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

by Because It Is Bitter

  e goes on to talk of experimental photography, it's a way of erasing the considerable strain between them; he sits on the edge of

  Graice's bed and pulls her onto his lap, but gently, with a kind of playful formality, for they've never been quite so alone together, never so intimate, or confronted with the prospect of intimacy. The tall milk glass lamp on Graice's bedside table casts a warm, halolike glow; the fluted shade, beige with an undercurrent of pink, glows too, with a suggestion of radiance suffused in flesh. Alan kisses Graice on the lips for a long tremulous moment.

  Then he says in a mock whisper, Should I be here? Aren't there university regulations against men in rooms? Graice says, This isn't university housing, this is a private house; I'm what is called an 'upperclassman.

  You are, darling! You are! Alan murmurs, as if making an oblique joke. His arms around her are both tight and tentative and Graice is thinking, Doesn't he love me? Doesn't he want me? and Graice is thinking, How happy I am, I do love him, and Alan kisses her again, soft probing kisses like questions; they kiss several times and Graice feels his quickly mounting excitement, she has slipped her arms around his shoulders and they're breathless, laughing a little, children caught up in a forbidden sort of play. as if they're in this room together in their elders' house, hidden away, door defiantly locked yet still, inescapably, in their elders' house. Too swift to be resisted, the thought of Jinx Fairchild passes through Graice's mind, for all men in their physical presence define Jinx Fairchild in his absence; she thinks, Oh, Jinx, how I love you, but no, she is thinking of Alan Savage; she touches his hair, his fine lank hair, she strokes the nape of his neck, they're whispering and laughing together to forestall a terrible gathering urgency like the wind rising outside lashing the window with rain on the very verge of sleet, and she's thinking too of the ardent young man who'd hoped to marry her, a long time ago it seems, a year ago in the exigency of this moment she has forgotten his name but she recalls that he too was sweetly patient, gentlemanly, yet affectionate, desiring her he'd made a tentative sort of love to Graice Courtney in this room, the two of them lying clothed on Graice's narrow bed on top of the corduroy cover, kissing sleepily, whispering to each other whatever words it is that lovers whisper to each other at such times, wistful and insubstantial as smoke, forgotten almost immediately. And that young man had been respectful of Graice Courtney too, as if he believed her fragile, literally fragile boned, breakable; he'd sensed the resistance in her, not girlish alarm at the violation of her body but womanly disdain for the agent of that violation, as if all that this young man might offer her, all the passion and tenderness and beauty of his maleness, were being re objected beforehand for no reason either of them might name.

  Alan Savage whispers, How lovely you are, how sweet, how.

  But he senses too, like his predecessor, the stiffness deep inside her bones, the steely cold behind the soft pliant warmth of her lips.

  He says, after a moment, I suppose I should leave Adding, as if to exonerate them both, It's late. You're tired.

  And they're so obviously waiting for me back at the house.

  Graice protests, Oh, don't leave yet, Alan, it's so lonely here.

  Alan says, laughing, that laugh that dispels all regret disappointment , hurt, Somehow, Graice dear, this doesn't strike me as a lonely place.

  What do you mean? No one ever comes here.

  That's what I mean.

  On his feet, Alan Savage prepares to leave, thrusts his arms into the coat sleeves out of which he'd drawn them shortly before; he says he'll telephone Graice tomorrow, early evening, and will Graice be home? I never go out in the evening except with you, Graice says, except to eat, on Marshall Street.

  Her eyes are heavy lidded, her hair slightly disheveled but stiff, springy, resilient like the finest of wires. There's a blood swollen look to her mouth from so much kissing, yes, and her lipstick is worn off too as if in evidence of the utter conventionality, thus rightness, of their courtship.

  At the door they kiss another time. I love you, Graice, Alan Savage murmurs into her hair, and I love you, Alan, Graice Courtney murmurs into the rough wool of his overcoat.

  She accompanies him to the stairs, she kisses him happily on the cheek, waves good night as he descends smiling and squinting up at her, his forehead deeply furrowed as he passes beneath her, his baby fine brown hair showing its thinness in the cruel overhead light.

  Graice feels a wave of affection for him. She wonders if that shade of brown, not dark, not light, the hue of damp sand, was the shade of Byron Savage's hair before it turned gray.

  How happy HOW HAPPY I AM. You didn't think, did you, that I COULD BE SO HA PP Y

  It's a white November sky, all rags and tatters.

  Saturday morning, all these things he's supposed to be doing, still Jinx Fairchild finds himself standing at the wire mesh fence watching neighborhood kids shooting basketsit's the schoolyard behind the Bank Street Junior High, five black boys thirteen, fourteen years old, skinny, fast, loud laughing but it's Sugar Baby Fairchild he sees among them, not Jinx Fairchild, the snaky quick black boy who's a showoff dribbler on the cracked asphalt then turns serious, whirling around suddenly and leaping straight up into the air and sinking the ball through the netless rim with a perfect hook shot, all one fluid motion.

  Jinx Fairchild links his fingers through the wire mesh, leans there, dreamy eyed, staring. can see Sugar Baby as if it had been just last week, not years agoman, he wouldn't want to calculate how many years ago his brother in the smart Hammond uniform, green and white, that silky look to it, the graceful white 8 on his jersey. He'd be hardly sweating, the other boys panting like dogs.

  And the white sneakers that's the sign of pride, flawless white, the slightest blemish you touch it up with polish, and white ribbed socks to mid calf you make sure don't slide down. Hey Sugar Baby!

  Hey Sugahhhhh! You the sweetest, baby! Doan you know it, man, you the SWEEEEEETEST!

  Strange how it's Sugar Baby he sees in the schoolyard, never Jinx Fairchild. Never Iceman. Like there hadn't ever been, even in the newspaper photographs, any Iceman Fairchild.

  Bobo Ritchie's in, didn't wait to be drafted.

  Packey Tice: him and his brother both, joined up with the navy.

  And Hector Chatwin who was on the football team at school, fullback, crazy mean, a year behind Jinx Fairchild, big square jawed black Hector, half his teeth knocked out so he'd grin sly and weird like a Halloween pumpkin his momma waylays Jinx Fairchild outside the grocery store, telling him Hector's in the U. S.

  Army which is why nobody's been seeing him on the street, she's steamy breathed, so proud, yakking away showing Jinx snapshots from out of her wallet, big black Hector Chatwin you'd hardly recognize in his dress uniform, visored hat, gloves, smiling, showing gold gleaming teeth, smart and composed and damn good looking like Sidney Poitier in Lilies of the Field. Says missis Chatwin, he's shipped out to this Veet nam where the fighting is and where he'd been wanting to go; you know Hector. That's over somewhere by Japan. mister Kennedy says ain't going to last much more'n a year, the war, so Hector all riled up, you know Hector. Says missis Chatwin proudly, See them teeth? They paid for em.

  Jinx examines the snapshots out of politeness, but he is impressed.

  .

  can't help but be, seeing that asshole Chatwin looking so good. Like he'd been made to grow up overnight and it suits him.

  Seems Jinx Fairchild is always seeing that damn billboard poster upside the East Avenue post office, Uncle Sam in his cartoon re d white and blue uniform pointing his crooked finger I WANT YOU, and Jinx knows it's bullshit but his eye is drawn to the giant poster and the pointing finger like your eye is drawn to a water stain in the ceiling in the shape of something you can't figure out but it's something you know you know. Taking the crosstown bus to work so he's facing the billboard every morning, lunch bucket on his lap like back in elementary school, his eyes lift, startled, hopeful. Jinx Fairchild is a married man and a fathe
r now, won't be drafted unless there's total war, but I WANT YOU makes you think somebody wants you at least, and like Bobo Ritchie said, It's something, ain't it? Not just fucking nothing?

  One day he wakes up, Jinx Fairchild is twenty four years old.

  Now Sugar Baby is dead, he's the oldest boy in the Fairchild family.

  He's the boy.

  Except he isn't a boy, he's a married man, always slow to sink in when he wakes in the morning, he's a father three times over, unbelievable as that seems to him two little boys of his own, one boy Sissy had with another man, when she was sixteen , no matter if he and Sissy aren't always living together like man and wife he's the legal father of those kids and he sure does love those kids like he never thought he had it in him and there's Sissy, he can't quite get into focus in his thoughts does he love the woman or just ache with missing her when she's gone off and he's left bitter and jealous and bewildered and shamefaced or maybe is it just fucking that binds them together. Sissy Weaver is Sissy Weaver that any man would go through a whole lot of shit for no matter she's had three babies and drinks too much and pops those nasty little diet pills.. or maybe Jinx truly hates Sissy, the bitch, the lying lying bitch, secretly relieved when she went off with her old boyfriend Meldrick leaving the kids with her mother, except Jinx Fairchild was shamed in the neighborhood, drunk and talking loud of ways he'd murder them both, and Minnie says, You know they ain't worth it, honey, them nigger trash ain't worth it, and Jinx screams he knows, he knows, but what's he going to do?

  Fucking Hammond so fucking small, everybody in everybody else's face, what's a man going to do?

  One of Jinx Fairchild's most desperate drunks, he got it into his head he'd join the Peace Corps, maybe his high school diploma would be enough, and certain of his gradesused to be, Jinx Fairchild did get high grades and he'd be sent to some African country, Nigeria let's say, Ethiopia, where he'd devote himself to teaching and helping people worse off than himself, Jesus those poor Africans are a whole lot worse off than himself so they'd be certain to admire a young black American like Jinx Fairchild, never guessing who he is or where he comes from.

  . the shamefulness of his own life. And if he got one of those terrible African sicknesses like malaria, leprosy, maybe he'd die over there, like Medgar Evers he'd be the center of some TV footage and Minnie would take pride in him again and Sissy would be brokenhearted regretting her deceitful ways. Man, you got to figure now's the time!

  Now's the time!

  John F. Kennedy opening the White House to Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, photographed shaking Reverend King's hand, united with the black man to change the cruel face of the United States forever! In the Blue Moon Lounge Jinx Fairchild was acting the fool, carrying on: I got a dream too! I got a dream too! I got my rights and I got a dream too!

  and the winos hooted and laughed and pounded on the bar: You tell 'em, Iceman! Yah, you tell em, Iceman, you the one!

  Except a week later Sissy comes trailing back, and they work things out, and Jinx Fairchild acknowledges, yes he's hard to live with especially since Sugar Baby, and that humiliation last year about Negroes finally being let in the UAW local, then getting laid off almost as soon as they started work, nasty mood half the time says Sissy and heavy hearted the re st of the time says Sissy, ain't no goddamn fun any longer says Sissy, cutting her bronzy black eyes at him, and you young yet, honey, what you gonna be by the time you ma daddy's age? dead?

  And it's just the two of them. Stone cold sober staring at each other at three in the morning so it chills Jinx like the touch of death, the truth of what the woman is saying, and the scared look in her eyes like maybe she does love him only just doesn't know what to do about him.

  .

  driving her off because he can't love her.

  Twenty four: how you get so old, so fast?

  Naw, he knows he isn't old, but neither is he young.

  Gets winded like he'd never done playing basketball, like say he's been running. And when he's worn out or has lost the thin tight thread of his concentration, like at work, at McKenzie's, the machine shop banging and clattering inside his head, he'll walk with a slight limp, favoring his right ankle where it was broken so bad.

  As long as he's mindful of it, though, he never walks with the slightest sign of any weakness.

  He hasn't touched a basketball since that night.

  Jesus Gawd how'd my boy hurt himself so bad. Jinx Fairchild's father grieved for weeks.

  And Minnie.. never mind about Minnie.

  Sugar Baby kept his distance, never asked questions. Sugar Baby let his brother alone forever after that.

  April 1958, the state semifinal game against Troy, and Jinx Fairchild lost his balance falling, nobody's fault but his own; the Hammond people tried to fix the blame on one of the Troy players elbowing Jinx in the ribs after he sank his shot but Jinx says it wasn't anybody's fault, he came down wrong, hit his ankle at the wrong angle so his full weight crashed down on it, on those breakable bones.

  He'd tried not to scream when they lifted him. Coming off the court he fainted.

  Weeks and weeks with his foot and ankle in that heavy cast, slamming around on crutches, into hot weather, and finally when the cast was re moved he'd wake at night sweating, feeling it still on his leg, the clammy weight of it like somebody's fingers closed over him pulling him down, down.

  Folks in Lowertown who know him or know of him continue to say to this day, Oh, Jinx, oh, Iceman, weren t that a shame, that was the saddest saddest thing, and Jinx makes an effort to be polite or maybe laughs, saying, naw, he never thinks about it none any more; basketball's for kids and you got to grow up sometime.

  But you was going to college too, wasn t you, Jinx?

  Like I say, you got to grow up sometime.

  And when Minnie brings the hurtful subject up as Minnie invariably does, moaning as if the loss were fresh, not years old, and her boy still her boy not another woman's husband, Jinx points out in a reasonable voice that neither Frankie nor Dwight would be born if he hadn't broken his ankle, if he'd gone off to college. and Minnie is crazy about her grandsons, isn't she?

  So that quiets his mother down. For a while at least.

  About Minnie Fairchild: since Sugar Baby's death she seems to be drinking more than she used to, drinking and hiding the beer bottles like she's ashamed, surely she is ashamed, and she's gaining weight so she's now quite a stout lady and her old nice clothes don't fit but she doesn't want to get new nice clothes, reasoning that she'll slim down some and won't have any use for the new large size clothes so in the mean time she's wearing old baggy slacks and blouses and sweaters and tent-like dresses one or another of her neighbor friends have given her. Ceci, who's married now, lives a few blocks away, shakes her head disapprovingly when she sees her mother in the street, complaining to everyone that Momma's turning into the very kind of black woman she'd always been so scornful of, all bloated up from eating starches and drinking beer. and her arthritis is so very painful. and she's got female problems too embarrassing to explain to the clinic doctor, this white man who doesn't take any time with his black patients, maybe not with his white patients either for all Minnie knows, acting like there's a bad smell in the air when he's examining her, and his face, my God d'you know who he looks like, he looks exactly like Pruneface in the Dick Tracy comic strip, that's who! Minnie throws back her head, roaring with laughter, breasts shaking. but Lord, she's having a streak of bad luck with her finicky white ladlesseems you just can't please them no matter how hard you work, scrubbing their floors and tubs and nasty stained toilets and say you leave a square inch of kitchen tile unpolished or a single dustball under a bed or forget to do some laundry and they're right down on your ass and Minnie Fairchild's of an age now she answers back sometimes, mumbling under her breath Hell with you white bitch or Who you mouthin' off to white bitch or French kiss ma ass white bitch, and even if the white ladies don't pick up every syllable of Minnie's words
they surely register Minnie's intention so she doesn't work as frequently or as regularly as she once did, it's a despairing thing she's about ready to apply for welfare aid like she swore she'd never never do but she isn't going to take money from her children cause they don't have any to spare but at least not working she isn't miserable hustling herself on and off those endless Hammond city buses where the drivers sometimes call her Grandma that fat lipped nappy headed nigger driving the 8 A. M. uptown is the worst, making unfunny jokes at Minnie Fairchild's expense so staying home she's better off, she can nurse her ailments, and there's day long TV, and she's on the telephone complaining to whoever's thereher married daughters, her girllriendssometimes, speech slurred so he hardly recognizes who it is, she'll call up Jinx in the evening just to talk, talk, talk: worried sick she says about the future of him and Sissy Weaver never does Minnie call her daughter in law anything but Sissy Weaver, as if Jinx never married Sissy, only took up living with her and could move out again any time he wants and those innocent little boys. yes and she's worried sick about Woodrow too, that bad hacking cough of his and stomach problems he refuses to discuss nor will he go to the clinic with her just puts his trust in the Lord he says Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings at the Second Coming African Church of Christ the Redeemer that man is happy, face lit up and eyes shining when he comes home.