Ann Petry

by Ann Petry

  “Well, I ain’t going to give it to you. See? You go on now because if I have to get out of my bed to make you stop pulling at the cover, I’ll wear you out. You go on downstairs and see if Crunch’s got anything for your breakfast. You hear? Go on now.”

  He glared at her and she laughed because he looked just like Bill when Bill was being pure nigger.

  “You go on now, J.C.,” she said, still laughing.

  “You got some Kool-Aid, Mamie?” he asked, not moving, still glaring, holding his round hard head on one side.

  “I’ll get you some this afternoon. You go on downstairs and get your breakfast.”

  She listened to the thud, thud, thud of his feet as he went down the hall. He put his feet down hard just like he had planted seeds and was using his feet to tramp them down in the ground. Kids never had any control over their feet. They clumped along just like they were clubfooted. But when he wanted to, he could walk like Bill, just like he was a cat, sneaking up on a robin, and the robin don’t know he’s coming until the cat’s got him between his paws. She pushed the pillows away, lay flat on her back, not asleep, not awake, eyes closed, aware of the sun shining in the room, like something red laid over her eyelids.

  She didn’t intend to do a damn thing all day, just laze around, not even get dressed, not even bother to fix herself something to eat. She’d get herself some coffee pretty soon. Around five or so she’d go over to Bill’s and get a sandwich for herself and have a drink with him. Powther would be home tonight and tomorrow night too.

  But I got to get that Kool-Aid, she thought. I promised it to J.C. And when you promise a kid something he would wear you out until he got it. But a kid could promise you something and forget it just as easy. It didn’t work both ways. Kool-Aid. Crunch got all upset when she saw J.C. licking something off his hand. Crunch saw him shake some powder out of a package, shake it in his hand, and then lick it off, and she had come out in the backyard, head held up high, “Mrs. Powther,” she said, “what’s J.C. taking?”

  I was hanging up the wash and I didn’t know what she was talking about and I said, “Taking?” I thought he’d been stealing some of her things, he don’t exactly steal, he just picks up anything that’s real shiny, anything that looks like it was gold or silver, on account of them dumb fairy stories Powther’s always telling him.

  Crunch said, “Does he take narcotics?”

  I thought she’d gone out of her mind, and then I started laughing because he was standing there in the yard right behind her licking some of that Kool-Aid powder out of his hand, and she must have figured he was sniffing coke and he only three and a half, and I explains it to her and she looked mad and said, “Well, that probably accounts for his tongue being that peculiar bright red. I thought he had some kind of unusual disease. Anyway I shouldn’t think it would be good for him, anything that color couldn’t be good for the inside of his stomach.”

  And I got kind of mad and I shouldn’t have and I said, “Well, Mrs. Crunch, I had three children and they all licked up that Kool-Aid and they’re all in good health and never had no sicknesses and so I would think that would show that it don’t do nothing to the inside of their stomachs. Besides if it did, it wouldn’t be sold everywhere all over this country. And besides I imagine I know more about kids than anybody who never had none.”

  Her head kind of went down, for a minute, and then she held it right up again, and looked at me the way she always does, as though she smelt something bad, and went back in the house. And on the way to the house she must have got mad too, because she banged the door shut.

  Crunch is different from anybody I ever come across. But she is awful good to J.C. I hope she never finds out Bill comes over here so much.

  She opened her eyes, and laughed, lightly, under her breath. He’s a crazy man, Bill is. Two nights ago he come busting in here like all hell was after him, and when he left he looked like an angel, well, a kind of wornout halfgoat angel. He was put together better than any man she’d ever seen, except maybe for Link Williams, and that only because Link was younger.

  Link Williams. She still had that cigarette case. She’d forgotten all about it. It was on a sunny morning, just like this one, and she was lying in bed half asleep, just like now, and the sunlight shifted and changed, flashing almost like lightning across her eyelids. When she sat up, leaning on one elbow, looking around she saw that J.C. was sitting on the floor, by the window, the early morning sun shining on him. He’s cute, she’d thought. He looked awful clean. Powther must have given him a bath. Powther was always fondest of ’em when they were still young enough to need a lot of care. Or maybe Crunch had washed him. Crunch was always washing him.

  J.C. had muttered, “All gold, and the robbers came, bang! bang! You’re dead, you bastid.”

  So he was interested in something that would keep him out of her hair, out of her way, for a long time, and she could lie in bed not moving, half dreaming. The light had flashed again. He was playing with something that glittered in the sun, flashed in the sun. What on earth had he got hold of? She remembered that she had sat all the way up, eyes wide open. He was still talking to himself, turning something around and over, holding it on the palm of his hand, then turning it again so that it glittered and flashed.

  “She was all gold, all gold,” he’d said.

  If she asked him what he had, he’d hide it, behind his back and run out of the room. So she got out of bed and walked right up to him without his hearing her, thinking that when a kid is interested in something he’s just like he’s blind and deaf too. J.C. was holding the glittering object flat on the palm of his hand, and she had approached him so quietly, had picked it out of his hand so quickly, that he was too surprised to move, just sat there, staring at his empty palm.

  When he looked up and saw her, saw that the glittering object was there in her hand, he let out a roar, and threw himself at her, grabbing her around the knees, clawing at her legs, so angry that he couldn’t do anything but holler. Then he had said the same thing over and over again, panting, “Give me dat, dat’s mine, give me dat, dat’s mine.”

  She had pushed him away, “Stop that,” she’d said. “You, J.C., you stop that noise.”

  She had ignored the noise to study the thing she was holding. It was a cigarette case. There was a monogram on it, picked out in brilliants that caught the light, the stones winking in the sun, flashing red, green, blue, yellow.

  “L.W.” she murmured. “Some woman musta give this to Link.”

  How did she know whose it was, right off, like that? Because she had been thinking about him, because she wanted, just once, once would be enough, to try him out. She had turned it over and over in her hands, finally held it flat, on the palm of her hand, just as J.C. had done. Then she opened it, read the fine print, eighteen-carat gold, Tiffany & Co. Not brilliants. Diamonds.

  “Great day in the morning!” she’d said. “Diamonds!” What woman— J.C. had dived at her legs again, nearly knocking her off balance and she reached down and whacked him across the seat. “You J.C., you stop that. You better be glad I’m feeling good, you J.C. you, get up from there,” and she whacked him again.

  “Let me tell you somethin’. You stay outta Link’s room. That’s where you got his cigarette case.”

  J.C. had howled and she had leaned over to give him another whack, and missed him, dropped the cigarette case, and had to race toward it, before J.C. got it, a form of exertion in the early morning which she’d resented, and she put the cigarette case down on the bed, grabbed J.C., and held him and cuffed him.

  “There,” she said, breathing hard from the effort, “that’ll hold you.”

  She remembered how he had sat crosslegged on the floor, silent, his thumb in his mouth, watching her, waiting to see where she was going to put the cigarette case, his glance followed hers as she looked around the room for a good hiding place.

  “Yo
u had your breakfast, J.C.?”

  He shook his head.

  “You go downstairs to Crunch’s. It’s about time she was having herself a second cup of coffee, though it sure surprises me that she should have a weakness like coffee drinking, and she’ll be feeling real good and she’ll give you some leftovers. You run along now.”

  She supposed she shouldn’t have beat on him like that, but sometimes he looked at her just like Bill, and there were times when Bill made her mad but she never’d worked up nerve enough to let him know it, and she supposed that she took it out on J.C. She had followed J.C. to the door, watched him go slowly, reluctantly, down the hall, heading for the front stairs, then she’d locked the door of the bedroom. Sometimes he moved so quiet that he was right in the room with you, standing behind you, and you never knew he was there till he said something. She didn’t intend that he should come creeping back up the stairs and catch her in the very act of hiding the cigarette case. She should have taken it back right then and given it to Crunch but she didn’t feel like listening to Crunch being holy that early in the morning.

  Instead she had decided that some morning she’d wake up feeling so good or so evil that whatever Crunch had to say on the subject of thievery wouldn’t bother her at all. So she had thought, Let’s see, where’s the best place to keep this until I can get it back downstairs where it belongs. Who could have give it to Link? A woman, yes. But what woman? What made me think he was going to sit around on his can somewhere waiting until I could get around to him? And was I going to get around to him? Sure. He was ready, willing, and able and his eyes kind of sparkled whenever he saw her, though he only nodded, very formal, the formal nod was funny because it didn’t match his face, didn’t match the devilment in his eyes when he said, “Good evening, Mrs. Powther.”

  She had tucked the cigarette case under a pile of Powther’s handkerchiefs in the top drawer of the tall chest, and afterwards, stood running her fingers over the fronts, the behinds, of the cupids carved on the handles, smiling, liking the roundness of them. Powther didn’t like the furniture she’d bought. He wouldn’t. He liked things plain, ordinary, and she liked things fancy, dressed up. She had glanced in the drawer, still smiling, at the neatly rolled-up socks, gray cotton socks, black cotton socks, that he washed himself and when they were dry, rolled them up in these little balls. He only had two drawers in the chest. He kept his shirts in the second drawer, shirts done by the Chinaman and taken to the Chinaman every Monday morning, just like clockwork, and picked up every Friday. Powther was always carrying packages, under his arm. Had to have everything lined up in rows, everything folded, even that oldfashioned knit underwear he wore, what’d they call ’em, union suits, even the union suits folded up.

  She’d tried to get him to wear shorts and undershirts like a human being, but, no, he couldn’t get used to the idea, he had to wear those funnylooking things. Bill was the only man she’d ever seen looked good in his underwear, just shorts he wore, and he looked good in them. Link Williams would look good in just his underwear.

  Powther looked kind of like he belonged in a glass case with a label on it when he stepped out of his pants and shirts and stood around in one of those union suits. She always wanted to laugh, had to swallow the laughter, because she wouldn’t hurt his feelings for anything, he was such a funny, serious little man, so she always said, “Come on, honey, hurry up and get in bed,” because she knew if she kept looking at him, she’d start laughing and wouldn’t be able to stop and men couldn’t stand being laughed at.

  She had decided that the top drawer was a good safe place. J.C. couldn’t reach the top drawer and besides there wasn’t anything in there to interest him. And she’d give the cigarette case back to Crunch sometime soon.

  Now she traced the outline of a bunch of grapes on the headboard of the bed, round fat grapes, then looked at her hand. I need to do my nails, she thought. Pretty soon I’ll get up and do my nails and make myself some coffee, and bring it back to bed and drink it. Wonder if Powther made the coffee before he left. Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t. I never ask him about it. He knows I love to laze around in bed, in the morning, drinking coffee, and that I hate to get up and make it, and I got the feeling that when he’s kind of mad at me, why he don’t make the coffee.

  It was late in the afternoon when she got up. She dressed slowly, carefully, spending a long time fixing up her face, studying it in the mirror of the dressing table, turning her head this way and that, thinking, I’ve seen better faces but it’s mine and it ain’t too bad. Then she took the cigarette case out of the top drawer of the tall chest, put it in the pocket of her purple coat. She liked that coat better than any she’d ever owned. It really showed off her figure, and the brass buttons dressed it up, and at the same time let you know that there were some fine breasts underneath that purple cloth.

  If Crunch was out she’d just stick that case somewhere in Link’s room and not say anything about it. She was only kidding herself if she thought there would be any time soon when she could hand that case to Crunch and tell her that J.C. took it, because Crunch would look at her as though she thought she smelt bad and her eyes would shoot sparks, and her back would get like she had a bedpost down it. She wouldn’t give it to Link Williams because men always got mad when people went through their things, and Link looked as though he could pitch one just like Bill, he looked like Bill, younger, browner, but the eyes and the walk and the stayonyourownside of the street expression exactly the same.

  She was dressed and ready to go out of the room, and she thought, Powther don’t like to have people go through his things either. So she spent about ten minutes lining Powther’s handkerchiefs up in neat piles, all the edges even, smiling and humming under her breath as she worked. “There,” she said when she finished, “I bet I could learn the Army something about putting things in piles. Powther couldn’ta done a better job himself. Real pretty.”

  She went straight across the street to The Last Chance with the cigarette case still in the pocket of the purple coat because she heard Crunch moving around in the kitchen, rattling pots and pans. She thought, Well, I’ll get a drink and a sandwich and then go downtown and buy myself a pair of green suede shoes, high heels, open at the toes and the heels, sandals, really, and a red-and-white-striped dress, a silk one, because spring’s on its way, I can feel it in the air, it’s still cold but the air smells fresh, and I need some new clothes anyway. By the time I get back Crunch may have gone out.

  At first glance, there wasn’t anyone in the place but Bill. He was standing behind the bar looking as evil as Satan. Then she saw that Old Man John the Barber was in there too, sitting at one of the tables, crouched over a glass of beer looking as though he hated himself. He had a fixed scowl between his bushy eyebrows, and his beard always had a kind of stuckout look, as though he kept thrusting his jaw out, and so the beard stuck out too. She nodded to Barber, said, “Hi, babe,” to Bill.

  “You want a drink?” Bill said.

  “Yeah. A long cold drink.”

  Weak Knees stuck his head out from the kitchen door. “You want me to put a record on, Mamie? I got a new one that’ll send you.”

  “Sure.”

  Weak Knees put the record on, and went back to the kitchen.

  She didn’t pay any attention when the street door opened because the drink was good, cold in her mouth, slow warmth seeping through her veins, and the record on the jukebox was better than anything she’d ever heard, not too fast, not too slow, and the bird doing the singing had a sweet kind of voice, it had a lilt in it, and she wondered who he was because most of them couldn’t sing, they messed a song up, but this one was really singing, it was like being in bed, stretched out, waiting, because something good was about to happen, something very good and very wonderful. Like Bill Hod.

  She never looked at Bill’s customers anyway. They were a rough hungry crew, not good to look at, not good to liste
n to, dockhands and cooks off the oil barges, hunkies and Swedes and sometimes a foreign nigger off a river tramp, an old tramp loaded down so heavy that she really wasn’t safe any more, sitting too low in the water, and the guys looked and sounded as though they’d come right off a tramp, not too clean, wanting to drink fast, get a load on fast, get a woman fast. But she turned and looked toward the door because Bill’s expression had changed, not his expression, his eyes, they narrowed down until they were slits, and she felt a funny kind of thrill run all through her, a kind of tingling, because she was afraid of him when he looked like that, afraid of him and more nearly in love with him than at any other time, when he got that got-you-cornered-trapped-beat-you-to-death look in his eyes. And he couldn’t cover it up. He could keep his face perfectly still but not his eyes.

  She turned to see who had come in through that big door that should make Bill look like that and saw a girl, a white girl in a mink coat. She was looking for someone, not Bill, because she glanced at him and then looked away, looked along the length of the bar, glanced at the tables, at Old Man John the Barber, and then toward the back. Weak Knees had come out of the kitchen and was standing near the jukebox. He started that creepy motion of his hand, and she couldn’t hear him say it but she could tell by the way his lips moved that he was saying, “Get away, get away, Eddie. God damn it, get away from me.” Then he ducked back into the kitchen.

  This was Link’s girl, the girl with the yellow hair, girl with a mink coat, the one that Crunch pushed down the front steps, and she felt laughter well up inside her, all over again, and told herself sternly, Don’t start laughing again because you’ll never be able to stop, you’re such a fool you’ll never be able to stop. Besides, why should a white girl have Link Williams? When you thought about all the white men there were for this girl to climb in bed with it wasn’t fair that she should cheat some colored girl out of the chance to go with him.

  The girl acted as though she were going to turn around and go out, she looked around as though she couldn’t make up her mind, and then she walked right up to the bar and said, “Scotch and soda.”