The Journal I Did Not Keep Page 20

  “On the lakefront,” shouted Carter. “Dean said, ‘We will certainly look into that little matter for you, keep our eyes skinned, see what we can come up with,’” hollered Carter. “‘We want you to believe—I know everyone here agrees with me one hundred percent—what a truly, truly memorable occasion this has been for every single one of us here…’”

  “Sure was one me-mo-rable occasion!” yelled Ebony. “Just a little cottage, just right on the lakefront…”

  Ilka held her smile through the protracted storm of black laughter.

  Ebony said, “Carter, d’you dare tell the story about Oink. That’s another funny story.”

  “You tell it,” said Carter. “You tell it good.”

  “There’s two colored,” Ebony said, “live up North, going home for a visit, and come through this little spot on the road, and, man, is it hot! They want water so bad they drive round the back of this old ramshackle farm, and the one calls out, ‘Lady, can we get a glass o’ cold water?’ Ol’ white woman, she sticks her head out the upstairs window, sees two colored, she up and starts hollering, ‘Help! Police! Murder! Rape!’ Well, two fellers, they think ‘Uh-huh. Time to skedaddle.’ One says, ‘Listen, they goin’ string us up for sure, may as well be for something,’ so they pick up this little black pig is running around and put it in the front seat between the two of them and head out of town. Sure as hell fire, there’s the old siren, right behind, so they pull over and the one, he puts his hat on the little pig’s head. Sure enough, the uniform gets out, walks over, says, ‘Okay, you boys, they’s a fine white lady been raped and beaten, left for half dead. You seen two evil-looking black bucks pass this way in a old jalopy?’ One feller, he says, ‘No, sir, I ain’t seen nobody, not of that there description like you said there, and we done come right through there, no siree. You seen anybody fitten that description there at all?’ he says to his buddy. Buddy says, ‘I ain’t see nobody a-tall. You seen anybody a-tall?’ ‘Uh-huh, I didn’t see nobody.’ ‘All right all right all righty,’ says the trooper. ‘If you boys see anybody that’s fitten that description, you-all tell them to get their black asses right on back here and see me at the statio house, you hear? What’s your name there?’ Feller says, ‘My name is Wadsworth.’ Trooper, he writes down, ‘Name is Wadsworth, and your buddy there. What is your name?’ Buddy says, ‘Name Jesse.’ Trooper writes it down. ‘Name Jesse. And you there, in the middle. What is your name?’ Wadsworth, he pokes the little black pig. Pig squeals, ‘Oink.’ Trooper writes down, ‘Name is Oink. Okay, you Wadsworth, Jesse, and Oink, I want you boys to haul outen this town and don’t come back in a month o’ Sundays.’ Say, ‘Yessir, officer,’ and they start up and hit the road. Trooper he walks back to his partner, says, ‘That ain’t them. Lady said two, and them there’s three boys in that old jalopy. Man, I seen ugly in my life. That Wadsworth—he is ugly; that Jesse, he is ugly; but that Oink, man! That is the ugliest nigger I ever see!’”

  “That,” said the man in the brown suit, and he stood up, and he was not laughing, “is a word I don’t permit to be used in my hearing.” He wished everyone a good day and strode away in the direction of the parked cars. Ebony stood up, setting Annie, who had fallen asleep, onto her feet. Sarah picked up the shrieking child and carried her into the house. The red-haired woman was gathering jars into a basket and walked after the man in the brown suit. Ebony walked after them. The red-haired woman stopped. The two women embraced before the red-haired woman got in the car with the man in the suit. They drove away.

  “Stanley!” said Ebony. “Baby, make us a fire in the living room. It got chilly. Stanley? Did Stanley go up? We’ll go inside,” said Ebony. Everyone was rising. Everyone had to get back to town. Tomorrow was Monday. There was no holding up the desultory but unmistakable trek, amidst thanks and congratulations on the fabulous house, the fabulous afternoon, in fives, in threes, in twos back into the cars.

  Carter, Ilka, and Doris Mae walked into the house after Ebony. Carter sat in his chair and said, “Well well well well well well.”

  Ebony poked at the dead fireplace. Carter said, “Getting so I can’t talk to middle-class black folk.”

  Ebony said, “When did Stanley go up? Where’s Percy?”

  “Percival went on up,” said Doris Mae.

  Ebony said, “I’m going up—see what happened to Stanley.”

  Doris Mae opened her mouth and said, “First Negro man I ever saw, when I was nine years.” Doris Mae said there were no Negroes in Oklahoma, where she came from, and the first she ever saw was on her aunt Martha’s farm. Doris Mae said Aunt Martha sent her to get Bowser’s dish, and washed it and she put ham on it and bread. Doris Mae asked her aunt why she was putting bread on the dog’s dish and Aunt Martha said, “You take this out back,” and Doris Mae took it and there was an old, dusty man, sitting on Aunt Martha’s back stoop. His shirt was the same color as his face, the brim of his hat was turned all the way up around his head, and he wore glasses. Ilka said there were no Negroes in Vienna and the first she saw stood at the entrance of a circus tent. He had on red harem pants and a turban like a purple doughnut so high up it was almost out of sight in the sky. Ilka asked her father if he was real, and her father had said, “Pssst.” The huge Negro in the sky had frowned thunderously and said, “What do you mean am I real?” and reached down his immense hand and patted Ilka’s hair.

  Carter said he and the other boys used to hide around the corner from the little sooty synagogue that was three blocks from school. They wanted to see what a Jew looked like. They used to dare each other to scoot past the door and scoot back to make a Jew come out and do whatever Jews did to little black Christian boys—cut off their balls at the very least. There were people all the time going in and out of the synagogue. Saturdays a whole lot of people went in and came back out lunch time, but they never ever got to see a Jew.

  * * *

  —

  “I should go back tomorrow,” said Ilka, as they undressed for bed.

  “And come back out on Friday,” said Carter.

  “Carter!” said Ilka, “I should not go on like this, should I? I must find myself a proper job and meet new people. Mustn’t I, Carter, get on with my life, don’t you think?” Ilka was shocked to be facing Carter’s outraged and unhappy face.

  He said, “What you must not do is to keep threatening me, because I cannot bear it.”

  “I threaten you!” said Ilka.

  Carter said, “I will be grateful, no, joyful—I will be joyful—if you stay with me, as long as you can stay with me. I will be unhappy indeed if you find you have to leave me, but this cannot be a decision in which I should be made to participate.”

  “You are right,” said the girl, immensely struck. It thrilled Ilka to be correctly corrected and made her fall in love with Carter all over again. They lay together and it was settled between them that Ilka, who had recently turned twenty-two, could afford to make over another year to Carter, and that until that time the question of their parting should be held in abeyance. Ilka agreed to stay the rest of her vacation, and they made love.

  * * *

  —

  And so it was Monday morning. Ilka jumped when the quiet sunny kitchen asked her if she wanted coffee. She had not seen Ebony hunkered at the table with her hands wrapped around her cup as if it were the source of warmth, and looking, in her cotton housedress and rusty black kerchief wound round and round her head, like Ilka’s notion of somebody’s black cook.

  “You didn’t sleep again!” said Ilka.

  “Didn’t sleep,” said Ebony. “Dr. Hunter can see me this afternoon, if somebody will do my cooking for me?”

  “I can not!” cried Ilka.

  And neither could Doris Mae. She was going to Boston. Percy was driving her to the station. “I should have told you!” said Doris Mae. “I thought I did say I was going into town Monday and get my hair done.”

  “You very likely did. You did tell me, I’m sure. I remember you told me,” said Ebony
.

  “It’s just these little salons out here won’t know what I want done. Sarah can do the cooking. She really wants to share the cooking.”

  “Sarah can do the cooking,” Ebony said. “No problem.”

  But there turned out to be a problem. Sarah was distressed. They had just this morning—not ten minutes ago—finally managed to get through to the stupid agency! “We’re going to New York.”

  “I don’t want to go to New York,” said Annie.

  “Annie, don’t you want to see the dear little babies?”

  “I want to stay with Aunt Ebony,” wailed Annie.

  “Annie, don’t! Annie’s bowels are loose today of all days,” said the distraught Sarah. “Victor, call them back and see if we can come tomorrow.”

  “Don’t you remember, the idiot woman was on her way going out?”

  “I don’t want to see the idiot woman!” howled Annie. “I want to stay with Aunt Ebony.”

  “Poor Aunt Ebony has a headache. She has to go and see Dr. Hunter. Maybe I could cook when we get back, except Annie will have a hunger tantrum.”

  “So will Stanley. No problem. We’ve got a capon in the icebox. I’ll make a nice liver stuffing, pop it in the oven, no fuss, no problem.”

  “I will help,” said Ilka.

  “There, you see,” said Ebony. “There is no problem.”

  “I want to help!” shrieked Annie.

  “I’ve got an idea for Annie, if Annie will stop crying and start chewing!” said Ebony. The little girl turned her tear-glistening face to the source of interest and satisfaction, and closed her mouth over the mess of cereal, milk, sugar, and salt tears and heroically masticated. Ebony said, “Do you think you could put up with those babies today, and tomorrow we’ll all go swimming in Aunt Abigail’s swimming hole?”

  “And lunch at the White Fence Inn!” said Ilka.

  “You’re not just whistling Dixie,” said Ebony.

  * * *

  —

  It excited Ilka and made her nervous to be left alone with Ebony. She said, “There are people natural in a kitchen, no? Doris Mae, I think, doesn’t have to ask all the time where things are and what to do next.”

  Ebony nodded her head and said, “Doris Mae doesn’t have to talk all the time.”

  Ilka blushed and said, “I know how I can help and learn and not be a nuisance!”

  “How is that?” asked Ebony.

  “You will tell me when I can help you something. I will stand here and I will watch you, and you explain what you are doing.”

  “Okey-dokey,” said Ebony. “I’m taking the capon out of the icebox.”

  Ilka stood at Ebony’s elbow. Ebony said, “In New York I buy kosher hens and draw them myself. I’d never get my liver like this raggedy thing.” She cupped the gross matter tenderly in the palm of her hand. Ilka watched the deft, cleanly motion with which Ebony flipped the fowl and intertwined its wings as if the naked bird had casually crossed its arMs. Under Ebony’s palpation the bluish, pimpled flesh plumped and glowed.

  Ilka asked Ebony if she had read Karel Čapek.

  “No,” said Ebony. ‘I’m putting the capon back in the icebox. I’m taking out the onion.”

  Ilka said, “Čapek has an essay. The title translates ‘Make a Ring Around the One Who Is Doing Her Work.”’

  Ebony’s knife continued to chop with the rapidity of a hummingbird’s wings. Ilka’s eyes must have registered the infinitesimal spasm that dilated the black woman’s eyes, and tightened her shoulders and neck with the dead stillness of a wild thing alerted to the imminence of an attack. Ilka heard Ebony say, “And cooking is doing my work, is it?” Ilka’s penetration of spoken English was still comparatively gross, or perhaps she lacked the feel of certain hard American facts; certainly it was the flow, not of Ebony’s mind, but of her own thought that carried her forward. Ilka said, “Yes. Čapek means how beautiful is work when done beautifully.”

  “Oh, brother,” said Ebony.

  “You don’t believe work can be beautiful?”

  “Where have I heard that idea before?”

  “Now what are you doing?” asked Ilka.

  “Tossing the liver with a little butter and the minced onion, scraping up every last little delicious bit. This is going in the stuffing, which is going into the capon, but only just before the capon goes in the oven, or the whole thing will go bad.”

  “That I did not know!” said Ilka, quite elated. “I am learning something!”

  It was at this juncture that Sarah reentered the kitchen. She said, “Would you mind cooking up some rice for Annie—I hate to ask you…” Sarah held a box with a grinning Uncle Ben toward Ebony, whose right hand held the spoon with which she was scraping the skillet, the handle of which she held with her left hand. Ilka, whose hands were unoccupied, took the box out of Sarah’s hand and said, “Where shall I put this?”

  “Any damn where,” said Ebony.

  Ilka set Uncle Ben on the table among the soiled breakfast dishes.

  “I mean it’s for Annie,” Sarah said in her despair. They could hear Annie wailing outside, in the car. “To bind her,” Sarah said, “because of her bowels.” Victor tooted the car horn. Still Sarah stood in the door waiting for mercy. Ebony ran water into the skillet. “So,” said poor Sarah, “listen, thanks, I mean really. You don’t mind?”

  “You bet,” said Ebony. “Have a nice trip.”

  “Thanks. We should be back six-thirty—seven at the latest. I’m sorry. Okay?” and she went.

  “Now,” Ebony said to Ilka, “if you would wash up the breakfast dishes that would be terrific. I’m going up and find where to lay my aching head.”

  This was the juncture at which Ilka discovered something she had not known about herself: she could not bear Ebony telling her what to do, and when to do it, and she said, “Does it make a difference if I will do it later?”

  “It makes no nevermind,” said Ebony.

  “I have to look for Carter. I will do it, definitely, later.”

  “Okey-dokey.”

  * * *

  —

  Carter was lying in the grass behind the cottage, and Ilka said, “I have an idea. Let’s go for a walk.”

  “Don’t have ideas,” said Carter. “Sit down. Lie down and tranquilize.”

  Ilka lay down. She shaded her eyes against the sun. She slapped at a feathery head of grass crawling up her leg.

  “Lie still,” said Carter.

  Ilka turned onto her side. The two grasses growing closest to her eye were the size of two tree trunks. Ilka sighted along the curving horizon—the noble rise, it seemed to Ilka—of Carter’s stomach against the bluest sky. Ilka laughed. Carter did not ask her why and Ilka said, “Your stomach does not know yet that you are shaping up.”

  “Never you mind my stomach,” said Carter equably. “There’s many a woman been known to grow fond of my stomach.”

  “I have grown fond,” said Ilka. She sat up.

  “Lie down,” said Carter. “I never met a Jew yet knew how to tranquilize.”

  “I have to go and wash up the dishes,” said Ilka. Carter did not open his eyes.

  When Ilka returned to the kitchen, Uncle Ben stood laughing on his box, on his spot on the table. The table, the sink had been cleared. The whole kitchen was silent, sunny, cleaned within an inch of its life.

  I said I would do it. She didn’t have to! Ilka argued, but she felt horribly uncomfortable.

  * * *

  —

  Annie’s wailing, like an attribute of the Connecticut summer carried temporarily out of earshot, had returned. Its volume increased sharply with the opening of the car doors. Sarah lifted the weeping child out on the left, while Victor, on the other side, fussed over a small pale lady in a lilac summer dress with a Peter Pan collar and buttons down the front: the idiotic agency woman in actual person!

  Ilka made her way over to the big house in the spirit of sheerest nosiness. She was a good-hearted girl, who did not want peo
ple to get hurt, but she liked the excitement of a row. Ilka entered the kitchen by the back door at the instant in which Sarah walked in the other door and took in that tidy perfection. “She hasn’t started dinner!” Sarah dumped Annie into a chair. Annie howled. The narrow lilac lady made a little moue and rolled her eyes and said, “Poor little dear, feeling so poorly!” in a thin voice like a voice at the other end of a telephone. She put out a sympathetic forefinger toward Annie’s tear-smudged, suffering face. Annie drew back her head, squinting at the pink hand coming at her, and continued, exhaustedly, to cry as if she would have liked, but could not remember how, to stop.

  “Why can’t you feed her and get her to bed,” Victor said through smiling teeth.

  “Because there is nothing to feed her,” snarled Sarah under her breath. She stood looking into the refrigerator. “Our friend, who was supposed to cook, had to go to the doctor,” Sarah told the agency lady.

  “She didn’t go to the doctor,” said Ilka.

  Now Victor introduced Ilka and Mrs. Daniels. Mrs. Daniels made her little smiling moue, like a comical disclaimer of some long-ago attempt at wit, when this little humor had been appropriate but unsuccessful, so that its small ghost was compelled to repeat itself forever in search of the laughter that had never come.

  Sarah took Ebony’s careful bowl of sautéed liver out of the icebox.

  Ilka said, “That’s the stuffing for the capon!” but Sarah had begun, with a trembling hand, to stuff the brown matter into Annie’s mouth, opened in a helpless howl of panic.

  Now Ebony entered, was introduced to the agency lady, and said, “You’ll be staying for dinner, of course!”

  “We tried to call—we tried a couple of times. The phone was always busy. Annie, chew!”

  “My fault,” Ebony promptly said. “I took the darn thing off the hook. That was bad of me!”

  “How’s the headache? ANNIE, STOP!”