Yonnondio: From the Thirties (8 page)

Momma was asleep again, falling asleep right in her chair like she was always doin
now, with her mouth open, and cryin as if somebody was hitting her, turnin her head
and cryin. Ben stood looking at the little worm of water on the floor from the leaking
washtub. “Ma,” he called, trying not to cry, “ma.” She moaned and her hands twitched
at him. “Ma,” he called again, louder.

She didn’t wake up. Ben pushed open the kitchen door and ran out; the clothes flapping
on the line slapped in his face with a crackling noise, but the wind felt good on
his hot cheeks. His finger hurt awful there in the tip, like a heart was beating in
it. He put it in his mouth and tried to suck the pain away.

Jimmie, stirring the ashes on the dump heap with an old broomstick, singing, “Pudding
wiv kithes,
pudding wiv kithes,” saw him and stood up. “Go bye?” he asked, “Ji go go go bye?”

“No,” said Ben, “Momma said no.” His finger throbbed and throbbed. He felt so empty
inside, like when he was hungry, but the idea of food made him shudder.

“See car?”begged Jimmie. “Go bye bye, see streetcar?”

“No, go on play.”He pushed Jimmie down and kicked the piece of stick out of his reach.

“Go bye?”quivered Jimmie again.

“No.”The yelling of it made him feel good. “No,” he yelled, “no, no, no.”

Near the ashes there was a tuft of fur like part of a tail of a cat. “All right, c’mon,”
said Ben suddenly, “we’ll go bye-bye, Jimmie, far away bye.”

“Go go go,” sang Jimmie, collecting his broken bits of wood, “go go go.”

Up at the corner big men were standing around laughing. Through their legs Ben could
see a dog, a dog like Shep. One held him by the collar, and another was sticking nails
all over a piece of meat. “The funniest sight you ever did see,” he chortled, “the
way a dawg tries to get at the meat.”

“Shep,” called Ben, “here, Shep, here, Shep.”

The man in front turned around. “That aint your dog. Scram!”

“Maybe it is,” faltered Ben. “Shep, here, Shep.”

“Say, I said beat it, you and your shadow. Go on home and get some titty.”

“No, I wanna see.”

“Scram now.” The man pushed his shoe into Ben’s back and gave him a shove. “Go on.”

Ben ran. But Jimmie tugged back. “See streetcar,” he wept, “see car.” In vain Ben
pulled and pulled, finally Jimmie gave. Then tears came, and in the middle of the
tears an anger lashing. Ben picked up a rock and smashed it against the telephone
pole, he pounded, pounded the pavement. Frightened, Jimmie began to cry too.

“Aw hush up,” Ben savagely commanded. “Hush up, nuffin to cry about, nuffin. You heard
me,” pushing him down. “You heard me.” Then, “I’m sorry, Jimmie, please dont cry,
JimJim, we’ll go see a streetcar, we’ll go see a car, we’ll go see a car. Please dont
cry.”Seeing Mazie come down the street, slowly, dreamily, a paper clutched in her
hand: “See, Mazie’ll take us bye-bye.” But she walked past.

Bess was wailing. “Ma,” said Mazie, shaking her, “wake up, baby’s cryin, she wants
to nurse.”

With her mouth open (so far in some sharp livid place), Anna slept on, drawing deep
hoarse breaths.

“
Ma
,” yelled Mazie again, “baby’s cryin, wake up, wake up.”

Anna’s body became rigid, then convulsed. She
sprang out of her chair with a cry, trembling. “What?”she asked in a voice not her
own, “What?

… Oh.”The kitchen, the half-done wash, a glimmering face like Mazie’s. She pushed
her hand hard over her brow. “Must’ve been asleep. Now… what did you say, Mazie?”

“Bess’s cryin, Momma.”

“Yes, Bess’s cryin.”It seemed Mazie’s face dipped and swayed like a sea. All that
heaviness … to batter through. “Better bring her in here.”Sinking again. Then with
a start: “My land, you home already? I musta been asleep a long time. And dinner to
get, and still clothes to get out on the line. I’m gettin up right now” (but she sank
right back in the chair). “Will home yet?”

“No’m.” An absent smile. “He said he was gonna play ball.”

The room would not come clear. Such a burning somewhere, such a swimming and a haze.
Bess’s cry was lost and struggling somewhere. “Hush, baby,” she said automatically,
pulling out her breast. “Hush now.” Calling, “Mazie.”

With such an effort she managed to find the thought and push it out steady. “Better
go get a pail of lard down at the store and tell him to put it on the bill. Say please.
Best bring a diaper first.”

The room swimming, swimming, or was it she?
Bess did not seem to be at her breast at all. Soaked, soaked through to the bone,
she thought, but her fingers felt no wet. She tried to rise. A great wave of giddiness
and illness rose and waited to engulf her; she sank back down. “Them clothes, I guess.
Leavin me tired enough not to move for a thousand years.”

Cleanly, suddenly, she arose and stumbled to the table. There, it was all right now.
She lay Bess down and took off her wet diaper and put on another. The paper Mazie
had laid there danced before her eyes, so she could not read it. A long while before
she made out the words.

It would have struck her like a blow on the naked heart once, this failure report
from school, but now she folded it carefully and put it into her pocket. “You bring
another one and I’ll beat you to a pulp,” she said to the empty room. To Bess, “Dont
you know learnin’s the only hope a body’s got in this world?”And her lips curved in
a smile, remembering the remote dream look in Mazie’s eyes as if she were not there
at all. “I aim to see any kids we have happy, Jim, not like we were brought up. Happy
and with learnin.” Her hand lifted to caress his cheek.

Shuddering, she clutched the table edge. “Hold on, Anna old girl,” she said to herself.
“Hold on. Get-tin a little teched in the head from the heat, I guess,” she explained
carefully. The wave of pain gathered her up, engulfed her, so that she swayed. Where
…
was … that … chair? God she
was
sick. Sick enough to die. The quivering in her back and the pounding in her head.
“Will,”she called faintly, “Mazie. Oughta know they wouldn’t be around when you want
them,”she reminded herself scornfully, “and it was you sent Mazie to the store.”

A terrible sobbing anguished her ears. Stop it, Anna, she begged, stop it, dont be
such a baby. But it was only Bess crying. “Only … Bess, what’s the matter with you
anyhow?”There, it was going to happen again, the dizziness and pain. She sank down
to the chair, down, down as far as she could go, and the pounding of her heart filled
the world.

After a while she lifted her head. “I’d better jest set here a while yet,” she said
out loud, “but not for long. I cant let Jim find me like this.”

Ben’s face was so red and funny. Could he have been listening or watching there at
the kitchen door? “It’s about time,” she managed to say as loud as she could. “I thought
I told you not to go away.” “Didnt, didnt, dont care.” He turned around to go. “C’mon
back here, you … Oh.” It was a cry of anguish. Trying to rise, the waters of pain
had closed over her head again, and a terrible something, hovering, had sunk its claws
in her back.

“Oh, Momma,” begged Ben, running back, “dont be sick.”

“No, Ben, Momma’s not sick.”Faintly, “But can
you hold Bess and not—” it was better now—“drop her? Just put her down … in the basket.”

Jimmie here too. But best dont get up. Sit here and let your strength gather up. (The
main thing, not to wander off, not to let the fever bear her away.) “Ben, you and
Jimmie want to help Momma make dinner now? You bring me the pan over there and a knife,
first, Ben, and you and Jimmie take the potatoes out of the sack, and bring them to
me till I tell you to stop. Thats right. Thats right.”

Clutching a pail of lard, dreaming a sweet dream of twilight on the farm and darkening
over a fragrant world, her face not shadowed by the buildings above, her nostrils
not twitching with the stink in the air, her eyes not bewildered by the seething of
people about her, dreaming the sweet dream unutterable, a hard body crashed into her
and a voice thundered: “Whynt you look where you’re going, stinking little bitch,”
and she was pushed in the stomach, punched down sprawling, a drunken breath in her
nostrils. (Fear remembered such a breath. It seemed a mass pressed itself into her
face, wet earth, or something she did not remember. In a minute she would be lifted
and carried through a blackness of terror.) A wet was on her cheek, not blood, but
a blob of spit she had fallen into. Feeling it, shuddering awoke her
veins. She struggled to get up. Harsh, the pavement grated against her. It was real
then. She moved her hand over the walk. Yes, it was real.

A streetcar plunged shrieking down the street, scraping over a naked nerve. Set, intent
faces passed by. Terrible faces, masked in weariness and hate and lust, faces that
knew her not, that saw her not.

The long street stretched infinite, a space that could never be finished traveling
over, distorted buildings blocking each side. There was no sky, only a slab of one,
draining color, vanishing into darkness.

She put her arm around the lamppost. Its solidity was fearful to her. As for the first
time she saw the street and people, and it entered into her like death. A woman was
sitting in the basement window in front of her, a great black around her eyes, teeth
bared in a terrible smile. A man in a soldier’s uniform, seeing her, staggered down
the steps. The window blind went down. Real then, real.

The trembling, vibrating sound in the lamppost like a wild imprisoned heart. She sprang
away. A shriek from behind. Slowly, slowly, with such laboriousness she turned her
head. A bum was hurtling out of an eating joint, hitting the sidewalk, and the man
coming after, roaring: “Dont ever try that again, you rat, or you wont have a face
left or a belly.” He gave him a kick, the body stopped sliding, he kicked him
again and again. Faces distorted into laughter, and from the street around a fearful
sound of hoarse joy went up into the sky.

Mazie ran. She fell. Here near the top of the street, she could see the shattered
sun die in a sky of bruises over the decayed line of houses and buildings. Way down,
like a hog, a great hulk of building wallowed. A-R-M-O-U-R-S gray letters shrieked.
Armours, said Mazie over and over: Armoursarmoursarmours. Beautiful, suspended, the
farm, softened by twilight floated an instant before her eyes. A new bulk, “C’mon,
hand it over,” shattered it forever. It passed her, and Mazie could see it was two
people, and the man was twisting the woman’s arm. Armoursarmours. Every step was pain,
every look was pain. The spit felt on her face again and the terrible face of the
soldier as he ran down the stairs thickened her in horror that over it held the shadow
of something mushy, opening in the middle, pressed hard against her cheeks.

Only a block to home. She began to run, running, trying to run away from the stink,
away from the-street, back, back, to something that had never been. Mr. Kryckszi held
her arm. He was all stink, all stink, he helped kill cows, cows like Brindle, and
Annamae said he washed blood off himself. “Come, little one,” he said in his funny
English (he was a furriner), “do
not hasten so. Life will catch up with you soon enough. Let us walk together.”

There was a man with him, something wrong with his shoulders, so he hunched over,
misshapen. They walked along in silence. But their shoes made an awful sound. Long
shadows lay over the street; the wind—flinging the arc lamp—twitched them as if they
were alive. Mazie was glad for Kryckszi’s hand, and she held it tight, tight.

There was no light in the house, as if nobody was home. But her father sat on the
steps, weariness riding his shoulders like despair. Kryckszi called through the windy
dark: “You not try to get on at the yards any more, Holbrook?”

“Naw.”

“Today they hire.”

“Damn shame you aint a nigger,” the other man interrupted. “If you was you could get
on in a minute.”

“Today they hire,” Kryckszi said again. “They think you are scissors bill maybe they
take you too—that is why they taking blacks—they think they scab if there is strike—have
to scab, how else they get job?”

Mazie went up to her father. He did not even look at her. Flat, inflectionless, he
spoke: “Git in there and help your ma git dinner on the table. You might tell
her Bess aint the only one in the house that wants to eat.”

There was something she wanted to say, but she could not remember it. “Go on,” her
father harshly ordered, “get in there.”

The light was not on. In the dirty light of dusk her mother sat motionless, her eyes
large and feverish, the baby at her breast asleep. The lifeless hair hung in two black
braids, framing her like a coffin, and above a spiral of fire foamed, reflected from
the open damper. “Momma,” said Mazie for no reason and went up and kissed her. The
cheek was burning to her lips.

Armoursarmours, her lips said soundlessly, and she slipped to her knees and buried
her face in her mother’s lap.

Her mother did not move. Mazie clutched her closer. The limbs began to tremble. “Yes,”
her mother spoke, “I never was much of a hand for tonics, but when it gets you like
this, Else …”

Mazie pushed herself away. The nightmare feeling came back. But the table felt solid
against her back (the pavement grated her hand, harsh). In the darkness she brought
out the dishes and put them on the table. She opened the oven and fed it wood.

Up above her mother’s head the swirl of color foamed larger and larger. Suddenly it
brought a nausea
of fear (the jelly mass pushing against her face, the breath stinking, the shuddering
laugh). She ran for the lamp and turned it up and stood there in the sudden light,
trembling. There, it was gone now.

“What?”a hoarse, startled, fear-stricken sound from Anna. “What?”then realizing. “Oh
… the light. Musta startled me. Where you been so long, Missy? Better get the table
set and the bread cut. Poppa’ll be home any minute now.”