by Marge Piercy
For Paul, pangs of action must be cured by new action: family tradition that used to lead to ministry or teaching. Paul was perhaps shocked that she had accepted his new radical ideas and projects. But she had long ago learned to live in a hostile armed camp. He seemed himself in company with those shaggy kids, whereas she had not recognized her brother sitting with that toad, plucking dirt from his naval and rubbing it into his hair. Last night listening to the pride and anger and power in that man’s voice for all her repulsion to rhetoric she had been moved, and moved to imagine Paul in that role. The sketch yes, she had realized as she finished it that it was a pastiche of the dove hovering over the waters, the spirit on the waves, but the waves were people’s faces upturned and the bird was no dove: more eagle, a phoenix-eagle black as a crow, a muscular broadwinged bird with talons.
The urine ran in quick streams to the drain over the cracked tiles. The toilets were too high for second-graders. Nancy slunk past in line. She put her hand on Nancy’s round head. The child pulled away. She liked Nancy who arched her thin back and fought. Teachers in the higher grades could not afford to like the tough vigorous ones, but who couldn’t put down a second-grader?
Mary Ellen pushed Francine so she stepped into the urine and wet her shoe. “Mommy’ll slap me down!” Francine wailed. She dabbed at Francine’s shoe with a papertowel. Above the bank of washbasins she floated in the weaksighted mirror, rosy in her dress. Rowley had come to her door and put his hand in, touching her face. She had pulled back like Nancy. Touch me not, this black violet. She had liked his energy, his way of moving, his voice with its patches of roughness. He did not use love or other obscene tricky words, but finally like every other man he thought he was worth that, he wanted to be loved. Love was not historically possible, not to be arrived at. He talked about history but did not think it applied to him: not even his own, witness Caroline. She frowned, tapping her foot.
She quieted sniffling Francine and flushed the toilet after Carla and washed her hands for her. She had not liked his hands, like loaves that had never been baked. Would Paul guess about Rowley? He never had about Will, poor Willy, wherever he was with his lifeguard’s body, his smile and his, alas, commonplace mind furnished by Poor Richard out of Ebony. His handsome useless body.
Images of power: not No-Power, not holy selfrighteous puritan power like the Jameson fathers. Black phoenix, bird of battle, black horse galloping. His face was quick with intelligence. His voice blew the crowd like wind. They said his wife had tried to hold him back politically, been afraid and wanting him to give up. Most women were barnacles or cows. Clingers or selfcentered breeders. Much of what he said was all that black pride rigmarole Paul had been spouting, but he said it with pride. Almost everybody seemed to need their totems, be it old 78 race records or African kings.
She heard noise in the hall and told Denise to line the girls up. When she got to the Boys, Ronnie and Jason were at it again. Ronnie was banging Jason’s head and shoulders against a locker. Some of the kids were yelling. Terry was numb faced, mouth open. Norman had wandered away to peek into other rooms. She collected them all and trotted them along while she brought up the girls. Back to homeroom. Homeroom. They weren’t fooled. If only she did not feel that Paul was luxuriating in his doubts and indecisions: might sit proliferating ideologies and swapping futilities with dormitory politicians until he grew bored and wanted distracting, and always there were girls who would oblige. Like her reaction to H.W.? The man said, We must make a new world, and the woman said, Honey, you so right, why don’t you start with me?
The fast readers got a new chapter in the integrated reader. They got a colored chapter. Bobbie and Susan lived in the city in a big clean (Spotless) apartment with Father and Mother and Baby. Everybody in the white chapters was white, everybody in the colored chapters colored. Separate but equal chapters. Up yonder the hierarchy decreed that the new textbooks would motivate the children. Oh, colored balloonman with colored balloons. The children sagged and sprawled and yawned and picked their noses and drooled boredom. The fast readers read about the friendly policeman. They would not object though already they knew better, for they had learned already not to connect, not to believe. Their brains would turn to sawdust and their IQ’s decline from testing period to testing period. Boredom lay over them like a worn hall carpet.
Wallie twisted a rubberband around his finger till the top swelled obscenely. Somebody’s book hit the floor. Somebody else cried out in pain. A messenger from the office came in with a note that her class was using too much construction paper. A moment later came a loud muffled bang that shook the windows and everybody began talking, “Miss Jameson, what happen?” and getting up to look out the windows. “That was a bomb, man.” “Nah, Mr. Burns sitting down.”
Beatrice never would meet Benedict but then she did not expect to and laughed in the mirror as well as the world. The fast readers as a special treat tomorrow would reread the same story. Write Policeman four times. The slow readers sat in a circle, in the suburbs with the white children and their integrated dog Spot. “Show me the sentence which tells what color the house is. Who can show me?” Mary Ellen’s eager hand waved, waved on an arm rigid with passion. Thin rickety girl with a love-me face. She would recite all the time if she were allowed—nine tenths of the time wrong. She could not read two words. Calling on her was adminstering a drug.
Norman’s nose was running down his chin. She fetched another Kleenex from the box in her desk. He had a cold all year, one he had caught at birth. His first word doubtless a sneeze. Next to him plump demure creamy Denise sat in her impeccable smock, smiling faintly. Her PTA mother was deeply ashamed (her daughter an underachiever) and thus hostile. She wanted her kid bussed out and no wonder. Denise had started out eager but just given up.
The bell rang in the corridor. She flipped back her cuff to see her watch. Not time. Again. Again. Again. Surprise fire drill. Even though they would freeze in the slush for ten minutes and the kids would be wound tight afterward, it would wake them and use some of the slimy length of afternoon. She had them stand and form a column of fours. As they milled out, some pushing, some going bugeyed along serious and ready, others joking, she did a quick roll. “Where’s Nancy?”
Blank eyes looked at her, away. The corridors were jammed already with four-abreast lines squeezing from every stuffed classroom to the jostling crowd outside. Exit Three for them. The end staircase.
“Where’s Nancy?” she asked again. “Didn’t she come out of the washroom?” She felt sick to her stomach. She always counted. But she had been rushed and thinking of Paul and last night and, “March along now, no shoving, Wallie. Flo, don’t dawdle. Pick up your feet. Stay in your own line now.” She got them moving. “Miss McBee!” she called to the bluehaired third-grade teacher. She hated to ask her but she was next in line. “Miss McBee, would you take my class down with yours? I have a child in the lavatory.”
Miss McBee gave a knowing smirk. “I’ll do my best, though when he hears about it, feathers will fly. If you didn’t let them go running through the halls every five minutes …”
Miss McBee called the children animals. Well, she’d say in the teacher’s lounge, back to the thundering herds. Welcome to the zoo, she’d say to new teachers. Vera walked from the stairhead, pushing against the current. She made her way past broken lockers, the leaky fountain, toward the Girls. Every time she passed a teacher she had to explain. Her cheeks burned. All for a piece of bubblegum Nancy must have taken off another kid on the playground.
She pushed open the Girls. “Nancy?” No answer. “Nancy Parks! We’re having a fire drill. You come out at once.”
Letting the door swing shut she squatted on a comparatively clean stretch of floor to peer under. No legs. Nothing to do but open every door. And if Nancy had snuck off or hidden or gone home? O lord! Outside, the stairtreads thundered, the stairwells echoed with a loud roar. She marched along opening every door. In the last cubicle before the grill-covered windows, Nan
cy curled on a toilet with her arms hooked around her legs. Big-eyed scared waiting look, with something of relief. Nancy must have thought no one was ever coming to find and punish her.
She grabbed Nancy by the arm and pulled her out. “You’ve been very bad. You hid from me and stayed outside class and didn’t answer when you were called.”
“Leggo my arm.” Nancy yanked free and stood rubbing her arm ostentatiously.
“If you’d waited to chew your gum after class, I’d never have taken it from you.”
“You could’ve let me put it in a piece of paper.”
“But I don’t do that with the other children. They’d get jealous.”
“What you got to be yelling at me for? Everybody else always yell at me.”
“Come on, give me your hand. We have to go down with the others.”
Pouting but compliant, Nancy gave over her thin hand and let herself be yanked along. The bell sounded again. Were they done already? She’d be on the principal’s carpet. She wasn’t a regular teacher and never would be, the way things were going. Four bells. Then it went on. One, two, three. A fine time to pull that, or hadn’t she noticed? Exit Three closed. Let’s see, the alternate exit. “No, Nancy, we have to go back and use the middle stairs.” Meant she would have to use Exit Two and go all the way around the building to get back to her kids. Everyone would see her. No! She’d run down with Nancy the way the kids had gone and take her chances on getting caught.
“Come on, we will take the end stairs. Your teacher’s crazy.”
She held Nancy by the cold tight hand and went at as quick a trot as she dared. No one was in sight but she couldn’t be sure. When they finally reached the end stairway and started down, at the first turn they ran into thick black smoke. She stood still a moment in shock. The school was burning. This old firetrap. She could not see down the stairs and her eyes began to water.
Nancy burst into tears and hugged her legs. She tried to pull the child back upstairs, but Nancy clung to her legs and her warm tears went running down the nylons. Stooping, she gathered up Nancy, a bag of allwhichway bones, oh she weighed half a ton, and started down the corridor to the middle stairway. She heard something fall below.
Smoke was everywhere now thickening the air. Her eyes burned. The floor looked funny and hurt her feet through her soles. The bell began to ring again in one long ring that went on and on and on. It came at her from all sides. Nancy clung to her neck in a stranglehold while her big purse thumped against her side. Finally she thought to drop it, right in the hall. The bell went on and on boring into her head. Her side ached, her shoulder and back hurt from carrying Nancy and trying to hurry. The child’s loosely dangling shoes kicked her.
She started down the middle stairs. The bell sang inside her head like a pain. Smoke whirled up the well. Then from the second turn she saw flames. She stopped, holding Nancy who clung to her neck, tough Nancy burrowing in and sobbing in deep shudders. The fire was orange and sometimes bluegreen in the old masonry, in the old wood whose layers and layers of varnish spat. The fire leaped and smoldered and hung in wreaths. Her eyes were running hard and she had to wipe them on Nancy’s flimsy dress to see.
When would she no longer get shocks from neutral things, even from neutral things? Get moving again. They had been raised not to be frightened. Not to sit down. Not to cry.
Because of the firecat.
There was no way through. She said the poem aloud to Nancy as she carried her down the corridor, aching. All the doors were closed. The last child was supposed to shut the classroom door. She could almost imagine classes in session. She set Nancy down. “Do you think you could walk now, babylove? Come on, give me your hand.”
But Nancy sank down crying. “Don’t leave me, Miss Jameson, don’t leave me here! I didn’t mean to make you mad!”
She stooped and picked her up again, staggering. Smoke was thicker and acrid. Down where the first stairway lay, flames licked at the doorframes and seeped from the walls. Nancy’s tears dried on her neck in the heat. The child began to cough, rubbing her face into her shoulder. She could not seem to think what to do. Her head ached. Her head was parched and the skin stretched drum-tight.
The bell stopped, abruptly. Sirens wailed and the fire spat, the itchy licking and high rumble of the fire. The floor smoldered in the hall. Below things fell. Outside men were yelling. The floor scorched her feet through her soles. She could hardly make herself keep walking. She felt as if she were sinking. The air was hot and hurt her face: She could not carry Nancy further. Her lungs burned and her throat ached and her back throbbed. Heat stretched her face tighter and tighter till it must split.
She pushed open a door into a classroom on the street side. Fifth grade, Miss Barnaby. On the board the founding of Chicago was pictured: Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, the first settler, black like me. Here first and last ever since. Smoke was pouring from the heating duct. She dragged her way among the desks to the window. Found the window pole. Nancy’s grip loosened on her neck and she sat the child limply at one of the desks.
Clambering on the ledge she pushed high the window. The metal of the outside grill was hot to touch. Then she dragged Nancy up. The wall was burning. The glassdoored bookcases with pictures of jet planes and cars and rockets showed flame. The glass was blackening and cracking. She held Nancy propped against her and looked over the edge. Straight down. She felt dizzy. Firemen were running hoses in through the doors. A hose was struck in a smashed window almost below. She yelled and could not hear herself. She yelled again.
The children were mostly lined up across the street and they were screaming with excitement. The older kids were out of control, dancing and clapping and singing and urging the building on. Even the shopkeepers were standing with big grins. Everybody hated this old school, this monstrous redbrick dungeon. They were cheering the flames and for a long time nobody heard her. Then a kid saw her and soon many of the kids were staring and pointing and finally some firemen saw and came running. Her face felt blistered. Her hands were flayed. The heat leaned on her, ate at her. Calling a warning she could not hear, she rolled the limp Nancy out the window and fell back. White firemen. She could not jump. Could not. Into space. Skirt flying up. Her dress was burning, the soft pink wool. Hideous odor of burned hair. Tried to crush it out between her hands, beating at the sparks.
Poor Paul, what would he do? He never had hated. Fire-wolf leapt. Flame in a sheet swooping. Can’t, no, please, can’t! She was screaming and ashamed, though she could not hear herself. She went twisting back and forth beating at herself. Had Nancy landed all right? Poor Paul, what would he … should have jumped. She could not stand it, could not stand it, mumbling I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Pulling herself up burning onto the burning ledge, she rolled over, and cold air burned her as rolling over and over she fell, heard wind and screaming, not hers, and fell.
Anna
Monday, January 12–Monday, January 19
Since she had gone to bed on the couch weary of waiting for Leon, every sound had torn her thin sleep. Now the scrape of his key in the lock woke her again. In the graying dark she watched him make his exhausted way to the bathroom to piss and cough up phlegm. Afterward he passed the couch and paused. She shut her eyes. She did not know why. She lay simulating sleep. Making an explosive noise with his lips he lumbered into the bedroom. Two thumps as he kicked off his wet boots. The rustle of the bed.
He must have been trying to see Caroline again: all night? It was bad, bad. She snoozed till the dank light of morning seeped through the room. At breakfast she looked through the paper for an apartment without success. Meetings in the afternoon and evening. In between she would hang around the office taking calls: no heat, pipes burst, children sick, eviction notices. The work was grim and slow, with a builtin futility that sent the staff into apocalyptic daydreams for relief, but the work was human and would do. Already their neighborhood was feeling the brunt of renewal. Rents going up, apartments being further subdivided into tiny pa
rtitioned holes, services cut back. The streets seemed visibly more crowded.
While she was sipping a second cup of coffee, to her surprise Leon came shuffling into the kitchen. He collapsed into a chair and blew his nose for several minutes.
“You’ve caught a cold.”
“So?”
His eyes showed bloodshot even through the shades he had put on, his nose was swollen, his lips cracked. She said, “Why don’t you stay in bed today? Maybe you can shake it.”
“You’d like that, eh?” He squinted: elephant eyes red in his swollen face.
“I won’t be here.” What was she suspected of?
He gave a dry meaningless chuckle that deteriorated into coughing. “What did you do with those antihistamines Murray gave you last winter?”
“What?”
“Those blockbusters he gave you?”
Was he thinking of Joye? blending them into some general wife-figure? “Want me to get something from the drugstore?”
“No use without a prescription.”
“Are you running a fever?” She reached out to his forehead.
He ducked away. “Let me along. Got things to do.”
Her trailing fingers had made contact long enough to tell that he was burning. After she cleared breakfast she picked up the mail from the floor where it slid through the slot. For her.
“What are you opening?”
“My check. The last from ISS. I had it sent here.”
“Yeah? You going to cash it?”
“This afternoon.”
The air felt soft and filmy. The streets were filled with a gray froth like dirty eggwhites. Beside her Paul walked head bowed, but he chose their erratic route. The snow and the dim light of the air were yellowed like old streets. Their boots sucked.
He was five days back from Green River and the funeral. “Caroline was there, with that prick she’s marrying next Saturday. They’re saying they been secretly married since Europe, and now they want to do it again in church. She came over waving a hankie and saying that Vera was the best friend she had.”
