Like One of the Family

by Alice Childress

  It gets real embarrassin’ to sit around pretendin’ that you don’t notice it. Lots of times when I’ve been there he would come walkin’ in and say, “Where’s my dinner?” before he would say good evenin’ to anybody! And no matter how I try to recollect I can never remember a time when I could say I saw him laughin’!

  The other day she went in the kitchen when he called her, and I could hear him sayin’ “Where’s that ten dollars I gave you last week?” And Tessie was whisperin’ soft-like so’s I couldn’t hear what she was sayin’, but it was plain to see that he was mad ’cause she wanted to pay out two dollars for club dues. When I left, I said, “Good night folks!” and he says, “mumble-mumble-night.” Like it was killin’ him to even do that much. He acts that way with everybody but mostly with Tessie!

  I’ll never forget the time when I went out with his brother Wallace! He was supposed to be takin’ me out on this bang-up dinner date! Honey, as soon as we got in the restaurant he says, “The hash is real good in this place, they make it better than any other restaurant.”

  …. No, dear, I wasn’t payin’ him no mind! I hadn’t asked him to take me out to dinner! Neither had I told him to pick out a expensive restaurant, so I went ahead and ordered me some spring lamb chops with a salad on the side! I can stand a broke man but I dearly detest a cheap man! And he was just pure cheap!

  Next thing he started lookin’ in his newspaper for a good movie and the way he told it everything that was playin’ at the high-priced picture houses was no good, but there was a couple of fine things showin’ in the neighborhood places! So, since he’d asked me what I wanted to see, I picked out the exact one I had in mind. However, I didn’t pick it out ’til I had ordered me a cocktail!

  Then you should have heard him twistin’ and turnin’! Started talkin’ ’bout how long he’d been alone since his wife died and how he really needed somebody and things like that. I just sat there sippin’ and noddin’ in a understandin’ way, but every once in a while I’d take a peek at my watch ’cause it was gettin’ mighty close to bein’ too late to catch a movie.

  Next thing you know, he starts talkin’ about wastin’ our time. He says, “We’re both grown and there ain’t no need of us wastin’ each other’s time if we’re not gonna get anywhere!” … Honey, I caught on real fast! He was lettin’ me know that he didn’t want to go to the movies unless I would come on out and declare how obligin’ I was gonna be in the love-makin’ department! … So I say, “It’s gettin’ late Wallace, I have a splittin’ headache and I think I’d better get on back home before we waste any more time or money!” And that was that! … Yes, he took me home and when we got to my door he says, “Do you want to give me a little kiss?” I just looked at him real calm-like and says, “Get off of that act, Wallace. You can tell whether somebody wants to kiss you or not, you don’t have to ask! Now look at me and tell me whether I want to kiss you or not!” He didn’t say another word, all he did was turn around and go on home!

  I hate any man to be creepin’ and pinchin’ along tryin’ all kinds of tricks and foolishness with me…. Of course, he had money, Marge! He has been workin’ on a good steady job for the last fifteen years and ain’t never missed a day’s work in all that time…. Tessie was the one who really talked me into goin’ out with him ’cause she told me I ought to go out with a “good steady fellow who has a reliable job.”

  I guess she was takin’ a dig at Eddie ’cause he is a salesman and don’t seem to be doin’ so hot at sellin’ them race-records and books. But I’ll take Eddie any day and you can have Wallace! Eddie is the kind of man I like. He doesn’t play any games or try no four-flushin’!

  Whenever Eddie’s in town I have a grand time and even a letter from, him is worth more than a whole evenin’ with somebody else. Sometimes he will say, “Well, honey, there ain’t but five dollars in the cash register so let’s try and stretch it into a good time!” And he can figure out a lot of swell things to do. We will go dancin’ and then have a few beers and take the subway home or sometimes walk even! But the whole time we’re laughin’ and talkin’ and enjoyin’ ourselves so much ’til you couldn’t believe how happy I feel!

  Some Sunday afternoons Eddie is broke and then we go walkin’ and he will take me up to a pawnshop window and turn it into a regular movin’ picture show…. Well, I mean he will make up stories about the things that he sees in the window and try to figure out who they belonged to in the first place and how they happen to be in the pawnshop window now…. Oh, foolishness stories like, “I see where some cat had to pawn his saxophone, now why do you think he did that?” And I’ll say, “To pay his room-rent!” And he’ll say, “No, he got a letter tellin’ him that If he came to East Jalappi, there would be a fine old steady job waitin’ for him, so he hocked his horn in order to buy a ticket, only when he got off the boat he didn’t have no horn to play so the poor old guy is hangin’ ’round Jalappi tryin’ to save up enough money to buy him a second-hand horn, and this horn is hangin’ here in the window tryin’ to tempt some youngster into takin’ up music so that he can get to Jalappi some day himself!”

  I like him to tell me them pawnshop stories. He can tell electric-iron stories, radio stories, ring stories, suitcase stories, silverware stories, and all manner of tales about cocktail shakers, toasters, suits and overcoats, cameras and all such things as that!

  Eddie will do me favors, too. Like goin’ downtown to buy things that I don’t have time to pick up, washin’ dishes for me, mindin’ my cousin’s kids so’s she can go to church and a whole lot of other things like that. But what I really like about him is that sometimes when I ask him to do a lot of things, one comin’ right after the other, he will say, “You runnin’ a good thing in the ground, and furthermore I don’t feel like it, what do you take me for?” I’m glad when he does that, too, ’cause just like I don’t want nobody walkin’ all over me, I sure wouldn’t have any use for a man that’s gonna let people trample him!

  Marge, you know Eddie has loaned me money, too. But the first time he tried to borrow some from me, I got real scared ’cause you do hear so many stories ’bout how men try to take advantage of women sometimes by gettin’ their money away from them…. Yes, I loaned it to him, but I worried him to death until I got it back. When he returned it, he said, “Whew! I don’t never want to borrow nothin’ from you no more ’cause it’s too much of a strain!”

  I felt a little bit shamed about that, but now we don’t never have that kind of trouble no more ’cause all the time we know we can depend on each other no matter what happens! … Yes, we have been talkin’ ’bout gettin’ married, but neither one of us got enough change to start up family life in the way we’d want it to be, and you know how you can start puttin’ things off ’til everything is shaped up just right.

  But I get to thinkin’ awful deep sometimes. And when Eddie is away, I start picturin’ his easy-goin’, happy ways, how he likes children, how he looks at me so that I don’t have to wonder how he feels, how he never had to ask for a “little kiss” but knew when was the right time to kiss me, how he loves people, how he hates meanness and ugliness—how he wants me to get out of other folks’ kitchens, when I think on all of that and stand him up side of those steady, reliable guys like Clarence and Wallace, it seems like Wallace and Clarence don’t look so hot!

  Yes, I think I will marry Eddie ’cause the only, single thing we will have to worry about is bein’ poor…. Yes, that is a pretty big thing to have to worry about all the time, but if a man gives you all of the very best that he has to offer, all the time, what more could a woman want? …

 

 

 
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