Stories of Erskine Caldwell (48 page)

She gazed at him admiringly.

While he waited for her to speak again, he glanced quickly up into her face, wondering how he was going to be able to rid himself of twenty-five pounds of stone before she discovered it on him.

(First published in
Coronet
)

T
HE FIRST QUESTION
John Nesbit asked Pauline when she told him that she had employed a new maid and nurse for the children, was the same thing he had always said when another servant came to take the place of one that had left.

“Pauline, what kind of a — are you sure that she is a good Negress?”

“She is a splendid housemaid, John, and she knows how to care for the children. Both Jay and Claire love her, and they obey her to the last word. She had the best recommendations of any servant we’ve ever hired. Mamie is the kind of maid I have wanted ever since we were married.”

“Yes, I know,” John said; “but is this new maid a good Negress?”

“Her recommendations were perfect, John. I haven’t any reason to suspect her of not being a suitable nurse for the children.”

“Well, you have seen her, and I haven’t. I’d much rather not have a servant in the house than to employ one who wasn’t a good Negress. I’ve seen too many of them at the plantation, when I was a kid growing up, to have one of that kind in the house.”

“Don’t worry about Mamie, John,” Pauline said. “I’m sure she is a good girl. If she isn’t, we can always ask her to leave.”

That settled the matter for the rest of the evening. The next afternoon, though, when he reached home from the mills, John saw the new maid on the lawn with Jay and Claire. He drove his car into the garage and walked down the driveway to the side entrance. Just before he reached the steps he looked back over his shoulder at the colored girl sitting on the bench under the cedar trees. Both Jay and Claire had left Mamie and were running to meet him. He had a second chance to look at the girl before the children reached him.

Mamie was a brown girl with straightened hair. She had the slender body of a young woman, and her long legs were straight and round-looking in the ash-colored stockings that covered them above her knees. John had noticed all that about her when he looked at her for the first time over his shoulder. When he looked the second time, he saw that Mamie was full-breasted.

After the children had become tired of climbing over his lap and had gone back outdoors to play on the lawn with their nurse, John asked Pauline again about the colored girl. John was the agent at the Glen Rock Cotton Mills, and he had grown to be unrelenting in questioning every man and woman to whom he gave employment. He expected Pauline to be the same about the colored servants she hired for the house.

“I saw that new nurse just now,” he said.

“Don’t you think she’s all right?” she asked.

“That’s for you to be certain about, Pauline. You have the opportunity of knowing her. Is she a good Negress? We certainly don’t wish to have the other kind to nurse Jay and Claire. It would be better for us not to have any servants at all, than to have the kind that we do not want in the house.”

“I wish you wouldn’t worry so much about Mamie, John. I just know that she is all right. Please stop worrying about it. Leave her to me. If I find out that she is not a good girl, I’ll discharge her. When you come home from the mills you should rest, and not let yourself be worried about the servants.”

“I know I should, Pauline,” he said, “but you don’t know the colored people as I do. You were raised in the East, where the only colored people are the ones who are probably as good as the whites, but down here in Carolina it’s different, and you haven’t lived here long enough yet to be able to distinguish between the two kinds. I was raised on a plantation with colored people, and I grew up in a small town where more than half the population was colored. I know there are two kinds of them, just as you know there are at least two distinct classes of whites. The reason I ask about the servants as I do is that I want to be sure that you do not let them fool you. We wouldn’t want the wrong kind of servants in the house caring for Jay and Claire.”

“Of course, we don’t,” Pauline said. “Now, let’s forget about that. We must get ready for dinner soon. There isn’t much time left for us to dress. Don’t forget, we have an eight o’clock invitation.”

Neither of them mentioned the new maid or the cook for several days. Pauline believed that John was assured at last that Mamie was a good Negress.

Less than a week later, though, something happened. Pauline missed one morning the silver-framed photograph of John that had been on the dressing table in her room since the day they were married. Once each week, on Tuesdays, Pauline had cleaned the silver frame with cloth and paste, and on this Tuesday she could not find the picture anywhere in the house. She was not certain how long it had been missing from the table, because she had not consciously noticed it since Sunday. On Sunday she had dusted the silver and glass, and had put the silver-mounted photograph back on her dressing table. But on Tuesday it was missing.

The moment she realized that the picture was missing, she ran to the phone to call up John at his office at the mills. But while the operator was connecting them she suddenly realized that telling John about the picture was the last thing she should do. She hung up hurriedly, hoping that he would not suspect that it was she calling. She sat beside the telephone, her hands gripped together, waiting for the bell to ring. After five minutes she got up and ran from the room.

Pauline’s first thought after leaving the room was, what in the world would John say to her if he should notice that the picture was missing! Suppose he should go to her room that evening after dinner and see that the photograph was not on her dressing table! He would surely ask her about it — what on earth could she tell him! She ran from room to room, looking over every inch of space in the house for the silver-framed photograph, and when she had finished, she was still as helpless as she had been the moment that she discovered it was missing. The picture was not in the house. Pauline was certain of that. She had searched everywhere.

Delia, the cook, was not there at that time of the afternoon, and it was Mamie’s day off. If they had been there she would have run to them and asked if they had seen Mr. Nesbit’s photograph. She would even have asked them if either had taken it and put it some place else. But there was no one there then except herself and the children. It did not occur to her to ask Jay and Claire if they had taken the photograph without permission. They were then in the playhouse on the lawn.

She called to Jay and Claire as she ran to the garage for her car. Seating them beside her, she backed out the automobile, turned around in the driveway, and drove out into the boulevard. Pauline did not know where she was going until she had driven several blocks down the boulevard. It was then that she realized she had turned the car towards the Negro quarter, and that in a short time she would be there.

Pauline passed Delia’s house without giving it more than a glance. After she had passed Delia’s she wondered why she had not stopped there to ask Delia if she had seen Mr. Nesbit’s photograph that had always been on the dressing table in her bedroom.

A block and a half farther down the street was Mamie’s house. Mamie lived there with her mother, Aunt Sophie, and several older brothers and sisters.

Pauline slowed down her car before she could see the house, and by the time she had reached it she had only to coast to a stop and to jump out on the sandy sidewalk. Mamie’s house looked very much like most of the other houses in the Negro quarter, but Pauline had seen it once before, and she needed only to recognize the ivy-trellised porch to tell her that it was the place where Mamie lived.

Several colored people were standing on the sidewalk, leaning against the whitewashed picket fence. None of them knew her, and Pauline did not stop to speak. She ran through the gate, up the steps to the open door. She knocked on the door as rapidly as she could. She could not wait much longer. John would be coming home from the mills at four o’clock, and it was past three o’clock then. There was not a minute to lose. She had to hurry.

Someone in the rear of the house opened a door and closed it. The delay made Pauline frantic. She took several steps into the hall, listening for somebody to answer her knocking.

Pauline was in the center of the hall when Mamie opened a bedroom door and came out.

“Why! Miss Pauline!” Mamie said, astonished. “What’s the matter, Miss Pauline?”

“Mamie, I came to ask —”

She stopped in the midst of her questioning and could go no further. Mamie had crossed the hall and was standing a few feet from her. Pauline sat down in a chair and looked at Mamie. Her heart was beating madly, and her head throbbed until she had to hold her hands over her face to ease the pain.

“Miss Pauline, ask me what? What’s happened to you, Miss Pauline? You look scared, Miss Pauline.”

Pauline opened her eyes slowly and looked at Mamie. She saw now exactly what John must have seen when he saw Mamie for the first time nearly two weeks before. She could see that Mamie was young and slender, that her hair was straight and glistening, and that her mixed blood had given her a kind of sensuous beauty that no white girl could ever possess. She saw that Mamie’s legs were long and slender, and that Mamie was full-breasted. It was only then that she fully realized what John had meant when he asked her if Mamie were a good Negress. She could answer him now. She knew what to tell John the next time he asked her that about one of the colored servants.

“Mamie, I came to ask if you know —”

The door behind Mamie had been left open, and she looked into the bedroom for the first time. The sunshine came into the room, and a light breeze whipped the white curtains. The bedroom dresser was in full view.

Without waiting to finish what she was about to say, Pauline jumped from the chair and ran into Mamie’s room. There on the dresser, just as it had sat on her own dressing table, was John’s silver-framed photograph. She snatched the picture in her arms and ran back to Mamie.

“What made you — why — when did you take it — what did you do it for, Mamie!”

Mamie smiled. She did not try to run away, nor did she attempt to defend herself. She smiled.

Pauline leaned against the wall, hugging the silver-framed photograph to her breast. Her head had stopped throbbing, but she felt too weak to stand any longer. Just in time, Mamie ran and brought the chair to her mistress.

Outside in the back yard a group of Negroes were talking, and, as suddenly as she had first heard their voices, they began to laugh. They were not laughing about something that was humorous. That would be another kind of laughter; white-folks’ laughing, Aunt Sophie called it. The laughter that now came from their throats was different from any other expression of emotion Pauline had ever heard. They were not laughing at anything nor with anyone; they were laughing as only Negroes can laugh about nothing.

Pauline did not know how long she had been there in Mamie’s house when she opened her eyes. She felt as though she had been in a deep sleep for hours. The laughter in the back yard had stopped, but echoes of it rolled in her head, just as the smile on Mamie’s face had been only the beginning. She knew then that she could never forget what she had seen and heard in a Negro’s house. She knew she would never be able to explain it to John, nor would she ever be able to explain the smile on Mamie’s face, and the laughter in Aunt Sophie’s back yard.

The silence in the house frightened her, and she realized how late it was in the afternoon. Pauline knew that John was at home wondering where she and the children were. She jumped to her feet unsteadily and ran through the doorway. Mamie ran beside her, holding her arm and supporting her with her other arm around her waist. They got into the car and sped homeward, with Mamie on the rear seat beside Jay and Claire.

John was standing on the porch when she turned into the driveway from the boulevard. She stopped the car and ran to him.

“Where have you been?” he asked, kissing her.

“Hold me tight, John! Hold me till it hurts!”

For several minutes she lay in his arms, her eyes closed, and her body trembling. It was only when he put his hand under her chin and raised her head that she could look into his eyes.

“Why is Mamie here this afternoon, Pauline?” he asked her. “I thought this was her day off.”

“It was her day off, John, but I couldn’t get along without her. I went to her house and brought her back.”

She knew the question that he had asked dozens of time was about to be asked of her again. She knew the question was coming, because he had always asked it of her. While she waited, she lowered her head again, tightening her arms around his neck, and closed her eyes tightly.

“Are you sure that we wish to keep Mamie?” he asked her. “Pauline, is she a good Negress?”

“Yes, John,” she said, her body relaxing in his arms. “Mamie is a good girl.”

(First published in the
New English Weekly
)

T
HE ACCIDENT WAS
unavoidable and I was set free, but nevertheless I am guilty. He was my friend.

I was hurrying home for lunch when I ran over Lazy-Bones. I blew my horn frantically, I jammed on the brakes, I shoved into reverse, and I shouted at Lazy-Bones with all the strength in my lungs. The poor fellow was reading the pink sports sheet of his newspaper and never looked up. If you had known Lazy-Bones as well as I had known him for more than twenty years perhaps you would understand why he did not look up and jump out of the way.

It was my fault. His death, I mean. In the first place I should not have been going home for lunch, and lastly, even though I was, I shouldn’t have been speeding in such a breakneck hurry. At one o’clock for the past seventeen years I had lunched each noon in a small restaurant on Grand Street. But this day I had decided to go home for lunch because I needed a change of clothing. The suit I wore was damp and ill-smelling with perspiration. The day was hot. Over my desk the thermometer’s crimson mercury had risen steadily all morning, at twelve-thirty reaching 103. Even in the shade 103 degrees Fahrenheit is hot. Outside in the street the heat scorched the canvas awnings and stewed the black asphalt. On the store fronts the thermometers were registering 116 and 117 degrees and upward. My linen coat and trousers, immaculately clean and fresh that morning, reeked with salty, odorous sweat.