by Dorothy West
“Our tree is the biggest in the whole world,” said Penny, believing it. “It isn’t bragging if it’s true.”
“But it isn’t polite to make people feel bad,” said Judy in distress, for Cleo had impressed it upon her that she must never let her cousins feel that she was rich and they weren’t.
“Po-lite,” said Tim emphatically, picking out Judy’s emphasized word, and thinking he was saying two.
“Feel bad,” echoed Vicky scornfully, for this was the core of the matter to her. “I’ve seen the white children make you feel bad.”
They had never made Vicky feel bad. She hated the white children and was therefore impervious to inner pain. She would not have hated them if it had not been for Judy. She did not dislike them because they were white. Being one of a household that was vari-hued, from very dark Bart to very blond Tim, she had no color prejudice or preference. Not being Bostonian by birth or inclination, she had no contempt for the Irish, whose red hair and freckles and monkey faces appealed to her fanciful mind. She was by nature a leader. The little sheep who now called her “nigger” would have followed her blindly in the imaginative games of her devising if she had ever stopped scorning them long enough to let them. But her fierce loyalty made her despise whoever could make Judy cry.
The white children never made Penny cry. She was indifferent to them. They were part of the school world, and she lumped everything connected with school in an unused crevice in her mind. She had never envisioned anything but a colored world, and even that she had narrowed considerably until she saw only the bright places of laughter and ladies in long dresses. She shrugged off the white kids’ shafts that could not pierce the armor of her innocent conceit and self-assurance.
The first day at school, when all the first-graders were scared and unsure, the white children had not been reluctant to cling to the light-colored hands of Vicky and Penny at Teacher’s command. But as frightened as they were of the vast expanse of the schoolyard, so enormous, so uncharted beside the familiar four corners of their own back yards, Judy’s appearance among them provoked a feeling of betrayal that even little people could assume the color associated with nighttime terrors.
The cousins had been escorted to and from school for a month by a rotation of mothers. But Vicky put her foot down finally. She was spoiling for a fight. Walking home with a mother offered no opportunity. In the first few weeks of the tremendous adventure of three little colored girls walking unattended in a largely Irish neighborhood, there was a daily battle. It began the moment the marching children left their formation outside the school gate and coalesced into a circle for Vicky and whatever bigger girl or boy had made her maddest.
Penny fought with sublime indifference to Queensberry rules. She did not want to soil her hands on these white kids. She waded in when Vicky appeared to be losing, using her teeth and the stub toes of her storm shoes. The children shouted, “No fairsies, no fairsies!” But Penny’s imperturbable face gave no sign that she heard. She wanted to go home and play dress-up in front of the mirror. She wanted Vicky to come home unbruised. She did not want to have to listen to Cleo lecture about how that old Thea and that old Simeon played so nice with white children when they were growing up.
If someone called you “nigger,” Cleo had told them, you should say in answer, “A nigger is a mean low person. And only a mean low person would use that word.” Did she think those old white children would stop calling names long enough to listen? Didn’t the cousins chant, “Yah, yah, yah, go wash your paddy face in the frying pan,” to cover the chant of the Irish children’s, “Nigger, nigger, pull the trigger,” until one or the other side got bored and ran home to play, with each side pretending not to have heard the other?
Judy didn’t fight at all. She was wrung with shame that Vicky was doing her fighting for her, since she knew quite well that most of their schoolmates’ meannesses were directed at her because she was darkest. But there was nothing in her that could make her strike out. She had been schooled too well by Thea in ladylike behavior. She was unprepared for the dog-eat-dog of public school, and had no impulse for revenge. She loved gentle Jesus devotedly, but was doubtful of her affection for His Father who handed down such pronouncements as an eye for an eye.
“I don’t really cry, just my eyes get wet,” Judy protested, with a suspicion of tears in her voice. For she did not like knowing she sometimes showed her feelings. “And anyway, the white children don’t make me cry. I cry because I can’t make myself fight them.”
Two tears formed on Tim’s long lashes. He crowded close to Judy. Whatever she suffered was his pain. Whatever her mood was his.
“We don’t want you to fight,” said Vicky staunchly. “We don’t think you’re a coward.” She chose the odious word deliberately, because she knew that was troubling Judy’s mind. “You’re good, but you’re not goody-good,” she said kindly. “Anyway,” she said quickly, cramming her mouth full of apple, “last one to finish is a piece of cheese.”
Everyone burst out laughing. The little white teeth flew in and out of the apples.
Deep-rooted in Judy was a quality of goodness, which Tim instinctively recognized, and Vicky and Penny felt in a way that they could not explain. They knew that they could not bear it if Judy ever told a lie, or acted mean, or spoke harshly. Fun-loving Penny had never known she could love anyone who was younger and not exciting. Intense, imaginative, restless Vicky, who set no such limitations on love, nonetheless had not supposed her quiet cousin would fill her unsuspected need for interludes of peace. There was a strength and stability beneath Judy’s shy exterior that made their independent spirits feel a strange dependency when she was near. She was the fountainhead of their search for truth.
CHAPTER 20
CLEO DRIFTED UP OUT OF SLEEP. Charity’s hard breathing had waked her. “Come in here and dress by the fire,” she commanded drowsily.
“Soon’s I get myself together,” Charity said between little gasps. She had just puffed upstairs from her bath. Bart’s Christmas supply of heat was keeping the water so red-hot that everybody could have a bath, not just the children who had a prior right, because children, Cleo said, were always frisking themselves in people’s faces.
Presently Charity entered with her ponderous walk. The weight of her body was vast, and her small feet steadily ached. Her bloated face was beet-red and a little moist from the effort expended on her slightest movement. She had long since given up trying to find a becoming dress. The search was too unrewarding, and her abnormal addition of pounds burst the stoutest seams in a week. She wore Mother Hubbards exclusively, for in her painful consciousness of her obesity she no longer left the house.
“Lord,” she said, bending forward in her chair to button her shoes and struggling upright again with a grunt and a groan and the hard rush of breath, “I could eat a horse. Up till near morning like we was. Remember how Pa used to play Santa Claus? I wonder what he’s doing right now? Seems funny he didn’t get someone to send a Christmas card for him.”
Cleo flung the covers back and swung out of bed. “Oh, you all make me sick, always talking about Pa. Nobody ever mentions Mama except me.”
“Mama’s been dead twelve years,” Charity protested mildly. “She’s a happy angel in heaven. But Pa by his-self, first Christmas alone in his life. Don’t seem right somehow.”
Cleo crossed her arms and scratched her shoulders luxuriously. “Well, his second wife should have stayed alive to keep him company. Shouldn’t have married her anyway. Bringing another woman in Mama’s house. I haven’t had much use for Pa since.”
“Why, Mama always liked Miss Hattie,” Charity said, pulling her petticoat over her head. “And God knows,” she panted inside its folds, “Miss Hattie made Pa a good wife.” Her rumpled hair and hotly flushed face began to emerge. “You weren’t there to see his loneliness when Mama died. Was me talked him into marrying again.” The petticoat slowly began to settle as Charity tugged and twisted. “Lily was always kinda skittish around Miss Hattie, w
hat with you writing her don’t let Miss Hattie make you do this and that. But me and Serena thought the world and all of her.”
“Oh, you and Serena,” said Cleo good-naturedly. “You’d like anybody’d pass Pa a glass of water.” She crossed to the marble washstand, stoppered it, and turned the hot-water tap. “I’ll take my bath later. Lily’s in there now. If I go in after her, she’ll spend the day apologizing for not letting me go in before her.”
“Poor Lily,” said Charity in gentle exasperation, “she’s scared of everything and everybody.”
Cleo chuckled. “Lord, I can’t remember half the lies I used to tell her.”
Charity shook her head, and made her easy entrance into her Mother Hubbard. “Cleo, sometimes I do believe you got a devil in you somewheres. Serena told me it hurt Pa’s feelings you never once wrote him all these years.”
“Well, Pa can’t read or write,” said Cleo indignantly, and she slapped the hot-water tap. The water was only a slow trickle. “This tap’s been acting funny for a week.”
“Serena did Pa’s reading and writing. You knew that,” said Charity. She heaved a great sigh. “Poor Serena. She mopes over Pa more than the rest of us, her and Robert and Pa living all together like they did. She saw how Pa aged after Miss Hattie died. And now with Robert God knows where, Serena don’t rest a minute in her mind. She said last night it sure didn’t feel like Christmas.”
“But it is Christmas,” said Cleo firmly — “a wonderful white Christmas.” She soaped her face vigorously, then rinsed it in her cupped hands. She reached for her towel. “I was worried last night. It was snowing so steady I was afraid it might snow today and keep people away from my party.”
“Lord,” said Charity quickly, “let me get downstairs and start breakfast. I promised Mr. Judson some hot bread.”
“You spoil that nigger,” said Cleo indifferently, soaping her armpits. “You thought what you going to wear tonight?”
“I’m not coming down tonight,” said Charity quietly.
“Charity,” Cleo cried in alarm, “you got to come down. It’s different when a friend drops in. It’s easy to excuse you. But how will it look my first party my own sister not there?”
“Look at me,” said Charity.
“I been looking at you five months,” said Cleo, with a little nervous laugh. She did not turn around.
“Look at me,” said Charity hoarsely, and her breath was so harsh that her body shook.
Slowly Cleo turned around, and her heart hammered. The sight of Charity hurt her and humbled her. The look of Mama was no longer there, yet she loved this grotesque creature more than she had loved her in all the years of her gentle prettiness.
“You want me at your party? You want to introduce this mass of flesh as your sister? You want me to come in a Mother Hubbard?”
“I want you any time and any way. There’s nobody coming tonight is as good as your little finger.”
But Charity did not hear her or did not heed her. “Ben could pass me and not know me. This time last year him and Penny and me was coming home from sunrise service. They was hollering for their breakfast, and I was too full of happiness to be hungry.” She shook herself like a great dog shakes. “Lord, let me get downstairs and put on the pot. My poor old stomach’s growling so, any minute now it’s fixing to bite.” Her laugh was like Christmas bells. She propelled her great body out of the room. The sound of her small unsure feet and her hand sliding down the bannister for balance had the running accompaniment of her hard breathing.
CHAPTER 21
LILY WAS MOVING ABOUT in the next room, her thin, tuneless voice lifted in song. “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way, Can’t you hear the Christmas bells ring out on Christmas Da-ay!” The children had been singing it all week, their caroling voices issuing from angel throats. But as the week progressed, Serena spoke for almost everybody when she said that if she had to hear that song one more time, she’d lose what was left of her mind.
Then Lily had picked it up unconsciously. She never really knew she was singing until Cleo or Serena yelled at her, For God’s sake shut up! which she did at once, only to start up again as soon as she forgot.
Cleo rapped on the wall. The singing stopped. “Lily, come on in here where it’s hot and finish dressing.” She didn’t want to get irritated with Lily the first thing Christmas morning.
“It ain’t cold in here, house is hot all over this morning. But I’m coming,” she called hastily.
She came so quickly that Cleo felt startled. She had not taken the time to fasten her garters. Her stockings were slipping down her legs. Her fresh underwear and clean house frock were bunched in her arms.
“I didn’t call you because the house was on fire,” said Cleo dryly, jerking the comb through her soft hair. There were times when she was unhappily aware that the sister she could influence easiest was the sister with the least spirit.
Lily gave her a sheepish smile, put her pile of clothes on the bed, then snatched them up and bundled them in a chair. “I can’t help running when somebody calls me, either to them or from them.” She smiled shamefacedly again, seeing herself on the street, and somebody quite innocuous halting her to ask a direction, and herself taking wings as if the hounds of hell had been loosed behind her.
The comb was arrested. “You were born a fool,” said Cleo, not unkindly, “and you ought to thank God you’ve got me to look after you.”
“I do,” said Lily gratefully. “When I was in New York so much alone with Vicky, I kept that child at my heels. Wouldn’t walk down my own dark hall to my own kitchen without her. I guess that’s why she’s not scared of nothing. I guess she saw I was a fool, too, and made up her mind not to be like me.”
“Well, all I ask you,” said Cleo briskly, “is not to be a fool tonight. Not a soul coming is going to bite.”
“You mean,” said Lily fearfully, “the party?”
“I swear before God —” began Cleo ominously.
Lily began to race into her clothes, her fingers thumbs at the thought of the decision she had been dreading for days. The sound of an automobile crunching to a halt across the street sent her rushing to the window in the hope that a visitor from Mars would alight to distract Cleo’s attention.
She reported over her shoulder: “It’s the doctor again, at that big corner house. He’s going up the steps. The maid’s letting him in, guess it’s the maid, can’t see without pulling the curtains back, and I know you don’t want me to do that.” She paused and parroted dutifully, “This is a nice street, and it’s up to us to help keep it nice.” Then she returned to her speculations. “Wonder how the old lady is today? Old folks don’t outlast each other. She won’t live another month now that he’s gone. Wonder who’ll move in? Hope no whole lot of people move in. It was nice having two old people who never made a peep. If young folks lived in that big house, I wouldn’t half sleep for worrying whether they’d keep us awake with loud parties.”
She paled. She had talked too much. She turned away from the window. Her doe eyes searched Cleo’s face with the pleading expression of a child.
Cleo gave a final twist to her hair. She, too, had a rather desperate look. She glowered at Lily darkly.
“Lily, it’s time you got over being scared of your shadow. I could understand when you were in wicked New York. But this is Boston. Like my party tonight, won’t be a soul here like the railroad men Victor used to drag in to play cards and drink. You’ve seen enough of my friends to know that.”
“But I’ve never seen so many of them at once,” said Lily miserably. “I’d be so bashful before a room full of high-toned folks, I’d faint.”
“Well, God have mercy,” said Cleo helplessly. “You were scared to death of ordinary niggers, scared they were going to start cussing and cutting. Now you’re bashful of my Boston friends because they act like ladies and gentlemen.”
The sisters stared at each other. Cleo’s eyes faltered first. There was nothing to do about Lily’
s being Lily, and they both knew it.
“All right,” Cleo snapped. “Suit yourself.” She was struck by the fact that though Lily was pliable, there was nothing really to work on except a mass of fears. Her hand had been largely instrumental in Lily’s sorry making, and now she could not remold her into spine and sinew.
“You ready to go down?” she said.
Lily’s fingers faltered on her braid of hair. Quickly she flung it over her shoulder where it began to loosen at once. Her hair was flyaway. Hairpins could not confine it. They were always dropping down her back, scaring a scream out of her, which startled everyone else.
“I’m ready,” she said hastily.
“Your braid’s coming loose,” said Cleo patiently. “Where’s your rubber band?”
“Here,” said Lily, jerking it off her finger, where she had wound it, and emitting a little “ouch!”
“Put it on. I swear to God,” Cleo said, with mild amazement, “you’re worse than all the children put together. Come on.”
Midway on the stairs Lily halted.
Cleo, on the step below, vainly wishing that Lily wouldn’t always walk on top of her, said, “Now what?”
“I’m worried about my present to Mr. Judson. Don’t seem right to give a good man like him two handkerchiefs, specially since he gave me that five dollars for Christmas on top of all the money he gave you to get as good for my child as you got for his.”
“What’s five dollars?” said Cleo contemptuously. “I get sick of you sisters. If one isn’t talking about Pa, the other’s talking about Mr. Judson.”
“But after you bought him two pair of socks,” Lily persisted, “I couldn’t have bought him anything bigger than handkerchiefs. It wouldn’t have looked right.”
“He ought to be glad we gave him anything,” said Cleo impatiently. “You go ahead of me and set the children’s table. I’ll stop a minute to see how they’re getting along.”
She stood in the doorway, watching them. Their backs were turned to her. They were sitting in a semicircle around the tree, adoring it. She saw Tim’s wet bottom, and did not want to scold him. The sight of his smallness caught her heart. She could not exclude him from her Christmas love. In this quiet moment of contemplation nothing could evoke dismay. She was supremely content. There was nothing more she could want for Christmas. Belowstairs were her sisters, the part of her that was her happiness. And here in this charmed circle was the part of her that was her hope.
