The Living is Easy

by Dorothy West

  She saw Bart Judson six months after her arrival, on one of the few occasions that she was let out of her cloister. This brief encounter, with a plate-glass window between them, made no impression on either participant. The wheels of their inseparable destiny were revolving slowly. For shortly thereafter Bart was to be on his way to Boston. And not for five years more was Cleo to follow, and then with no knowledge that Bart Judson had preceded her.

  As they stared disinterestedly at each other, he seeing only a pretty, half-grown, countrified girl, she seeing only a shirt-sleeved man with a mustache, and neither recognizing Fate, the disappointed goddess had half a mind to change their charted course. Then with habitual perversity thought better of it.

  Cleo had come to a halt before a store front, where an exquisite pile of polished fruit was arrayed on a silver tray, the sole and eye-compelling window display. Two men were busy inside the store, one, a fair-skinned man whom Cleo mistook for white and the proprietor, was waiting on the customer, the other man, obviously the colored help, was restocking the counters. The colored man stared briefly, as did Cleo. Then her eyes moved to a wide arch which made convenient access to an ice-cream parlor next door.

  Two retail stores on busy State Street was the distance Virginia-born Bart had come in his lucky boots on his way to the banana docks of the Boston Market. Cleo, with ten cents burning a hole in her pocket and her throat parched for a fancy dish of ice cream, slowly walked away, because she wasn’t certain that the owner wanted colored customers. And, as a matter of fact, Bart didn’t.

  When he and Cleo met five years later, again it was pure chance. But this time Fate flung them headlong at each other, and for Bart, at least, there was no mistaking that he had met the woman he wanted for his wife.

  Cleo was sent to Boston by the relatives of her Springfield benefactress when the old lady’s lingering illness was inevitably leading her to the grave. The relatives rallied around her, for there were always cases of elderly people deciding to leave their estates to faithful servants. They arrived en masse, for there were cases, too, of elderly people deciding that one devoted relative was more deserving than the rest.

  They overflowed the small house. There was no room for Cleo, and also no need, for the women industriously cooked and cleaned, went errands, and wrote letters. One of the letters was to a Boston friend of Miss Peterson, who knew Cleo slightly from her occasional visits to Springfield. She was importuned to give shelter to this young Negro girl. With Christian charity, she promptly did so.

  She shared her home with a nephew, whom she had raised and educated. The young man, coming of age, was not grateful. He wanted to get married. He intended to leave home. He was so obdurate about these matters that his aunt, Miss Boorum, was nearly resigned to spending her declining years alone, regretting the sacrifice that had caused her spinsterhood.

  Cleo seemed a light in the gathering gloom. She was southern, she was colored. From what Miss Boorum had read of southern colored people they were devoted to what they quaintly called “my white folks,” and quite disdainful of their own kind, often referring to them as “niggers.” They liked to think of themselves as an integral part of the family, and preferred to die in its bosom rather than any place else. It was to be hoped that Cleo would show the same sterling loyalty.

  In Boston Cleo settled into the same routine that she had endured in Springfield. She was indifferent to the change. One old white woman looked just like any other old white woman to her. Only difference was Miss Boorum wore false teeth that slipped up and down when she talked. She paid the same five dollars a month, the sum that Cleo had been receiving, obliquely, since she was sixteen. It was not considered wages. The amount was not the thing that mattered so much as the spirit that prompted it. Though Cleo’s duties were similar to a servant’s, she was considered a ward. She was fed and clothed, and given a place at table and a chair in the parlor, except when there was company. At such times she put on an apron, held her proud head above the level of everybody’s eyes, and wished they would all drop dead.

  Both her Springfield and Boston protectresses felt that Cleo was better off without money. Each month Miss Boorum, as had her predecessor, sent five dollars to Mama affixed to a little note in an aging hand full of fancy flourishes that Mama spent a day deciphering. These custodians of Cleo’s character had no wish to teach her to save. Nothing, they knew, is a greater inducement to independent action than knowing where you can put your hand on a bit of cash.

  Their little notes reported to Mama on Cleo’s exemplary behavior. But Cleo was neither good nor bad. She was in a state of suspension. She knew she was paying penance for all the joyous wildness of her childhood. She had been exiled to learn the discipline that Mama’s punishments had not taught her. She did not mind these years of submission any more than she had minded Mama strapping her. If you were bad, you got punished. But you had had your fun. And that was what counted. These meek years would not last forever. The follies of childhood were sweet sins that did not merit eternal damnation. This was the period of instruction that was preparing her for adulthood. Yet she knew she was not changing. She was merely learning guile.

  She was going to run away the minute she got her bearings in Boston, leaving a sassy note saying, Thank you for nothing. Good-bye and good riddance. If I never see you again, that will be too soon.

  Then she was going on the stage. She was going to sing and dance. That would be wickeder than anything she had ever done, but almost as much fun as there had been in the Carolina woods. Pa would disown her, and Mama would pray for her soul. But she would fix up the house for Mama with furniture and running water, and buy her some store clothes and a horse to hitch the buggy to in place of Pa’s old mule.

  She sat in Miss Boorum’s parlor, reading Little Women aloud, looking demure and gray-eyed, hearing the richness of her own voice, being thrilled by its velvet sound, and seeing herself singing and kicking her heels on a stage in a swirl of lace petticoats. The only thing was she wasn’t going to have any partner. She wasn’t going to sing an old love-song with any greasy-haired coon. She wasn’t going to dance any cakewalk with him either, and let his sweaty hand ruin her fancy costumes.

  Miss Boorum’s nephew, looking at Cleo across the table, was profoundly disturbed by his emotions. He, too, had heard about Negroes. He had heard mostly about Negro women, and the information was correct. Desire was growing in his loins and there was nothing he could do to stop it. All he could do was try to keep it from spreading to his heart.

  He talked no more of marriage now, nor of moving away. He rarely went out in the evening. He gloomed about the house, staring moodily at Cleo. Miss Boorum supposed he was beset by the jealous fear that her ward would supplant him in her affections. To punish him for the pain he had caused her, she made his ears ring with Cleo’s praises. Cleo supposed he was jealous, too, as the Springfield relatives had been, and took a wicked delight in tormenting him by being her most appealing in his presence.

  Mama died. The letter came. Nobody down home had sense enough to send a telegram. Mama was buried by the time the letter reached Boston. She died bearing a dead child. Pa had just as good as killed her.

  Cleo hadn’t seen Mama since she was fourteen. Mama standing in the station saying, “God watch between me and thee, while we are absent one from another.” Mama with the flush in her face from her fast-beating heart, and the tears held tight in her searching doe eyes, her coral lip trembling between her white teeth, and her arms reaching out, the rounded arms with dimples. Mama was dead, and the lid was shut down. Now Mama could never say, Cleo, I loved you best of all my children.

  Cleo’s grief was an inward thing that gave her a look of such purity that Miss Boorum’s nephew was even further enmeshed. The enchantment of knowing that she was no one’s was monstrous. He was seduced by her chastity. He would never be free as long as he knew he could be her first lover. Until he could see the face of her purity replaced by the face of surrender, her image would lie o
n his lids to torment him.

  He grew thin and wan. Cleo looked at him and thought indifferently that he was coming down with something, and hoped it wouldn’t be catching.

  Miss Boorum’s nephew began his campaign. He bought Cleo a bicycle. Ostensibly it was to solace her sorrow. Actually it was because he could not afford to deck her in diamonds.

  He did not ride with her, nor would he instruct her in the intricacies of balance. Subconsciously he had the bloody hope that she would break every bone in her body and destroy her beauty, if not herself.

  She pedaled away as easily as if she had been cycling all her life, for she still did not know there was anything she was incapable of doing. In Norumbega Park she sped around a curve and rode unromantically into Mr. Judson’s stomach.

  The impact sent them sprawling on either side of the path, with the shiny new bicycle rearing like a bucking horse, flinging itself against a boulder, and smashing itself to pieces.

  Because she had not long lost Mama, and now she had lost her new bicycle, Cleo burst into heartbroken howls. Her heretofore unshed tears flowed in a torrent. Mr. Judson sat and rubbed his upset stomach and felt himself drowning helplessly in her welling eyes and tumbled hair.

  When she could speak, she sobbed accusations. Why didn’t he look where he was going? Why hadn’t he jumped out of her way? Look at her brand-new bicycle. Who did he think was going to get her another one?

  He was, Mr. Judson assured her gallantly. He helped her to her feet, though she fought him all the way, jerking and twisting out of his unexploring hands. He asked her for her name and address, and she gave them to him defiantly. She knew this poor darky didn’t have one thin dime to lay against another, but if he wanted to talk big, let him back up his promise. He told her his name, and she forgot it immediately. What did she want to know his name for? She wasn’t going to give him a bicycle.

  He offered to see her home. She refused so vehemently that he pictured her parents as martinets, and supposed that the courtship, on which he had decided the minute he got back his breath, would be long and hazardous.

  She took the poor wreck of her bicycle and pushed off unaided. It was a painful journey, and she was often admonished to get a horse. She reached home footsore and furious. Miss Boorum’s nephew flew to the door, for Cleo rang the bell so sharply that the unhappy young man had the rather pleasurable foreboding that a policeman had brought bad tidings.

  It was Cleo. He had never seen her in a wild moment, and he was further undone. For now he saw her with all her aliveness, her dark hair streaming, her eyes sparking green stars, the blood in her cheeks with the tear streaks and dust streaks, and her apple breasts betraying the pulse of her angry heart. He knew God was punishing him for his desire to see her dead by sending her back more alive than ever.

  That night Miss Boorum’s nephew and Mr. Judson tossed and turned in their restless sleep, while Cleo slept like a rock from all the air she had imbibed on the long ride and the long walk.

  Mr. Judson was ardently in love. Why it had come upon him like this, he could not have explained, except that he had reached the age for it. He had distrusted women until now. He thought all they saw in a man was his pocketbook. When they asked him flattering questions, he imagined they were prying into his affairs, trying to find out how much he had that they would have if they married him. Artfully he had sidestepped them all, spending his days in such hard work that sleep came easily, and there were no wakeful hours of aching loins. On Sunday afternoons he strolled in the city’s parks.

  His excursions into society were infrequent and unsuccessful. He did not look like a rich man, for he wore a disguise of ancient suits to confuse the predatory. He did not resemble a Bostonian. His tongue was soft and liquid. He was dark. He was unimpressed by backgrounds. He made it plain that if you were a State House attendant, you were only a porter to him, no matter how many of your forebears had been freeborn.

  The men with whom he had daily contact were unpretentious rich men, the bankers, the brokers, the shipowners, the heads of wholesale houses. When he moved among colored men, he was slightly contemptuous, though he thought he was merely bored. He had been in business for himself since he was ten, and was never wholly able to understand anyone who was content to let someone else be the boss man.

  Bart bought the finest bicycle he could find in Boston and dispatched it next day, with a crate of oranges and two handsome hands of bananas that he hoped would impress Cleo’s parents.

  He called the following Sunday, and was surprised to find that Cleo worked in service, but rather pleased. She ought to consider herself a lucky girl to be courted by a man of substance. Miss Boorum, herself, showed him into the parlor, and sat down with a colored man for the first time in her life. Though she had not seen through her nephew, she saw through Bart immediately. He was in love with Cleo. This did not surprise her. It was typical of colored men.

  Her nephew, hearing a male voice below with a Negro flavor, came down from his study in acute anxiety. Here was the stranger his common sense had commanded to come. Here was the man who would set him free. And his eyes were hot with hatred. Bart saw the young man’s anguish. He saw that Cleo did not see it. Nor Miss Boorum. He had to get Cleo out of this house before the fever in the young man’s eyes spread to his loins. He could not let her be lost in one wanton night. Or her image would lie on his eyelids for the rest of his life.

  All the next day he worried like a hen with one helpless chick. When his picture-making grew too intolerable, he washed off his surface sweat and went to Miss Boorum’s. He approached the house by way of the alley, hoping to find Cleo in the kitchen, where he could talk unheard. He had better luck than he bargained for. She was in the clothes yard. She had clothespins in her mouth, and was too surprised to take them out.

  He began to whisper fiercely, and she only heard half of what he said, for he kept jerking his head around to see who might be coming. He told her hurriedly and harriedly that she was in great danger, a wolf was abroad in Miss Boorum’s nephew’s clothing. She was not safe, and never would be safe, so long as she stayed within reach of his clutches. She was too young to be alone in Boston. She had no mother to guide her. She needed a good man’s protection. She needed a husband. He would marry her today if she would have him. If she would have him, he would apply for a license today and marry her at City Hall at nine o’clock on Thursday morning.

  If he had proposed to her any other way, if he had courted her for a longer time, she might have refused him, out of sheer contrariness. He had not frightened her with his fears. She felt that she could subdue any man with her scorn. But she wanted to get away. She couldn’t stand seeing Miss Boorum’s nephew moping around like a half-sick dog if woman hankering was what ailed him. If he ever came hankering after her, she’d stab him dead with an ice-pick. And no man on earth, let alone a white man, was worth going to hell for.

  She was still so wrapped up in murderous thoughts and daring Miss Boorum’s demoralized nephew to come within a foot of her that she married Bart without thinking about it. When she found herself in her marriage bed, she let him know straightaway that she had no intention of renouncing her maidenhood for one man if she had married to preserve it from another.

  Bart had expected that he would have to lead her to love with patience. He was a man of vigor and could wait without wasting for Cleo’s awakening. Some part of him was soothed and satisfied by the fact of his right to cherish her. It did not torment him to lie beside her and know that he could not possess her. He threw his energy into buying and selling. For he loved his fruit almost as much as he loved his wife. There was rich satisfaction in seeing it ripen, seeing the downiness on it, the blush on it, feeling the firmness of its flesh.

  When Cleo was twenty, their sex battle began. It was not a savage fight. She did not struggle against his superior strength. She found a weapon that would cut him down quickly and cleanly. She was ice. Neither her mouth nor her body moved to meet his. The open eyes were wide
with mocking at the busyness below. There was no moment when everything in her was wrenched and she was one with the man who could submerge her in himself.

  Five years later, she conceived a child on a night when her body’s hunger broke down her controlled resistance. For there was no real abhorrence of sex in her. Her need of love was as urgent as her aliveness indicated. But her perversity would not permit her to weaken. She would not face the knowledge that she was incomplete in herself.

  Yet now, as she walked toward the trolley stop, she was determined not to live another year without her sisters.

  CHAPTER 4

  CLEO SAILED up Northampton Street with Judy in tow. Dark, unshaven faces split in wide grins, and low, lewd whistles issued from between thick lips. This was her daily cross to bear in this rapidly deteriorating section of Boston. The once fine houses of the rich were fast emptying of middle-class whites and filling up with lower-class blacks. The street was becoming another big road, with rough-looking loungers leaning in the doorways of decaying houses and dingy stores. Coarse conversations balanced like balls in mouths stretched wide to catch the dirty pellets and toss them to other agile word jugglers all along the way.

  They kept on the lookout for Cleo because she walked proud with her eyes on a point above their bullet heads. They had sworn to a man to make her smile.

  “Look away, look away,” moaned an ogling admirer. “The yeller sun has took up walking like a natchal woman.”

  Roars of appreciative guffaws greeted this attempt at wit. As the laughter subsided, a falsetto voice implored, “Lawd, take me to heaven while I’m happy. You done open my eyes and I done see a host of angels coming at me. She look like fire, and she ack like ice. I’m hot, I’m cold. Oh, Lawd, have mercy on my soul.”

  Twin spots glowed in Cleo’s cheeks. A stream of white-hot words erupted inside her, but did not pass the thin line of her lips. She swallowed them down and felt the spleen spread to the pit of her stomach. Men were her enemies because they were male.