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by Toni Morrison

“Was there other seconds working here? Did they get let go?” Cee looked anxious.

  “Well, some quit. I remember just one who was fired.”

  “What for?”

  “I never did find out what the matter was. He seemed just fine to me. Young he was and friendlier than most. I know they argued about something and Dr. Beau said he wouldn’t have fellow travelers in his house.”

  “What’s a fallow traveler?”

  “Fellow, not fallow. Beats me. Something fierce, I reckon. Dr. Beau is a heavyweight Confederate. His grandfather was a certified hero who was killed in some famous battle up North. Here’s a napkin.”

  “Thanks.” Cee wiped her fingers. “Oh, I feel so much better now. Say, how long have you been working here?”

  “Since I was fifteen. Let me show you to your room. It’s downstairs and not much, but for sleep it’s as good as anything. It’s got a mattress made for a queen.”

  Downstairs was just a few feet below the front porch—more of a shallow extension of the house rather than a proper basement. Down a hall not far from the doctor’s office was Cee’s room, spotless, narrow, and without windows. Beyond it was a locked door leading to what Sarah said was a bomb shelter, fully stocked. She had placed Cee’s shopping bag on the floor. Two nicely starched uniforms saluted from their hangers on the wall.

  “Wait till tomorrow to put one on,” said Sarah, adjusting the pristine collar of her handiwork.

  “Oooh, this is nice. Look, a little desk.” Cee gazed at the bed’s headboard, then touched it with a grin. She shuffled her feet on the small rug lying next to the bed. Then, after peeping behind a folding screen to see the toilet and sink, she plopped on the bed, delighting in the thickness of the mattress. When she pulled the sheets back she giggled at its silk cover. So there, Lenore, she thought. What you sleep on in that broke-down bed you got? Remembering the thin, bumpy mattress Lenore slept on, she couldn’t help herself and laughed with wild glee.

  “Shh, girl. Glad you like it, but don’t laugh so loud. It’s frowned on here.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Tell you later.”

  “No. Now, Sarah, please?”

  “Well, remember those daughters I mentioned being away? They’re in a home. They both have great big heads. Cephalitis, I think they call it. Sad for it to happen to even one, but two? Have mercy.”

  “Oh, my Lord. What a misery,” said Cee, thinking, I guess that’s why he invents things—he wants to help other folks.

  The next morning, standing before her employer, Cee found him formal but welcoming. A small man with lots of silver hair, Dr. Beau sat stiffly behind a wide, neat desk. The first question he put to her was whether she had children or had been with a man. Cee told him she had been married for a spell, but had not gotten pregnant. He seemed pleased to hear that. Her duties, he said, were primarily cleaning instruments and equipment, tidying and keeping a schedule of patients’ names, time of appointments and so on. He did his own billing in his office, which was separate from the examination/laboratory room.

  “Be here promptly at ten in the morning,” he said, “and be prepared to work late if the situation calls for it. Also, be prepared for the reality of medicine: sometimes blood, sometimes pain. You will have to be steady and calm. Always. If you can you’ll do just fine. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, sir. I can. I sure can.”

  And she did. Her admiration for the doctor grew even more when she noticed how many more poor people—women and girls, especially—he helped. Far more than the well-to-do ones from the neighborhood or from Atlanta proper. He was extremely careful with his patients, finicky about observing their privacy, except when he invited another doctor to join him in working on a patient. When all of his dedicated help didn’t help and a patient got much worse he sent her to a charity hospital in the city. When one or two died in spite of his care, he donated money for funeral expenses. Cee loved her work: the beautiful house, the kind doctor, and the wages—never skipped or short as they sometimes were at Bobby’s. She saw nothing of Mrs. Scott. Sarah, who took care of all her needs, said the lady of the house never left it and had a tiny laudanum craving. The doctor’s wife spent much of her time painting flowers in watercolor or watching television shows. Milton Berle and The Honeymooners were her favorites. She had flirted with I Love Lucy, but hated Ricky Ricardo too much to watch it.

  One day, a couple of weeks into the job, Cee entered Dr. Beau’s office a half hour before he arrived. She was always in awe of the crowded bookshelves. Now she examined the medical books closely, running her finger over some of the titles: Out of the Night. Must be a mystery, she thought. Then The Passing of the Great Race, and next to it, Heredity, Race and Society.

  How small, how useless was her schooling, she thought, and promised herself she would find time to read about and understand “eugenics.” This was a good, safe place, she knew, and Sarah had become her family, her friend, and her confidante. They shared every meal and sometimes the cooking. When it was too hot in the kitchen, they ate in the backyard under a canopy, smelling the last of the lilacs and watching tiny lizards flick across the walkway.

  “Let’s go inside,” said Sarah, on a very hot afternoon that first week. “These flies too mean today. Besides, I got some honeydews need eating before they soften.”

  In the kitchen, Sarah removed three melons from a peck basket. She caressed one slowly, then another. “Males,” she snorted.

  Cee lifted the third one, then stroked its lime-yellow peel, tucking her forefinger into the tiny indentation at the stem break. “Female,” she laughed. “This one’s a female.”

  “Well, hallelujah.” Sarah joined Cee’s laughter with a low chuckle. “Always the sweetest.”

  “Always the juiciest,” echoed Cee.

  “Can’t beat the girl for flavor.”

  “Can’t beat her for sugar.”

  Sarah slid a long, sharp knife from a drawer and, with intense anticipation of the pleasure to come, cut the girl in two.

  FIVE

  Women are eager to talk to me when they hear my last name. Money? They snigger and ask the same questions: Who named me that or if anybody did. If I made it up to make myself feel important or was I a gambler or thief or some other kind of crook they should watch out for? When I tell them my nickname, what folks back home call me, Smart Money, they scream with laughter and say: Ain’t no such thing as dumb money, just dumb folks. Got any more? You must have mine. No end of easy talk after that and it’s enough to keep a friendship going way after it’s dried up just so they can make lame jokes: Hey, Smart Money, gimmee some. Money, come on over here. I got a deal you gonna love.

  Truthfully, other than getting lucky back in Lotus and some street girls in Kentucky, I’ve had only two regular women. I liked the small breakable thing inside each one. Whatever their personality, smarts, or looks, something soft lay inside each. Like a bird’s breastbone, shaped and chosen to wish on. A little V, thinner than bone and lightly hinged, that I could break with a forefinger if I wanted to, but never did. Want to, I mean. Knowing it was there, hiding from me, was enough.

  It was the third woman who changed everything. In her company the little wishbone V took up residence in my own chest and made itself at home. It was her forefinger that kept me on edge. I met her at a cleaner’s. Late fall, it was, but in that ocean-lapped city, who could tell? Sober as sunlight, I handed her my army issue and couldn’t take my eyes away from hers. I must have looked the fool, but I didn’t feel like one. I felt like I’d come home. Finally. I’d been wandering. Not totally homeless, but close. Drinking and hanging out in music bars on Jackson Street, sleeping on the sofas of drinking buddies or outdoors, betting my forty-three dollars of army pay in crap games and pool halls. And when that was gone, I took quick day jobs until the next check came. I knew I needed help but there wasn’t any. With no army orders to follow or complain about I ended up in the streets with none.

  I remember exactly why I hadn’t had
a drink in four days and needed to dry-clean my clothes. It was because of that morning when I walked over by the bridge. A crowd was milling there along with an ambulance. When I got close enough I saw a medic’s arms holding a little girl vomiting water. Blood ran from her nose. A sadness hit me like a pile-driver. My stomach fell and just the thought of whiskey made me want to heave. I rushed off feeling shaky, then I spent a few nights on benches in the park until the cops ran me off. When on the fourth day I caught my reflection in a store window I thought it was somebody else. Some dirty, pitiful-looking guy. He looked like the me in a dream I kept having where I’m on a battlefield alone. Nobody anywhere. Silence everywhere. I keep walking but I don’t find anybody at all. Right then I decided to clean up. To hell with the dreams. I needed to make my homeboys proud. Be something other than a haunted, half-crazy drunk. So when I saw this woman at the cleaner’s, I was wide open for her. If it wasn’t for that letter, I’d still be hanging from her apron strings. She had no competition in my mind except for the horses, a man’s foot, and Ycidra trembling under my arm.

  You are dead wrong if you think I was just scouting for a home with a bowl of sex in it. I wasn’t. Something about her floored me, made me want to be good enough for her. Is that too hard for you to understand? Earlier you wrote about how sure I was that the beat-up man on the train to Chicago would turn around when they got home and whip the wife who tried to help him. Not true. I didn’t think any such thing. What I thought was that he was proud of her but didn’t want to show how proud he was to the other men on the train. I don’t think you know much about love.

  Or me.

  SIX

  The actors were much nicer than the actresses. At least they called her by her name and didn’t mind if their costume didn’t quite fit or was stained from old makeup. The women called her “girl,” as in “Where’s the girl?” “Say, girl, where’s my jar of Pond’s?” And they raged when their hair or wigs didn’t obey.

  Lily’s resentment was mild because seamstress/wardrobe was a financial promotion from cleaning woman and she got to show off the sewing skills her mother had taught her: slip stitch, blanket stitch, chain, back, yo-yo, shank-button, and flat. In addition, Ray Stone, the director, was polite to her. He produced two sometimes three plays a season at the Skylight Studio and taught acting classes the rest of the time. So, small and poor as it was, the theater was as busy as a hive all year. In between productions and after classes, the place hummed with intense argument, and sweat misted the foreheads of Mr. Stone and his students. Lily thought they were more animated then than when they were onstage. She couldn’t help overhearing these quarrels, but she didn’t understand anger that wasn’t about a scene or how to say some lines. Now that the Skylight was shut down, Mr. Stone arrested and she out of a job, it was clear she should have listened closely.

  It must have been the play. The one that caused the problem, the picketing, then the visit from two government men in snap-brim hats. The play, from her point of view, wasn’t very good. Lots of talking, very little action, but not so bad it had to be closed. Certainly not as bad as the one they rehearsed but couldn’t get permission to perform. The Morrison Case, it was called, by somebody named Albert Maltz if her memory was right.

  The pay was less at Wang’s Heavenly Palace dry cleaners and there were no tips from actors. Yet working in daylight was an improvement over walking in darkness to get from her tiny rented room to the theater and back. Lily stood in the pressing room, recalling a recent irritation that had blossomed into anger. The response she had recently gotten from the real estate agent had her seething. Frugal and minding her own business, she had added enough to what her parents left her to leave the rooming house and put a down payment on a house of her own. She had circled an advertisement for a lovely one for five thousand dollars and, although it was far from her work at the cleaner’s, she would happily commute from so nice a neighborhood. The stares she had gotten as she strolled the neighborhood didn’t trouble her, since she knew how neatly dressed she was and how perfect her straightened hair. Finally, after a few afternoon strolls, she consulted a Realtor. When she described her purpose and the couple of houses on sale she had found, the agent smiled and said, “I’m really sorry.”

  “They’re sold already?” asked Lily.

  The agent dropped her eyes, then decided not to lie. “Well, no, but there are restrictions.”

  “On what?”

  The agent sighed. Obviously not wanting to have this conversation, she lifted her desk blotter and pulled out some stapled papers. Turning a page, she showed Lily an underlined passage. Lily traced the lines of print with her forefinger:

  No part of said property hereby conveyed shall ever be used or occupied by any Hebrew or by any person of the Ethiopian, Malay or Asiatic race excepting only employees in domestic service.

  “I’ve got rentals and apartments in other parts of the city. Would you like …”

  “Thank you,” said Lily. She raised her chin and left the office as quickly as pride let her. Nevertheless, when her anger cooled and after some mulling, she returned to the agency and rented a second-floor one-bedroom apartment near Jackson Street.

  Although her employers were far more considerate than the actresses at Skylight Studio, after six months of pressing and steaming for the Wangs, and even after they gave her a seventy-five-cent raise, she was feeling stifled. She still wanted to buy that house or one like it. Into that restlessness stepped a tall man with a bundle of army-issue clothes for “same-day” service. The Wang couple, at lunch in the back room, had left her to attend the counter. She told the customer the “same-day” service applied only if requests were made before noon; he could pick his things up the next day. She smiled when she spoke. He did not return the smile, but his eyes had such a quiet, faraway look—like people who made their living staring at ocean waves—she relented.

  “Well, I’ll see what I can do. Come back at five-thirty.”

  He did and, holding the clothes hangers over his shoulder, waited on the sidewalk for half an hour until she came out. Then he offered to walk her home.

  “Do you want to come up?” Lily asked him.

  “I’ll do anything you say.”

  She laughed.

  THEY SLID INTO each other, becoming a couple of sorts within a week. But months later, when he said he had to leave her for family reasons, Lily felt one abnormal pulse beat. That was all.

  Living with Frank had been glorious at first. Its breakdown was more of a stutter than a single eruption. She had begun to feel annoyance rather than alarm when she came home from work and saw him sitting on the sofa staring at the floor. One sock on, the other in his hand. Neither calling his name nor leaning toward his face moved him. So Lily learned to let him be and flounced off to the kitchen to clean up whatever mess he’d left. The times when it was as good as at the beginning, when she felt such sweetness waking up with him next to her, his dog tags under her cheek, had become memories she was less and less inclined to dredge up. She regretted the loss of ecstasy but assumed its heights would at some point return.

  Meantime the small mechanics of life needed attention: unpaid bills, frequent gas leaks, mice, runs in her last pair of hose, hostile, quarreling neighbors, dripping faucets, frivolous heating, street dogs, and the insane price of hamburger. None of these irritations did Frank take seriously, and in all honesty she couldn’t blame him. She knew that buried underneath the pile of complaints lay her yearning for her own house. It infuriated Lily that he shared none of her enthusiasm for achieving that goal. In fact he seemed to have no goals at all. When she questioned him about the future, what he wanted to do, he said, “Stay alive.” Oh, she thought. The war still haunted him. So, whether annoyed or alarmed, she forgave him much: like that time in February when they went to a church convention held on a high school football field. Known more for table after table of delicious free food than for proselytizing, the church welcomed everybody. And everybody came—not only member
s of the congregation. The nonbelievers, crowding the entrance and lining up for food, outnumbered the believers. Literature passed out by serious-looking young people and sweet-faced elders was stuffed into purses and side pockets. When the morning rain stopped and sunlight sashayed through the clouds, Lily and Frank exchanged their slickers for sweaters and strolled hand in hand to the stadium. Lily held her chin a bit higher and wished Frank had had a haircut. People gave him more than a passing glance, probably because he was so tall, or so she hoped. Anyway, they were in high spirits all afternoon—chatting with people and helping children load their plates. Then, smack in the middle of all that cold sunlight and warm gaiety, Frank bolted. They had been standing at a table, piling seconds of fried chicken on their plates, when a little girl with slanty eyes reached up over the opposite edge of the table to grab a cupcake. Frank leaned over to push the platter closer to her. When she gave him a broad smile of thanks, he dropped his food and ran through the crowd. People, those he bumped into and others, parted before him—some with frowns, others simply agape. Alarmed and embarrassed, Lily put down her paper plate. Trying hard to pretend he was a stranger to her, she walked slowly, her chin up, making no eye contact, past the bleachers and away from the exit Frank had taken.

  When she returned to the apartment, she was thankful to find it empty. How could he change so quickly? Laughing one second, terrified the next? Was there some violence in him that could be directed toward her? He had moods, of course, but was never argumentative or the least threatening. Lily drew up her knees and, with her elbows leaning on them, pondered her confusion and his, the future she wanted and the question of whether he could share it. Dawn light seeped through the curtains before he returned. Lily’s heart jumped when she heard the key turn in the lock, but he was calm and, as he put it, “beat up with shame.”

  “Was it something to do with your time in Korea that spooked you?” Lily had never asked about the war and he had never brought it up. Good, she had thought. Better to move on.