The Street

by Ann Petry

  It was all of three years since he had had a really young woman. The last young round one left after three days of his violent love-making. She had stood in the door and screamed at him, her voice high and shrill with rage. ‘You old goat!’ she said. ‘You think I’m goin’ to stay in this stinkin’ apartment with you slobberin’ over me day after day?’

  After her the succession of drab, beaten, middle-aged women started again. As a result he wanted this young one—this Lutie Johnson—worse than he had ever wanted anything in his life. He had watched her ever since she moved in. She was crazy about her kid. So he had gone out of his way to be friends with him.

  ‘Hey, kid, go get me a pack of smokes,’ and he would give the kid a nickel for going. Or, ‘Run around the corner and get a paper for me,’ giving him a couple of pennies when he came back with the paper.

  They planned the shoeshine box together and made it in the basement. He brought a hammer and a saw down, fished a piece of old carpet out of the rubbish, got the nails to tack it on with, and showed the kid how to hold the hammer.

  ‘Gee, Mom’ll be proud of me,’ Bub had said. He was sweating and he leaned back on his knees to grin up at the Super.

  The man shifted his weight uneasily. He had been standing close to the furnace at the time and he remembered how difficult it was to keep from frowning, for standing there looking down at the kid like that he saw the roundness of his head, how sturdily his body was built, the beginnings of what would be a powerful chest, the straightness of his legs, how his hair curled over his forehead.

  And he suddenly hated the child with a depth of emotion that set him trembling. He looks like whoever the black bastard was that used to screw her, he thought, and his mind fastened on the details. He could fairly see Lutie, brown and long-legged, pressed tight against the body of that other man, a man with curly hair and a broad chest and straight back and legs.

  ‘Damn him,’ he muttered.

  ‘Whatsamatter, Supe?’ Bub asked. ‘Hey, you look sick.’

  ‘Go away,’ the man motioned violently as the boy stood up. He had felt that if the child should touch him he would try to kill him. Because the child was an exact replica of his father—that unknown man who had held Lutie in his arms, caressed her breasts, felt her body tremble against him. He watched the child back away from him, saw that his eyes were wide with fear, and by a prodigious effort he controlled himself. Don’t scare the kid, he told himself. And again, Don’t scare the kid. You’ll scare off the mother if you do and she’s what you want—what you gotta have.

  ‘I got a headache,’ he muttered. ‘Come on and let’s tack the carpet on the seat.’

  He forced himself to kneel down beside him and to hold the carpet taut while the kid nailed it in place. The kid lifted the hammer and began swinging it with a regular rhythm, up and down, down and up. Watching him he had thought, When he grows up he’s going to be strong and big like his father. The thought made him draw away from the nearness of the boy who was so like the father—that man who had Lutie when she was a virgin. He couldn’t look at the child again after thinking that, so he stared at the dust and the accumulation of grime on the furnace pipes that ran overhead.

  Now standing here on the street watching Lutie walk toward the corner, he was aware that Mrs. Hedges was looking at him from her window. He was filled with a vast uneasiness, for he was certain that she could read his thoughts. Sometimes standing out on the street like this, he forgot she was there, and he would stare hungry-eyed at the women who went past. Some movement she made would attract his attention and he would look toward the window to find that she was sitting there blandly observing him.

  When Lutie disappeared around the corner, he looked up and Mrs. Hedges leaned toward him, smiling.

  ‘Ain’t no point in you lickin’ your chops, dearie,’ she said. ‘There’s others who are interested.’

  He frowned up at her. ‘What you talkin’ about?’

  ‘Mis’ Johnson, of course. Who you think I’m talkin’ about?’ She leaned farther out of the window. ‘I’m just tellin’ you for your own good, dearie. There ain’t no point in you gettin’ het up over her. She’s marked down for somebody else.’

  She was still smiling, but her eyes were so unfriendly that he looked away, thinking, She ain’t never been able to mind her own business. If he could he would have had her locked up long ago. She oughtta be in jail, anyway, running the kind of place she did.

  He had hated her ever since he had dropped a hint to her one afternoon, after months of looking at the round young girls who lived with her. He had said, ‘Kin I come in some night?’ He had made his voice soft and tried to say it in such a way that she would know instantly what it was he wanted.

  ‘You got anything you want to talk about, you kin say it at the window, dearie. I’m always a-settin’ right here where folks kin see me.’ She said it coldly, and loud enough so that anyone passing on the street could hear her.

  He was so furious and frustrated that he made up his mind to find some way of getting even with her. There must be, he finally decided, some kind of complaint he could make to the police. He asked the super next door about it.

  ‘Sure,’ the man said. ‘Runnin’ a disorderly house. Go down to the precinct and tell ’em.’

  The cop he talked to at the station house was young, and Jones thought he acted real pleased when he heard what he had come for. He began filling out a long printed form. Everything was all right until a lieutenant came in and looked over the cop’s shoulder as he wrote.

  ‘What’s the woman’s name?’ he asked sharply, though he was looking right at it where the cop had written it on the paper.

  ‘Mis’ Hedges,’ the Super said eagerly, and thought, Maybe there’s something else against her and she’ll get locked up for a long time. Perhaps she would spend the rest of her life sticking her fat head out between jail bars. That red bandanna of hers would look real good in a jail-house yard.

  The lieutenant frowned at him and pursed up his lips. ‘How do you know this is true?’

  ‘I’m the super of the building,’ he explained.

  ‘Ever hear any noise? Do the neighbors complain? People in the house complain?’

  ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘But I see them girls she’s got there. And men go in and out.’

  ‘The girls room there? Or do they come in from the street?’

  ‘They rooms there,’ he said.

  The lieutenant reached out and took the paper away from the cop and the cop’s pen sort of slid across it because he was still writing on it. The lieutenant tore it up into little fine pieces and the pieces drifted slowly out of his hands into a wastebasket near the desk. The cop’s face turned redder and redder as he watched the pieces fall into the basket.

  The lieutenant said, ‘That isn’t enough evidence for a complaint,’ and turned on his heel and walked out.

  Jones and the cop stared at each other. When Jones started toward the door, he could hear the cop swearing softly under his breath. He went back and stood outside the building. He couldn’t figure it out. Everything had been all right until the lieutenant came in. The cop was taking it all down and then suddenly, ‘Not enough evidence.’

  He asked the super next door what that meant. ‘You gotta get people to complain about her. And then take ’em down to the station with you,’ the man explained.

  Jones tried out the people in the house. He talked to some of the women first, keeping his voice casual. ‘That Mis’ Hedges is runnin’ a bad place downstairs. She hadn’t oughta live here.’

  All he got were indignant looks. ‘Mis’ Hedges’ girls come up here and looked after me when I was sick.’ Or, ‘Mis’ Hedges keeps her eye on Johnnie after school.’

  ‘Them girls she’s got in there ain’t no good,’ he argued.

  ‘Good’s most of the folks round here. And they minds they own business. You leave Mis’ Hedges alone’—and the door would slam in his face.

  The men roared with l
aughter. ‘Wotsa matter, Poppa? Won’t she let you buy nothin’ in there?’ Or, ‘Go on, man, them gals is the sweetest things on the block.’ ‘Hell, she’s got a refined place in there. What you kickin’ about?’

  And so there was nothing he could do about Mrs. Hedges. He had resigned himself to just looking at the young girls who lived in her apartment and the sight of them further whetted his appetite for a young woman of his own. In a sense Mrs. Hedges even spoiled his daily airings on the street, for he became convinced that she could read his mind. His eyes no sooner fastened on some likely looking girl than he became aware of Mrs. Hedges looming larger than life itself in the window—looking at him, saying nothing, just looking, and, he was certain, reading his mind.

  He was certain about her being able to read his mind because shortly after he tried to have her locked up the white agent who collected the rents from him said to him, ‘I’d advise you to leave Mrs. Hedges alone.’

  ‘I ain’t done nothin’ to her,’ he said sullenly.

  ‘You tried to get her locked up, didn’t you?’

  He had stared at the man in astonishment. How could he know that? He hadn’t said anything to the tenants about having her put in jail. Thus he began to believe that she could sit in her window and look at him and know exactly what he was thinking. It frightened him so that he didn’t enjoy his visits to the street. He could only stand there for a little while at a time, for whenever he looked up at her she was looking at him with a derisive smile playing about her mouth.

  ‘She’s always sittin’ in the window,’ he had said defensively to the white agent.

  The man threw his head back and roared. ‘You want her locked up for just sitting in the window? You’re crazy.’ He suddenly stopped laughing and a sharp note came in his voice. ‘Just remember that you’re to leave her alone.’

  They were all on her side, he thought. And then he remembered that he was still standing on the street and she was looking at him. He wished he could think of a cutting reply to make to her, but he couldn’t, so he whistled to the dog and went in the house stifling an impulse to shake his fist at her.

  He turned on the radio in the living room and slumped down in the shabby chair near it. He didn’t turn his head at the sound of a key being timidly turned in the lock. He knew it was Min, the shapeless woman who lived with him. He had got to know her when she stopped at his door every two weeks to pay her rent. He was living alone at the time, for the last shabby woman who stayed with him had been gone for nearly two months.

  Min used to sit and talk to him while he wrote out her rent receipt, and linger in the doorway afterward talking, talking, talking. One day when she came down to his door, the keys of her apartment were dangling loose from her hand. Usually she held them tightly clutched in her palm as though they represented something precious. ‘I gotta move,’ she said simply.

  Jones held out his hand for the keys, thinking that it was lonesome in his apartment, especially at night when he couldn’t see anything if he stood outside on the street and therefore stayed inside the house by himself. Standing up outside like that his feet got tired, too. If he had a window where he could look out and see the street like Mrs. Hedges, it would be different, but the only windows in his place were in the back, facing the yard which was piled high with rusting tin cans, old newspapers, and other rubbish.

  ‘You could stay here’—he indicated his apartment with a backward jerk of his head. The sound of her talking would drive away his loneliness and she might stay a long time because her husband had deserted her. He had heard one of the tenants telling Mrs. Hedges about it. He watched a warm look of pleasure lighten her face, and he thought, Why, she musta fell for me. She musta fell for me.

  She moved in with him that same day. She didn’t have very much furniture, so it wasn’t any problem to fit it into his rooms. A bed, a bureau, a kitchen table, some chairs, and a long console table with ornate carved feet. ‘One of my madams gave me that,’ she explained, and told him to be careful with it on the stairs.

  They got along all right until Lutie Johnson moved in. Then he began to feel like he couldn’t bear the sight of Min any more. Her shapeless body in bed beside him became in his mind a barrier between him and Lutie. Min wore felt slippers in the house and ‘they flapped against the dark paleness of her heels when she walked. There was a swish-swish noise when she moved from the stove to the sink as she was doing now. Whenever he heard the sound, he thought of Lutie’s high-heeled shoes and the clicking noise her heels made when she walked. The swish of Min’s slippers shut the other sound out and her dark knotted legs superimposed themselves on his dreams of Lutie’s long brown legs.

  As he sat listening to Min slop back and forth in the kitchen, he realized that he hated her. He wanted to hurt her, make her cringe away from him until she was as unhappy as he was.

  ‘Supper’s ready,’ she said in her soft sing-song voice.

  He didn’t move out of his chair. He wasn’t going to eat with her any more. It was a sudden decision made while he sat listening to the soft clop of her slippers as she went to and fro in the kitchen.

  She came to stand in the doorway. ‘You ain’t eatin’?’

  He shook his head and waited for her to ask him why, so he could shout at her and threaten her with violence. But she went back into the kitchen without saying anything, and he felt cheated. He listened to the sounds of her eating. The clink of the fork against the plate, a cup of tea being stirred, the loud sucking noise she made when she drank the tea, a knife clattering against the plate. She poured a second cup of tea from the teapot sitting on the stove and he heard the scuffing of the slippers as she walked back to the table.

  And he got up abruptly and walked out of the apartment. He couldn’t bear to stay in there with her for another moment. He would go down and put coal on the furnace and sit in the furnace room awhile. When he came back up, he would eat, and then go stand outside on the street where he might get a glimpse of Lutie when she came home.

  As he stepped out into the hall, the street door opened. Bub bounded in, his face still glowing with the memory of the movies he had seen. He paused when he saw Jones. ‘Hi, Supe,’ he said.

  The Super nodded, thinking, She ain’t home. Wonder what he does up there by himself when she ain’t home.

  ‘Mom didn’t like that shoeshine box,’ he said. ‘She got awful mad.’

  Jones stared at the boy, not saying anything.

  ‘You goin’ to fix the fire?’ Bub asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, and walked quickly toward the cellar door under the stairs. He hooked the door behind him, thinking that he couldn’t stand the sight of the kid tonight. Not the way he was feeling.

  He put shovel after shovel of coal on the furnace. Then he stared into the fire, watching the blue flame lick up over the fresh coal, and studying the deep redness that glowed deep under it.

  His thoughts turned almost immediately to Lutie and he stood there leaning on the shovel oblivious to the intense heat that surged out of the open door. So she hadn’t liked the shoeshine box. Too bad. He had thought she’d be so pleased and that she would come down and ring his bell and stand there smiling at him. Tall and slim and young. Her breasts pointing up at him. Mebbe she would have got so she rang his bell often.

  ‘Just to say hello to you,’ she would say.

  ‘That’s mighty nice of you, Mis’ Johnson,’ and he would pat her arm or mebbe hold her hand for a moment.

  He wouldn’t do anything to scare her. He would just be friendly and give her little presents at first. ‘Saw this in a store. Thought you’d like it, Mis’ Johnson.’ Perhaps a pair of stockings. Yes, that would be it—stockings. Some of those long, mesh ones. Mis’ Greene who lived on the third floor worked downtown—she’d get them for him.

  ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have, Mr. Jones,’ Lutie would say, and put her hand on his shoulder.

  ‘How about me seein’ if they fit?’ That was it. Playfully. Not doing anything that would scare
her.

  He leaned harder on the shovel imagining what it would be like. Seeing her there in his apartment with one of her long legs thrust forward—a bare, brown leg with red stuff on the toenails. And he would shake out the long stocking and pull it slowly over her foot. The soft brown skin would show through the meshes as he pulled the stocking up, up over the smooth flesh. He would lean nearer and nearer, as the stocking reached the rounded part of her leg where the fatness of the curve came, until he was pressing his mouth hot and close against that curve. Closer and closer so that he could nibble at it with his mouth, nibble the curve of her leg, and her skin would be sweet from soap and cool against the hotness of his mouth.

  He had to stop thinking about it. And as he stood there, he could see all those other women who had lived with him. Of the whole lot only one had been young and she had left at the end of three days. The rest of them had been bony women past fifty, toothless women past fifty, big ones and little ones—all past fifty. At that, none of them stayed very long. Three months, six months, and then they were gone.

  All except Min. Min had stayed two years. Talking, talking, talking. At first he had thought it was kind of cheerful to have her around. She kept the place from getting so deadly quiet. Now the sound of her voice shut Lutie’s voice out and he could never remember what it sounded like. Min’s voice would thrust it away from him the minute he started trying to remember.

  The thing for him to do was get rid of her. Min was probably the reason Lutie never even looked at him. Only sort of nodded when she went past. He should have thrown Min out that first night he saw Lutie. He remembered how her long legs had looked going up the stairs ahead of him. Just watching her like that he had wanted her so badly it was like a pain in his chest. Those long legs walking up and up in front of him, her rump moving from side to side as she walked. He remembered how his hand had cupped into a curve—unconsciously, uncontrollably, as he walked in back of her.