The Street

by Ann Petry

  Boots filled his glass from a flask that he took from his pocket. Then he slid the glass back and forth on the table, holding it delicately between his thumb and forefinger. He looked at her and smiled. The long, narrow scar on his cheek moved up toward his eye as he smiled.

  ‘You know, baby, I could fall in love with you easy,’ he said. And, he thought, it’s true. And that if he couldn’t get her any other way, he just might marry her, and he laughed because the thought of being married amused him. He pushed the glass back and forth and smiled at her again.

  ‘Really?’ she said. It was beginning rather quickly. But it didn’t matter because the job was hers and that was the important thing. She searched her mind for an answer that wouldn’t entirely rebuff him and yet would hold him off. ‘I was in love once, and I guess once you’ve put all you’ve got into it there isn’t much left over for anyone else,’ she said carefully.

  ‘You mean your husband?’

  ‘Yes. It wasn’t his fault it didn’t work out. And I guess it really wasn’t mine either. We were too poor. And we were too young to stand being poor.’

  They’re all alike, he thought. Money’s what gets ’em, even this one with that soft, young look on her face. And he almost purred, thinking not even marriage would be necessary. It would take a little time, just a little time, and that was all. He leaned across the table to say, ‘You don’t have to be poor any more. Not after tonight. I’ll see to that. All you got to do from now is just be nice to me, baby.’

  He had thought she would give some indication that being nice to him was going to be easy for her. Instead, she got up from the table. There was a little frown between her eyes. The thick mug in front of her was more than half full of beer.

  ‘Hey, you ain’t finished your beer,’ he protested.

  ‘I know’—she waved her hand toward the bandstand where the men were filing in. ‘The boys are ready to start,’ she said.

  It was three o’clock when the rainbow-colored lights stopped moving over the dance floor. There was a final blast from the trumpets and the orchestra men began stowing music into the cases that held their instruments. The people filed out of the big hall slowly, reluctantly. The ornate staircase was choked with them, for they walked close to each other as though still joined together by the memory of the music and the dancing.

  The hat-check girls smiled as they peeled coats off hangers, reached up on shelves for hats. Coins clinked in the thick white saucers. The men crowded around the mirrors adjusting bright-colored scarves around their necks, buttoning coats, patting their hats into becoming shapes, and adjusting the hats on their heads with infinite care.

  Boots turned to Lutie. ‘Can I give you a ride home, baby?’

  ‘That would be swell,’ she said promptly. Perhaps he would tell her how much the salary was that went with the job. Perhaps, too—and the thought was unpleasant—he would make the first tentative advances toward the next step—the business of being nice to him. At the moment she felt so strong and so confident that she was certain she could put him off deftly, neatly, and continue to do it until she signed a contract for the job.

  When they reached the lobby, there were only a handful of stragglers left. Even these were putting on hats and coats, the men ogling themselves in the mirror, the women posing on the circular bench in the center of the lobby. The women pressed their feet deep into the red carpet, enjoying the feel of it under their shoes, admiring the glimpses they caught of their own reflections in the mirrors on the wall.

  At the foot of the stairs one of the biggest of the Casino’s bouncers laid a hamlike hand on Boots’ arm. Lutie stared at him, for at close range the battered flesh of his face, the queer out-of-shape formation of his ears, and the enormous bulge of his shoulders under the smooth cloth of the tuxedo jacket were awe-inspiring.

  ‘Hey, Boots,’ he said. ‘Go by Junto’s. He wanta see you.’ The words came out of the side of his mouth. His lips barely moved.

  ‘He phoned?’

  ‘Yeah. ’Bout an hour ago. Said you was to stop when you got through here.’

  ‘Okay, pal.’

  Boots obtained Lutie’s coat from the checkroom, held it for her, pushed the big doors of the Casino open, then helped her into his car, not really thinking about her, but wondering what Old Man Junto wanted that was so important it wouldn’t keep until daylight.

  He drove down Seventh Avenue in silence, conjecturing about it. When he finally remembered that Lutie was there in the car with him, he had reached 115th Street. ‘Where’ll I let you out?’ he asked absently.

  ‘At the corner of 116th Street and Seventh.’

  He stopped the car at the corner of 116th Street, reached across her to open the door. ‘See you tomorrow night, baby?’ he asked. ‘Same time so we can rehearse some?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ she said, and felt a faint astonishment because his hands had gone back to the steering wheel and stayed there. He was looking up the street, his mind obviously far away, not even remotely concerned with her.

  She watched his car until it disappeared up the street, trying to figure out what it was that had distracted and disturbed him so that he had put her completely out of his thoughts.

  The wind lifted the full folds of her skirt, blew the short, full coat away from her body. She shrugged her shoulders. It was too cold to stand on this corner puzzling about what was on Boots Smith’s mind.

  As she walked toward the apartment house where she lived, she passed only a few people. They were moving briskly. Otherwise the street was dead quiet. Most of the houses were dark.

  The cold couldn’t reach through to her, even with this thin coat on, she thought. Because the fact that she wouldn’t have to live on this street much longer served as a barrier against the cold. It was more effective than the thickest, warmest coat. She toyed with figures. Perhaps she would get forty, fifty, sixty, seventy dollars a week. They all sounded fantastically high. She decided whatever the sum proved to be, it would be like sudden, great wealth compared to her present salary.

  A man came suddenly out of a hallway just ahead of her—a furtive, darting figure that disappeared rapidly in the darkness of the street. As she reached the doorway from which he had emerged, a woman lurched out, screaming, ‘Got my pocketbook! The bastard’s got my pocketbook!’

  Windows were flung open all up and down the street. Heads appeared at the windows—silent, watching heads that formed dark blobs against the dark spaces that were the windows. The woman remained in the middle of the street, bellowing at the top of her voice.

  Lutie got a good look at her as she went past her. She had a man’s felt hat pulled down almost over her eyes and men’s shoes on her feet. Her coat was fastened together with safety pins. She was shaking her fists as she shouted curses after the man who had long since vanished up the street.

  Ribald advice issued from the windows:

  ‘Aw, shut up! Folks got to sleep.’

  ‘What the hell’d you have in it, your rent money?’

  ‘Go on home, old woman, ‘fore I throw somp’n special down on your rusty head.’

  As the woman’s voice died away to a mumble and a mutter, the heads withdrew and the windows were slammed shut. The street was quiet again. And Lutie thought, No one could live on a street like this and stay decent. It would get them sooner or later, for it sucked the humanity out of people—slowly, surely, inevitably.

  She glanced up at the gloomy apartments where the heads had been. There were row after row of narrow windows—floor after floor packed tight with people. She looked at the street itself. It was bordered by garbage cans. Half-starved cats prowled through the cans—rustling paper, gnawing on bones. Again she thought that it wasn’t just this one block, this particular street. It was like this all over Harlem wherever the rents were low.

  But she and Bub were leaving streets like this. And the thought that she had been able to accomplish this alone, without help from anyone, made her open the street door of the apartment h
ouse with a vigorous push. It made her stand inside the door for a moment, not seeing the dimly lit hallway, but instead seeing herself and Bub living together in a big roomy place and Bub growing up fine and strong.

  The air from the street set her skirt to billowing around her long legs and, as she stood there smiling, her face and body glowing with triumph, she looked almost as though she were dancing.

  10

  AFTER MIN hung the cross over the bed, Jones took to sleeping in the living room. He could no longer see the cross, but he knew it was there and it made him restless, uneasy.

  Finally it seemed to him that he met it at every turn. Wherever he looked, he saw a suggestion of its outline. His eyes added a horizontal line to the long cord that hung from the ceiling light and instantly the cross was dangling in front of him. He sought and found the shape of a cross in the window panes, in chairs, in the bars on the canary’s cage. When he looked at Min, he could see its outline as sharply as though it had been superimposed on her shapeless, flabby body.

  He drew an imaginary line from her head to her feet and added another crosswise line, and thus, whenever he glanced in her direction, he saw the cross again. When she spoke to him, he no longer looked at her for fear he would see, not her, but the great golden cross she had hung over the bed.

  He turned and twisted on the sofa thinking about it. Finally he sat up. Min was snoring in the bedroom. He could almost see her lower lip quiver with the blowing-out of her breath through her opened mouth. The room was filled with the sound. The dog’s heavy breathing formed an accompaniment.

  It annoyed him that Min and the dog should be comfortably lost in their dreams while he was wide awake—painfully awake. He thought of Lutie’s apartment on the top floor. It was like a magnet whose pull reached down to him and drew him toward it steadily, irresistibly. He dressed quickly in the dark. He had to go up and see if she was home. Perhaps he could get another look at her.

  He went steadily up the stairs, his thoughts running ahead of him. This time he would tell her that he had come to see her. She would invite him in and they would really get to know each other. The stairs creaked under his weight.

  There was no light under the door of her apartment. He hesitated, not knowing what to do. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might not be home. He stared blankly at the door and then went past it, down the hall, and climbed the short flight of stairs to the roof. He stood looking down at the dark street, studying the silhouette of the buildings against the sky.

  Gradually he began to discern the outline of a whole scries of crosses in the buildings. And he crept silently down the stairs and into his apartment. He didn’t undress. He took his shoes off and lay down listening to the sound of Min’s snoring, and the dog’s heavy breathing, and hating it.

  He couldn’t go to sleep. His mind was filled with a vast and awful confusion in which images of Lutie warred with images of Min. His love and desire for Lutie mixed and mingled with his hatred and aversion for Min. He was stuck with Min. He hadn’t been able to put her out. Yet as long as she stayed he was certain he could never induce Lutie to come and live with him. He dwelt on her figure, etching it again and again in the darkness. She wasn’t the kind of girl who would have anything to do with a man who had a wreck of a woman attached to him.

  There ought to be some way he could rid himself of the fear of that cross Min had put over the bed. But though he thought about it at length, he knew he could never touch it long enough to throw it out of the house. And as long as it remained, Min would be here with him.

  The living room had a cold, menacing feel. He kicked the patchwork quilt onto the floor and reached for his heavy work shoes, not turning on the light in his desire to hurry and get out of the room and go down to the cellar where there was warmth from the fire in the furnace. The glow from its open door would keep him company and finally lull him off to sleep as it had so many times when he stayed in furnace rooms.

  One of the shoes slid out of his hands and landed on the floor with a loud clump. Min stopped snoring. He heard the bedsprings creak as she turned over. He turned on the light and bent over to lace his shoes up, not caring whether she knew that he was going out. He thought of her with contempt. She was probably sitting bolt upright in bed, her head cocked on one side just like the dog’s, trying to figure out what the noise was that had awakened her.

  Outside in the hall he opened the cellar door and then paused with his hand on the knob when the street door opened. He turned to see which of the tenants was coming in so late and he saw Lutie standing in the doorway, her long skirt blowing around her. She seemed to fill the whole hall with light. There was a faint smile playing around her mouth and he thought she was smiling at the sight of him and bending and swaying toward him.

  His hand left the door in a slow, wide gesture and he started toward her, thinking that he would have her now, tonight, and trembling with the thought. His long gaunt body seemed taller than ever in the dim light. His eyes were wide open, staring. He was breathing so quick and fast in his excitement, he made a panting sound that could be clearly heard.

  Lutie saw the motion of his hand leaving the door, saw his figure moving toward her. She couldn’t see who or what it was that moved, for the cellar door was in deep shadow and she couldn’t separate the shadow and the movement. Then she saw that it was the Super. He was either going down into the cellar or just coming out of it. At first she couldn’t tell which he was doing because his lank figure was barely recognizable in the dim light.

  He was walking toward her. She decided he was going into his apartment. When she started up the stairs, she would have to pass close by him and the thought filled her with dread. She saw again the tight, hard wrinkles in her blouse and thought of how he must have squeezed it between his hands. For a moment she was unable to move. Her throat went dry and tight with fear.

  She forced herself to walk toward the stairs, aware as she moved that her gait was stiff and unnatural almost as though her muscles were rebelling against any motion. He wasn’t going into his apartment. He had stopped moving. He was standing motionless in front of her. Somehow she had to pass him, get past him without looking at him, get past him now, quickly, before she thought about it too long.

  He side-stepped and blocked her passage to the stairs. He put his hand on her arm. ‘You’re so sweet. You’re so sweet. You little thing. You young little thing.’

  She could barely understand the words, for he was so excited that his voice came out thick and hoarse. But she caught the word ‘sweet’ and she moved away from him. ‘Don’t,’ she said sharply. The street door was in back of her. If she moved fast enough, she could get out into the street.

  Instantly his arm went around her waist. He was pulling her back, turning her around so that she faced him. He was dragging her toward the cellar door.

  She grabbed the balustrade. His fingers pried her hands loose. She writhed and twisted in his arms, bracing her feet, clawing at his face with her nails. He ignored her frantic effort to get away from him and pulled her nearer and nearer to the cellar door. She kicked at him and the long skirt twisted about her legs so that she stumbled closer to him.

  She tried to scream, and when she opened her mouth no sound came out; and she thought this was worse than any nightmare, for there was no sound anywhere in this. There was only his face close to hers—a frightening, contorted face, the eyes gleaming, the mouth open—and his straining, sweating body kept forcing her ever nearer the partly open cellar door.

  And suddenly she found her voice. Someone in his apartment must have opened the door or else it was open all the time. For the dog was loose. He came bounding toward them down the length of the dark hall, growling. She felt him leap on her back. The horror of it was not to be borne, for the man was trembling with his desire for her as he dragged her toward the cellar, and the dark hall was filled with the stench of the dog and the weight of his great body landing on her back.

  She screamed until she could hear
her own voice insanely shrieking up the stairs, pausing on the landings, turning the corners, going down the halls, gaining in volume as it started again to climb the stairs. And then her screams rushed back down the stair well until the whole building echoed and re-echoed with the frantic, desperate sound.

  A pair of powerful hands gripped her by the shoulders, wrenched her violently out of the Super’s arms, flung her back against the wall. She stood there shuddering, her mouth still open, still screaming, unable to stop the sounds that were coming from her throat. The same powerful hands shot out and thrust the Super hard against the cellar door.

  ‘Shut up,’ Mrs. Hedges ordered. ‘You want the whole place woke up?’

  Lutie’s mouth closed. She had never seen Mrs. Hedges outside of her apartment and looked at closely she was awe-inspiring. She was almost as tall as the Super, but where he was thin, gaunt, she was all hard, firm flesh—a mountain of a woman.

  She was wearing a long-sleeved, high-necked flannelette nightgown. It was so snowy white that her skin showed up intensely black by contrast. She was barefooted. Her hands, her feet, and what could be seen of her legs were a mass of scars—terrible scars. The flesh was drawn and shiny where it had apparently tightened in the process of healing.

  The big white nightgown was so amply cut that, despite the bulk of her body, it had a balloon-like quality, for it billowed about her as she stood panting slightly from her exertion, her hands on her hips, her hard, baleful eyes fixed on the Super. The gaudy bandanna was even now tied around her head in firm, tight knots so that no vestige of hair showed. And watching the wide, full nightgown as it moved gently from the draft in the hall, Lutie thought Mrs. Hedges had the appearance of a creature that had strayed from some other planet.

  Her rich, pleasant voice filled the hallway, and at the sound of it the dog slunk away, his tail between his legs. ‘You done lived in basements so long you ain’t human no more. You got mould growin’ on you,’ she said to Jones.

  Lutie walked away from them, intent on getting up the stairs as quickly as possible. Her legs refused to carry her and she sat down suddenly on the bottom step. The long taffeta skirt dragged on the tiled floor. Bits of tobacco, the fine grit from the street, puffed out from under it. She made no effort to pick it up. She put her head on her knees, wondering how she was going to get the strength to climb the stairs.