I looked at them too. They were red and ugly from work. They were the hands of a young woman aged before their time from housework—all the housework.
“No,” she whispered. She spoke so low she almost might have been talking to herself. “No! No! No!”
“O.K., lady,” I said cruelly, “if that’s the way you want it. But don’t kid yourself. We both know how much of a chance there is for him to get a job today.” I walked over to the door and put my hand on the knob.
“Wait a minute,” she called. “Let me think.” She put her head in her hands while the little girl stared solemnly at the both of us.
I relaxed. I could practically see the wheels go round inside her head. But I knew what the answer would be. What it had to be.
At last she looked up at me. Something more had gone out of her face—I didn’t know just what, but she looked different. She spoke to the child: “Laura, run downstairs and wait for Daddy. Call me through the window if he comes.”
The child solemnly walked through the door I held open for her. She looked back and waved at us and started downstairs. I waited until she was downstairs before I closed the door. Then I put the package down and faced her.
She looked at me a moment and then led the way into the bedroom. It was a small room with a small window. There was a neatly made three-quarter size bed and a crib in one corner. A small statue of the Virgin and the Child hung opposite the foot of the bed. A picture of her husband and herself was on the dresser. She stood there a moment and then said: “Not in here,” and walked through to the parlour.
I followed her. It wasn’t a woman I had there, it was an empty shell. I looked at her for a full minute. In that minute she didn’t move a muscle. “You can keep the groceries.” I started for the kitchen.
She took a step forward. “Mister,” she said, and suddenly slumped towards me.
I caught her before she hit the floor. Her head was against my shoulder and she was crying—this time without tears. I held her tightly, but impersonally, all the strength seemed to have left her legs.
“Mister,” she sobbed, “mister, you couldn’t know what we’ve gone through—how many times Mike has gone hungry to give the food to the kid, how many things he’s done without, cigarettes.”
She was cracked. Here I had a dame in my arms and she was crying about what her husband sacrificed. I suppose she didn’t think she had done anything for the kid either. I was suddenly ashamed.
“Take it easy!” I said, interrupting her babbling. “Take it easy! Everything will be all right.”
She looked up at me. Her eyes were wide pools of gratitude. I gave it back to her, look for look. “You’re O.K.,” she half whispered.
“I know, I know.” I laughed shortly. Sucker Kane, number one patsy! We walked silently through to the kitchen. At the door she stopped me. “Thanks again, mister,” she said.
“Forget it, lady! Courtesy is our motto.”
I walked down the stairs and out into the street. About halfway down the block I saw the little girl. A man ran up to her and picked her up and tossed her in the air.
“Daddy, Daddy!”
He did a little dance with her, “Laurey,” he sang out, “Daddy’s got a job!”
I walked past them. “Congratulations, Mike!” I said. “You got more than that.” And kept on going.
He looked after me for a second and scratched his head. I guess he was wondering if he knew me. Then he turned and ran for his house with his baby in his arms.
I was getting madder and madder as I walked back towards the store. That teasing Terry would pay for this! The next time I had her out, she wouldn’t get away with it.
And she didn’t.
T
HE
next morning the lady I had left the groceries with came down to the store. She came over to me. The kid was tagging along with her. She looked different than she had looked the day before. It was the way she held her head or maybe the way she moved— more sure of herself. The defeated look had vanished from her eyes.
“My husband got a job,” she said, without any preliminaries. “I was wondering if you could let me have a few things till pay-day, tomorrow.”
“I know,” I said. “I saw him on the street. Wait a minute, I’ll ask the boss.” I went over to Harry and explained the situation to him: that her husband had just started work and they would like a few things to carry them over until the next day when he’d get paid. I was ashamed of what I had done yesterday. I didn’t know just how bad off I was until this morning. And now I was anxious to make it up to them. He told me it was O.K. if I thought they were all right.
I went back to her and gave her what she wanted. While I was wrapping the package I tried to apologize for my action yesterday. I spoke in a low tone of voice so no one else could hear but her. “I’m glad your husband got something,” I said.
She didn’t answer.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” I continued. “I don’t know why I acted that way, but I heard so many stories about different things. I don’t know who to believe any more. I don’t know who to trust.”
“Why can’t you trust everybody until you find out differently about them?” she said simply, her face reddening.
I felt worse than before, but there was no answer to what she said. I couldn’t explain to her some people would cheat you and some wouldn’t—that the bad ones made it tough for the good. I wrapped up the package and gave it to her. She took it and left.
Later in the afternoon Terry came in. She smiled at me. “Gimme a bottle of katship.” “Hell!” I said to her, “don’t you ever eat anything else?” I knew she wasn’t sore at me.
I could tell from the way she acted. I took the catsup from the shelf behind me and put it on the counter. “Anything else?” I asked.
She shook her head.
I put the bottle in a bag. “Ten cents, please.”
She gave me the dime. “Coming to the meeting tomorrow?” she asked. “I’ll be there,” I said. “Wait for me.”
She left.
Harry came over. “How come you’re going to those meetings?” he asked. “They’re a bunch of reliefers. Most of them don’t want to work, anyway.”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “They seem like pretty decent folks. The breaks are against them, that’s all. Besides, I have some fun up there.”
He looked at me. “Don’t tell me you’re going Communist!”
I laughed at that. “I don’t even know what Communism is. I wouldn’t know one if I
“They believe in free love,” he said. “They don’t believe in getting married if you want it.”
“I don’t know about that,” I replied. “Most of them up there are married.”
“Well,” he said, “if they were decent, they wouldn’t let their kids run around the way they do—like that Terry, for instance.”
That got me sore. I started to answer him hotly but controlled myself. Instead I grinned slowly. “She’s that kind, anyway!”
A customer came in then and Harry turned away to wait on her and I got busy unpacking and we forgot all about what we were saying.
The months went by. Sam quit his job and went to live with some relatives of his in Hartford. I became a full-fledged grocery clerk and was raised to fifteen dollars a week. I became a pretty good soda clerk too on the Sundays I worked for Otto. I saved a few bucks and bought some new clothes, gained a little weight, felt a little better, more friendly towards people. I knew everybody in the neighbourhood. Between the store and the club I kept pretty busy. Not that I was active in the club, but being there seemed to bring me closer to people in general.
One evening, about a week after Thanksgiving, Gerro Browning called me as I left the store. I waited for him to catch up to me and then we walked down town.
“Where do you live, Frank?” he asked.
“At the Mills,” I said. I was wondering why he was interested. “Where are you going now?”
“I’m going to eat and then home,” I told him. “Mind if I eat with you?” he asked.
“No, not at all,” I answered, surprised that he should ask to eat with me. “I’d like it, as a matter of fact—have someone to talk to for a change.”
He looked at me curiously. “Haven’t you any folks?” I shook my head.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-two,” I told him. I looked at him questioningly. “Look, I don’t mind your asking me these questions, but maybe you can tell why the sudden interest?”
He laughed shortly. “I don’t know exactly why myself. You interest me, I guess.” “Why should I? I’m no different than any of the others.”
“You don’t think so?”
“No, I don’t,” I said. We turned into a cafeteria.
We went down the counter and picked up our trays and food. Then we sat down at a table and began to eat.
For a few minutes we ate in silence. Then between mouthfuls of food, he said: “Your hair, for instance.”
Instinctively I raised my hand to my temple. “What about my hair? It’s combed, isn’t it?”
He began to laugh. “No, that’s not it. It’s different. You asked me, didn’t you?” “It’s no different from any other hair.”
“It is,” he said, smiling. “It’s got grey in it—not much, but enough to see. And you’re kind of young to have grey hair.”
“Maybe I worry a lot.”
He shook his head. “No, you’re not the kind. But you’ve been through a lot.” “How can you tell?”
He swallowed a mouthful of food before he answered. “By little things mostly. The way you act. You seem to sit back and watch people with a glint of amusement, or superiority, or something in your eyes. The way you talk—positively, tersely, always surely, never indefinitely. A certain way you move around, on the edge of your feet, so to speak, ready to jump one way or the other—like an animal, always wary, always on guard.” He took another mouthful of food. “Like when you sat down here in the restaurant—your back against the wall. The instinctive way you look at everybody that comes in or walks past while we’re talking and eating. Who are you looking for, and what are you on guard against?”
I smiled. “I didn’t realize I did that,” I said, “I’m not on guard against anything. It’s just a habit, I guess.”
“There are reasons for habits,” he said. We were through with our meat. I got up and went for the coffee and brought it back to the table.
He was sitting back in his chair and smoking, absently twirling a small pin attached to his watch chain around his finger.
I put the coffee down on the table. “What’s that?” I asked him, indicating the watch chain.
He took the watch from his pocket and gave it to me. I looked at it. “That’s a Phi Beta Kappa key.”
I turned it over in my hand. It had some strange lettering on it. “It’s the funniest- shaped key I ever saw,” I said. “What does it open?”
He laughed. “It’s supposed to open the world of opportunity. But it doesn’t. Sometimes I think it’s a fake.” He saw I didn’t understand him. “You get it in college. It’s a very snooty club that admits you only if you’ve maintained the highest standing.”
“You went to college?” He nodded.
I handed the watch and chain back to him. I thought of Marty and Jerry: they should be pretty nearly through college by now. “I have some friends that are going to college.”
He looked interested, “Where?” he asked.
I smiled at him wryly. “I don’t know,” I confessed. “I haven’t seen them for a long time.”
“Then how do you know they’re going to college?” “I know them,” I said.
“It’s funny how people lose track of each other,” he said, reflectively.
That seemed to break the ice between us, and everything came easy afterwards. We sat and talked for over an hour. I told him about myself. I hadn’t ever told anyone before,
and he seemed to be really interested. We parted pretty good friends.
T
HE
winter of 1932–3 was a bad one. People were out of work, on relief. It was becoming more evident, even to me who was safe in a small way, that steps would have to be taken to insure the livelihood of the people around me. Every day the papers screamed “New Crisis”. People were hungry. People were cold. Bonus for the veterans. Jobs for the people. Stop kidding yourself, neighbour, “prosperity” isn’t just around the corner.
But in some strange way it didn’t seem to affect me. I was safe. I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t cold. I had a job.
When I went upstairs to the club the complaints of the people attending never seemed quite real. The speeches I heard never seemed to have any effect. The demands that were made were never listened to. And gradually the people seemed to despair, to lose their hope of ever getting a job again. It reflected itself in many ways. Men who would religiously go out to look for work every morning stopped going. They adopted a what’s-the-use attitude. Theirs was a standard complaint. “Don’t you know there’s a depression on? Buddy, can you spare a dime?”
Several stores on the avenue went out of business. Nobody seemed to care. The stores stood vacant on the street with big to-let signs in their windows. The byword was cheap: “Cut-rate,” “half price,” “fire sale,” “anniversary sale.” Any excuse for a sale. But there weren’t any sales.
The people were bewildered, confused. They didn’t know who to blame. Small stickers were pasted in the subways, on store windows, doors: “Buy American.” The Morning American and the Evening Journal were plugging a nation-wide campaign: “Bring back prosperity by buying American.” At Columbus Circle men were speaking against the Government, against the President, against the Jews, the black people, the Catholics, against anything. They lashed out savagely at everybody—at unions, at strikes, at strike- breakers, scabs, bosses, Jew bosses, Jew bankers. Aimlessly, savagely, stupidly, they struck at the people around them.
Buy Gentile. Buy American. People walked the streets amidst news of riots in Harlem— food riots in Hell’s Kitchen. Tempers were being frayed, the latent savagery in people was being stirred, as if by some master hand that stopped every few minutes, to add a little bit of seasoning, hatred, suspicion, calumny, insinuation.