Mrs. Bales, walking ahead, smiled over her shoulder. “Neither did Paul nor Thomas Jefferson. Goodbye, my dear; things will get easier.” She turned to Gertie. “Thank you again. Search on and you will find—” They had covered the few steps to Gertie’s walk when Mrs. Bales stopped. She glanced uneasily toward Johala, who had also stopped and was waiting with the polite but impatient air of a busy woman forced to spend time at some foolish party. “A face,” Mrs. Bales went on, touching the block of wood, “the perfect face. The top of the head, and the hair, the way it swirls, they’re beautiful,” and she stood on tiptoe in order to see the top of the head again. She asked, without looking away: “Did you see it, Johala? Did you see?”
Johala nodded, searching Gertie’s face, “Christ?”
Gertie nodded. “I’ve allus kind a hoped so—but I cain’t seem tu find a face.”
“Maybe,” Johala said, and she was smiling a little, “you’ll find it in Detroit. In Detroit there are many Christs.”
“Seems like they’re all dead an hung on crosses,” Gertie said.
“I guess it’s easier to live with a dead Christ,” Johala said.
Mrs. Bates protested. “Oh, Johala, Christ is alive. He is risen. His spirit struggles continually in Satan’s world.”
“Yes’m,” the dark woman said, and moved on down the walk, for Georgie, plowing snow in her direction, was flinging the dirty snow onto her boots.
SIXTEEN
SATURDAY AGAIN, AND ALL morning the alley had been first a knocking and then a reaching hand, cupped for the down-dropping silver, thumb and fingers reaching for the bills. Silver enough she had had for Casimir the ice-man and for the paper boy who collected each Saturday. Six loaves she had asked of the bakery man, wondering if only that much bread would run them till Monday, but still the dollar bill had been too little and she must break another. The milkman came with his milk and his bill for the seventy quarts they’d used since the Saturday two weeks back. She had held out to him a ten and a five, her lips moving over the figures; two ones and forty cents would be left in change. She had questioned with her eyes, opened her mouth to protest when instead of the forty cents there were two pennies. She remembered the sales tax. She was always forgetting the sales tax. Enough to have bought two more quarts of milk, and there was never enough for milk-hungry Reuben.
In between there’d been the peddlers and the children. “Lady, any small children in the home?” An older woman shoved sample pictures into her face. “Large photographs or postcard size for the father in the service. No? Friends back home, then? Remember them with a picture of loved ones.” She had hurried away after Gertie’s three headshakes. Next came two little girls giggling with shyness, “Lady, buy a chance on this beautiful radio. One punch, onli ten cents; git a box u candy, perhaps, even if yu don’t gitu radio. Butcha can’t lose, lady. Yu’ll help u good sisters buy equipment fudu playroom.” There had come a boy thrusting a too bright wreath into her face. “Why, lady,” when she had shaken her head, “if I didn’t tell yu it was paper, yu’d think um fresh frum u tree.”
Then came a man with a suitcase, opening she storm door and knocking on the inside door as if he owned the place. “But I don’t—” she began.
“Three sixty-five, Mrs. Nevels, on your little account.” He came through the door and waved the card to remind her, the waiting cupped hand in his eyes. The suitcase was quickly opened on the floor, and more quickly still out came the purple curtains, the pink bedspreads, the flowered tablecloths, the towels, bathmats, pot holders, chenille rugs. They were a flood over the table, the chairs, and the board on which Gertie tried to iron, and over them the flood of words: “Now, lady, any small thing for your home. Yu credit’s good with us; so little, so little each week. Yu’ll have more linens den u Hotel Statler an never know yu’ve spent a dime.”
Clytie heard and came running. She saw the length of blue-dotted ruffled curtains in his hands. “Oh, Mom, they’re prettier than th ones I was goen to order back home.”
The man seized more curtains, pink ones now. “Just what the young lady needs for her bedroom; these flowers fudu kitchen; lace here fudu living room—dignity yet, but good.” He bent across the ironing board, looked up at Gertie, perspiring, backing away. “Youse ez lucky, a chance like this on such a buy—pure cotton, regulation PY 47 goes on next week. No more cotton. Du navy’s short on doilies. Yu gotta not git caught short.”
Gertie mumbled something about getting his money, and fled. His voice followed. “Think a yu kids, lady. Kids gotta have curtains, rugs, bedspreads …”
Gertie closed the door behind her, and his voice and Clytie’s voice were lost in the steel-mill sounds. She remembered, leaning against the door, breathing hard as if she had been running, that in this room there was no money. This was a kind of sanctuary, and often she fled to it. Victor and Max’s bedroom was on the other side of the wall, and it was most always still of days except when Victor’s radio played music, and though the music was different from any she had heard, she liked it. Here, too, was the block of wood. It stood on a chair because there was no room for it on the floor. Cassie had wanted it in the room with the two little beds where she and Clytie slept, but Gertie had been unable to wedge it in.
She was smoothing the top of the head when Clytie came, begging for curtains at least for the living room, reminding her, “Pop was quarrelen t’other night, sayen we was th onliest people in th alley ’thout curtains but Miz Anderson; an Georgie swings on hers.”
Gertie drew a deep breath. “But they’re so skimpy an flimsy—an they’ll make th place seem littler. An all that money. Git that five-dollar bill from th high shelf. He’ll have to have a down payment.”
Cytie said, “Oh, goody,” and skipped away.
Gertie ironed again, but her thoughts wandered, as they so often did. She forgot, as she had forgotten many times since Clovis had brought her the always hot electric iron. She set it on the stove, and even bent to get the wood before she remembered.
She was in the middle of Clovis’s good white shirt when there came another knocking. Too weary to walk round the board and open the door, she called the knocker in, though Clovis had warned her that in Detroit it was a dangerous thing to do. However, it was only Maggie Daly, holding out a box of Christmas cards, explaining she sold them to help the good sisters of Crimson Blood High buy batons for the class in baton twirling.
“Yu know you’re gonna send cards to your folks back home,” Maggie said, spreading the cards on the table so that Gertie might buy without any interruption to the ironing, “so buy these an help u good sisters.” And she showed cards with fat baby Christs that made Gertie think of the cur dog on her mother’s rug. There were fat little angels that might have come from the ads for baby foods in the paper, and many prim-mouthed mothers of God, all blonde with the permanent-waved, neat-handed look of the women in the frozen-food ads. All seemed at least one heaven away from the tears and sweat and blood of the many childbirths and the work the Mother Mary had. Maggie was disappointed when in the end Gertie bought only three, and these, fat angels.
She ironed again, and not long after Sophronie came, whispering above her package-filled arms: “Is your youngens all out a th way? I’ve got Santie Claus stuff—I meant to go to Max’s, but Victor’s home.”
“They’re all out in th snow,” Gertie answered.
Sophronie turned and motioned with her head toward the battered car in the alley, then hurried across the kitchen, while a tall man, almost as tall and slim as Clovis, got out from the driver’s seat. He loaded up with bundles, taking last from a box in the back a bottle of beer. “Santa Claus,” he said, smiling as he came to the door, his voice soft and slow.
Gertie tried not to show the scorn she felt for such a foolish waste of money. A little stuff for Santa Claus, maybe, but not so much. Under the wrappings she caught glimpses of a sled, shiny contraptions on wheels, and boxes of all sizes. She saw on one the words Hockey Skates, and remembered with a twinge
of guilt that Enoch had wished for just such skates. Amos would love a contraption on wheels. “I ain’t bought a thing,” she said, half defiantly, half apologetically to Sophronie as she helped her stow the stuff in the scant space under the bed in her room.
“You’d better be a layen it in,” Sophronie said. “War’s maken stuff so scarce they won’t be nothen left by Christmas. Most a th stores’ll let you have it on time, like clothes er anything else. An it’s like Whit says, they ain’t never little but onct.” The top fell off a flimsy cardboard box, and a tiny red cup rolled out. Sophronie reached for it with a worried, “Oh, Lordy, I hope none uv em’s lost,” and she opened the box to examine the set of dishes, little and dainty and red.
Even Gertie smiled on the little things. “My Cassie’ud set a big dinner with them,” she said.
“You can git um in Hamtramck—two seventy-five. I allus, when I was a youngen, wanted a little set a dishes.” And she squatted a moment, staring at the cup, her usually expressionless eyes looking back at the little girl who had wanted dishes. She smiled up at Gertie and put the cup away. “But we ginerly got our part a th cotton money along about Christmas, an by the time Pop paid up at th store they wasn’t much left.”
“Hurry,” Whit called from the kitchen, “they’s a great swarm a youngens a comen this away. It’s all right,” he called a moment later as the women hurried to hide the toys. “They ain’t a comen in. Looks like somebody’s cleaned up ona Dalys, they’re all runnen in home. That biggest un’s a bleeden some. Mebbe fer onct our kids didn’t git th dirty end a th stick.”
The women came into the kitchen. Whit looked around from the door and smiled at Sophronie, satisfaction in his pale blue eyes. Gertie saw that two of his front teeth were broken, with only stumps remaining, and that running up from the broken teeth was a crooked scar, showing ugly across one temple, reaching up into his pale thin hair. Though she knew him to be younger than Clovis, his eyes looked old, holding something of the filmed and rheumy look of a very old man’s eyes, but his laugh when he looked out the door again was young enough. “It must ha been Claude Jean done it. He’s a comen thisaway.”
Sophronie looked through the glass and gave a sharp gasp. “They’ve hurt him agin. Look how he’s a bleeden frum his mouth. Four a them, allus four a them on my two—an then th least uns clawen um while the big uns holds um.”
“Yeah. But recollect ours gits help sometimes.” Whit took a sip of beer, studied Claude Jean in the alley. “He don’t look like he’d got his feelens bruised up none.”
Gertie looked over their shoulders, but could not find Claude Jean or any of her own, for the alley seemed one churning, wriggling mass of children, tempted out on this warmish Saturday by the freshly fallen snow. She saw Georgie pulling his sled upside down. Following Georgie was a plumpish man in horn-rimmed spectacles and an overcoat, who at every step or so stooped, and with a quick furtive motion tried to put the sled right side up. The man always straightened quickly and stood helplessly watching each time his son turned and saw what he was trying to do, then stamped his foot and screamed.
A huddle of little girls was building a snow man across from Max’s place who from their giggling squeals and cries loved the snowballs flung by little boys more than the snow man. Gertie wished that Cassie might be with them, laughing and squealing and hiding her face. She saw Cassie at last, but alone as always, running into the alley at the end by the railroad fence. She was not alone either, for in one mittened hand she held Callie Lou’s hand, while with the other she caught up a handful of snow and tried to fling it into the witch child’s face. She failed, but laughed and ducked her head when the other, using Cassie’s hand, flung it back. Gertie smiled; she had suddenly realized that Callie Lou was one of the things she had missed in Detroit.
“Well, is he or ain’t he a comen out?” Whit wanted to know.
Gertie realized that she and Cassie were about the only ones within sight of the Daly door who were not looking at it. Mr. Anderson no longer seemed interested in righting the sled, but stared at the Daly door with the same look of all-consuming curiosity as must have been on the face of Lot’s wife when she turned to watch the beginnings of the end of Gomorrah. Claude Jean, oblivious to the trickle of blood down his chin, stood at the end of the Meanwell sidewalk, watching, smiling a little, half afraid, but eager too.
He was joined in a moment by his older brother, Gilbert, only a year younger than Reuben but smaller, a tough and wiry child with hair the color of his pale skin, so that at a distance he seemed baldheaded, only now his head was splashed with crimson. Sophronie, seeing it, gave another low gasp, and pulled at the doorknob. Whit took another sip of beer and put his hand over hers as he said: “You know better’n to go out an mix with them Dalys. Old man Daly,” he explained to Gertie, “he’s in good with th cops an th project manager.”
Sophronie blew a hard blast of smoke. “Comen er goen he’s allus got us. If’n our youngens gits help an licks his’n he’ll go complainen to Mr. Jergens—an Jergens threatened us last fall with eviction.”
“You didn’t git a look at them two biggest Dalys,” Whit comforted Sophronie, but added, “Some day, by God, me an you we’re a goen to have us a little hole a our own, an they’ll never be no more evictions.”
Sophronie took the bottle from him, took a long swallow, and handed it back, smiling. “Whit, honey, th only hole a our own me an you’ll have ull be in hell. Not six weeks after we’re buried, no matter where it is—after we’ve got it paid fer with our insurance money—they’ll come bulldozen that graveyard down fer a highway.”
“A factory site, you mean,” Whit said. “Old man Flint’ull outlast me an bulldoze down my grave fer a coffin-maken factory.”
“He don’t make coffins,” Sophronie said.
“He’s put many a good man in one, though,” Whit said, and rubbed the pathway of the old wound across his cheek in a remembering, reflective sort of way. “Old man Flint, he’ll figger out a way so’s a man when he drops dead can drop in a coffin on one end uv a ’sembly line an step right out in hell a shovelen coal on t’other end.” He squeezed his wife’s hand over the doorknob. “Don’t worry none about old Jergens. He won’t evict us no matter what that old communist says—we’re both in defense.”
Sophronie, before he could finish, had begun an angry, troubled, shshushing. “Now, Whit, you know he ain’t no communist. If,” she went on in her usual low tiptoeing sort of voice, “Daly knowed you was a callen him that, he’d git us throwed out fer true.”
“Sophronie,” Whit said, sighing, then taking another sip of beer, “I wisht you’d git over bein so skeered. None a old man Flint’s protection men is around a listenen.” He looked at Gertie, tapped his wife gently on the shoulder. “She made me lose a job onct—back inu depression—frum talken in a store. But she couldn’t hep it none. She didn’t know they was a Flint man, one a them paid to listen an tell, right behind her.”
“Aw, Whit,” Sophronie said, looking ever more worried, throwing a quick, suspicious glance at Gertie, “you oughtn’t to say—”
“I ain’t said a thing about nobody,” Whit said, looking out the door again. “Sure, sure, Daly, he don’t love communism no more. He ain’t a bit like a guy I know wot left his wife. Allatime this guy goes around tellen wot a bad woman she was so’s he can be certain he done th right thing an don’t love her no more.”
“Emotionally involved?” Gertie said, then flushing, tramped on her tongue with her teeth. She was unable to explain to the startled, puzzled Whit that the words of the gospel woman had been running in her head for days, the way the Bible did or a piece of poetry. All the new Detroit words—adjustment, down payment, and now Whit’s eviction and communism—would get into her head and swim round for days until she got them fastened down just right so that they lay there, handy to her thinking; like the stars when she looked at them told her the heavens declared the—
There was a sharp rise in the chorus of screams and cries f
rom the alley. Gertie saw three of the smaller Dalys rush out of their kitchen and climb onto their coalshed as if to be prepared with a grandstand seat for some coming spectacle. Wheateye, holding a turnip by its top, peeling it with her teeth, jumped up and down on the Meanwell coalshed, and in between times screaming at the Dalys: “Mother suckers, mother suckers; that’s yer brothers, allus runnen home to yu old man. Why ain’tcha old man a comen out? Where’s yu big-mouthed old man? He’s drunk an inu jail, yah, yah. My brothers licked yer brothers, all yer loud-mouthed brothers. Christopher, Joseph, James, an John, Patrick, Michael, Francis, an Tom. Claude Jean an Gilbert, they licked um all. Mother suckers. Mother suckers.”
Hurling back Wheateye’s words as if they had been balls were the little Dalys and the Bommaritas. “Liar, liar, liar, hillbilly. Yu mom never had no shoes till yu come to Detroit. Yu mudder’s a hillbilly son uv a bitch. Youse hillbillies come tu Detroit un Detroit wenttu hell. Waitansee, waitansee, hillbilly bigmouth whitehead, brother sucker, waitansee—”
“Them youngens. That Wheateye,” Whit said, looking at his daughter with a troubled headshake. “Them bigger Dalys is up to somethen. Where’s Gilbert?”
“He’s baby setten, looks like,” Sophronie said, nodding toward Gilbert. He was strolling past Max’s unit, eating a turnip with one hand, holding on his hip with the other the smaller of the two Japanese children.
“Yeah?” Whit said, looking again toward the Daly door. “Looks like yer kids is into it, too,” he said to Gertie, satisfaction in his voice.