The Outsider

by Richard Wright

  It was time to go. Amidst a tidal wave of laughter he paid his check and went out, passing the black boy on the sidewalk and looking back several times to see other Negroes leave the cafe to join the black boy laughing in the white snow. Their peals reached his ears for half a block.

  Yes, he had to see Dot. The thought made tension rise in him and he went into a bar and had a double whiskey. When he came out a bluish mist hung in the air and the sun was a faint red ball. The outlines of the buildings were beginning to blur. A freezing wind stung his face. He found a taxi and climbed in.

  “5743 Indiana,” he told the driver.

  Underneath all he had felt that day, Dot had rested as a kind of uneasy undertow, a slow black tide that would not be gainsaid. And, now that he was going to have it out with her, he flinched with fear at the hurt she would sustain. It had been six months ago that she had first floated into his mind as just another image of desire, woman as body of woman; but, for reasons which he had not foreseen, she had clung to him and he had clung to her and slowly she had come to mean more to him than just a woman’s body. Now that the moment of what she so melodramatically liked to refer to as the “payoff” was at hand, he did not like it. What bothered him most was that he knew that he had to betray her, and this betrayal was not springing from any innate perversity in him, but from the very complexity of his relations with Gladys. There was no way out but to hurt her, and he was convinced that she knew it. He had helped her with money, advice, sharing with her his life; but it seemed that these gifts enraged her. She had said that they were not enough and he knew that, as a woman, she was right. Dot was so close to what she wanted in life, that is, to marry him, that its impossibility drove her almost out of her mind.

  In her struggle for legal possession of him, Cross knew that she was in the end counting heavily upon his weakness to carry her through. Yes, he was weak, but he knew that he was weak, and that made a difference. He also knew more about the turnings and twistings of her mind than she knew he knew, and this knowledge gave him an ironic insight into her that he did not relish. How could he ever make her know that, though he gave forth the appearance of weakness, that this weakness was really a kind of strength of not wanting to hurt others. His own experience had shown him that he was cold-bloodedly brutal when trapped in situations involving his self-respect. All his life he had been plagued by being caught in relations where others had tried to take advantage of him because they had thought him supine and gullible; and when he had finally confronted them with the fact that he knew that they were playing him, they had hated him with a redoubled fury for his having deceived them! And he dreaded that happening with Dot.

  He had never tried to conceal from Dot his situation; he had been transparently honest with her from the beginning; he had told her everything and if she had any illusions, they were of her own making. And what saddened him to inward tears was that he suspected that Dot had allowed herself to become impregnated in order to test the strength of their attachment, hoping that he would be so moved and harassed by her passionate appeals that he would find some way of breaking legally with Gladys and marrying her. And he knew that freedom was the last thing on earth that Gladys would ever grant him. Dot’s just young and romantic enough to try such a fool thing, he thought bitterly.

  He had met her, of all the places in a teeming city, in the liquor section of the South Center Department Store one Saturday morning last spring. There had been a widely advertised sale of Jamaica rum and long lines of people had queued up to buy at the unheard of rate of two bottles of rum for three dollars. The store had been jammed with milling crowds. He had taken his place at the end of a long queue and a moment later he had been aware that a young, willowy slip of a tall yellow girl had fallen in directly behind him. It was warm; he was without a coat and his shirt sleeves were rolled up past his elbows. He sniffed the perfume she wore, then gave her a quick survey; she was uncommonly pretty and was wearing a sheer pink print dress that showed the shape of her body with disturbing distinctness. She looks sweet, he thought. He glanced at her, trying to catch her eye; but the jostling crowd so distracted him that he forgot her until a few minutes later, when, all at once, he felt his naked elbow touching something yieldingly soft behind him. He looked around and she smiled shyly; a soft lump rose in his throat. Good God, what a gal! And so young… Did she know that his elbow was touching her left breast? If she did, she gave no outward sign; she still had that vague, sweet smile that could mean anything: coyness or just simple self-consciousness. Why, she’s just a child, he thought with a twinge of shame. He looked at her again, feeling his elbow still touching her breast; she smiled and looked off, yet she did not try to move away. She knows…But really, would a young girl with a face so sensitive and finely chiselled allow him to do that to her in public? Was she alone or was that man behind her her husband? The image of woman as body of woman filled him and his head felt pleasantly giddy. He was determined to know if she knew that his bare elbow was tan-talizingly touching the tip of her breast. Perhaps she’s so excited about the rum that she does not feel it…But his knowledge of the erotic made him feel that that was impossible. He sensed in her a quality of quiet waiting and it made him feel that she did know and did not mind, was even welcoming it. The line inched forward. The metallic ringing of cash registers sang out over the crowd. Traffic clanged through the streets outside. And all around was bubbling a cacophony of voices. He was now so near the counter that he could see the towering rows of bottles of dark yellow rum. Slowly, so slowly that no one could notice anything, he moved his bare elbow to and fro across the tip of her breast, realizing with sensual astonishment: She’s not wearing a brassiere! Desire surged softly through him. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that she had not moved; she was staring steadily ahead, holding her purse primly in front of her. He tried it again; she did not move or seem aware that she was being touched at all; her face was sweet, composed, solemn, angel-like in its purity and remoteness from erotic passion. Was she aware or was she not? He had to know; it obsessed him. She could, of course, abruptly leave the line to indicate her disgust; or she could, if she were the hysterical breed, yell out that he was molesting her. But he did not believe that she would…Was she playing the same game that he was playing? And who was she? Again he moved his naked elbow across her left breast, caressing it, gently indenting the soft, surrendering flesh under the sheer cloth of her dress as much as he dared, and, this time, he knew that she knew, for he felt the tip of her loose breast gradually hardening, growing delicately into a pointed, taut nipple. He gazed at her directly now, but still she did not look at him; and her face was as passive and serene as a summer landscape. The line shortened and he fondled her breast with his elbow and she made no move to withdraw her body; instead, as the line snaked forward, she managed to keep her breast where his elbow could touch it. He was now certain that the man behind her was not her husband, did not know her. Finally he turned to her and smiled, still touching her breast, and said:

  “It’s a long time, hunh, to wait for two bottles of rum?”

  “It’s awful,” she said, and they both laughed.

  “You like rum?” he asked.

  “Now, what do you think?” she countered teasingly.

  “What do you make with it? Cuba Libres or Rum Punches?”

  “Both,” she said.

  “You live around here?”

  “Naw. Up near 37th Street.”

  He looked at her openly now, as a man looks at a woman he likes and wants.

  “You couldn’t be over sixteen,” he ventured.

  “You’re wrong. I’m seventeen,” she corrected him.

  They had spoken in low tones, as though both were conspiring to keep secret the erotic link that was springing up between them. He noticed that she was trembling slightly and he knew that she was being claimed by a state he knew well: dread. This was perhaps the first time she had ever let herself be caressed in this manner and he must not frighten her. H
e cast about for something to say to let her know that, though he was after her, he was also a gentleman and that she need not be afraid of him, that she could rely on him for discreetness and good sense. It was then that he saw a Wendell Phillips High School pin on the collar of her dress.

  “When did you get your sheepskin?” he asked her.

  “Last June,” she answered readily.

  “Phillips was my school, too,” he told her.

  “Really?” she asked. She smiled broadly, relaxing completely for the first time.

  They were at the counter now and he paid for his rum and stood aside, waiting for her. When she left the counter, he said:

  “Here. Let me help you carry that.”

  “Thank you,” she said with a charming degree of hesitation; then she allowed him to take her bottles.

  They walked out of the store together, making small talk. She told him that she lived with her mother and a younger brother; but her mother was a terror, depriving her of all freedom. She said that she was thinking seriously of leaving home and living with Myrtle, a girl friend…During the first five minutes he had let her know that he was not free, that he worked in the Post Office, that he was married but not living with his wife. They passed a movie house and he asked her if she liked movies and she said yes. He invited her to see a show with him that afternoon and she demurred modestly. She doesn’t want to seem too forward, he thought; and he laughed out loud about it when he was alone in his room.

  “But you can call me sometimes, if you want to,” she said, and she gave him her telephone number.

  That was how it had begun. She had known from the beginning that he was not free and she had told him that it did not really matter for the time being. In their relationship he had found her a passionate child achingly hungry for emotional experience. Of an afternoon she would come to his room with the most disconcerting directness he had ever known in a woman. He would try to talk to her and as he talked he could tell that she was not listening; she was pulling off her dress, stripping down her nylon stockings, stepping out of her nylon slip and panties…And afterwards he would stare at her unbelievingly as she would stomp her foot and tell him with a childlike seriousness that was all the more serious because it was so childlike: “I never want to make love with anybody but you.”

  “You’ll live and learn,” he had told her, yawning.

  “Don’t say that,” she had protested with sudden fury, and he realized with a sense of dismay that what had taken place was to her sacred.

  But that did not prevent some nuance of perversity in him from trying to make her admit that she had been conscious of his elbow caressing her breast that warm, spring Saturday morning in the liquor store, but she would never confess it, would exhibit feelings of shame and indignation whenever he mentioned it; but beneath her ardent denials was a furtive sense of erotic pleasure. He was amused by the manner in which she balanced her moral notions with her emotional hungers. Under his questioning she would pause in her dressing and stare at him with wide, hurt eyes and exclaim:

  “How can you say that? You sure have a filthy imagination!”

  “But, Dot, dammit, you knew! I swear you did—”

  “Do you think I’d let anybody do that to me in public?” she asked, her voice ringing with genuine incredulity.

  “But you did, Dot!”

  “I didn’t!”

  Tears would roll down her cheeks and he would take her in his arms and soothe her; but she never got angry about it. And until the end she would never concede that that morning was the first time that she had ever felt so keen a sensual pleasure. But Cross was certain of it and it made him marvel that she could deny it with such passionate consistency.

  His bond with her grew deeper with the passing days, for it was with her that, for the first time in his life, he found himself talking freely, emptying out of his soul the dammed up waters of reflection and brooding thought. He told her of his morbidly tangled yet profound relation with his mother; he told her how, when he had been twenty-one years of age, he had naïvely been sucked into a stupid marriage with Gladys; and he confessed to her his incurable melancholy stemming from his mulling over his emotions. He never quite knew how much of what he told her she understood, but she always listened patiently, now and then timidly venturing a detached question or two, but never commending or blaming. He came at last to believe that she accepted the kind of talk in which he indulged as a mysterious part of a man’s equipment, along with his sexual organs. But the mere fact that she listened to his analytical tirades had been a boon to him beyond his deepest hopes.

  And now he had to hurt her. And what would she do? Once he had toyed with trying to find possible friends of his with whom she could fall in love; he had once even spoken to her in glowing terms of a man who worked with him on the job. And he had been amazed when she had turned to look at him and demanded:

  “Are you trying to pawn me off on somebody?”

  To hear her speak like that had so shamed him that he had never tried it again. Then, one Sunday evening over dinner in a crowded restaurant, she told him that she was carrying his child. His stupefication had been such that the food stuck in his throat. Later, in his room, she had wildly resisted his suggestion that she abort the child and it had maddened him. The scenes of emotional conflict that took place the following month had frayed him almost to madness.

  He had just left one woman, his mother, who, in an outpouring, had hurled at him her life draped in the dark hues of complaint and accusation, had tried futilely to rouse compassion in him by dramatizing the forlorn nature of her abandoned plight; now he was on his way to struggle with yet another woman. And after Dot there loomed the formidable figure of his wife.

  “Okay, Buddy; here you are,” the taxi driver told him as the cab swerved to a curb hidden by snowflakes.

  He paid, ran up the steps, pushed the bell of Dot’s apartment three times, the signal they agreed upon when he was calling to see her. The buzzer was so long in answering that he thought that surely she was not in. Where could she be? He rang again and was about to leave when the buzzer suddenly responded in a long blast of sound that would not stop. He opened the vestibule door, feeling that something was wrong. He heard the buzzer still emitting its tinny throb long after he had passed the second floor. She must be upset or something…When he reached the door of Dot’s apartment, he saw Myrtle, Dot’s girl friend, looking at him with a face as devoid of expression as she could make it. Myrtle was a tall, dark girl with a handsome face and sardonic eyes. Cross slowed his movements, sensing knowledge of a crisis behind Myrtle’s reserved manner.

  “Hi,” he greeted her.

  Without answering, she caught hold of his arm and drew him forcibly into the hallway of the apartment.

  “Where’s Dot?” he asked, trying to keep his voice calm.

  “In bed,” she said flatly.

  “What’s happened?”

  “You ought to be asking…All hell’s broke loose, that’s all.”

  “What do you mean? I want to see Dot.”

  “You can’t now,” she said with an air of petty satisfaction.

  He started for Dot’s bedroom and Myrtle held him back.

  “The doctor’s in there,” she whispered fiercely.

  “The doctor? Why? Tell me what’s happening!”

  “You men!” She curled her lips in scorn. “How much do you think a poor girl can stand?”

  “Okay. You can can that,” he told her roughly, unable to suppress hot resentment. “Dot can talk to me like that, but you can’t!”

  He had never liked her and she did not like him and the way she was now acting was something he had known she would do if she ever had gotten the chance; now she had it and was doing it. One instinct told him to ignore her, but she had cut too deeply into his bleeding feelings for him to leave off. He stood glaring at her, his fingers trembling.

  “Look, I’m Dot’s best friend, see?” she shot at him. “I’m taking care of he
r, trying to repair the damage you’ve done. I can say what I damn well like…”

  “Not to me,” Cross said.

  “And why not?” she flipped at him.

  “Because I don’t sleep with you,” he told her brutally, looking her straight in the eyes.

  An anger so intense burned in Myrtle’s face that her large eyes shrank in size.

  “You dirty sonofabitch,” she said in an even, low tone.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  He opened the door of Dot’s room and peered in.

  “Who is it?” a loud masculine voice called out to him as he stood uncertainly.

  It was the doctor who had yelled; Cross could see his back bent over Dot’s bed. Dot was lying with her face to the wall.

  “It’s me, honey. Cross.”

  “Please, please, don’t come in now, Cross.”

  “Will you be kind enough to wait outside until I’m through here?” the doctor asked brusquely. “What happens after I’m gone is your business…”

  Cross shut the door and turned to see the smirk on Myrtle’s face.

  “What happened?”

  “I ought to spit right in your face for what you said to me,” she said forming her lips as though about to spew something through them. “What she ever saw in your sullen heart, God only knows!”

  “I’m sorry,” he relented to get information. “But why don’t you tell me what’s happened?”

  “Yeah, sorry… Men are always sorry,” she derided him openly, keeping her voice low and charging it with hate.

  “For Christ’s sake!” he exploded. “Now’s no time to carry on like that! Tell me what happened.”

  “Wait and she’ll tell you,” Myrtle said and went into the kitchen, closing the door behind her.

  Cross sat and fumed. How crazy women could be sometimes…What did she think she was gaining by throwing dramatic fits? He looked up as she came briskly out of the kitchen, opened the door of the hall closet, took out her coat and put it on. She paused, not looking directly at him. The muscles of Cross’s body tightened; he could have kicked her right through the brick wall into the snowdrifts piled outside.