The Outsider

by Richard Wright

  “Don’t you know that if you destroy me, you’re hurting yourself?” he asked her. “This calling in a lawyer—”

  “Oh, Cross!” she wailed. “I didn’t! You don’t understand!”

  “I understand more than you think,” he told her.

  She flung herself into his arms and clutched him frantically. All grief and despair vanished from her face as quickly as a summer rain, and he could not help but marvel at the weapons of a woman when she fought. Her volatile emotions altered with dialectical suddenness, changing into their opposites, disappearing, hiding under new guises.

  “Mary phoned and told me to tell you that she had a lawyer for you,” he told her.

  “That was Mary on the phone a while back?” she asked with wide eyes.

  “Yes.”

  Dot sighed with such relief that Cross wondered if she had other plots cooking…

  “Oh, Mary…She’s crazy,” Dot explained it away in a childlike voice. “I don’t have to obey her, Cross. The lawyer was her idea.”

  He would now try to see what was really on her mind.

  “Dot, how old are you?” he asked her softly.

  She did not look at him; her eyes were steadily before her and yet he knew that she knew that he was staring at her and waiting for an answer.

  “Did you hear what I asked you, Dot?” he demanded.

  She still did not answer or look at him. Well, he would wait her out. He had been intimately tender with this girl and now he had caught her acting most cruelly against him. What excuse would she give? Then he guessed her strategy; she would give none. She would just be a helpless, hard-put-upon, suffering woman playing her oldest and strongest role.

  “Dot, I’m talking to you,” he said. “How old are you?”

  The knowledge of the criminal threat she held over him stood between them like an invisible wall. She still could not turn to look at him; then she bent suddenly forward, covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she gulped.

  She had failed to answer; instead, she had let him see the emotional dilemma in which she was caught, let him glimpse the terrible weapon she held in her hand, let him surmise how reluctantly she would use it, but use it she would.

  “Look, Dot, you can haul me before a court and get me convicted, but I swear to you that I’ll find some way out, you hear?” he warned her. “You lied to me. You told me you were seventeen. You led me to this crime, if you call it a crime. Now, how old are you?”

  “I’ll be sixteen in June,” she breathed, not looking at him.

  Cross sighed. “Why did you lie to me?”

  “I wanted you,” she whispered, her eyelashes nestling against her cheeks.

  “And now you want me put into jail for ten, maybe twenty years?”

  Myrtle entered and lifted the tray from the bed.

  “Darling, I’ll never do that to you,” Dot said sweetly, too sweetly.

  “If you do, you’ll never win,” he warned her solemnly.

  “Maybe Superman’ll kill himself and escape everybody?” Myrtle gave forth a brittle laugh. “You could run off to South America, too.”

  She went briskly through the door and Cross balled his fingers in fury. He turned again to Dot.

  “Look, start with Ma. Why did you go to her?”

  Again Dot became too weak to talk; through tears she groped blindly for Cross’s hand and gripped it.

  “I was wild—Even my mother won’t speak to me,” she whimpered.

  “Your mother? Does she know?” he demanded, amazed.

  She gave him a look that begged forgiveness. She had not kept her word. He would never be dumb enough to trust anybody again. Dot’s face suddenly brightened with joy.

  “Your mother’s wonderful,” she sang.

  Goddammit! Wouldn’t Dot ever learn that these assumed poses would never work.

  “I understand now why you love her so,” Dot floated on warmly. “She has such a noble face…And she’s for us, Crossy. She hates Gladys; she didn’t tell me so, but I can feel it. She says your children are beautiful! Oh, Crossy, I’d love to take care of them. I would!”

  She’s out of her mind…Did she think that she could take away another woman’s children? Were there no limits to her vanity? Dot turned and looked yearningly at him.

  “The children, yours and mine, could all be together—”

  “Did Gladys tell you that?” he asked with soft irony.

  Dot’s eyes narrowed as she conjured up the image of Gladys. “She hates me; she hates you—God, she’s awful!”

  “Look, Dot, I’m going to tell you the lay of the land, then you must let your common sense guide you. Gladys will not let me go; her keeping me is her revenge on me for leaving her. Let’s live together and ride this out. Or, get rid of the child—”

  Dot sat up and looked at him; she had changed.

  “Cross, you got to get a divorce,” she pronounced.

  “Somebody has to give way in this,” he insisted.

  “I won’t kill the child,” she said simply.

  She was telling him that she would not let go of the hold she had upon him, no matter what. He stood up.

  “I don’t give a damn,” he muttered. “I couldn’t care less—”

  “Then, why do you blame me for getting a lawyer?” she demanded.

  “I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to myself, about myself,” he said.

  His eyes were hot and vacant. He was in a rage.

  “You’re threatening me with jail to make me get a divorce my wife won’t give,” the words growled out of him.

  “Pull off your coat, honey,” she seemed to relent.

  “Naw; I got to go,” he said. “I’ve got to see Gladys and try to undo some of the harm you’ve done.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell me something?” she begged.

  “You tell me what to tell you!” he shouted.

  Myrtle came in and stood by the bed, and asked, “What did you decide about Dot, Cross?”

  “Nothing,” he told her bluntly.

  “Wouldn’t your wife take some money?”

  “Sure; if I had it.”

  “Can’t you borrow some?”

  “I’m already up to my neck in debt.”

  “Give her monthly payments—”

  “And what’ll be left for Dot, then? I’m paying for the car—”

  “Sell it,” Myrtle suggested.

  “I haven’t got the car to sell. Gladys has it and she’s hanging on to it and I’ve got to keep up the payments,” he explained.

  “Well, it’s your funeral,” Myrtle said. “You can’t expect Dot to sit here and not defend herself; can you?”

  “All right; put me in jail, if you want to,” he spoke through tight lips.

  He turned abruptly and walked out. He was so spent that he felt that he was floating down the steps. Through the night’s mist the street lamps gleamed dully. He tramped over snow-carpeted sidewalks without knowing it. He had to see Gladys, but he did not know what he would say to her. He paused and rubbed his hand over his eyes. If those who were pressing him knew how little he felt himself as a real being, they would recoil in horror; he felt unreal, scarcely alive. How long could he go on like this? Shame flooded him as he recalled his attempt with the gun. He could not even do that…

  He stopped at a street corner and waited for a southbound trolley. The snow enforced a hush over the city, muffling the sounds of traffic and the footsteps of passersby. Above him an invisible plane droned through the night sky. Icy wind flapped his overcoat and he turned his back to it to escape its knifelike pain on his face. His eyes caught a scrap of paper whirling uncertainly on currents of wind; he watched it rise, veer, hover, then vanish aimlessly around a corner. A clanging trolley heaved into view and he approached the tracks and sprang upon the trolley when it slowed to a stop. He paid and sat in the rear of the car and closed his eyes and leaned his head against a sweaty windowpane.


  Dread was deep in him now; he had to tackle Gladys and he did not know how. The tussle between them had been so long and bitter that there was not much room left for jockeying. Over the years they had hurled at each other every curse word they knew and he felt that his present visit would be by far the most exacting. He had not seen her for more than three months; he made his payments to her by sending a check through the mails every two weeks. His not seeing her had made him forego his joy in seeing his sons and he missed them acutely, but Gladys had so adroitly managed their parting that she had extorted his not seeing the children as part of the price he had to pay for his being rid of her. After the terrible scene the last time he had seen her, he had told her that he did not intend to come again, and, in his black mood, he had given her the right to tell the children any damn thing she chose. And Gladys had seized literally upon his words and had written a special delivery letter to his mother informing her that he had disowned his children, branding him an unnatural monster. His mother had summoned him, had upbraided him, wept and prayed.

  His head lolled as the trolley jolted through the snowy night streets and his mind drifted back to the time he had been attending day classes at the University of Chicago, majoring in philosophy and working the nightshift in the Post Office. In those days he had not had much time for fun and had been constantly hankering for relaxation. His mother had been in the South, living in the house that she had bought through her lifelong and morbid frugality, and he had been a lonely young man hankering after pleasure in a big city. A stream of her pious letters had urged him to marry, but he had ignored her naïve moralizing and had remained single. Ideas had been his only sustained passion, but he knew that his love of them had that same sensual basis that drew him achingly to the sight of a girl’s body swinging in a tight skirt along a sunny street.

  He had been more than ready for Gladys when she had first risen on his horizon. He had congratulated himself on having tumbled upon a naïve girl who was gratefully receiving his amorous attentions, and it was not until long afterwards that he had discovered that she had waited patiently while he had gropingly strayed into her domain, and then she had quietly closed the trap door over him. If some ironic enemy had been intending to tangle him in an ill-suited marriage, his self-enforced abstinence could not have better prepared him for her. She had been living in his South Side rooming house and he had spoken to her only casually. A registered nurse, quiet, perhaps more than a little repressed and with maybe a tendency toward the hysterical, she was soft-spoken, brown-skinned, and well-made. Sometimes he had seen her in her handsome nurse’s uniform and he had admitted that she looked distinctively attractive in it.

  Early one rainy autumn afternoon five years ago he had gone down into the vestibule to go out to drive his Ford to work and had found her standing there, sheltering herself against the roaring downpour. He could see the edges of her white uniform showing around the hem of her coat. Surmising that she was trying to get to work, he had offered her a lift. Enroute he engaged her in a bantering conversation which had ended with her accepting an invitation to have a drink with him at the GOLDEN KEY the next afternoon.

  That was how it began. The next afternoon—the rain was still falling—he sat waiting for her in a rear booth of the tavern, hunched over an unfinished drink. She presented herself a half hour late all done up in a smart, dark blue suit with a white silk blouse. A red silk scarf was tied over her head and flouncing over her whole body was a transparent, plastic raincoat. He helped her out of her coat and noticed that tiny drops of rain gleamed on her wide forehead and her pert nose. From her there drifted to him the odor of lilacs and autumn leaves…

  As they drank they talked about themselves, their families, racial problems. He found that she had no settled tastes or convictions, and he was not a little flattered to discover that she was curious about his notions and had the good sense to defer to him when he told her something of importance. Years later Cross realized that she had had enough sagacity to clear ample psychological ground about her so that he could move in at ease and without knowing that she was luring him. Her feminine instinct placed him at once in the role of a strong and reliable man and encouraged him to play it; he found himself liking to talk to her.

  He had already made up his mind to invite her to dinner when she suddenly lifted her left wrist and looked at her watch, wailing:

  “Oh, God! It’s almost six. I’ve got to go.”

  “I thought you were going to be free,” he said disappointedly.

  “You didn’t ask me to be,” she said quickly. “I’ve got to go to a cocktail party. You know, the white and colored nurses’ associations are merged and if a colored member doesn’t show up when she’s invited, they might get the notion that we don’t want to belong.” She frowned and stared off. “Really, I feel out of place in a roomful of whites. I’m afraid I’ll be the only spook there.”

  “Guess I’ll catch up on my sleep,” he yawned.

  “If that’s all you’ve got to do, come with me to the party. Then I’ll have dinner with you. And I’d feel better if you were with me.”

  They hustled out of the bar and drove to the Loop. The party was paralyzingly dull, with Cross and Gladys standing huddled together at one end of a huge, buzzing roomful of people, holding their drinks selfconsciously, watching the others. He was amazed at how uneasy Gladys was in the presence of whites. She’s too conscious of her color, he thought.

  “Look, buck up,” he sought to put some backbone in her. “Don’t let the mere existence of these people intimidate you.”

  “They think they’re something and we’re nothing,” she snapped.

  “It’s up to us to make ourselves something,” he argued. “A man creates himself…”

  “You are a man,” she said simply.

  He understood now; it was the helplessness of dependence that made her fret so. Men made themselves and women were made only through men.

  They had been there only half an hour when Gladys whispered to him: “Let’s get to goddamn hell out of here. They make me sick!”

  “Okay,” he assented. “But whites don’t scare me.”

  They went straight to a bar on the South Side where Gladys sulked bitterly. He studied her, wondering what memories lay under her mood. Through gentle questioning he stumbled upon it; she had attended a racially mixed school in her adolescence and the snubs and ostracism had branded her with a deep sense of not belonging and a yearning to have her status as an outsider cleared of shame. Her consciousness of being an outcast moved him toward her, enabled him to drape about her a net of tender compassion. Underneath sex and common interests flowed a profounder tide of identity.

  After dinner they began to drink in earnest, then they danced in a far South Side night club and it was while holding her in his arms on the dance floor that desire for her leaped in him and it carried an extra urge to bind her to him and make her feel her humanity; he hungered for her as an image of woman as body of woman, but also as a woman of his own color who was longing to conquer the shame imposed upon her by her native land because of her social and racial origin. Gladys finally said that she wanted some fresh air and they went to a little bar on 47th Street where they drank some more. They got quite drunk.

  “I ought to be getting in,” Gladys said. “It’s late.”

  “Okay. I’ll put the car up and we’ll walk home; is that all right?”

  “Anything you do is all right,” she said, her head lolling and her eyes a little glazed.

  He took her arm and guided her wandering steps to the car; he kissed her when they were inside and she went limp. But when he attempted to caress her further, she resisted. He put the car in the garage, then walked beside her, his arm about her waist.

  “I’m drunk, really drunk,” she said as though talking to herself.

  “I am too,” he confessed, chuckling.

  It was raining and she began to stumble. Giggling, they supported each other. It was after three o’clock in t
he morning and they were fairly floating. The rain began to fall in broad, steady sheets and Cross, who wore no hat, let his coat flop open.

  “Honey, you’re getting wet,” she said.

  “I don’t feel it,” he said.

  “But you’ll catch cold!”

  “Naw!”

  He suggested another drink when they were near the rooming house and she agreed. They had three each. In the vestibule of their building, he kissed her; then, on the landing leading to their rooms, he kissed her again in the stillness and darkness.

  Nestling close to him, she mumbled as out of a dream: “I hate white people.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re mean.”

  “Did white people ever bother you?”

  “Hell, naw! I wouldn’t let ’em,” she said belligerently.

  “Then why do you hate ’em?”

  “’Cause they’re different from me. I don’t like ’em even to look at me. They make me self-conscious, that’s why. Ain’t that enough?”

  “If you say so, baby. But, listen, I’m not white.”

  “That’s what’s so nice about it,” she said drunkenly.

  He led her to his room and when he switched on the light she had a fleeting moment of soberness and shook her head, taking an aimless step backward. He tried to kiss her again and she twisted out of reach.

  He switched off the light and kissed her and she melted, letting her lips cling fully to his; he carried her to the bed and they slept together in their damp clothes, being too drunk to undress. It was the beginning of the unleashing of a mutual, silent, and intense passion. During the following week, Cross had her in his bed, on the floor, standing up, in the bathroom…She made no demands, imposed no conditions, set no limits; she simply clung to him and when she spoke at all on general topics it was about how good it was to have someone to be with when the whole world was white and she was colored; he could say nothing to her about her color consciousness because he did not know how to handle it. In time he grew to accept it along with her womanness.

  Cross’s drunken carousal in the rain gave him pneumonia and Gladys stayed home from her job to nurse him. Quietly and all the time avoiding discussing it, she took total charge of him, created a situation that spelled unconditional surrender. She straightened out his disordered room, sent his piles of soiled linen to the laundry, gave him his penicillin injections, cooked and brought up his food. He accepted it all meekly, gazing up at her in humble gratitude when his fever was over one hundred and four. He had never been so comfortably looked after in all his life.