River, cross my heart (18 page)

Ina told Alice what Miss Mary Ann Clarke had said about the St. Pierres being in financial trouble. Earlier that afternoon, Ina had cleared her throat and drawn her lips tighter

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around the row of straight pins in her mouth as she pinned the hem o( Miss Mary Ann Clarke's new black serge skirt. Seated on a small hassock, she'd removed each pin from her lips, slid it into the fabric, and leaned back to get perspective on the work. Miss Mary Ann Clarke stood on a slightly taller hassock. Ina's front parlor floor was an obstacle course of hassocks. The four square wooden stools with legs at graduated heights and plush upholstered centers like nougats were used for measuring and pinning customers' hems. Cap had made the stools and Ina had fitted them with cushions at around the time she decided to put a seamstress sign in her front window on Volta Place.

"My sister said that woman, Alexis St. Pierre, has been taking her family silver service down to the Jews on M Street," Miss Mary Ann Clarke said. "They say her husband is tied up in some bad business about money down at the agency where he works. My sister says he has run through all their money. How come you don't take in laundry, Ina Mae? You could make a pretty penny if you did laundry and pressing along with your sewing. As it is, I've got to send my things down to the Chinaman on Water Street."

Ina's mind had wandered and she was sorry she hadn't caught more of what Miss Mary Ann Clarke was saying about the St. Pierres. But a body would lose her mind if she tried to keep up listening to this talkative woman. Removing the last of the straight pins from her mouth, Ina had replied, "Miss Mary Ann Clarke, you know I don't do laundry. I never have. That about the length you want it now?"

Glancing in the mirror, Miss Mary Ann Clarke had answered, "Yes, Ina Mae, that will probably do. If a decent

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woman like you took in some laundry, we wouldn't have to deal with Chinamen."

Always prepared to sew, Ina now pulled another sock with a hole at the heel from her running bag. She took a needle from the place above her heart where several threaded needles were worked through the dress and set to work on the sock.

According to Alice, Alexis St. Pierre had been acting nervous lately. She seemed especially nervous when her husband was at home. It was as if she were guarding herself against saying something to him. For his part, Douglas St. Pierre appeared to be avoiding his wife. When both were in the house, there was little conversation. And the only time there was lively talk now was when Douglas St. Pierre entertained his acquaintances. Alexis was fluttery and irritable on these occasions and became increasingly so as the talk turned to investments and speculation in the stock market. Douglas became downright giddy then and took a child's delight in tales of wild speculation on the stock market. Alexis would look at him with a dull, puzzled face and refuse to join in the gaiety.

As a senior clerk at the department of the treasury, Douglas St. Pierre afforded a comfortable, though not opulent, lifestyle. The backbone of the St. Pierres' financial position was Alexis's inheritance.

When the women's talk wound down, Willie rose, stretched, and went out to the toilet for his evening constitutional. Johnnie Mae closed her book and hurried to wash up near the kitchen stove before going upstairs to her chilly bedroom.

At the St. Pierres' house the next day, Alice counted

Alexis's silver pieces and found many missing. Miss Mary Ann Clarke was right. They had been selling off their belongings. This was coming at a bad time—with the baby coming. Alice had wanted to work right up until the baby came and then have Ina work in her place until she could take her job back. But if the St. Pierres' money was getting tight, then soon they wouldn't be able to afford to keep her on. Better be asking people if they've heard of anything.

Alice ruminated on the St. Pierres and their financial troubles while she worked. All she was going to learn she'd have to learn at the keyhole. Though they'd had a respectful camaraderie over the years, Alice knew that Alexis wouldn't discuss her troubles. Alexis would consider it unseemly to talk about these troubles straight out and honestly.

Around the time that dinner was ready and Alice prepared to serve it, she heard Alexis and Douglas arguing in the parlor. When they moved into the dining room, she could hear their conversation clearly from the kitchen. She was embarrassed for them at first. Then she got angry that they were not ashamed to air all their business within earshot. She listened quietly, seated at the kitchen table with her hands folded as if praying. Douglas St. Pierre spoke to his wife in a low, sullen, growling voice. Alexis's voice danced above his in a tearful, high-pitched whine. "How can they do that? How can they do it? Douglas, how can this happen?" Alexis's words were clearly intelligible. Alice was unable to discern Douglas's reply. She could only hear his growl.

Alice decided not to go into the room. There wouldn't be any way to pretend that she wasn't aware of their argument. The sound of a door slamming followed. Alice waited impa-

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nentlv in the kitchen. The argument seemed to have run out with the slamming door. The next noise from the room was Alexis's crying. Alice was in a tangle about what to do. She wanted to get the dinner served and get home. But she was reluctant to go into the room. Her annoyance grew into anger while she waited the dinner. She fussed to herself that she had better be looking for something else if they were going to start acting like this. She didn't want foolishness.

Around eight o'clock, Johnnie Mae came to the back door oi the St. Pierres' house and looked through the kitchen window at her mother. Mama was sitting at the table with her arms folded across her chest and her face as tight as Dick's hatband. The family had been waiting for her and Papa had sent Johnnie Mae to see if there was trouble.

At the sight oi Johnnie Mae, Alice rose from the table, signaled to the girl to wait, and marched into the dining room. Alexis sat alone at the table, staring at the place settings. Alice quietly informed Alexis that she had put up the food and was going home. Alexis said nothing, but tears ran down her cheeks. She sat at the table looking at the chair her husband was accustomed to sit in and continued crying. He was not there, but she looked as if she were hanging on to every word that came from the empty chair.

Alice left the St. Pierre house feeling angry. When she'd gone a block she thought to be ashamed oi herself. She was mad at Alexis—and Douglas—but she hadn't stopped to feel sorry for Alexis crying into her sleeve like that. He'd made her cry. He'd fussed at her and lied to her most likely and done something that caused her to cry and Alice was only feeling sorry now that she'd left their house. Up underneath them in

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the house, her compassion was squashed by annoyance with them, and this annoyance had crowded out her better feelings.

Wintertime brings a closed-in feeling that creates hazards and annoyances. Households draw in toward their centers for warmth in cold weather, and emotions and conflicts that are dispersed in balmier air keep circulating and threatening to strangle folks when they're inside so long huddled against the cold. In the house with them, Alice hadn't given Alexis as much sympathy as you'd give a dog. But out in the sharp air she could hear the woman sobbing and wished she'd given her some show of feeling.

Alice walked down Wisconsin Avenue feeling grateful that Willie had sent Johnnie Mae to see about her. She had a feeling that she wanted to gather up her loved ones and crush them to her. Then her mind went to Clara—the fact of her being gone. And a twinge passed over her. Alice's thoughts raced ahead to the coming child and she wondered if every joyful thought would now be diminished a jot by longing for Clara.

Johnnie Mae skipped down the street ahead of her mother. When Alice caught up with her at the street corner, Johnnie Mae was staring into the large pit that was the construction site of the new Francis Junior High School swimming pool. Johnnie Mae stood under a streetlight with a dreamy look on her face.

After much agitation on the part of Reverend Jenkins of Mount Zion Church and Reverend Souter from the First Baptist church and Reverend Walker from Jerusalem Baptist and Dr. Tyler and Miss Elizabeth Boston and Miss Clementine Chichester and others, the District of Columbia had finally

agreed to build a regulation swimming pool for colored children in Georgetown. The churchmen had organized the most prominent o( Georgetown's colored people to press the district government and the Congress to recognize that colored citizens were paying taxes. And being taxpayers, they were entitled to recreational facilities and libraries for their children. The leaders cited business after business in Georgetown owned by colored citizens who paid their taxes as certainly as their white neighbors. Hundreds of signatures were gathered on the petitions, and the pastors made the rounds oi countless meetings.

Building the Francis Junior High School swimming pool was a compromise, though. The government was immovable and the white citizens were adamant that the same playgrounds, pools, and libraries not be used by both colored and white. And as long as there was something for even-body, nobody could squawk. Though there was something like progress about the pool, there was something else, too. They had built a pool for the colored children. Colored weren't allowed into the whites-only pool on Volta Place and never would be — that was final.

The swimming pool had become the biggest topic ot conversation in Georgetown. People wrote to their people back home about it. Little as it was, the colored folks had got something for themselves.

To Alice Bynum the new swimming pool was tangible proof that their opportunities were better in Georgetown. "As long as we're making progress," she said to herself, "no matter how slow. As long as we're not standing stock-still with our shoes in the mud!"

An odd thought came to her as she stood back a bit watching Johnnie Mae. She tried to think back to when she'd begun thinking of progress and better times and accomplishments as something for Johnnie Mae rather than for herself. After all, she was not an old woman. But comes a time for a woman when she stops thinking of herself as a girl, as a person of possibles. She starts looking at the plain facts of herself. Her body that's become the body that she has and her habits becoming the habits that she's written in stone. Her "haves" being the ones she's got and maybe not getting any more. Alice knew she was still able to work hard, was still a clear thinker, was still pretty enough. But there had recently come about a transference. She had come to a kind of resignation that real progress was not going to come in time for her to really latch on to it. Johnnie Mae would get it. Johnnie Mae would be coming around just in time for the brass ring. And what there was chiefly for Alice and Willie to do was to make sure Johnnie Mae was ready. They would prepare her — be sure she'd be able to reach for it. Johnnie Mae must be able to finish school, must go all the way through. Maybe she'd go on after high school to a college? Maybe she would find work as a teacher or a nurse? Alice's dreams took on an ever-rising spiral.

Johnnie Mae would perhaps be a schoolteacher and a big woman like Miss Nannie Helen Burroughs or Miss Mary Macleod Bethune or some other Negro women. That's why Alice and Willie worked—why they'd come to Georgetown. And now there was the baby to dream for. And they needed to keep their children from being ground down by want so much that they wouldn't be able to dream dreams for themselves. She and Willie could have filled their bellies and shod

their feet in Carolina, but for schooling and dreaming their children were better off here. Yes, it had happened. She had ceded the future to her children.

Johnnie Mae's dreams fetched closer to hand. She had been watching and waiting for the swimming pool to be completed. Each day since the work had begun, she'd looked down into the hole that was fast becoming a trench that would eventually be lined with tiles and by June would be filled with water. Nobody was more excited about the new pool than Johnnie Mae and nobody more eager to jump in.

"Come on" was what Johnnie Mae said to Pearl that afternoon after classes let out. It was a January day with bright sunshine and soft clouds. The phrase that had always rallied Clara to her cause, whatever it might be, had the same effect on Pearl. At first she'd just stood there. Johnnie Mae walked away a few steps, looked back at Pearl still standing on the steps oi Wormley School, raised her eyebrows in a way that questioned the girl's moxie, and walked down Prospect Street. Pearl followed. Johnnie Mae was right to call Pearl a scaredy-cat. She was scared a lot oi the time. Since the Millers' troubles out in Oklahoma, Pearl had started to be skittish and to shrink away from people. But she couldn't stop herself from following Johnnie Mae either. Johnnie Mae had said come on and she couldn't disengage herself from the pull of the girl and make any kind oi firm decision to stay put. So she followed along.

The blessed freedom of walking in and around the clusters of people buying or selling or toting a load buoyed the girls.

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"Step on a crack, break your mother's back!" Johnnie Mae looked like a ballerina or an aerialist walking from cobblestone to cobblestone not stepping on the cracks, placing her feet on one rounded stone then another. She held her arms out away from her sides to balance and Pearl tried vainly to copy her.

Johnnie Mae scuttled away from the crowds of folks on Wisconsin Avenue and wound her way up and around and through alleys. She went past Stevens's fish market in order to see Pearl's eyes pop. She knew that the sight of the huge swordtail hanging in the window would make Pearl gape like Clara used to. They took the alley behind the fish market and down toward Water Street. A group of men with bloody aprons sat on crates gutting fish. "Watch out!" Johnnie Mae called to Pearl, not stopping, only skirting the men. Pails of waste water cascaded out of doorways all along the street, running over the cobblestones and sluicing toward the river. Johnnie Mae followed beside this septic freshet to the nasty tangle of wild growth and human waste at the river's edge.