The Collected Novels of Charles Wright

by Charles Wright

  Nothing had changed and I mounted the porch steps slowly. An alley cat sprang out of the porch swing, hissed angrily, and disappeared. I started, then smiled, and raised a trembling hand to knock on the door.

  There was no sound from within the house and I rapped again, then stood rigid with my hands hanging down at my sides. Finally I heard Grandma’s soft voice: “All right, I’m a-comin.”

  The door opened and she stood facing me. I had a sense of falling. My heart, heavy as a log, dropped, just dropped. I bit my lower lip to hold back the tears.

  “Sonny!”

  “Grandma!”

  We embraced, falling into each other’s arms as if the ground under the sagging porch were giving way.

  I held Grandma gently in my arms. She was seventy-nine years old. She had been a full-bodied woman, but I could feel the change in her. She was thin now, no more than a bundle of dried sticks. The round face was not even a mask of what it had been. Her cheeks had caved in and there were only her proud bones beneath a thin layer of wrinkled brown flesh. The waist-length hair, before always crowned in tight braids, had almost all gone. What was left was plastered against her skull like a baby’s knitted cap. Her eyes were the same: warm, brown, laughing. They peered up at me questioningly.

  “Grandma, Grandma,” I crooned, rocking her in my arms, hoping she did not note a change on my smiling face.

  “Surprised?” I asked, knowing there was nothing I could hide from her.

  “Glory be . . . I can hardly get my breath.” Grandma looked at me tenderly, there were tears in her eyes. Her voice was happy and lilting, like that of a young girl. “And you didn’t even write to let me know you were coming. Shame on you.”

  We were not only connected by blood; we were friends. Whatever had happened to us, whatever thoughts crossed our minds that early November morning, could not destroy the love we bore each other.

  “Let’s go inside,” Grandma said. I picked up my bags and followed Grandma inside, kicking the door shut.

  The living room was not the cool, flowered room of sleepy summer afternoons or the warm crackling room of winter. I could not believe that I had played in this room as a child. Giant red roses in the grimy wallpaper overpowered the room. Hunks of plaster peeped through the wallpaper and paint peeled from the ceiling in fancy paper scallops. A web of dust framed the portrait of Grandpa, which hung above the closed-up fireplace. A horsehair sofa littered with shiny silk pillows was shoved against a wall and near it sat an oil burner, covered with dust. Two carved rosewood tables and four moth-eaten olive chairs occupied the space opposite the fireplace. A hard, rock-maple chair, as perky looking as ever, and the old marble-covered table were on either side of the bay window. A carpet, ravelling at the edges, covered the floor.

  Fronting the window was Grandma’s Pennsylvania Dutch bed which had been given a coat of horrible, cheap, blue paint. The scene of dry dampness, of medicine and flowers, hung in the room like a sickening perfume.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Grandma sit down on the edge of the bed and sigh. She resembled a wretched little doll. Her thin, bloodless hands fumbled on the nightstand.

  “I haven’t been well,” she said, “and the doctor has given me all sorts of pills.”

  “You still look great to me,” I said nervously, and removed my jacket and unlaced my shoes.

  Grandma’s eyes never left my face. “You think so?”

  “Same old gal,” I joked.

  Her laugh was unrestrained. But she choked slightly and caught her breath. Only four years before, after the Korean discharge, she had played touch football with my younger cousin and me. “The old mare ain’t what she used to be,” she said, smiling.

  I carefully averted my eyes and sat down on the horsehair sofa. I wanted to sleep, close my eyes, but awaken to what?

  “You look tired, Sonny. How’d you come, by bus?”

  “You know I’m a bug for buses,” I lied. “Buses and fire engines.”

  “My little Sonny,” Grandma marveled. “I forgot to ask, are you hungry? You’ll find something in the kitchen.”

  “Think I’ll make a cup of tea,” I said, rising.

  “I’m going to take a nap.” Grandma said. “Got to watch myself.”

  “You’re still sweet sixteen and have a dozen beaux.”

  “Come and give Granny a kiss.”

  I went over and kissed her lightly on the cheek. Her trembling hands sought out my face and the fingers moved slowly across my face, and then her shrewd eyes met mine again.

  “I’ve waited, prayed for this day . . . Still the same old Sonny?”

  “Still the same,” I mustered up, feebly.

  “And I thank God, dear sweet blessed Jesus.”

  The first rays of the sun swept the room with a cruel light. I closed the door noiselessly, leaving behind Grandma, already stretched out on her bed, praying for me.

  * * *

  The languor of autumn diminished as the nights grew cold. The small-town life slowed down. There was little rain and the old people said that that was a sure sign of a cold, long winter. I loved those new days. I slept well and was up at dawn, chopping wood for the old woodburning stove that Grandma had refused to give up. I made breakfast for Grandma and then would get the morning paper, do some chores around the house, and some also for the neighbors, which made them buzz around me as if I were a saint.

  I read a lot that winter, going to the library three times a week. I tried to avoid the kids I had grown up with. They all worked eight-to-five shifts and were carving out their future in this smalltown Negro world. And in this quiet world for the first time in years, I relaxed; I drank very little and did not feel the need for sex. Gone was the fevered air of New York, gone the hipped-up, Freudian complications. These small-town folk had problems like people anywhere, but they faced them by looking them square in the eye, accepting them as they accepted changes in the weather.

  I remember the first of December, 1958, in that Missouri town on the banks of the river. Snow fell softly through the bare trees and onto the old buildings and houses. Peace. There was almost no sound in the street night or day except for the laughing voices of children returning from school at three in the afternoon or the grinding whirr of a stalled car. Grandma had taken to bed and old Doctor Bess would creep in with his black bag and joke with Grandma and give out white, pink, orange, and yellow pills. Then he would talk with me. He had gone to Columbia in 1905 and we discussed the changes in New York City. Ruby came almost daily; she had married again but was still her same, solid, cold self. I never saw my father, although he lived only three blocks away.

  The snow lasted well into the middle of December. Grandma was permanently bedridden, and had developed bedsores. Like most old people, she moved into what is called a second childhood, had lapses of memory. My own mind was on the edge of a cliff during those days; fear had settled inside me. Grandma and I were sometimes cross with each other, but then our eyes would meet.

  I remember that clear winter Saturday, blue sky, white sun. The snow was melting and water dripped from the eaves of the house. I saw icicles drop noiselessly from the naked trees and a few birds chirped on the bare branches. I remember the little boy who lived down the street dragging his sled on the sidewalk, the screeching sound of steel on concrete in the wintry, mellow sun and the afternoon shadows like fine lacework.

  I was sitting in the rocking chair with a black coffee and a cigarette, rocking peacefully. Grandma sat up in the bed and said in a slow gravelly voice: “Sonny, ain’t that Mrs. Carter out there at her fence? What is she doing out there with a baby in this weather? Why, he has on only a diaper.”

  There was nothing out there but a wood rail fence with water dripping from a green hedge. The afternoon wore on and I became frightened and called Ruby. Soon the house was filled with neighbor women, church and sewing-circle friends of Grandma’s. They all stood around quietly with their hands under their bib aprons. Doctor Bess arrived. Grandma began remin
iscing about people that only the silent old women remembered. Doctor Bess got out a hypo and pricked her body here and there. Water sprang from her like from a fountain. Dropsy. Ruby and I changed the bed again and again. Grandma just lay there, moving her lips with closed eyes. Toward midnight, as I put a wet cloth to her lips, a cry rose from my stomach and I prayed: “Oh, dear Jesus, if she dies, please let there be nobody in the house but me.”

  But she did not die. I forced Ruby home toward morning. The little boy who lived down the street brought the Sunday paper. I sat in the rocking chair, reading the paper, and I remember hearing the church bell toll for morning worship and thinking: “Grandma is very quiet. She’s been sleeping a long time. I had better put a wet cloth to her mouth like Doctor Bess said.”

  I went over and applied the wet cloth and she did not move. I went into the kitchen and made a cup of tea, returned to the living room, and sat down in the rocker. I smoked a half-dozen cigarettes and then went over to the bed. I felt Grandma’s pulse and forehead. Then I lifted up her right arm which fell back down on the bed with a life of its own, and then I fell on my knees beside the bed and cried.

  Memory withdraws. There is now only this cluttered, yellowing room on West Forty-ninth Street, in the heart of Manhattan. Here, there, again, and always, the Why of my life, the meanings. Terrible depression as I sit here watching darkness settle in the corners of this room. Aware of the muted, miscellaneous noises that drift up from the street, I am also aware of the loss of something. It is strange that I had never felt the suffocation of this small room before; as if shadows, objects, furniture were rising toward the ceiling and would explode into what had once been my life. Thinking of all I’ve ever done and not done. Thinking and feeling this terrible loss.

  Where did it all begin? A small town on the banks of the Missouri River. Trees and the red-brick school. Grandpa and Grandma, dead. Grandma. Ruby and all the little girls with ribbons in their hair, and all the people I later met taking the long road through hell.

  ALL MY DELIVERIES are over and it is late afternoon. The scene on my block is completely gypsy. A group of them have set up shop at the end of the street. They are what I call upper-middle-class gypsies. The women of this group do not practice the fortune-telling game, and their children are always clean as if each day were Sunday. The men all wear very good casual clothes. One of the women has a mink stole that must have cost at least $750. They do not speak to the gypsies who live in the building next to mine.

  One day, a few weeks ago, I heard loud curses and looked out the window. The whole gypsy clan who live next door was rushing down the steps of their building, with a middle-aged man with thin brown hair, brown suit, brown shoes, in their midst.

  One of the younger gypsies let him have a good one on the chin, yelling, “He beat up my sister! That’s what the son-of-a-bitch did!”

  A crowd quickly gathered. Several of the sages from Tip Top Parking came over and tried to calm the young gypsy man. Mama, the gypsy queen, was talking her unknown tongue a mile a minute, flashing her foxy eyes, one hand glued to her hip-swinging money pocket.

  The argument between the gypsies and the middle-aged character in brown finally broke up, and he headed rapidly toward Sixth Avenue, wiping his forehead with his hand. The two younger gypsy men went and sat in their car, which was parked across the street. The rest of the clan trooped back into the house, except for Mama, who remained on the stoop, hands on her hips, a cigarette in the corner of her mouth. She had her sharp eyes fixed in the direction of Sixth Avenue.

  The crowd of onlookers did not disperse. They were waiting for the second act of the drama. Grinning, discussing the incident, they continued to wait, sure that something more was going to happen. The gypsy queen thinks something might happen too, which is the reason she sent the young men to the car. If the cops or detectives arrive, they can drive off without being noticed. If the middle-aged man had called the police, Mama would have to deal with them.

  The owner of the Steak de Paris was worried too. He paced up and down in front of his restaurant, arms folded. The gypsies are fine local color for his customers, but fights and cops are another story.

  An hour went by, and finally Mama, giving her long braids a toss, sauntered back into her house like a defiant queen. And after the gypsy Mama had returned to her headquarters, a squad car drove by very slowly and I saw a cop point at the gypsies’ house. But the squad car did not stop.

  Now the question is, what caused a medium-sized, middle-aged man with thin brown hair to beat up a young woman who was telling his fortune? Whatever the reason, it must be a good one because now the gypsies have opened a smaller place almost directly across the street. The gypsy girls sit out in front on chrome-plated kitchen chairs and wooden soda crates and hustle fortunes. All the people passing our block believe that we have an open-air whore house.

  It is now evening. I decide to take a shower. Returning from the hall bathroom, I hear many footsteps on the stairs, coming toward the top floor. It is the police.

  A sergeant comes up. I am carefully holding a towel around me, the soap and washcloth clutched in my right hand.

  “This is all residential here, isn’t it?” the sergeant asks.

  “Yes,” I say.

  The police sergeant’s sharp eyes take in the corridor and he spots my garbage outside the door. “Do you have a phone?”

  “Not anymore,” I say, showing him my teeth.

  “Okay. Thanks,” the police sergeant said, and lumbered back down the stairs yelling, “Okay. This is all residential. Yeah. Residential.”

  I go into my apartment and have a beer. As I go into my living room, I discover a living gallery of portraits in the windows of the Elmwood Hotel. I look down at the street, and there is a crowd of about seventy-five people peering up at my building as if expecting a recluse king and queen suddenly to appear. Four squad cars are blocking crosstown traffic. But what is happening? Nothing! I shake my head and laugh, close my shutters and lie down.

  But, more footsteps on the stairs. A defiant knock on the door. The police again.

  “Are you sure this building is all residential?” the police sergeant asks. “What kind of business is going on here?”

  “What kind of business do you mean?”

  “Well . . . we got this alarm down at headquarters,” the police sergeant says (he is not unlike those popular heroes on television). “Mind if I come in and look at your place?”

  “Welcome,” I answer gleefully.

  The police sergeant takes one short glance at the cluttered living room and starts to leave.

  “There is no legit or shady business going on in this building,” I say. “It was a false alarm. And don’t come knocking on my door again or I’ll have you arrested for disturbing my peace.”

  The sergeant looks dumbfounded. “What?”

  “That’s what I said. Usually you know exactly where you are going. But last year you came into this building and broke the door down in number three looking for bookies. And you knew damn well what street the bookies were on. I suppose you’ll go back to headquarters now and say nothing is happening in my building.”

  “I’m sorry to have disturbed you,” the police sergeant says, and exits.

  Feeling very, very self-righteous, I returned to bed and dreamed that I opened the door and asked a policeman what he wanted. He did not answer but came charging into my apartment followed by six other policemen. I protested angrily. Finally I gave in and started yelling, “Welcome! Come on in!” At last there were about forty policemen in my living room. They formed lines on each side of the room and I walked between the lines of policemen, naked, with my hands clasped behind my back, lecturing on the crime of disturbing innocent citizens’ peace.

  I knew the police in Sedalia, Missouri—remember?—and I don’t like them.

  MAXINE’S Virginia-Canada tour is off temporarily due to her grandmother’s illness. This afternoon after I made a few deliveries, Maxine and I took a rid
e on the Staten Island ferry because, as Maxine said, without batting an eye, “Charles, you have been neglecting me.”

  It was a pleasant afternoon, cloudless, with the temperature an even seventy-five degrees. Maxine and I fought all the way down on the Seventh Avenue local to South Ferry. She loves me. It is not because I play with her and offer gifts. No. With Maxine one would get nowhere that way. Rather, it is because she knows I am for real. I don’t play with her as an adult with a child, but as her equal. Somewhere between the shelter of childhood and the wide open adult world, we laugh together as friends. Shirley always used to be a little jealous of our relationship.

  Maxine and I have taken this nickel voyage many times and so we sat on the starboard side of the ferry, passing the Statue of Liberty and saying as always that we must go there sometime. Then we begin telling jokes and making up riddles which never turn out right. Then, as the air grew cool, Maxine asked for her sweater and nestled in my arms. She began singing in a haunting, quivery, little girl’s voice. “Doe-re deer, a female deer.” When I did not join in, there were sharp jabs in my ribs. Soon Maxine fell asleep, and I held her quietly until the lovely evening façade of Manhattan came into view.

  LAURA VEE ARRIVED in the heat of a gray afternoon. The sullen sky gives no promise of rain. The murmurous street voices drift up as if begging for something which escapes them in this elusive city. I am putting down my sixth beer and watching Laura’s friend, Jim. He has problems, Laura has said.

  Jim has the lanky, awkward grace of a basketball player, a hyperborean face, and unbelievably burnished red-gold hair. He is morosely opening his sixth beer.

  Laura is in a gay mood. She has discovered that she is not the only human being with the ability to weep. “Give the lady a beer,” she laughed, wiping her ringed hand across her smooth forehead. “I say, how about a cold one?”