The smell had begun there. It outlined the image of the stumbling woman and the one who had broken her fall. Sophie and a few other women sniffed at the spot and then, perplexed, silently looked at each other. Where had they seen that before? They had often laughed and touched each other—held each other in joy or its dark twin—but where had they seen that before? It came to them as the scent drifted down the steps and entered their nostrils on the way to their inner mouths. They had seen that—done that—with their men. That shared moment of invisible communion reserved for two and hidden from the rest of the world behind laughter or tears or a touch. In the days before babies, miscarriages, and other broken dreams, after stolen caresses in barn stalls and cotton houses, after intimate walks from church and secret kisses with boys who were now long forgotten or permanently fixed in their lives—that was where. They could almost feel the odor moving about in their mouths, and they slowly knitted themselves together and let it out into the air like a yellow mist that began to cling to the bricks on Brewster.
So it got around that the two in 312 were that way. And they had seemed like such nice girls. Their regular exits and entrances to the block were viewed with a jaundiced eye. The quiet that rested around their door on the weekends hinted of all sorts of secret rituals, and their friendly indifference to the men on the street was an insult to the women as a brazen flaunting of unnatural ways.
Since Sophie’s apartment windows faced theirs from across the air shaft, she became the official watchman for the block, and her opinions were deferred to whenever the two came up in conversation. Sophie took her position seriously and was constantly alert for any telltale signs that might creep out around their drawn shades, across from which she kept a religious vigil. An entire week of drawn shades was evidence enough to send her flying around with reports that as soon as it got dark they pulled their shades down and put on the lights. Heads nodded in knowing unison—a definite sign. If doubt was voiced with a “But I pull my shades down at night too,” a whispered “Yeah, but you’re not that way” was argument enough to win them over.
Sophie watched the lighter one dumping their garbage, and she went outside and opened the lid. Her eyes darted over the crushed tin cans, vegetable peelings, and empty chocolate chip cookie boxes. What do they do with all them chocolate chip cookies? It was surely a sign, but it would take some time to figure that one out. She saw Ben go into their apartment, and she waited and blocked his path as he came out, carrying his toolbox.
“What ya see?” She grabbed his arm and whispered wetly in his face.
Ben stared at her squinted eyes and drooping lips and shook his head slowly. “Uh, uh, uh, it was terrible.”
“Yeah?” She moved in a little closer.
“Worst busted faucet I seen in my whole life.” He shook her hand off his arm and left her standing in the middle of the block.
“You old sop bucket,” she muttered, as she went back up on her stoop. A broken faucet, huh? Why did they need to use so much water?
Sophie had plenty to report that day. Ben had said it was terrible in there. No, she didn’t know exactly what he had seen, but you can imagine—and they did. Confronted with the difference that had been thrust into their predictable world, they reached into their imaginations and, using an ancient pattern, weaved themselves a reason for its existence. Out of necessity they stitched all of their secret fears and lingering childhood nightmares into this existence, because even though it was deceptive enough to try and look as they looked, talk as they talked, and do as they did, it had to have some hidden stain to invalidate it—it was impossible for them both to be right. So they leaned back, supported by the sheer weight of their numbers and comforted by the woven barrier that kept them protected from the yellow mist that enshrouded the two as they came and went on Brewster Place.
Lorraine was the first to notice the change in the people on Brewster Place. She was a shy but naturally friendly woman who got up early, and had read the morning paper and done fifty sit-ups before it was time to leave for work. She came out of her apartment eager to start her day by greeting any of her neighbors who were outside. But she noticed that some of the people who had spoken to her before made a point of having something else to do with their eyes when she passed, although she could almost feel them staring at her back as she moved on. The ones who still spoke only did so after an uncomfortable pause, in which they seemed to be peering through her before they begrudged her a good morning or evening. She wondered if it was all in her mind and she thought about mentioning it to Theresa, but she didn’t want to be accused of being too sensitive again. And how would Tee even notice anything like that anyway? She had a lousy attitude and hardly ever spoke to people. She stayed in that bed until the last moment and rushed out of the house fogged-up and grumpy, and she was used to being stared at—by men at least—because of her body.
Lorraine thought about these things as she came up the block from work, carrying a large paper bag. The group of women on her stoop parted silently and let her pass.
“Good evening,” she said, as she climbed the steps.
Sophie was standing on the top step and tried to peek into the bag. “You been shopping, huh? What ya buy?” It was almost an accusation.
“Groceries.” Lorraine shielded the top of the bag from view and squeezed past her with a confused frown. She saw Sophie throw a knowing glance to the others at the bottom of the stoop. What was wrong with this old woman? Was she crazy or something?
Lorraine went into her apartment. Theresa was sitting by the window, reading a copy of Mademoiselle. She glanced up from her magazine. “Did you get my chocolate chip cookies?”
“Why good evening to you, too, Tee. And how was my day? Just wonderful.” She sat the bag down on the couch. “The little Baxter boy brought in a puppy for show-and-tell, and the damn thing pissed all over the floor and then proceeded to chew the heel off my shoe, but, yes, I managed to hobble to the store and bring you your chocolate chip cookies.”
Oh, Jesus, Theresa thought, she’s got a bug up her ass tonight.
“Well, you should speak to Mrs. Baxter. She ought to train her kid better than that.” She didn’t wait for Lorraine to stop laughing before she tried to stretch her good mood. “Here, I’ll put those things away. Want me to make dinner so you can rest? I only worked half a day, and the most tragic thing that went down was a broken fingernail and that got caught in my typewriter.”
Lorraine followed Theresa into the kitchen. “No, I’m not really tired, and fair’s fair, you cooked last night. I didn’t mean to tick off like that; it’s just that…well, Tee, have you noticed that people aren’t as nice as they used to be?”
Theresa stiffened. Oh, God, here she goes again. “What people, Lorraine? Nice in what way?”
“Well, the people in this building and on the street. No one hardly speaks anymore. I mean, I’ll come in and say good evening—and just silence. It wasn’t like that when we first moved in. I don’t know, it just makes you wonder; that’s all. What are they thinking?”
“I personally don’t give a shit what they’re thinking. And their good evenings don’t put any bread on my table.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t see the way that woman looked at me out there. They must feel something or know something. They probably—”
“They, they, they!” Theresa exploded. “You know, I’m not starting up with this again, Lorraine. Who in the hell are they? And where in the hell are we? Living in some dump of a building in this God-forsaken part of town around a bunch of ignorant niggers with the cotton still under their fingernails because of you and your theys. They knew something in Linden Hills, so I gave up an apartment for you that I’d been in for the last four years. And then they knew in Park Heights, and you made me so miserable there we had to leave. Now these mysterious theys are on Brewster Place. Well, look out that window, kid. There’s a big wall down that block, and this is the end of the line for me. I’m not moving anymore, so if that’s what yo
u’re working yourself up to—save it!”
When Theresa became angry she was like a lump of smoldering coal, and her fierce bursts of temper always unsettled Lorraine.
“You see, that’s why I didn’t want to mention it.” Lorraine began to pull at her fingers nervously. “You’re always flying up and jumping to conclusions—no one said anything about moving. And I didn’t know your life has been so miserable since you met me. I’m sorry about that,” she finished tearfully.
Theresa looked at Lorraine, standing in the kitchen door like a wilted leaf, and she wanted to throw something at her. Why didn’t she ever fight back? The very softness that had first attracted her to Lorraine was now a frequent cause for irritation. Smoked honey. That’s what Lorraine had reminded her of, sitting in her office clutching that application. Dry autumn days in Georgia woods, thick bloated smoke under a beehive, and the first glimpse of amber honey just faintly darkened about the edges by the burning twigs. She had flowed just that heavily into Theresa’s mind and had stuck there with a persistent sweetness.
But Theresa hadn’t known then that this softness filled Lorraine up to the very middle and that she would bend at the slightest pressure, would be constantly seeking to surround herself with the comfort of everyone’s goodwill, and would shrivel up at the least touch of disapproval. It was becoming a drain to be continually called upon for this nurturing and support that she just didn’t understand. She had supplied it at first out of love for Lorraine, hoping that she would harden eventually, even as honey does when exposed to the cold. Theresa was growing tired of being clung to—of being the one who was leaned on. She didn’t want a child—she wanted someone who could stand toe to toe with her and be willing to slug it out at times. If they practiced that way with each other, then they could turn back to back and beat the hell out of the world for trying to invade their territory. But she had found no such sparring partner in Lorraine, and the strain of fighting alone was beginning to show on her.
“Well, if it was that miserable, I would have been gone a long time ago,” she said, watching her words refresh Lorraine like a gentle shower.
“I guess you think I’m some sort of a sick paranoid, but I can’t afford to have people calling my job or writing letters to my principal. You know I’ve already lost a position like that in Detroit. And teaching is my whole life, Tee.”
“I know,” she sighed, not really knowing at all. There was no danger of that ever happening on Brewster Place. Lorraine taught too far from this neighborhood for anyone here to recognize her in that school. No, it wasn’t her job she feared losing this time, but their approval. She wanted to stand out there and chat and trade makeup secrets and cake recipes. She wanted to be secretary of their block association and be asked to mind their kids while they ran to the store. And none of that was going to happen if they couldn’t even bring themselves to accept her good evenings.
Theresa silently finished unpacking the groceries. “Why did you buy cottage cheese? Who eats that stuff?”
“Well, I thought we should go on a diet.”
“If we go on a diet, then you’ll disappear. You’ve got nothing to lose but your hair.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I thought that we might want to try and reduce our hips or something.” Lorraine shrugged playfully.
“No, thank you. We are very happy with our hips the way they are,” Theresa said, as she shoved the cottage cheese to the back of the refrigerator. “And even when I lose weight, it never comes off there. My chest and arms just get smaller, and I start looking like a bottle of salad dressing.”
The two women laughed, and Theresa sat down to watch Lorraine fix dinner. “You know, this behind has always been my downfall. When I was coming up in Georgia with my grandmother, the boys used to promise me penny candy if I would let them pat my behind. And I used to love those jawbreakers—you know, the kind that lasted all day and kept changing colors in your mouth. So I was glad to oblige them, because in one afternoon I could collect a whole week’s worth of jawbreakers.”
“Really. That’s funny to you? Having some boy feeling all over you.”
Theresa sucked her teeth. “We were only kids, Lorraine. You know, you remind me of my grandmother. That was one straight-laced old lady. She had a fit when my brother told her what I was doing. She called me into the smokehouse and told me in this real scary whisper that I could get pregnant from letting little boys pat my butt and that I’d end up like my cousin Willa. But Willa and I had been thick as fleas, and she had already given me a step-by-step summary of how she’d gotten into her predicament. But I sneaked around to her house that night just to double-check her story, since that old lady had seemed so earnest. ‘Willa, are you sure?’ I whispered through her bedroom window. ‘I’m tellin’ ya, Tee,’ she said. ‘Just keep both feet on the ground and you home free.’ Much later I learned that advice wasn’t too biologically sound, but it worked in Georgia because those country boys didn’t have much imagination.”
Theresa’s laughter bounced off of Lorraine’s silent, rigid back and died in her throat. She angrily tore open a pack of the chocolate chip cookies. “Yeah,” she said, staring at Lorraine’s back and biting down hard into the cookie, “it wasn’t until I came up north to college that I found out there’s a whole lot of things that a dude with a little imagination can do to you even with both feet on the ground. You see, Willa forgot to tell me not to bend over or squat or—”
“Must you!” Lorraine turned around from the stove with her teeth clenched tightly together.
“Must I what, Lorraine? Must I talk about things that are as much a part of life as eating or breathing or growing old? Why are you always so uptight about sex or men?”
“I’m not uptight about anything. I just think it’s disgusting when you go on and on about—”
“There’s nothing disgusting about it, Lorraine. You’ve never been with a man, but I’ve been with quite a few—some better than others. There were a couple who I still hope to this day will die a slow, painful death, but then there were some who were good to me—in and out of bed.”
“If they were so great, then why are you with me?” Lorraine’s lips were trembling.
“Because—” Theresa looked steadily into her eyes and then down at the cookie she was twirling on the table. “Because,” she continued slowly, “you can take a chocolate chip cookie and put holes in it and attach it to your ears and call it an earring, or hang it around your neck on a silver chain and pretend it’s a necklace—but it’s still a cookie. See—you can toss it in the air and call it a Frisbee or even a flying saucer, if the mood hits you, and it’s still just a cookie. Send it spinning on a table—like this—until it’s a wonderful blur of amber and brown light that you can imagine to be a topaz or rusted gold or old crystal, but the law of gravity has got to come into play, sometime, and it’s got to come to rest—sometime. Then all the spinning and pretending and hoopla is over with. And you know what you got?”
“A chocolate chip cookie,” Lorraine said.
“Uh-uh.” Theresa put the cookie in her mouth and winked. “A lesbian.” She got up from the table. “Call me when dinner’s ready, I’m going back to read.” She stopped at the kitchen door. “Now, why are you putting gravy on that chicken, Lorraine? You know it’s fattening.”
The Brewster Place Block Association was meeting in Kiswana’s apartment. People were squeezed on the sofa and coffee table and sitting on the floor. Kiswana had hung a red banner across the wall, “Today Brewster—Tomorrow America!” but few understood what that meant and even fewer cared. They were there because this girl had said that something could be done about the holes in their walls and the lack of heat that kept their children with congested lungs in the winter. Kiswana had given up trying to be heard above the voices that were competing with each other in volume and length of complaints against the landlord. This was the first time in their lives that they felt someone was taking them seriously, so all of the would-be-if-they-could-be law
yers, politicans, and Broadway actors were taking advantage of this rare opportunity to display their talents. It didn’t matter if they often repeated what had been said or if their monologues held no relevance to the issues; each one fought for the space to outshine the other.
“Ben ain’t got no reason to be here. He works for the landlord.”
A few scattered yeahs came from around the room.
“I lives in this here block just like y’all,” Ben said slowly. “And when you ain’t got no heat, I ain’t either. It’s not my fault ’cause the man won’t deliver no oil.”
“But you stay so zooted all the time, you never cold no way.”
“Ya know, a lot of things ain’t the landlord’s fault. The landlord don’t throw garbage in the air shaft or break the glass in them doors.”
“Yeah, and what about all them kids that be runnin’ up and down the halls.”
“Don’t be talking ’bout my kids!” Cora Lee jumped up. “Lot of y’all got kids, too, and they no saints.”
“Why you so touchy—who mentioned you?”
“But if the shoe fits, steal it from Thom McAn’s.”
“Wait, please.” Kiswana held up her hands. “This is getting us nowhere. What we should be discussing today is staging a rent strike and taking the landlord to court.”
“What we should be discussin’,” Sophie leaned over and said to Mattie and Etta, “is that bad element that done moved in this block amongst decent people.”
“Well, I done called the police at least a dozen times about C. C. Baker and them boys hanging in that alley, smoking them reefers, and robbing folks,” Mattie said.
“I ain’t talkin’ ’bout them kids—I’m talkin’ ’bout those two livin’ ’cross from me in 312.”
“What about ’em?”
“Oh, you know, Mattie,” Etta said, staring straight at Sophie. “Those two girls who mind their business and never have a harsh word to say ’bout nobody—them the two you mean, right, Sophie?”
The Women of Brewster Place Page 14
