The Last Leaf of Harlem

by Lionel Bascom

  She knew at once that it was Babe, or worse, that it concerned Babe, to whom something dire had happened her first time away from home and mother.

  She picked u the telephone and it was Western Union calling. An impersonal voice read a telegram to her. “Jut married to Bill Taylor. Please wish us well. Will see you soon.”

  Mrs. Dieterling, walking agitatedly back and forth, had to think hard to remember Bill Taylor. Then she remembered the little that Babe had told her about him. He worked at one of the local television stations in a minor job. Babe had been on a televised high school panel in her second semester. Every week this Bill Taylor had come to her school to help set up facilities for the broadcast. Until her telegram, Babe has never referred to him as anything but Mr. Taylor.

  After her first few weeks on the panel, she had no referred to him at all. How often had Mrs. Dieterling’s friend, the meddlesome one, remarked that still waters run deep. And how often Mrs. Dieterling had answered that if she meant Babe, Babe was as easy to read as a book.

  SHE PLAYED HER CARDS WELL

  When the couple returned from their brief honeymoon, Mrs. Dieterling was too happy to have Babe back to reproach them. bill had been sharing a flat with bachelor friends. Not too long out of college, not too long employed, he had no money to embark on marriage. Mrs. Dieterling still held high cards.

  She played them well. She could have invited the newlyweds to live with her, but she did not take this advantage of their improvidence. That very night Mrs. Dieterling moved to a small hotel and gave her house, as a wedding present, to the astonished pair, whose gratitude, not unnaturally, was boundless.

  To her habitual inquisitor who wanted to know what she would do without a house to take care of, Mrs. Dieterling replied, somewhat testily, that the very point of her taking a room was to keep her time free for Babe, if she needed a helping hand.

  Babe sent her a frantic call for help almost immediately. There was nothing she knew about keeping house or feeding a husband.

  Mrs. Dieterling came without delay, deftly undoing Babe’s apron, which was hers anyway, and tying it where it belonged.

  “You’re still a child,” she said soothingly. “You can’t be expected to learn a woman’s work overnight. It’s a lovely day. Go out and enjoy it. I’ll have everything done by the time you get back.”

  Mrs. Dieterling was always gone by the time Bill got home. He saw her only on Sundays when she invited the couple to dinner hat her hotel. She never asked them how they were getting along or if there was anything she cold do. Bill was fairly sure he had the pick of mothers-in-law.

  Despite Mrs. Dieterling’s delicate hints that Babe had years to be a mother, a baby was on the way before Babe was nineteen. Mrs. Dieterling took bill aside. he musn’t, she cautioned him, let Babe overdo or overtire. Her youth and inexperience could prove disastrous to both mother and child.

  At his job (the) next day Bill could not settle down. He brooded all morning, hating the thought of Babe being alone, praying that everything was alright at home. Finally and desperately he telephoned Mrs. Dieterling, who was sitting complacently by the phone, waiting for his call. In an embarrassed rush he asked her if she would mind staying days with Babe while he was away at work. Detecting no trace of reluctance in her assent, he asked her if she would stay nights, too, until the baby came.

  It was Mrs. Dieterling who brought young Bill home from the hospital. As the weeks added up, Babe, watching her mother take care of him, could never see more than her mother’s back, which someone, was always turned to her.

  Bill, seeing Babe’s inexpert handling of his son, confided to Mrs. Dieterling that he did not think Babe was ready to be left alone with the baby. since Mrs. Dieterling did not think so either, she remained in charge. When the second baby, Laurie, was born, young Bill was still in the toddler stage. Since Babe hadn’t learned to take care of one child, it went without saying that she couldn’t take care of two. Susie’s birth two years later made Mrs. Dieterling indispensable.

  AN EXCITING DISCOVERY

  When bill was going on ten, Babe was going on thirty. Mrs. Dieterling made a bright response whenever bill mentioned his birthday, but she shied away from any mention of Babe’s. This constant shying away slowly impinged on Babe’s mind. She wondered about it, then she thought about it, with her thinking daily growing more serious, until she came to the startling realization that she was no longer a girl in her twenties.

  She revealed this fact to her other as an exciting discover.

  Mrs. Dieterling, reacting as if from a blow, said harshly, “If it weren’t for Bill Junior, you would be. You don’t look a day over twenty, but your son will soon be ten. You can hide your age, but you can’t hide your children.”

  “You couldn’t hide me either,” Babe said quietly, her celebration still in progress. “That’s why you turned me into a doll. A doll stays a doll forever. We lived in a make-believe world, cut off from the real one where people grow old. But now I’m tired of lets pretend. I want to be my age.”

  And what happens to me?” Mrs. Dieterling said bitterly.

  “I need you more than I’ve ever needed you,” Babe said earnestly. “I’ve as much to unlearn as I have to learn. You’ve as much to undo as you have to do. I’ll suffer with growing pains. Your patience will grow thin. It won’t be easy for either of us. We’ll probably are in the process. But will you give it a try?”

  There was a pause, then Mrs. Dieterling had a most extraordinary sensation. She felt as if she were floating on air, weightless and serene.

  “Yes,” she said on a sigh of tranquility, “I’m willing.

  The Richer, The Poorer

  News Syndicate Co., Inc.

  May 14, 1958

  Over the years Lottie had urged Bess to prepare for her old age. Over the years, Bess had lived each day as if there were no other. Now they were both past sixty, a time for summing up. Lottie had a bank account that had never grown lean. Bess had clothes on her back, and the rest of her worldly possessions in a battered suitcase.

  Lottie had hated being a child, sharing her parents’ skimping and scraping. Bess had never seemed to notice. All she ever wanted was to go outside and play. She learned to skate on borrowed skates. She rode a borrowed bicycle. Lottie couldn’t wait to grow up and buy herself the bet of everything.

  As soon as anyone would hire her, Lottie put herself to work. She minded babies; she ran errands for the old.

  She never touched a penny of her money, though her child’s mouth watered for ice cream and candy. But she could not bear to share with Bess, who never had anything to share with her. When her dimes began to add up to dollars, she lost her taste for sweets.

  By the time she was twelve, she was cleaning after school in a small variety store. Saturdays she worked as long as she was wanted. She decided to keep her money for clothes. When she entered high school, she would have a wardrobe that neither Bess nor any one else would be able to match.

  But her freshman year found her unable to indulge so frivolous a whim, particularly when her admiring instructors advised her to think seriously of college. No one in her family had ever gone to college, and certainly Bess would never get there. She would show them all what she could do if she put her mind to it.

  She began to bank her money and her bank became her most private and precious possession.

  In her third year high, she found a job in a small but expanding restaurant, where she cashiered from the busy hour until closing. In her last year high, the business had increased so rapidly that Lottie was faced with the choice of staying in school or working full-time.

  NO OTHER AMBITION

  Bess had been in the school band, and had no other ambition except to play the horn. Lottie expected to be settled with a home and family while Bess was still waiting for Harry to earn enough to buy a marriage license.

  That Bess married Harry straight out of high school was not surprising. That Lottie never married at all was not really surprisi
ng either. Two or three times she was halfway persuaded but to give up a job that paid well for a homemaking job that paid nothing was a risk she was incapable of taking.

  Bess married life was nothing for Lottie to envy. She and Harry lived like gypsies. Harry playing in second rate bands all over the country, even getting himself and Bess stranded in Europe. They were often in rags and never in riches.

  Bess grieved because she had no child but having sense enough to know she was better off with out one. Lottie was certainly better off without nieces and nephews to feel sorry for. Very likely Bess would have dumped them on her doorstep.

  That Lottie had a doorstep they might have been left on was only because her boss, having bought a second house, offered Lottie his first house at a price so low and terms so reasonable that it would have been like losing money to refuse.

  She shut off the rooms she didn’t use, letting them go to rack and ruin. Since she ate her meals out, she had no food at home and did not encourage callers, who always expected a cup of tea.

  SHE LOOKED OLD AND INEFFICIENT

  The years after forty began to race. Suddenly Lottie was sixty and retired from her job by her boss’s son who had no sentimental feeling about keeping her on until she was ready to quit.

  She made several attempts to find other employment, but her dowdy appearance made her look old and inefficient. For the first time in her life, Lottie would gladly have worked for nothing to have some place to go, something to do with her day.

  Harry died abroad, in a third rate hotel. With Bess weeping as hard as if he had left her a fortune. He had left her nothing but his horn. There wasn’t even money for her passage home.

  Lottie, trapped by the blood tie, knew she would not only have to send for her sister, but take her in when she returned. It didn’t seem fair that Bess should reap the harvest of Lottie’s lifetime of self-denial.

  It took Lottie a week to get a bedroom ready, a week of hard work and hard cash. There was everything to do, everything to replace or paint. When she was through the room looked so fresh and new that Lottie felt she deserved it more than Bess.

  She would let Bess have her room but the mattress was so lumpy, the carpet so worn, the curtains so threadbare that Lottie’s conscience pricked her. She supposed she would have to redo that room, too and went about doing it with an eagerness that she mistook for haste.

  When she was through upstairs, she was shocked to see how dismal downstairs looked by comparison. She tried to ignore it, but with nowhere to go to escape it, the contract grew more intolerable.

  She worked her way from kitchen to parlor, persuading herself she was only putting the rooms to right to give herself something to do. At night she slept like a child after a long and happy day of playing house. She was having more fun than she had ever had in her life. She was living each house for itself.

  There was only a day now before Bess would arrive. Passing her gleaming mirrors, at first with vague awareness, then with painful clarity, Lottie saw herself as others saw her and could not stand the sight.

  She went on a spending spree from specialty shop to beauty salon, emerging transformed into a woman who believed in miracles. She was in the kitchen basting a turkey when Bess rang the bell. Her heart raced harder and she wondered if the heat from the oven was responsible.

  HER EYES SUDDENLY SMARTED

  She went to the door, and Bess stood before her. Stiffly she suffered Bess’ embrace, her heart racing harder, her eyes suddenly smarting from the inrush of cold air.

  “Oh, Lottie, It’s good to see you,” Bess said but saying nothing about Lottie’s splendid appearance. Upstairs Bess, putting down her shabby suitcase and said “I’ll sleep like a rock tonight,” without a word of praise for her lovely room. At the lavish table, top-heavy with turkey, Bess said “I’ll take light and dark both,” with no marveling at the size of the bird or that there was turkey for two elderly women, one of them too poor to buy her own bread.

  With the glow of good food in her stomach, Bess began to spin stories. They were rich with places and people, most of lowly, all of them magnificent. Her face reflected her telling the joys and sorrows of her remembering and above all, the love she by that enhanced the poorest places, the humblest person.

  Then it was that Lottie knew why Bess had made no mention of the finery, or the shining room or twelve-pound turkey. She had not even seen them. Tomorrow, she would see the room as it really looked and Lottie as she really looked and the warmed over turkey in the second day of glory. Tonight she saw only what she had (been) seeking, a place in he sister’s home and heart.

  She said, “That’s enough about me. How have the years used you?”

  “It was me who didn’t use them,” said Lottie wistfully. “I saved for them. I forgot the best of them would go without my ever spending a day or a dollar enjoying them. That’s my life story in those few words, a life never lived. Now it’s too near the end to try.”

  Bess said: “To know how much there is to know is the beginning of learning to live. Don’t count the years that are left us. At our time of life, it’s the days that count. You’ve too much catching up to do to waste a minute of a waking our feeling sorry for yourself.”

  Lottie grinned a real wide-open grin. “Well, to tell the truth, I felt sorry for you. Maybe if I had any sense, I’d feel sorry for myself after all. I know I’d too old to kick up my heels, but I’m going to let you show me how. If I land on my head, I guess it won’t matter. I feel giddy already and I like it.”

  Interlude

  News Syndicate Co., Inc.

  June 5, 1959

  She didn’t know why she was having twelve for lunch, except that she was indebted to twelve, and it just seemed easier to have them in one afternoon.

  It was that she didn’t like to entertain. It was just that it was never easy to fit company into her daily routine of taking care of a small boy, who didn’t know that she had any other reason for existence.

  Children made such demands on adults. They thought everything was within your capacity because you were bigger than they were. They believed you could be in two places at once, that you were blessed with two pair of hands, that you had a ready answer for no matter what was asked, plus time to spare for trivia.

  If only she didn’t let herself be persuaded that Jamie was old enough to have a puppy. But he had begged so hard and made so many promises, not that he hadn’t kept them. He was like a hen with one chick. the puppy absorbed his day and threatened to disrupt hers. Jamie discussed its care and feeding from sunup to sundown.

  And it was just a mutt. Just a mutt that a wily neighbor had given to Jamie, knowing his mother would not have the heart to make him give it back. She gave him a female, of course, the runt of the father-unknown litter, her feet too big, her legs too short, her tail a comic curlicue, her whole ensemble adding up to nothing but a boy’s first dog, that creative invariably impossible to describe, with whom the boy learns devotion.

  HE NAMED HER PRINCESS

  He named her princess, finding no other name better suited to her beauty, intelligence and charm. Like a mother with her first-born, or that hen with her one baby chick, he could not imagine how he had lived in the world so long without her.

  The screen door slammed. Joan sighed. She could hear Jamie coming on the run as if the moments of his life were more important than those of other mortals. “Mom,” he began with his usual breathlessness.

  She eyed him warily. She did not want to get involved with so much still to do.

  “What is it Jamie?” she said in a deliberately deflated voice to discourage a long story.

  “It’s Princess,” he said excitedly, “She’s too hot.”

  She put her hands against his flush cheek. “You’re too hot yourself. It’s an August day Jamie. It’s not a day to race and run. Now go sit in the shade and cool off. If you want to go swimming this afternoon, you’ll have to rest first.”

  “I’m not going swimming,” he said. “I�
�m going to stay home with Princess.”

  She should have known it. He was going to be difficult because she was having company. Any other day you couldn’t have kept him out of the water. He was jealous of this one afternoon she had reserved for herself in the long (years that had) come and gone. They’re coming at one. They’ll be gone by four. Three hours!

  Her voice was slightly hysterical. “Is it too much to ask for three hours to be with people my own age, to enjoy them without interruption? Is it too much to ask of you, Jamie?”

  He was staring at her, trying to sort her words into meaning, knowing only that he was not in her favor, and feeling frightened by her rejection.

  He said, to make her love him again, “No, it’s not too much to ask. You can ask me.”

  SHE FELT ASHAMED

  She felt ashamed. He was only seven. He was so innocent, so vulnerable. But just once this summer, just this once in a day that she would make up to him as soon as her guests were gone, could she not have a little while to laugh and talk with women like herself. Like herself, these women were taking these snatched hours to recapture a time gone, not regretted, but gone except for these illusory afternoons without children or husbands or pets claming attention.

  “You’ll be surprised,” she said gently, “how quickly time flies if you don’t keep an eye on it. It’ll be four before you know it. She gave a little start. “And it’ll be one before I know it. Jamie scoot! That’s my love. I’ll save you something special from the party.”

  Her guests came, looking charming, acting carefree and gay. The afternoon passed beautifully. Her lunch was perfect. The right people were paired for cards. The prizes were just what the winners wanted. Promptly at four, they rose to leave. Everything went according to plan. Joan wished she could do it more often. But, anyway, it was a lovely oasis.

  Twice she had glimpsed Jamie’s anxious face at the window, but no one else had noticed. She had blocked his face with her back.

  She was well aware her guests wanted no reminder; their children, too, were impatiently waiting for their mothers to stop this sill pretending that there were no chains that bound them.