The Street

by Ann Petry

  She watched the butcher slap the hamburger on a piece of waxed paper; fold the paper twice, and slip the package into a brown paper bag. Handing him a dollar bill, she tucked the paper bag under her arm and held her pocketbook in the other hand so that he would have to put the change down on the counter. She never accepted change out of his hand, and watching him put it on the counter, she wondered why. Because she didn’t want to touch his chapped roughened hands? Because he was white and forcing him to make the small extra effort of putting the change on the counter gave her a feeling of power?

  Holding the change loosely in her hand, she walked out of the shop and turned toward the grocery store next door, where she paused for a moment in the doorway to look back at 116th Street. The sun was going down in a blaze of brilliant color that bathed the street in a glow of light. It looked, she thought, like any other New York City street in a poor neighborhood. Perhaps a little more down-at-the-heels. The windows of the houses were dustier and there were more small stores on it than on streets in other parts of the city. There were also more children playing in the street and more people walking about aimlessly.

  She stepped inside the grocery store, thinking that her apartment would do for the time being, but the next step she should take would be to move into a better neighborhood. As she had been able to get this far without help from anyone, why, all she had to do was plan each step and she could get wherever she wanted to go. A wave of self-confidence swept over her and she thought, I’m young and strong, there isn’t anything I can’t do.

  Her arms were full of small packages when she left Eighth Avenue—the hamburger, a pound of potatoes, a can of peas, a piece of butter. Besides six hard rolls that she bought instead of bread—big rolls with brown crusty outsides. They were good with coffee in the morning and Bub could have one for his lunch tomorrow with the hamburger left over from dinner.

  She walked slowly, avoiding the moment when she must enter the apartment and start fixing dinner. She shifted the packages into a more comfortable position and feeling the hard roundness of the rolls through the paper bag, she thought immediately of Ben Franklin and his loaf of bread. And grinned thinking, You and Ben Franklin. You ought to take one out and start eating it as you walk along 116th Street. Only you ought to remember while you eat that you’re in Harlem and he was in Philadelphia a pretty long number of years ago. Yet she couldn’t get rid of the feeling of self-confidence and she went on thinking that if Ben Franklin could live on a little bit of money and could prosper, then so could she. In spite of the cost of moving the furniture, if she and Bub were very careful they would have more than enough to last until her next pay-day; there might even be a couple of dollars over. If they were very careful.

  The glow from the sunset was making the street radiant. The street is nice in this light, she thought. It was swarming with children who were playing ball and darting back and forth across the sidewalk in complicated games of tag. Girls were skipping double dutch rope, going tirelessly through the exact center of a pair of ropes, jumping first on one foot and then the other. All the way from the corner she could hear groups of children chanting, ‘Down in Mississippi and a bo-bo push! Down in Mississippi and a bo-bo push!’ She stopped to watch them, and she wanted to put her packages down on the sidewalk and jump with them; she found her foot was patting the sidewalk in the exact rhythm of their jumping and her hands were ready to push the jumper out of the rope at the word ‘push.’

  You’d better get your dinner started, Ben Franklin, she said to herself and walked on past the children who were jumping rope. All up and down the street kids were shining shoes. ‘Shine, Miss? Shine, Miss?’ the eager question greeted her on all sides.

  She ignored the shoeshine boys. The weather had changed, she thought. Just last week it was freezing cold and now there was a mildness in the air that suggested early spring and the good weather had brought a lot of people out on the street. Most of the women had been marketing, for they carried bulging shopping bags. She noticed how heavily they walked on feet that obviously hurt despite the wide, cracked shoes they wore. They’ve been out all day working in the white folks’ kitchens, she thought, then they come home and cook and clean for their own families half the night. And again she remembered Mrs. Pizzini’s words, ‘Not good for the woman to work when she’s young. Not good for the man.’ Obviously she had been right, for here on this street the women trudged along overburdened, overworked, their own homes neglected while they looked after someone else’s while the men on the street swung along empty-handed, well dressed, and carefree. Or they lounged against the sides of the buildings, their hands in their pockets while they stared at the women who walked past, probably deciding which woman they should select to replace the wife who was out working all day.

  And yet, she thought, what else is a woman to do when her man can’t get a job? What else had there been for her to do that time Jim couldn’t get a job? She didn’t know, and she lingered in the sunlight watching a group of kids who were gathered around a boy fishing through a grating in the street. She looked down through the grating, curious to see what odds and ends had floated down under the sidewalk. And again she heard that eager question, ‘Shine, Miss? Shine, Miss?’

  She walked on, thinking, That’s another thing. These kids should have some better way of earning money than by shining shoes. It was all wrong. It was like conditioning them beforehand for the role they were supposed to play. If they start out young like this shining shoes, they’ll take it for granted they’ve got to sweep floors and mop stairs the rest of their lives.

  Just before she reached her own door, she heard the question again, ‘Shine, Miss?’ And then a giggle. ‘Gosh, Mom, you didn’t even know me.’

  She turned around quickly and she was so startled she had to look twice to be sure. Yes. It was Bub. He was sitting astride a shoeshine box, his round head silhouetted against the brick wall of the apartment house behind him. He was smiling at her, utterly delighted that he had succeeded in surprising her. His head was thrown back and she could see all his even, firm teeth.

  In the brief moment it took her to shift all the small packages under her left arm, she saw all the details of the shoeshine box. There was a worn piece of red carpet tacked on the seat of the box. The brassy thumbtacks that held it in place picked up the glow from the sunset so that they sparkled. Ten-cent bottles of shoe polish, a worn shoe brush and a dauber, were neatly lined up on a little shelf under the seat. He had decorated the sides of the box with part of his collection of book matches.

  Then she slapped him sharply across the face. His look of utter astonishment made her strike him again—this time more violently, and she hated herself for doing it, even as she lifted her hand for another blow.

  ‘But Mom—’ he protested, raising his arm to protect his face.

  ‘You get in the house,’ she ordered and yanked him to his feet. He leaned over to pick up the shoeshine box and she struck him again. ‘Leave that thing there,’ she said sharply, and shook him when he tried to struggle out of her grasp.

  Her voice grew thick with rage. ‘I’m working to look after you and you out here in the street shining shoes just like the rest of these little niggers.’ And she thought, You know that isn’t all there is involved. It’s also that Little Henry Chandler is the same age as Bub, and you know Little Henry is wearing gray flannel suits and dark blue caps and long blue socks and fine dark brown leather shoes. He’s doing his home work in that big warm library in front of the fireplace. And your kid is out in the street with a shoeshine box. He’s wearing his after-school clothes, which don’t look too different from the ones he wears to school—shabby knickers and stockings with holes in the heels, because no matter how much you darn and mend he comes right out of his stockings.

  It’s also that you’re afraid that if he’s shining shoes at eight, he will be washing windows at sixteen and running an elevator at twenty-one, and go on doing that for the rest of his life. And you’re afraid that thi
s street will keep him from finishing high school; that it may do worse than that and get him into some kind of trouble that will land him in reform school because you can’t be home to look out for him because you have to work.

  ‘Go on,’ she said, and pushed him ahead of her toward the door of the apartment house. She was aware that Mrs. Hedges was, as usual, looking out of the window. She shoved Bub harder to make him go faster so they would get out of the way of Mrs. Hedges’ eager-eyed stare as fast as possible. But Mrs. Hedges watched their progress all the way into the hall, for she leaned her head so far out of the window her red bandanna looked as though it were suspended in midair.

  Going up the stairs with Bub just ahead of her, Lutie thought living here is like living in a tent with everything that goes on inside it open to the world because the flap won’t close. And the flap couldn’t close because Mrs. Hedges sat at her street-floor window firmly holding it open in order to see what went on inside.

  As they climbed up the dark, narrow stairs, darker than ever after the curious brilliance the setting sun had cast over the street, she became aware that Bub was crying. Not really crying. Sobbing. He must have spent a long time making that shoeshine box. Where had he got the money for the polish and the brush? Maybe running errands for the Super, because Bub had made friends with the Super very quickly. She didn’t exactly approve of this sudden friendship because the Super was—well, the kindest way to think of him was to call him peculiar.

  She remembered quite clearly that she had told him she wanted all the rooms in the apartment painted white. He must have forgotten it, for when she moved in she found that the rooms had been painted blue and rose color and green and yellow. Each room was a different color. The colors made the rooms look even smaller, and she had said instantly, ‘What awful colors!’ The look of utter disappointment on his face had made her feel obligated to find something that she could praise and in seeking for it she saw that the windows had been washed. Which was unusual because one of the first things you had to do when you moved in a place was to scrape the splashes of paint from the windows and then wash them.

  So she said quickly, ‘Oh, the windows have been washed.’ And when the Super heard the pleased note in her voice, he had looked like a hungry dog that had suddenly been given a bone.

  She hurried up the last flight of stairs, fumbling for her keys, pausing in the middle of the hallway to peer inside her pocketbook, so that Bub reached their door before she did. She pushed him away and unlocked the door and the can of peas slipped out from under her arm to roll clumsily along the hall in its brown-paper wrapping. While Bub scrambled after it, she opened the door.

  Once inside the apartment he turned and faced her squarely. She wanted to put her arm around him and hug him, for he still had tears in his eyes, but he had obviously been screwing his courage up to the point where he could tell her whatever it was he had on his mind, even though he wasn’t certain what her reaction would be. So she turned toward him and instead of hugging him listened to him gravely, trying to tell him by her manner that whatever he had to say was important and she would give it all her attention.

  ‘You said we had to have money. You kept saying it. I was only trying to earn some money by shining shoes,’ he gulped. Then the words tumbled out, ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  She fumbled for an answer, thinking of all the times she had told him no, no candy, for we can’t afford it. Or yes, it’s only twenty-five cents for the movies, but that twenty-five cents will help pay for the new soles on your shoes. She was always telling him how important it was that people make money and save money—those things she had learned from the Chandlers. Then when he tried to earn some of his own she berated him, slapped him. So that suddenly and with no warning it was all wrong for him to do the very thing that she had continually told him was important and necessary.

  She started choosing her words carefully. ‘It’s the way you were trying to earn money that made me mad,’ she began. Then she leaned down until her face was on a level with his, still talking slowly, still picking her words thoughtfully. ‘You see, colored people have been shining shoes and washing clothes and scrubbing floors for years and years. White people seem to think that’s the only kind of work they’re fit to do. The hard work. The dirty work. The work that pays the least.’ She thought about this small dark apartment they were living in, about 116th Street which was filled to overflowing with people who lived in just such apartments as this, about the white people on the downtown streets who stared at her with open hostility in their eyes, and she started talking swiftly, forgetting to choose her words.

  ‘I’m not going to let you begin at eight doing what white folks figure all eight-year-old colored boys ought to do. For if you’re shining shoes at eight, you’ll probably be doing the same thing when you’re eighty. And I’m not going to have it.’

  He listened to her with his eyes fixed on her face, not saying anything, concentrating on her words. His expression was so serious that she began to wonder if she should have said that part about white folks. He was awfully young to be told a thing like that, and she wasn’t sure she had made her meaning quite clear. She couldn’t think of any way to soften it, so she patted him on the shoulder and straightened up and began taking off her hat and coat.

  She selected four potatoes from the package she had put on the kitchen table, washed them, found a paring knife, and seating herself at the table began peeling them.

  Bub came to stand close beside her, almost but not quite leaning against her as though he was getting strength and protection from his closeness to her. ‘Mom,’ he said, ‘why do white people want colored people shining shoes?’

  She turned toward him, completely at a loss as to what to say, for she had never been able to figure it out for herself. She looked down at her hands. They were brown and strong, the fingers were long and well-shaped. Perhaps because she was born with skin that color, she couldn’t see anything wrong with it. She was used to it. Perhaps it was a shock just to look at skins that were dark if you were born with a skin that was white. Yet dark skins were smooth to the touch; they were warm from the blood that ran through the veins under the skin; they covered bodies that were just as well put together as the bodies that were covered with white skins. Even if it were a shock to look at people whose skins were dark, she had never been able to figure out why people with white skins hated people who had dark skins. It must be hate that made them wrap all Negroes up in a neat package labeled ‘colored’; a package that called for certain kinds of jobs and a special kind of treatment. But she really didn’t know what it was.

  ‘I don’t know, Bub,’ she said finally. ‘But it’s for the same reason we can’t live anywhere else but in places like this’—she indicated the cracked ceiling, the worn top of the set tub, and the narrow window, with a wave of the paring knife in her hand.

  She looked at him, wondering what he was thinking. He moved away from her to lean on the edge of the kitchen table, poking at a potato peeling with an aimless finger. Then he walked over to the window and stood there looking out, his chin resting on his hands. His legs were wide apart and she thought, He’s got nice strong legs. She was suddenly proud of him, glad that he was hers and filled with a strong determination to do a good job of bringing him up. The wave of self-confidence she had felt on the street came back again. She could do it, too—bring him up so that he would be a fine, strong man.

  The thought made her move about swiftly, cutting the potatoes into tiny pieces so they would cook quickly, forming the ground meat into small flat cakes, heating the peas, setting the table, pouring a glass of milk for Bub. She put two of the hard crusty rolls on a plate and smiled, remembering how she had compared herself to Ben Franklin.

  Then she went to the window and put her arm around Bub. ‘What are you looking at?’ she asked.

  ‘The dogs down there,’ he said, pointing. ‘I call one of ’em Mother Dog and the other Father Dog. There are some children dogs over yonde
r.’

  She looked down in the direction in which he was pointing. Shattered fences divided the space in back of the houses into what had once been back yards. But as she looked, she thought it had become one yard, for the rusted tin cans, the piles of ashes, the pieces of metal from discarded automobiles, had disregarded the fences. The rubbish had crept through the broken places in the fences until all of it mingled in a disorderly pattern that looked from their top-floor window like a huge junkpile instead of a series of small back yards. She leaned farther out the window to see the dogs Bub had mentioned. They were sleeping in curled-up positions, and it was only by the occasional twitching of an ear or the infrequent moving of a tail that she could tell they were alive.

  Bub was explaining the details of the game he played with them. It had something to do with which one moved first. She only half-heard him as she stared at the piled-up rubbish and the sluggish dogs. All through Harlem there were apartments just like this one, she thought, and they’re nothing but traps. Dirty, dark, filthy traps. Upstairs. Downstairs. In my lady’s chamber. Click goes the trap when you pay the first month’s rent. Walk right in. It’s a free country. Dark little hallways. Stinking toilets.

  She had wanted an apartment to herself and she got it. And now looking down at the accumulation of rubbish, she was suddenly appalled, for she didn’t know what the next step would be. She hadn’t thought any further than the apartment. Would they have to go on living here year after year? With just enough money to pay the rent, just enough money to buy food and clothes and to see an occasional movie? What happened next?

  She didn’t know, and she put her arm around Bub and hugged him close to her. She didn’t know what happened next, but they’d never catch her in their dirty trap. She’d fight her way out. She and Bub would fight their way out together. She was holding him so tightly that he turned away from his game with the dogs to look up in her face.