She went to the closet and looked at her clothes. When was she ever going to get to wear anything but an apron? She never had a chance to dress up. Harry never took her any place; all she’d done since Thanksgiving was change diapers. That Wanda was smart to get out when the getting was good. But she had gotten out too. The trouble was she should have stayed out. She tried to remember why she had come back. Because she missed a nice family Thanksgiving! Everybody in America had been eating candied sweets and turkey and dressing and cranberries — except her. She loved candied sweets more than anything, and when she had called Harry, he had said that that was just what he was having. So she’d come back, and there hadn’t even been any damn candied sweets at all! Just the same, she thought then that he really loved her. He said he loved her when she asked him. Then why did he make her stay in her room? She had a right to see Mr. Wallace if he came. Gabe.
She thought about sex all the time.
Harry didn’t. At least not with her, she thought, moving from the closet and flopping down across the bed. She had heard people say that men only want women for one thing. Well, the only thing Harry wanted her for was to be a maid to him and those kids. And they weren’t even her kids! She began to whimper. She had only become twenty on November nineteenth!
It was just too bad Dewey had been married — otherwise he would have had to marry her. But of course she was already married. The only one who wasn’t married was Mr. Wallace. Boy, she had really told him off on the phone. Harry had been good and mad when she had finally repeated to him what he had said to her. Who the hell did he think he was! Who was he, breaking up families! He was nothing but a goddam Jew, making a dollar on somebody else’s troubles! Vic said he wouldn’t be surprised if the Jews had made the recession.
She wondered what it was like to do it with a Jew. She remembered the story of the little nigger boy they had taken to the hospital back home. She began to giggle and then she was crying, really crying this time. Harry just got on top, most times when she wasn’t even ready. The only warning she had was that he would get up and pull down the shades all the way, then draw the curtains across and close the door tight. They couldn’t even see each other’s face. She knew he made believe he was doing it to Wanda. Well, she could make believe she was doing it to somebody else, too! She had, many times — even with Dewey she had made believe she was doing it with somebody else. But that was because she knew that Dewey was making believe he was doing it with somebody else. Nobody who did it to her ever made believe he was doing it to her.
Well, she might not be a beauty queen, but at least she was clean and she had nice clothes.
But when could she ever wear them?
She put her ear to the door. She could hear hardly any of what was being said. Apparently he had been there for some time now, even while she had been on the bed, thinking things over. Little by little the voices were getting louder, and more frightening, and she was afraid to open the door. Harry had told her it was none of her business.
Why did she have to listen to him? She wasn’t his slave!
But she wasn’t going to run away again. Harry took care of her.
She thought of how she could get out of the room. Quietly she opened the door, and then tiptoed down the hallway to the room where the children slept. Once inside the children’s room, she quickly closed the door, but then she couldn’t hear anything again. Though in the corridor she had heard Mr. Wallace’s voice, and then some terrible thing that Harry was saying. When he got mad, he could really get mad.
Melinda was sleeping; the little baby, George, was sleeping too. And Walter was pretending to sleep. He was trying to trick her again. Her excuse for coming in was to make sure none of them had kicked off a blanket, but she wasn’t going to do anything for Walter if he was going to try to trick her. She stood over his bed.
“All right, Walter, why are you actin’ like you’re sleepin’?”
He did not answer.
“That’s just like you act like you can’t do it in the bowl. I’m goin’ to take your diaper away from you, then what you goin’ to do, huh?”
She shook him. “Don’t you pretend you’re sleepin’, Walter.” She shook him again.
The child’s eyes opened.
She gave him a good crack across the face.
He began to howl. “Well, that’s what you deserve,” she said, but he only howled louder. She knew he hated her. She would have cracked him again, just for good measure, but he was howling like an animal.
The door swung open. “What’s going on in here!” Harry shouted.
She could hear Vic and Gabe arguing in the other room. “He spit at me — so I hit him, to teach him—”
“He don’t spit at nobody!” Harry said. His face was red; he was shaking a finger at her.
“Well, he spits at me! So I gave him a good crack.”
“You don’t give nobody a good crack! I’ll give you a crack!”
“I got a right to come out in the living room. It’s my house too.”
“I’ll tell you whether to come out in the living room or not!”
“I’m not your slave—”
“You get back in your bedroom!”
“I got a right to see Mr. Wallace, if I want—”
But Mr. Wallace was in the doorway, with Vic. Melinda was sitting up in bed, and now George was crying too. And she was only twenty years old! What were any of these strangers to her? Christmas Eve without even a tree!
From the doorway Mr. Wallace was shouting — at her. “—you agreed, Theresa—” His face was red too. Vic had his hand on Mr. Wallace’s shoulder.
“Yes—”
“—extortion—”
“—back in your own room and stay—”
“—money already! months ago—”
“—baby—”
“It’s my living room too!” she screamed, and raced into it.
On the sofa was a laundry basket, and there was a small baby in it. She heard the men shouting — heading back to where she stood.
Nobody would hit a woman with a child. Her child! She picked it up and held it in her arms. It was her child! She looked at its face.
“It’s my baby — I’m holdin’ my baby—” she screamed, as they came at her.
“Put that baby down!”
“Theresa—” Wallace said.
“It’s mine! I ain’t goin’ to sign nothin’!”
“It’s not yours!” Mr. Wallace was moving his arms. “It’s not yours!”
“—it’s not yours—” Harry was saying, but not to her.
Mr. Wallace was screaming, “I’ll kill you!”
“Hey—”
Vic had grabbed Mr. Wallace’s shoulder. Mr. Wallace’s mouth was open, and his face was huge and red, almost as though it would pop. God, he wasn’t really handsome at all. “That baby—” he roared, but Harry was lunging toward her. She broke for the bedroom.
But she couldn’t lock the door in time; he barged through. What was she doing?
“You nuts—crazy?”
“Walter spit at me!”
“Put that baby down, God damn you. Put it down!”
“You ain’t goin’ to order—”
“I got five hundred bucks! I’m going to get two hundred more, you miserable little bitch! You give me that baby!”
“You can’t sell my baby!”
“Oh it’s not your damn—”
“I’m only twenty—”
He was coming at her. “You want to go out in the cold? You don’t want me to go in a business? You want to starve?”