The Women of Brewster Place

by Gloria Naylor

  When she heard the first pair of soft thuds behind her, she willed herself not to stop and look back because there was no one there. Another thud and she started walking a little faster to reassure herself of this. The fourth thud started her to running, and then a dark body that had been pressed against the shadowy building swung into her path so suddenly she couldn’t stop in time, and she bumped into it and bounced back a few inches.

  “Can’t you say excuse me, dyke?” C. C. Baker snarled into her face.

  Lorraine saw a pair of suede sneakers flying down behind the face in front of hers and they hit the cement with a dead thump. Her bladder began to loosen, and bile worked its way up into her tightening throat as she realized what she must have heard before. They had been hiding up on the wall, watching her come up that back street, and they had waited. The face pushed itself so close to hers that she could look into the flared nostrils and smell the decomposing food caught in its teeth.

  “Ain’t you got no manners? Stepping on my foot and not saying you sorry?”

  She slowly backed away from the advancing face, her throat working convulsively. She turned to run in the direction of the formless thuds behind her. She hadn’t really seen them so they weren’t there. The four bodies that now linked themselves across the alley hit her conscious mind like a fist, and she cried out, startled. A hand shot itself around her mouth, and her neck was jerked back while a hoarse voice whispered in her ear.

  “You ain’t got nothing to say now, huh? Thought you was real funny laughing at me in the streets today? Let’s see if you gonna laugh now, dyke!” C. C. forced her down on her knees while the other five boys began to close in silently.

  She had stepped into the thin strip of earth that they claimed as their own. Bound by the last building on Brewster and a brick wall, they reigned in that unlit alley like dwarfed warrior-kings. Born with the appendages of power, circumcised by a guillotine, and baptized with the steam from a million nonreflective mirrors, these young men wouldn’t be called upon to thrust a bayonet into an Asian farmer, target a torpedo, scatter their iron seed from a B-52 into the wound of the earth, point a finger to move a nation, or stick a pole into the moon—and they knew it. They only had that three-hundred-foot alley to serve them as stateroom, armored tank, and executioner’s chamber. So Lorraine found herself, on her knees, surrounded by the most dangerous species in existence—human males with an erection to validate in a world that was only six feet wide.

  “I’m gonna show you somethin’ I bet you never seen before.” C. C. took the back of her head, pressed it into the crotch of his jeans, and jerkily rubbed it back and forth while his friends laughed. “Yeah, now don’t that feel good? See, that’s what you need. Bet after we get through with you, you ain’t never gonna wanna kiss no more pussy.”

  He slammed his kneecap into her spine and her body arched up, causing his nails to cut into the side of her mouth to stifle her cry. He pushed her arched body down onto the cement. Two of the boys pinned her arms, two wrenched open her legs, while C. C. knelt between them and pushed up her dress and tore at the top of her pantyhose. Lorraine’s body was twisting in convulsions of fear that they mistook for resistance, and C. C. brought his fist down into her stomach.

  “Better lay the fuck still, cunt, or I’ll rip open your guts.”

  The impact of his fist forced air into her constricted throat, and she worked her sore mouth, trying to form the one word that had been clawing inside of her—“Please.” It squeezed through her paralyzed vocal cords and fell lifelessly at their feet. Lorraine clamped her eyes shut and, using all of the strength left within her, willed it to rise again.

  “Please.

  The sixth boy took a dirty paper bag lying on the ground and stuffed it into her mouth. She felt a weight drop on her spread body. Then she opened her eyes and they screamed and screamed into the face above hers—the face that was pushing this tearing pain inside of her body. The screams tried to break through her corneas out into the air, but the tough rubbery flesh sent them vibrating back into her brain, first shaking lifeless the cells that nurtured her memory. Then the cells went that contained her powers of taste and smell. The last that were screamed to death were those that supplied her with the ability to love—or hate.

  Lorraine was no longer conscious of the pain in her spine or stomach. She couldn’t feel the skin that was rubbing off of her arms from being pressed against the rough cement. What was left of her mind was centered around the pounding motion that was ripping her insides apart. She couldn’t tell when they changed places and the second weight, then the third and fourth, dropped on her—it was all one continuous hacksawing of torment that kept her eyes screaming the only word she was fated to utter again and again for the rest of her life. Please.

  Her thighs and stomach had become so slimy from her blood and their semen that the last two boys didn’t want to touch her, so they turned her over, propped her head and shoulders against the wall, and took her from behind. When they had finished and stopped holding her up, her body fell over like an unstringed puppet. She didn’t feel her split rectum or the patches in her skull where her hair had been torn off by grating against the bricks. Lorraine lay in that alley only screaming at the moving pain inside of her that refused to come to rest.

  “Hey, C. C., what if she remembers that it was us?”

  “Man, how she gonna prove it? Your dick ain’t got no fingerprints.” They laughed and stepped over her and ran out of the alley.

  Lorraine lay pushed up against the wall on the cold ground with her eyes staring straight up into the sky. When the sun began to warm the air and the horizon brightened, she still lay there, her mouth crammed with paper bag, her dress pushed up under her breasts, her bloody pantyhose hanging from her thighs. She would have stayed there forever and have simply died from starvation or exposure if nothing around her had moved. There was no wind that morning, so the tin cans, soda bottles, and loose papers were still. There wasn’t even a stray cat or dog rummaging in the garbage cans for scraps. There was nothing moving that early October morning—except Ben.

  Ben had come out of the basement and was sitting in his usual place on an old garbage can he had pushed up against the wall. And he was singing and swaying while taking small sips from the pint bottle he kept in his back pocket. Lorraine looked up the alley and saw the movement by the wall. Side to side. Side to side. Almost in perfect unison with the sawing pain that kept moving inside of her. She crept up on her knees, making small grunting sounds like a wounded animal. As she crawled along the alley, her hand brushed a loose brick, and she clawed her fingers around it and dragged it along the ground toward the movement on Brewster Place. Side to side. Side to side.

  Mattie left her bed, went to the bathroom, and then put on her tea kettle. She always got up early, for no reason other than habit. The timing mechanism that had been embedded in her on the farm wasn’t aware that she now lived in a city. While her coffee water was heating up, she filled a pitcher to water her plants. When she leaned over the plants at the side of the apartment, she saw the body crawling up the alley. She raised the window and leaned out just to be sure the morning light wasn’t playing tricks with her eyes. “Merciful Jesus!” She threw a coat over her nightgown, slipped on a pair of shoes, and tried to make her arthritic legs hurry down the steps.

  Lorraine was getting closer to the movement. She raised herself up on her bruised and stiffened knees, and the paper bag fell out of her mouth. She supported herself by sliding against the wall, limping up the alley toward the movement while clawing her brick and mouthing her silent word. Side to side. Side to side. Lorraine finally reached the motion on top of the garbage can. Ben slowly started to focus her through his burgundy fog, and just as he opened his lips to voice the words that had formed in his brain—“My God, child, what happened to you?”—the brick smashed down into his mouth. His teeth crumbled into his throat and his body swung back against the wall. Lorraine brought the brick down again to stop the
moving head, and blood shot out of his ears, splattering against the can and bottom of the wall. Mattie’s screams went ricocheting in Lorraine’s head, and she joined them with her own as she brought the brick down again, splitting his forehead and crushing his temple, rendering his brains just a bit more useless than hers were now.

  Arms grabbed her around the waist, and the brick was knocked from her hand. The movement was everywhere. Lorraine screamed and clawed at the motions that were running and shouting from every direction in the universe. A tall yellow woman in a bloody green and black dress, scraping at the air, crying, “Please. Please.”

  THE BLOCK

  PARTY

  Rain. It began the afternoon of Ben’s death and came down day and night for an entire week, so Brewster Place wasn’t able to congregate around the wall and keep up a requiem of the whys and hows of his dying. They were forced to exchange opinions among only two or three of themselves at a time, and the closest they could get to the wall was in the front-room windows of the apartments that faced the street. They were confined to their homes and their own thoughts as it became increasingly difficult to tell a night sky from a day sky behind the smoky black clouds. The rains became the heaviest after dusk; water snaked down the gray bricks and flowed into the clogged gutters under sulfurous street lights like a thick dark liquid. Greasy cooking odors seeped into the damp apartment walls; cakes wouldn’t rise, and bed sheets remained clammy and cold. Children became listless, and men stayed away longer at night or came in and picked arguments to give themselves a reason they could understand for needing to go out again. The corner bar did a record business that week, and electric bills rose sharply as portable heaters, televisions, and lamps stayed on night and day as Brewster Place tried desperately to bring any kind of warmth and light into their world. By midweek, hopes for the block party started to disappear, the weeks of planning washed through the rusted drains with the gutters’ debris.

  Although only a few admitted it, every woman on Brewster Place had dreamed that rainy week of the tall yellow woman in the bloody green and black dress. She had come to them in the midst of the cold sweat of a nightmare, or had hung around the edges of fitful sleep. Little girls woke up screaming, unable to be comforted by bewildered mothers who knew, and yet didn’t know, the reason for their daughters’ stolen sleep. The women began to grow jumpy and morose, and the more superstitious began to look upon the rains as some sort of sign, but they feared asking how or why and put open Bibles near their bed at night to keep the answers from creeping upon them in the dark. Even Mattie’s sleep was fitful, her dreams troubling….

  “Miss Johnson, you wanna dance?” A handsome teenager posed himself in a seductive dare before Etta. She ran her hand down the side of her hair and took off her apron.

  “Don’t mind if I do.” And she pranced around the table.

  “Woman, come back here and act your age.” Mattie speared a rib off the grill.

  “I am acting it—thirty-five!”

  “Umph, you got regrets older than that.”

  The boy spun Etta around under his arms. “Careful, now, honey. It’s still in working order, but I gotta keep it running in a little lower gear.” She winked at Mattie and danced toward the center of the street.

  Mattie shook her head. “Lord, keep her safe, since you can’t keep her sane.” She smiled and patted her foot under the table to the beat of the music while she looked down the street and inhaled the hope that was bouncing off swinging hips, sauce-covered fingers, and grinning mouths.

  A thin brown-skinned woman, carrying a trench coat and overnight case, was making her way slowly up the block. She stopped at intervals to turn and answer the people who called to her—“Hey, Ciel! Good to see you, girl!”

  Ciel—a knot formed at the base of Mattie’s heart, and she caught her breath. “No.”

  Ciel came up to Mattie and stood in front of her timidly.

  “Hi, Mattie. It’s been a long time.”

  “No.” Mattie shook her head slowly.

  “I know you’re probably mad at me. I should have written or at least called before now.”

  “Child.” Mattie placed a hand gently on the side of Ciel’s face.

  “But I thought about you all the time, really, Mattie.”

  “Child.” Both of Mattie’s hands cupped Ciel’s face.

  “I had to get away; you know that. I needed to leave Brewster Place as far behind me as I could. I just kept going and going until the highway ran out. And when I looked up, I was in San Francisco and there was nothing but an ocean in front of me, and since I couldn’t swim, I stayed.”

  “Child. Child.” Mattie pulled Ciel toward her.

  “It was awful not to write—I know that.” Ciel was starting to cry. “But I kept saying one day when I’ve gotten rid of the scars, when I’m really well and over all that’s happened so that she can be proud of me, then I’ll write and let her know.”

  “Child. Child. Child.” Mattie pressed Ciel into her full bosom and rocked her slowly.

  “But that day never came, Mattie.” Ciel’s tears fell on Mattie’s chest as she hugged the woman. “And I stopped believing that it ever would.”

  “Thank God, you found that out.” Mattie released Ciel and squeezed her shoulders. “Or I woulda had to wait till the Judgment Day for this here joy.”

  She gave Ciel a paper napkin to blow her nose. “San Francisco, you said? My, that’s a long way. Bet you ain’t had none of this out there.” She cut Ciel a huge slice of the angel food cake on her table.

  “Oh, Mattie, this looks good.” She took a bite. “Tastes just like the kind my grandmother used to make.”

  “It should—it’s her recipe. The first night I came to Miss Eva’s house she gave me a piece of that cake. I never knew till then why they called it angel food—took one bite and thought I had died and gone to heaven.”

  Ciel laughed. “Yeah, Grandma could cook. We really had some good times in that house. I remember how Basil and I used to fight. I would go to bed at night and pray. God, please bless Grandma and Mattie, but only bless Basil if he stops breaking my crayons. Do you ever hear from him, Mattie?”

  Mattie frowned and turned to baste her ribs. “Naw, Ciel. Guess he ain’t been as lucky as you yet. Ain’t run out of highway to stop and make him think.”

  Etta came back to the table out of breath. “Well, looka you!” She grabbed Ciel and kissed her. “Gal, you looking good. Where you been hiding yourself?”

  “I live in San Francisco now, Miss Etta, and I’m working in an insurance company.”

  “Frisco, yeah, that’s a nice city—been through there once. But don’t tell me it’s salt water putting a shine on that face.” She patted Ciel on the cheeks. “Bet you got a new fella.”

  Ciel blushed. “Well, I have met someone and we’re sort of thinking about marriage.” She looked up at Mattie. “I’m ready to start another family now.”

  “Lord be praised!” Mattie beamed.

  “But he’s not black.” She glanced hesitantly between Etta and Mattie.

  “And I bet he’s not eight feet tall, and he’s not as pretty as Billy Dee Williams, and he’s not president of Yugoslavia, either,” Etta said. “You know, we get so caught up with what a man isn’t. It’s what he is that counts. Is he good to you, child?”

  “And is he good for you?” Mattie added gently.

  “Very much so.” Ciel smiled.

  “Then, I’m baking your wedding cake.” Mattie grinned.

  “And I’ll come dance at your reception.” Etta popped her fingers.

  Mattie turned to Etta. “Woman, ain’t you done enough dancing today for a lifetime?”

  “Aw, hush your mouth. Ciel, will you tell this woman that this here is a party and you supposed to be having a good time.”

  “And will you tell that woman,” Mattie said, “that hip-shaking is for young folks, and old bags like us is supposed to be behind these tables selling food.”

  “You two will n
ever change.” Ciel laughed.

  “Ain’t it lucky you got your vacation around this time?” Etta said, tying her apron back on. “Woulda been a shame if you had missed the party.”

  “No, I’m not on vacation.” Ciel looked around slowly. “You know, it was the strangest thing. It rained all last week, and then one night I had a dream about this street, and something just told me I should be here today. So I took a few days off and came—just on an impulse. Funny, huh?”

  Mattie and Etta willed themselves not to look at each other.

  “What kind of dream, Ciel?” Mattie gripped the basting brush she was holding.

  “Oh, I don’t know, one of those crazy things that get all mixed up in your head. Something about that wall and Ben. And there was a woman who was supposed to be me, I guess. She didn’t look exactly like me, but inside I felt it was me. You know how silly dreams are.”

  Etta fingered the money in her apron pocket. “What did the woman look like?”

  Ciel shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know, like me I guess—tall, skinny.” She frowned for a moment. “But she was light-skinned and her hair was different—yes, longer, but pinned up somehow.” She looked at Etta as the words began to leave her mouth with a will of their own. “And she had on a green dress with like black trimming, and there were red designs or red flowers or something on the front.” Ciel’s eyes began to cloud. “And something bad had happened to me by the wall—I mean to her—something bad had happened to her. And Ben was in it somehow.” She stared at the wall and shuddered. “Ah, who knows? It was just a crazy dream, that’s all.”