by Ann Petry
She drank it fast. She kept turning her head toward the window. Mamie wondered why. You couldn’t see nothing out of the window, nothing but Dumble Street, the front of Crunch’s house, the knocker on the door, well you knew it was there, you couldn’t really see it in this halflight, even though Crunch kept it polished up like it was gold, and the front steps and the iron railing. Those steps made her think of Baltimore where the front steps were painted white, and the housemaids scrubbed them down every morning. That’s what she did when she was eighteen, scrubbed down the steps every morning, and a white guy used to be going by when she was down on her hands and knees, she used to know it was him, because he’d start whistling “Yankee Doodle” when he got near that house where she worked, whistling and laughing, and she laughed, too, because she figured she looked like an elephant all turned up to the street like that, scrubbing away at steps that would be dirty before nightfall, and finally they got so they kind of talked to each other and she got tired of doing those same steps every morning, and she went and lived with him and stayed for three years.
She didn’t know what made her think about him, it was a long time ago, he was a conductor on some railroad line, and she didn’t even remember now how they came to break up.
The girl was still looking out of the window. Nothing to see, except Crunch’s front steps and that iron railing on each side of the steps, looking at it from here if you half closed your eyes, it looked like a cock, repeated over and over, though nobody else would probably think of it but her.
“Fill it up, please,” the girl said.
Mamie looked at the girl sharply, thinking, She’s got half a jag on. I can tell by her voice—sounds like she’d swallowed a lot of fuzz. And she’s hanging around here looking for Link. They must have broke up. She reached in her coat pocket for a package of cigarettes and her fingers touched something cold, hard, not cigarettes. What did I put in my pocket, you mean to say I come out without no cigarettes and if there’s anything Bill hates it’s to have me bum some from him, he’s pure nigger about ’em. No, I’ve got ’em, a full pack. But what else? The cigarette case. She’d forgotten all about it. She was going to put it in Link’s room only Crunch was home and it was still in her pocket—and she felt kind of funny about its being there, because this girl must have given it to him—and the girl was looking straight at her—
Weak Knees stuck his head out through the swinging door in the back. The record had stopped playing and he said, louder than he would have, but he must have thought the record was still going, and he had to make himself heard, “Say, Mamie, you wanta ham sandwich, like I make for you and Link, what you say, Mamie, you wanta ham sandwich?”
The girl’s face crumpled up. Why she must be in love with Link, Mamie thought, in love with him, I thought she was just fooling around with him, I ought to say something, I ought to explain about what Weak just said. He talks so dumb sometimes. He made it sound like me and Link are always in here together eating ham sandwiches and it wasn’t like that. One afternoon I came over to get a drink and Link was in here, behind the bar, and Weak made a sandwich for me and Link said it looked so good he’d have one and he went out in the kitchen and as far as I know he ate it out there.
“You wanta ham sandwich like the kind I make for you and Link?” Weak Knees repeated.
“Sure,” she said, and she knew that her voice sounded funny and that she had a funny look on her face. But the girl was still looking at her, just as though she could see right in the pocket of the purple coat, see that gold cigarette case in there, and Weak talking simpleminded like that.
“How much do I owe you?” the girl said.
Bill said, “Three-fifty.”
“Three-fifty?” the blurred, fuzzy sound of her voice was awful. “Why—” The girl didn’t finish whatever she was going to say. She laid a five dollar bill down on the bar, a brandnew five dollar bill. Bill laid the change down, almost absentmindedly, and Mamie wondered if he had deliberately selected that dirty crumpled dollar bill out of all the bills in the cash register, anyway he laid it down with an absentminded air, along with fifty cents.
The girl picked up the bill and put it in her pocketbook, her fingers poking at it, as though she really didn’t want to touch it, and left the fifty cents on the bar.
She wanted to say, For Christ’s sake, honey, pick it up, don’t leave a tip, can’t you look at him and tell he’s not the kind you tip, he’s got all the earmarks of being about to pitch one, pick it up, honey.
Bill picked up the fifty cents, put it in his pocket.
She glanced at the girl again. She looks sick. She looks half out of her mind. And she’s pretty, she’s pretty as a movie star. I never felt that way, not even about Bill. I don’t think I could. He’s a good guy and all that but, they all got the same thing between their legs and they’re all hellbent on handing it around, one way or another, and there’s none of them I’ve ever seen that I’d go looking for, not even Bill.
She watched the girl’s slow progress toward the door. There ought to be something I could say. Well, why don’t I say it. I could call her back and tell her it wasn’t the way it sounded but did the girl remember me, remember me? Fog. Fog so thick the street lights couldn’t cut through it. Dumble Street quiet except for the sound of the foghorn. Crunch’s front door open, light from the hall reaching a little way out into the fog, and Crunch pushing this same girl down the steps. Fog outside. Fog. Crunch pushing the girl down the steps, white girl in a mink coat, nothing under it and I laughed because I couldn’t help it, laughed because of the look on Crunch’s face.
Crunch was standing in the hall, in a nightgown and felt slippers and an old gray bathrobe, hair in braids, white braids, that fell forward as she leaned over to give the girl a final push, saying “Out of my house, get out of my house.” And I stood there, laughing, laughing, laughing because Crunch looked the way a person would look if they woke up in the middle of the night and found a tiger in one of the beds, and then Crunch threw some clothes out of the door, and stood there, peering out, looking down at the sidewalk. Then the door slammed and the girl put her shoes on and I stopped laughing because it was cold enough to get pneumonia and the girl was shivering and shaking and I remembered how the girl’s face looked there in Crunch’s front hall, in the light, and I could tell she’d never been thrown out anywhere, never, not anywhere.
She cleared her throat, “Say, miss—” she began, voice too husky, voice too low in pitch to carry, voice too soft to reach the girl’s ears, knowing it, even as she said it, and not raising the pitch, not increasing the volume.
So that the girl kept going straight ahead toward the door, was through the door. I could catch her outside on the sidewalk and tell her that Weak just talks backwards. Girl walking up Dumble Street now, head up, back as straight as Crunch’s.
She was hopped up like a cokie, I could tell by her eyes, by the size of the pupils, by the way her mouth was trembling, everything would seem bigger, louder, sounds, smells, the feel of things, everything outsize. Light would hurt her eyes. She probably heard something in my voice that wasn’t there, so she’s sure I’m gone on Link, and he on me. How do I know that? Tell by looking at her, tell by the way her face crumpled up when Weak was talking about me and Link eating ham sandwiches. She believes Link and I—I ought to go catch her and tell her. Aw, she’s white. It’s no skin off my back.
“Give me another drink, Bill. And where’s that ham sandwich?”
They’ll straighten it out, Link and the girl. A rich white girl. She don’t need no help. Link musta laid it on her for keeps. I always heard once a white girl got herself a colored feller she wouldn’t give him up, got a perpetual heat on for him, followed him around.
“Where’s Link, anyway?” she asked.
“Canada. For two weeks.”
“In this weather?” Smell of spring in the air, or maybe she just thought so because she w
anted some new clothes, but it was cold out and there was plenty of snow still on the ground.
Bill shrugged. “Maybe he’ll get cooled off. In a snowbank.”
Canada, she thought. He must have had a heat on, too.
Bill said, “Somebody ought to tell that little white bitch to stay away from here. She’s been in here five nights straight now.”
“I told him,” Weak Knees said. He put the sandwich down on the bar. “I said to him if a man’s got to have a piece of white tail then he oughtta go live in some other country, some country where they don’t give a damn about such things. Get away, Eddie, get away,” he made a nudging movement with his elbow.
Old Man John the Barber gave a prefatory grunt, lifted his head, glared toward the door, “Tell her to go do her huntin’ in her own part of town, Bill. Tell her to stop stinkin’ up the place with perfume. Tell her to stop haulin’ her long hot lookin’ legs in and outta that car out in front of here. Who’s she think she is?”
Mamie listened, thinking, She’s got them talking to themselves just like a bunch of old women. Not one of them is listening to the other. I come in here for a quiet drink, nicest part of the day, and I got to run straight into the tailend of somebody else’s hurricane and if there is anything I can’t stand it’s a whole lot of mess about who is sleeping with who as though it made any difference to anybody.
“What’s Link doin’ in Canada?” she asked. The place has a creepy feel, like being in the house on a night when it rained and you had to stay home, by yourself, for some reason, and the radio wouldn’t work, and you sat around listening to the rain as it hit the windows. Creepy.
“Tryin’ to break his neck on some damn ski jump,” Bill said, still looking out of the window.
“What’s he want to do that for?” she asked, just to keep some talk going about something other than that white girl with her face all collapsed, pretty girl, too. And young.
Barber lifted his head again. “He’s just one of them young squirts that’s got to try out different ways of breakin’ his own neck, got to keep tryin’ to find out will it break. Tell by lookin’ at him and listenin’ to him. Tell by all that fancy talk he does. Talks so you don’t know what he means because he’s still tryin’ to find out will his neck break. If he keeps talkin’ that stuff to me I’ll help him find out what he wants to know, I’ll show him that his neck—”
Mamie thought, Let me get the hell out of here before they start fighting with each other. She said, “Did you ever try breakin’ yours, Barber?”
“Not since I was sixteen. You only try out different ways of breakin’ it when you’re young and the hookworm hustle keeps you runnin’.”
“You ain’t old, Barber,” Weak Knees said.
“Nine years older’n God,” the old man mumbled and picked up his glass of beer.
It was Weak Knees who started on the white girl again. He said, “Any brokedown whore’ll give a man a better time. No complications. I told him that, I said, Name-a-God, Sonny—”
Mamie left, left before she’d buttoned up the brass buttons on the purple coat and had to button it up outside, standing on the sidewalk, wind from the river blowing around her neck, thinking again, She’s got them talking to themselves just like a bunch of old women, I wish I hadn’t, oh, well.
Crunch was still home. She heard her moving around downtairs, heard her talking to somebody, heard J.C.’s voice, answering her. I’ll leave the case in my coat pocket and put it in Link’s room some day soon, when she’s out.
Old Man John the Barber had said, Who’s she think she is? He came nearer to saying the right thing than the other two. I’ll fix Powther something special for his supper, and where are those little devils, Shapiro and Kelly. I bet they’re sitting in the movie house. Well, they got to do somep’n to pass the time.
When she lit the oven in the kitchen, she started moving with a deftness and speed that could only have come from long practice. Late as it was, by the time Powther and the boys got home, supper would be ready and the table set, just as it would have been if she had been the kind of housewife who planned her meals long in advance and stayed home working in the kitchen all day.
“Oh, Jesus,” she said suddenly, “I gone and forgot J.C.’s Kool-Aid.” She put on the purple coat, ran down the backstairs, laughing at herself, moving so fast that the long full skirts of the coat whirled about her legs.
18
* * *
HE INSERTED his key in the front door of Number Six Dumble Street, put his bags down in the hall. It was good to be back. Two weeks on a long slope of mountain was enough. After two weeks of snow, gleaming like mica in the sun, shadows of trees bluepurple on the snow, wind, coldhot, like a cat-o’-nine-tails across the face, it was good to be in a house that was warm inside, that smelt of floor wax and lemon oil; good to be where the gleam of a goldheaded cane, shine of a silk hat, hung on a hatrack just inside the door, set the tone, prepared you, for the spitandpolish look of the hall, the big curve of the winding staircase, smallscale repetition of the curve in the legs and backs of a pair of Victorian chairs.
Abbie said, “Who is it?” There was a tremor in her voice. “Who’s there? Is there someone there?”
He thought, embarrassed, I came in here like a homing pigeon. I just plain forgot that I don’t live here any more—not since that night—
“It’s me, Miss Abbie,” he said. He went toward the sitting room, thinking, It’s all there in her voice, the fear of robbers lurking under the beds, the fear that hordes of Mongolians (though I never knew why Mongolians or why they should always attack in hordes) will appear suddenly at the windows, the expectation of disaster that makes her hide the silver butter dish, and the silver cake basket, the one with the grapes on it, if she’s going to be away from home more than an hour or so. It’s the thing that makes her check the doors and windows, at least three times, to make certain that they’re closed and locked.
Once she lost the front doorkey and sent me hightailing over to Franklin Avenue to get Penfield the carpenter, in the hope that he could jimmy a lock somewhere, so we could get back inside the house. Penfield kept tapping a screwdriver against his overalls, as he walked around the house, trying doors and windows, muttering, “Got it locked up like it was a fort.” Then he turned to me and said, “Say are you sure she’s married, she’s got this place bolted up just like an old maid bolts up a place.” He tried another window, in the back. “Christ,” he said, “anybody’d think she kept gold bricks in the cellar. Old maids keep the houses bolted up because they’re always scared of rape, even when they’re ninety, got it on their minds. But you say she’s married. Must be she keeps gold bricks.”
She was sitting on the narrow Victorian sofa, in the sitting room. J. C. Powther sat beside her. There was a card table in front of them, books and paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen, on the table. She must have been teaching him something, or trying to. What a game old girl she is, sitting there dressed up like a duchess, in that gray dress, darker gray leaves printed on it, white hair piled on top of her head, head up in the air, and a gold necklace around her neck, and that little street urchin right beside her, and she scared out of her wits but it only showed in her voice, no trace of it in her eyes.
“Link!” she said. “You’ll never know how much I missed you.” There was still a faint tremor in her voice. “I thought I heard somebody come in, but I wasn’t certain. Ever since that night—” her voice slowed, faltered, “that night you left,” she said, voice firm now, “I’ve been hearing a key turn in the lock. I’d wake up and think I heard your key in the lock, think I heard you walking down the hall. I’d get up and look out in the hall. But there was never anyone there. It was just my imagination. It was just that I so desperately wanted you back. I never knew how empty a house could be until you left.”
She’s more than game, he thought, she’s one of the last of the species known as lady.
She isn’t even going to mention the fact that I absolutely outraged her, violated her moral code, offensively, unforgivably.
“I am most awfully sorry,” he said, slowly. “Sorry about all of it. I owe you an apology. I somehow overlooked the fact that you had a point of view, too, and that—”
“I don’t want you to apologize,” she said quickly. “I was more in the wrong than you, or—” her voice faltered again, “or anyone else.”
She still can’t mention the girl. Well, that’s ended too, so it doesn’t matter. He leaned over and kissed her forehead, and thought of Camilo, of the perfume she used, of the silky softness of her hair, of the color of it, and didn’t know what it was that had reminded him of her. Not Abbie’s hair, silkysoft like Camilo’s, not the clean, fresh smell of the eau de cologne she used. It’s the way she sits, with her back so straight, her head up. Camilo sits the same way.
As he straightened up, he saw that J. C. Powther was staring at him. He said, “How are you, pal?”
J.C. blinked his eyes, and kept on staring. He seemed to be studying Link’s throat and neck.
“I’ve been teaching J.C. the alphabet,” Abbie said, and patted one of J.C.’s grubby hands.
“Yeah?” Link said, noncommitally, thinking, As round and hard as his head appears to be, I doubt that even you could teach him anything. He could probably teach both of us things we never knew, or heard of, or dreamed existed. What in hell does he see on my neck that makes him keep staring at it?
“Mamie say you was tryin’ out new ways to bust up your neck. Did you bust it up?” J.C. asked.
“Not yet, old man.” So that was it. “How did Mamie know that I was trying to bust up my neck?”
“Bill told her. Mamie say that white girl keeps lookin’ for you over in Bill’s place, and she say that if that white girl had good sense she’d stop goin’ in there. Bill don’t like her comin’ in there and he—”