Authors: William March
The bell rang at that moment, and Christine went to answer it. It was Mrs. Monica Breedlove from the floor above, and she
called out gaily, “I wanted to make sure that you hadn’t overslept on such an important morning. I thought my brother Emory was coming along, too, but he’s still fast asleep. No power in the world can get him up before eight o’clock, but he did open his eyes long enough to tell me that his car is parked in front of the building, and to suggest we use it this morning. So I’m going to drive you and Rhoda to the Fern School, if you haven’t any objections. Anyway, it’ll save you the trouble of getting your car out of the garage.” Then, turning to the child, and tossing her head a little, she added, “I have two gifts for you, my darling. The first is from Emory. It’s a pair of dark glasses with rhinestone decorations, and he says tell you that it’s intended to keep the sun out of those pretty brown eyes.”
The child moved quickly toward Mrs. Breedlove, with the expression on her face which Christine had come to think of as “Rhoda’s acquisitive look.” She stood obediently while Mrs. Breedlove adjusted the glasses, then turning, she examined herself in the mirror. Monica stood back, clasped her hands together, and cried out in an enraptured voice, “Now, who
is
this glamorous Hollywood actress? Can it really be little Rhoda Penmark who lives with her delightful parents on the first floor of my apartment house? Is it possible that this lovely, sophisticated creature is the little Rhoda Penmark that everybody loves and admires so greatly?”
She paused for effect, and then, continuing in a lower key, she went on. “And now for the second prize, which is from
me
.” She took from her purse a gold heart with a finely wrought chain attached to it. She explained that the locket had been given her when she, too, was eight; and it had waited all these years in her jewelry case just for this occasion. The locket had been a birthday present originally, and in one side of the heart there was set a garnet, which was her birthstone, since she’d been born in January. At the first opportunity, she meant to take the locket to
the jeweler and have the garnet taken out and a turquoise, which was Rhoda’s own birthstone, put in instead. She planned, too, to have the locket cleaned and the little chain fixed; the clasp didn’t seem to be as firm as it should be, which was hardly surprising when you considered that she, Mrs. Breedlove, had had the locket for more than fifty years.
“Can I have both stones?” asked Rhoda. “Can I have the little garnet, too?”
Christine smiled, shook her head disapprovingly, and said, “Rhoda! Rhoda! How can you say such a thing?”
But Mrs. Breedlove went into peals of pleased, hysterical laughter. “But of
course
you may! Why,
certainly,
my dearest!” She seated herself, and went on. “How wonderful it is to meet such a
natural
little girl. Why, when I was given that same locket by my uncle Thomas Lightfoot, I just stood tongue-tied in the parlor and twisted my plaid dress, a quivering little mass of anxiety and frustration.”
The child went to her, put her arms around her neck, and kissed her with an intensity that seemed to engage all her consciousness. She laughed softly and rubbed her cheek against the cheek of the entranced woman. “Aunt Monica,” she said in a sweet, shy voice, drawing the name out slowly, as though her mind could not bear to relinquish it. “Oh, Aunt
Monica.
”
Christine turned and went into the dining-room. She thought, half-amused, half-concerned:
What an actress Rhoda is. She knows exactly how to handle people when it’s to her advantage to do so.
When she returned to the living-room, Mrs. Breedlove was inspecting the child’s dress. “You look like you’re going to a fashionable afternoon tea, not to a picnic at the beach,” she said gaily. “I know I’m behind the times, but I thought children wore coveralls and playsuits to picnics. But you, my love, look like a princess in that red-and-white dotted-Swiss dress you’re wearing.
Now, tell me, aren’t you afraid you’ll get it dirty? Aren’t you afraid you’ll fall down and scuff those new shoes?”
“She won’t soil the dress, and she won’t scuff the shoes,” said Christine. She waited a moment, as though debating with herself, and then added, “Rhoda never gets anything dirty, although I don’t know how she manages it.” Then, seeing the question in Mrs. Breedlove’s eyes, she said, “I wanted her to dress like the other children, but she felt so strongly about it that—well, if she wanted to wear one of her best dresses, I didn’t see any real objection.”
“I don’t like coveralls,” said Rhoda in an earnest, hesitant voice. “They’re not—” She waited, as though unwilling to finish her sentence, and Mrs. Breedlove laughed with pleasure, and said, “You mean coveralls aren’t quite
ladylike,
don’t you, my darling?” She embraced the tolerant child once more, and said in a delighted voice, “Oh, my old-fashioned little darling! Oh, my absolutely quaint little darling!”
Presently, when the preparation for departure was completed, Rhoda went to her bedroom to put her locket away for safekeeping, and as she stepped off the rug, her shoes made a sharp, staccato sound on the hardwood floor. “You sound like Mr. Fred Astaire tap-tapping up and down stairs,” said Mrs. Breedlove. “What have you got on your shoes? Is this something entirely new? Is this something I haven’t heard about?”
Rhoda returned, put one hand on Monica’s shoulder for support, and stood obediently while Mrs. Breedlove lifted each of her feet and examined the new shoes. They were heavier than average, designed for the play of childhood, with thick leather heels which had been reinforced with metal cleats in the shape of half-moons. In explanation, Rhoda said, “I run over my heels all the time, so Mother had those iron pieces put on this pair so they’d last longer. Don’t you think it was a good idea?”
“It was Rhoda’s suggestion, not mine,” said Christine. “I can’t take any credit, I’m afraid. You know how vague and impractical I am most of the time. It would never have occurred to me at all. It was Rhoda’s idea entirely.”
“I think they’re nice,” said Rhoda solemnly. “They save money.”
“Oh, my penurious little sweetheart,” said Monica in delight. “Oh, my thrifty little housewife.” She embraced the child exuberantly, and added, “What are we going to
do
with her, Christine? Tell me, what are we going to do with this remarkable little creature?”
Later, when they came out of the apartment house, they paused on the marble steps that led to the foyer, for Leroy Jessup, the janitor, was hosing down the walk that ran from the house to the street beyond. He worked with that aggrieved persistence, as though calling on heaven to witness the injustice done him, which the sullen everywhere bring to their trivial tasks; and as he worked, his lips moved in unison with his hands to shape his petulant thoughts for his pleasure, for his mind rehearsed eternally the inequities that had been forced upon him—inequities which he must endure in silence, since he was one of the underprivileged ones of the world, the unfortunate son of an unfortunate sharecropper, the pathetic victim of an oppressive system, as everyone who knew anything at all admitted, and had admitted for a long time.
He was conscious that the two women and the little girl had stopped on the steps, but he pretended that he did not see them, and he did not lift his hose from the flooded flagstone so that they could pass; instead, he turned toward the street, and with eyes carefully averted, he guided the stream of water so far up the flagstones that the group had to move quickly onto the porch once more. He covered his mouth with one hand to hide his amusement at their consternation.
Mrs. Breedlove said patiently, “Leroy, will you kindly move that hose? We’re going to my brother’s car. We’re late as it is.”
He pretended that he did not hear her; he wanted to prolong the scene to its limit, but Monica, losing patience with him, called out, “Leroy! Have you completely lost your senses this time?”
He stared insolently at her, as though undecided what his next move should be; then, regretfully, he shifted the hose so that the water fell on the lawn. “I got work to do,” he mumbled. “But I guess you don’t know nothing about that, now, do you? I haven’t got no time to go bus-riding and picnicking. I got plenty work to do.”
He stood, hand on hip, thinking how unjustly others used him. He didn’t live in no big apartment house with servants to wait on him hand and foot; and he didn’t have no nice automobile to ride around in; he didn’t have nothing to ride in but an old broke-down wreck that you couldn’t even give to the junk man. He didn’t have no fine clothes to wear, neither; and when he was little, he didn’t go to no private school that cost a pile of money and was always giving picnics and frolics for its worthless pupils. No, sir! He’d walked to school himself! In all sorts of weather, too; and mostly without no shoes on his feet. But at that he was a lot smarter than most of those dumbbells that had all the advantages in the world; he could make monkeys out of them dumbbells any time he wanted to.…
He felt infinitely sorry for himself. No, sir! He didn’t have nothing now, and he didn’t have nothing when he was a boy about Rhoda’s age. The world was in a plot to cheat him out of what was rightfully his, he thought. He watched as the women and the little girl picked their way across the dripping flagstones; but when they had reached the sidewalk, he wheeled abruptly so that the hose lifted, and water splashed over the feet of the people he so deeply despised.
Mrs. Breedlove’s hand, which had been on the door of the car, dropped with a dramatic suddenness. She closed her eyes, her face and neck turning a deep coral-pink as she counted calmly to ten; then, in her well-bred voice she diagnosed Leroy’s emotional condition in a detailed manner: in the past, she had thought of him as emotionally immature, obsessed, torn by irrational rages and, in a sense, a bit on the constitutional psychopathic side; but now, after the demonstration she’d just witnessed, she wondered if her diagnosis hadn’t been too mild; she thought now that he was definitely a schizophrenic with well-defined paranoid overtones. And another thing: she’d had quite enough of his discourtesy and surliness—a feeling that the other tenants in the building enthusiastically shared. He might not know it, but it was due to her intervention that he now had a job: the other tenants, including her brother Emory, who was hardly a man to take liberties with, had been in favor of demanding his discharge, but she had pleaded for him, not because she condoned his actions, but because she considered him disturbed and hardly responsible for some of his irrational acts.
Christine touched Mrs. Breedlove’s sleeve with a mild, placating gesture. “He didn’t mean to wet us,” she said. “It was an accident. I’m sure it was.”
“He meant it,” said Rhoda. “I know Leroy well.”
Mrs. Breedlove shook her shoulders in indignation. “It was no accident, dear Christine! I assure you, it was no accident.” But already her anger was subsiding, and, extending her hands tolerantly, she added, “It was deliberately done—the spiteful act of a neurotic child.”
“He meant to do it,” said Rhoda. Her voice was cold and thoughtful, and she stared at Leroy with her round, calculating eyes as though she could see into his quivering mind. Then, speaking directly to the man, she added, “You made up your mind
to do it when we were standing on the steps. I was looking at you when you made up your mind to wet us.”
Then Leroy, knowing that he had gone too far this time, that his contempt and his fantasies of injustice had betrayed him into an action which his intelligence had not entirely sanctioned, became very humble and apologetic. He dropped to his knees on the wet pavement, and, bending down, he took out his handkerchief; and, as a token of his humility and surrender, he passed it over the shoes of Mrs. Breedlove and her guests.
Mrs. Penmark pulled back quickly, as though embarrassed, and said, “Oh, please! Oh, no—please!”
Monica opened the door of her car. Her anger was gone now, and, already ashamed of her outburst, she sighed ruefully and said, “Oh, very well! Very well! But my patience has a limit, and you may as well realize it.”
Leroy crumpled the handkerchief he had used and threw it into the street. He stood erect, feeling a sense of power returning, a knowledge that he could handle this situation or any other that arose.… That good-looking Mrs. Penmark, that dizzy blonde, didn’t know what it was all about. She was too dumb, when you came right down to it, to understand his contempt for her. She was one of them soft, easily-taken-in ones that went around feeling sorry for people. She was one of the ones that was eat up with kindness. You could do that one a dirty trick, but instead of hitting back, or hating the hell out of you, she’d feel guilty, instead, thinking she must be the one that was wrong. He spat on the lawn, insolent and sure of himself once more.
Now, that Breedlove dame, that big-talking bitch, was something else again. She’d feel in the wrong, too, but for another reason. She thought she was so smart; she thought she knew everything there was to know; she thought there wasn’t nobody as tricky as she was. She’d feel guilty, all right—not because she was humble, but because she was so stuck on herself. She didn’t
expect other people to come up to her standards; it wasn’t fair to expect ordinary people to be as delicate and fine and smart as she was. She’d feel bad, all right, when she thought things over, and to ease her conscience, she’d send her maid down with a ten-dollar bill to pay him off for the things he’d done to her. That one was really something!
He picked up the hose again. The triumph would be his in the end this time, just as it had always been in the past, with these dumbbells. Just wait and see, that was all. Just wait.… And then Rhoda said, “You did it on purpose. I know the way you are. You knew you were going to do it all the time.”
There was no resentment in the child’s face; there was not even disapproval; there was only a stubborn appraisal of his character that startled him. He knew then that the little girl understood him entirely; that nothing he could say or do, that none of the acts which misled others, and got him his way with them, would affect her at all. He turned away in confusion before the cold knowledge in her eyes, as though his weapons had failed him where she was concerned; and as the automobile pulled away from the curb and turned the corner, with the morning sunlight flashing for an instant on Mrs. Breedlove’s extended, bejeweled hand, he said under his breath, not of Mrs. Breedlove, but of the child, “That bitch! That nasty little bitch! There’s nothing I wouldn’t put past her. That one would put a knife between your ribs and watch the blood spurt.”