The Last Leaf of Harlem

by Lionel Bascom

  Mother Love

  News Syndicate Co.

  April 21, 1942

  A sketch of two women who appear to be white, comforting each other, illustrated this story.

  Summary: Leila knows that her mother Pat did not want an heir, especially a girl…

  The maternal instinct, Leila always insisted, was something you had or you hadn’t. You didn’t acquire it by having a child. Leila felt that she could speak with authority for all her life she had had the examples of her mother and her maiden aunt.

  Pat -- Leila rarely called her mother -- was sweet and all that but she just wasn’t maternal. On the other hand, Aunt Clara had been mother in everything but name.

  From the first, Pat hadn’t wanted a baby. Leila had heard the story often from Aunt Clara. Pat had been planning her first trip to Europe. She and her husband Terry had never had a proper honeymoon, just a week that began and ended in a downpour and a touch of the grippe for Pat. For two years she and Terry had saved for a second honeymoon aboard. A week before their schedule sailing Pat was taken sick suddenly. Only this time it was not the grippe. It was a baby.

  Pat stormed and wept and said she did not want a baby. She wanted to go abroad. And now all that lovely money that she and Terry had saved would have to be spent for hospitals and doctors and diapers. For a month, Pat’s rebellion continued. After that she began to feel wonderful and excited. She made the most extravagant plans for junior’s future.

  Leila was born and Pat turned her face away and wept. A girl after all those months of waiting for a son. When she came from the hospital Pat was still not reconciled. It was quite two months before she stopped minding. If Aunt Clara hadn’t been on hand to love and want her, Leila was sure she would have grown up with all kinds of complexes. Clara had come to stay with Pat during the last weeks before Leila’s birth. Clara was Pat’s eldest sister. She had raised Pat and her other brothers’ and sisters after their mother died. She had been only sixteen but a born mother in every way.

  By the time Pat was of an age to marry, Clara was well along in her thirty’s. She had raised a house full of children. It had kept her busy and happy. Her father, until his death, had been her beloved companion. She had not lacked a man’s advice in the children’s upbringing. In addition, her father had considerately remained alive until his youngest child, who was Pat, was grown up and working. His insurance, wherein Clara was sole beneficiary, would provide her with a modest income for life. Marriage, therefore, had never held sufficient enticement to make Clara want to change her way of life.

  With her father’s death, and Pat’s marriage a year later, Clara became aware of her solitude and her spinster hood. She began to realize that her married brothers and sisters no longer came to see her. On birthdays and vacations they visited their in-laws because their in-laws were the grand parents of their children.

  When Pat wrote Clara a tearful little note, decrying her canceled trip and the reason for it, Clara felt the first surge of happiness she had known in three years. Pat was going to have a child, and Terry had no living parents to have first claim on it.

  Clara began to dream about Pat’s baby while Pat was still hating the whole idea. When Pat wrote that she wanted a boy, Clara wrote back that she hoped the baby would be a dear little girl. She wanted to make adorable dresses again. Did Pat remember her own dear little dresses? Pat did. She had always hated homemade clothes.

  When Leila was born and Pat could not bear the sight of her, Clara stayed on. Leila knew -- Aunt Clara had once told her -- that she probably would have died of neglect if her aunt hadn’t been there to care for her. Of course, her mother had nursed her but a child needed affection as much as food. After a month or so her mother had got used to her, and had even begun to view her with pride.

  It was a little selfish of Pat. Leila always thought to wrest her out of Aunt Clara’s arms just when Aunt Clara was beginning to think of her as her very own. Literally, of course, Pat assumed full charge of her child, because her full strength was restored and because she absorbed all the advice in the baby books and could follow it efficiently. That didn’t alter the fact that it was a terrific wrench to Aunt Clara’s heart.

  Pat didn’t seem to notice. She did not urge Clara to make her home with her. She took it for granted that Clara was ready and anxious to return to her own house. But to Clara, the thought of going away, and leaving Leila to Pat’s inexpert hands, was more than she could bear. She went in secret to the landlord and leased a small flat across the hall. She told Pat that she was too young to stay tied to a house all day and all night. She, Clara, would always be happy to mind the baby. Pat was more than grateful. She and Terry hadn’t been out in ages.

  Leila didn’t know who would have dried her tears when she was small if Aunt Clara hadn’t been next door with comforting arms and candy. Pat let her take the bumps from the time she first began to walk and lay in a sprawling sobbing heap. Through her first years at school when she sometimes came home in tears, Pat just said she must fight her own battles.

  For the first eight years of Leila’s life practically everything she wore was something Aunt Clara made. Pat was always too busy to sew. Sewing by hand took too much time. She would add also, unnecessarily, that she hated her own homemade dresses, and saw no reason for Leila to suffer similarly.

  When Leila was eight, she began hating homemade dressed too. Aunt Clara still thought the old styles were prettiest, and Leila grew self conscious about looking different.

  Leila was willing to admit that she adored the dresses Pat bought for her. But she never forgot that Aunt Clara said that anybody could go downtown and buy a dress.

  Pat had some good points. For one thing, she kept up with things, and could always answer Leila’s questions. She read a good deal. That was fine, but she never let Leila interrupt her. She said that she and Leila were two separate individuals and each should respect the rights of the other. Aunt Clara said that was stuff and nonsense. A mother ‘s life was inseparable from her child’s When Leila reached her teens, she began to grow a little tired of spending so much time with Aunt Clara. She found that it was nicer in her mother’s flat, where she could go off to dream in her room without Pat coming in every five minutes to ask if she felt ill. When she and her girl friends giggled over their fudge making, pat didn’t want to come into the kitchen to join in the fun. Pat didn’t mind when you raced out of the house, leaving her alone. She didn’t get excited when she saw you walking home from school with a boy.

  All of Leila’s friends adored Pat, though Leila couldn’t see why. They said she was understanding, not a bit like their mothers. Their mothers, they said, were as bad as Leila’s Aunt Clara, quite unable to grasp the idea that they were grown up.

  Leila felt that her friends were being unfair to their mothers. Only an unnatural mother like Pat would placidly accept her child’s growing up. Aunt Clara simply couldn’t. She cried on Leila’s birthdays because she was a year older and a year nearer independence.

  Leila told Aunt Clara about Larry before she told Pat. She kissed Larry good night, and flew across the hall to her aunt’s apartment. The ring on her finger felt unfamiliar and wonderful.

  Aunt Clara came to the door in her bathrobe. She looked at Leila’s shining eyes then down at the jewel on her outstretched hand. Aunt Clara burst into tears. There were not tears of joy. She was inconsolable. Leila held her in her arms, patting her into quiet, assuring her that she had not lost a niece, but had gained a nephew. It was obvious that Aunt Clara did not consider the gain of any importance.

  Leila went back to her own flat with a terrible letdown feeling. Aunt Clara had not wanted to share her happiness. Instead, she had wanted Leila to share her grief. Leila decided to go and wake Pat. If Pat was going to be troublesome, too, she might as well be troublesome now and get it over with.

  She called Pat into her bedroom. She heard Pat close her book. Pat would probably ask why she should be dragged away from her book to be shown a ring
that she could have seen some other time. Diffidently, Leila held out her hand.

  Pat gave a little aching cry, opened her arms. Leila felt happy and love inside them. Then Pat released her and searched her eyes and was satisfied. For a moment Pat’s lips trembled but before Leila’s own eyes could fill, Pat was making a joke about weeping and making wrinkles.

  “I didn’t think you’d take it like this,” said Leila. “I thought you’d either not care or you’d carry on like Aunt Clara did.”

  “So you told Clara first,” Pat said quietly.

  Leila dropper her eyes. “You know how she is about me,” she said hastily.

  ‘Yes, I know,” Pat said gently. “She lives for you.”

  “But I don’t want her to,” Leila burst out passionately, remembering that scene with Aunt Clara. ‘I’m only her niece, and any way, marrying isn’t the same as dying.

  “To Clara it’s almost the same. Don’t forget she raised me and my brothers and sisters, but she wasn’t our mother. When we married, our children weren’t her grandchildren. Sometimes we forgot Clara was on earth. I was never sorry to see you make up for our omissions.”

  “You let her love me more than you loved me,” Leila cried jealously.

  SO IT IS THAT CLARA CRIES FOR JOY

  “I let her spoil you,” Pat said. “That isn’t the same thing.”

  Leila looked surprised. “I guess it isn’t,” she said slowly.

  “I’ve always known,” said Pat, and her voice broke a little, “that you thought me an unnatural mother. Clara, bless her heart, never wanted to be married that she could not understand that I could love Terry so much that at first, your coming seemed an intrusion. Nor could she know that almost every woman wants to give her husband a son, not because she loves boys best, but because she thinks her husband does.”

  Leila gave a guilty start. Tonight when she had looked at Larry, she had thought about a son in his image.

  “If sometimes I seemed cold,” Pat went on, “it was because I was preparing myself -- and you -- for this moment. Clara would never face it. I faced it the first day you went to school. Every real mother does Leila. Every mother who places her child’s future self-sufficiency before her own present delight in that child’s independence.

  ‘If I ever have a child,” said Leila defiantly, “I won’t let Aunt Clara come near it.”

  “Don’t say that, darling,” Pat pleaded.

  “She’s an overindulgent maiden aunt,” said Leila firmly.

  In the flat across the hall, Clara lay sobbing into her pillow. Larry had a perfectly good set of parents and so had Leila.

  The Puppy

  May 9, 1942

  News Syndicate Co., Inc.

  Summary: John Barrow has never recovered from the death of his young son. His wife, Margaret, does not welcome a baby and goes into a shell after the boy’s death.

  When twelve-year-old Johnny Barrow drowned on a summer’s day, nobody thought John, Senior, would survive the shock. The two had been inseparable. They had been perfect companions.

  Margaret had stayed outside their charmed circle for Margaret had never wanted children, and had never forgiven Johnny for making her a mother. Yet it was she who went to pieces and turned into an old woman.

  John and Margaret Barrow had been married fifteen years. Six months after their marriage, John knew he should never have married Margaret and Margaret should never have married anyone.

  The young bride took her marriage lightly. She seemed to be delighted in her inability to make a bed decently, or broil a chop or hold a serious conversation. At first he had laughed at her bed making, and kissed the finger that she had cut trying to get a dinner out of cans, and teased her because she read nothing but the funnies and the ads, and caught her up and danced her around the room when she switched from a quiet symphony to a blast of jazz.

  WIFE’S BEAUTY, NO CULINARY HELP

  But when six months later she was still a sophomore on holiday, John decided that men were fools who want the honeymoon to last forever. The day that he was notified of a promotion and raise in pay, he went to see a doctor. He was afraid of his ability to handle his new job because of his steady loss of weight and nervous fatigue. The doctor found that he was suffering from nothing more than under nourishment, and advised him to get married and stop eating in restaurants.

  John went straight from the doctor’s office to a glittering restaurant where he was reproachfully assured that nothing served came out of cans. He ate two enormous dinners without stopping. Over coffee he thought with grim amusement of Margaret’s happy satisfaction that marriage was not making her fat.

  He felt wonderful on his way home, and stopped to buy flowers for Margaret. After all, he had got a promotion and a raise. It was a cause for celebration. For with a fat raise he was going to hire a cook-housekeeper. He knew that Margaret would be happy about that as he was. She would poutingly protest that he spoiled her. He should make her learn to do things, she would insist, letting herself look small and young and helpless. And he would feel that he was a brute to expect her to be anything but beautiful.

  Margaret’s beauty would make his heart miss a beat. She could make all other women seem shadows that his hands had no wish to touch. He could not yet live with out her; he was ready to admit. And if he lived with her, he would have to be the homemaker. A hired housekeeper would have to be his proxy.

  At the end of two years, Margaret’s beauty disturbed John only when other men drifted toward her and away from their plain wives. For Margaret had not matured! Her mouth still wore a childish pout. She was exactly the same as she was when they married, which was no credit to himself.

  He was lonely. He lived with a child whose whole life was spent in having fun. And, because Margaret was a child, her fun was entirely innocent, and he could not even expend his passion in jealousy.

  It was then that John began to want a son. He felt that where he had failed a baby might succeed in making Margaret a woman. It would be something smaller and frailer than herself, dependent on her for everything. Surely in that moment when she saw her son for the first time, Margaret’s eyes would flow and soften and her lips would curve into tenderness.

  But, Margaret’s eyes filled with angry tears, and she turned her face to the window. The nurse assured the discomforted father that many young mothers reacted like that. They got over it, she said heartily. John knew that Margaret would not. In a flash he realized that she was jealous. Her son’s tiny hand made her own look enormous, his doll-sized body made hers seem immense. It was a contrast she hated.

  Margaret was more thistledown (silly) than ever after Johnny’s birth. It was as if she sought by this means to prove to herself and the world in general that motherhood had not changed her. John was the stay-at-home, with his son when Margaret plunged back into gayety. John wheeled the baby in the park while Margaret went riding with unmarried friends who had no tiresome bassinet on the back seat. When she was cornered by expectant parents, the sent a frantic signal to John, who joined the conversation and talked with ease and eloquence about infant care.

  As Johnny grew it began to appear that he was to be like his mother in looks and like his father in says. It was a long time before he realized that the flyaway Margaret was his mother. Even when he knew, it did not matter. He continued to prefer the motherly housekeeper, and would go to Margaret only when coaxed with candy.

  But the housekeeper filled only a physical part of his life. It was his father who was the beginning and end of his inner world. His love for his father was an incandescent light that gave him a beauty beyond Margaret’s. What John could not kindle in Margaret for all his trying was a radiance in Johnny’s eyes whenever he lifted his face to his father.

  So Johnny took that place in his father’s heart; that Margaret had not even wanted to fill. And John was no longer lonely. Margaret’s persistent youth was no longer terrifying. Johnny was adult beyond his years. At eight he could talk about things with his father
of which Margaret hadn’t the vaguest notion. At ten a brilliant future was already predicted for him. John settled down to the long rich years of his son’s companionship. At twelve Johnny Barrow was dead.

  Margaret had never known death. She had never before been close to it. She had never been summoned by a creaming child to a stretch of white beach and given a lifeless body to hold. She had never had to tell a man that his son was dead through her selfishness. She had never had to lie awake living over and over that afternoon when Johnny flung in from a taxing game of tennis, and downed two glasses of ice-water, and she shooed him out to take a swim, because it was much too hot to have a boy tramping around the house.

  Everybody thought that Johnny’s death would very nearly kill his father. And everybody was shocked when Margaret seemed to take it harder. She collapsed at the funeral, and for weeks her life hung by a thread. When she was better, she had no interest in anything. She would weep silently for hours; she would talk in a mournful tone that set the listener’s nerves on edge. She drew her hair back into a tight knot, she went without makeup and her clothes hung shapeless from her thin body.

  She was not acting. The death of her son had thrust her violently into an adulthood for which she had never prepared herself. All of the years of her marriage she had always been less than twenty in her mind. Now she felt every day of her thirty-seven years. Because to her, thirty-seven was terribly old, she turned into an old woman.

  Margaret’s collapse and long illness and slow disintegration had allowed John no moment of loneliness in which to give release to his own grief. When he came home from the office, after a harrowing day of holding himself in, he could not remove his forced bright look. He had to wear it through the long evenings of Margaret’s expressed despair. When at last he let his mask slip off in his pillow, with Margaret lying awake and tearful beside him, he was not permitted the relief of a muffled groan.

  One night in late Fall, on his way to his suburban home, John drove past a kennel of wire-haired puppies. He had passed it innumerable times in the last years, but Margaret had been so much like a playful kitten, that he had never felt there was room for a frolicking puppy.