The collected stories, p.23
The Collected Stories, page 23
As we struggled up life’s ladder
I will call you and together
We will cuddle up and see
What the weather’s like in Key West
On the old-age home TV.
This song was sung coast to coast and became famous from the dark Maine woods to Texas’s shining gulf. It was responsible for a statistical increase in visitors to old-age homes by the apprehensive middle-aged and the astonished young.
Politics
A group of mothers from our neighborhood went downtown to the Board of Estimate hearing and sang a song. They had contributed the facts and the tunes, but the idea for that kind of political action came from the clever head of a media man floating on the ebbtide of our Lower West Side culture because of the housing shortage. He was from the far middle plains and loved our well-known tribal organization. He said it was the coming thing. Oh, how he loved our old moldy pot New York.
He was also clean-cut and attractive. For that reason the first mother stood up straight when the clerk called her name. She smiled, said excuse me, jammed past the knees of her neighbors, and walked proudly down the aisle of the hearing room. Then she sang, according to some sad melody learned in her mother’s kitchen, the following lament requesting better playground facilities.
oh oh oh
will someone please put a high fence
up
around the children’s playground
they are playing a game and have
only
one more year of childhood, won’t the city
come
or their daddies to keep the bums and
the tramps out of the yard they are too
little now to have the old men wagging their
cricked pricks at them or feeling their
knees and saying to them sweetheart
sweetheart sweetheart, can’t the cardinal
keep all these creeps out …
She bowed her head and stepped back modestly to allow the recitative for which all the women rose, wherever in the hearing room they happened to be. They said a lovely statement in chorus:
The junkies with smiles can be stopped by intelligent
reorganization of government functions.
Then she stepped forward once more, embarrassed before the high municipal podiums, and continued to sing:
… please Mr. Mayor
there’s a girl without any pants on they’re babies
so help me the Commies just walk in the gate
and put shit in the sand …
Raising her arms toward the off-white ceiling of our lovely City Hall, she cried out.
stuff them on a freight train to Brooklyn
your honor, put up a fence
we’re mothers oh what
will become of the children …
No one on the Board of Estimate, including the mayor, was unimpressed. After the reiteration of the fifth singer, all the officials said so, murmuring ah and oh in a kind of startled arpeggio round lasting maybe three minutes. The comptroller, who was a famous financial nag, said, “Yes yes yes, in this case, yes, a high 16.8 fence can be put up at once, can be expedited, why not …” Then and there, he picked up the phone and called Parks, Traffic and Child Welfare. All were agreeable when they heard his strict voice and temperate language. By noon the next day, the fence was up.
Later that night, an hour or so past moonlight, a young Tactical Patrol Force cop snipped a good-sized hole in the fence for two reasons. His first reason was public: The Big Brothers, a baseball team of young priests who absolutely required exercise, always played at night. They needed entrance and egress. His other reason was personal: There were eleven bats locked up in the locker room. These were, to his little group, an esoteric essential. He, in fact, had already gathered them into his arms like stalks of pussywillow and loaded them into a waiting paddy wagon. He had returned for half a dozen catcher’s mitts, when a young woman reporter from the Lower West Side Sun noticed him in the locker room.
She asked, because she was trained in the disciplines of curiosity followed by intelligent inquiry, what he was doing there. He replied, “A police force stripped of its power and shorn by vengeful politicians of the respect due it from the citizenry will arm itself as best it can.” He had a copy of Camus’s The Rebel in his inside pocket which he showed her for identification purposes. He had mild gray eyes, short eyelashes, a smooth and perfect countenance, white gloves of linen, barely smudged, and was able, therefore, while waiting among the basketballs for apprehension by precinct cops, to inject her with two sons, one Irish and one Italian, who sang to her in dialect all her life.
Northeast Playground
When I went to the playground in the afternoon I met eleven unwed mothers on relief. Only four of them were whores, the rest of them were unwed on principle or because some creep had ditched them.
The babies were all under one year old, very funny and lovable.
When the mothers stuck them in the sandbox, they took up the whole little desert, throwing sand and screeching. A kid with a father at home, acknowledging and willing to support, couldn’t get a wet toehold.
How come you’re all here? I asked.
By accident, said the first.
A couple of us happened to meet, said the second, liked one another, and introduced friends.
We’re like a special-interest group, said a third. That was Janice, a political woman, conscious of power structure and power itself.
A fourth came into the playground with eleven Dixie cups, chocolate and vanilla. She passed them around. What a wonderful calm unity in this group! When I was a mother of babies in this same park, we were not so unified and often quarreled, accusing other children of unhealthy aggression or excessive timidity. He’s a ruined wreck, we’d say about some streaky squeaker about two years old. No hope. His eyelids droop. Look how he hangs on to his little armored prick!
Of course, said Janice, if you want to see a beauty, there’s Claude, Leni’s baby. The doll! said Janice, who had a perfectly good baby of her own in a sling across her chest, asleep in the heat of her protection.
Claude was beautiful. He was bouncing on Leni’s lap. He was dark brown, though she was white.
Beautiful, I said.
Leni is very unusual, said Janice. She’s from Brighton Beach, a street whore, despite her age, weight, and religion.
He’s not my baby, said Leni. Some dude owed me and couldn’t pay. So he gave me the first little bastard he had. A.D.C. Aid to Dependent Children. Honey, I just stay home now like a mama bear and look at TV. I don’t turn a trick a week. He takes all my time, my Claude. Don’t you, you little pancake? Eat your ice cream, Claudie, the sun’s douchin’ it away.
The sixth and seventh unwed mothers were twin sisters who had always dressed alike.
The eighth and ninth were whores and junkies and watched each other’s babies when working or flying. They were very handsome dykey women, with other four- and five-year-old children in the child-care center, and their baby girls sat in ribbons and white voile in fine high veneer and chrome imported carriages. They never let the kids play in the sand. They were disgusted to see them get dirty or wet and gave them hell when they did. The girls who were unwed on principle—that included Janice and the twins—considered it rigidity, but not hopeless because of the extenuating environment.
The tenth and eleventh appeared depressed. They’d been ditched and it kept them from total enjoyment of the babies, though they clutched the little butterballs to their hearts or flew into the sandbox at the call of a whimper, hollering, What? What? Who? Who? Who took your shovel? Claude? Leni! Claude!
He’s a real boy, said Leni.
These two didn’t like to be on relief at all. They were embarrassed but not to the point of rudeness to their friends who weren’t ashamed. Still, every now and then they’d make ironic remarks. They were young and very pretty, the way almost all young girls tend to be these days, and would probably never be ditched again. I tried to tell them this and they replied, Thanks! One ironic remark they’d make was, My mother says don’t feel bad, Allison’s a love-child. The mother was accepting and advanced, but poor.
The afternoon I visited, I asked one or two simple questions and made a statement.
I asked, Wouldn’t it be better if you mixed in with the other mothers and babies who are really a friendly bunch?
They said, No.
I asked, What do you think this ghettoization will do to your children?
They smiled proudly.
Then I stated: In a way, it was like this when my children were little babies. The ladies who once wore I Like Ike buttons sat on the south side of the sandbox, and the rest of us who were revisionist Communist and revisionist Trotskyite and revisionist Zionist registered Democrats sat on the north side.
In response to my statement, NO kidding! most of them said.
Beat it, said Janice.
The Little Girl
Carter stop by the café early. I just done waxing. He said, I believe I’m having company later on. Let me use your place, Charlie, hear?
I told him, Door is open, go ahead. Man coming for the meter (why I took the lock off). I told him Angie my lodger could be home but he strung out most the time. He don’t even know when someone practicing the horn in the next room. Carter, you got hours and hours. There ain’t no wine there, nothing like it. He said he had some other stuff would keep him on top. That was a joke. Thank you, brother, he said. I told him I believe I have tried anything, but to this day, I like whiskey. If you have whiskey, you drunk, but if you pump up with drugs, you just crazy. Yeah, hear that man, he said. Then his eyeballs start walking away.
He went right to the park. Park is full of little soft yellow-haired baby chicks. They ain’t but babies. They far from home, and you better believe it, they love them big black cats walking around before lunchtime, jutting their apparatus. They think they gonna leap off that to heaven. Maybe so.
Nowadays, the spades around here got it set out for them. When I was young, I put that kettle to cook. I stirred it and stirred it. And these dudes just sucking off the gravy.
Next thing: Carter rested himself on the bench. He look this way and that. His pants is tight. His head making pictures. Along comes this child. She just straggling along. Got her big canvas pocketbook and she looking around. Carter hollers out. Hey, sit down, he says. By me, here, you pretty thing. She look sideways. Sits. On the edge.
Where you from, baby? he ask her. Hey, relax, you with friends.
Oh, thank you. Oh, the Midwest, she says. Near Chicago. She want to look good. She ain’t from maybe eight hundred miles.
You left home for a visit, you little dandylion you, your boyfriend let you just go?
Oh no, she says. Getting talky. I just left and for good. My mother don’t let me do a thing. I got to do the breakfast dishes when I get home from school and clean and do my two brothers’ room and they don’t have to do nothing. And I got to be home in my room by 10 p.m. weekdays and 12 p.m. just when the fun starts Saturday and nothing is going on in that town. Nothing! It’s dead, a sleeping hollow. And the prejudice, whew! She blushes up a little, she don’t want to hurt his feelings. It’s terrible and then they caught me out with a little bit of a roach I got off of some fellow from New York who was passing through and I couldn’t get out at all then for a week. They was watching me and watching. They’re disgusting and they’re so ignorant!
My! Carter says. I don’t know how you kids today stand it. The world is changing, that’s a fact, and the old folks ain’t heard the news. He ruffle with her hair and he lay his cheek on her hair a minute. Testing. And he puts the tip of his tongue along the tip of her ear. He’s a fine-looking man, you know, a nice color, medium, not too light. Only thing wrong with him is some blood line in his eye.
I don’t know when I seen a prettier chick, he says. Just what we call fattening the pussy. Which wouldn’t use up no time he could see. She look at him right away, Oh Lord, I been trudging around. I am tired. Yawns.
He says, I got a nice place, you could just relax and rest and decide what to do next. Take a shower. Whatever you like. Anyways you do is O.K. My, you are sweet. You better’n Miss America. How old you say you was?
Eighteen, she jump right in.
He look at her satisfied, but that was a lie and Carter knew it, I believe. That the Number One I hold against him. Because, why her? Them little girls just flock, they do. A grown man got to use his sense.
Next thing: They set out for my apartment, which is six, seven blocks downtown. Stop for a pizza ‘Mm this is good, she says (she is so simple). She says, They don’t make ‘em this way back home.
They proceed. I seen Carter courting before. Canvas pocketbook across his shoulder. They holding hands maybe and hand-swinging.
Open the front door of 149, but when they through struggling up them four flights, she got to be disappointed, you know my place, nothing there. I got my cot. There’s a table. There two chairs. Blanket on the bed. And a pillow. And a old greasy pillow slip. I’m too old now to give up my grizzily greasy head, but I sure wish I was a young buck, I would let my Afro flare out.
She got to be disappointed.
Wait a minute, he says, goes into the kitchen and brings back ice water, a box of pretzels. Oh, thank you, she says. Just what I wanted. Then he says, Rest yourself, darling, and she lie down. Down, right in her coffin.
You like to smoke? Ain’t that peaceful, he says. Oh, it is, she says. It sure is peaceful. People don’t know.
Then they finish up. Just adrifting in agreement, and he says, You like to ball? She says, Man! Do I! Then he put up her dress and take down her panties and tickle her here and there, nibbling away. He says, You like that, baby? Man! I sure do, she says. A colored boy done that to me once back home, it sure feels good.
Right then he get off his clothes. Gonna tend to business. Now, the bad thing there is, the way Carter told it, and I know it so, those little girls come around looking for what they used to, hot dog. And what they get is knockwurst. You know we are like that. Matter of fact, Carter did force her. Had to. She starting to holler, Ow, it hurts, you killing me, it hurts. But Carter told me, it was her asked for it. Tried to get away, but he had been stiff as stone since morning when he stop by the store. He wasn’t about to let her run.
Did you hit her? I said. Now Carter, I ain’t gonna tell anyone. But I got to know.
I might of hauled off and let her have it once or twice. Stupid little cunt asked for it, didn’t she? She was so little, there wasn’t enough meat on her thigh bone to feed a sick dog. She could of wriggled by the scoop in my armpit if I had let her. Our black women ain’t a bit like that, I told you Charlie. They cook it up, they eat the mess they made. They proud.
I didn’t let that ride too long. Carter’s head moves quick, but he don’t dust me. I ask him, How come when they passing the plate and you is presented with the choice, you say like the prettiest dude, A little of that white stuff, please, man?
I don’t! He hollered like I had chopped his neck. And I won’t! He grab my shirt front. It was a dirty old work shirt and it tore to bits in his hand. He got solemn. Shit! You right! They are poison! They killing me! That diet gonna send me upstate for nothin but bone diet and I got piles as is.
Joking by the side of the grave trench. That’s why I used to like him. He wasn’t usual. That’s why I like to pass time with Carter in the park in the early evening.
Be cool, I said.
Right on, he said.
He told me he just done shooting them little cotton-head darkies into her when Mangie Angie Emporiore lean on the doorway. Girl lying on my bloody cot pulling up a sheet, crying, bleeding out between her legs. Carter had tore her up some. You know, Charlie, he said, I ain’t one of your little Jewboy buddies with half of it cut off. Angie peering and peering. Carter stood up out of his working position. He took a quick look at Angie, heisted his pants, and split. He told me, Man, I couldn’t stay there, that dumb cunt sniffling and that blood spreading out around her, she didn’t get up to protect herself, she was disgusting, and that low white bug, your friend, crawled in from under the kitchen sink. Now on, you don’t live with no white junkie, hear me Charlie, they can’t use it.
Where you going now Carter? I ask him. To the pigs, he says and jabs his elbow downtown. I hear they looking for me.
That exactly what he done, and he never seen free daylight since.
Not too long that same day they came by for me. They know where I am. At the station they said, You sleep somewhere else tonight and tomorrow night. Your place padlocked. You wouldn’t want to see it, Charlie. You in the clear. We know your whereabouts to the minute. Sergeant could see I didn’t know nothing. Didn’t want to tell me neither. I’ll explain it. They had put out a warrant for Angel. Didn’t want me speaking to him. Telling him anything.
Hector the beat cop over here can’t keep nothing to himself. They are like that. Spanish people. Chatter chatter. What he said: You move, Charlie. You don’t want to see that place again. Bed smashed in. That little girl broken up in the bottom of the airshaft on top of the garbage and busted glass. She just tossed out that toilet window wide awake alive. They know that. Death occur on ground contact.
The next day I learned worse. Hector found me outside the store. My buffer swiped. Couldn’t work. He said, Every bone between her knee and her rib cage broken, splintered. She been brutally assaulted with a blunt instrument or a fist before death.
Worse than that, on her leg high up, inside, she been bitten like a animal bit her and bit her and tore her little meat she had on her. I said, All right, Hector. Shut up. Don’t speak.
They put her picture in the paper every day for five days, and when her mother and daddy came on the fifth day, they said, The name of our child is Juniper. She is fourteen years old. She been a little rebellious but the kids today all like that.
Then court. I had a small job to say, Yes, it was my place. Yes, I told Carter he could use it. Yes, Angie was my roommate and sometimes he lay around there for days. He owed me two months’ rent. That the reason I didn’t put him out.
