by Dorothy West
Following through, she flew down one Saturday, and looked up a real estate agent. She found what she wanted, a lovely, sprawling house, which she could take care of herself with occasional local help.
The maple tree was what really decided Liz. She did not think she had ever seen a tree with more breathtaking grace and grandeur. She said so to the agent, and he agreed, though he was sorry to have to tell her that the tree was not on her property.
Her neighbors, the Comdens, he went on to say, had made the same mistake when they bought their cottage a few years earlier. It was the tree that had made up their minds for them, too, or at least Mrs. Comden’s mind. But, fortunately, Mrs. Comden had not changed her mind when she found out that the tree was not hers, and he hoped Mrs. Terrell wouldn’t either.
The confusion, he explained, was due to the fact that the tree stood alone on a very small lot. Because the Comden place and the soon-to-be-Terrell place were much larger in area, the small lot in between the two, barren of buildings, seemed part of one or the other properties.
Many years ago, there had been a house on the lot, with a sapling growing beside its front door. When the owner died, his estate had gone to a distant cousin, who made his home in California. The tax on the tiny house on the tiny lot was so trifling that the cousin preferred to pay it rather than sell the property.
Over the years the house deteriorated, while the tree grew apace. The cousin died, but his heir, out of habit, continued to pay the tax, which grew less as the house lost more of its value.
Now the house was gone, destroyed by time and the tree. The grass had grown over its wounds. The great tree commanded the lot, casting a wide circle of shade.
There was still an owner, presumably a very old man. But the agent assured Liz that she need not worry about having a neighbor any closer than the Comdens. The cost of uprooting so big a tree to build a house would be completely out of proportion to what the lot was worth. It was a safe assumption that the tree would outlast them all.
Liz bought her house. In June she and Clark flew down twice to see to the work they were having done. On her first visit Liz noticed that the grass had been cut on the lot where the tree stood. Her caretaker, Mr. Trueworthy, informed her that the Comdens, whose house he also kept an eye on during their nonresidence, had the grass cut with theirs so that their property would not have a stretch of unsightly wild growth beside it.
On their second visit Liz and Clark met the Comdens, who were also down for the weekend. They had a brief exchange of pleasantries, each thinking the other nice enough neighbors, but all of them too busy putting things to rights to make any further findings.
In July, Liz came to stay. She was not really on vacation until August when Clark’s vacation began. But in July she could work as well at her desk in the country as in the city. She enjoyed having the house to herself, but she was pleased when Betsy Comden showed up a few days later.
Seeing that Betsy had driven down alone, Liz called over to ask if there was anything she could do.
“You can give me a cup of tea,” Betsy said gratefully. “And let’s drink it under the maple tree. I’ll bring some chairs.”
Liz fixed a portable tray, wondering if she could include some martinis for herself, but decided not to. Afterward, she was glad. There was something very cozy about a cup of tea, though she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had one.
Betsy said she always came down in July alone. She, too, liked the house to herself and doing as she pleased. The children were in camp in July. In August she sent for them, because by that time she missed them terribly, and Steve, who took his vacation in August, wanted the children with him.
They finished their tea, and both had things to do. They rose. “Let’s leave the chairs,” Betsy said. “May I bring you breakfast tomorrow? Not to pay for my tea, but because I want to.”
That was the way it began, and that was the way it went through the cloudless month of July.
Over the weeks of that July, and through the two successive summers their pleasure in each other’s company, though deepened, did not leave the orbit of the maple tree. For in August, the husbands came, and Betsy’s children came. Liz had no children to play with Betsy’s children. Betsy’s husband was fiercely athletic. Liz’s husband lazed through August. They were each bored at the sight of the other.
In August the tree kept the secret of the life that had centered on it in July.
There was something that Betsy had kept from Liz. At first the matter had not entered her mind. When it did, she did not know how to introduce it with the light touch she admired so in Liz. And the matter was too delicate for heavy handling.
The truth was that when Betsy and Steve bought their property, and were told the story of the abutting lot, Steve had asked the agent to give him priority if the owner ever decided to sell.
At last the aging owner did. One day in the spring Steve received a letter from the agent, advising him that the lot was for sale, and naming a reasonable figure. Steve promptly sent a check.
He wrote another letter to Mr. Trueworthy, asking him to arrange for a carpenter to fence in the whole property. With the new lot the house would be nicely centered, and a white picket fence would set it off handsomely.
The day after school closed, Betsy packed her children off to camp and left for the country the same afternoon. She was in a fever to arrive before Liz, to explain the whys and wherefores of the fence when Liz saw it for the first time.
Liz came. Betsy, hearing her car, rushed out to welcome her. She took the shortcut across the lot, and then was stopped by the fence, embarrassment flooding her that she had forgotten to use the gate, and could only extend her hand in greeting.
“Oh, it’s good to see you,” she said, but her voice sounded strained to her, and her hand felt hot in Liz’s cold clasp.
“It’s good to be back,” Liz said, avoiding any personal reference.
“We bought the lot,” Betsy said in a rush. “We asked for preference before we knew you. And I didn’t want to sound possessive by telling you. As for the fence, please forget it’s there. Steve just thought a fence would be attractive.”
“It is,” said Liz, saying no more.
“I’ll put the kettle on for tea, a large tea,” Betsy said too eagerly.
“I’ll take a raincheck,” Liz said lightly. “I couldn’t eat a thing.”
“Then you’ll be my guest for breakfast tomorrow?”
“I only want coffee. It isn’t worth your bothering.”
Betsy took a step back. “You’ve things to do. I mustn’t keep you.”
“If you’ll excuse me then,” Liz said, smiling a lovely, meaningless smile.
The fence had come between them and their understanding. They could only reach each other the long way round, and neither was sure the trip was worth making. There was only a tree at the end of it, and a tree is at best and at most a tree. Time is too precious to waste on it or under it.
They turned and walked out of each other’s lives.
AN UNIMPORTANT MAN
He awoke to the dig of his wife’s sharp elbow in the tender flesh of his side. He blinked for a moment bewilderedly and eased away from her. He glanced at the clock. It hadn’t quite struck nine. He wondered, idly, if he had a clean collar to wear to church, and began to question wistfully whether he dared miss the church service just this once, and, the family having creakingly departed, patter about in his disreputable old bathrobe and slippers in the beautiful peace of aloneness.
He smiled. He was very hot and uncomfortable, but he was happy. He wanted, a little foolishly, to burst out laughing. He ached to express his joy. And for a moment he chortled softly with his head drawn under the sheet. But his wife stirred and groaned in her sleep, and he uncovered his head and lay quite still. He began to pray that she would not awaken to shatter the quiet with her shrill complaints. He sighed. He hated his wife. He rolled over gently and looked at her.
She lay on her back w
ith her knees drawn up and her thick braids covering her narrow breasts. One thin arm hung over the edge of the bed, the other lay across her flat stomach. It struck him suddenly, looking down at her, that the bulge of her eyeballs seemed more prominent when her straight-lashed eyelids covered them. For the first time he noted how homely she looked asleep. Her face was unbelievably narrow. There were heavy bags beneath her eyes. The small, straight nose that had once intrigued him seemed pinched and too transparent. And with the increasing years of incompatibility the slender, sensitive curve of her lips had blended to a straight, stern line of bitterness.
She stirred again, and the long ropes of hair fell along her side. Her narrow bosom rose almost imperceptibly. He remembered with shamed surprise how he had told her, in the first, happy week of their marriage, that he would kiss her dry, young breasts to fullness. He remembered, too, the color that had rushed to her cheeks, and the instinctive lifting of her hands as if to ward off his lips.
With his own cheeks hot at the memory, he rolled to the edge of the bed. And then, as he lay there, his unseeing eyes blinking at the ceiling, a great swell of passion racked him. He shut his eyes. His flesh tingled. Sweat streamed from his pores, and his body itched with urging. Something was draining him of resistance. He almost heard a light, mocking laugh. Dark flesh sank warmly into his. Hot, thick, sensual lips burned his empty mouth. The phantom woman who lay in the grip of his arms was more terribly real than the passionless woman who lay every night by his side.
But after a moment of that sharp, beautiful agony he opened his eyes. The woman drifted out of his arms, and he drew a deep breath that was like a sigh. He wanted to get up and take a bath, but he hadn’t the strength to rise.
He could hear his old mother coming down the narrow hall with her grandchild. They would be quarreling, of course, and the old woman would be shrill with ineffectual threats. He was sorry for his mother. These last years of her life were as full of toil and travail as the first. He was her only son, and it came to him, rather bitterly, that he had not been a good one. Bit by bit he had broken her valiant spirit, she who had given so much had received so pitifully little. There was ironic sadness, after the years of her teaching of independence, in her complete and unrewarded subservience.
He heard her voice rise. “Mind now, Essie—”
And his first thought was: “I wish t’ God she’d stop picking on that child. But the instant it formed in his mind, he felt a great surge of pity for his mother. And his lips framed an unexpected prayer: “Oh, dear God, let me make it all up to her.”
He had a sudden vision of himself, in an oratorical pose—a Darrow for his race, eloquently pleading a black man’s cause.
He was happy again. Little waves of joy rolled over him. But he had a panicky moment of doubt. After all of these years—bitter years of despairing failure—had he passed his bar exams at last? Rather sheepishly he pinched himself. It was beautifully true.
Well, by God, he had studied—and hard. He had felt somehow that if he failed again, it meant the end. The definite blotting out of the already flickering flame of ambition. He would never have had the courage to try once more.
He read the shingle swaying in the wind: “Zebediah Jenkins, Attorney-at-Law.” His tongue rolled the morsel over his lips. Attorney Jenkins. It stood for achievement. It meant respect. Metaphorically he steadied himself on the first rung of the ladder.
But in that instant he heard again a light, mocking laugh. Wanda, somewhere in the hot sun, laughing … laughing … laughing … Calling him fool for his ambition when her arms were wide with love.
He hadn’t, he decided, wanted to be a lawyer. He hadn’t, he found with surprise, wanted to be anything. His only childhood ambition had been eventual marriage with Wanda. He had never seen beyond a two-room cabin.
He would always remember the night he had cried out his love for Wanda. His mother had been doing last-minute things; and he had trailed after her, in hot protest, meanly refusing to help.
For Wanda, at dusk, with the wisdom of Eve, had bound him eternally to her with her darkly beautiful body. They had not made any promises. To both of them the North had seemed so far away they knew with bitter certainty they would never meet again. For Wanda it would forever suffice that she had been his first love.
In a rush of scarcely articulate words he had told it all to his mother.
He had not known that he was a sentimentalist. The years of her widowhood were to him a glorious record of sacrifice. He was just beginning to realize the purity of mother love. He knew a sudden sense of shame at his lust for Wanda. In a swift moment of refutation he hated her for what he could not then call her honesty. With a rather splendid gesture he offered his mother his future to mold it as she willed.
She was in the bathroom with Esther. He could hear the little girl gargling her throat, and his mother’s impatient: “That’s ’nough, now. Jus’ look at this floor.” And then a faint scuffle, and his mother again, “You keep on, now. You jus’ spoilin’ for a spankin’.”
And Esther’s bold, young voice—and he visioned her, arms akimbo—“Yah, yah, yah! You just try it.”
Against his will he was envious of Esther. He couldn’t imagine himself at ten talking back to his mother. “Oh, my God!” he thought, and would have laughed if tears hadn’t stung his lashes. He wanted passionately, this August morning, to lazily drift down a Southern stream with Wanda.
He decided—feeling, however, his betrayal of his mother—that he was proud of Esther’s independence. He was glad, rather fiercely glad, that she knew enough to stand up to people. No one would ever—no one must ever—shape the course of Esther’s life. He would rather starve in the streets than drag his child back from the stars with his heavy hands on her skirts.
His mother was tapping on the bathroom door that opened into his bedroom. “Min, y’all up? It’s ha’ past nine. I done started the coffee boilin’.”
Minnie blinked awake and started up on her sharp, pointed elbows. Her voice was thick. “Who? Huh? Oh, that you, Miss Lily? Awright.”
She sat up then and hugged her thin knees, her mouth a wide, red cavern of interrupted sleep.
He told her pleasantly, “It’s a nice morning, Min.”
She regarded it imperturbably. “Yeh,” she said.
He flung back the sheet and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He was boyishly eager. “I could eat a house.”
“Seems to me,” she said with conscious meanness, “you’d be sick and tiahed of the sight of food, cookin’ in a white man’s kitchen ev’ry day.”
All of the sparkle went out of his eyes. “It hasn’t been easy, Min.”
She felt a certain compunction. “Well, it shouldn’t be hard no longer. Things ought to brighten up in no time now, since you passed that bar exam.”
He was pathetically grateful. His words poured out eagerly. His nostrils dilated. His mustache quivered a little. He sat there, on the edge of the bed, in a humorous nightshirt that showed his thin legs.
“I guess you’re right about that, Min. Guess this old ship’s steered clear at last. Guess we’ll know a little plain sailing now. I knew my God would answer my prayers.”
She snorted a little. “If you’d done more on your own hook ’stead o’ waitin’ ’round for God to help you, you’d ‘a’ got on faster. That’s the main trouble with all o’ you niggers.”
He could not quite veil his annoyance, but his tone was very patient. “I don’t like to hear you talk like that, Min. I don’t like it. That’s the main trouble with us colored people—trying to act like white folks, mocking God. Let me tell you, Min, these white folks don’t know nothin’ ’bout slavery, and prejudice, and causeless hate. They’ve never had to go down on their knees and cry out to their God for deliverance. It’s all right for them to talk like fools. But for us poor colored folks, it ain’t!”
She was pale with vexation, but she had no adequate words to express her grievance. She said with childish irrelevan
cy, “Why don’t you go on an’ take your bath? You ain’t got your sign painted yet.”
He got to his feet and made an unexpected reply. “But I’ll have it done pretty soon.”
“You better see about gettin’ an office,” she conceded. “I see a nice place to let down on Tremont Street and I think there’s three or four good-size rooms in back.”
“I’ll see about it,” he answered, “first thing tomorrow. But I’m not going to stay down on Tremont Street long. I’ve never wanted nothing but the best.”
He entered the bathroom then, his cheeks burning with resolute purpose. Above the running of the water he heard her swift retort, “You’d oughta be content with anything, this late age.”
He tried to smile at his suddenly strained reflection in the glass above the bowl. “I’m barely forty,” he told it definitely. “All o’ Ma’s people live to be ninety.”
But there was no lessening of the pain in those mild brown eyes.
He turned away dispiritedly and slumped into the tub. And it wasn’t ludicrous, somehow, screwing about in the too-hot water.
He was hating Minnie and wishing passionately that he had never married her. The long, dark hair of his golden bride was the silken coil that had trapped him.
“If I had to do it again,” he thought with rueful humor, “I wouldn’t do it.”
All of the uneventful years prior to his marriage had been almost wholly devoted to an unhappy pursuit of what his mother sternly defined as independence. Even back in the South there had been daily lessons toward this end with the invalid Marse Jim, who was always faintly amused at the grim determination of his pupil.
He looked, as he squatted on the porch, his brown toes wriggling, as if the last thing in all the world he would have chosen for himself was a career. He should have been, thought Marse, swinging down a sunlit road, with a fishing rod over his shoulder and the image of a little black girl bright on his vacuous mind.
