by Dorothy West
There was constant warfare between her and Vicky. Yet Vicky came closest to being her favorite. Their temperaments met head on, struck sparks, and exploded. The love of battle was in them both. Though neither would admit an affinity for the other, they were both stimulated and intrigued by the thought of fresh encounters. When the children went out into the world, it would be Vicky that Cleo would miss most. For Vicky never bored her.
Sometimes Judy bored her. She deplored Judy’s gentleness. She supposed it was an agreeable quality, but worried lest it was a sign of softness. She never yearned to spoil her daughter. Her ambition for the little girls was tremendous, and for Judy it was greatest. Out of her egoism she could not imagine that she had not borne a remarkable child. She was determined that Judy should have an abundance of education. She held the firm conviction that a plain child was denied the distraction of prettiness for a noble purpose.
She was afraid that Penny was in danger of being content to be beautiful. This made her impatient, for she felt that beauty was a dangerous asset without brains. Too often beauty just got married.
She wanted Vicky, who was a brilliant first-grader, to be a schoolteacher. Judy, who was showing dexterity with her first piano lessons, must be a celebrated pianist. Penny, who exhibited no talent for anything except kicking her heels when the graphophone whirled, could train for sobering settlement work. Such refined white people lived and worked at Thaw House. And they were beginning to include a colored face in their personnel. True, Thaw House was in the South End, but the address could have a distinguished sound when it was possible to add that you ate and slept there with better-class whites, and were paid to treat the Negroes in the neighborhood as inferiors.
Tim, poor child, thought Cleo, as slow a walker and talker as he was, he would never be the brightest jewel in her crown. He might as well go into business. That didn’t take brains, not educated brains, anyway. He could be apprenticed to Mr. Judson who was always wishing he had a son. Well, he could take Tim and turn him into another black banana king.
Judy felt Cleo’s presence and turned around. “Mother,” she said, using her term of endearment, “Santa Claus came!” She jumped up eagerly.
“Thanta Caus came!” announced Tim, floundering inside his towel in his effort to rise.
“Would you like to see what he brought me?” asked Vicky, rising carefully to keep from bursting with joy.
“I can see from here,” said Cleo quickly. She did not want the children to have a close view of the naked face of her happiness.
“We got dolls,” said Penny blissfully. “Mine looks like me except her blue eyes.”
“I wanted a colored doll,” said Vicky. “But Santa Claus didn’t know I was colored. I forgot to tell him in my letter.” She hadn’t forgotten, but there had been a little persistent fear that even dear kind Santa Claus might have a touch of prejudice.
“What would you want to parade up and down the street with a colored doll for?” asked Cleo in honest bewilderment.
“Because Vicky’s colored,” explained Judy, who was a trifle pedantic.
“Vicky’s colored,” said Tim accusingly, hearing the mild reproof in Judy’s voice.
“Hush up, Tim. You don’t even know what you’re talking about. You’re four little children. That’s all you have to call yourselves. If you think you’re different, you’ll act different, and people will treat you different. Just remember that brains are the only thing that counts. And brains are not black or white.”
There was a little silence. Cleo felt her face reddening and frowned. They were looking at her in astonishment. She knew that they were not surprised at what she had said. They had heard her say it too often. They were just surprised that she was lecturing them on Christmas morning. That even on Christmas she was an old crank. Some day they would learn that her Spartan discipline was for their good. If she let her heart go, it would flood with pity because they were little colored children. And what would she use then to bolster their pride? But she could not leave them with that betrayed look.
“I haven’t had my Christmas kisses,” she said recklessly, advancing into the room.
Their mouths fell open, except for Tim’s, which began to pucker.
“We haven’t brushed our teeth,” said Judy politely, for Cleo had taught them that unclean teeth were an unpardonable breach of etiquette.
“Me kiss you,” said Tim, his first digression, because he was affectionate and Cleo’s kisses were rare. He held up his arms.
Vicky jerked them down. “He hasn’t brushed his teeth either,” she said firmly.
The blush deepened in Cleo’s cheeks. She took a step backward. “Then go and brush them,” she said tartly. “And take that towel off Tim. And don’t let me have to call you twice to come to breakfast.”
This was the Cleo they understood. Cleo with her Christmas love embarrassed them. They filed past her, giving sly peeps at her set face, giggling foolishly the moment they reached the safety zone of themselves.
Cleo was alone in the room. She stared unseeingly at the splendid array of expensive toys. Something was missing in the room, something that had been there the night before when she and her sisters trimmed the tree. The thing was a sense of oneness. Now some part of her felt severed, her self-identity with her child.
There was a little girl, and then there were three little girls and a boy. And now in Cleo was the core of fear that there were no children at all.
CHAPTER 22
CLEO started down the back stairs to the kitchen, from where there floated up to her the merry sounds of her sisters and Mr. Judson in conversation. She smiled benignly, shaking her head with the wonder of it. They could talk to Mr. Judson as if they enjoyed it. She didn’t see where they got the patience. She got the fidgets after five minutes.
She paused and sniffed the air. Why in the name of God did they have to fry onions today of all days? She clattered down the rest of the stairs and sailed into the sunny room, her eyes flashing green sparks.
“I declare to God,” she said dramatically, “if I turn my back for a second, this house runs on three wheels. Whoever wanted onions must have wanted them for meanness.”
“Was me asked Serena to fry me some,” Bart said peaceably. “I been shoveling snow two hours. Onions is the best thing to keep out a cold.”
“I know a stink smell doesn’t bother you,” Cleo snapped at him. She swung around to Serena. “But I thought you’d have more consideration for your own sister.”
Serena’s lower lip trembled. “You’re a rich man’s wife, Cleo. Talk is cheap to you. I’m a poor relation. I can’t afford to bite the hand that’s feeding me.”
She turned her back and began to shake the pan vigorously to conceal her own quivering.
Cleo’s eyes changed to gray. There was no green in them, no smoldering fire. Gentleness lay in the curve of her mouth. Serena was not herself. She did not even look the same. The dimples never showed in her too thin cheeks. The smudges under her eyes, the deepening lines from nose to mouth, the hollow in her throat were an unlikeness to her old self.
“Serena,” said Cleo, in a rich and tender voice, “no need to stir up a hornet’s nest over a pan of onions. No need to take out on those who love you your worry over a no-account nigger. I could have told you long ago what would happen when Robert left Camden. That letter before he left about going away to get a good job so he could give you a decent house. That was nothing but talk. These past years he thought Pa’s rattletrap place was good enough for you. Don’t tell me it took all that time to open his eyes.”
“It was my doing,” Serena said brokenly. “Me writing about your fine house, your fine furniture. I made him ashamed of himself. I made him think I had to have money. He lit out to get me some. And now the earth’s swallowed him up. And as if my cup ain’t full enough, I can’t hear from Pa. Last year this time we were thanking God we’d all been spared to share another Christmas. This year every one of us is scattered to the four winds.”
Charity heaved herself out of her chair and pounded across the floor. Her bread was not ready, and she knew that it was not. But she could not sit still with Serena’s sorrow. She rested her hands on her knees as she bent to examine her baking, and her breath scraped her throat like a file.
Lily hung back cravenly in the pantry, where she had retired at Cleo’s stormy entrance to busy herself rattling dishes. She was happy in Mr. Judson’s house. She did not want him to notice that she was a poor relation and send her back to Victor to die like a dog.
Cleo went to Serena and pried her stiff fingers from the sputtering pan. Gently she took her by the arm, and as her hand circled the scant flesh on the delicate bones, her heart shrank. This was her baby sister, whose little fat body had curled against hers in the old bed down home. She led her away from the stove and forced her unyielding body into a chair. She stood above her, trying to will her strength into Serena’s stubborn frailty.
“Serena, you’ve got to take hold of yourself. You’re the only one grieving yourself to death. Pa’s probably courting another woman to put in Mama’s place. And Robert, I know what happened to him. Those yellow-haired niggers start passing for white and forget they were ever colored.”
Bart saw Serena recoil as if Cleo had struck her. He tugged at his mustache, not wanting to interfere. Cleo embarrassed his manhood by calling him down before the girls whenever he put a word in. And if she provoked him to the point of his thundering back, the girls were the ones went to pieces. A man might as well be living with a parcel of kittens. Or a nest of baby birds with their mouths open.
The war was spreading. No need sticking his head in the sand. Might as well say the banana trade had stopped. Might as well say there’d be hard sledding from now on. The living wouldn’t be like it had been. Dollars wouldn’t come easy as dimes. Food wouldn’t fall from trees. The Saturday night exchange would soon be a thing of the past. Time was when he could bring home all the meat and fancy canned goods he could carry, and a five-pound box of fine chocolates for the price of passing the time of day and some choice fruit. Saturday nights he had looked like a pack horse getting off the trolley. Now he and the other wholesalers, the importers in particular, were exchanging without heartiness.
He rubbed his back against the chair reflectively, and scratched one stocking-shod foot against the other. The habit of years made him acutely conscious that he had not been down to the store. But the great banana rooms were empty, and the few crates of other produce needed no special cosseting. The Christmas sales had exhausted the last of the golden fruit, and another small, slow shipment from the narrowing area of untroubled seas would not be due for God knew when. In the meantime there was always the overhead. There was more going out than coming in.
It was a blessed morning, a morning a man could ease the worry on his mind and listen to the laughter of little children. And Cleo, God help her, was standing between himself and the sun. Peace was no part of her. She was born to bedevil. God pity her, she would cut off her arm for these sisters of hers with the same knife she held at the tenderest spot in their hearts.
“Cleo,” he said, “you got more to do besides talk. You got a raft of people coming tonight, and a mess of cooking ahead of you. Why don’t you let us eat and get it over, so you and the girls can start?”
“Bread’ll be ready time we sit down,” said Charity. “Mr. Judson, you draw up. I hear the children coming down the back stairs. Lily, you serve them. Serena’ll pass you their plates through the pantry slide. You sit down, Cleo. You going to be standing most all day and all tonight.”
Cleo frowned at Charity’s unconscious assumption of her prerogative. “You children,” she shouted commandingly, “come down the back stairs. I don’t want one foot on the front stairs today. Mr. Judson, you’re not drawing up to my table till you put on your shoes. Serena, you serve the children. Lily’d just act helpless if they didn’t behave instead of slapping them down. I’ll sit down when I’m ready, Charity. I can’t bear to be talked to like I was a child. You sit down yourself. I’ll dish up. You’ve told me a dozen times this morning you’re starving to death.”
Bart, bending over his shoes, raised his head and smiled. “Reminds me how my mother used to say, Feed your stomach and promise your back. Never promise your stomach.”
“While we’re on the subject of clothes,” said Cleo, “you lay out yours before tonight. Don’t come worrying me the last minute to help you find a clean shirt.”
Bart began to lace his shoes, which he hadn’t intended to do. But he had no intention of meeting Cleo’s eye either.
“Well, now, about tonight, Cleo. You know I’m a man will fall asleep anywhere soon as the sun goes down. You don’t want me falling asleep at your party. I’ll sneak off to bed before folks start coming. You all,” he added largely, “have a nice time.”
He raised his head, stole a look at Cleo’s glowing green eyes, and swallowed hard.
“Well, I’ll finish calling the roll,” she said, with deadly calm. “Serena, what fool excuse you got to give me?”
“About what?” asked Serena abstractedly, turning back from the door.
“Just tell me plain out, yes or no, you coming downstairs tonight like a civilized person or not?”
“No,” Serena said.
“You can stand there and tell me ‘no’ as plain as that?” asked Cleo passionately.
“You asked me to,” Serena said stubbornly.
“I declare before God, I have to pull the weight of this whole house.”
“We’ll be leaning over the upstairs bannisters,” said Lily helpfully. “I sure want to see everybody that comes.”
“That’s right,” said Cleo witheringly. “Be second-class niggers leaning over the fence looking at first-class folks. Nobody thinks of the children but me. Mr. Judson only cares if their bellies are full. The rest of you only care if they keep themselves clean. I’m the only one cares to see them walk proud. If they don’t learn to hold their heads up in the colored world, how they ever going to know to hold their heads up in the white world?”
She saw that they were staring at her just as the children had stared at her.
“Charity, pass your plate,” she said resignedly.
CHAPTER 23
THE COUSINS sat at the dining-room table, too excited and too full of fruit and forbidden-before-breakfast candy to want their cereal and eggs and bacon. They ate stoically, so that there need be no nonsense from Cleo about nobody can get up from this table until every plate is clean. The little girls had even persuaded Tim to eat from his own dish. He ate with his eyes on Judy. When she took a mouthful, he did.
A dinner napkin was tied around his neck, giving him a bunny look again. He would not wear bibs because Judy did not, and he was beginning to demand that his napkin be laid across his lap. This morning his insistence had not been too mulish because he felt dressed up in his best linen rompers and new white stockings and shoes, and did not want to soil them.
The little girls wore their embroidered serges and the Mary Janes that they customarily carried in their dancing-school bags on Saturdays. They sat with their ankles crossed as Miss Templeton had taught them, but their feet swung back and forth against the Chippendale chairs in their nervous eagerness.
They were listening to Bart’s resonant voice, making itself heard above Cleo’s, and they wanted to go in and lean against him. They saw so many women faces in all the departments of their day that they were wonderfully glad to see Bart’s dark face at dusk. They liked to feel his mustache tickle when they laid their smooth cheeks against his lips, the only form of kissing that Cleo permitted in her effort to wipe out all the world’s germs.
The adults leaned back from the kitchen table, replete with steak and onions and hominy and hot bread. Bart had a match in the corner of his mouth, the extent of Cleo’s permission of the practice of picking teeth at table. As he talked the match teetered on his lip in a way that captivated Lily. Serena and Charity were c
aptivated, too, though the match was only a minor attraction. They were listening to Bart talk about his life before they knew him. They had not lived with him long enough for his tales to be twice-told. Though his stories were old, they were new to them, and enthralling.
“I hate to hear a lot of talk about old used-to,” Cleo said impatiently. She wanted to tell her own story about the time she cut off her braids and told poor Mama old Ant Sooky had conjured them off.
“Don’t keep interrupting him,” begged Serena. Mr. Judson was easing the morning for her.
“Well, like I was saying,” Bart resumed, “Ma and I sold out in the South and came to Springfield, Massachusetts. Reason we came to Springfield was Ma’s only known kin was there. I was just going to visit awhile, then come on to Boston and send for Ma. But I’m a man can’t go a day without working. I was made for work, and work was made for me. I want to die in harness.”
“Oh, hush up, Mr. Judson,” Cleo said sharply. “Don’t talk about dying. You’ll bury me. You’ll be too mean to die and leave me your money.”
Behind her screen of anger was a strange feeling of desolation. She did not want to imagine him dead. She had never believed that a man could be part of the living substance of a house. All the same, she found herself listening with the others for the sound of his key in the door. Although her greeting was never more than Oh, it’s you, nonetheless on the nights when he fell asleep on the trolley and rode to the end of the line, her life was suspended and her heart quickened to every footfall outside. Her sisters and the children were within call, but the completeness she had felt all day slowly began to crumble away until Mr. Judson returned to the house, where she had no place for him, to restore it.
