The Street

by Ann Petry

  But not apparently from using a mop or a broom, for, as she went up and up the steep flight of stairs, she saw that they were filthy, with wastepaper, cigarette butts, the discarded wrappings from packages of snuff, pink ticket stubs from the movie houses. On the landings there were empty gin and whiskey bottles.

  She stopped looking at the stairs, stopped peering into the corners of the long hallways, for it was cold, and she began walking faster trying to keep warm. As they completed a flight of stairs and turned to walk up another hall, and then started climbing another flight of stairs, she was aware that the cold increased. The farther up they went, the colder it got. And in summer she supposed it would get hotter and hotter as you went up until when you reached the top floor your breath would be cut off completely.

  The halls were so narrow that she could reach out and touch them on either side without having to stretch her arms any distance. When they reached the fourth floor, she thought, instead of her reaching out for the walls, the walls were reaching out for her—bending and swaying toward her in an effort to envelop her. The Super’s footsteps behind her were slow, even, steady. She walked a little faster and apparently without hurrying, without even increasing his pace, he was exactly the same distance behind her. In fact his heavy footsteps were a little nearer than before.

  She began to wonder how it was that she had gone up the stairs first, why was she leading the way? It was all wrong. He was the one who knew the place, the one who lived here. He should have gone up first. How had he got her to go up the stairs in front of him? She wanted to turn around and see the expression on his face, but she knew if she turned on the stairs like this, her face would be on a level with his; and she wouldn’t want to be that close to him.

  She didn’t need to turn around, anyway; he was staring at her back, her legs, her thighs. She could feel his eyes traveling over her—estimating her, summing her up, wondering about her. As she climbed up the last flight of stairs, she was aware that the skin on her back was crawling with fear. Fear of what? she asked herself. Fear of him, fear of the dark, of the smells in the halls, the high steep stairs, of yourself? She didn’t know, and even as she admitted that she didn’t know, she felt sweat start pouring from her armpits, dampening her forehead, breaking out in beads on her nose.

  The apartment was in the back of the house. The Super fished another flashlight from his pocket which he handed to her before he bent over to unlock the door very quietly. And she thought, everything he does, he does quietly.

  She played the beam of the flashlight on the walls. The rooms were small. There was no window in the bedroom. At least she supposed it was the bedroom. She walked over to look at it, and then went inside for a better look. There wasn’t a window—just an air shaft and a narrow one at that. She looked around the room, thinking that by the time there was a bed and a chest of drawers in it there’d be barely space enough to walk around in. At that she’d probably bump her knees every time she went past the corner of the bed. She tried to visualize how the room would look and began to wonder why she had already decided to take this room for herself.

  It might be better to give it to Bub, let him have a real bedroom to himself for once. No, that wouldn’t do. He would swelter in this room in summer. It would be better to have him sleep on the couch in the living room, at least he’d get some air, for there was a window out there, though it wasn’t a very big one. She looked out into the living room, trying again to see the window, to see just how much air would come through, how much light there would be for Bub to study by when he came home from school, to determine, too, the amount of air that would reach into the room at night when the window was open, and he was sleeping curled up on the studio couch.

  The Super was standing in the middle of the living room. Waiting for her. It wasn’t anything that she had to wonder about or figure out. It wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination something she had conjured up out of thin air. It was a simple fact. He was waiting for her. She knew it just as she knew she was standing there in that small room. He was holding his flashlight so the beam fell down at his feet. It turned him into a figure of never-ending tallness. And his silent waiting and his appearance of incredible height appalled her.

  With the light at his feet like that, he looked as though his head must end somewhere in the ceiling. He simply went up and up into darkness. And he radiated such desire for her that she could feel it. She told herself she was a fool, an idiot, drunk on fear, on fatigue and gnawing worry. Even while she thought it, the hot, choking awfulness of his desire for her pinioned her there so that she couldn’t move. It was an aching yearning that filled the apartment, pushed against the walls, plucked at her arms.

  She forced herself to start walking toward the kitchen. As she went past him, it seemed to her that he actually did reach one long arm out toward her, his body swaying so that its exaggerated length almost brushed against her. She really couldn’t be certain of it, she decided, and resolutely turned the beam of her flashlight on the kitchen walls.

  It isn’t possible to read people’s minds, she argued. Now the Super was probably not even thinking about her when he was standing there like that. He probably wanted to get back downstairs to read his paper. Don’t kid yourself, she thought, he probably can’t read, or if he can, he probably doesn’t spend any time at it. Well—listen to the radio. That was it, he probably wanted to hear his favorite program and she had thought he was filled with the desire to leap upon her. She was as bad as Granny. Which just went on to prove you couldn’t be brought up by someone like Granny without absorbing a lot of nonsense that would spring at you out of nowhere, so to speak, and when you least expected it. All those tales about things that people sensed before they actually happened. Tales that had been handed down and down and down until, if you tried to trace them back, you’d end up God knows where—probably Africa. And Granny had them all at the tip of her tongue.

  Yet would wanting to hear a radio program make a man look quite like that? Impatiently she forced herself to inspect the kitchen; holding the light on first one wall, then another. It was no better and no worse than she had anticipated. The sink was battered; and the gas stove was a little rusted. The faint smell of gas that hovered about it suggested a slow, incurable leak somewhere in its connections.

  Peering into the bathroom, she saw that the fixtures were old-fashioned and deeply chipped. She thought Methuselah himself might well have taken baths in the tub. Certainly it looked ancient enough, though he’d have had to stick his beard out in the hall while he washed himself, for the place was far too small for a man with a full-grown beard to turn around in. She presumed because there was no window that the vent pipe would serve as a source of nice, fresh, clean air.

  One thing about it the rent wouldn’t be very much. It couldn’t be for a place like this. Tiny hall. Bathroom on the right, kitchen straight ahead; living room to the left of the hall and you had to go through the living room to get to the bedroom. The whole apartment would fit very neatly into just one good-sized room.

  She was conscious that all the little rooms smelt exactly alike. It was a mixture that contained the faint persistent odor of gas, of old walls, dusty plaster, and over it all the heavy, sour smell of garbage—a smell that seeped through the dumb-waiter shaft. She started humming under her breath, not realizing she was doing it. It was an old song that Granny used to sing. ‘Ain’t no restin’ place for a sinner like me. Like me. Like me.’ It had a nice recurrent rhythm. ‘Like me. Like me.’ The humming increased in volume as she stood there thinking about the apartment.

  There was a queer, muffled sound from the Super in the living room. It startled her so she nearly dropped the flashlight. ‘What was that?’ she said sharply, thinking, My God, suppose I’d dropped it, suppose I’d been left standing here in the dark of this little room, and he’d turned out his light. Suppose he’d started walking toward me, nearer and nearer in the dark. And I could only hear his footsteps, couldn’t see him, but could hea
r him coming closer until I started reaching out in the dark trying to keep him away from me, trying to keep him from touching me—and then—then my hands found him right in front of me—At the thought she gripped the flashlight so tightly that the long beam of light from it started wavering and dancing over the walls so that the shadows moved—shadow from the light fixture overhead, shadow from the tub, shadow from the very doorway itself—shifting, moving back and forth.

  ‘I cleared my throat,’ the Super said. His voice had a choked, unnatural sound as though something had gone wrong with his breathing.

  She walked out into the hall, not looking at him; opened the door of the apartment and stepping over the threshold, still not looking at him, said, ‘I’ve finished looking.’

  He came out and turned the key in the lock. He kept his back turned toward her so that she couldn’t have seen the expression on his face even if she’d looked at him. The lock clicked into place, smoothly. Quietly. She stood there not moving, waiting for him to start down the hall toward the stairs, thinking, Never, so help me, will he walk down those stairs in back of me.

  When he didn’t move, she said, ‘You go first.’ Then he made a slight motion toward the stairs with his flashlight indicating that she was to precede him. She shook her head very firmly.

  ‘Think you’ll take it?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know yet. I’ll think about it going down.’

  When he finally started down the hall, it seemed to her that he had stood there beside her for days, weeks, months, willing her to go down the stairs first. She followed him, thinking, It wasn’t my imagination when I got that feeling at the sight of him standing there in the living room; otherwise, why did he have to go through all that rigamarole of my going down the stairs ahead of him? Like going through the motions of a dance; you first; no, you first; but you see, you’ll spoil the pattern if you don’t go first; but I won’t go first, you go first; but no, it’ll spoil the—

  She was aware that they’d come up the stairs much faster than they were going down. Was she going to take the apartment? The price wouldn’t be too high from the looks of it and by being careful she and Bub could manage—by being very, very careful. White paint would fix the inside of it up; not exactly fix it up, but keep it from being too gloomy, shove the darkness back a little.

  Then she thought, Layers and layers of paint won’t fix that apartment. It would always smell; finger marks and old stains would come through the paint; the very smell of the wood itself would eventually win out over the paint. Scrubbing wouldn’t help any. Then there were these dark, narrow halls, the long flights of stairs, the Super himself, that woman on the first floor.

  Or she could go on living with Pop. And Lil. Bub would learn to like the taste of gin, would learn to smoke, would learn in fact a lot of other things that Lil could teach him—things that Lil would think it amusing to teach him. Bub at eight could get a liberal education from Lil, for she was home all day and Bub got home from school a little after three.

  You’ve got a choice a yard wide and ten miles long. You can sit down and twiddle your thumbs while your kid gets a free education from your father’s blowsy girl friend. Or you can take this apartment. The tall gentleman who is the superintendent is supposed to rent apartments, fire the furnace, sweep the halls, and that’s as far as he’s supposed to go. If he tries to include making love to the female tenants, why, this is New York City in the year 1944, and as yet there’s no grass growing in the streets and the police force still functions. Certainly you can holler loud enough so that if the gentleman has some kind of dark designs on you and tries to carry them out, a cop will eventually rescue you. That’s that.

  As for the lady with the snake eyes, you’re supposed to be renting the top-floor apartment and if she went with the apartment the sign out in front would say so. Three rooms and snake charmer for respectable tenant. No extra charge for the snake charmer. Seeing as the sign didn’t say so, it stood to reason if the snake charmer tried to move in, she could take steps—whatever the hell that meant.

  Her high-heeled shoes made a clicking noise as she went down the stairs, and she thought, Yes, take steps like these. It was all very well to reason light-heartedly like that; to kid herself along—there was no explaining away the instinctive, immediate fear she had felt when she first saw the Super. Granny would have said, ‘Nothin’ but evil, child. Some folks so full of it you can feel it comin’ at you—oozin’ right out of their skins.’

  She didn’t believe things like that and yet, looking at his tall, gaunt figure going down that last flight of stairs ahead of her, she half-expected to see horns sprouting from behind his ears; she wouldn’t have been greatly surprised if, in place of one of the heavy work shoes on his feet, there had been a cloven hoof that twitched and jumped as he walked so slowly down the stairs.

  Outside the door of his apartment, he stopped and turned toward her.

  ‘What’s the rent?’ she asked, not looking at him, but looking past him at the One A printed on the door of his apartment. The gold letters were filled with tiny cracks, and she thought that in a few more years they wouldn’t be distinguishable from the dark brown of the door itself. She hoped the rent would be so high she couldn’t possibly take it.

  ‘Twenty-nine fifty.’

  He wants me to take it, she thought. He wants it so badly that he’s bursting with it. She didn’t have to look at him to know it; she could feel him willing it. What difference does it make to him? Yet it was of such obvious importance that if she hesitated just a little longer, he’d be trembling. No, she decided, not that apartment. Then she thought Bub would look cute learning to drink gin at eight.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ she said grimly.

  ‘You wanta leave a deposit?’ he asked.

  She nodded, and he opened his door, standing aside to let her go past him. There was a dim light burning in the small hall inside and she saw that the hall led into a living room. She didn’t wait for an invitation, but walked on into the living room. The dog had been lying near the radio that stood under a window at the far side of the room. He got up when he saw her, walking toward her with his head down, his tail between his legs; walking as though he were drawn toward her irresistibly, even though he knew that at any moment he would be forced to stop. Though he was a police dog, his hair had such a worn, rusty look that he resembled a wolf more than a dog. She saw that he was so thin, his great haunches and the small bones of his ribs were sharply outlined against his skin. As he got nearer to her, he got excited and she could hear his breathing.

  ‘Lie down,’ the Super said.

  The dog moved back to the window, shrinking and walking in such a way that she thought if he were human he’d walk backward in order to see and be able to dodge any unexpected blow. He lay down calmly enough and looked at her, but he couldn’t control the twitching of his nose; he looked, too, at the Super as though he were wondering if he could possibly cross the room and get over to her without being seen.

  The Super sat down in front of an old office desk, found a receipt pad, picked up a fountain pen and, carefully placing a blotter in front of him, turned toward her. ‘Name?’ he asked.

  She swallowed an impulse to laugh. There was something so solemn about the way he’d seated himself, grasping the pen firmly, moving the pad in front of him to exactly the right angle, opening a big ledger book whose pages were filled with line after line of heavily inked writing that she thought he’s acting like a big businessman about to transact a major deal.

  ‘Mrs. Lutie Johnson. Present address 1370 Seventh Avenue.’ Opening her pocketbook she took out a ten-dollar bill and handed it to him. Ten whole dollars that it had taken a good many weeks to save. By the time she had moved in here and paid the balance which would be due on the rent, her savings would have disappeared. But it would be worth it to be living in a place of her own.

  He wrote with a painful slowness, concentrating on each letter, having difficulty with the numbers twenty-three
seventy. He crossed it out and bit his lip. ‘What was that number?’ he asked.

  ‘Twenty-three seventy,’ she repeated, thinking perhaps it would be simpler to write it down for him. At the rate he was going, it would take him all of fifteen minutes to write ten dollars and then figure out the difference between ten dollars and twenty-nine dollars which would in this case constitute that innocuous looking phrase, ‘the balance due.’ She shouldn’t be making fun of him, very likely he had taught himself to read and write after spending a couple of years in grammar school where he undoubtedly didn’t learn anything. He looked to be in his fifties, but it was hard to tell.

  It irritated her to stand there and watch him go through the slow, painful process of forming the letters. She wanted to get out of the place, to get back to Pop’s house, plan the packing, get hold of a moving man. She looked around the room idly. The floor was uncarpeted—a terrible-looking floor. Rough and splintered. There was a sofa against the long wall; its upholstery marked by a greasy line along the back. All the people who had sat on it from the time it was new until the time it had passed through so many hands it finally ended up here must have ground their heads along the back of it.

  Next to the sofa there was an overstuffed chair and she drew her breath in sharply as she looked at it, for there was a woman sitting in it, and she had thought that she and the dog and the Super were the only occupants of the room. How could anyone sit in a chair and melt into it like that? As she looked, the shapeless small dark woman in the chair got up and bowed to her without speaking.

  Lutie nodded her head in acknowledgment of the bow, thinking, That must be the woman I heard whispering. The woman sat down in the chair again. Melting into it. Because the dark brown dress she wore was almost the exact shade of the dark brown of the upholstery and because the overstuffed chair swallowed her up until she was scarcely distinguishable from the chair itself. Because, too, of a shrinking withdrawal in her way of sitting as though she were trying to take up the least possible amount of space. So that after bowing to her Lutie completely forgot the woman was in the room, while she went on studying its furnishings.