The Street — by Ann Petry

[Chapter 2 continued]

“Richest damn country in the world——”

“Always be new markets. If not here in South America, Africa, India—— Everywhere and anywhere——”

“Hell! Make it while you’re young. Anyone can do it——”

“Outsmart the next guy. Think up something before anyone else does. Retire at forty——”

It was a world of strange values where the price of something called Tell and Tell and American Nickel and United States Steel had a direct effect on emotions. When the price went up everybody’s spirits soared; if it went down they were plunged in gloom.

After a year of listening to their talk, she absorbed some of the same spirit. The belief that anybody could be rich if he wanted to and worked hard enough and figured it out carefully enough. Apparently that’s what the Pizzinis had done. She and Jim could do the same thing, and she thought she saw what had been wrong with them before—they hadn’t tried hard enough, worked long enough, saved enough. There hadn’t been any one thing they wanted above and beyond everything else. These people had wanted only one thing—more and more money—and so they got it. Some of this new philosophy crept into her letters to Jim.

When she first went to work for the Chandlers, Mrs. Chandler had suggested that, instead of her taking one day off a week, it would be a good idea if she took four days off right together all at once at the end of a month; pointing out that that way Lutie could go home to Jamaica and not have to turn right around and come back. As Lutie listened to the conversations in the Chandlers’ house, she came more and more under the influence of their philosophy. As a result she began going home only once in two months, pointing out to Jim how she could save the money she would have spent for train fare.

She soon discovered that the Chandlers didn’t spend very much time at home in spite of their big perfect house. They always went out in the evening unless they had guests of their own. After she had been there a year and a half, she discovered, too, that Mrs. Chandler paid a lot more attention to other women’s husbands than she did to her own. After a dinner party, Mrs. Chandler would walk through the garden with someone else’s husband, showing him the river view, talking to him with an animation she never showed when talking to Mr. Chandler. And, Lutie observed from the kitchen window, leaning much too close to him.

Once, when Lutie went into the living room, Mrs. Chandler was sitting on the window-seat with one of the dinner guests and his arms were tight around her and he was kissing her. Mr. Chandler came right in behind Lutie, so that he saw the same thing. The expression on his face didn’t change—only his lips went into a straight thin line.

Two weeks before Christmas, Mrs. Chandler’s mother came for a visit. A tall, thin woman with cold gray eyes and hair almost exactly the same color as her eyes. She took one look at Lutie and hardly let her get out of the door before she was leaning across the dining-room table to say in a clipped voice that carried right out into the kitchen: “Now I wonder if you’re being wise, dear. That girl is unusually attractive and men are weak. Besides, she’s colored and you know how they are——”

Lutie moved away from the swinging door to stand way over by the stove so she couldn’t hear the rest of it. Queer how that was always cropping up. Here she was highly respectable, married, mother of a small boy, and, in spite of all that, knowing all that, these people took one look at her and immediately got that now-I-wonder look. Apparently it was an automatic reaction of white people—if a girl was colored and fairly young, why, it stood to reason she had to be a prostitute. If not that—at least sleeping with her would be just a simple matter, for all one had to do was make the request. In fact, white men wouldn’t even have to do the asking because the girl would ask them on sight.

She grew angrier as she thought about it. Of course, none of them could know about your grandmother who had brought you up, she said to herself. And ever since you were big enough to remember the things that people said to you, had said over and over, just like a clock ticking, “Lutie, baby, don’t you never let no white man put his hands on you. They ain’t never willin’ to let a black woman alone. Seems like they all got a itch and a urge to sleep with ’em. Don’t you never let any of ’em touch you.”

Something that was said so often and with such gravity it had become a part of you, just like breathing, and you would have preferred crawling in bed with a rattlesnake to getting in bed with a white man. Mrs. Chandler’s friends and her mother couldn’t possibly know that, couldn’t possibly imagine that you might have a distrust and a dislike of white men far deeper than the distrust these white women had of you. Or know that, after hearing their estimation of you, nothing in the world could ever force you to be even friendly with a white man.

And again she thought of the barrier between her and these people. The funny part of it was she was willing to trust them and their motives without questioning, but the instant they saw the color of her skin they knew what she must be like; they were so confident about what she must be like they didn’t need to know her personally in order to verify their estimate.

The night before Christmas Mr. Chandler’s brother arrived—a tall, sardonic-looking man. His name was Jonathan, and Mrs. Chandler smiled at him with a warmth Lutie had never seen on her face before. Mr. Chandler didn’t have much to say to him and Mrs. Chandler’s mother pointedly ignored him.

Lutie heard them arguing in the living room long after she had gone to bed. An argument that grew more and more violent, with Mrs. Chandler screaming and Mr. Chandler shouting and Mrs. Chandler’s mother bellowing any time the other voices stopped. She drifted off to sleep, thinking that it was nice to know white people had loud common fights just like colored people.

Right after breakfast, everybody went into the living room to see the Christmas tree and open their presents. Lutie went along, too, with Little Henry by the hand. It was a big tree, and even though Lutie had helped Mrs. Chandler’s mother decorate it the day before, she couldn’t get over how it looked standing there in front of the river windows, going up and up, all covered with tinsel and stars and brilliantly colored baubles.

Everybody got down on the floor near the tree to sort out and open the presents. Lutie happened to look up because Jonathan Chandler had moved away from the tree, and she wondered if he was looking for an ash tray because there was one right on the small table near the tree and he didn’t need to go all the way across the room to find one. So she saw him reach into the drawer in the secretary. Reach in and get Mr. Chandler’s revolver and stand there a moment fingering it. He walked back toward the tree, and she couldn’t figure out whether he had put the gun back or not. Because he had closed the drawer quickly. She couldn’t see his hand because he had it held a little in back of him.

Mrs. Chandler was holding out a package to Lutie and she looked at her to see why she didn’t take it and then followed the direction of Lutie’s eyes. So that she, too, became aware that Jonathan Chandler was walking right toward the Christmas tree and saw him stop just a little way away from it.

Lutie knew suddenly what he was going to do and she started to get up from the floor to try and stop him. But she was too late. He drew the gun out quickly and fired it. Held it under his ear and pulled the trigger.

After that there was so much confusion that Lutie only remembered a few things here and there. Mrs. Chandler started screaming and went on and on and on until Mr. Chandler said roughly, “Shut up, God damn you!”

She stopped then. But it was worse after she stopped because she just sat there on the floor staring into space.

Mrs. Chandler’s mother kept saying: “The nerve of him. The nerve of him. Deliberately embarrassing us. And on Christmas morning, too.”

Mr. Chandler poured drink after drink of straight whiskey and then, impatiently shoving the small glass aside, raised the bottle to his lips letting its contents literally run down his throat. Lutie watched him, wondering why none of them said a word about its being a shame; thinking they acted worse and sounded worse than any people she had ever seen before.

Then she forgot about them, for she happened to look down at Little Henry crouching on the floor, his small face so white, so frightened, that she very nearly cried. None of them had given him a thought; they had deserted him as neatly as though they had deposited him on the doorstep of a foundling hospital. She picked him up and held him close to her, letting him get the feel of her arms around him; telling him through her arms that his world had not suddenly collapsed about him, that the strong arms holding him so close were a solid, safe place where he belonged, where he was safe. She made small, comforting noises under her breath until some of the whiteness left his face. Then she carried him out into the kitchen and held him on her lap and rocked him back and forth in her arms until the fright went out of his eyes.

After Mr. Chandler’s brother killed himself in the living room, she didn’t lose her belief in the desirability of having money, though she saw that mere possession of it wouldn’t necessarily guarantee happiness. What was more important, she learned that when one had money there were certain unpleasant things one could avoid—even things like a suicide in the family.

She never found out what had prompted Jonathan Chandler to kill himself. She wasn’t too interested. But she was interested in the way in which money transformed a suicide she had seen committed from start to finish in front of her very eyes into “an accident with a gun.” It was done very neatly, too. Mrs. Chandler’s mother simply called Mrs. Chandler’s father in Washington. Lutie overheard the tail-end of the conversation, “Now you get it fixed up. Oh, yes, you can. He was cleaning a gun.”

And Mr. Chandler talked very quietly but firmly to the local doctor and to the coroner. It took several rye highballs and some of the expensive imported cigars, and Lutie could only conjecture what else, but it ended up as an accident with a gun on the death certificate. Everybody was sympathetic—so tragic to have it happen on Christmas morning right in the Chandlers’ living room.

However, after the accident both Mr. and Mrs. Chandler started drinking far too much. And Mrs. Chandler’s mother arrived more and more often to stay two and three weeks at a time. There were three cars in the garage now instead of two. And Mrs. Chandler had a personal maid and there was talk of getting a bigger house. But Mrs. Chandler seemed to care less and less about everything and anything—even the bridge games and parties.

She kept buying new clothes. Dresses and coats and suits. And after wearing them a few times, she would give them to Lutie because she was tired of looking at them. And Lutie accepted them gravely, properly grateful. The clothes would have fitted her perfectly, but some obstinacy in her that she couldn’t overcome prevented her from ever wearing them. She mailed them to Pop’s current girl friend, taking an ironic pleasure in the thought that Mrs. Chandler’s beautiful clothes Designed For Country Living would be showing up nightly in the gin mill at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 110th Street.

For in those two years with the Chandlers she had learned all about Country Living. She learned about it from the pages of the fat sleek magazines Mrs. Chandler subscribed for and never read. Vogue, Town and Country, Harper’s Bazaar, House and Garden, House Beautiful. Mrs. Chandler didn’t even bother to take them out of their wrappings when they came in the mail, but handed them to Lutie, saying, “Here, Lutie. Maybe you’d like to look at this.”

A bookstore in New York kept Mrs. Chandler supplied with all the newest books, but she never read them. Handed them to Lutie still in their wrappings just like the magazines. And Lutie decided that it was almost like getting a college education free of charge. Besides, Mrs. Chandler was really very nice to her. The wall between them wasn’t quite so high. Only it was still there, of course.

Sometimes, when she was going to Jamaica, Mrs. Chandler would go to New York. And they would take the same train. On the ride down they would talk—about some story being played up in the newspapers, about clothes or some moving picture.

But when the train pulled into Grand Central, the wall was suddenly there. Just as they got off the train, just as the porter was reaching for Mrs. Chandler’s pigskin luggage, the wall suddenly loomed up. It was Mrs. Chandler’s voice that erected it. Her voice high, clipped, carrying, as she said, “I’ll see you on Monday, Lutie.”

There was a firm note of dismissal in her voice so that the other passengers pouring off the train turned to watch the rich young woman and her colored maid; a tone of voice that made people stop to hear just when it was the maid was to report back for work. Because the voice unmistakably established the relation between the blond young woman and the brown young woman.

And it never failed to stir resentment in Lutie. She argued with herself about it. Of course, she was a maid. She had no illusions about that. But would it hurt Mrs. Chandler just once to talk at that moment of parting as though, however incredible it might seem to anyone who was listening, they were friends? Just two people who knew each other and to whom it was only incidental that one of them was white and the other black?

Even while she argued with herself, she was answering in a noncommittal voice, “Yes, ma’am.” And took her battered suitcase up the ramp herself, hastening, walking faster and faster, hurrying toward home and Jim and Bub. To spend four days cleaning house and holding Bub close to her and trying to hold Jim close to her, too, in spite of the gap that seemed to have grown a little wider each time she came home.

She had been at the Chandlers exactly two years on the day she got the letter from Pop. She held it in her hand before she opened it. There was something terribly wrong if Pop had gone to all the trouble of writing a letter. If the baby was sick, he would have phoned. Jim couldn’t be sick, because Pop would have phoned about that, too. Because he had the number of the Chandlers’ telephone. She had given it to him when she first came here to work. Reluctantly she opened the envelope. It was a very short note: “Dear Lutie: You better come home. Jim’s carrying on with another woman. Pop.”

It was like having the earth suddenly open up so that it turned everything familiar into a crazy upside down position, so that she could no longer find any of the things that had once been hers. And she was filled with fear because she might not ever be able to find them again. She looked at the letter for a third, a fourth, a fifth time, and it still said the same thing. That Jim had fallen for some other woman. And it must be something pretty serious if it so alarmed Pop that he actually wrote her a letter about it. She thought Pop can’t suddenly have turned moral—Pop who had lived with so many Mamies and Lauras and Mollies that he must have long since forgotten some of them himself. So it must be that Jim had admitted some kind of permanent attachment for this woman whoever she was.

She thrust the thought away from her and went to tell Mrs. Chandler that she had to go home that very day because the baby was seriously ill. She couldn’t bring herself to tell her what the real trouble was because, if Mrs. Chandler was anything like her mother, she took it for granted that all colored people were immoral and Lutie saw no reason for providing further evidence.

On the train she kept remembering Mrs. Pizzini’s words: “Not good for the woman to work when she’s young. Not good for the man.” Queer. Though she hadn’t paid too much attention at the time, just remembering the words made her see the whole inside of the vegetable store again. The pale yellow color of the grapefruit, dark green of mustard greens and spinach. The patient brown color of the potatoes. The delicate green of the heads of lettuce. She could see Mrs. Pizzini’s dark weather-beaten skin and remembered how Mrs. Pizzini had hesitated and then turned back to say: “It’s best that the man do the work when the babies are young.”

She forgot that Jim wasn’t expecting her as she hurried to the little frame house in Jamaica, not thinking about anything except the need to get there quickly, quickly, before every familiar thing she knew had been destroyed.

Still hurrying, she opened the front door and walked in. Walked into her own house to find there was another woman living there with Jim. A slender, dark brown girl whose eyes shifted crazily when she saw her. The girl was cooking supper and Jim was sitting at the kitchen table watching her.

If he hadn’t held her arms, she would have killed the other girl. Even now she could feel rage rise inside her at the very thought. There she had been sending practically all her wages, month after month, keeping only a little for herself; skimping on her visits because of the carfare and because she was trying to save enough money to form a backlog for them when she quit her job. Month after month and that black bitch had been eating the food she bought, sleeping in her bed, making love to Jim.

He forced her into a chair and held her there while the girl packed and got out. When Lutie finally cooled off enough to be able to talk coherently, he only laughed at her. Even when he saw that she was getting into a red rage at the sight of his laughter.

“What did you expect?” he asked. “Maybe you can go on day after day with nothing to do but just cook meals for yourself and a kid. With just enough money to be able to eat and have a roof over your head. But I can’t. And I don’t intend to.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” she asked fiercely. “Why did you let me go on working for those white people and not tell me——”

He only shrugged and laughed. That was all she could get out of him—laughter. What’s the use—what’s the point—who cares? If even once he had put his arms around her and said he was sorry and asked her to forgive him, she would have stayed. But he didn’t. So she called a moving man and had him take all the furniture that was hers. Everything that belonged to her: the scarred bedroom set, the radio, the congoleum rug, a battered studio couch, an easy-chair—and Bub. She wasn’t going to leave him behind for Jim to abuse or ignore as he saw fit.

She and Bub went to live with Pop in that crowded, musty flat on Seventh Avenue. She hunted for a job with a grim persistence that was finally rewarded, for two weeks later she went to work as a hand presser in a steam laundry. It was hot. The steam was unbearable. But she forced herself to go to night school—studying shorthand and typing and filing. Every time it seemed as though she couldn’t possibly summon the energy to go on with the course, she would remind herself of all the people who had got somewhere in spite of the odds against them. She would think of the Chandlers and their young friends—“It’s the richest damn country in the world.”

Mrs. Chandler wrote her a long letter and Jim forwarded it to her from Jamaica. “Lutie dear: We haven’t had a decent thing to eat since you left. And Little Henry misses you so much he’s almost sick——” She didn’t answer it. She had more problems than Mrs. Chandler and Little Henry had and they could always find somebody to solve theirs if they paid enough.

It took a year and a half before she mastered the typing, because at night she was so tired when she went to the business school on 125th Street she couldn’t seem to concentrate on what she was doing. Her back ached and her arms felt as though they had been pulled out of their sockets. But she finally acquired enough speed so that she could take a civil service examination. For she had made up her mind that she wasn’t going to wash dishes or work in a laundry in order to earn a living for herself and Bub.

Another year dragged by. A year in which she passed four or five exams each time way down on the list. A year that she spent waiting and waiting for an appointment and taking other exams. Four years of the steam laundry and then she got an appointment as a file clerk.

That kitchen in Connecticut had changed her whole life—that kitchen all tricks and white enamel like this one in the advertisement. The train roared into 125th Street and she began pushing her way toward the doors, turning to take one last look at the advertisement as she left the car.

On the platform she hurried toward the downtown side and elbowed her way toward the waiting local. Only a few minutes and she would be at 116th Street. She didn’t have any illusions about 116th Street as a place to live, but at the moment it represented a small victory—one of a series which were the result of her careful planning. First the white-collar job, then an apartment of her own where she and Bub would be by themselves away from Pop’s boisterous friends, away from Lil with her dyed hair and strident voice, away from the riff-raff roomers who made it possible for Pop to pay his rent. Even after living on 116th Street for two weeks, the very fact of being there was still a victory.

As for the street, she thought, getting up at the approaching station signs, she wasn’t afraid of its influence, for she would fight against it. Streets like 116th Street or being colored, or a combination of both with all it implied, had turned Pop into a sly old man who drank too much; had killed Mom off when she was in her prime.

In that very apartment house in which she was now living, the same combination of circumstances had evidently made the Mrs. Hedges who sat in the street-floor window turn to running a fairly well-kept whorehouse—but unmistakably a whorehouse; and the superintendent of the building—well, the street had pushed him into basements away from light and air until he was being eaten up by some horrible obsession; and still other streets had turned Min, the woman who lived with him, into a drab drudge so spineless and so limp she was like a soggy dishrag. None of those things would happen to her, Lutie decided, because she would fight back and never stop fighting back.

She got off the train, thinking that she never felt really human until she reached Harlem and thus got away from the hostility in the eyes of the white women who stared at her on the downtown streets and in the subway. Escaped from the openly appraising looks of the white men whose eyes seemed to go through her clothing to her long brown legs. On the trains their eyes came at her furtively from behind newspapers, or half-concealed under hatbrims or partly shielded by their hands. And there was a warm, moist look about their eyes that made her want to run.

These other folks feel the same way, she thought—that once they are freed from the contempt in the eyes of the downtown world, they instantly become individuals. Up here they are no longer creatures labeled simply “colored” and therefore all alike. She noticed that once the crowd walked the length of the platform and started up the stairs toward the street, it expanded in size. The same people who had made themselves small on the train, even on the platform, suddenly grew so large they could hardly get up the stairs to the street together. She reached the street at the very end of the crowd and stood watching them as they scattered in all directions, laughing and talking to each other.