The Street

by Ann Petry

  He looked down at Junto seated at the table and swallowed an impulse to laugh. For Junto’s squat-bodied figure was all gray—gray suit, gray hair, gray skin, so that he melted into the room. He could sit forever at that table and nobody would look at him twice. All those people guzzling drinks at the bar never glanced in his direction. The ones standing outside on the street and the ones walking back and forth were dumb, blind, deaf to Junto’s existence. Yet he had them coming and going. If they wanted to sleep, they paid him; if they wanted to drink, they paid him; if they wanted to dance, they paid him, and never even knew it.

  It would be funny if Junto who owned so much couldn’t get to first base with Lutie. He wasn’t even sure why Junto wanted to lay her. He couldn’t quite figure it out. Junto was kind of nuts about that black woman on 116th Street, talked about her all the time. He had never forgotten the shock he got when he first saw Mrs. Hedges. He hadn’t really known what to expect the night he went there with Junto, but he was totally unprepared for that hulk of a woman. He could have sworn from the way Junto looked at her that he was in love with her and that he had never been able to get past some obstacle that prevented him from sleeping with her—some obstacle the woman erected.

  ‘How was the crowd tonight?’ Junto asked.

  ‘Packed house. Hanging from the ceiling.’

  ‘No trouble?’

  ‘Naw. There’s never any trouble. Them bruisers see to that.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘That girl sings very well,’ he said. He watched Junto’s face to see if he could get some clue from his expression as to what it was about Lutie Johnson that had made him want her. Because there had been all kinds of girls in and out of Junto’s joints and he had never been known to look twice at any of them.

  ‘Yes, I know. I heard her.’ And Junto’s eyes blinked, and Boots knew instantly that Junto wanted her for the same reason that he had—because she was young and extraordinarily good-looking and any man with a spark of life left in him would go for her.

  ‘You heard her tonight?’ Boots asked, incredulous.

  ‘Yes. I was at the Casino for a few minutes.’

  Boots shook his head. The old man surely had it bad. He had a sudden desire to see his face go soft and queer. ‘How’s Mrs. Hedges?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine.’ Junto’s face melted into a smile. ‘She’s a wonderful woman. A wonderful woman.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He thought of the red bandanna tied in hard, ugly knots around her head. ‘She sure is.’

  He turned away from the table. ‘I gotta go, Junto. I’ll be seein’ you.’ He walked out of the bar, cat-footed, his face as expressionless as when he came in.

  12

  JONES, THE SUPER, closed the door of his apartment behind him. He was clenching and unclenching his fists in a slow, pulsating movement that corresponded with the ebb and flow of the rage that was sweeping through him.

  At first it was rage toward Mrs. Hedges and her barging into the hall, shoving her hard hands against his chest, ordering him about, threatening him. If she hadn’t been so enormous and so venomous, he would have knocked her down.

  He frowned. How had the dog got out? Min must have let him out. Min must have stood right there where he was standing now, just inside the door, looking out into the hall, and seen what was going on and let the dog loose. A fresh wave of anger directed at Min flooded through him. If she hadn’t let the dog out, he would have had Lutie Johnson. The dog scared Lutie so she screamed and that brought that old sow with that rag tied around her head out into the hall.

  He could feel Lutie being dragged out of his arms, could see Mrs. Hedges glaring at him with her baleful eyes rammed practically into his face, could see the bulk of her big, hard body under the white flannel nightgown, and could feel all over again the threat and menace in her hands as she slammed him against the cellar door.

  All of it was Min’s fault. He ought to go drag her out of bed and beat her until she was senseless and then toss her out into the street. He walked toward the bedroom and stopped outside the door, remembering the cross over the bed and unable to get over the threshold despite his urge to lay violent hands on her. He couldn’t tell by the light, rhythmic sound of her breathing whether she was asleep or just pretending. She must have scuttled back to bed the minute she saw him start toward the apartment door.

  His thoughts jumped back to Mrs. Hedges. So that was why he couldn’t have her locked up that time he went to the police station. He remembered the police lieutenant, ‘What’s her name?’ and his eyes staring at the paper where it was already written down. Junto was the reason he couldn’t have her arrested that time. Sometimes during the summer he had gone to the Bar and Grill for a glass of beer and he had seen him sitting in the back—a squat, short-bodied white man whose eyes never apparently left the crowd drinking at the bar. The thought of him set Jones to trembling.

  He moved away from the bedroom door and walked aimlessly around the living room. Finally he sat down on the sofa. He ought to go to bed, but he’d never be able to sleep with his mind swirling full of thoughts like this. Lutie’s body had felt soft under his hands, her waist had just fitted into the space between his two hands. It was small, yielding, pliant.

  His face smarted where she had scratched him. He ought to put something on it—get something from the medicine cabinet, but he didn’t move. The reason she had scratched him like that was because she hadn’t understood that he wasn’t going to hurt her, that he wouldn’t hurt her for anything. He must have frightened her coming at her so suddenly.

  He could feel his thoughts gather themselves together on Lutie, concentrate on her, stay put on her. Those scratches on his face were long, deep. She hadn’t been frightened that bad. It wasn’t just fright. It must have been something else. She had fought him like a wildcat; as though she hated him, kicking, biting, scratching, and that awful wild screaming. But she screamed because of the dog, he told himself. But even after Mrs. Hedges came out and the dog left, even after Mrs. Hedges had pulled her out of his arms, she had gone on screaming. He could hear the despairing, desperate sound of her screams all over again, and he listened to them, thinking that they sounded as though she had found his touching her unbearable, as though she despised him. No. It wasn’t just fright.

  The full significance of what Mrs. Hedges had said to him came over him. That was why Lutie had fought like that and screamed and couldn’t stop She was in love with the white man, Junto, and she couldn’t bear to have a black man touch her.

  His mind rebelled against the’ idea, thrust it away. It wasn’t true. He refused to admit it was remotely possible. He tried to rid himself of the thought and it crept back again quietly establishing itself. He quivered with rage at the thought of Junto’s squat white body intimately entwined with Lutie’s tall brown body. He saw Junto’s pale skin beside Lutie’s brown skin. He created situations and placed them together—eating, talking, drinking, even dancing.

  He tortured himself with the picture of them lying naked in bed together, possibly talking about him, laughing at him. He attempted to put words into their mouths.

  ‘Can you imagine, Mr. Junto, that Jones making love to me?’

  He couldn’t get any further than that because his mind refused to stay still. It seemed to have become a livid, molten, continually moving, fluid substance in his brain that spewed up fragments of thought until his head ached with the effort to follow the motion, to analyze the thoughts. He no sooner started to pursue one of the fragments than something else took its place, some new idea that disappeared just as he began to explore it.

  Mrs. Hedges and Min. They were the ones that had frustrated him. Just at the moment when he had Lutie in his arms they had fixed it so she was snatched away from him. If only he could have got her down into the cellar, everything would have been all right. She would have calmed down right away.

  Now he would have to begin all over again. He didn’t know where to start. Maybe a little present would make her feel bet
ter toward him. He must have frightened her a lot. He was certain she had been smiling at him when she stood there in the doorway, holding the door in her hand, the long skirt blowing back around her legs as she looked toward the cellar door.

  What ought he to give her? Earrings, stockings, nightgowns, blouses—he tried to remember some of the things he had seen in the stores on Eighth Avenue. It ought to be something special—perhaps a handbag, one of those big shiny black ones.

  Junto probably gave her presents. His mind stood still for a moment. What present could he give her that could compare with the things Junto could give her? Junto could give her fur coats and—He got up from the couch wildly furious, so agitated by his anger that his body trembled with it.

  She was in love with Junto. Of course. That was why she had fought him off like a she-cat, clawing at him with her nails, kicking at him, filling the hall with that howl that still rang in his ears. She was in love with Junto, the white man.

  Black men weren’t good enough for her. He had seen women like that before. He had had women like that before. Just off the ship, hungry for a woman, dying for a woman, seeking and finding one he had known before. A door opened a narrow crack, ‘No. You can’t come in.’ The door slammed tight shut in his face. He had waited and waited outside and seen some replete, satiated white tramp of a sailor emerge from the same room hours later.

  Yes. He’d seen that kind before. No use for men their own color. Well, he’d fix her. He’d fix her good. He searched his mind for a way to do it and was surprised to find that his thinking had grown cool, quiet, orderly. Her fighting against him as though he was so dirty she couldn’t bear to have him touch her, her never looking at him when she went in and out of the building, her being frightened that night when she came to look at the apartment and they were up there together—all of it proved that she didn’t like black men, had no use for them.

  So she belonged to a white man. Well, he would get back at both of them. Yes. He’d fix them good.

  He strained his eyes in the dark of the room as though by looking hard enough in front of him he would be able to see the means by which he would destroy her. He walked up and down thinking, thinking, thinking. There wasn’t anything he could think of, no way he could reach her.

  But there was the kid. He paused in the middle of the room, nodding his head. He could get at the kid. He could fix the kid and none of them could stop him. They would never know who was responsible. He finally went to sleep, still not knowing what it was he would do, but comforted by the knowledge that he could hurt her through the kid. Yes. The kid.

  When he woke up the next morning, Min was standing by the couch looking down at him with a curious expression on her face.

  ‘What you looking at?’ he asked gruffly, wondering what she had been able to read on his face while he lay there asleep, unaware of anyone watching him, perhaps unconsciously revealing the things he had been thinking about just before he went to sleep. ‘How long you been there?’

  ‘I just come,’ she said. ‘Breakfast is ready’; and then she added hastily: ‘I ate mine already. You can have the kitchen to yourself.’

  ‘How come you ain’t gone to work yet?’

  ‘I overslept myself. I’m gettin’ ready to go now.’

  She went into the bedroom. The worn felt slippers made a slapping, scuffing sound as she walked. It was a hateful sound and his anger of the night before returned so swiftly that he decided it must have stayed on the couch with him waiting for him to awaken. He thought of Lutie’s high heels clicking on the stairs, of her long legs, and immediately he began puzzling over a way of fixing the kid.

  In the kitchen he ate hungrily. Min had made rolls for breakfast. They were light and fluffy. He ate several of them, drank two cups of coffee and was starting on a third cup when his eyes fell on a slender glass vial almost full of a brilliant scarlet liquid. It was lying flat between the bottle of ketchup and a tin of evaporated milk right near the edge of the shelf over the kitchen table.

  He stood up for a better look at it, uncorked it, and sniffed the contents. It had a sharp, acrid odor. There was a medicine dropper lying beside it.

  He had never seen either of them before. And for no reason at all he thought of the candles that Min burned every night, of the sudden unexpected appearance of the cross over the bed, of her never explained absence one evening.

  He picked up his coffee cup, suddenly suspicious. There seemed to be traces of the same acrid odor, fainter, to be sure, but still there in the cup. He smelt the contents of the big enameled coffee pot that was sitting on the stove and put it down, frowning. He still couldn’t be sure, but there seemed to be traces of the same odor, diluted down, much fainter, but definitely there. It might be his imagination, and on the other hand it might ‘have been only that his nose was full of the sharp smell of the red liquid and so he thought he found it again in his coffee cup and in the big pot.

  She wouldn’t dare put anything in his coffee. She wouldn’t dare. How did he know? The candles and the cross returned sharply to his mind. For all he knew she had been working some kind of conjure on him all along, trying to bring him bad luck.

  He picked up the slender vial and the medicine dropper and went toward the bedroom. He didn’t go all the way into the room. He stood in the doorway.

  Min was tying a triangular, faded wool scarf over her head. She had her coat on and her movements were slow, clumsy, awkward. Her galoshes were fastened tightly around her feet and he thought nobody but a half-wit would get dressed backward like that. She saw him in the door and she put one hand into her coat pocket, leaving the ends of the scarf dangling loose.

  ‘What’s this for?’—he held the bottle and medicine dropper out toward her. ‘You been putting this in my coffee? You been trying to mess with me?’

  ‘It’s my heart medicine,’ she said calmly.

  He stared at her, not believing her and not knowing why he didn’t believe her. She didn’t shrink away from him, she stared back giving him look for look, and with her hand in her coat pocket she had a slightly jaunty air that made him want to strike her.

  ‘What’s the matter with your heart?’

  ‘I don’t know. Doctor gave me that for it.’

  ‘What do you do with it?’

  ‘Put it in my coffee.’

  ‘Why ain’t there no doctor’s label on it?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘He said it don’t need one. Couldn’t mix that bottle up with no other one.’

  He still wasn’t satisfied. ‘When’d you see him?’

  ‘The night I went out.’

  He didn’t believe her. She was lying. She looked like she was lying. She didn’t have nothing the matter with her heart. If it wasn’t for that cross—he located it out of the corner of his eye. Yes. It was still there over the bed, and he turned his eyes away from it quickly, sorry that he had looked at it, for he would be seeing the damn thing before him everywhere he looked the rest of the day.

  ‘Well, keep it in here,’ he said hastily. He entered the room, laid the bottle and the medicine dropper down on the bureau and walked away quickly. ‘Don’t have it out there in the kitchen. I don’t want to look at it. Or smell it.’ He said the words over his shoulder.

  When she emerged from the bedroom a few minutes later, the scarf tied tightly under her chin, her house dress wrapped up in a brown-paper bag that she carried under one arm, he refused to glance in her direction.

  ‘Well, good-bye,’ she said hesitantly.

  He grunted by way of answer, thinking that he had been so confused at the sight of the cross he hadn’t asked her what the candles were for. They didn’t have anything to do with her heart. He hadn’t planned to ask her about the cross, because he couldn’t have brought himself to question her about it; mentioning it aloud would have given it importance. It would never do for her to know what it had done to him.

  He went outside to bring in the garbage cans. He stood against the building looking up and down
the street. It had snowed during the night—a light, feathery coating that clung to the brick all up and down the street, gently obscuring the dirt, covering the sidewalk with a delicate film of white. He eyed it, thinking that it wouldn’t call for any shoveling. A couple of hours and it would be gone just from folks walking on it.

  The Sanitation Department trucks rumbled up to the curb. The street was filled with the rattle and bang of garbage cans, the churning sound of the mechanism inside the trucks as it sucked up the refuse and rubbish from the big metal cans.

  There was a steadily increasing stream of women passing through the street. They were going to work. Most of them, like Min, carried small brown bundles under their arms—bundles that contained the shapeless house dresses they would put on when they reached their jobs. Some of them scurried toward the subway entrance, hurrying faster and faster because they were late. Others plodded past slowly with their heads down as though already tired because the burden of the day’s work had settled about their shoulders, weighing them down before they had even begun it.

  Jones rolled his empty garbage cans into the areaway and returned to stand in front of the building. In the mornings like this he was usually inside working, shaking the furnace, firing it, taking out ashes. The street had a pleasant, lively look this morning. The sun had come out, and what with the light coating of snow he felt a faint stirring of pleasure as he stood there. Just this one day he ought not to do a lick of work in the house, let the fire go out, leave the halls full of rubbish while he stayed outside and enjoyed himself.

  As he watched the street, he saw that there were young, brisk-walking women among the plodding, older women. Some of them had well-shaped legs that quivered where the flesh curved to form the calf. His eyes lingered on one of them as she moved toward the corner at a smart pace that set her flesh to jiggling pleasantly.