by Ann Petry
Link grinned. “You mean you’re taking him in just like that? Without having seen his wife and his kids?”
“After all, he’s the Treadway butler,” she said. “If you had seen what a polishedlooking person he was you wouldn’t need to see his family either.”
“Miss Abbie, a man hasn’t got a corner on virtue just because his shoes are shined. You’d better get a look at his family in spite of the pretty creases in his pants.”
“You sound just like Frances,” she said, annoyed because he had called her Miss Abbie.
“Well, of course, honey. A man can’t have two women in his hair practically from birth without ending up sounding like one or both of them.”
“Frances didn’t live here with us,” she said.
“She might just as well have. She might just as well have. She was here so often that I used to think she was my father and you were my mother.”
“She’s been awfully good to me,” Abbie said, remembering.
“Yeah. I don’t doubt that. But F. K. Jackson is right at least ninety-nine point nine times out of a hundred. It’s very difficult for us average humans to love a female with a batting average like that. If she’d been a gambler she could have made a fortune.”
“A gambler? She doesn’t play cards—”
“No,” he said, and he half closed his eyes, as though he were looking at a picture that pleased him, half closed his eyes and threw his head back. Abbie looked at the line of his throat, at the slight forward thrust of his chin, at the smoothness of his skin, the perfection of his nose and mouth, the straightness of his hair, and thought, Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish he wasn’t so very goodlooking; or rather, I wish that the rest of him matched his good looks. He simply does not care about the right things. How can he go on working behind that bar? What was the point of his going to college if he was going to end up working in a bar?
Was it my fault? Yes. I forgot about him when he was eight. When he was sixteen I had the chance to win him back and somehow muffed it. And now it’s too late. Now I do not dare say what I think about his working in that saloon for fear he will leave me and never come back.
“No,” Link said, voice dreamy now. “But I wish she did. I wish she played poker. I’d like to see her in a game with Bill Hod. I would pay out folding money to get F. K. Jackson and Mr. B. Hod in a poker game.”
Abbie made no comment on this statement. When Link finished college he had said he was going to write history books. Shortly after that he went into the Navy and was gone four years, and when he came home it was to work in a bar on Dumble Street. On Saturdays he played poker until four and five o’clock in the morning, played with his friends: a white man, a photographer, who had the unlikely name of Jubine and the unkempt look of a Bolshevist; a colored man named Weak Knees, who walked as though he were drunk, and did the cooking in The Last Chance; and Bill Hod, who owned The Last Chance and controlled or operated every illegal, immoral, illicit enterprise in The Narrows—though nobody could prove it—and who had the face of a hangman, face of a murderer. Colored, too.
Now Link was imitating Frances, clipping his words off the way she did, pursing his lips, lifting his eyebrows, pretending to remove a pair of pince-nez glasses.
He was saying, “Do you remember the time that F. K. Jackson said: ‘Abbie, never never rent out any part of the premises without first seeing all the members of the family. Males have been known to marry females who bear a strong resemblance to the female fruit fly; and females have been known to marry males that are first cousin to the tomato worm. On the other hand, perfectly respectable couples have been known to produce children who have all the unpleasant qualities of the Japanese beetle!’”
Abbie listened to him, thinking, His voice doesn’t match the rest of him either. It is a deep, resonant, musical voice. A perfect speaking voice. And—somebody has to go through that apartment upstairs to find out what needs to be done to it before the Powthers move in. If Link went up there now, Mrs. Allen wouldn’t care if it was suppertime. She’d look at the breadth of his shoulders, listen to the music in his voice, and immediately start making the sounds of the dove and even show him the inside of the closets.
“Link,” she said, “will you go upstairs and ask Mrs. Allen to let you go through the apartment so you can see if anything needs to be done to it before the Powthers move in?”
“Right now?”
“Of course not. After you finish your supper.”
“Sure, Miss Abbie, sure. I didn’t know. I thought you meant with knife and fork in hand and napkin tied tight under chin. I am, after all, only mortal man and mortal man is so conditioned to attack from immortal female that he—well, he never really knows.”
The week slipped by. The Allens moved out. Abbie began to worry about Mrs. Powther. Why hadn’t she been to see the place?
On Thursday, toward dusk, Mr. Powther stopped at the door. He wouldn’t come in. He was in a hurry. He paid a month’s rent in advance, seventy dollars in crisp new bills.
He said, “Mrs. Powther is busy with the packing and the children. She’s perfectly willing to take the apartment on my say-so.”
After he left, Abbie fingered the bills, wondering for the first time why he and his wife and the children didn’t live at Treadway Hall, thinking almost at the same time that one never saw crisp new money like this in The Narrows. These bills looked as though they had gone straight from the mint into Treadway Hall, where they had been handed to Mr. Powther, who in turn handed them to Abbie Crunch. She hoped he was right about his wife’s willingness to live on Dumble Street.
She was still thinking about Mrs. Powther, the next afternoon, when the knocker sounded. There was a repeated banging, a thundering on the door, that echoed and re-echoed through the house from cellar to attic, startling her so that she dropped the handle of the carpet sweeper she was using on the stairs. Who on earth would bang on a door like that? She kicked the carpet sweeper out of the way, thinking, I ought to pick it up and take it to the door with me and use it on his head. Anyone would think that he, whoever he is, was summoning a charwoman, and a deaf charwoman at that.
Usually she stood back from the smallpaned windows at the side of the door so that she could not be seen when she looked out. But this time she wanted to be seen, she glared out of the little windows and then frowned. There was a woman standing on the steps. A stranger. Or at least her face was unfamiliar. She’d seen the type before though: young, but too much fat around the waist, a soft, fleshy, quite prominent bosom, too much lipstick, a pink beflowered hat, set on top of straightened hair; the hair worn in what they called a pageboy bob, hanging loose, almost to the shoulders. She had on a light tan coat, very full, very long. Under one arm she carried a big loosely wrapped package which was held together by red and green string, carelessly tied. The package looked as though one good jounce would make the whole thing open up all at once.
The woman lifted her hand and banged the knocker against the door again, a peremptory, commanding knock. Abbie wouldn’t have opened the door, but the woman had a little boy by the hand—a bulletheaded, bigheaded little boy. Bulletheaded. Bigheaded. The Major’s expressions. They were always cropping up in her thoughts. He loved to describe children in that fashion; he took a special delight in pointing out small dark specimens that she had to agree, reluctantly, really fitted the words. And this child standing on her doorstep was both bulletheaded and bigheaded.
Because of the child she decided the woman might well be someone who had come to see the Allens and didn’t know they’d moved. She was certain she’d seen the little boy somewhere. She opened the door, not too wide, just wide enough to be able to shut it quickly if she had to. After all, she was alone in the house.
“How do you do?” she said. She made it sound like a question.
“Afternoon. Are you Missus Crunch?”
Abbie nodded, staring, now.
The woman smiled, the thick coating of dark red lipstick on her mouth made her teeth look very white. They were good teeth, even, strong.
“I’m Mamie,” she said.
Abbie said, “Yes?” There was music in the woman’s voice, a careless, easy kind of music.
“I’m Mamie Powther.”
“Mamie Powther? Mamie Powther? Oh—I—oh, of course. Come in, Mrs. Powther.”
There was an awkward moment during which they stood in the hall looking at each other, Mrs. Powther smiling and showing her strong white teeth and Abbie trying to maintain an expression of cordiality and welcome. She didn’t know when she’d ever felt quite so at a disadvantage. What had she expected Mrs. Powther to look like? She didn’t know exactly. Certainly not like this woman. She supposed she had expected a sort of female edition of Mr. Powther, small, neat, precise of speech, businesslike in manner. She remembered Mr. Powther’s highly polished shoes and without really meaning to, glanced down at Mrs. Powther’s feet. She had on black suede shoes, scuffed at the toe, a kind of ballet-type shoe that bore a most unfortunate resemblance to a house slipper, and there was a bulge on each shoe, a kind of little hump, that only came from bunions.
“This here is J.C.” Mrs. Powther said, still smiling.
At the mention of his name, the bulletheaded little boy retreated behind Mrs. Powther’s tan coat, clutching at the folds.
“You stop that, you J.C.,” Mrs. Powther said sharply. “Come out here where Missus Crunch can see you.”
J.C.’s response to this command was to wrap the long full skirt of the coat more tightly around him, disappearing from view entirely except for one scuffed brown shoe and a dirty blue sock.
“He’s shy,” Mrs. Powther said benevolently.
“What is his name?” Abbie asked.
“J.C.”
“But—” Abbie tried again. “What do the initials stand for?”
“Oh, they don’t stand for nothing. It’s just initials. I thought it was kind of a nice thing to do for him. When he gets old enough he can pick a name for himself, to match up with the initials. This way he won’t be worried with no name he don’t like for the rest of his life.”
“Why I never heard of such a thing.”
“No’m. Most folks haven’t.”
“Aw, Mamie,” J.C. said suddenly, his voice muffled. “Come on and look at the place.”
“He don’t really want to move here,” Mamie Powther said. She made no effort to disentangle J.C. from her coat. “He’s got a lot of friends over where we been livin’. All ’bout his own age. And he’s head man, ain’t you, honey?”
Abbie wanted to end the conversation. She needed to think, to sit down alone and think, she’d heard of all kinds of names for children, but initials—what about the other children?
“Mr. Powther said there were three children. Are they—do the others have initials, too, instead of names?”
“No, ma’am. I didn’t think of it until J.C. come along,” she paused, as though in recollection, smiled. “There’s just the twins. They’re seven. Named Kelly and Shapiro. It’ll take you awhile to tell ’em apart, but Kelly is the quiet one and Shapiro is the loud-mouthed one.”
“I see,” Mrs. Crunch said. Then she added hastily, because Mamie Powther had opened her mouth as though to continue and she looked like the kind of woman who enjoyed giving all the details of her last confinement, “You go right up and look at the rooms. My knees aren’t what they used to be so if you don’t mind, I’ll stay down here.”
She had planned to escort Mrs. Powther through the rooms, answering questions, explaining about the position of the sun in the afternoon, showing off the view of the river that one got from the living room windows. But this Mrs. Powther wasn’t the one she had expected. She didn’t want to watch this Mrs. Powther’s bosom quiver as she walked through the bedroom that she, Abbie, had once shared with the Major.
“You can go right up. The doors are all open. You don’t need a key.”
“That’s fine,” Mrs. Powther’s voice was cordial. “Come on, J.C.”
Abbie sat down heavily in the Boston rocker in the dining room—she still referred to it like that when she got upset, though it had long since been converted into a sitting room. Twins, she thought. Kelly and Shapiro. Why it was fantastic. Incredible. She couldn’t very well not rent the apartment to the Powthers. She’d taken Mr. Powther’s money, promised it to him, and she’d always been a woman of her word. Perhaps Mrs. Powther wouldn’t like the place. Nonsense. Mamie Powther would love Dumble Street. Besides there weren’t any places for rent in Monmouth. Or perhaps that horrible little boy, J.C., whoever heard of such nonsense, initials for a name, perhaps he wouldn’t like it, because it wouldn’t offer sufficient opportunity for him to be head man. Oh, they’d take it. J.C. and Mamie. He didn’t even call her Mother. How on earth had that polished little Mr. Powther managed to acquire a bigbosomed creature like this one, painted fingernails, some of the paint peeling off, jingly earrings in her ears, smelling of bergamot or something equally as sickeningly sweet, and the little boy with a distinct smell of urine about him.
Hearing Mrs. Powther’s footsteps, soft, heavy, on the front stairs, muted by the carpet, she got up and met her in the hall.
“Well?” she said.
Mamie Powther started drawing a pair of soiled white gloves over her hands, covering the scarlet fingernails. “It’s a lovely place, Missus Crunch,” she beamed. “A lovely place. Actually I wouldn’t have come to look at it, I would have moved right in on the strength of Powther’s say-so. He knows an awful lot about houses. But J.C. he wouldn’t let me be until I brought him over. Just kept on sayin’, Mamie I’m not a-goin’ to move until I see where I’m goin’.”
“And did you like the apartment, J.C.?” Abbie asked, being deliberately sarcastic.
J.C. disappeared in the folds of Mrs. Powther’s coat again.
“He liked it fine. He liked it so much he already moved in, Missus Crunch. His things is up there now.”
What in the world is she talking about? Abbie wondered.
“He left his comic books up there. That’s what was in that big bundle. He said, ‘Mamie if I like it I’m a-goin’ to be the first to move in.’ It suits us as though we thought it up ourselves, don’t it, J.C.?” She paused but J.C. did not answer. “And it’s so nice that there’s a back stairs, a outside back stairs.”
Abbie Crunch thought there was a kind of anticipatory gleam in Mamie Powther’s eyes that the existence of an outside back stairs hardly seemed to justify. Certainly there was an extra gaiety in her manner.
“Back stairs do save so much wear and tear on a front stair carpet,” Mamie Powther explained. “Children is always runnin’ up and down and in and out you know.”
Abbie watched them cross the street. Mamie Powther was moving swiftly and J.C. was trotting to keep up with her. Wind from the river rippled the pages of the comic book he held in his hand, toyed with the full skirt of Mrs. Powther’s coat.
Bill Hod was standing in front of The Last Chance. He lifted his hat as they passed. Mrs. Powther nodded, lifting one gloved hand in a gesture that was part salute, part wave. Abbie wondered if he knew her or if he was merely paying tribute to her quivery bosom. The ballet slippers gave her a flatfooted appearance. As they disappeared from sight, Abbie decided they looked like figures out of the old Mother Goose books, the proportions all wrong, highly exaggerated. And almost immediately she was rhyming again:
Mister Powther Sat on a sowther
Eating his curds and whey.
Along came a Mamie
And said, You must pay me.
And so he did pay, did pay.
How old was Mamie Powther? In her early thirties? Mr. Powther was a lot older, closer to fifty, at least. Link would laugh. Female fruit fly? Japanese beetle? Tomato worm? Not Mamie Powth
er. Mamie Powther was Dumble Street.
The Major had been dead set against this street. “Fine old brick house, yes. But Dumble Street—Dumble Street—that’s not a good place to live.” Then he had startled her by saying, “It ought to be called Fumble Street. That’s what it is.”
She had glanced at him sharply, wondering if he, too, was a victim of rhyming, and that she’d never known it. No. Because he snorted his contempt, his disgust, for the street, unconscious of the endless possibilities for rhymes: dumble, fumble, stumble, tumble, mumble. It had proved itself to be all of those things. The people who lived here near the waterfront fumbled and they mumbled and they stumbled and they tumbled, ah, yes, make up a word—dumbled.
2
* * *
Got no roof over my head
Slats keep fallin’ out of my bed
And I’m lonesome—lonesome.
Rent money’s so long overdue
Landlord says he’s goin’ to sue
And I’m lonesome—lonesome.
The words were clear but the voice seemed far away. It came nearer, slowly, slowly, increasing in volume, until it seemed to be right there in the kitchen. “And I’m lonesome.” A big warm voice with a lilt in it, and something else, some extra, indefinable quality which made Abbie listen, made her want to hear more, and more; as though the singer leaned over, close, to say, I’m talking to you, listen to me, I made up this song for you and I’ve got wonderful things to tell you and to show you, listen to me.
Abbie looked across the breakfast table at Link. The people next door played records morning, noon, and night. He might think this was a record. He was buttering a piece of toast and he didn’t seem to hear that big clear attention-getting voice that was filling the kitchen with song. It isn’t a soprano, she thought, it goes down too far, too easily for a soprano, lonesome was sung way down, almost down to a tenor’s middle range, but head and bed, sue and due were way up high.
