by Ann Petry
Finally, he went to New York and registered with a highclass employment agency, explaining optimistically that he was going to get married, that his fiancée preferred to live in Connecticut. The Treadway job was offered to him and he went to Monmouth for an interview. He explained to Mrs. Treadway that his wife preferred not to live on the premises. Though he was certain Mamie would have gentlemen callers, he did not intend to have the Treadway chauffeur, cook, gardener included in their number. It would make for an impossible situation, all of them being white. Before he went back to Baltimore he rented an apartment for Mamie in the colored section of Monmouth. It wasn’t what he wanted but it would do until he could locate something better.
When he told Old Copper that he was leaving, the old man let out one of those roars that made people jump back from him, startled, awed.
“Whatsamatter?” he bellowed. “I’ll raise your pay. Is that the trouble? You want more money? You want more money?”
“No, oh, no, sir. It’s just that I’m getting married.”
“You are? Good God!” Old Copper looked at Powther half questioningly. “Has she got a big—”
Powther said hastily, “My fiancée don’t like Baltimore, sir. The only way I can get her to marry me is to offer her the chance to live in Connecticut.”
Old Copper snorted, “Connecticut! Of all the godfosaken swampy places to live,” he shuddered. “It’s got the goddamndest climate, the goddamndest weather in the whole United States. They got drought in August, flood in MarchApril, hurricanes in the fall, winds howlin’ down the chimneys all winter long. The goddamndest—I know what I’m talkin’ about, Powther. I was born there.” He sighed, sank deeper in the leather chair. “When you leavin’?”
“In three weeks.”
“I’ll give you a weddin’ present, Powther. Bring her around before you leave and I’ll give you a weddin’ present. And if those goddamn farmers you’re goin’ to work for in Connecticut don’t treat you right, you come back here and I’ll pay you twice what they been payin’ you.”
Powther nodded, thinking, I may never go to Monmouth. I may be wrong about Mamie Smith. He stayed away from her until the day before he was to leave, stayed away for three weeks, hoping that she would wonder about him, miss him, become aware of the disorder in which she lived without him.
When he finally went to see her, he carried two big packages of food with him. He walked through that shabby downattheheels crooked street where she lived, thinking, Too many people, too many dogs, too many smells. Spring of the year but already hot. Heat waves rising from the sidewalk, nearly naked children toddling down the street, crawling up and down the highstooped steps in front of the houses.
He would tell her about spring in Connecticut, about the dogwood and the laurel, about the smell of the river, the curve of the river, sunlight on the River Wye, about the grass, and the birds, the pigeons that strutted on every available patch of grass, about the friendliness of the people, about how clean Monmouth looked, how the houses, many of them, were painted white and the blinds were green, so that even though it was a city, it looked like a toy city compared to Baltimore with its dingy streets and its gray old buildings.
He wondered what Mamie had been doing these past three weeks while he had been completing his carefully thought out campaign. Had he made himself indispensable? He soon found out that in one way he had, and in another, perhaps more important way, he hadn’t. The bleak furnished room that he had turned into a colorful, rather luxurious, one-room apartment was in a state of dreadful disorder. He took off his coat, rolled up his shirt sleeves and set to work, washing dishes, making the bed, cleaning the room.
She must have been going to the movies rather often because there were innumerable stubs of tickets from the colored theatre, on the floor, on top of the chest of drawers. She hadn’t bothered to fix a decent meal for herself because there wasn’t a scrap of food in the icebox. She’d had a caller, or callers, there were six empty beer cans on the floor, and she didn’t drink beer; two empty whiskey bottles, and several sticky glasses and innumerable empty ginger ale bottles. He found a man’s socks, large size, loud red and green stripes, medium-priced, under the bed. Indispensable? For some things. Not needed for companionship though. He held the socks in his hand, wondering, conjecturing, and then tossed them into the dustpan with the rest of the rubbish.
He had set the table, one of his gifts, a card table, very expensive, actually a folding table, heavy, unshakable, and the steak was just about ready to serve when Mamie came home from the restaurant where she worked.
She had a parcel under her arm, wrapped in brown paper, almost the color of the brown dress she wore. No stockings. No hat. Perspiration on her forehead. She looked hot and tired and so beautiful, so big and beautiful, that he swallowed twice, in an effort to get rid of the lump that rose in his throat. He didn’t say anything to her because somehow he couldn’t.
“Powther!” she said, pleasure in her voice. “My God! Ain’t it hot!”
She looked all around the room, looked longest at the table set for two, at the white tablecloth, the carefully folded napkins, made no comment. He watched her cross the room, sit down in the chair by the front window, slip her feet out of her shoes, and then he turned back to the stove, stuck the French bread in the oven, served the plates, poured wine in the wine glasses.
She ate in silence, ate with a relish that made him wish he hadn’t stayed away so long. She must have been hungry. He watched her with a tender, yearning feeling, and thought, surprised, That’s the way mothers feel about their children. She ate four of the pastries he’d brought with him, drank coffee, and then nibbled at the white grapes.
“Powther,” she said. “I haven’t eaten a meal like this since the last time you was here. Where’ve you been?”
He leaned forward, grasped the edge of the table. “I’ve been getting a new job. In Monmouth. A small city in Connecticut. I’ve got an apartment there. And all you’ve got to do is to say the word, just say the word, and you can go with me. I leave tomorrow.” He opened his wallet, took out two railroad tickets. “One’s for you and one’s for me.”
“I couldn’t,” she said. “It was right sweet of you to get the ticket for me but I haven’t got a job in Monmouth. I’ve tried and tried to save the money so I’d have enough to tide me over but I haven’t got ten dollars to my name and that’s the God’s truth.”
“That’s just it,” he said eagerly. “You won’t need any job. I thought, well, will you marry me? I earn enough money to more than take care of both of us.”
She threw her head back and laughed. “You’re a funny little man,” she said. “Here I been thinkin’ I’d done something to hurt your feelings and you been away makin’ plans.” She was silent for a moment. “Suppose I said no?”
“I—” he began, and stopped. What would he do? He’d die. That’s what he’d do. He couldn’t live without her. “I’d—I’d just turn the unused ticket in when I got to the station tomorrow afternoon.”
“You mean you’d go anyway? Without me?”
“I have to,” he said. “I have a job there. I have to go.”
She looked around the room again. He wished, afterwards, that she had looked at him, appraised him, studied him, but she didn’t. She looked at the room, at the stove, at the table, at the chairs he’d bought, at the comfortable bed. He supposed she was weighing the comfort and luxury, the good food, the cleanliness, against the disorder and discomfort of the past three weeks. He knew that people got accustomed to luxury very quickly, accepting it finally as their due, and no matter what strain and struggle, what utter poverty they may have known, they soon forgot it, they soon reached the point where they could not survive whole without comfort, luxury. It softened them up. He knew that. He had used it to win Mamie with, but he couldn’t help wishing that he, as a person, had been the one important factor in her decision.
> Picking up one of the tickets, she started humming under her breath. “I’ll wear that new navy hat,” she said. “And that new navy suit because it’ll be cool up there and I’ve got some new navy suedes and I’ve got a big red pocketbook that’ll go good with it. Let’s see, what time’s this train go anyway?” She frowned at the ticket, examining it.
It was as simple as that, as quick as that. He couldn’t quite believe it, even while he packed her things, and made arrangements to have a moving van pick up the furniture.
On their way to the railroad station, the next day, they stopped to see Old Copper. He stared at Mamie a long time and to Powther’s great discomfort, Mamie stared right back.
“You done well, Powther,” Old Copper said. “If I was younger I’d give you a run for your money.” Then he got out of the big leather chair, in the library, sat down at his desk, wrote a note, made out a check, put the note and the check in an envelope, and handed it to Powther. He handed the envelope to Powther, but he kept looking at Mamie, staring at Mamie, and Mamie was staring right back. Powther felt more and more uncomfortable, embarrassed.
Old Copper said, “Well! Good luck!” and shook Powther’s hand, and patted his shoulder and said, again, “If them goddamn farmers you’re goin’ to work for don’t treat you right, you come straight back here.”
He followed them to the door, and once outside Powther looked back and Old Copper was still staring at Mamie, watching her go down the steps, and he knew a sudden rush of sheer maleness such as he had never felt before, suddenly hated the old man because of his wealth, the whiteness of his skin, wanted to go back and punch him in the jaw. When Old Copper saw Powther looking at him, he closed the door suddenly.
While Mamie was in the ladies’ room, on the train, he opened the envelope. Old Copper’s check was for a thousand dollars, and the note, written in that bold heavy hand, sounded as though the old man had spoken to him:
Watch what I tell you. Someday she’ll leave you for another man. If you’re ever broke, ever need a job, ever need anything, just let me know, because God damn it, Powther, there’s nobody else in the world can look after me like you done.
He was tempted to tell Mamie, after all they were married now, that he had to go back to Old Copper, that now that he had left, he knew he couldn’t stand a new place, new people. And there was, too, the old man’s warning, “She’ll leave you for another man.” In a new place it was much more likely to happen than in Baltimore.
It was all a dreadful mistake. He had spent money like a millionaire and his bank account had practically vanished. But he had Old Copper’s check. That would serve as a stake, a kind of cushion against disaster. He folded the check and put it in his wallet, tore the letter into tiny pieces and thrust the pieces far under the seat.
Mamie came swaying down the aisle, swaying partially because of the motion of the train, but also because it was the way she walked. And he thought, Well, I can’t go back to Old Copper’s, not with Mamie. They had looked at each other, stared at each other, just as though they were testing each other out, as though they had immediately recognized some quality they had in common and were instantly defiant, instantly jockeying for position for some final test of strength.
He knew that he would have rivals, knew that he would find gentlemen callers in his house, but he could not, would not, make it possible for Old Copper to be included among them.
And now as he lay in this bed, beside J.C., turning and twisting, in vain, wasted effort to avoid the child’s knees, elbows, head, he asked himself if he regretted that decision he’d made on the train. Should he have gone back to Old Copper? More important still, was it a mistake, the whole thing? Wouldn’t he have been better off if he hadn’t married Mamie? No. He had never known such delight as he had experienced with Mamie.
J.C. moved for the millionth time, turning over, and then inching up in bed. He put his arm around him thinking to restrain his movements, and J.C.’s head caught him under the chin, hard, heavy, the impact was such that Powther thought his jaw was broken, then that he had cracked his bridge, but he had only bitten his tongue, viciously, painfully. It felt swollen and he lay there, pain along the edge of his tongue, moving it back and forth cautiously, exploratively, expecting to feel a gush of blood at any moment. J.C. muttered darkly to himself, under his breath. Kelly and Shapiro echoed his mutterings. They were talking in their sleep, repeating words, phrases. Then they turned over, sighed, groaned, kicked the covers off. He could hear their feet rejecting the covers, getting free of the covers.
I will never get to sleep, he thought. And I have to be at the Hall early tomorrow morning. He heard the clang-clang of the last trolley that went up Franklin Avenue. It seemed like a long time after that that the lights went off in The Last Chance. This room in the front of the house became suddenly darker, the pinkorange light from the neon sign went out suddenly; and just before it went out, there was a little eddy, a gust of talk in the street below, suggesting wind, eddying, gone, as the last of the beer drinkers, and the seekers after Nirvana, left The Last Chance, heading reluctantly toward home.
The Last Chance. The Last Chance. Last chance to do what? Get a drink? Burn in hell? Look at Bill Hod?
He sat up in bed, listening. He thought he heard footsteps in the hall, then the click of a lock. He really couldn’t tell, not in this room with its restless sleepers.
Getting out of bed, he covered J.C. carefully, closed the door of the boys’ room behind him, and went down the hall, slowly, quietly, in his bare feet, the floor cold to his feet. He stood outside the door of the bedroom, listening, and he thought he heard Bill Hod’s voice. But he wasn’t certain. He couldn’t see anything except a thin thread of pinkish light under the door.
The thread of pinkish light disappeared from under the door and there was silence, no sound at all, nothing, just the darkness and the cold floor under his feet. He stood there waiting for some further sound. There was nothing at all, no sound of voices, no movement. Silence.
He went back down the hall, opened the door of the boys’ bedroom, and got in bed with J.C., refusing to think about what he thought he’d heard, thinking instead, I will not sleep on that damn sofa in the living room, I will sleep in a bed, a rightful bed, even if I cannot rest. I am not a refugee. I have a right to a bed. I work all day and half the night, and come home to—Bill Hod? Link Williams? Cigarette case incrusted with diamonds.
At five o’clock the next morning he was dressing in the living room. The boys were good for another two hours at least. While he was putting on his shoes, he thought he heard the thud-thud of the percolator in the kitchen, was certain that he smelt coffee. But he didn’t know how to greet Mamie this morning, so he finished dressing and then went down the hall. The bedroom door was open, the room was empty.
Mamie called from the kitchen, “You up already, Powther? Set the table for me, will you? Mebbe we can eat without them starvin’ Armenians sittin’ in our laps.”
He decided that he must have dreamed that business last night, had a nightmare, a night horse, as his father used to say. She was so gay this morning, her eyes sparkled, her lips kept curving into a smile, and she sang as she turned the bacon in the frying pan, cooked the pancakes.
“Soup’s on,” she said. He thought even her voice was lovelier this morning, there was more music in it than ever. And she was off the diet. She ate everything in sight.
When they finished eating, she leaned back in her chair, sighed and lit a cigarette. “Let’s leave the dishes,” she said. “And go get back in bed. It’s too early for any poor black sinners to be up.”
He nearly tripped over his feet getting there, and later, he went to sleep, relaxing into sleep, easily, quickly, contentment seeping all through him, so that he smiled in his sleep, aware just before he slid down into the total darkness, the blackout, the delicious oblivion of sleep that Mamie’s soft warm naked body was pressed tig
ht against him, and the strong sweet perfume was all around him, like a cloud.
When he woke up he looked around the room, trying to remember where he was, and how he got there, and then he smiled, remembering. He sat up in bed and saw that Mamie was up, and getting dressed.
She always put her shoes on first, she never wore any stockings in the house, and now she was leaning over, back turned, putting on a pair of green highheeled sandals. He liked to tease her about putting her shoes on first, telling her that she must have been born in the South, must have been a little barefoot pickaninny, and then she finally acquired a pair of shoes, sign of prosperity, mark of distinction, that set her apart from the rest of the black barefoot tribe, so precious a possession that she slept with them under her pillow, her hand resting on them, like an old-time prospector with a small bag of gold dust never out of reach of his hand. When she woke up, she felt under her pillow for her shoes, and then got up, and put them on, just as she was doing now.
He changed the story each time he told it, changing the emphasis, changing the details, embellishing it, sometimes the shoes were scarlet, sometimes they were gold, sometimes she lost them and could not find them, but always on the morning when she first got them, she went around singing, “All God’s chillun got shoes.”
Mamie straightened up and the new story about the first pair of shoes went out of his mind. She was shaped almost like a violin, like the base of a violin, big beautiful curve, and as she turned toward the bed, he thought, If she were standing inside a frame, naked like that, with that look of expectancy on her face, all the museums in the world would sell their Da Vincis and their Manets and their Rubens in order to own this one woman.
He said, “Mamie.”
“Powther!” she said. “You awake? Here I been tippin’ around—” She crossed over to the bed, sat down on the side of it, put her arms around him, hugged him close to her, and kissed his cheek.