And she would say, “One a these days I’m aimen to fry you a mess a butter-lily flowers, Cassie Marie,” and Cassie would giggle and …
“May I give you God’s word?”
Gertie lifted her glance past the outstretched booklet up to the woman’s face. She saw, below white hair, calm brown eyes, somewhat like Max’s eyes in color but filled with a peace and a certainty that Max did not know. “Read God’s word,” the woman went on. Her voice was low and somehow pretty, but more than anything it was smooth and even. It told a body nothing but the words as it said, “Find God and Jesus, and you will find yourself.”
Gertie cleared her throat and did not reach for the booklet. “I’ve been a readen th Bible an a hunten God fer a long while—off an on—but it ain’t so easy as picken up a nickel off th floor.”
“Evermore learning but forever from the truth,” the woman said, walking beside her. “You need a teacher to help in the search. Find him. He is coming soon, very soon. The prophecies are almost fulfilled.”
“Paul said that nigh two thousand years ago,” Gertie said, and they were silent as they walked together down the bit of empty alley between the end of the six-unit building just ended, and the beginning of the building that held Gertie’s unit. The woman turned away and knocked at the first door.
Gertie walked slowly on, watching the woman, keeping almost abreast of her, for no one came to her knocking at the first two doors. At the third door in the row of six, a woman was just coming out with broom and bucket, taking advantage of the thaw to scrub her steps. She did not look about her, but at once dipped the broom into the pail and began to scrub so vigorously that her broom spattered dirty water onto the next stoop, which was clean.
She was a little woman, faded and dumpy, puffed in the wrong places, Gertie thought, like a piece of bright but cheap cloth, washed and boiled in overly strong lye suds. She was the mother, Clytie had said, of the girl Maggie and of the boy who had knocked Enoch down. It was hard to believe, though, that this woman could be kin of Maggie. Her hair might have been red and curly once, or it might have been black and wavy. It was fuzzy grizzled now, matching the red, chapped hands on the broom handle. She looked like she might be pretty far gone in the family way, but it was hard to say. She was so dumpling.
When the gospel woman paused at the foot of the steps, a book held out, the little woman did not look round but continued to scrub as if she and the broom were alone in the world together. But Gertie, watching in swift sidewise glances, felt she knew that someone waited by the bottom step.
There was at the moment one of those sudden lulls of silence that now and then dropped into the alley; even traffic, held back by switching trains, was still. Gertie heard the gospel woman say, “Could I leave some of our literature with you as a gift? It might help you through these troubled times.”
The little woman soused her broom up and down in the bucket, giving the other an angry, suspicious glance as she did so. She bent again to the scrubbing. “Would you be interested in—” The gospel woman’s words were broken off by a spattering of dirty water, some of which must have gone into her face. Still she advanced to the second step, and her voice continued pleasant, “In this book are many of Christ’s teachings that will help you through these tr—”
A broomful of scrub water well aimed, with no pretense of accident, flew about the brown shoulders and the dull scarf. Gertie thought it must have hit the woman in the mouth, for she heard a choking gasp, saw her elbows move as if she were wiping her face; but in a moment the woman was able to say, turning slowly away, “‘Do unto others as—’”
The Bible verse was cut in two by the pail of dirty water flung over her shoulders and head. Gertie saw it trickle down the coat, both front and back, as the woman turned about, wiping her eyes. The other cried with a furious shaking of the bucket: “Some people that don’t move fast enough when Kathy Daly gits ready to t’row out her scrub water gits dirtied. And if,” she went on, dropping the bucket and seizing the broom, “good people like Father Moneyhan had th say-so in this country, yu’d git worse’n scrub water. Hitler knows how t’handle u likes a youse along wit u Jews.”
“Yes,” the woman said, still rubbing her eyes as she turned back to the other, “the prophecies are being fulfilled. All over the earth we are persecuted. Hitler kills us, but here we are only beaten by mobs and put into jail.”
Mrs. Daly flourished the broom. “I mean git. I’ll call a cops; da red squad. Youse can’t talk about u gover’ment thataway in front a Kathy Daly, see? I’m a good patriotic Christian American. See? No nigger-loven, Jew-loven, communist’s gonna stand on mu steps and tell me wot I gotta do. Don’t think I don’t know th likes a youse, communists, not saluten du flag, an—”
“Bow down to no graven image,” the gospel woman said, turning away again, but awkwardly, like one unable to see.
“Wotta yu mean, graven image?” And the broom came hard down on the blinded woman’s head. Gertie had not known she was so close, but when Mrs. Daly ran down two steps and brought the broom down a second time, it fell on her own outstretched hand. She held it and looked into the angry blue eyes above it. The eyes told her the woman was Maggie’s mother, though they were red now, as if from old weeping, and set about with flabby wrinkles, faded as if the eyes along with the wrinkled, freckled forehead and pouchy cheeks had been left too long in the too hot, too strong suds. The loose-lipped mouth showed ragged, broken teeth as the woman cried, pulling on the broom: “Youse jist got here, yu hillbilly heathen, an so help me yu think you run du town. Leggo this broom, yu big bitch. I’ll calla cops.”
Gertie flushed, but hung on to the broom as she turned to the gospel woman, who was still wiping her eyes, her face twisted with pain. “I live jist a little piece ahead. Go up to my place an git dry.”
“I can’t see,” the other said.
“Youse ain’t blinded,” Kathy cried, struggling with both her small hands to free the broom from Gertie’s one big hand. “I give youse a little Roman Cleanser inu water’s all. But come close t’my house anudder time an youse’ull git a pot a lye water. Keep them books an that talk away frum mu kids, see?” Her voice grew louder, shriller, and her talk unlike anything Gertie had ever heard. It became a mixture of swear words such as Sue Annie might have used in her worst moments, coupled with others Gertie had never heard, all mixed in with prayer-sounding pieces of talk to the Virgin, Father Moneyhan, and various saints. Amos stared at her in wonder, as he had stared a few moments earlier at the strange-talking man in the little grocery store.
Gertie held the broom off with one hand, turned the blinded woman about with the other. The door next to Mrs. Daly’s opened, and a large dark woman in a starched pink apron came out to her stoop and stood watching. Gertie gave her one quick pleading glance, then turned away without asking for help. Something in the dark face under the neat rolls of hair in curlers made her feel that if the woman took anybody’s part it would be Mrs. Daly’s.
“Is she badly hurt?” It was Mrs. Anderson running down her steps, her baby bouncing on her arm.
“I’m fine, thank you, except that I can’t see so well,” the woman answered, holding her hand out toward the voice.
Mrs. Anderson ran up and piloted her out of Kathy’s reach, and then, while Gertie continued to hold the broom, rushed back. Murmuring, “How terrible, how terrible,” she ran stopping to pick up the booklets and the gospel woman’s purse. It was a worn and shoddy thing of imitation leather, its flimsy clasp fallen open, with a few pieces of silver, but mostly nickels and pennies, scattered in the slush.
Max, in a full-skirted housecoat and with the rumpled look of one just awakened, ran down the alley and led the woman away. Gertie saw her in swift sidewise glances, as she saw Mrs. Anderson, but mostly she looked into the eyes at the other end of the broom. The angry, troubled eyes made her want to say something, beg forgiveness for doing a thing she had to do. She had to hold one end of the broom, but Kathy Daly had to hold the oth
er. Why? In front of her a whole houseful of little youngens was spilling through the door onto the stoop, and from somewhere inside she heard the crying of a baby—so many youngens. Counting these and the ones gone to school, there must be ten. They all screamed at her, repeating fragments of their mother’s curses, along with such words as “old bitch, hillbilly, Jew, communist,” the last word most fiercely and most often repeated, as if in it alone were gathered all the evil that could be put into all the curses. At last a little boy darted out and struck her on the thigh, crying, “Hillbilly. Go back home, youse hillbilly communist.”
The voice was familiar, and looking at him she remembered the grapes he had held out to Amos only a few days ago. “Let th rest be,” she said in a rough hoarse voice to Mrs. Anderson, and dropped the broom and darted away.
She did not look back when Mrs. Daly called: “Youse needn’t run. I wouldn’t hurt a little ting like youse.”
The children in the doorway laughed so hard they could no longer call her names. Ahead of her she heard laughter, and looked up to see Max bending with laughter, her face twisted with the laughter as if it were for her some unaccustomed thing she did not quite know how to handle. “Whyn’tcha pick her up an throw her inu trash can?” she asked when she could speak.
“I couldn’t,” Gertie said, turning toward her steps, but stopping when Max motioned with her arm.
“Come on in. Expressman broughtcha some stuff. I got it.” And then to Mrs. Anderson, just behind Gertie, her hands and arms overflowing with baby and booklets, “Come on in my place. She’s ina bathroom. Victor’s worken double shift. They’s somethen in my kitchen yu gotta see. It gives me th willies.” She motioned again to Gertie, explaining as she opened the door, “Sophronie an me was drinken coffee when Kathy Daly went to war.”
Gertie followed Max and Mrs. Anderson into the tiny kitchen that to her flustered glance seemed smothery crowded with fancy furniture. Sophronie, sitting at the table over a cup of coffee, smiled up at her, then lifted her peacock-draped arms in a long stretch, the cigarette between her fingers pointing ceilingward while she yawned with a long and yearning yawn.
Then, in the passway into the living room Gertie saw the block of wood. She crowded past the women until she was close enough to touch it; and there in the little empty space in front of the stove she knelt and studied it, both with her eyes and her hands to see if any hurt had come to it. But it stood unscratched and undented, marked only by the pasted papers to guide it on its journey. The top of the head was bending, searching for the face, waiting, as it had searched and waited all these years.
All unknowing her hands went under her coat into her apron pocket, opening the knife. If right now she and the wood could be alone together, she would bring out the face. His face was so clear—Christ coming down through the October field with the red leaves in one hand, an ax in the other. It was so plain, a little like Henley’s face, a little—no—not exactly. Her hand came away from the knife, and dropped again onto the wood. How had it been, the face? She wasn’t seeing. She was recollecting what she had seen. The only face she could see now was Kathy Daly’s, the eyes looking at her with such hatred. A sin it was to make another sin with such hatred and such talk—but Judas had to sin. She saw that Amos had followed her, and now stood tongue-tied in the doorway behind Mrs. Anderson who asked, looking over her baby’s head: “What is that? Do you carve? Did you do that?”
“It’s what I wanted yu to see,” Max said, busily hanging the woman’s dampened clothing on the overhead pipe. She turned to Gertie. “I wanta see his face. He gives me th willies. Seems like all he’s gotta do is raise his head an there he’d be.”
“It’s quite a work of …” Mrs. Anderson’s tone, which had been one of grudging praise handed down with authority, changed to troubled pleading: “Georgie, darling, please don’t—do leave the poor woman’s clothing on the pipe. It won’t dry on the floor. Let Mother take off your snow suit while you’re in the house.” The dark-eyed, smooth-faced child was still an instant while she, working awkwardly with one hand, unzipped zippers and unbuckled buckles. She had not quite finished when he darted into the living room after Amos and Wheateye. She did not call him back, but shifted the baby, and after another frowning glance at the block of wood turned her attention to the woman’s clothing. She shook her head in pity. “Poor thing. That coat must be twenty years old, and I guess it’s her only outdoor garment.”
“Oh, yeah,” Max said, taking cups and saucers from a shelf above the sink. “That coat’s just like what th poor woman wears ina movies, but lookut them hose—Hudson’s best brand a nylons—service weight.”
Mrs. Anderson sat down and rocked the baby, beginning to whimper now, back and forth in her arms in a weary sort of way. “Somebody’s given them to her—poor woman.”
“Yeah?” Max said, pouring cream off a bottle of milk into a small pitcher. “Who’s got nylons to give away? And yu oughta see her slip, pure silk, real lace. People don’t cast off slips like what she’s got on—and make um fit. But so what? It’s her business, ain’t it?”
“Max,” Sophronie warned in a whisper, just as the gospel woman came into the passway. Gertie, pressed into a corner, aware as always since leaving home that she took up more than one’s person’s share of room, gave the petticoat, showing a little under the housecoat Max had loaned the woman, a quick appraising glance, as did the others. She saw the lace was in truth handmade, and finer than any her mother had ever done. Still, it seemed to belong on the woman, who, without her hat and under the bright overhead light, looked older than she had looked in the alley, maybe as old as her mother, but unlike Sophronie, she looked neither tired nor faded without make-up, even though one eye was still faintly red from the scrub water. Her hair had plainly never been ruined by permanent waves and lack of care like Mrs. Daly’s. There was something about its soft whiteness, set in gentle waves and curling wisps around her ears, that bespoke an easier, kinder life than the alley gave.
There was the same look about her small white, uncalloused hands; and when she thanked Max for the coffee her voice was plainly a stranger to all alone weeping like Max’s voice or mad screaming like Kathy’s. She sat with the others about the table, silent, sipping coffee, smiling now and then at Mrs. Anderson’s baby, growing ever more restless. She gave it one of Max’s bright silver spoons and a bit of coffee cake, which Mrs. Anderson, with a horrified look, immediately took from the child, though not before she had got a few small crumbs into her mouth. “It’s not on her diet,” she explained as the child smacked its lips, then screamed, reaching for the cake.
“You have a pediatrician, my dear?” the gospel woman asked.
“Oh, yes. Yes, indeed,” Mrs. Anderson said, looking somewhat startled, then composing her face to add, “a very good one, highly recommended by two of my husband’s bosses.”
“Really. And may I ask where your husband works?”
“In one of Mr. Flint’s plants—temporarily. He majored in sociology and did government work in employment down in Indiana before the war. But now he does something about personnel. I don’t know just exactly what it is.”
“Neither does anybody else, I’m sure,” the gospel woman said. She smiled at Mrs. Anderson, then looked at Gertie, still standing pressed into a corner of the passway. “I can’t begin to thank you,” she said, setting down her coffee cup. “Not just for helping me, but for not hurting the other and for not saying anything.”
“She was too little, an I ain’t much on talken,” Gertie said.
The other nodded, “Talk—human talk—is no good. She needs Christ.”
“Yeah,” Max said, flipping a package of cigarettes across the table toward Sophronie. “If Christ come knocken on her door, an he couldn’t say his beads with a Irish brogue, she wouldn’t let him in. If he told her about the man with the two coats, she’d call him a communist, and if his beard wasn’t blond like the images she’d call him a dirty Jew.”
The gospel woman s
ighed. “Poor thing—such hatred, such hatred. She needs a teacher.”
Gertie cleared her throat. “Seems like she’s got one—this Father Moneyhan she kept a quoten.”
“He’s terrible—some say his teachings here in the United States have helped Hitler a lot,” Mrs. Anderson said. “He’s fascist through and through.”
“I don’t know this Father Moneyhan,” Max said, “but whatever he is, if he’s a Catholic he’ll love Hitler an huggle up to Mussolini an hate th Russians worse’n th Germans,” and her eyes were no longer cool but hotly bright.
Mrs. Anderson looked apprehensively at Max, and spoke soothingly, “Now, Max, they hate the Russians because they’re communists.”
“Yeah,” Max said, “they hate th Russians for what they ain’t, not for what they are. Kid, I’m educated—my mother-in-law’s taught me more about some things than your man will ever know when he finishes that paper for that degree. Th pope’s hated th Russians an th Russians has despised th pope from a long time back when there wasn’t no communism, nothing but kings.”
“And the pope,” the gospel woman said.
“Max,” Mrs. Anderson began, putting the baby over her shoulder, “historically you’re partly right; but still they don’t hate the way you—”
“Oh, yeah?” Max leaned forward, an unlighted cigarette between her fingers. “Maybe yu do know history, but yu’re not married to a Catholic—or yu thought yu was married till yu learned different—a Polock Catholic. I know. See?”
“My dear, don’t hate him or any Catholic,” the gospel woman said. “You need—”
“Yeah?” Max asked, her voice rising. “I know wot I need. If I quit hating them—him and her, th priest that done it, that lying sister that letum carry her away—if I quit hating them, I’d hafta hate myself—see?”