“I’m a vegetarian,” said Rip or Reap.
“He’s lying through his face, Ellsworth,” said the girl. “This family man in Baltimore, he came out on the parking lot with two buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken on his arms. He”—she pointed at the nigger—“cruised by and robbed them right off the man. He put his face in the bucket and eat that chicken out just like a hog.”
“Beauty ain’t gone keep you well forever,” said the nigger to her.
“He had slaw on his nose,” she said.
The nigger made a move at her.
“Freeze, buster,” I said.
“What you got can stop me?” He looked around.
I ducked in the back room and got that UHF antenna I messed up Oliver Darling with. By that time he was halfnelsoning his sister.
“Leave off, Rip, Reap!” I shouted.
He sprung off her and came out with something yellow from his hip. It was a banana. He was a larger-looking nigger now and he raced over and beat the damn light out of me. When I woke up, he was still laying on my burned leg with what was left of the banana, these peel fibers. They stung in a vicious way.
“Stop it, stop it!” his sister was saying. “You woke him up, for Jesus’s sake!”
I washed up and after we’d eaten the steaks, with light bread and ketchup, we were all lying around pretty sleepy. The girl drank half a beer. I’d drunk five or six for pain. The girl stood up and went to use the bathroom.
“Say,” I said to the nigger while she was out. “I’m kind of in love with her. I know that’s not the right thing to say now. It’s just my feeling talking.”
“You what?” He got wall-eyed like a joke nigger.
“Got a crush on your sis. Don’t come at me again. You don’t need to get tough on me. Thought we could talk this out. You think I’d have a chance with your sister?”
“Yeah. Cause you’re white and she’s terrible tired. You weren’t too bad-looking till I blued you all up in the face.”
She came back and sat down on the floor. Pretty soon she was fast away asleep.
“I’ll tell you,” he said softly, “you can’t get away from people bothering you anymore. People coming by laughing at even what you eating. Don’t move,” he whispered, and eased out of the room.
Deaf and Dumb
She had a certain smile that would have bought her the world had the avenue of regard been wide enough for her. They loved it at the Bargain Barn. But the town was one where beauty walked the walks as a matter of course, and her smile was soon forgotten by clerk and hurried lecher on the oily parking lot. She never had any talent for gay chatter. She could only talk in brief phrases close on the truth. How much is this? Is this washable? This won’t do, it’s ugly.
It hit ninety-eight degrees and the parking lot of the A & P was the worst, with heat rays thick over the black pavement. There were four Cadillacs out there with the rabble of other cars. She got in the Chevy Nova, no air-conditioning and failing muffler. Her husband was an intellectual in real estate. He was such an intellectual he never sold anything. He had a huge habit of honesty and viewed everything being built or traded as pure overpriced dung. Forty-eight thousand got you a phony shack with no trees and tennis privileges. Don’t buy this turkey, he told the couples who were new in town, let’s look for something good. But he never could come up with anything good. All the good stuff was held down by old people with oaks and magnolias in their yard. He sold a few grimy houses to hip people who didn’t mind niggertown.
So Minny and her husband and their four children squeezed by on nine thousand a year. They were in hock up to their hips. They owed everybody from Sears to Saks in Atlanta. The letters from Saks were so gentle and decent. She loved Saks. The requests for payment approached the condition of love letters to her, which nobody else since she was in college had written her.
She remembered the one from Harold, who had taken her virginity.
“Gosh. Thank you, thank you. If you aren’t heaven, I don’t want to go there. You didn’t have to but you did. I love you so much it hurts my chest bones. Thank you, thank you.” Just as if his voice were speaking it to her now.
She drove her Nova around town, delaying her arrival at home, though she was suffering from the heat. The children were out in the garage with a hammer, sharing it. They were using the hammer to smash the pictures she’d hung in the garage. It had been her idea to dress up the garage. To her mind, there was no reason the garage need be an ugly slot to park your car. The garage could be beautiful. She was a major in art in college, and though she was no great shakes as an artist, she loved beauty and fitting colors. Minny painted the telephones in the house yellow.
But at night, when the kids were asleep, her husband took pictures of her naked with a Polaroid camera ordered from Sears on the easy-pay plan. One of his rare big cash-on-the-barrelhead buys was a six-foot mirror. He took pictures in the mirror of her with him. He couldn’t believe she was submitting to these things and wanted to capture it for immortality. The pictures showed a middle-aged man in all sorts of postures with a shy zestful woman, the man joined to her and aiming the camera. The pictures he kept high on a shelf and called his “studies.”
When Minny got home, she scolded the children for destroying her pictures in the garage. This took the last of her energy. She was all done in, hauling the bags, finding the old places for the cans and hauling them to their spots. She went to the room where the air-conditioner worked, shut the doors and lay down.
She had an hour before everybody would be hungry and Daryl, the husband, would be in. In the bag leaning on her bed was four yards of orange cloth she would sew into a dress. Her youngest child opened the door and crawled into the bed beside her. This was her and their only girl. She was a small pulchritudinous thing, with strange heavy-lidded eyes. While Minny lay there, the child kicked her in the course of falling asleep.
I can’t sleep, said Minny to herself. Why isn’t Charlotte watching them? Why has Charlotte gone home? She’s paid to stay. They’re my responsibility. The teen-agers come by our street so fast in their cars and on motorcycles. They found out there are no police on our street and they use it as a blasting alley. One boy I met with before college liked to speed that way.
We raced everywhere. He was always early for everything, the basketball games, the prom. We never even held hands. One time when we went swimming together he looked down at my feet and tackled me. He put my big toe in his mouth. I told him to cut it out. He got big in his swimming trunks and was humiliated. He said: Listen, I got to teach you how to swim. It bothers me thinking a person like you might drown just for simple lack of swimming. So he taught me how to swim. He had a nice body and cut out through the water like a motor. No reason to go that fast, as usual, no point in getting there to the floating dock early except just to get there fifteen seconds before the others. He always kept a comb, even in his swimming trunks. Had hairy knees that disgusted me. Said I don’t want anything but would you at least look at what does want to. Pulled down his trunks. First one I really ever saw, miracle, although a little bit ugly. No wonder he was proud. All men ought to be proud. All I and the rest of us have is hair and a crease. What’s so emotional about titties? Mine are fine, but I never understood the excitement. Guy in a convention in New Orleans said he’d cut off his arm to savor my chest. The easiest place to have wit is in the presence of another’s need. Deaf and dumb guy selling ballpoint pens comes up with a card saying I am deaf and mute, raising two children, help me out. I pretended I was deaf and dumb too. He was giving signs like mad and I was giving signs back to him that weren’t real. I was looking in his face. Who let you have children in her? I thought. What’s deaf and dumb intercourse like? Then I became ashamed and bought all his pens with the grocery money. Daryl was drunk and therefore understood everything when I came home. We ate rice with ketchup on it. My hobby is Daryl now that my other interests have had no chance to grow. Maybe I was never an artist, but I could be an interior decorator. Lucky for me Daryl is good-looking. I couldn’t stand phonying-up to one with hair on his knees. They once tried to hire me as an interior decorator at the furniture place on Sixth Street. They offered me a salary of $5700 a year. Daryl got on the phone to the headman. “Who do you think you’re trying to hire, some Goddamned darkie? My wife has an art background and all sort of cleverness. You got to raise the ante or she doesn’t come at all. Let us know if you can get it up over nigger wages. I don’t want to be ashamed of what my girl is bringing home every month.” They didn’t up it and I lost the job. But I loved Daryl and his pride. I guess I have pride. I guess I’m lucky how much I love Daryl, who’s a silly ass by any judgment. Some hot nights I dream about the beaches in Pensacola. But Daryl is my hobby. You can tell how good it is by the temperature of a man’s come. Harold’s was lukewarm. . I suppose I shouldn’t think of it, being raised in the church. But with Daryl — once the kids are asleep — there’s nothing like that hot blowing out in you when you are coming yourself. I, good Lord, thank You for that. It keeps a body going through the trash in daylight. Good intercourse is a work of art.