by Marge Piercy
“What’s up?” He stepped close, meeting that scorched gaze.
“Nothing that won’t come down. I would like my coat.”
When they got outside Vera plunked herself down on the porch steps. “You go talk in the car. When you’re done, blink the lights and I’ll join you. Then you can take me home.”
That he would settle later. He marched ahead of Caroline to the car, trying to figure out what in hell she could have told Vera. Getting in, she huddled in her coat. A faint smell of sweat came off her along with her perfume. Her hands sought each other. Caroline sitting in his car that warm night, hugging her own bare arms tentatively, at a different pitch of nerves. Annie felt he should just have turned her off—merely locate the switch. Who was that guy she left with?
“I didn’t have a period last month.” She waited. He turned, encountered her wet glance and shook it off, looked into the windshield instead. “I went to a doctor.” Again she waited. Leaning on the wheel, he stared at the frozen street. Vera hunched in her coat on the steps. “I’m pregnant. I’m going to have a baby.”
“You’re getting married. Move up the date.”
“I can’t marry Bruce and have your baby!”
He cringed. “Marry Bruce and have Bruce’s baby. I’m betting it’s not mine.”
“It has to be.” Her voice leaked reproach. “I don’t sleep with Bruce”
“In a pig’s eye.”
“It’s true. He loves me. He wants to marry me.”
“He loves you and doesn’t touch. What do you do?”
Caroline pushed up the fur collar. “Besides, we did in Europe, then he decided we shouldn’t till we’re married. He’ll know it isn’t his, I mean it’s physically impossible.”
“Who else did you fuck during October?”
“Don’t talk to me that way!” She flipped the collar down, turning to him. Large tears began to well from her eyes.
“It bugs me to hear you go on as if you had an inner voice could sort out the sperm and label that thing, Maybe by Rowley.”
“I’ve been engaged. I only went to bed with you because I loved you. That was stronger than my engagement. But I haven’t slept with anyone else since July, except for Bruce. It has to be yours.”
Loved him. Hot pig meat.
“How can you sit there and treat me that way? No one has the right to speak to me in that tone of voice! I loved you, and now I’m going to have your baby.”
“You did not love me and I didn’t love you. Is that what you told Vera in the head that got her mad?”
“I know you’re dating her, but Vera doesn’t like men. Her family would never let her become serious about somebody from a different background. Maybe you wouldn’t expect that, but they’re stand-offish. I asked her if she would mind if we started going together again, and she said, Of course not—”
“You stuck your foot in it.”
“You can’t be serious about her, and I have a right.” She snuffled slightly. She had stopped crying. “Don’t look at me that way! Do you think I’m enjoying this?”
“No. I think that, in a sly way, you expected to.”
Her hand flopped in her lap. “You want to hurt me. You don’t care any longer.”
“Not you, and certainly not me, ever did.” He forced himself to put out his hand and touch her arm—lightly, lightly, for fear she would turn and fall against him. “I’m sorry you’re caught. Have you told your boyfriend?”
“Bruce? Of course not! I can’t marry him now. He’d kill me if I told him!”
“He sounds like a gem. However.”
“Everyone says he’s on the way to being a very successful architect. Dad is going to have him do the new highschool.” She slumped with hands to her cheeks, suddenly and truly aghast. “What a mess, oh, they’ll never …”
“What kind of architect is he?”
“Oh, he must be good. He travels all over for redevelopers and people making subdivisions.” She sat up, rooting in her purse for a handkerchief, which dispersed perfume on the frosty air.
Vera stirred on the step. Compacted and catlike. Goddamn it.
Her voice came out with a throaty quaver, “How can you question me about Bruce? I can only forget him.” She turned her face into the path of the streetlight with lifted chin. Even now he was struck by how pretty she was, with soft mouth and melting long-lashed eyes.
“Want a baby?”
“If you want me to.” Cautiously she smoothed at her hair, still holding that chin-up pose. She was offering what she had been taught to offer, her all-American playmate’s face.
“Hell no. Look here,” he said, “I can help you pay for an abortion and then you can marry your boyfriend and go on the way you were going. I’m short on funds but what I can scrape together, I will.”
“You don’t care if I die. If I can’t have babies the rest of my life. No!”
“The Syndicate protects a man downstate, clean setup. If you don’t like that, gynecologists in the Loop are available for the price of tears, crawling, and five hundred bucks.”
“No. Why should I suffer?” The chin was down now, her fists clenched. She spoke with passion: cry of an angry child. “Why should I crawl? Or go to jail? Or let some horrible, dirty old man, no!” She cradled her belly. “I won’t!”
“What do you want, Caroline? Get to the point. Vera’s frozen by now.”
“You can always go in and get warm. What do I want? You knew well enough what you wanted that night I told you Bruce was coming back and we were getting married.”
He held his head in his hands. He felt like picking her up by the scruff and depositing her in the snow. Yet in the blue-green morgue light of the streetlamp he pitied her flowery face, her soft chin and soft body, her ridiculous dead animal collar and large compliant hands and hips and mouth. She probably sucked off her friend. He had never been convinced she enjoyed fucking. Her frenzy was all beforehand. Little lump of cells inside her going at it, half Caroline and half him if he could believe her.
“I’m not about to marry anybody. If I’d thought we had a strong thing going, I’d have let you know.”
“You think you can get away with anything. You think you can just tell me, go away, and I’ll disappear. My father would kill you, if he knew. He could do it, too.”
“If you want to ditch this thing, I’ll help you. If you want to have it, I’ll help you. You’ll let me know.” He snapped the lights once, switched on the motor and hit the horn.
Stiffly Vera rose brushing snow from her coat and came toward them. With slow deliberation she walked and every tap of her boots on the sidewalk expressed distaste. Her gaze passed from one to the other with equal contempt. She got into the backseat without speaking. When she saw where he was going she spoke up. “You can drop me first.”
“I can drop you second too. Hold on.”
Caroline turned and said over the seat, “He won’t marry me. He says he won’t.”
Vera said shortly, “Perhaps he’ll change his mind.”
After Caroline had gone tripping past the doorman, he drove a block before pulling over. “Would you come up front?”
“No thank you. This talk won’t be a long one, and you can hear me well enough.”
“But can you listen to me?”
“If I’d known there was a hanky-panky between Caroline and you, I’d never let you … see me. When she was staying with me, she was calling Santa Barbara every other night, so how was I to guess?”
“Hanky-panky is all there was. On that basis I am marching nowhere.”
“That’s your business. You’ll do as little as you can get away with.”
“Vera, listen. I did not pursue Caroline. I didn’t even ask her, like. For you I’d feel responsible, because I’ve put a lot into this and asked a lot from you.”
“I’m not surprised that a girl not pregnant should attract you more right now than another girl pregnant who attracted you last month. You know I’m not about to talk marriage
, ever. Then let’s keep quiet.”
“Why are you riled up? I thought you’d guessed about Caroline.”
“If she can’t trust you, why should I?”
“Because I damn well never asked her to trust me.”
“Well, I don’t ask you to trust me. Or want me. Or pester me. Or keep me sitting in this freezing car. I want to go home. I want to wash you off and forget you like a bad cold.”
“Stop slamming doors in my face!” He twisted around with the wheel jabbed into his ribs, shouting over the seat at her. A bitter fury took him when he saw from the depth of her anger how close to her he had got. He had got under her skin for real. His victory had not been sexual: he could not fool himself that he had moved her beyond simple bored acquiescence. But she had come almost into trusting him. “Tell me what you’re blaming me for? Screwing around with Caroline before I met you?”
She pushed open the door and hopped out. “Your life disgusts me!”
He slid across and went after her, taking her by the shoulder. “Vera, get back in. We’re not finished.”
“Let go of me, or I’ll start screaming.”
Annoyed, he let go. “I’ll take you home.”
She got back, this time in front. “Then don’t talk! What more could happen to me tonight?” Her voice was shrill, fraying. “Your talk makes me sick down to my shoes.”
Hearing the pain in her voice he felt sick. He could have wrung Caroline by that soft throat. Coming and going she cast tacks under his wheels. He couldn’t believe she had come to him tonight confident he would marry her. Of the girls he would not marry she was high on the list. If that made him a bastard, too bad.
Leaving the car doubleparked, grimly he followed her in. He felt ragged with helplessness. She half ran up the stairs. At her door she turned at bay. “Go home! Stay home! Keep your big feet out of my life!”
The door across the hall opened a crack. “Goodnight, Mrs. Martin,” Vera said, biting her lip hard.
It was not in him to plead or wheedle, no more than he had with Anna. “Goodnight yourself, Vera, and sleep tight.” He went down. The door slammed. He heard the lock turn over and the chain slide to. He went down, leaving her to the narrow bed, to the art nouveau rockingchair, to the worktable and sewingmachine and lesson plan for the second grade, to the sky of treetops and chimneys, to her neat tight body and her brother and her hard narrow life. Past old scents of soft coal, of child and animal piss, of chitterlings and disinfectant and cooked greens, he went down a staircase he would not climb again.
He drove home through the icy streets and found a parking spot three houses away, fatigue like lead in his boots. The Corporation had begun to tear down an apartment on the corner—and although it belonged to the University and they could have torn it down at any time, the sight had demoralized even the Defense Committee. The crane dwarfed the houses. He shouldn’t have gone to the party. But Caroline would not have given up. He had a premonition she would be sitting on the front steps waiting, his special present from the world tonight.
He wanted to stop and talk to Harlan and pool their depressions. Harlan had been feeling really down. His job was easier on him than Harlan’s—less pressure, less nonsense and a lot more joy. If he had lost interest, how did Harlan get through his welfare days? But the only light on the first floor was in their bedroom. He’d see Harlan tomorrow. They had to make a decision about trying to take their case to court.
So late and cold he was surprised not to find Yente at the door yowling, hammering his furry head against his pantleg. Maybe he’d begged his way in upstairs? The night was bitter cold. He called a couple of times, looked around a moment longer, then went in.
He was already asleep. He did not know what first made him wake, then know he had to get up. He had been asleep and he did not think he had heard anything, not anything real. But he got up, snapped on the light and pulled on his trousers and shoes.
When he opened the outside door he saw nothing and was about to shut it. His sleepy reflexes slowed the gesture long enough for him to catch sight of something moving under the steps. It moved again. An animal came dragging out. It pulled itself by its forepaws on the ice. It made a noise in its throat. As it dragged along in the ice it left bits of itself, charred flesh and burned hanks of hair. It came on toward him, dragging and made a noise in what had been its throat.
He knelt down. He did not know how to touch Yente, because he was burned too badly. Gasoline reek. Lynched cat. He tried to touch Yente’s back, but half-mad with pain, the cat snapped at him and cowered. Then Yente stretched out his livid red and black neck, his scorched skin to which stuck patches of crisp hair, he craned out his neck and out of his one eye and out of his cooked opaque eye he looked and asked and made the noise in his throat.
Rowley knelt over him with his fists clenched. His eyes scalded. He felt guilty. He felt there must be something, something he could do that would turn Yente back into himself, return him as shaggy clumsy cat and make this tortured thing vanish. Napalmed cat. We do that to people every day. He shut the door and knelt over Yente. Yente was dying but slowly, slowly. He rolled to and fro in his frantic pain and made that noise. Gobbets of cooked meat came loose. The stench of burned hair and baked flesh. His fat smeared the floor. He rolled and snapped at himself. He turned to and fro, he crawled dragging toward Rowley’s foot, making the noise.
Rowley straightened and went into the kitchen. He took from the knife rack the best knife. He could hear the noise behind him. He sharpened the knife on the grindstone. The knife swam and wavered and came back to itself.
He went back into the livingroom and knelt. Forcing himself to touch the charred living head, the blackened bone exposed over the cooked eye, he held the head and drew the knife across Yente’s throat. The cat gave a weak spring as the throat opened and the blood came spilling over his hand. The noise stopped. The body shuddered, again, and went still.
He found a box for Yente and put him in. He wiped the floor as well as he could. He put the knife in the box too. Then he put on his coat, took the box and went out. He could not think where to put Yente, because the ground was frozen. There was never anybody to blame, for each man only does his job and hopes for a promotion to a job where he will do more of the same. There were only the needs of great organizations.
What could he do with his dead cat? He carried it to the house of the chancellor of the University and put the box down before the door. That was the best he could do, though he did not hope that anyone would understand his justice. He did not care. He had no place to bury Yente. He went home and went back to bed. It was very cold in his apartment. He thought it was the coldest it had ever been.
Friday, December 19–Saturday, December 27
“I don’t want Whitey in my house. That’s all.”
“Don’t throw slogans at me. I’ve never been Whitey before, and it’s not me who’s changed.”
Harlan reached up. His fingers brushed a pipe. “Can’t help it. I’m not saying I’m sorry. What’s the use? There’s only so much water in the bucket and it’s all gone dry.”
“They push you back toward the ghetto, so you turn and leap in.”
“I can’t balance my mind like a tray of dirty china any more. Let it fall, let it drop, let it bust. I’m making allowances for nobody. I’m done giving credits or green stamps.”
Harlan looked tired through and through. He’d lost weight and he was down to sore nerves. Rowley looked aimlessly around his livingroom trying to think how to reach him. “It wasn’t the way you lived, when you could help it. Now you hang a big sign on me Whitey, Guilty. I’m not taking that sign.”
“That’s your problem. I can’t afford to care about your feelings. Besides, I can’t have you in the house and join the FBM. They wouldn’t take me. Not that I’ll be having a house long.”
“The Free Black Militia. Of all the pseudo-fascist splinters.”
“You can’t win from the city and all you win in court is words. I
can’t work for them any more. I played into their hands too long. Riding herd on poor black girls with their miserable illfed kids, driving them out of their heads trying to find out if they’re getting any. I’ve had it. Please, White Father, let me pay twice as much for this lousy little house and you can forget about cleaning the streets and picking up the garbage, we’ll just eat it. At least in the FBM they’re men.”
“It’s not the black supremacy stuff per se that bugs me. It organizes people who have to be organized, and what group doesn’t think they’re God’s own peepers? But this talking violent is an old scene. When violence hits, who gets their heads broken?”
“You lose every time till you win. But that’s how you get pride.”
“Look, the less actual channels exist for action—given the being hurt, the anger and outrage—the tendency exists for the words to get hot. Like the Wobblies who talked sabotage a lot more than they practiced it—but the union got broken and the leaders jailed for enraging the public. If you talk violent enough you get the government down on you. Are you going to fight the real estate interests and the corporate interests with codewords and karate practice?”
“This society is trying to box me, is trying to tear my balls off and stuff them down my throat. I got to fight. But not fair any more. I can’t afford it.”
“You’re saying I got hurt, so I don’t care how effective this action I’m going to take is. It’s an outlet for my feelings. The race be damned.”
“When they drive the nails in you, let’s hear what you yell. You’re yelling now, cause you been comfortable and now you’re getting pushed around a little. I’m saying they’re killing me, and I’m going to choose my death. And it sure won’t be ulcers or hypertension. And I’m telling you, clear out of my house.”
He looked at Harlan. His shoulders felt heavy with sadness and the acid residue of useless anger. “I’ll move out tomorrow.”
Harlan shrugged, looking away. “You’re paid up to the end of the month. Just start looking.”
“I’ll move tomorrow. But we’ll both be poorer for this, and I don’t mean at the end of the month.”
