The Collected Stories (44 page)

I told them thanks. They said, That's O.K., man. Then I did something strange. Why, I don't know. I said, It's true I need the film, but here, you take the camera.

No, no, said the leader.

Take it, I said.

No, no—you crazy, man?

Listen, take it, use it. We'll come over and help you out. You can make a movie.

Don't want it—you deaf?
No.
No.

I said, You've got to take it. I'll be on the 143rd Street lot.

I shoved the camera into their hands. I walked away fast. And here I am—that's all there is. What do you think?

What in the world! said Ruth.

Forget the world, said Joe. I'm sorry I told you the story. I don't know why I did. I must be nuts.

Martin said, I know why you told the story. You wanted to show that just because a person owns a camera they do not own the whole world and you understand it.

That's what you think, said Joe. I think I told it to you because it just happened. Don't make a big Marxist deal about it.

O.K., don't get upset, said Martin. He began to fuss with the projector. Now, let's be calm, he said. Get your chairs, everybody. Ruthie, put the lights out. Wait'll you see the color, folks. Number one. Here it comes, that old man, he's holding that grandchild in a pink and orange sweater—where was that?

Oh, Christ, said Joe, can't you remember anything? It was in a courtyard in a village near Nanking.

Lavinia was born laughing. That's how come her disposition so appealing, Robert, how come you in love with her, not Elsie Rose nor Rosemary. Pretty they be, they all come out of me with a grievance.
And
the boys, J. C. Charles and Edward William, from the first second it seem, louder than their sisters.
UN
controllable.

It come from nature, that fact. My opinion: What men got to do on earth don't take more time than sneezing. Now a woman walk away from a man, she just know she loaded down in her body nine months. She got that responsibility on her soul forever.

A man restless all the time owing it to nature to scramble for opportunity. His time took up with nonsense, you know his conversation got to suffer. A man can't talk. That little minute in his mind most the time. Once a while busywork, machinery, cars, guns. Opposite of facts, you got to give in, Robert.

You listen now, boy, Lavinia born in good cheer. Nothing but a crumple sock, a newborn baby, she got a grin acrost her face.

Now, you say you love her. You got three rooms, front, sunny, you want her up there with you. I'm gonna ask you a question. How your job? You a happy worker? Or you dissatisfied, complaining to the boss, upsetting your mother with your dissatisfaction. Ask you another: You ever had welfare? You lie to the relief? I can't see a liar and am against a poor-dispositioned person.

Well, me and Mr. Grimble pull together. He didn't have a dollar, I made do. We live. When he pass away, it be all on me, them devilish boys and them mopey girls.

School, I said to them, you have had it. This here time is Depression. Mr. Roosevelt says so. The greengrocer hisself sitting amids barrels of plenty is skin and bones. Out, I said. You want to learn, learn by night. You spect to eat, work by day.

The big ones took it all right, little ones whine not to have their mama always about. Not Lavinia. Now, Robert, I got to tell you, she so cheerful with foolish stories to tickle the babies. She just rumple up the eldsters. A child, that's all. But I work for folks then, said: Bring that child, she just fine to talk to Granny while you ironing. We don't mind you bring
that
child.

So you see, Robert, when old John Stuart married our Rosemary last week, I said: Take her John Stuart. You and me play Spin the Bottle years and years ago and it some offense you prefer a hankering disarranged girl to a sensible widow that's got some feeling. It's a fact, though, that child does
need
protection. She lack caution. So I gives her to you my old friend, hoping you a better husband to her than you been to poor Mrs. Lucy Stuart gone only seven months.

In fact, who take Elsie is welcome to her. No matter she just sixteen, she never put her mind to nothing large and ain't going to soon.

Tell the truth Robert, it don't seem so far away in my mind, it don't seem distant from this front porch that Grimble first set his eye on me. I was a grade scholar then, aiming high. All in every way I look was on their back providing for men or on their knees cleaning up after them.

I said: Mama, I see you just defile by leaning on every will and whim of Pa's. Now I aim high. To be a teacher and purchase my own grits and not depend on any man.

That was my thought when Mr. Grimble turn to me. He was a smart man, incline to understanding, but his heart been darken by moodiness. Oh my, he liked me.

Now, he was a smart man Robert, but no education. He turn it all to strength till he got shorn by pride. He could heave a meaty hog and that's no lie. In the WPA he was sought for.

I said: Grimble, I just determined not to set myself drifting in this animal way. I just as well live out a spinster's peevish time as be consumed by boiling wash water.

Grimble said: There is ways and means. If you wish not to have little ones, or just one or two for comfort, I say yes. I do not want you to pass your ma's pitiful days. I wish you well.

But you knows men as good as me. When they warm, they got to cool off. No ways out of that. Robert, you recollect your own ma, the children that grown ain't but half. Some discourage in me before they born, some scotch in my own flesh. And one little baby, crawling off, drown in springtime in that hole there by the creek.

Grimble tell me, Put that sorrow out of your mind. It can't be lived with. We got Elsie Rose and Rosemary and that glad Lavinia. J. C. Charles and Edward William look so hearty. Preserve yourself. The Lord says: Endure.

Well, he was sorry to see I never gain my strong desire to teach. But he provides no help nor no friendship neither, for lean days begun to gnaw into the fat ones.

Time pass and I sees him clear, but that time I was rancorous.

I near forgot my reading but that J. C. Charles was so slow and needed help and that was pleasure to do. In summer when the light was long, me and the boy studied. I come close to loving him best, but he was too slow for my affection.

Then one bad day a man from the quarry come running. Now listen to me, he say. What Grimble did. The foreman holler, Now you two hoist that rock from where it moored. Git it yonder. Well, listen, we went forward. Then Grimble brag, You scrawny hod carrier, if'n I can't hoist that pitiful rock myself, I'm made to swing a broom. No, then the pusher says, no. No, Grimble, that sandstone's got bottom. But him stubborn, gits to it, levers it up, hike his shoulder to it, heaves, and has it sure enough. Then down on his knees using what he got, a goddamn blockhead, and set it just so. Then—now listen—he stand up and turn to look at us. But his face got no appearance. And that Samson sets down and decline to fall but sets like an idiot. Mrs. Grimble, your man's blood vessel is busted.

I only giving you a true idea of life. Robert, for some folk
will
paint it prettier than it truly be.

What I mean about Lavinia—look here at me. Ain't nothing I own but this here apron and that Sunday hat Grimble give me twenty years ago. Now see Lavinia going about improving the foolish, singing in the choir, mending the lame. Now see her, Robert, that gal apt to be a lady preacher, a nurse, something great and have a name. Don't know what you see Robert, but I got in mind to be astonished.

That just what I said to Robert one year just past Christmas. Days still lean and mean. Old Grimble gone, save from misery. Then Robert said to me: How come you set on making me so fearful? You got to know I care for Lavinia. I don't mean no harm to her. Ain't she got her high school? I ain't a bad man. I don't lie. I like her hopeful nature. I like her smart way. Just what you got in mind, Ma?

That was all out of him. Call me Ma and slam the door.

Then a long time pass and all growed and gone, but Edward William, a boy concern with nastiness. Then this day come:

Just visiting Lavinia, I see her near scalded, deep in the washtub. Robert Grimble Fenner, Junior, my grandboy, is setting on a stool and squeaking out his schoolday story. Our Lavinia can't stop appreciating him a minute to heed my presence. By my side is Edward William, just wiggling to get away off someplace and start admiring hisself. He is fifteen and my patience is done. So I spurn him to look at that girl. Her little baby, Vynetta, is demanding her and Robert Junior follow her off to the cradle squeaking minus a letup.

I watch that gal. I just stare out my sad-old-sighted eyes at her. What I see: she is busy and broad.

Then I let out a curse, Lord never heard me do in this long life. I cry out loud as my throat was made to do, Damn you, Lavinia—for my heart is busted in a minute—damn you, Lavinia, ain't nothing gonna come of you neither.

To put us at our ease, to quiet our hearts as she lay dying, our dear friend Selena said, Life, after all, has not been an unrelieved horror—you know, I
did
have many wonderful years with her.

She pointed to a child who leaned out of a portrait on the wall—long brown hair, white pinafore, head and shoulders forward.

Eagerness, said Susan. Ann closed her eyes.

On the same wall three little girls were photographed in a schoolyard. They were in furious discussion; they were holding hands. Right in the middle of the coffee table, framed, in autumn colors, a handsome young woman of eighteen sat on an enormous horse—aloof, disinterested, a rider. One night this young woman, Selena's child, was found in a rooming house in a distant city, dead. The police called. They said, Do you have a daughter named Abby?

And with
him
, too, our friend Selena said. We had good times, Max and I. You know that.

There were no photographs of
him.
He was married to another woman and had a new, stalwart girl of about six, to whom no harm would ever come, her mother believed.