Ann Petry

by Ann Petry

  Girl Link would marry. Harlot. In my house. I put the pillowcases on his bed by mistake. Saturday morning. Change the beds. I always have, and I had pillowcases for my bed and his bed and I started in his room and I had the bridal pillowcases with the others because I had washed them and ironed them, I do it every three months, linen, kept and not used, yellows, and gets stains on it, hard to get out, sometimes impossible, and I was going to put them back in the linen closet.

  And J.C. was underfoot, he always is and I wasn’t paying any attention to what I was doing because he kept wandering around, as though he were looking for something, and he kept watching me, and it made me nervous, he weaves back and forth like some kind of little animal, in a cage, always under my feet, or he comes and stands and leans against me, all his weight, as though I were a wall or a tree, and he leaning against it for support or protection and so I tried, was hurrying, trying to finish quickly, and he came and leaned against me, almost knocking me down, and then he started wandering around again, and he kept watching me with those inscrutable black eyes, and it made me nervous and he said, “It’s her smell.”

  He’d been saying it for days, and I said, “Whose smell?”

  He didn’t answer me. He said, “You smell it, too?”

  “No.”

  “It’s the printhess. It’s her smell.”

  That made me hurry even faster, not paying any attention to what I was doing, and I must have put the bridal pillowcases on Link’s pillows without noticing, then later I couldn’t find them, and I spent most of the morning, Saturday morning, yesterday morning, looking for them, looking everywhere, and J.C. following me around, and finally I accused him of taking them.

  “I did not,” he said, “you got ’em yourself.”

  “You must have taken them.”

  “Yeah,” he said, finally, and he laughed, and I never saw a young child before who had malice in his eyes and in his laughter. Malice. He said, “I ate ’em all up. I put on season’ and butter and ate ’em all up. Yum-yum,” and made that humming sound he makes when he’s eating, and rocked back and forth just as though he were eating, “I ate ’em pillowcases all up.”

  How do I know he’s in love with her, I knew it the moment I went into that room and saw them lying there naked, because I saw the immorality, the license, the wantonness, but I saw and remembered, just that quickly, their bodies, the perfection, he on his back, one arm extended, so that it was around her shoulders, and she turned toward him, curving toward him, and the young rounded breasts, and he lying there, and the big curve of her hips and the long line tapering down to the knee and then curve again from calf to ankle, small feet, arched feet, with the toenails painted, I think it was not so much the white nakedness of her, not just the shock of finding them there like that, it was the hair, pale yellow hair, not tousled or tangled, but curling about the bare shoulders, pale yellow hair, under his chin, it was the sight of her hair, that pale yellow hair, yellow hair, and Link—Link—

  Yellow hair. Yellow chalk. Writing on the sidewalk early in the morning. Pink, yellow. Decorative, elaborately patterned writing, an adornment and a decoration on the sidewalk. Fog coming in.

  Up until the time of the Major’s death, no situation ever too much. In her what the Major laughingly called the benign persistence of the Jew, laughed, and meant it, though he laughed. She knew the phrase wasn’t his, it came straight from the Governor, who probably laughed when he said it, and meant it, too, just as the Major did. The Major’s death had been too much for her, vanquished by death, beaten by it. Then surmounted it.

  Emptiness. For years afterwards. Sometimes the feeling that he is very close. Nearby. That if I reached out my hand I would find his big strong warm hand. Never again, in anyone, anywhere, that total acceptance, the adoration.

  Dumble Street. What kind of people, Mrs. Cohen crying, Matzos, matzos, two for five. Dumble Street. Christian Sunday School. That nigger woman undertaker from Washington Street. See what she wants. I sets under The Hangman. You fool. You goddamn fool. Get a doctor.

  Fog coming in, blowing in from the river, sidewalk obscured, light from the hall, on the steps, swallowed up by the fog, and somewhere someone laughed, somewhere outside on the street, laughter. Someone standing there, watching and laughing, ripple of laughter, vaguely familiar sound, not the laughter, the tone, the pitch of it, laughing, laughing, laughing. Fog undulating up from the sidewalk, in waves. She had closed the front door, slammed it. Thick sound. Lid on a coffin. Final sound. Deacon Lord’s funeral. A man who loved God. Mean . . . that was Hubborn . . . a great man for gold.

  Link? She would ask him to leave, to live somewhere else. A white girl. In my house. In bed with Link. Tramp of a white girl. Pale yellow hair on the bridal pillowcases. Sweet smell in the hall. In Link’s room. He would bring a tramp into my house. I am a fool. Frances, “Howard’s a fool.” You fool. You goddamn fool. Get a doctor.

  15

  * * *

  HE WAS so damn tired, so damn tired. He never got enough sleep any more. And now someone was trying to wake him up, kept trying to wake him up. The room was full of confused movement, senseless movement. He thought at first that he was in The Hotel in Harlem with Camilo, The Hotel where the elevator jerkrumbled outside the door, all night, where the street music of New York, cacophony of pneumatic brakes, of gears, of sirens, played all night, eight floors down, on 125th Street.

  Then he decided that they weren’t in that suite, on the eighth floor, they were in the lobby, and he was signing the register, Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln Williams, Syracuse, New York, and all this movement, confused, violent movement, was due to the arrival and departure of the hasbeens and the wouldbes who were The Hotel’s patrons. He was signing the register in The Hotel and nobody believed what he wrote, the clerks, the elevator boys, the bellhops. Nobody. Male and female certainly. But not Mr. and Mrs. Anybody. Not from Syracuse, either. New York markers on the car, so from somewhere in New York State. Not Syracuse. From Rabbit Hollow or Sycamore Creek. En route to Shangri-La. Heaven bound.

  But they weren’t in New York. They couldn’t be. He had told her he was too damn tired to drive down and back in that fog and she had said, “I’ll drive. I just drove up. It took me about an hour and a half. Even in the fog.”

  “Not me, honey. You won’t drive me to New York. You drive too fast.”

  “I do not,” quickly, impatiently, blue eyes darkening with anger. Hair-trigger temper all set to blow. Then, “Don’t look at me like that,” imperiously.

  “Like what?”

  “As though you wanted to bite my head off.”

  “It’s a lovely head. I wouldn’t bite it off, ever. I have occasionally wanted to knock it off.” Like right now. When you sound like the lady of the manor ordering a poacher off the place. “In fact, every time I’ve watched you tear off in that crate I have wished that I could get my hands on your head, or some other perhaps more appropriate part, for about five minutes.”

  “For what?”

  “For to teach you not to pass stop lights when they are red, honey. For to teach you to hang on to your temper, too. It would be a very pretty kettle of fish if we both lost, couldn’t find, dropped our tempers, at one and the same time. One of us would get hurt and it wouldn’t be me.”

  “You—” she said, “you—”

  He had kissed her, not letting her talk, pressing his mouth hard on hers, feeling her mouth moving, still trying to form words, trying to protest, and he kissing her, holding her and kissing her, until she stopped trying to talk, and relaxed against him, leaned against him, put her arms around his neck.

  Later, in his room, mouth on his chest, mouth moving against his chest, she had murmured, “Don’t ever leave me,” hair with a shimmer, perfumed hair, under his chin, “I can’t live without you, I love you, love you, love you, oh, Link!”

  They must be in The Hotel because almost every weekend,
since sometime in December, they’d been in The Hotel in New York. Except that Sunday when he waited and waited at the dock, and she didn’t show up, staying away for a week, and then the following week she was there, and he, by then, ready to kill her, swearing to himself that when he saw her again he would throttle her for making him wait, for not calling up, or writing, and when he saw her crossing the street, saw the long lovely legs, the ballerina’s walk, the innocent lovely face, he didn’t even ask her why she stayed away, and she didn’t bother to explain, they were both hellbent on one thing, the same thing, fast, because they couldn’t wait, couldn’t wait. She had said, “Link, put your arms around me. Put your arms around me, hurry,” shivering. Ecstasy.

  There was confused violent motion, in the room, all around him. He couldn’t wake up enough to protest against this unseemly disturbance, whatever it was. Abbie was in the center of the confusion, creating it. She was standing by the bed, leaning over, pushing and pulling at the bed, arms violent, short stout body, violent, long white braids downdangling, violent, too. She’s gone crazy, he thought. I have, too. I’m eight years old again and the Major is dead and Abbie is wearing that Aunt Mehalie dressing gown, not a brack or a break in it, wearing slippers all day long, not brushing her hair any more, letting it hang in two long braids. But the braids should be gray. And they are white.

  So he was dreaming this. She was leaning over the bed, shouting, pushing and pulling, glaring, shouting, not really shouting, her voice was hoarse, muffled, but the effort she put into it, the energy, was like that which produces a shout, it was a kind of hoarse, furious talking, something about her house, and she was waving a newspaper, the black eyes that he had described to himself as valorous, were the eyes of a virago, a termagant.

  “Get out of my house,” she said.

  He sat up, said, “Abbie—don’t.” He thought she was about to attack him, with that rolled-up newspaper, and he pulled the sheet up for protection, because he was half asleep, and moving with the illogic of a dream.

  New York. Had they gone to New York? Where was Camilo? Nightmare. Abbie went out of the room, and then she was back again, still talking in that hoarse muffled voice, which could not produce a shout, she picked up something, bundled it up, and went out into the hall. He caught a glimpse of Camilo. Abbie was pushing her.

  Oh, damn, he thought, what’s the matter with Abbie? What has happened to the censor that sits in her brain, controlling her actions, directing her thoughts. If she were anyone else I would say she was drunk. He found a T-shirt, put it on, pulled on a pair of slacks, stuck his feet in his slippers. The night light was still burning, in the hall. No sign of Abbie anywhere.

  He walked toward the dock, never enough sleep, life filled with crazy women, one back there in the house, and he out here chasing another one through the fog, cold out here, why hadn’t he stopped to put on a jacket, no socks on, feet cold in the slippers, fog in Dumble Street, cold in Dumble Street.

  Camilo had turned on the headlights of the car. She was trying to put on her clothes, shivering, furious, frightened. He helped with stockings, helped with shoes, with slip, with dress, she still shivering, eyes blazing, not saying anything. All cats bee gray? All cats bee crazy.

  They sat there, in that car with its smooth, coldfeeling upholstery, he talking to her, trying to apologize, thinking, Explain Abbie? Impossible. Queen Victoria turned shrew, turned virago. Turned. Changed. Why the fury? Why the violence?

  “It was my fault,” he said. His fault? Whose fault? Why anybody’s fault? How his fault? “I’m awfully sorry.”

  No answer.

  Cold in the car. Fog outside. Fog in the car. He had no coat on. Dumble Street was silent, asleep, closed up for the night. Fog in the street. Fog in him. He was asleep, closed up for the night.

  “I’m awfully sorry,” he repeated. He would have to explain Abbie. But he couldn’t. He’d never been able to explain her even to himself, how explain her to someone else.

  He said, irritably, “Say something.”

  She kept staring straight ahead, hands gripping the steering wheel, refusing to look at him. He thought, You’re in the doghouse, Bud. You’re in the doghouse. Why not stay there? Why not stay there for keeps? He put his hands on her shoulders, forced her to turn so that she was facing him.

  “Camilo, listen to me,” he said.

  “You bastard,” she said, “you knew—you—knew, leave me alone,” turning and twisting under his hands. “That woman, laughing at me, laughing at me,” twisting, turning, pushing him away, “Get out of my car,” voice imperious.

  They all carry eviction notices around with them, typed up, ready to use. Abbie: Get out of my house. Mr. B. Hod: Get the hell out of my face. Camilo: Get out of my car.

  “Let’s fix it up for keeps,” he said savagely. Cold in the car. In love with love? In love with Camilo Williams? Wait for you on the dock, two weeks ago, on a Sunday night, and you not come, when you do show up, you not say anything, you not explain, you not apologize, you bitch, you, you keep me on a seesaw, now up, now down.

  Camilo said, “Let go of me.”

  He tightened his grip on her shoulders.

  “You black bastard,” she said, voice furious. “Let go of me.”

  Something exploded inside his head. I never understood, he thought, I never could quite understand Mr. B. Hod. But I do now. I never could figure out what happens to him, what goes on inside him that turns him into an executioner. But I do now. It is just this. It is an explosion inside his head. Will you marry me? Yes, come spring, and the time of the singing of birds, you black bastard.

  He held her hands, soft hands, usually warm, cold now to the touch, he held the cold hands in his left hand, and slapped her, with his right hand.

  If we were not here, in this car, on Dock Street, I would kill you. Just this way, just by slapping you, just by working on your face. Love. Hate. No one in the USA free—from, warfare, eternal war between the male and the female. Black bastard. White bitch.

  She tried to bite his hand, and he kept slapping her, slapping her, remembering a conversation out of his past:

  Dr. Easter: You’re okay, eh?

  L. Williams: Yes, sir.

  Dr. Easter: Let’s have a look. (pause in the examination and then the sudden question) Who did it?

  L. Williams (unprepared for the question. Dr. Easter had been treating him for three weeks and had asked no questions): Did what?

  Dr. Easter: Beat you with a rawhide whip until he very nearly killed you.

  L. Williams: I don’t know.

  Dr. Easter: I see. I suppose it was a dark night and you were waylaid by four or five total strangers and you can’t identify any of them because you couldn’t see their faces. Or did they wear masks? Where did it happen? Here in The Narrows?

  L. Williams: I don’t remember anything about it.

  Dr. Easter: “Don’t know.” “Don’t remember.” You must have been studying those gangster trials. You mean you’re not telling.

  L. Williams: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  Dr. Easter: A man capable of doing this sort of thing to a sixteen-year-old boy ought to be put in prison. If I were Mrs. Crunch, I would have him arrested. He’s a mad dog. He ought to be locked up.

  Weak Knees (quickly): Sonny’s comin’ along fine, now, ain’t he, Doc?

  Dr. Easter: So we talk about something else, eh?

  Kill you, he thought, just by working on your face. Face that he had dreamed about, held between his hands, kissed, rubbed his cheek against, traced the line of the eyebrows with his fingers. Expressive face. Gay, laughing face. Innocent face. Ruin it.

  He let go of her hands. Got out of the car, slammed the door.

  He stood on the dock, thinking, Bill Hod: I’ll cripple you for life. It was, somewhere, in everybody. It was in Abbie, which shocked him. It was in Link Williams, whi
ch didn’t shock him at all because he had always known it was there. It was in Camilo Williams. You black bastard. Fury rose in him again, and he thought, I ought to go back to that car where you sit shuddering and slap you and keep on slapping you until I have killed you. I can’t live without you. You black bastard.

  Far down Dock Street he heard the putt-putt of Jubine’s motorcycle, like a series of small explosions, coming nearer. Fog over the river, fog over Dumble Street, lapping of the river under the piling, and over it all the sound of Jubine’s motorcycle. The red car was still there, fog obscuring it, but he could see the headlights. Putt-putt of the motorcycle, nearer and nearer. It would be daylight in another hour or so, or what would pass for daylight in this fog.

  He heard her start the motor, and then the grinding sound of a car not in gear, was now though, roaring down the street in first, she’d forgotten to shift, now in second, now in high, she must be doing eighty. “I’ll cripple you for life.” He thought the fury had died in him. It hadn’t. Because he kept thinking, You’ll have to explain it, you’re going to have trouble explaining the way your face looks, to whoever it is you have to explain things to, to whoever it was you were with that Sunday night when you didn’t show up. I wish I had not stopped. Come spring, and the singing of birds. You black bastard. Who did it? I don’t know.