The Last Leaf of Harlem

by Lionel Bascom

  The last car drove off and Jamie came, not running, but slowly, the door not banging, but sighing shut. His face was very white.

  SHE SAW THE STILL FORK

  He said starkly, “Princess won’t move. She’s dead.”

  “Jamie, no! Are you sure?”

  When? Why didn’t you call me.

  Without reproach, he said dully, “You told me not to.”

  A child’s logic, a child’s unreasoning logic.

  “But I didn’t mean -- Never mind. I’ll go see. You’ve got to be wrong. It just isn’t true. This last she said aloud, not to herself, but to whatever gods there were who worked miracles for mothers of small boys, so the sin of their omissions might not forever lie like lead in their remorseful hearts.

  As she ran, her thoughts raced with her. Was she to blame? What was her misdeed? She had no power of clairvoyance. What should she have done when she glimpsed Jamie’s face at the window? Brought an end to her party, sent her guests home unfed an unforgiving? They were the mothers of Jamie’s friends. Had she been rude to them, they might have turned about and taken revenge where it would hurt her most, made a summer outcast of her son, calling their children away whenever he appeared, never letting them come to play.

  How can you choose between a child’s face at a window and a grown-up guest. How can you choose between a dying dog and an afternoon of cards? The choice is too bizarre. It is also unfair that a choice must be made. Mothers are people with the same disposition to error.

  She was almost there. She saw the still fork. She ran faster. She knelt down… She felt a heartbeat. Princess was still alive. She was just too sick to move and too indifferent in her near dying to respond to a small boy, who did not know what to do for her.

  But at Joan’s touch, her tail gave a feeble flick of life of hope, her pain-washed eyes lost a little of their glare. Here was the one who could help her if anyone could. Here was the tall one, the mother one, who was all-powerful, all wise.

  Joan lifted Princess gently into her arms.” Run get the keys to the car, Jamie. You know where I keep them. We’ll go straight to the vets. He’ll make her well…”

  He gave her a look of adoration. “You made her not dead. You made her come alive. Oh, mom, I knew you could if you tried.”

  He was gone for the keys before she could protest that she had no power to quicken the dead. He never would have believed her. He had seen with his own eyes a still form move for her that had not moved for him.

  She walked toward the car. Jamie came running with the keys. He looked up at her and Princess was looking up at her, their world secure and safe again because she had put them first in hers.

  The interlude of lunch and cards was over as it was for all the other mothers in their seaside town and in all the towns everywhere.

  The Long Wait

  News Syndicate, Inc.

  November 2, 1959

  Millie had finally outlived her family. At last she had her house to herself. Long ago Papa had left it to her because she was his spinster daughter. But except for a few weeks after Papa’s death, Millie hardly knew what it felt like to call her home her own.

  Those few short weeks of solitude were Millie’s brightest memory. All through Papa’s sickness the doorbell rang, the telephone rang or Papa was calling her to read to him, to rub his back, to fetch him a glass of water. When it was over she was too worn out to feel bereaved. All she asked was a little time of peace.

  In the days following her doorbell rang and she did not answer it. Her telephone rang, and she let it rig. She put her mail aside unopened. Tomorrow she would make a fresh start, pick up the pieces of routine living but every tomorrow her resolution weakened.

  Millie was on leave without pay from her firm. When she thought about returning to her desk with all those other desks around her and the constant clatter of tongues and typewriters she could not think beyond her dread of being snowed under.

  She was 45. She was single. Everyone else in the office was married, or engaged, or young enough to be hopeful. All of them talked don to her, or around her, as if she were not quite the same as they were, because she had no husband to prove it. To be part of them again and apart from them again took more mettle than Millie could muster.

  There was only one alternative and Millie mulled over it in her mind. The house had no mortgage. There were no monthly payments to meet. She could sell Papa’s car. He had never let her learn to drive it anyway. With her little money that Papa had left her, she might be able to manage until she was old enough for a pension.

  Millie began to live with excessive frugality. She had her telephone removed. She kept the house just warm enough to keep her teeth from chattering, and ate without ever appeasing her hunger.

  She lived in this homemade Eden for a month of happy exile. Then one day her doorbell rang and kept on ringing loudly, insistently, as if it would never let up. The sudden, shrill assault on her ears was unendurable. She rushed to the door and flung it open, words she did not know she knew ready to leap from her tongue.

  Surprise dropped her jaw before she could say them. Before her stood her oldest sister, Carrie (?), the one who had bossed so when they were children, the widowed one with no husband or young ones to make her stay at home.

  “Why haven’t you answered my lette4rs? Why did you take out your phone? I even called your office, and they said they hadn’t seen you. You might have been dead, and so might the rest of us for all it seemed to matter to you. What’s got into you? You’re thin as a rail and you look like a rag picker. You ought to thank your stars I came.”

  “Well come on in,” Mill (said) miserably.

  Carrie stepped inside and stared around. She said with satisfaction: “The house looks a sight, like a hermit’s hideaway. You’re not the kind to live by yourself. It makes you live inside yourself. With all my children grown and gone, and my landlord planning to raise my rent, there’s nothing to call me back home. You and this poor house need someone to take an interest.

  Carrie sent instructions to one of her daughters who packed her mother’s clothes and a few treasured keepsakes, and sold her furniture to the second-hand dealer who offered the best price.

  These matters disposed of, her trunks unpacked, her treasures set in place, Carrie rolled up her sleeves to run Millie’s life.

  There was nothing for Millie to do but resign herself. The pattern was unchanged. She was the last born, late in Mama’s life and Mama had tried to keep her a baby, never letting go her hand. Her sisters had treated her like a plaything, making her conscious that she would never catch up with them, that they would always be older and wiser. Papa was fiercely protective, warding off barking dogs, cats with claws, and eventually boys. As his other daughters married, Papa gave them away without feeling forsaken. Millie was the child he chose to be the staff of his old age.

  And now here was Carrie insisting that Millie didn’t know her own mind, and marching her off to her office with the blunt explanation that there was nothing Millie could do at home Carrie couldn’t do better.

  Christmas came and Carrie told Millie to (prepare) for a big surprise. Sure enough on Christmas Eve in walked their sister Josie, came on Carrie’s invitation to spend the holidays. Josie was so jolly, she was such good company that Carrie kept saying she hated to think of her ever going. Josie started saying wished she didn’t ever have to.

  Carrie asked then why did she have to? Wasn’t she in the way at her daughters?

  NO FURTHER PERSUASION NEEDED

  With no further persuasion Josie stayed on. And that left only their sister Louis outside the family fold. Letters flew between Carrie and Lou, Louis’ letters growing more and more homesick for Carrie’s cooking and Josie’s laughter and Millie’s quiet way.

  Carrie put her thinking cap on. Lou’s husband was planning to retire. They had only a home to tie them down that had always been too big for a couple without children.

  Lou could talk Harry into selling it, and be ready
to board the train the minute they found a buyer. A house full of people could live more cheaply than two, and lived a whole lot more happily.

  Millie’s life had come full circle. She slept on a cot in Carrie’s room, just as she had done as a child. When all her sisters started talking at once her smaller voice was rarely heard. With Harry, she was relegated to the piddling chores, Harry because no more was expected of a man, Millie because no more was expected of her.

  The one thing that sustained Millie through the years ahead was the comforting knowledge that as the youngest, with luck, she would live the longest.

  When that day of deliverance came, she was 60 (years) old. But she wasted no time rewriting the years that were over and gone. There was not that much time to waste. In a fever of haste, she locked her doors and pulled her shades, her private world restored at last.

  Millie drank deep of sweet independence and the after-taste was sour. The days began to drag, night brought no sleep, and silence drummed louder in her ears than all the lost laughter of her sisters. To live along because you want to be quiet is quite different from living alone because you have to. to do as you please has lost most of its meaning when there is no one who cares what pleases you.

  Millie put an ad in the morning paper, cleaned up the house almost as well as Carrie could have cleaned it, rolled up her shades, dressed in her best and waited.

  DOOR BELL RINGS

  That afternoon the doorbell rang, a sound as exciting as any she had ever heard. With racing heart, she opened the door. There stood a googol-eyed family of six, a man, a wife and four small children.

  The woman said breathless: “Is it true. I couldn’t believe it when I read your ad. She read it aloud “ ‘Woman old enough to be a grandmother wants ready-made family to live with her rent free in return for their affection.’ “

  “Is it a gag?” the man asked suspiciously.

  “Ads cost money,” Millie said with a spirit. “I’m too old to waste it on silliness.”

  “We’ve got a dog,” the woman added anxiously, “a very nice dog. We left him with our next door neighbor until we get settled here. You see, we just came and we’re bunking with my husband’s brother, and, of course with all of us, and all of them, it’s crowded. My husband’s going to in business with his brother. They’ve bought a garage. For you to let us live in your house rent free until the business starts showing a profit is like having a fairy godmother.”

  Grandmother,” Millie said firmly. “And if you’re going to live here, you’d better start calling it our house. Nobody ever called it my house anyway. My sisters thought what was mine was theirs, and it made us more of a family.

  “Well children,” said the woman, “go and kiss your grandmother.”

  They all lived happily together for the rest of Millie’s life. The children were always clamoring for stories, and Millie found her tongue. When she began to talk there was no end of stories to tell about Mama and Papa and Carrie and the rest. And in the telling Millie acquired a personality which gave her the identity that is come by no other way.

  The Birthday Party

  News Syndicate Co. Inc.

  April 29, 1960

  Summary: After years of bonding with Aunt Em, little Kathy Binney ventures out into the world briefly on her fourteenth birthday.

  Aunt Em and the Binney’s were summer neighbors. They had known each other before the Binneys bought the sprawling old house next door that had been untenanted for years. Their coming was providential. Aunt Em acquired neighbors when she most needed them, the summer after her husband’s death, when she had to force herself to go down to her cottage alone, sure that this quiet retreat and the shuttered house next door would accentuate her loneliness.

  Aunt Em found the Binneys already in residence, the lawn cut, new curtains sparkling and the trim spruced up with paint. The lively sounds of their occupancy were clearly heard above the groans of the tired old taxi chugging its way up the incline. Aunt Em was childless and her relatives were scattered. Nothing could have pleased her more than to find a family waiting for her, as in deed the Binneys were. There were six small ones, two of parent size, putting their best foot forward in the hope that a neighbor who had no children would not be too dismayed by people who had a pocketful.

  TOOK FENCE IN STRIDE

  There was only a low ornamental fence between the two properties, which the young Binneys literally took in their stride. They thought children were the business of everybody. They asked Aunt Em for drinks of water. They brought her their cuts and bruises to be bandaged. They fell in her flowerbeds when they were wrestling.

  Mrs. Binneys was humbly grateful to Aunt Em for her endurance. She had stair steps for children, the youngest just two and the oldest not quite nine.

  Kathy was the only girl. She was the one who was going on nine. She was also the one who gave Aunt Em. Mrs. Emmett -- her affectionate title.

  Kathy was soft-spoken and gentle. She was complete fragile and feminine as her brothers, even the youngest, were stridently male.

  Aunt Em’s little sun parlor became her sanctuary. She chose a little corner where she kept her favorite possessions. On rainy afternoons she and Aunt Em had tea parties for Kathy’s dolls.

  One day she said shyly and proudly that tomorrow was her birthday. Aunt Em naturally asked her what she would like for a present.

  “A tea party in our sun parlor,” Kathy said fervently. “And only girls invited, no old boys, not even brothers.”

  Aunt En couldn’t give consent until she had spoken to Kathy’s mother, who certainly had a prior right to plan her only daughter’s party. Mrs. Binney was delighted to hand over the reins.

  Aunt Em gave Kathy the first birthday party that Kathy did not cry through. It was just a small dainty tea party, with Aunt Em’s finest china and four prim little girls on their best behavior. None of Kathy’s gifts were broken before the party was over. Nobody fought in the middle of the floor. Nobody stole a bite out of the birthday cake before it was brought to the table.

  When it was over with Kathy’s face wreathed in smiles instead of streaked with tears, Kathy made Aunt Em promise that she could have her birthday party in the sun parlor every year forever, and never any boys, and only girls who didn’t like boys either.

  In the succeeding summers, Kathy’s acquaintance ship widened. But the charm of her party was its setting in the small sun parlor. She made her prim selection of guests from the slowly decreasing number of girls who still didn’t like boys.

  The summer of Kathy’s fourteenth birthday she did not seem quite the same to Aunt Em. Perhaps it was because she had grown so tall through the winter. The little girl look was gone. She still liked to sit in her corner of the sun parlor, but she sat there dreaming, answering without interest Aunt Em’s questions about school.

  HER VOICE TRAILS OFF

  Then it was the week of her birthday. Somehow

  Aunt Em knew that Kathy would not want a tea party. The very name suggested childish play. And when you are fourteen, you have put away childish things. Aunt Em wondered whether Kathy would like a buffet supper in the sun parlor, with the same kind of wonderful things to eat that grown ups had at theirs.

  ‘It’s just a suggestion,” Aunt Em said. “If you’d rather have another kind of party…” Her voice trailed off for Kathy’s own suggestion.

  “I was thinking of another kind of party,” Kathy said in that new dreamy way.

  Aunt Em felt a little disappointed, but she wanted Kathy to say what she wanted. Whatever she said, Aunt Em would be glad to do her bidding.

  But Kathy didn’t say. She rambled on vaguely. “Well, I asked my mother, and she said I could. I mean she said I cold have it over at my house. There’ll be more kids. My mother said you wouldn’t want the bother.”

  It’s never been a bother,” Aunt Em protested. “It’s always been a pleasure to give you a party. I’m sure we can stretch the sun parlor to hold as many girls as you like.”

 
; Well, I already told the kids to come to my house,” Kathy said. “So I guess its too late to tell them not to.”

  The day before the party, Mrs. Binney, out of earshot of Kathy, called across to Aunt Em: “You’d think this was Kathy’s first party. I’ve never seen her so excited. Let’s hope it doesn’t rain on the doings. I’ll be glad when her birthday’s over.”

  THEY STAMPEDE INSIDE

  Aunt Em knew that little girls half grown were no longer made of sugar. They didn’t melt in the rain. She supposed the young ladies were concerned about their clothes. At fourteen, their sub-deb finery was given loving care.

  But the girls didn’t come in party dresses. They came in shorts, trailing them were boys in jeans. To Aunt Em, there seemed to be an unending stream of boys no different from Kathy’s brothers except a little older. Yet Kathy flew to greet them as if they had come from another country.

  The feature of the party was a barbecue in the back yard, frankfurters were at least half burned except for those that got dropped in the dirt. There was a lot of horseplay and a good deal of showing off by the girls. Afterwards they stampeded inside for the cutting of the cake and the opening of the presents, some of which, judging by Kathy’s squeals and the whoops of laughter, were probably purchased by some unsupervised gift givers in the novelty shop that dealt in scary tricks.

  When the last celebrators rode away on (her) bicycle silence fell had that hurt the ears. Aunt Em set about getting her dinner, feeling a little sad that it wasn’t a buffet supper, feeling a little left out, knowing she could never take the play of anything as miraculous as a boy, but wishing had not forgotten her so completely.

  A knock pounded… “Aunt Em said “Come,” and in came Kathy, bearing a plate with birthday cake and dish with melted ice cream

  “Yours was the first piece of cake. It’s the biggest and I made mother save you some ice cream before she served the others.