Jennie Sargosie celebrated her seventy-seventh birthday with a slice of hot apple pie and a cup of coffee at Woolworth’s. It was an event to travel to downtown Houston. It entailed walking four blocks from her white clapboard home to the suburban bus stop. It also meant switching to a cross town bus after braving the freeway and finally being pushed and shoved on the sidewalk in front of Woolworth’s.
Jennie did not like riding the bus with all the smart-mouthed little brats and the hostile foreign women. Mostly Mexican women, the ones who shouldn’t even be here.
When she had to share a seat with one of them, she shrank closer to the window, turning her head away in anger. She wrinkled her nose at the smell of perspiration, lifted her pale blue eyes at the cheap, bright clothes. Houston was not becoming an international city the way they claimed it was on TV. Long ago Jennie had decided Houston was turning into a cesspool. One day it would die from the diseased humanity that clogged its streets.
Jennie had papers and photographs proving her ancestors had come to Houston in wagons all the way from West Virginia. That this same family had emigrated from a tiny, poverty-ridden village in Ireland did not change her attitude toward “foreigners.” Houston belonged to her and her kind, and it was being given away to people who could hardly speak English. And it was a crime.
All of her family was dead—all but herself and one badly bred grandson who had hitch-hiked to California during the hippie era. She had not heard from the boy again and she did not care to. His mother had been her own flesh and blood, but the child’s father was Mexican-American so the boy was lost from the start.
Jennie viewed the changing world as an increasingly alien place. Her small house was paid for, but she had to live frugally on a Social Security check. Sometimes in the dark of night when she was loneliest and most susceptible to self-pity, she wished she might come down with pneumonia or a heart attack and let it all end. It was terrible to be seventy-seven, arthritic, frail, unloved, and bored.
At the counter in Woolworth’s Jennie marveled over the flavor of the apple pie. She lifted a forkful to her mouth and chewed it slowly. Her gums hurt where her ill-fitting dentures rubbed, but the pie was worth the pain. The coffee too was a prize. It always tasted better downtown at Woolworth’s. She sipped it with relish.
Jennie fingered the black cloth bag beside her saucer. She had six dollars and forty-two cents she could splurge without throwing her monthly budget totally off. After the delightful pie and coffee she thought she would look around for something to get as a birthday present to herself.
It did not strike Jennie as pathetic to have to buy her own presents. She had long since forgotten how once she had been surrounded by a husband and family, forgotten how she once had money for luxuries. Every birthday for the past ten years she had put aside money for the bills she owed, money for food, and took whatever was left over for the trip downtown. Each year the birthday allowance dwindled because of rising expenses, but even if it were only a dollar, it would suffice.
A woman dressed in a tailored, white linen suit sat next to Jennie. Occasionally the woman glanced over and frowned to show her disgust for the old woman. Jennie noticed. She deliberately held the fork in front of her before theatrically licking the last crumbs from the tines. She slanted her eyes at the lady, wondering if she were Mexican because she sure was dark.
“I ain’t bothering you,” Jennie said loudly. “Go on and move if you don’t like it.”
The woman blanched and moved down two stools.
The waitress had heard Jennie’s remark. She brought the coffeepot to the counter. “More?” she asked. Her eyes traveled over the old woman’s plain dark cotton dress and raveled white sweater.
“Had my fill, thank you very much. I’ll be paying my check now. Don’t think I’m welcome around here no ways.”
Jennie paid the outrageous sum of a dollar-ten for the pie and coffee and walked off into the store grumbling.
Woolworth’s was nearly deserted. Salespeople stood around looking bored or walked the aisles fingering the merchandise. Jennie took her time wandering from one department to another. The number of things money might buy in just this one department store was an amazing show of shoddy merchandise, she thought. Most of it made by foreigners. “No one cares about quality these days,” she mumbled.
She approached a shelf of knickknacks and picked up a tiny figurine. She turned it upside down to read where it had been made. “Figures!” she said loudly when she saw Taiwan stamped on the bottom.
The figurine was nice. It was of a girl in a long blue dress. In the girl’s hand was a rainbow-striped umbrella, as delicate as a butterfly’s wings. It would look pretty on a windowsill. The girl in blue could watch over the weather and predict the warm spring rains that were sure to follow Houston’s cold winter.
From the corner of her eye Jennie saw a saleslady approaching and put the blue girl down. She had not yet decided to spend four dollars and ninety-five cents on a piece of Oriental junk. She sidled away quickly.
It was great fun pretending she might buy anything her heart desired. She stood over the embroidery section a long time contemplating the pretty work that could be done on pillowcases, scarves, and aprons.
But her hands were too stiff with arthritis to hold a needle for any length of time.
In the pet department she watched tropical fish cavort through plaster castles and treasure chests that opened with a hundred bubbles every few seconds. She was so enthralled she missed the approach of a small black girl who wore a name pin in a prominent position on her blouse.
“Want some fish, ma’am?”
Jennie jumped. Her eyes filled with contempt as they settled on the black salesgirl.
“No, I don’t ’spect I’l1 be needing no fish. Think I’m out to steal ’em, do you?”
The girl did not blink. She looked Jennie up and down evenly.
“Why you staring like that, girl? You got nothing better to do?” Jennie was more than a little flustered. “Get outta my way. Tend to your old fish.”
The girl refused to move, so Jennie did her best to swish the full cotton skirt as she went around her. It was ten minutes before she could calm down enough to consider birthday presents again. She glanced at her feet, which were sending sharp jabs of pain up her legs. The tan patent leather of her shoes was cracked where the tops of her feet always swelled, and the cracks were pinching the flesh badly. It was a long trip back home, and by the time she got to the rocker and hassock in her living room she would hardly be able to walk.
Although she had not seen everything in the store, it was necessary to make her choice. She bought the figurine. The rest of her anger melted away as she looked at the rainbow colors of the umbrella.
“Wrap it for me,” she commanded the woman who took her money.
As the figurine was being covered with white tissue paper she decided the present deserved a box too. For four ninety-five a person should at least get a box. “Put it in a box,” she ordered.
“It don’t come with a box.” The sales lady’s voice was close to a snarl. She put the blue girl in the bottom of a thin paper bag.
“I don’t care if it comes in a doggie bag, I want a box for it,” Jennie said firmly.
She got her way. She usually did. She knew she was often crotchety and rude, but she did not care. What had the people in this city ever done to deserve courtesy? Had good manners made life more comfortable for her? They had not.
Only the ornery got what they asked for these days. The nastier and more demanding you were the more respect you received.
The bus ride home was as bad as Jennie had thought it would be. The downtown bus was packed with city workers returning home. At first she could not find a seat and thought she would be forced to stand. There were not any gentlemen around anymore to give a lady a seat. The bus lurched two blocks before Jennie, in a state of near panic, spied an empty place in the back. It was between two Hispanic women with parcels heaped in their laps.