The Collected Stories, page 25
They are sitting at the edge of their chairs. He’s leaning forward reading to her in that old bulb light. Sometimes she smiles just a little. Then he puts the paper down and takes both her hands in his as though they needed warmth. He continues to read. Just beyond the table and their heads, there is the darkness of the kitchen, the bedroom, the dining room, the shadowy darkness where as a child I ate my supper, did my homework, and went to bed.
The Long-Distance Runner
One day, before or after forty-two, I became a long-distance runner. Though I was stout and in many ways inadequate to this desire, I wanted to go far and fast, not as fast as bicycles and trains, not as far as Taipei, Hingwen, places like that, islands of the slant-eyed cunt, as sailors in bus stations say when speaking of travel, but round and round the county from the seaside to the bridges, along the old neighborhood streets a couple of times, before old age and urban renewal ended them and me.
I tried the country first, Connecticut, which being wooded is always full of buds in spring. All creation is secret, isn’t that true? So I trained in the wide-zoned suburban hills where I wasn’t known. I ran all spring in and out of dogwood bloom, then laurel.
People sometimes stopped and asked me why I ran, a lady in silk shorts halfway down over her fat thighs. In training, I replied and rested only to answer if closely questioned. I wore a white sleeveless undershirt as well, with excellent support, not to attract the attention of old men and prudish children.
Then summer came, my legs seemed strong. I kissed the kids goodbye. They were quite old by then. It was near the time for parting anyway. I told Mrs. Raftery to look in now and then and give them some of that rotten Celtic supper she makes.
I told them they could take off any time they wanted to. Go lead your private life, I said. Only leave me out of it.
A word to the wise … said Richard.
You’re depressed Faith, Mrs. Raftery said. Your boyfriend Jack, the one you think’s so hotsy-totsy, hasn’t called and you’re as gloomy as a tick on Sunday.
Cut the folkshit with me, Raftery, I muttered. Her eyes filled with tears because that’s who she is: folkshit from bunion to topknot. That’s how she got liked by me, loved, invented, and endured.
When I walked out the door they were all reclining before the television set, Richard, Tonto, and Mrs. Raftery, gazing at the news. Which proved with moving pictures that there had been a voyage to the moon and Africa and South America hid in a furious whorl of clouds.
I said, Goodbye. They said, Yeah, O.K., sure.
If that’s how it is, forget it, I hollered and took the Independent subway to Brighton Beach.
At Brighton Beach I stopped at the Salty Breezes Locker Room to change my clothes. Twenty-five years ago my father invested $500 in its future. In fact he still clears about $3.50 a year, which goes directly (by law) to the Children of Judea to cover their deficit.
No one paid too much attention when I started to run, easy and light on my feet. I ran on the boardwalk first, past my mother’s leafleting station—between a soft-ice-cream stand and a degenerated dune. There she had been assigned by her comrades to halt the tides of cruel American enterprise with simple socialist sense.
I wanted to stop and admire the long beach. I wanted to stop in order to think admiringly about New York. There aren’t many rotting cities so tan and sandy and speckled with citizens at their salty edges. But I had already spent a lot of life lying down or standing and staring. I had decided to run.
After about a mile and a half I left the boardwalk and began to trot into the old neighborhood. I was running well. My breath was long and deep. I was thinking pridefully about my form.
Suddenly I was surrounded by about three hundred blacks.
Who you?
Who that?
Look at her! Just look! When you seen a fatter ass?
Poor thing. She ain’t right. Leave her, you boys, you bad boys.
I used to live here, I said.
Oh yes, they said, in the white old days. That time too bad to last.
But we loved it here. We never went to Flatbush Avenue or Times Square. We loved our block.
Tough black titty.
I like your speech, I said. Metaphor and all.
Right on. We get that from talking.
Yes my people also had a way of speech. And don’t forget the Irish. The gift of gab.
Who they? said a small boy.
Cops.
Nowadays, I suggested, there’s more than Irish on the police force.
You right, said two ladies. More more, much much more. They’s French Chinamen Russkies Congoleans. Oh missee, you too right.
I lived in that house, I said. That apartment house. All my life. Till I got married.
Now that is nice. Live in one place. My mother live that way in South Carolina. One place. Her daddy farmed. She said. They ate. No matter winter war bad times. Roosevelt. Something! Ain’t that wonderful! And it weren’t cold! Big trees!
That apartment. I looked up and pointed. There. The third floor.
They all looked up. So what! You blubrous devil! said a dark young man. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and had that intelligent look that City College boys used to have when I was eighteen and first looked at them.
He seemed to lead them in contempt and anger, even the littlest ones who moved toward me with dramatic stealth singing, Devil, Oh Devil. I don’t think the little kids had bad feeling because they poked a finger into me, then laughed.
Still I thought it might be wise to keep my head. So I jumped right in with some facts. I said, How many flowers’ names do you know? Wildflowers, I mean. My people only knew two. That’s what they say now anyway. Rich or poor, they only had two flowers’ names. Rose and violet.
Daisy, said one boy immediately.
Weed, said another. That is a flower, I thought. But everyone else got the joke.
Saxifrage, lupine, said a lady. Viper’s bugloss, said a small Girl Scout in medium green with a dark green sash. She held up a Handbook of Wildflowers.
How many you know, fat mama? a boy asked warmly. He wasn’t against my being a mother or fat. I turned all my attention to him.
Oh sonny, I said, I’m way ahead of my people. I know in yellows alone: common cinquefoil, trout lily, yellow adder’s-tongue, swamp buttercup and common buttercup, golden sorrel, yellow or hop clover, devil’s-paintbrush, evening primrose, black-eyed Susan, golden aster, also the yellow pickerelweed growing down by the water if not in the water, and dandelions of course. I’ve seen all these myself. Seen them.
You could see China from the boardwalk, a boy said. When it’s nice.
I know more flowers than countries. Mostly young people these days have traveled in many countries.
Not me. I ain’t been nowhere.
Not me either, said about seventeen boys.
I’m not allowed, said a little girl. There’s drunken junkies.
But I! I! cried out a tall black youth, very handsome and well dressed. I am an African. My father came from the high stolen plains. I have been everywhere. I was in Moscow six months, learning machinery. I was in France, learning French. I was in Italy, observing the peculiar Renaissance and the people’s sweetness. I was in England, where I studied the common law and the urban blight. I was at the Conference of Dark Youth in Cuba to understand our passion. I am now here. Here am I to become an engineer and return to my people, around the Cape of Good Hope in a Norwegian sailing vessel. In this way I will learn the fine old art of sailing in case the engines of the new society of my old inland country should fail.
We had an extraordinary amount of silence after that. Then one old lady in a black dress and high white lace collar said to another old lady dressed exactly the same way, Glad tidings when someone got brains in the head not fish juice. Amen, said a few.
Whyn’t you go up to Mrs. Luddy living in your house, you lady, huh? The Girl Scout asked this.
Why she just groove to see you, said some sarcastic snickerer.
She got palpitations. Her man, he give it to her.
That ain’t all, he a natural gift-giver.
I’ll take you, said the Girl Scout. My name is Cynthia. I’m in Troop 355, Brooklyn.
I’m not dressed, I said, looking at my lumpy knees.
You shouldn’t wear no undershirt like that without no runnin number or no team writ on it. It look like a undershirt.
Cynthia! Don’t take her up there, said an important boy. Her head strange. Don’t you take her. Hear?
Lawrence, she said softly, you tell me once more what to do I’ll wrap you round that lamppost.
Git! she said, powerfully addressing me.
In this way I was led into the hallway of the whole house of my childhood.
The first door I saw was still marked in flaky gold, 1A. That’s where the janitor lived, I said. He was a Negro.
How come like that? Cynthia made an astonished face. How come the janitor was a black man?
Oh Cynthia, I said. Then I turned to the opposite door, first floor front, 1B. I remembered. Now, here, this was Mrs. Goreditsky, very very fat lady. All her children died at birth. Born, then one, two, three. Dead. Five children, then Mr. Goreditsky said, I’m bad luck on you Tessie and he went away. He sent $15 a week for seven years. Then no one heard.
I know her, poor thing, said Cynthia. The city come for her summer before last. The way they knew, it smelled. They wropped her up in a canvas. They couldn’t get through the front door. It scraped off a piece of her. My Uncle Ronald had to help them, but he got disgusted.
Only two years ago. She was still here! Wasn’t she scared?
So we all, said Cynthia. White ain’t everything.
Who lived up here, she asked, 2B? Right now, my best friend Nancy Rosalind lives here. She got two brothers, and her sister married and got a baby. She very light-skinned. Not her mother. We got all colors amongst us.
Your best friend? That’s funny. Because it was my best friend. Right in that apartment. Joanna Rosen.
What become of her? Cynthia asked. She got a running shirt too?
Come on Cynthia, if you really want to know, I’ll tell you. She married this man, Marvin Steirs.
Who’s he?
I recollected his achievements. Well, he’s the president of a big corporation, JoMar Plastics. This corporation owns a steel company, a radio station, a new Xerox-type machine that lets you do twenty-five different pages at once. This corporation has a foundation, The JoMar Fund for Research in Conservation. Capitalism is like that, I added, in order to be politically useful.
How come you know? You go over their house a lot?
No. I happened to read all about them on the financial page, just last week. It made me think: a different life. That’s all.
Different spokes for different folks, said Cynthia.
I sat down on the cool marble steps and remembered Joanna’s cousin Ziggie. He was older than we were. He wrote a poem which told us we were lovely flowers and our legs were petals, which nature would force open no matter how many times we said no.
Then I had several other interior thoughts that I couldn’t share with a child, the kind that give your face a blank or melancholy look.
Now you’re not interested, said Cynthia. Now you’re not gonna say a thing. Who lived here, 2A? Who? Two men lives here now. Women coming and women going. My mother says, Danger sign: Stay away, my darling, stay away.
I don’t remember, Cynthia. I really don’t.
You got to. What’d you come for, anyways?
Then I tried. 2A. 2A. Was it the twins? I felt a strong obligation as though remembering was in charge of the existence of the past. This is not so.
Cynthia, I said, I don’t want to go any further. I don’t even want to remember.
Come on, she said, tugging at my shorts, don’t you want to see Mrs. Luddy, the one lives in your old house? That be fun, no?
No. No, I don’t want to see Mrs. Luddy.
Now you shouldn’t pay no attention to those boys downstairs. She will like you. I mean, she is kind. She don’t like most white people, but she might like you.
No Cynthia, it’s not that, but I don’t want to see my father and mother’s house now.
I didn’t know what to say. I said, Because my mother’s dead. This was a lie, because my mother lives in her own room with my father in the Children of Judea. With her hand over her socialist heart, she reads the paper every morning after breakfast. Then she says sadly to my father, Every day the same. Dying … dying, dying from killing.
My mother’s dead Cynthia. I can’t go in there.
Oh … oh, the poor thing, she said, looking into my eyes. Oh, if my mother died, I don’t know what I’d do. Even if I was old as you. I could kill myself. Tears filled her eyes and started down her cheeks. If my mother died, what would I do? She is my protector, she won’t let the pushers get me. She hold me tight. She gonna hide me in the cedar box if my Uncle Rudford comes try to get me back. She can’t die, my mother.
Cynthia—honey—she won’t die. She’s young. I put my arm out to comfort her. You could come live with me, I said. I got two boys, they’re nearly grown up. I missed it, not having a girl.
What? What you mean now, live with you and boys. She pulled away and ran for the stairs. Stay away from me, honky lady. I know them white boys. They just gonna try and jostle my black womanhood. My mother told me about that, keep you white honky devil boys to your devil self, you just leave me be you old bitch you. Somebody help me, she started to scream, you hear. Somebody help. She gonna take me away.
She flattened herself to the wall, trembling. I was too frightened by her fear of me to say, Honey, I wouldn’t hurt you, it’s me. I heard her helpers, the voices of large boys crying, We coming, we coming, hold your head up, we coming. I ran past her fear to the stairs and up them two at a time. I came to my old own door. I knocked like the landlord, loud and terrible.
Mama not home, a child’s voice said. No, no, I said. It’s me! a lady! Someone’s chasing me, let me in. Mama not home, I ain’t allowed to open up for nobody.
It’s me! I cried out in terror. Mama! Mama! let me in!
The door opened. A slim woman whose age I couldn’t invent looked at me. She said, Get in and shut that door tight. She took a hard pinching hold on my upper arm. Then she bolted the door herself. Them hustlers after you. They make me pink. Hide this white lady now, Donald. Stick her under your bed, you got a high bed.
Oh that’s O.K. I’m fine now, I said. I felt safe and at home.
You in my house, she said. You do as I say. For two cents, I throw you out.
I squatted under a small kid’s pissy mattress. Then I heard the knock. It was tentative and respectful. My mama don’t allow me to open. Donald! someone called. Donald!
Oh no, he said. Can’t do it. She gonna wear me out. You know her. She already tore up my ass this morning once. Ain’t gonna open up.
I lived there for about three weeks with Mrs. Luddy and Donald and three little baby girls nearly the same age. I told her a joke about Irish twins. Ain’t Irish, she said.
Nearly every morning the babies woke us at about 6:45. We gave them all a bottle and went back to sleep till 8:00. I made coffee and she changed diapers. Then it really stank for a while. At this time I usually said, Well listen, thanks really, but I’ve got to go I guess. I guess I’m going. She’d usually say, Well, guess again. I guess you ain’t. Or if she was feeling disgusted she’d say, Go on now! Get! You wanna go, I guess by now I have snorted enough white lady stink to choke a horse. Go on!
I’d get to the door and then I’d hear voices. I’m ashamed to say I’d become fearful. Despite my wide geographical love of mankind, I would be attacked by local fears.
There was a sentimental truth that lay beside all that going and not going. It was my house where I’d lived long ago my family life. There was a tile on the bathroom floor that I myself had broken, dropping a hammer on the toe of my brother Charles as he stood dreamily shaving, his prick halfway up his undershorts. Astonishment and knowledge first seized me right there. The kitchen was the same. The table was the enameled table common to our class, easy to clean, with wooden undercorners for indigent and old cockroaches that couldn’t make it to the kitchen sink. (However, it was not the same table, because I have inherited that one, chips and all.)
The living room was something like ours, only we had less plastic. There may have been less plastic in the world at that time. Also, my mother had set beautiful cushions everywhere, on beds and chairs. It was the way she expressed herself, artistically, to embroider at night or take strips of flowered cotton and sew them across ordinary white or blue muslin in the most delicate designs, the way women have always used materials that live and die in hunks and tatters to say: This is my place.
Mrs. Luddy said, Uh huh!
Of course, I said, men don’t have that outlet. That’s how come they run around so much.
Till they drunk enough to lay down, she said.
Yes, I said, on a large scale you can see it in the world. First they make something, then they murder it. Then they write a book about how interesting it is.
You got something there, she said. Sometimes she said, Girl, you don’t know nothing.
We often sat at the window looking out and down. Little tufts of breeze grew on that windowsill. The blazing afternoon was around the corner and up the block.
