The Street Read online

  Then he shook hands with her and she thought talking to him had been the most satisfying experience she had ever known. True, he hadn’t said very much except toward the last when he was telling her how to use the things. The satisfaction she felt was from the quiet way he had listened to her, giving her all of his attention. No one had ever done that before. The doctors she saw from time to time at the clinic were brusque, hurried, impatient. Even while they asked questions—is the pain here, is it often, do your shoes fit—their minds weren’t really on her as a person. They were looking at her feet, but not as though they belonged to her and were therefore different, individual, because they were hers. All they saw were a pair of feet with swollen, painful bunions on them—nigger feet. The words were in the expressions in their faces. Even with the colored doctors she felt humble, apologetic.

  Even Jones when he was in a good mood never listened to her. She might as well not have been there. All the time she was talking, his mind was on something else, something that set him to frowning and biting his lips. And her madams. And her madams—short ones, fat ones, harried ones, calm ones, drunken ones—none of them had ever listened when she talked. They issued orders to some point over her head until sometimes she was tempted to look up to see if there was another head on top of her own—a head she had grown without knowing it. And the minute she started answering, they turned away. The few times she had a chance to talk to the preacher at the church, he interrupted her with, ‘We all got our troubles, Sister. We all got our troubles.’ And he, too, turned away.

  But this man had listened and been interested, and all the time she had talked he had never shifted his gaze, so that when she came out from behind the white curtains the satisfaction from his attentive listening, the triumph of actually possessing the means of controlling Jones, made her face glow. The women waiting in the chairs outside stared at her and she walked past them, not caring, for she had got what she came after. And it had been simple and easy and not as expensive as she had expected.

  Riding toward 116th Street on the bus, she decided that every time she heard about some poor woman in trouble she would send her to the Prophet David. He was so easy to talk to, his eyes were so kind, and he knew his business. Seeing as Mrs. Hedges had been responsible for her finding him, she really ought to do something in return. As she clung to the bus strap she wondered what she could do. She thought about it so hard that she rode past 116th Street and the bus was at 112th Street before she realized it.

  She walked up Eighth Avenue, still thinking about Mrs. Hedges. She stopped to look in the window of a florist shop and then went inside.

  ‘How much are them cactuses in the gray dishes in the window?’ she asked.

  ‘Dollar and a quarter.’

  ‘Wrap one up,’ she ordered, and when the clerk reached in to the window for one of the plants she took the remainder of the flat roll of bills from her bosom. Peeling off two dollars she saw there wasn’t much left over, but what she’d got in return for spending it was worth far more than she had paid for it.

  There was a dim light in Mrs. Hedges’ living room, and as Min turned the corner of the building Mrs. Hedges’ voice came from the window, ‘Get fixed up, dearie?’ she asked.

  ‘I sure did,’ Min said. Her voice was so full of life and confidence that Mrs. Hedges stared at her amazed. ‘I saw you liked plants,’ she went on. ‘So I brought you a little present.’ She handed the package up to Mrs. Hedges.

  ‘Sure was sweet of you, dearie.’ Mrs. Hedges leaned forward holding the plant and waiting to hear about the Prophet David. But Min walked swiftly toward the apartment house door. There was such energy and firmness about the way she walked that Mrs. Hedges’ eyebrows lifted as she craned her neck for a further look.

  Jones, dozing in the chair by the radio, heard Min’s key go in the lock. It was the sound he had been waiting for, and he got up out of the chair to stand in the middle of the floor stretching to get himself thoroughly awake. The dog got up, too, cocking his ears at the click of the lock.

  It was the sound he had been waiting to hear, but it came to his cars with an offensive, decisive loudness. Normally Min’s key was inserted in the lock timidly, with a vague groping movement, and when the lock finally clicked back, she stood there for a second as though overwhelmed by the sound it made. This key was being thrust in with assurance, and the door was pushed open immediately afterward. He frowned as he listened because on top of that she slammed the door. Let it go out of her hand with a bong that echoed through the apartment and in the hall outside, could even be heard going faintly up the stairs.

  Her unaccustomed actions surprised him so greatly that when she came into the living room, of starting immediately to throw her out and her table along with her, he found himself saying, Where you been?’

  ‘Out,’ she said, and walked into the bedroom.

  And he sat down again, appalled at the thought that she might have taken up with some other man. He slowly clenched his fist and then relaxed his fingers until his hand lay limp along the arm of the chair. Here he was thinking about her again when what he wanted was Lutie. And Lutie wouldn’t even look at him while Min stayed here. He saw Lutie again in his mind’s eye—her long brown legs, the way her pointed breasts pushed against the fabric of her clothing. The thought sent him striding toward the bedroom, his hands itching to do violence to Min. Even his foot was itching, he thought, for he was going to plant his foot squarely in her wide shapeless bottom.

  Min was unpinning her high-crowned hat, looking at herself in the mirror over the bureau as she withdrew the long pins. There was something so smug and satisfied about her and her bland, flat face reflected in the mirror was so ugly that the sight of her standing there contentedly surveying herself sent a wave of fury through him.

  He took a hasty step toward her and he saw her eyes shift in the mirror. He turned his head to see what she was staring at, it was something that must be near the bed and he followed the direction of her glance. When he saw the great gold cross hanging over the headboard, he stood still. It was like an accusing finger pointing at him.

  Almost immediately he started backing away from the sight of it, retreating toward the living room where he wouldn’t be able to see it. Though he didn’t believe in religion and never went to church, though he only had contempt for the people who slobbered about their sins and spent Sundays pleading for forgiveness, he had never been able to rid himself of a haunting fear of the retribution which he had heard described in his early childhood. The retribution which, for example, awaited men who lusted after women—men like himself.

  Hence to him a cross was an alarming and unpleasant object, for it was a symbol of power. It was mixed up in his mind with the evil spirits and the powers of darkness it could invoke against those who outraged the laws of the church. It was fear of the evil the cross could conjure up that forced him out of the bedroom, made him sit down in the chair in the living room.

  He covered his eyes with his hands, for it seemed to him the great gold-colored cross was hanging directly in front of him instead of over the headboard of the bed where he had last seen it. He muttered under his breath and got up once to kick savagely at the dog and then sat down again.

  In the bedroom Min smiled as she bent forward to light the fat white candles she had placed on each side of the bureau.

  6

  THERE WAS ALWAYS A CROWD in front of the Junto Bar and Grill on 116th Street. For in winter the street was cold. The wind blew the snow into great drifts that stayed along the curb for weeks, gradually blackening with soot until it was no longer recognizable as snow, but appeared to be some dark eruption from the street itself.

  As one cold day followed swiftly on the heels of another, the surface of the frozen piles became encrusted with bags of garbage, old shoes, newspapers, corset lacings. The frozen débris and the icy wind made the street a desolate place in winter and the people found a certain measure of escape from it by standing in front of the Junto wh
ere the light streaming from the windows and the music from its juke-box created an oasis of warmth.

  In summer the street was hot and dusty, for no trees shaded it, and the sun beat straight down on the concrete sidewalks and the brick buildings. The inside of the houses fairly steamed; the dark hallways were like ovens. Even the railings on the high steep stairways were warm to the touch.

  As the thermometer crawled higher and higher, the people who lived on the street moved outdoors because the inside of the buildings was unbearable. The grown-ups lounging in chairs in front of the houses, the half-naked children playing along the curb, transformed the street into an outdoor living room. And because the people took to sleeping on rooftops and fire escapes and park benches, the street also became a great outdoor bedroom.

  The same people who found warmth by standing in front of the Junto in winter con tinned to stand there in summer. In fact, the number of people in front of the Junto increased in summer, for the whirr of its electric fans and the sound of ice clinking in tall glasses reached out to the street and created an illusion of coolness.

  Thus, in winter and in summer people stood in front of the Junto from the time its doors opened early in the morning until they were firmly shut behind the last drunk the following morning.

  The men who didn’t work at all—the ones who never had and never would—stood in front of it in the morning. As the day slid toward afternoon, they were joined by numbers runners and men who worked nights in factories and warehouses. And at night the sidewalk spilled over with the men who ran elevators and cleaned buildings and swept out subways.

  All of them—the idle ones and the ones tired from their day’s labor—found surcease and refreshment either inside or outside the Junto’s doors. It served as social club and meeting place. By standing outside it a man could pick up all the day’s news: the baseball scores, the number that came out, the latest neighborhood gossip. Those who were interested in women could get an accurate evaluation of the girls who switched past in short tight skirts. A drinking man who was dead broke knew that if he stood there long enough a friend with funds would stroll by and offer to buy him a drink. And a man who was lonely and not interested in drinking or in women could absorb some of the warmth and laughter that seeped out to the street from the long bar.

  The inside of the Junto was always crowded, too, because the white bartenders in their immaculate coats greeted the customers graciously. Their courteous friendliness was a heart-warming thing that helped rebuild egos battered and bruised during the course of the day’s work.

  The Junto represented something entirely different to the women on the street and what it meant to them depended in large measure on their age. Old women plodding past scowled ferociously and jerked the heavy shopping bags they carried until the stalks of celery and the mustard greens within seemed to tremble with rage at the sight of the Junto’s doors. Some of the old women paused to mutter their hatred of it, to shake their fists in a sudden access of passion against it, and the men standing on the sidewalk moved closer to each other, forming a protective island with their shoulders, talking louder, laughing harder so as to shut out the sound and the sight of the old women.

  Young women coming home from work—dirty, tired, depressed—looked forward to the moment when they would change their clothes and head toward the gracious spaciousness of the Junto. They dressed hurriedly in their small dark hall bedrooms, so impatient for the soft lights and the music and the fun that awaited them that they fumbled in their haste.

  For the young women had an urgent hunger for companionship and the Junto offered men of all sizes and descriptions: sleek, well-dressed men who earned their living as numbers runners; even better-dressed and better-looking men who earned a fatter living supplying women to an eager market; huge, grimy longshoremen who were given to sudden bursts of generosity; Pullman porters in on overnight runs from Washington, Chicago, Boston; and around the first of the month the sailors and soldiers flush with crisp pay-day money.

  On the other hand, some of the young women went to the Junto only because they were hungry for the sight and sound of other young people and because the creeping silence that could be heard under the blaring radios, under the drunken quarrels in the hall bedrooms, was no longer bearable.

  Lutie Johnson was one of these. For she wasn’t going to the Junto to pick up a man or to quench a consuming, constant thirst. She was going there so that she could for a moment capture the illusion of having some of the things that she lacked.

  As she hurried toward the Junto, she acknowledged the fact that she couldn’t afford a glass of beer there. It would be cheaper to buy a bottle at the delicatessen and take it home and drink it if beer was what she wanted. The beer was incidental and unimportant. It was the other things that the Junto offered that she sought: the sound of laughter, the hum of talk, the sight of people and brilliant lights, the sparkle of the big mirror, the rhythmic music from the juke-box.

  Once inside, she hesitated, trying to decide whether she should stand at the crowded bar or sit alone at one of the small tables in the center of the room or in one of the booths at the side. She turned abruptly to the long bar, thinking that she needed people around her tonight, even all these people who were jammed against each other at the bar.

  They were here for the same reason that she was—because they couldn’t bear to spend an evening alone in some small dark room; because they couldn’t bear to look what they could see of the future smack in the face while listening to radios or trying to read an evening paper.

  ‘Beer, please,’ she said to the bartender.

  There were rows of bottles on the shelves on each side of the big mirror in back of the bar. They were reflected in the mirror, and looking at the reflection Lutie saw that they were magnified in size, shining so that they had the appearance of being filled with liquid, molten gold.

  She examined herself and the people standing at the bar to see what changes the mirror wrought in them. There Was a pleasant gaiety and charm about all of them. She found that she herself looked young, very young and happy in the mirror.

  Her eyes wandered over the whole room. It sparkled in the mirror. The people had a kind of buoyancy about them. All except Old Man Junto, who was sitting alone at the table near the back.

  She looked at him again and again, for his reflection in the mirror fascinated her. Somehow even at this distance his squat figure managed to dominate the whole room. It was, she decided, due to the bulk of his shoulders which were completely out of proportion to the rest of him.

  Whenever she had been in here, he had been sitting at that same table, his hand cupped behind his ear as though he were listening to the sound of the cash register; sitting there alone watching everything—the customers, the bartenders, the waiters. For the barest fraction of a second, his eyes met hers in the mirror and then he looked away.

  Then she forgot about him, for the juke-box in the far corner of the room started playing ‘Swing It, Sister.’ She hummed as she listened to it, not really aware that she was humming or why, knowing only that she felt free here where there was so much space.

  The big mirror in front of her made the Junto an enormous room. It pushed the walls back and back into space. It reflected the lights from the ceiling and the concealed lighting that glowed in the corners of the room. It added a rosy radiance to the men and women standing at the bar; it pushed the world of other people’s kitchen sinks back where it belonged and destroyed the existence of dirty streets and small shadowed rooms.

  She finished the beer in one long gulp. Its pleasant bitter taste was still in her month when the bartender handed her a check for the drink.

  ‘I’ll have another one,’ she said softly.

  No matter what it cost them, people had to come to places like the Junto, she thought. They had to replace the haunting silences of rented rooms and little apartments with the murmur of voices, the sound of laughter; they had to empty two or three small glasses of liquid gold so
they could believe in themselves again.

  She frowned. Two beers and the movies for Bub and the budget she had planned so carefully was ruined. If she did this very often, there wouldn’t be much point in having a budget—for she couldn’t budget what she didn’t have.

  For a brief moment she tried to look into the future. She still couldn’t see anything—couldn’t see anything at all but 116th Street and a job that paid barely enough for food and rent and a handful of clothes. Year after year like that. She tried to recapture the feeling of self-confidence she had had earlier in the evening, but it refused to return, for she rebelled at the thought of day after day of work and night after night caged in that apartment that no amount of scrubbing would ever get really clean.

  She moved the beer glass on the bar. It left a wet ring and she moved it again in an effort to superimpose the rings on each other. It was warm in the Junto, the lights were soft, and the music coming from the juke-box was sweet. She listened intently to the record. It was ‘Darlin’,’ and when the voice on the record stopped she started singing: ‘There’s no sun, Darlin’. There’s no fun, Darlin’.’

  The men and women crowded at the bar stopped drinking to look at her. Her voice had a thin thread of sadness running through it that made the song important, that made it tell a story that wasn’t in the words—a story of despair, of loneliness, of frustration. It was a story that all of them knew by heart and had always known because they had learned it soon after they were born and would go on adding to it until the day they died.

  Just before the record ended, her voice stopped on a note so low and so long sustained that it was impossible to tell where it left off. There was a moment’s silence around the bar, and then glasses were raised, the bartenders started making change, and opening long-necked bottles, conversations were resumed.

  The bartender handed her another check. She picked it up mechanically and then placed it on top of the first one, held both of them loosely in her hand. That made two glasses and she’d better go before she weakened and bought another one. She put her gloves on slowly, transferring the checks from one hand to the other, wanting to linger here in this big high-ceilinged room where there were no shadowed silences, no dark corners; thinking that she should have made the beer last a long time by careful sipping instead of the greedy gulping that had made it disappear so quickly.