Joyce Carol Oates - Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart

by Because It Is Bitter

  P.M. curfew in effect all weekend... young black men mainly are the disturbers-of-the-peace the cops are alert to, and disperse. And they disperse them, and others. And there are no arrests. And that's how John Elmore Ritchie dies and gets buried in Peach Tree Cemetery.

  This episode they talk about, the adults. For a while.

  The Peter B. Porter Elementary School on Chautauqua Street to which Iris Courtney transfers eight weeks into the school term the tearful consequence of a weekend move, Curry Street to the fourth-floor flat on Holland is an aging brown-brick building with an asphalt playground crumbling at its edges, fenced off at the rear from hillocks of ashy chemical-stinking landfill. You are not to play there. You are not to scale the fence andplay there. You are to play only on the playground.

  At recess the younger children surge shouting and screaming amid the swings, the rusted teeter-totters, the wicked monkey bars-where the nastiest accidents happen, or are caused to happen. They are white and Negro... but mainly white. The older children, fifth- and sixth-graders, stand about in good weather, eat their lunches out of paper bags on gouged picnic tables bolted to the asphalt paving, whites and Negroes at separate tables; and there one day is Iris Courtney the new sixth-grader, pale, freckled, shy, watchful, in the pretty red plaid jumper Momma bought her as compensation for the pain, as if there could be any compensation for such pain, of the sudden humiliating change of address, the new and utterly friendless terrain.

  Daddy has said you must learn to roll with the punches.

  everyone must learn. And better young than old.

  Iris learns. Iris is shy but Iris learns.

  Fairly quickly she makes friends with one or two girls who are accessible... then with a few more... and even a boy or two, the less pushy, less aggressive, less dirty-mouthed boys... none of them are Negro, of course, or, as it's said here, "colored"; the two groups keep to themselves most of the time, eating lunch in separate groups, playing together, talking, wisecracking, scuffling, fighting.

  .. and drifting homeward from school, since the colored children live generally to the north in the section of Lowertown near the river and the white children live elsewhere.

  Though there are exceptions, of course.

  Iris Courtney learns. Perhaps she is too watchful, a little coldhearted. Dropping one friend as she acquires another, willing to walk several blocks out of her way, after school, to accompany the popular girls in her class, the girls she knows instinctively to court - and who appear to like her: "Iris, c'mon with us."' In any case there is the excuse, should an excuse be required, of returning to the flat on Holland Street along a commercial stretch of East Avenue, browsing in store windows, buying herself a soft drink, skimming through magazines and paperback books in the drugstore until her head aches and her eyes begin to lose their focus... for when she gets home, to this new "home," neither Persia nor Duke will be there.

  Iris's father has a succession of jobs, in sales, management, "public relations." He is a brilliant salesman, naturally gifted, he has superior skills as a manager, and his experience with ex-mayor Barrow has given him considerable insight, as he says, into the workings, the mechanism, of certain not-entirely-public aspects of the public sector... but his heart is elsewhere. Yes and his brain too: he's a speculative man by temperament, not a gambler but a speculator, a thinker, philosopher, analyst. He is setting enough by for a stake, as he calls it, a stake in the future, for he hopes to invest in-but it's bad luck to talk of such things prematurely.

  Bad luck, good luck. "Luck."

  But a wise man makes his own luck. Says Duke Courtney.

  Persia is selling ladies' lingerie at Freeman Brothers, the largest, best department store in Hammond.

  In Mrs. Rudiger's sixth-grade class at Peter B. Porter Elementary School there is a tradition of many years: boys and girls under her instruction are seated not in alphabetical order exclusively but according to a highly convoluted system of private classification, and a student's position in the classroom is subject at all times to abrupt and unexplained changes. Good grades, though not necessarily intelligence; good "citizenship"; cleanliness and clean habits; size, height, sex, race... these are factors in Mrs. Rudiger's kingdom, which the seating chart with its slots for handily movable names authenticates. The half-dozen Negro boys are wisely separated, but their seats are inevitably toward the rear; the nicest, most docile, best-groomed Negro girls are seated as close to the front, in several instances, as the third row; the rest, girls, boys, all of them "white" but not reliably "white," are arranged so that, seated at the desk from which she rises only sporadically, massive doughyskinned Mrs. Rudiger-she must weigh two hundred twenty pounds, veers around on a metal-tipped cane like a listing elephant-can gaze out most directly, most immediately and agreeably, at the attractive faces of her favorites while keeping an instinctive scrutiny of the others, the potential troublemakers in particular. Like a mill worker in whom decades of labor have reduced the singularity of days to but one buzzing anesthetized sensation, Mrs. Rudiger inhabits a cosmology in which only now and then, and always unexpectedly, individual faces, voices, beings, souls emerge.

  Iris Courtney, for instance.

  The child is a puzzle to Mrs. Rudiger, and Mrs. Rudiger does not like puzzles. Clearly, she is a superior student; clearly a decently brought up, perhaps even well-bred girl in this motley mix; she gets perfect scores on most of the tests, hands in carefully prepared homework and special assignments, answers her teacher's questions in a bell-like voice... but rarely volunteers to answer; nor does she volunteer to assist Mrs. Rudiger in the subtle and indefinable ways in which certain of the other girls assist her, in the daily struggle to maintain discipline amid incipient chaos. In such classrooms in such schools there is a ceaseless drama of wills, as in meteorological crises between contending fronts of atmospheric pressure, and only the benevolent cooperation of the majority of the students allows order to be maintained... some species of order, however harsh and whimsical.

  In this, Iris Courtney is not one of the "good" girls.

  Suspicious Mrs. Rudiger understands that the girl only pretends to be shy and well-behaved. It is a pose, a ruse, a game, an artful befuddlement. In spirit, Iris Courtney sides with the outlaws.

  Her polite classroom smile is wickedly elastic and capable of shifting-with a quick sidelong glance at a classmate, whether girl or boy, white or colored, in the seat beside hers-into the subtlest of smirks. Her neat clean clothes, her decent shoes, her well-brushed fair brown hair, her posture, her outward deportment, the calm, composed, cool gaze of her pebble-colored eyes, all mask a wayward and mutinous spirit that reveals itself in unguarded moments: a shoulder's shrug, a rolling of the eyes, a stare of flat disdain as Mrs. Rudiger speaks or, with a creaking of the floorboards, heaves herself to her feet to write something on the blackboard. She would catch little Iris Courtney whispering or passing wadded notes or yawning into a cupped hand or doodling in the margin of her textbook, except the shrewd girl does not allow herself to be caught.

  One of Mrs. Rudiger's English grammar exercises involves sending students to the blackboard to write out sentences and diagram them; then aIling 'upon other st'udents to come forward and "correct" these sentences. But she quickly becomes wary of allowing Iris Courtney, despite the girl's talent for grammar, to stand at the blackboard where Mrs. Rudiger can't see her face at every instant... for she is convinced that the girl casts satirical glances out at her classmates, judging from stifled giggles here and there, downcast smiles, undercurrents of shivery amusement that ripple to the very bottom of the room... to those coal-black slouching boys-Hector, Rathbone, Rollins, "Mule"-who are Mrs. Rudiger's natural enemies and who, had she the power, she would erase from the surface of the earth.

  Ah, had she the power!

  Of course, Mrs. Rudiger, whose eyesight is uncertain and whose hearing is not so keen as it once was, isn't altogether certain that Iris Courtney is rebellious. Maybe the poor drained-looking child is just
nervous? Self-conscious and twitchy? Maybe the class, rousing itself from lethargy, laughs not with her but at her? For there are days in succession when Iris is, to the outward eye, as good a girl as Mrs. Rudiger's favorites; thus, gets moved toward the front of the room: third row center. White children on either side.

  Like the other teachers at Peter B. Porter, all Caucasians, Mrs. Rudiger believes in a formal division of whites and colored whenever possible. Her prejudices reveal themselves in only the most discreet of ways. When, for instance, the public school doctor makes one of his dreaded "surprise" visits to the school, it is primarily the colored students whom Mrs. Rudiger sends down to the gymnasium; her special favorites she spares the ordeal of a public health examination on the assumption that their parents can afford doctors of their own. At such times Iris Courtney finds herself herded along with the others-colored, poor-white, frightened and humiliated-worrying her feet will not be clean, her underwear grimy. She is hot with shame submitting to the scalp-lice check like the most slovenly of the Negroes... some of whom invariably do have lice. I hate, I hate, I hate, she thinks, not knowing what it is, apart from Mrs. Rudiger, she hates.

  Among the Negro girls it is Lucille Weaver who arouses her covert admiration. Lucille is quick-witted, funny, a natural adversary of Mrs. Rudiger's: with a droll pug face, very dark; a derisive laugh; thick black hair plaited and twined in braids heavy as rope.

  In gym class, Lucille is a terror: the white girls learn to step quickly out of her way. Iris would befriend her if only to placate her.

  except, how?

  Just before Christmas recess Mrs. Rudiger singles out both Iris and Lucille for embarrassment. It is a stratagem of some ingenuity.

  Perhaps it is even innocent. On one of her whims she shifts Iris's seat to the fourth row beside the clanking overheated radiators; Lucille Weaver's desk is beside hers. When Mrs. Rudiger gives an impromptu arithmetic quiz, it happens that both Iris and Lucille have the same answer, the correct one, to a problem involving fractions which no one in sixth grade is really expected to know; the coincidence is too much, and Mrs. Rudiger accuses Lucille of having copied Iris's paper. Stony-faced Lucille is called to the teacher's desk to explain herself and stands mute and appalled as the class stares and Iris Courtney writhes in her seat. Mrs- Rudiger says, "Lucille, how do you explain... ? How do you account for... ?" and long minutes pass. The room is silent except for the radiators.

  Lucille shakes her head; Lucille has nothing to say; it's impossible to tell if she is guilty or sullen or stricken to the heart, or simply confused.

  Perhaps she did copy the white girl's answer, without knowing what she did? Her usual arithmetic scores are barely passing.

  "Lucille," says Mrs. Rudiger, "did you copy the answer? If you tell the truth, dear, it will be all right."

  She regards the black girl, ugly as sin, from beneath compassionate eyebrows. It is part of Mrs. Rudiger's teacherly strategy at such times to suggest how authority is tempered with mercy.

  Lucille Weaver, staring at her feet, mumbles something inaudible.

  "Lucille, please don't lie," Mrs. Rudiger says calmly. "Of all things in heaven and earth do not lie."

  Lucille stands as if paralyzed. No one wants to look at her, yet there is nowhere else to look. Mrs. Rudiger is shaking Lucille's test paper as if the very paper gives offense. She says in a voice of fair mindedness, "If you insist you did not cheat, will you demonstrate your mathematical ability? On the blackboard? Right now? I will read off the problem to you, andLucille begins suddenly to cry. It is not an admission of having cheated but, being larger and more shameful, seems to contain an admission. The class shifts in their seats; there is a collective misery and relief: now it is over, now Lucille can sit down.

  Mrs. Rudiger scolds them for many minutes as Lucille sits hunched and weeping at her desk... no one even wants to look at her, especially not the good colored girls who are Mrs. Rudiger's favorites and who stare at their white lady teacher with terrified unblinking eyes.

  By the clanking steaming radiators Iris Courtney feels pure cold.

  Doesn't look at Lucille either. Thinking if she'd been brave she'd have said she cheated... but she isn't brave. Just sits there, shivering.

  And that afternoon on the way home from school Lucille and two of her friends shove Iris Courtney off a curb, knock her into a gutter of filthy rushing water, her saddle shoes soaked, knee scraped raw and bleeding, the palms of both hands; they shriek "white bitch, white asshole bitch" and cuff and kick and then they're gone, running down the street laughing, and Iris picks herself up, biting her lip not to cry, not to give them that satisfaction. "Dirty nigger bitches!

  Dirty!"

  And she says nothing to her mother, not a word.

  And next time she sees Lucille Weaver and her friends she surprises them with the ferocity of her attack, her sudden wild anger. You'd think the skinny white girl would be fearful but, no, she's mad as hell, has Persia's hot quick temper, and though it's surely a mistake to cross the playground to start a fight Iris rushes straight at Lucille and strikes her with her schoolbooks, and the girls scream, and scuffle, and punch, and kick, and another time Iris is knocked to the ground hard on her bottom stunned and breathless and her nose bleeding, but she sees that the black girl's nose too is rimmed in blood.

  And bright red blood it is, sweet to behold. Just like her own.

  1etters in official-looking envelopes, sometimes stamped REGISTERED MAIL: RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED, come for "Cornelius Courtney, Jr."

  Follow him from one address to another, one season to another.

  Bills.

  .. or the second notices of bills... or Internal Revenue, Washington, D.C. Duke cringes, seeing that name. That name!

  But snatches up the envelope, rips it open with a jaunty thumbnail, walks out of the room humming. Quickly, before Persia appears.

  Atop the bureau in Persia and Duke's bedroom is a photograph of Private First Class Duke Courtney, aged twenty, framed in silver, brown-toned, taken by Duke's brother, Leslie. In it, Duke has an angel's face.

  .

  . a truly beautiful face. A mere boy. The fact of this photograph of Iris Courtney's father before he was Iris Courtneysf'ther might terrify Iris if she allows herself to consider it.

  Like bones, bones, blood, pulsing muscle-hearts, walking erect in envelopes of skin like sausage.

  In a gay mood, her boogie-woogie mood as she sometimes calls it, Persia covers the glass, the boy's face, with damp luscious kisses.

  "My old honey," she says. "Yummy-honey. Better-looking any damn day than Errol Flynn."

  Duke runs an embarrassed hand through his thinning wavy hair.

  "Jesus! Wasn't he!"

  Names. Like the wavy bluish glass, its perfect transparency marred by secret knots and curls, in the vestibule fanlight of the old house on Java Street: altering your vision unawares.

  "Can you imagine me as 'Cornelius Courtney, Jr." for my entire life?"

  As if the insult to his integrity were fresh and not thirty-odd years old, Duke can work himself up to actual anger. His eyes drain to the color of ice and his nostrils look like black holes punched in his face.

  Iris laughs but quickly sobers, seeing that her father is in one of his serious moods.

  He tells her he changed his name as soon as he'd come of age; which is to say, left home. Joined the army, joined the war.

  "Thank God for the war!" says Duke. Though he was wounded in action has not one but two Purple Hearts to prove it he looks back, he says, upon his youth with real nostalgia. For one thing, the world was younger then.

  "Did you change your name in court, with a judge and all?"

  Iris asks.

  "I changed it in here," Duke says. He makes a gentlemanly fist and strikes it against his heart.

  Iris was told as a small child that she has no grandfather on her father's side of the family... no grandmother either. Duke Courtney and "his people" don't see eye to eye on life, thus why
beat a dead horse?

  It's the kind of question, appalling to envision, even a child knows isn't meant to be answered.

  Persia tells Iris she is named for something special: the iris of the eye.

  "I thought I was named for a flower," Iris says, disappointed.

  'An iris is a flower, of course," Persia says, smiling, "but it's this other too. Our secret. 'The iris of the eye."

  "The eye?"

  "'The iris of the eye." The eye. The eyeball, silly!"

  Persia snaps her fingers in Iris's eyes. The gesture is so rude and unexpected, Iris will remember it all her life.

  After this disclosure, Iris doesn't know whether she likes her name.

  Her favorite name at the time is Rose-of-Sharon, that of a pretty brown-skinned girl at school.

  Persia's name really is "Persia." Her mother named her; it's her authentic Christian name, in black and white right on her birth certificate.