her uncork the bottle, carefully unwrap the tinfoil, and then smear the stick perfume on her wrists, her elbows, the lobes of her ears, the back of her neck. Everything smelt of it, her clothes, her body, her hair, the sheets and the pillowcases. He could never separate the smell of that perfume from Mamie, the two inextricably entwined; and all he asked in life, really, was—well, not to keep his job, not long life and good health for himself and his family, not sufficient food, or ample clothing, all he asked was that Mamie would, as long as they both should live, let him sleep with her on those nights when he was not at Treadway Hall, let him sleep with her so that he could go down, down, into sleep with the strong, toosweet perfume all around him, tangible assurance of Mamie’s presence.
Now that he had seen the pinkish light in the bedroom windows, he started moving faster and faster, until he was very nearly running when he went up the outside back staircase. In the back entry, he stood still for a moment. He could smell pork chops frying on the stove, thought he could hear the spit-spatter of grease as the chops cooked, could smell kale being cooked.
He opened the kitchen door, stepped inside, and had to shut his eyes for a moment, half blinded by the brilliant light from the hundred-watt bulbs Mamie used in the kitchen; and it was hot, steam came from the open pot where the kale was cooking, bubble, bubble, bubble, smell of kale. Mamie was leaning over, bending over, opening the oven door, yams in the oven, corn muffins in the oven, fragrance issuing from the oven; and over it all the smell of her perfume, strong, heavy, toosweet, overriding the food smells, and he looked at Mamie bent over like that and could hear Old Copper’s big voice, roaring, “Get one with a big ass, Powther, get a big wench with a big ass, and by God, you’ll be happy for the rest of your life,” could see Old Copper slapping his knee, could hear him laughing, and there was Mamie, bent over, and he looked away, because of the desire that rose in him, a sudden emotion, that made him feel as though he were going to choke, and he couldn’t think straight, couldn’t see, he wanted to be on top of her, and he told himself there was a fresh baked cake on the kitchen table, and he heard J.C. whining, “I want cake. I want cake. I want cake.”
Mamie closed the oven door, cuffed J.C. away from the cake.
Shapiro yelled, “Hit him over the head again, Mamie. Give him a good one this time.”
“Ah, shut up, Shapiro,” Kelly yelled back, “you big mouth, you—”
“Whose a big mouth? Whose a big mouth?”
“You—you—you—”
They rolled over on the floor, over and over, clutching at each other, shouting, faces contorted with anger.
Mamie hummed under her breath, turned the pork chops in the frying pan with a longhandled fork, apparently unaware of the noise, the brilliant light, the sound of food cooking, smell of food cooking. She was impervious to it, Powther thought. No, a part of it, not ignoring, but enjoying, liking, the heat, the light, the confusion, the noise, the boys scuffling on the floor, J.C.’s yelps of rage.
Suddenly they were all looking at him, all silent, J.C., Shapiro, Kelly, Mamie. He supposed that he had brought the cold wet air from the street in with him, the darkness of the street, the silence of the street, brought it straight into the hot, brilliantly lighted, filled-with-food-smell, noisy kitchen; and their eyes questioned him, challenged his right to enter this place that was the heartbeat of the house, heartbeat pulsing with heat, sound, life.
Mamie said, “Powther, you sure gave me a turn. Come on in. Come on in and close that door. Supper’ll be ready in a minute.”
He went through the kitchen, down the hall, into the bedroom. He always hurried to get here, inside the house, home, and yet he always felt as though he were an alien, a stranger, strangeness, a sense of strangeness, in the kitchen, here in this bedroom. It was always the same room no matter what the address, the room where a pink-shaded lamp shed warm pink light on the bed, on the table by the bed, on the pink taffeta spread, not too clean. Cupids on the bed.
He put his hat on the closet shelf, hung his overcoat on a hanger in the one closet—a closet jammed full of dresses which were paid for by Bill Hod. His coat would smell of Mamie’s perfume, just as all these dresses did. He got a clothesbrush out of the one drawer of the chest which was reserved for his use, brushed his hat, his overcoat, then rehung them in the closet, and in a petty unreasoning kind of anger, born of what he could not say, he pushed the newestlooking dress from its hanger and watched it fall, in a heap, on the closet floor.
Tomorrow morning, if he had time, he would rearrange the closet before he went to work. Mamie liked having him fix up her clothes. He pressed her dresses, sewed on buttons, repaired the split seams under the arms. He couldn’t leave that dress on the floor of the closet. He reached down, picked it up, shook it out, examined it for split seams, from force of habit. Mamie had put on quite a few pounds lately. Was she still dieting? He hoped not. True she lost weight, but she was so cross, so irritable, when she was dieting, slapping the children, swearing at him, that nobody could stay in the house with her. Two weeks ago, when he was off, he went to the movies and sat there dozing away the hours, those precious hours, of his days off, trying to think of something that would be so good to eat, so appealing, that she’d taste it and then eat it, and would be off the diet. He sat through two shows and then went home, walking warily around the side of the house, going quietly up the back stairs, sniffing the air, thinking that if she was cooking, at so early an hour, in the afternoon, she was still on the diet, still not eating.
When she went on these starvation diets, she seemed impelled to torture herself by handling food, by cooking food that smelled to high heaven. She would sit at the table with a cup of black coffee and a package of cigarettes in front of her, sit there and sip the coffee; and smoke one cigarette after another, and watch them eat, watch forkfuls of the great round crusted roast of beef, and the browned potatoes and the beautiful fresh vegetables and the rich buttery dessert go into their mouths; her eyes followed the course of their forks and spoons from the plate to mouth, mouth to plate, her eyes eating the food with them, her lower lip thrust out, mouth a little open.
He imagined he saw saliva at the corner of her mouth, and would stare, fascinated, knowing that he was imagining it, but knowing, too, that it ought to be there, that the saliva glands were working overtime. Then Mamie would catch him staring and turn her belligerent baleful hungry eyes toward him, and he would look away, eating faster and faster, eating more than his stomach could possibly hold, afraid to stop eating.
It was a horrifying business to come home and find that Mamie was still on a starvation diet that might last anywhere from two days to a month. Once she’d held out for a whole month, a month during which she watched them eat cream puffs, chocolate éclairs, strawberry shortcakes piled up with whipped cream, all the rich sweet fattening food she loved most, while she drank black coffee, and wolfed down some kind of dry hard tasteless crackers.
For a whole month, they tiptoed around her, almost whispering, and she cooked from the time she got out of bed in the morning until she went back to bed at night, using up pounds of butter and quarts of cream and God only knew how much sugar and flour and vanilla. Kelly and Shapiro began to look like small round young pigs being fattened for the kill. J.C. gorged himself to the vomiting stage every night.
Night after night, Powther sneaked out to the corner drugstore for a large dose of sodium bicarb and oil of peppermint, afraid to mix it on the premises, even in the comparative privacy of the bathroom, because Mamie would have smelt the peppermint and known he’d eaten too much and been furious, with that quick unreasoning fury of the starving.
When she was hungry like that she couldn’t sleep. He remembered the tenseness of her, lying there motionless be
side him, flat on her back, as though she did not have the energy to turn over, not moving, tense, stiff, hungry. And he lay there beside her, afraid to touch her.
He had looked forward to this Saturday night, unexpected time off. A cold, rainy night. The kind of night a man needed a woman’s arms around him. And now—
Hot in the house, he thought. Hot in the bedroom. He was sweating. Forehead wet with sweat. He’d get a clean handkerchief, mop his forehead. One of the old handkerchiefs. They were at the bottom of the pile in the top drawer of the chest.
Someone had been in the drawer, had mussed up the handkerchiefs, had put them back every which way. J.C. was getting completely out of hand, he would tell Mamie to get after him. He didn’t ask much but he simply could not, would not, stand having anyone paw through his things. He’d rearrange them. He took them all out, turned the pile upside down, started to put them back, one by one. His hand touched something cold and metallic. He stood on tiptoe, looked in the drawer. There was a cigarette case in there. It had been under the handkerchiefs.
Perhaps it was a present, a surprise, from Mamie. He took it out, wondering why she had given it to him, because he didn’t smoke. He turned it over. There were initials on it. L.W. picked out in brilliants. Who was L.W.? What was his cigarette case doing in this drawer?
He took the case over to the light. He turned it over, moving it back and forth, and the stones that formed the initials flashed, seemed to wink at him. It said Tiffany & Co. on the inside. A gold cigarette case. The initials were formed by small absolutely perfect diamonds. No question about their being diamonds. He used to see Old Copper’s collection. Night after night the old man sat in the library holding a few of the stones in his hand, letting them trickle between his fingers. Old Copper told him about them, told him that finally you got so you could pick out the perfect ones without a glass, but a man ought always to carry a glass with him, just in case, just to verify what his naked eye told him. He went over to the closet, got a jeweler’s glass out of his coat pocket, looked at the stones through it. Oh, yes, absolutely perfect, flawless, small stones. A gold cigarette case initialed in diamonds. L.W.