‘Like this,’ Harry said. ‘It used to be I had some big . ambition for myself all the time. A great engineer or a great doctor or lawyer. But now I don’t have it that way. . All I can think about is what happens in the world now. About Fascism and the terrible things in Europe--and on the other hand Democracy. I mean I can’t think and work on what I mean to be in life because I think too much about this other. I dream about killing Hitler every night And I wake up in the dark very thirsty and scared of something--I don’t know what’ She looked at Harry’s face and a deep, serious feeling made her sad. His hair hung over his forehead. His upper lip was thin and tight, but the lower one was thick and it trembled. Harry didn’t look old enough to be fifteen. With the darkness a cold wind came. The wind sang up in the oak trees on the block and banged the blinds against the side of the house. Down the street Mrs. Wells was calling Sucker home.
The dark late afternoon made the sadness heavy inside her. I want a piano--I want to take music lessons, she said to herself. She looked at Harry and he was lacing his thin fingers together in different shapes. There was a warm boy smell about him.
What was it made her act like she suddenly did? Maybe it was remembering the times when they were younger. Maybe it was because the sadness made her feel queer. But anyway all of a sudden she gave Harry a push that nearly knocked him off the steps. ‘S.O.B. to your Grandmother,’ she hollered to him.
Then she ran. That was what kids used to say in the neighborhood when they picked a fight Harry stood up and looked surprised. He settled his glasses on his nose and watched her for a second. Then he ran back to the alley.
The cold air made her strong as Samson. When she laughed there was a short, quick echo. She butted Harry with her shoulder and he got a holt on her. They wrestled hard and laughed. She was the tallest but his hands were strong. He didn’t fight good enough and she got him on the ground. Then suddenly he stopped moving and she stopped too. His breathing was warm on her neck and he was very still. She felt his ribs against her knees and his hard breathing as she sat on him. They got up together. They did not laugh any more and the alley was very quiet. As they walked across the dark back yard for some reason she felt funny. There was nothing to feel queer about, but suddenly it had just happened. She gave him a little push and he pushed her back. Then she laughed again and felt all right.
‘So long,’ Harry said. He was too old to climb the fence, so he ran through the side alley to the front of his house.
‘Gosh it’s hot!’ she said. ‘I could smother in here.’
Portia was warming her supper in the stove. Ralph banged his spoon on his high-chair tray. George’s dirty little hand pushed up his grits with a piece of bread and his eyes were squinted in a faraway look. She helped herself to white meat and gravy and grits and a few raisins and mixed them up together on her plate. She ate three bites of them. She ate until all the grits were gone but still she wasn’t full.
She had thought about Mister Singer all the day, and as soon as supper was over she went upstairs. But when she reached the third floor she saw that his door was open and his room dark. This gave her an empty feeling.
Downstairs she couldn’t sit still and study for the English test.
It was like she was so strong she couldn’t sit on a chair in a room the same as other people. It was like she could knock down all the walls of the house and then march through the streets big as a giant.
Finally she got out her private box from under the bed. She lay on her stomach and looked over the notebook. There were about twenty songs now, but she didn’t feel satisfied with them. If she could write a symphony! For a whole orchestra--how did you write that? Sometimes several instruments played one note, so the staff would have to be very large. She drew five lines across a big sheet of test paper--the lines about an inch apart. When a note was for violin or ‘cello or flute she would write the name of the instrument to show. And when they all played the same note together she would draw a circle around them. At the top of the page she wrote SYMPHONY in large letters. And under that MICK KELLY. Then she couldn’t go any further.
If she could only have music lessons! If only she could have a real piano! A long time passed before she could get started. The tunes were in her mind but she couldn’t figure how to write them. It looked like this was the hardest play in the world. But she kept on figuring until Etta and Hazel came into the room and got into bed and said she had to turn the light off because it was eleven o’clock.
FOR six weeks Portia had waited to hear from William. Every evening she would come to the house and ask Doctor Copeland the same question: ‘You seen anybody who gotten a letter from Willie yet?’ And every night he was obliged to tell her that he had heard nothing.
At last she asked the question no more. She would come into the hall and look at him without a word. She drank. Her blouse was often half unbuttoned and her shoestrings loose.
February came. The weather turned milder, then hot. The sun glared down with hard brilliance. Birds sang in the bare trees and children played out of doors barefoot and naked to the waist. The nights were torrid as in midsummer. Then after a few days winter was upon the town again. The mild skies darkened. A chill rain fell and the air turned dank and bitterly cold. In the town the Negroes suffered badly. Supplies of fuel had been exhausted and there was a struggle everywhere for warmth. An epidemic of pneumonia raged through the wet, narrow streets, and for a week Doctor Copeland slept at odd hours, fully clothed. Still no word came from William. Portia had written four times and Doctor Copeland twice.
During most of the day and night he had no time to think. But occasionally he found a chance to rest for a moment at home.
He would drink a pot of coffee by the kitchen stove and a deep uneasiness would come in him. Five of his patients had died.
And one of these was Augustus Benedict Mady Lewis, the little deaf-mute. He had been asked to speak at the burial service, but as it was his rule not to attend funerals he was unable to accept this invitation. The five patients had not been lost because of any negligence on his part. The blame was in the long years of want which lay behind. The diets of cornbread and sowbelly and syrup, the crowding of four and five persons to a single room. The death of poverty. He brooded on this and drank coffee to stay awake. Often he held his hand to his chin, for recently a slight tremor in the nerves of his neck made his head nod unsteadily when he was tired.
Then during the fourth week of February Portia came to the house. It was only six o’clock in the morning and he was sitting by the fire in the kitchen, warming a pan of milk for breakfast. She was badly intoxicated. He smelled the keen, sweetish odor of gin and his nostrils widened with disgust. He did not look at her but busied himself with his breakfast. He crumpled some bread in a bowl and poured over it hot milk. He prepared coffee and laid the table.
Then when he was seated before his breakfast he looked at Portia sternly. ‘Have you had your morning meal?’
‘I not going to eat breakfast,’ she said.
‘You will need it. If you intend to get to work today;’
‘I not going to work.’
A dread came in him. He did not wish to question her further.
He kept his eyes on his bowl of milk and drank from a spoon that was unsteady in his hand. When he had finished he looked up at the wall above her head. ‘Are you tongue-tied?’
‘I going to tell you. You going to hear about it. Just as soon as I able to say it I going to tell you.’
Portia sat motionless in the chair, her eyes moving slowly from one corner of the wall to the other. Her arms hung down limp and her legs were twisted loosely about each other.
When he turned from her he had for a moment a perilous sense of ease and freedom, which was more acute because he knew that soon it was to be shattered. He mended the fire and warmed his hands. Then he rolled a cigarette. The kitchen was in a state of spotless order and cleanliness. The saucepans on the wall glowed with the light of the stove and behind each one there was a round, black shadow.