The Street

by Ann Petry

  The lights made no impression on the quiet in the apartment either and she switched on the radio. Bub usually listened to one of those interminable spy hunts or cowboy stories, and at night the living room was filled with the tumult of a chase, loud music and sudden shouts. And Bub would yell, ‘Look out! He’s in back of you.’

  This lavish use of light is senseless, she thought. You used to lecture him about leaving lights on at night because the bill would be so big you couldn’t pay it. He left them burning because he was frightened, just like you are now. And she wondered if he was afraid now in that strange place—the Children’s Shelter—and hoped there were lights that burned all night, so that if he woke up he could see where he was. It was easy to picture him waking in the dark, discovering that he wasn’t here where he belonged, and then feeling as though he had lost himself or that the room he knew so well had changed about him while he slept.

  She sat down near the radio, tried to listen to a news broadcast, but her thoughts kept twisting and turning about Bub. What would happen to him after this was over? The lawyer had assured her he could get him paroled in her care. But he would have a police record, and if he played hookey from school two or three times and broke a window with a ball and got into a fight, he would end up in reform school, anyway.

  Even his teachers at school would have a faint but unmistakable prejudice against him as a juvenile delinquent and they would refuse to overlook any slight infraction of the rules because he had established himself in their minds as a potential criminal. And in a sense they were right, because he didn’t have much chance before living in this street so crowded with people and children. He had even less now.

  They would have to move away from here. She would get a job cooking for a family that lived in the country. Unfortunately, the idea didn’t appeal to her. She knew what it would be like. He would become ‘the cook’s little boy,’ and expected to meet some fantastic standard of behavior. He would have to be silent when he was bursting to talk and to make noise. ‘Because Mrs. Brentford or Mrs. Gaines or Mrs. Somebody Else has guests for dinner.’

  She didn’t want him to grow up like that—eating hurried meals at a kitchen table while he listened to ‘the family’ enjoying a leisurely meal in a near-by dining room; learning young the unmistakable difference between front-door and back-door and all that the words implied; being constantly pushed aside because when he came home from school running over with energy, she would be fixing salads and desserts for dinner and only have time to say, ‘Get a glass of milk out of the icebox and go outside and play and be quiet.’

  It was quite possible that he wouldn’t have much opportunity for playing. Lil had painted a grim picture of what it could be like, based on the experience of one of her friends. ‘That poor Myrtle said they counted practically every mouthful that poor boy child of hers ate. And wanted him to work, besides. Little light tasses the madam said like cleaning the car and mowing the lawn.’ Lil had taken a big swallow of beer before continuing, ‘And Myrtle and that poor child of hers had to sleep together because the madam said, well, of course, you all wouldn’t expect me to buy another bed and he’s small and don’t take up much room.’

  The pay would be miserable because of Bub, and the people she worked for would subtly or pointedly, depending on what kind of folks they were, demand more work from her because they would feel they were conferring a special favor by permitting his presence in their home.

  Perhaps it wouldn’t be like that. Even if it was, it was the best she could do for him. Somebody else’s kitchen was a painfully circumscribed area for a kid to grow up in, but at least it would be safe. She would be with him all the time. He wouldn’t come home to a silent, empty house.

  She switched off the radio, put out all the lights except the one in the bedroom, thinking that tomorrow she wouldn’t go to work. Instead, she would go to the Children’s Shelter and see Bub.

  While she undressed, she tried to remember if she had been afraid of the dark when she was Bub’s age. No, because Granny had always been there, her rocking chair part of the shadow, part of the darkness, making it known and familiar. She was always humming. It was a faint sound, part and parcel of the darkness. Going to sleep with that warm sound clinging to your ears made fear impossible. You simply drifted off to the accompaniment of a murmured ‘Sleepin’, Sleepin’, Sleepin’ in the arms of the Lord.’ And then the gentle creak of the rocking chair.

  She had never been alone in the house after school. Granny was always home. No matter what time she reached the house, she knew in the back of her mind that Granny was there and it gave her a sense of security that Bub had never known.

  When there was no one in a house with you, it took on a strange emptiness. This bedroom, for instance, was strangely empty. The furniture took up the same amount of room, for she bumped her knee against the corner of the bed. But the light in the ceiling reached only a little way into the living room. She stared at the shadows beyond the brief expanse of light. She knew the exact size of that room, knew the position of every piece of furniture, yet it would be easy to believe that beyond the door, just beyond that oblong of light, there stretched a vast expanse of space—unknown and therefore dangerous.

  After she turned out the light and got into bed, she kept listening for sounds, waiting to hear the stir of some movement from the shadows that enveloped the bed and turning her head from side to side in an effort to make out the familiar outline of the furniture.

  When people are alone, they are always afraid of the dark, she thought. They keep trying to see where they are and the blackness around them keeps them from seeing. It was like trying to look into the future. There was no way of knowing what threat lurked just beyond tomorrow or the next day, and the not knowing is what makes everyone afraid.

  She woke up at seven o’clock and jumped out of bed, reaching for her dressing-gown and thinking that today they had assembly at school and she had forgotten to iron a white shirt for Bub and she would have to hurry so he wouldn’t be late.

  Then she remembered that Bub was at the Children’s Shelter. She wasn’t going to work today. She was going to see him.

  It was her fault he’d got into this trouble. No matter how she looked at it, it was still her fault. It was always the mother’s fault when a kid got into trouble, because it meant she’d failed the kid somewhere. She had wanted him to grow up fine and strong and she’d failed him all the way along the line. She had been trying to get enough money so that she could have a good place for him to live, and in trying she’d put so much stress on money that he’d felt impelled to help her and started stealing letters out of mail boxes.

  Lately she had been so filled with anger and resentment and hate that she had pushed him farther and farther away from her. He didn’t have any business in the Children’s Shelter. He didn’t have any business going to court. She was the one they ought to have arrested and taken to court.

  Pulling the cord of the robe tight around her waist with an angry jerk, she went into the kitchen where she put coffee into an enamel pot on the stove. While she waited for it to boil, she raised the window shade and looked out. It was a dark, grim morning. The blackness outside pressed against the panes of glass, and she drew the shade hastily.

  She scrambled eggs and made toast, but once she was seated at the kitchen table she thrust the food away from her. The very sight and smell of it was unpleasant. The coffee didn’t go down her throat easily; it kept sticking as though an ever-tightening band were wrapped around her neck, constricting her throat.

  Getting dressed for the trip to the Center was a slow process, for she found herself pausing frequently to examine all kinds of unrelated ideas and thoughts that kept bobbing up in her mind. Pop had never got anywhere in life and certainly Lil hadn’t ever achieved anything, but neither one of them had ever been in jail. Perhaps it was better to take things as they were and not try to change them. But who wouldn’t have wanted to live in a better house than this one and who
wouldn’t have struggled to get out of it?—and the only way that presented itself was to save money. So it was a circle, and she could keep on going around it forever and keep on ending up in the same place, because if you were black and you lived in New York and you could only pay so much rent, why, you had to live in a house like this one.

  And while you were out working to pay the rent on this stinking, rotten place, why, the street outside played nursemaid to your kid. The street did more than that. It became both mother and father and trained your kid for you, and it was an evil father and a vicious mother, and, of course, you helped the street along by talking to him about money.

  The last thing she did before she left the apartment was to put the stiff, white paper in her pocketbook. And on the subway she was so aware of its presence that she felt she could see its outline through the imitation leather of the bag.

  It was just nine o’clock when she got off the subway. She asked the man in the change booth which exit was nearest the Shelter.

  ‘You shoulda took another line,’ he said. ‘Walk five blocks that way’—he pointed to the right-hand exit. ‘And then two down.’

  The crosstown blocks were long. She started walking rapidly and then, tired by the effort, she slowed down. She had never been in this section of the city before. The streets were clean and well-swept, and the houses and stores she passed had a shine and a polish on them. Immediately she thought of Bub leaning out of the kitchen window playing a game that involved the inert dogs sleeping amidst the rubbish in the yard below.

  This was, by comparison, a safe, secure, clean world. And looking at it, she thought it must be rather pleasant to be able to live anywhere you wanted to, just so you could pay the rent, instead of having to find out first whether it was a place where colored people were permitted to live.

  The Children’s Shelter was housed in a tall brick building. And as she approached it, she kept thinking, But it can’t be full of children. She walked up the steps, conscious of a hollow, empty feeling in the pit of her stomach. A uniformed guard stopped her just inside the door.

  ‘I came to see my son,’ she said. She drew the stiff white paper from her pocketbook. ‘He was brought here yesterday.’

  He gestured toward a waiting room just off the hall. It was a large room filled with people, and the instant she entered it she was assailed by the stillness in the room.

  The gray-haired woman behind a desk marked ‘Information’ asked for her name and address, riffled through a thick card file.

  ‘His case comes up Friday,’ the woman said. ‘If you care to wait, you can see him for a few minutes this morning.’

  Lutie sat down near the back of the room. It was filled with colored women, sitting in huddled-over positions. They sat quietly, not moving. Their patient silence filled the room, made her uneasy. Why were all of them colored? Was it because the mothers of white children had safe places for them to play in, because the mothers of white children didn’t have to work?

  She had been wrong. There were some white mothers, too—three foreign-looking women near the door; a gray-haired woman just two seats ahead, her hair hanging in a lank curtain about the sides of her face; a tall, bony woman up near the front who kept clutching at the arms of her fur coat, a coat shiny from wear; and over on the side a young, too thin blond girl holding a small baby in her arms.

  They were sitting in the same shrinking, huddled positions. Perhaps, she thought, we’re all here because we’re all poor. Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with color.

  Lutie folded her hands in her lap. Fifteen minutes went by. Suddenly she straightened her shoulders. She had been huddled over like all these other waiting women. And she knew now why they sat like that. Because we’re like animals trying to pull all the soft, quivering tissue deep inside of us away from the danger that lurks in a room like this, and the silence helps build up the threat of danger.

  The room absorbed sound. She couldn’t hear even a faint murmur of traffic or of voices from the street outside. As she waited in the silent room, she felt as though she were bearing the uneasy burden of the sum total of all the troubles these women had brought with them. All of us started with a little piece of trouble, she thought, and then bit by bit more was added until finally it grew so great it pushed us into this room.

  When the guard finally escorted her to the small room where Bub waited, she had begun to believe the silence and the troubled waiting that permeated the room had a smell—a distinct odor that filled her nose until it was difficult for her to breathe.

  Bub had grown smaller. He was so little, so forlorn, so obviously frightened, that she got down on her knees and pulled him close to her.

  ‘Darling,’ she said softly. ‘Oh, darling.’

  ‘Mom, I thought you’d never come,’ he said.

  ‘You didn’t think any such thing,’ she said, patting the side of his face. ‘You know you didn’t really think that.’

  ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘I guess I really didn’t. I guess I knew you’d come as soon as you could. Only it seemed like an awful long time. Can we go home now?’

  ‘No. Not yet. You have to stay here until Friday.’

  ‘That’s so long,’ he wailed.

  ‘No, it isn’t. I’ll be back tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day. And then it’ll be Friday.’

  Then the guard was back, and she was going out of the building. She hadn’t asked Bub anything about the letters or if he’d been frightened. There were so many things she hadn’t said to him. Perhaps it was just as well, because the most important thing was for him to know that she loved him and that she would be coming to see him.

  There was a whole day to be got through. And once she was back in the apartment, time seemed to stretch out endlessly in front of her. She scrubbed the kitchen floor and cleaned out the cupboards over the sink. While she was working, she kept thinking of all the reasons why Boots might not have the money for her tonight.

  She started to wash the windows in the living room. She sat on the window sill, her long legs inside the room, the upper part of her body outside. At first she rubbed the panes briskly and then stopped.

  It was so deadly quiet. She kept listening to the silence, hoping to hear some sound that would destroy it. It was the same kind of stillness that had been in the waiting room at the Shelter.

  She polished one pane of glass over and over. The soft sound of the cloth did nothing to disturb the pool of silence that filled the apartment. She turned to look at the blank windows of the apartment houses that faced her windows. They revealed no sign of life. In the distance she could hear the faint, tinny sound of a radio. The sky overhead was dark gray. A damp cold wind rattled the windows, tugged at the sleeves of the cotton dress she was wearing.

  Suppose that for some reason Boots didn’t have the money for her tonight? Doubt grew and spread in her, alarming her so that she stopped washing the windows, went inside the room. She collected the window-washing equipment, poured the water out of the enamel pan she had been using, and stood watching it go down the sink drain. It was black and syrupy, thick with the grime and dirt from the windows. She put the window cloths to soak in the set tub.

  He would cither give her the money or he wouldn’t. If he didn’t, she would have to figure out some other way of getting it. There was no point in her worrying about it. And as long as she stayed alone in these small rooms, she would worry and wonder and the knot of tension inside her would keep growing and her throat would keep constricting like it was doing now. She swallowed hard. Her throat felt as though the opening were growing smaller all the time. It was smaller now than it had been this morning when she tried to drink the coffee.

  If she went to the movies, it would take her mind away from these fears that kept closing in on her. But once inside the theater, she was abruptly dismayed. As her eyes became adjusted to the dimness, she saw that there were only a few seats occupied. She deliberately sat down near a little group of people—a protective little
group in back of her and in front of her.

  And the picture didn’t make sense. It concerned a technicolor world of bright lights and vast beautiful rooms; a world where the only worry was whether the heroine in a sequined evening gown would eventually get the hero in a top hat and tails out of the clutches of a red-headed female spy who lolled on wide divans dressed in white velvet dinner suits.

  The glitter on the screen did nothing to dispel her sense of panic. She kept thinking it had nothing to do with her, because there were no dirty little rooms, no narrow, crowded streets, no children with police records, no worries about rent and gas bills. And she had brought that awful creeping silence in here with her. It crouched along the aisles, dragged itself across the rows of empty seats. She began to think of it as something that was coming at her softly on its hands and knees, coming nearer and nearer to her aisle by aisle.

  She left in the middle of the picture. Outside the theater she paused, filled with a vast uneasiness, a restlessness that made going home out of the question. There was a beauty parlor at the corner. She would get a shampoo that she couldn’t afford, but she would have people around her and it would use up a lot of time.

  Walking toward the shop, she tried to figure out what was the matter with her. She was afraid of something. What was it? She didn’t know. It wasn’t just fear of what would happen to Bub. It was something else. She was smelling out evil as Granny said. An old, old habit. Old as time itself.

  It was quiet in the beauty shop except for the noise that the manicurist made. She was sitting in the front window, chewing gum, and the gum made a sharp, cracking sound. It was the only sound in the place.

  The hairdresser, normally talkative, was for some reason in an uncommunicative mood. She rotated Lutie’s scalp with strong fingers and said nothing. It was so quiet that the awful stillness Lutie had found in the Shelter settled in the shop. It had followed her in here from the movies and it was sitting down in the booth next to her. She shivered.