Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart Read online

  First thing Persia does is rummage through her purse, locate her cigarettes, light up. Her eyelids tremble with re lief; she's been so long without, in the interior of the hospital where smoking is forbidden: an hour and ten minutes.

  Persia draws on the cigarette as if it were oxygen itself.

  Next, in a pose of indignation, she pulls up her sweater sleeves, shows Graice a half dozen small circular Band Aids on her arms. There was this crude, cruel nurse who kept poking me with a needle, couldn't find a vein and blamed me. Jesus, those needles hurt! Duke was scared to death of them, re member he said he'd end up like Al Capone, he'd die rather than have a needle stuck in him?

  Well, I'm not that bad, thank God, but I couldn't help flinching when that woman came at me, I swear she had it in for mea woman's worst enemy can be a woman, you know, especially a woman in authority like a nurse. You better get used to it,' she warned me, sort of smug and nasty as if she knew something about me I didn't know. Can you imagine! Seeing people in the vicinity staring at her, Persia hurriedly pulls her sleeves back down, well over the wrists. She stands for a moment swaying on her feet as if she can't re member where she is or what she has been doing.

  Graice gives her a gentle half hug. Momma, I'm sorry, she says guiltily, but anyway it's over now?

  Over for now.

  'And when will the results be in, did they say?

  Persia shrugs, not meeting Graice's eye. They didn't say.

  It is at this precise moment that the thought occurs to Graice Courtney, too swift and too chilling to be absorbed, that maybe, just maybe, Persia walked out without submitting to the re st of the tests.

  no matter that her new doctor McDermott prescribed them and that Graice has paid for them. Graice says, fumbling, I guess the hospital will telephone your doctor. I guess that's the procedure. When the results are back from the laboratory.

  Persia murmurs carelessly, I guess.

  She snatches up her coat and Graice helps her slip it on. the old fake fur meant to re semble silver fox that Virgil Starling used to bury his face in, clowning in ecstasy, declaring it sure had class just like Persia. The coat is frayed and shabby now and Graice is embarrassed by it, as Graice is embarrassed by her mother's Hollywood color hair and excessive makeup and a certain tough histrionic manner that comes over her in public. As if she's keenly conscious of being watched: both shrinking from attention and inviting it.

  Graice herself wears an imitation camel's hair coat, a classic style, neat, attractive, schoolgirlish in its covered belt and tortoise shell buttons. camel's hair coats, the authentic kind, are worn by most of the well to do girls at Hammond Central High School.

  Outside, it's a blinding winter day. Early February. The wind off the river lifts skeins of dry powdery snow like snakes many yards long.

  Persia, bundled in her coat, a white angora scarf wound about her head, shivers and says, I'd never miss this damn weather, that's for sure!

  Graice doesn't quite catch this. Her eyes flood with tears from the cold.

  Persia deserves a re ward, and Graice is readily talked into the proposition that they see a movie instead of going right home; Butterfield 8 is playing at the Palace, and Elizabeth Taylor is Persia's favorite actress. Then we can have dinner at Schrafft's, maybe, Persia says, squeezing Graice's arm as if they were girls together, on an impromptu lark. I'm sure I'll be able to eat if the food is good and the atmosphere is attractive. That's what I tried to explain to McDermott, but I don't think the man heard. You know, a woman can speak directly and lucidly to a man and the man will not hear.

  Graice quickly shuts her mind against the memory of Persia, the other morning, vomiting up a soft boiled egg and toast Graice brought to her for breakfast, in her bed, eyes bulging, frantic with the terrible strain. Heaving and heaving as if to turn herself inside out long after there was nothing further to bring up.

  Graice had to run for a basin, brought it to her just in time.

  Graice, I don't know what comes over me.

  Graice doesn't think of that now, it's the prospect of an afternoon movie with Persia that excites her: the two of them, mother and daughter, have not gone to a movie together for years. Graice too is in awe of Elizabeth Taylor, gorgeous Liz with her heartbreak skin, impossibly lavender eyes, sumptuous lips, breasts, hips, palpitating life, and there's the tacky elegant Palace, with plush crimson draperies, deep cushioned seats, a golden Egyptian motif. Suddenly Graice Courtney wants nothing more passionately than to see Butterfield 8 with her mother.

  But there's the library, she says, disappointed. I have to be there by four thirty, I can't be late again.

  Persia links her arm snug through Graice's. She's thinking of Clang's across the street from the Palace where she'll have a drink to steady her nerves, placate her queasy stomach. Oh, hell, honey, she says, mischievous as a truant schoolgirl. Call in sick.

  then we are hurt, when we are frightened, befuddled. we take up our pens. And in secret.

  She has become utterly unpredictable. untrustworthy.

  She has no soul. all slipping sliding surfaces.

  She could stop drinking If she wanted to. She just doesn't want to.

  There is not the slightest connection between us.

  Late winter 1960. When Graice Courtney is fearful of re turning home to the apartment on Buena Vista Avenue: for either Persia is gone, and Graice will be compelled to wait with mounting anxiety for her to re turn; or Persia is there, and Graice will be compelled to confront the person her mother has become.

  So begins Graice's season of wandering the streets after the library closes, eating supper alone. are ading, doing schoolwork, writing furiously in her journal while she eats, in public. At the start she was intensely self conscious, in terror of being sighted by high school classmates, for how odd it would seem to them, secure in their families, how odd in truth it is, a girl Graice Courtney's age eating supper by herself in the clamorous cafeteria in the Greyhound bus station. or at the counter in Rexall's. or one or another of the anonymous Main Street restaurants where solitary diners are the rule but older, and usually male.

  By degrees I've come to like it. I do like it. There is nothing that gives perspective to one's life like eating alone in a public place.

  Graice's favorite restaurant is Kitty's Korner at the corner of Buena Vista and Fifteenth, a small square stucco building painted canary yellow, a dollhouse look to it: hanging plants in the windows, a single row of booths, and an L shaped counter kept spotlessly clean by a waitress named Betty. When Graice eats there she sits in one of the booths with her back to the door, and rarely in these surroundings does anyone approach her to ask is she alone? Does she want company? What is she reading? What is her name?

  Nor does Betty, smiling good natured Betty, intrude: seeing from the first that Graice Courtney is not the kind of customer who wants friendly chatter. Please leave me alone. Yes, I see you are very nice.

  No, I can't bear it.

  At school too Graice Courtney is rapidly acquiring a re puta tion for being cool, re served, distant, aloof. How much easier, that way.

  On the rear wall of Kitty's Korner there is a Girl Scout calendar that invariably draws Graice's eye to it. makes her think guiltily of the uniform still in her closet which she hasn't worn in years but hasn't been able to throw out. Strange how quickly she'd lost interest in the Girl Scouts once she joined, and in her friends too who were Scouts, how she'd lost interest in religion and the church choir and Caroline Braverman with whom, now, she scarcely speaks.

  Persia once said, You know? You're your father's daughter.

  Graice asked what did she mean.

  Persia said, Cold as ice.

  Tonight in Kitty's Korner, Graice is sitting in the booth farthest from the door, her back to the door. never so much as glances around when she hears it open. He's late. He isn't coming. Why should he come?

  She doesn't expect him re ally.

  A weekday evening, mid March.

  Persia
is out with her new boyfriend Rafe, probably a scribbled note for Graice on the kitchen table, Don't wait up please. Love you. P Or maybe there's no note at all.

  Or maybe they aren't out, maybe they're there, drinking.

  or in bed.

  How brightly lit Kitty's Korner is, achingly overexposed, like a photograph gone wrong. Graice rubs her eyes; Graice wonders can you always trust your eyes; the process of vision is a sort of photographic process, and photography always lies. the one clear truth Leslie Courtney has taught her. No visual truth, only inventions. No eye of the camera, only human eyes.

  Here, in this place Graice has come perhaps wrongly to trust, it seems that the edges of things are too sharp, too emphatic. You expect almost to see outlines as in old re touched photographs: the arm and hand of a customer at the counter lifting a cup of coffee to his mouth. the bulldog profile of another customer beside him.

  The problem is: too much reality to be absorbed.

  Light ricochets off surfaces. The green Formica topped counter kept so spotlessly clean, ceaseless motions of the waitress's hand, a chunky sponge in her hand: the counter alone is ablaze with reflected light.

  And the chrome napkin holders. the salt and pepper shakers. black plastic menus. lozenge shaped floor tile in green and black like a jigzaw puzzle. Colors too defined, voices too loud. A jukebox, turned up too high, is playing Harry Belafonte's Water Boy, all honeyed slides and diphthongs.

  She sees by the clock it's ten fifteen. He's late.

  Yes, but he probably isn't coming, never intended to come.

  Yes, you knew that when you hung up the phone, didn't you.

  Three postal workers at the counter laughing with Betty the waitress, trading quips, wisecracks, good natured the asing; Graice takes a kind of pleasure in their ease with one another so long as it doesn't involve her. She's sitting glancing idly through a discarded copy of that morning's Hammond Chronicle, headlines, always head lines, news, the public life so distant from her and from everyone she knows; yet the world is re al, the world is us, no escape.

  It's ten twenty. The restaurant closes at 11 P. M. ; at that time Graice Courtney won't have much choice but to go home.

  Harry Belafonte continues to sing Water Boy.

  At the Hammond Public Library, Graice Courtney is perceived as a quiet but excellent worker, a librarian's assistant who can be, and frequently is, trusted with librarian's work. The salary is low but the work is interesting. isn't it? Books, magazines, the solace of shelves and shelves of strangers' inventions, competing versions of the truth. The salary is low, all available salaries are low; why shouldn't I be a cocktail waitress, says Persia defiantly, why the hell not, what am I saving it for, at my age?

  At the counter the laughter fades when the door opens, some one pushes in Betty the waitress and her customers stare almost rudely and Graice Courtney's heart leaps, He's here.

  It's Jinx Fairchild. Looking very black.

  Young, coltish lanky, but very black and very tall, standing in the doorway of Kitty's Korner but reluctant to come inside, just there to catch Graice Courtney's eye. He's wearing a leather jacket creased and scuffed so it looks white in places, soiled work trousers, a navy blue wool cap on his head. the kind of wool cap it seems half the black men in Hammond wear.

  There's a thin little mustache on his upper lip Graice Courtney has never seen before.

  He catches her eye, nods, no smile, then he's gone again and it's silent in Kitty's Korner as quickly, fumblingly, Graice Courtney gathers up her things, puts on her coat, pays her bill at the register hurries to join Jinx Fairchild out on the sidewalk. not a word as Betty and the others watch her. These white faces, expressionless eyes. What will they say, when she's gone?

  Even the jukebox has switched off.

  Outside Graice catches up with Jinx, seeing he's impatient, edgy, won t look at her. Not wanting her to touch him either but she does: squeezes his fingers, says, Thank you for coming, Jinx.

  This is embarrassing. This is unexpected.

  And the shock of the white girl's hand in his, fingers so frankly gripping his, as if she had a right. he laughs, nervous, annoyed, says, Hell. sure. It's no big deal.

  Graice says, Your hands: did you hurt them?

  Some of the scabs are fresh, some healed.

  Jinx mumbles words Graice can't hear, walking away.

  Jinx's car is a low slung rust pocked 1955 Chrysler with a long cruel scrape on its side, must have been in a sideswiping accident.

  There's an awkward moment when Jinx goes to open the passenger's door for Graice and she's about to open it herself so she draws back, smiling, face very warm, and he opens it, nudges her inside, as if they're old friends with a mysterious grudge between them, some thing not quite re solved, or brother and sister.

  He's kept the motor running. Graice climbs into gusts of hot dry air billowing up from the heater.

  She says again, I didn't think you would come. I. it's very nice of Behind the wheel, gunning the motor, Jinx says, neither friendly nor unfriendly, We better not go anywhere, like for a drink or anything, people gonna see us. Gonna see me, ask questions of me.

  Just drive around and you tell me what's what, then I can take you home. said you and your mother moved, close by? He pauses, glancing at her. I got to get home early.

  Graice says, Yes.

  Graice is thinking she has no further wish than Jinx Fairchild's presence, the strangeness of his being here with her, out of all of Hammond.

  So Jinx drives east on Ontario Street; he doesn't speak and neither does Graice, that white girl always so fixed upon him, crazy white girl with those eyes fixed upon him, what's he going to do?

  Not going to touch her, that's for sure.

  Like bringing a lit match close to human hair.

  Just for the hell of it. bringing it close.

  The interior of the car smells: hair pomade, spilled food, something tart and ammoniac like baby diapers.

  ris says finally, shyly, I. heard you're married? You and your wife have a little baby?

  Uh huh. That's right.

  I wanted to tell you congratulations, when I heard.

  Thanks.

  'And where do you work now?

  Jinx shrugs. Here and there.

  You used to work at that gravel place across the river, didn't you?

  Jinx just shrugs.

  Your wife is Sissy Weaver? I knew her sister, back in grade school.

  Yah. Sissy Weaver.

  Where do you live?

  Jinx glances at her, laughs as if almost annoyed, or maybe he's just amused. Sure got a lot of questions, Graice, don't you: like my momma.

  We live down on Tenth Street, got a place there. Upstairs place.

  They drive for a while in silence. Graice's face is very warm, her heartbeat painfully fast. They're passing darkened stores. banks of gritty snow. familiar sights now unfamiliar. At this time of night the intersections are deserted, or nearly: traffic lights a continuous quick flashing yellow.

  Do you think you'll ever go back to school? To college? You were planning Jinx makes a derisive snorting noise.

  Must be, folks have asked him that question many times.

  Graice Courtney persists, though. It's that way she has about her, pushy, unrelenting. You could go back, couldn't you? Sometime?

  You kidding?

  No, I'm not kidding.

  Jinx looks at her as if she's simple, and he doesn't have much patience with simple.

  After his accident playing basketball Jinx Fairchild quit both basketball and school. drifted clear away from the white folks' expectations and good wishes for him.

  Graice re calls how Hammond school officials and student government officers debated the issue, the then controversial issue, of whether Jinx Fairchild should be granted a Hammond Central High School diploma despite his failure to complete his senior year.

  this, the traditional token diploma granted to hopeless but tractable students, often black, somet
imes mildly retarded, in place of the New York State Regents approved diploma, the re al thing. In the end they voted to grant Jinx Fairchild the diploma, though worrying he'd re fuse to turn up for graduation to receive it on stage with his fellow seniors, which of course he did; they had to mail it to him at home.

  Graice says, not pushy now butte ntative, nervous, Look: why did you do it? That accident'? I knew you did it intentionally, I knew right away. She pauses. Jinx makes no re ply as she knew he wouldn't, behaves as if he's hardly listening. She says, He deserved to die.