White People (32 page)

Here I’ll hurry what happened next. Sometimes you rush stories because you don’t have sufficient info. In this case, a person’s maybe got too much. You know those memo pads with “While You Were Out …” printed at the top, yellow pages maybe four inches by four? Well, inside my tweed windbreaker’s breast pocket, I’d recently placed just such a piece of paper. Names were written on it in my own admirable forward-tilting Palmer script. I’d arrived at Sam’s office building early. While waiting in the weedy park across the street, I chose a sunny bench. Bored, working from memory, I copied nine offenders’ names (plus their dollar amounts in arrears). To the cent, I knew. I wrote just to soothe myself, I told myself. I’ve always been big into lists.

How carefully I inscribed each name. Lovingly almost. One example, I traced ridges like gutters over the TT in the middle of one name. I extended those crossbars to shelter the whole name LoTTe. That list, now hidden in my jacket pocket, crackled when I fidgeted, talking to Sam. The square of yellow paper burned me like a mustard plaster.

Everybody’s superstitious. About money especially. “If I clear this figure by March, I’ll give X amount to charity, really.” “Like it or not, I’ll only eat what’s in the house till we go out and splurge on Friday.” The folkways of the wallet. Pretty strange. Consider our nervous computerized stock market: It still uses a bull and a bear to explain itself to itself. Animals? Now? See, it’s homemade magic. Where money comes in, we’re all primitives. And, like that, I’d carefully copied a list so I’d
prevent
myself from saying out loud any name on that list. Got it? Logic, it’s not—heartfelt, it is.

See, even as I made those two T’s spread like a porch roof and guardian umbrella over the name beneath, I was giving myself one teentsy loophole. If, and only if, Sam smelled this list on me, if he
asked for it point-blank, then and only then might I consider maybe possibly letting him just peek at it perhaps. And for one sec.

It’s just, I’d been so silent for so long. Nine old people felt they owed me their lives. Once Sam read the thing, I knew I’d feel better, I’d find the stamina to sustain Group Life a little longer.—I was, after all, legally responsible to Sam here and if a person’s boss actually
orders
that person to hand over an inventory of backsliding wrongdoers, well …

What can I say? I was nineteen years old. I’d been buying my own clothes since I was eleven. Other guys my age and half as smart, a tenth as driven, were already off at college, lounging around, sleeping in till 11:30 a.m.

Early March, Sam’s office overheated, but I couldn’t take my jacket off because the list was in it. He’d see. Paper crackled if I didn’t sit real still. Fiduciary voodoo.

M
Y WIFE SAYS
: for somebody like me, somebody with a strong head for facts, it’s even more important to empty out that head from time to time. So I am, okay? Clearing the books.

“B
UDDY
? Something’s off, right? College material like you, and with bags down to here. I’m seeing a wear-and-tear beyond the normal wear of raking in their coins come Saturday. Know what Sam here’s starting to think? Somebody’s holding out on you, kid. You definitely got moochers. More’n one, too. Your face gives it away. You’re too young to know how to hide stuff yet. In time, you’ll get that right—but now your kisser is like neon practically, going bloink blink blank. And this particular neon tells Sam, says ‘Sam? Certain moneys are coming directly out of young Jerry’s personal bone marrow.’ You got parasites, Jer. It shows. Draining you.

“You’re shielding them but who’s looking after
you?
Your folks? Naw, you’re on your own.
I’m
here for you. You were handsome when I hired you.
Now
look. Your pantcuffs are frayed, the boy can’t even sit up straight.—Jerry, who you covering for? Let me help,
son. I swear it won’t get past this desk. You know their names, you maybe even wrote names down. Yeah—probably got those tucked somewheres on your person. Look, kid, trust me here. You want Sam to step around his desk, ease you against that wall and frisk you, Jer? You’re a good-looking kid, Jerry, but not that good. Spare us both. Pass your uncle the names. I’ll need the exact dollar amount each leech has sucked out of my favorite. Jerry? Tell your Uncle Sam.”

Tears stood in my boss’s eyes. That’s when I knew I had to let him save me. Yellow is such a beautiful positive color, isn’t it?
While You Were Out …

I
SLEPT
so well that night! Why lie about it? I dropped off saying things like “Figures don’t lie.” It was a sleep too deep to let one single dream come tax it—just blackness so pure I woke up sweaty, half-panting. Getting true rest seemed the most exerting thing I’d done in months. One room away, Dad coughed, Mom promised him it’d be all right, she pounded his back, Dad thanked her, he said it’d passed, he choked again.

T
HE
F
RIDAY AFTER
, I was driving toward the night-school business office to make my overdue payment. I’d got certain bonuses and could again fund my education. I still collected for Windlass but now avoided the two hundred block of Sunflower Street. I called on that block’s paying clients only after dark. It was a gusty March afternoon, dust devils spun along the roadside. Winds rocked even the biggest trees. One wad of cotton, large as a hassock, came tumbling down the center line, rolled up onto my car hood and snagged one windshield wiper. I braked, cussed, got out to yank it off and—two hundred yards away in Baby Africa’s clay cemetery—saw a funeral in progress.

Women were hunched under shawls, men held hats against their chests. Everybody, fighting wind, kept faces turned down and aside. They all looked ashamed and—in my present state—this at once
attracted me. An old woman stood surrounded by kids. “It’s Pearl’s,” I said. “They’re burying Pearl.” My voice broke, but, understand I am not asking for credit. Fact is, I slunk back into my Nash, flipped down both sun visors, prepared to roar off. Then unexpectedly my car was pulling over, I was out in the air, was walking toward a familiar group. Like so much I did back then, I hadn’t planned to.

I remember dry weeds snapping under my new loafers. I waited off to one side, hands joined before me. I was the only white person present.

Two weeks back, I made four phone calls to the Detroit morgue; I’d helped get Pearl’s body shipped home in a railroad ice-car. The trip had taken her eleven days. Pearl’s coffin was splintery pine. You could see black nail ends bent crooked under half-moon hammer dents. Must be the crate they packed her home in. Somebody’d tried painting out stenciled instructions:
THIS SIDE UP. KEEP REFRIGERATED AT ALL TIMES
. Near the coffin’s tapering foot end, a Maxwell House can rested on the ground. It was stuffed with dried hydrangea blooms big as human heads. Alongside the jagged grave, a pile of earth waited. Wind kept flicking dirt off that and onto the mourners. Everybody stood with eyes closed, less in prayer than to protect themselves from the menace of flung grit. (I wondered why this didn’t usually happen. I’d only been to two funerals but remembered that the undertakers usually spread a grass-green groundcloth over such waiting dirt to hide it, and protect the living.)

People lined up looking into the coffin a last time. I’d never seen an open coffin at the graveyard. But, having strolled over here, I felt I couldn’t hold back. When I joined the line, Mrs. B’s neighbor kids saw me. They suddenly closed ranks around her. Only then did she turn in my general direction. Her neck lengthened, the blue-gray head twisting my way. I knew she couldn’t see me at this distance but both VLB’s arms lifted from her sides, wavering noplace. She seemed to be hearing a sound or maybe scented me standing here. I felt so honored I got weak.

The woman in the box was over seventy, she wore a mostly emptied amethyst necklace. On her chest a gold pin-watch read
FORD MOTORS
,
a perfect attendance prize. Her age shocked me. I’d always pictured Pearl as just a bit older than me. I now saw: that would’ve made Vesta Lotte Battle a mother at seventy-three or so.

In the makeshift coffin, Pearl’s head had shifted to one side, she faced pine planks like a person choosing to look punished, refusing even a last chance at formality.

The coffin was then closed, boys nailed it shut. Nails kept doubling over and this looked so ugly it grieved me. Strong young boys lowered Pearl’s crate by ropes. Mourners themselves started heaping in the dirt. Garden spades and shovels seemed brought from home, no professional gravedigger waited in sight.

The girl who’d once pressed my hand between her candied palms now led Mrs. B away, detouring to avoid me. I walked over anyway. I was helpless not to. My mouth and lips felt novocained (I later realized I’d been mercilessly biting them without noticing). I felt foolish and exposed here,
rude
. But I still needed something from the old lady.
My
old lady, I still thought of her, but knew I had no right.

She must have seen a pink blur fumble nearer. VLB resisted ten children who tried dragging her past me. When she stopped, kids eased back, but their chins stayed lifted, hands knotting into fists. I didn’t blame them. I knew how I must look out here. They’d taught me. I kept swallowing to keep from smiling. I gulped down a beefy-yeasty-copperpenny taste that turned out to be blood.

Mrs. Battle—grieving like this, far from her familiar house—seemed disoriented. Her skin had lost its grapey luster; she now looked floured in fine ash—her eyes’ fronts too. Daylight showed a face composed entirely of cracks depending on splits and folds; her hands stayed out in front of her, long fingers opening and closing, combing air. She groped my way, lightly, almost fondly. Plain daylight showed her to be so tiny, malnourished maybe. Sun made her look just like … a blind person! Completely blind. Somehow she seemed less dignified out here and less unique. I have to say: it made things easier on me just then.—I’m telling you everything. That’s our deal.

She faltered quite close, finally touching my sleeve, but jerking
back like from a shock. “Ah,” her voice recognized me. “You, Assurance?”

“Yes ma’am.” I studied my new shoes.

“You did come. I knew it. I done told them. And we thanks you. Pearl’d be glad.—Look, not to worry bout all that other, hear? We doing just fine. Fact is, been missing you more than we miss it, Assurance. You steadily helped me to find my Pearl, get her on back here. Don’t go fretting none, child, you tried.—You gone be fine. I’m gone be fine.”

Then she turned and moved away from me supported by neighbor kids’ spindly arms and legs.

I waited till everybody left. The wind got worse. I stood at Pearl’s grave. Handprints and shoe marks had packed the earth. Wind had tipped the coffee can. Water made mud of the grave’s foot end. I squatted and crammed hydrangeas back into their tin and set it upright. Last year’s hydrangeas had dried brown but still showed most of their strong first blue. You know the color of hydrangeas—that heavenly blue so raw it comes close to seeming in bad taste.

I drove out into the country and passed a rural mailbox I’d always admired and meant to check on. I did that now for no good reason. It was a life-sized Uncle Sam enameled red, white, and blue—meat-pink for his face and hands. The eyes were rhinestone buttons salvaged off some woman’s coat. His vest buttons were dimes glued on and varnished. While I stood looking, the proud owner stepped out of a tractor shed, then headed over to tell me how he’d got the idea and to accept my compliments. I panicked, saw myself as one of those guys, like Dad, who’ll jaw for forty minutes with complete strangers over nothing. I hopped back into my Nash and squalled away.

I drove to Lucas’ All-Round Store, needing staples for my folks. Mom loved angel food cake. With a little teasing encouragement from me, she could sit at our kitchen table and pull off a bit of white fluff at a time till she’d eaten it, whole. The embarrassment was part of her joy. “I
ate
that? I ate it?” And somehow she never gained. So I got her a big Merita angel cake and, for Dad, the giant economy size of Vick’s Vap-O-Rub. (On his worst coughing nights, he sometimos
clipped one finger in and swallowed gobs of it till I had to leave the room.)

H
ERE RECENTLY
, dredging all this up, I’ve decided: if a person’s emotional life were only rational—if it just “came out” like algebra does—then none of us would ever need good listeners or psychiatrists, would we? We’d do nicely with our accountants. We’d bring our man a whole year of receipts, evidence, and pain. We’d spend two hours together in a nice office and, at the end, our hired guy could just poke the
Tally
button and we, his client, would feel clean again and solid, solvent. Nice work if you can get it.

After Pearl’s burial, I dropped off my folks’ supplies, explaining I was headed for our Public Library to hit the books. Instead—pretending I didn’t know what I was up to—I drove along Sunflower, switched off my ignition and headlights, coasted to a halt three houses down from Mrs. Battle’s.

I sat screened by dried sunflower stalks rustling in the breeze, I looked toward her kerosene-lit home. I heard kids in there talking loud, once a wave of laughing broke. Her narrow body, half-doubled, crisscrossed the room from ironing board to stove and back, for tea, for hotter irons. I knew hers was just a little bent black nail of a body, but she threw such large blue shadows. I slumped out here feeling like a spy or a spurned lover, like some hick planning a stepladder elopement. I knew if I walked up and knocked at her screen door, she’d greet me, “Look children, our Boy Assurance’s back.” Kids might act snooty but she’d go make me tea in a mended cup so fine you could hold it up and—even against a kerosene lantern’s glow—read imprinted on the bottom, its maker’s name.

I watched her shack, pretending to guard it. Dumb thoughts: What if it caught fire? Then I’d carry her out, lug all the kids to safety. I was big: I could, I could carry most of them at once.

Why was I waiting? Did I hope she’d sense me here and suddenly pop up like when my tire blew? Maybe I could take her for a car ride tonight, go find her and the kids ice cream someplace. On me, of course. Maybe have two cords of firewood sent? I soon disgusted
myself and drove home. I stayed up extra late, studying. Days, I didn’t get much time for schoolwork. I think I told you I was working a couple other jobs. Managing a soda fountain and, after hours, cleaning two laundromats for this hermit bachelor who owned much of Falls while spending absolutely nothing. Plus I had the four night-school courses a week.