Strange Fruit, page 7
Tonight seemed a long time ago to Tracy as he sat there on the steps. A long time since he had been with the crowd at the drugstore, out at Sulphur Springs talking to Harriet, telling Dorothy good night on her front porch. A long time since Mother had spoken to him today: You owe it to Dorothy to make a decision. A long time since he talked to Nonnie at the gate. A long time since he had come home from the army, going along without looking where he was going …
Now sign says: Road Closed. Better detour.
I’m pregnant and I’m glad.
You owe it to Dorothy to make a decision.
Behind him the house he was born in. Everyone sleeping. Everyone sleeping. Tracy stood, stretched, put out his cigarette. Lord …
FIVE
When Tracy walked in, the family were at breakfast, Dr. Deen finishing, Laura just beginning, Mrs. Deen pouring her first cup of coffee, having waited for Laura. It was the kind of dining room one associates, perhaps too glibly, with a Southern accent. Mrs. Deen poured coffee from her mother’s old silver urn, which had been her mother’s before her. It was clumsier than the electric percolator, but the family preferred drip coffee and Mrs. Deen preferred the silver urn. There was a bowl of figs at each place and a silver pitcher of heavy Jersey cream was near Dr. Deen’s plate. Henry had just put a plate of Eenie’s hot muffins in front of Mrs. Deen, and now stood, tray under arm, six feet two inches of cheerful, sweating servant, awaiting the family’s wishes. Near the muffins was a small crystal dish containing butter balls that were rapidly softening in the heat of this August morning. There were lilies on the sideboard, a bowl of red roses on the table. The roses were crowded tightly into the blue crinkly bowl, as Tut had arranged them, after gathering them in the garden. Shortly, Mrs. Deen or Laura would rearrange them.
Tut was drinking his coffee and reading the Atlanta Journal. His seersucker coat looked mussed, and from the tentative glance Mrs. Deen gave it, anyone could have guessed that in a minute or so Dad would be reminded to exchange it for a fresh Palm Beach coat before making his morning calls. Tut cheerfully read his paper, lifting his coffee cup with his left hand, not because he was left-handed but because he liked to do a few things in his own way.
Mrs. Deen looked fresh and cool in her thin blue dress and her hair, brushed high and smooth, was coolly gray against cool skin.
Tut chuckled. He was now reading the comic strips, and in a moment would look up and tell his family all about them.
Laura half smiled at her father, broke a muffin, buttered a small portion of it, looked at Tracy.
“Morning, Mother … Dad.… Finish your book?” This last addressed to Laura.
Someone had closed the east blinds, and the paneled wall opposite was striped by sun and shadow.
“Almost. Did you finish your—” Laura left her sentence uncompleted.
“Almost.” He raised his eyebrows, laughed, turned to Henry, asked for two strips of bacon.
Dr. Deen folded the paper, passed it to his son, asked Henry to get his car. He was going to tell them now what was in the comics: “Maggie—”
“Tut,” Alma Deen looked at her husband, touched her lips with her napkin. Tracy chuckled, Laura smiled, peered at her father through her bifocal glasses.
“Tut, your coat looks as if you’ve worked hours in the garden. Your fresh Palm Beach is hanging in your closet. Henry, get Dr. Deen’s fresh coat for him.”
Henry went for the coat, went for the car. The wheels slid on the gravel as he brought it to a quick stop in the driveway. Dr. Deen chuckled as he recounted some incident he had just read, and Henry’s deep laugh came through the window to the three who had not talked after Tut Deen left the room.
No one read the funnies. Each drank coffee, slowly, now and then glancing at one and another or out the window.
The telephone shrilled across the silence. “Hit’s Miss Dorothy,” Henry announced.
Mrs. Deen put down her cup, touched her lips slowly with her napkin, “Whom does she wish to speak to?” Words casual, quiet.
“She’s atter Mr. Tracy, mam,” and Henry grinned and cocked his eyes at Tracy, who would not receive the glance. Tracy tilted his cup against the edge of the saucer, looked in it, looked up. “May I have some coffee, Mother?”
Mrs. Deen poured the coffee from the silver urn, added cream.
“No sugar, please,” Tracy said. “Tell her—I’ll call later.”
“Trace—you really can’t do that!” Laura broke a piece of muffin as she looked at him, half smiling. “Or can you?”
Tracy laughed, drank his coffee.
“He ain’t here now, Miss Dorothy.” Henry’s big voice floated back into the dining room from the hall. “Minute he gits in I’ll sho tell him to call you. Yes’m, thanky mam.” Henry laughed politely into the mouthpiece, softly hung up the receiver, came into the dining room, tray under arm.
Tracy picked up the Atlanta Journal, continued to drink his coffee.
“Mother—I’m going out for some tennis.”
“It’s ninety-three in the shade,” Tracy said, “if that means anything to you.”
“It’s always ninety-three—best thing is to ignore it.”
“You’ll be back in time for a bath before the service?” her mother said.
“I don’t know. Mother.”
“But you plan to attend the morning service?”
“I don’t know, Mother.” A monotone of resistance crept into the voice.
Tracy laughed.
Mrs. Deen looked at him, with, she believed, no expression in her face, turned to Laura, “I feel that it’s our duty to support the church in this revival.”
“But why?” Laura spoke with sudden sharpness. “Why, Mother? It’s all so—oh, I don’t know … last night those mill people … wallowing in the sawdust—”
“Because,” Mrs. Deen ignored Laura’s description, “people need to be awakened. There has never been a time in our country when religion was at the low ebb it now is. Since the war young people have grown away from the church. Drinking … girls smoking … things happening in cars … and not only young people but their parents are—”
“But why such a crude method of winning us to God?”
“I am not pleased with that criticism.”
“I’m sorry, Mummie. But in this day, to use frontier methods to save us does seem crude. Or worse.”
“This isn’t only a revival in our church. It’s a community project. While some things may seem a little old-fashioned or unnecessary from our point of view, all of Maxwell has not had your opportunities. Brother Dunwoodie has a message people need, educated or uneducated. It is especially those poor mill people who do need God. And you must remember that none of us becomes so educated that we can do without religion.”
Laura drank her coffee in silence.
Tracy looked at his sister, looked at his mother, smiled again.
It was after this second smile that Alma upset her cup. She began to tremble, her cup slipped, a brown stream ran slowly down the cloth, and on her dress. She could not remember ever having done such a thing. She felt deeply disturbed and, after her children left the house, went into Laura’s room. Seeking peace in old familiar routines, she tidied Laura’s drawers, rearranged the books, looked over her dresses, and possessed once more the fringe of her life.
And then she found the clay torso. She found it in Laura’s drawer, wrapped in a wet cloth. Uncovered, it lay in her hand, urgent, damp, like something in gestation. A lump of wet dirt. She was not able to take her eyes from it. And as she stood, unmoving, a bright red spot appeared in each cheek, her clamped jaws squared, shuttling her face into fresh planes, destroying the glaze which gave Alma Deen what her friends ardently called her “spiritual look.”
She held the little figure, stared at each detail as if she saw nakedness for the first time. As if all she had feared had come to life in that lump of dirt. As if in it were hidden the key to Laura’s secrets, and Laura’s life, always as easily entered as Laura’s room, now locked against her. In both she had once felt welcomed. She looked around the room. It was as inseparable a part of Laura as her gray eyes. Her bed, her books, her desk. In that desk Laura kept her writings; when little, her diaries; now older, her letters. And it was by means of these that Alma had maintained so intimate, so satisfying a knowledge of her child’s thoughts and moods. For as Laura had grown older, and talked less—Laura seemed to talk less each time she returned from college—Alma had leaned more heavily on the written words in the desk. Laura’s friends’ letters, her journal kept during college days, meant so much to Alma. As did this room. When Laura was away, Alma often brought her mending in and sat in the old Morris chair. And occasionally, oh most rarely, she had slept in Laura’s bed, escaping Tut’s masculinity. Feeling at times a desperate need, she would slip into Laura’s room. And on those nights her sleep would be dreamless and peaceful. Like a child, she had counted the weeks throughout winter until Laura’s return. And now that Laura was here, the air was heavy with the slamming of doors, shutting her out of her life. She was different. Withdrawn. Uncooperative. For instance, about the revival meeting. Anyone brought up in a religious home in Maxwell knows that revivals are necessary for the community. How else are people to be persuaded to live decent lives! And yet, at breakfast, right before Tracy too, when Laura knows that Tracy needs to be encouraged to go to church, she had criticized the revival. And he had enjoyed it.
She looked at the clay figure. If it had any beauty in it! But no, only nakedness. Why should Laura want to make naked things? A pelvis … what had she been thinking of that would make her want to make a pelvis! A man, a boy—you could understand men being dirty like that—men seemed made that way. But your own daughter … spending her time making naked things … What did she do it for! She’d call it art, and her lips would grow tight and thin as she said it. This was what she had been doing. Every day she had been going somewhere—like Tracy. It made Alma feel—
It made Alma remember a day long ago. She and three-year-old Laura had gone into the library where a breeze could be felt and she had sat watching the child play, watching the slow smile which came and went on her solemn little face. Alma had been happy that day. She remembered with startling clearness her feeling of peace, as if the baby Laura had for all time answered an old nagging doubt. She, who seldom was without some handwork, had sat with hands quiet as her heart, watching her baby. This child loved her. She loved it. Always they would understand each other. And then, as if something had crashed in the room, she turned quickly. What is it, she asked herself, her mind feeling around as one does for something run into in the dark. Tracy … so far away lunch seemed now, when last she had been with him. So remote had grown all the world save that small fragment which enclosed Laura and herself. With the thought of him, the old burden of motherhood fell upon her. She hastily left the room to search for him, found him and his little black playmate Henry, behind the cook’s house. Naked, unmindful of the broiling sun, they were crouched before an upturned washpot, beating upon it. Sweat poured from their grave faces, down their bodies.
“We’re playing savages,” Tracy declared stoutly, deserted by Henry, who upon her appearance had shot like greased lightning into his mama’s cabin.
“Savages?”
“Yes’m. We’re playing Africa.” Six-year-old blue eyes looked into hen unwaveringly.
“Why did you take your clothes off, Tracy?”
“To play Africa.”
“Couldn’t you play Africa with your clothes on?”
“No mam.”
“Why?”
“Cause Africa is nothing on.”
“Who suggested such an idea to you? Did Henry?”
“No mam.”
“Then why, Tracy, did you do it?”
“It’s a game,” doggedly.
“Have you been doing—anything else?”
He shook his head.
“Are you sure you’re telling me the truth?”
Her young son did not answer.
“Tracy, you must answer me.”
He looked at her, face flushed, blue eyes dark with feeling, lips together. Sweat poured down his body, streaked with smut from the pot.
“You must answer me, Tracy!”
He did not answer.
“You know that I must punish you for disobeying me?”
He continued to look at her, his lips pressed tightly together.
“You know that I should, Tracy?”
He stood there before her, blue eyes looking straight into hers.
She had been shaken with fury by her son’s stubborn silence, his refusal to admit her rightness. And now, as she remembered it, she grew angry. So stiffly had he obeyed her, baring his thin thighs to the switching. Only a few light strokes of a peach-tree sprout had she given him. But when he put his pants on, breathing quickly though making no sound, and walked away from her, she queerly felt that she had lashed him brutally. Chilled by the thought, she had hurried into the room where Laura was playing and had pulled the child into her arms, seeking her lost self-esteem and the now lost peace. And Laura had snuggled close, patting her cheeks, pressing wet kisses on her face until she was suffused once more with the warmth of the child’s love and the comforting knowledge that she was a good mother.
All these years Laura had given back to Alma what Tracy had taken away.
And now as she sat in Laura’s room, holding the little clay torso, a hideous thought swept through her mind. Tracy is destroying Laura. Not directly, but by the subtle influence of his failures. Tracy’s tight lips, his silence, his withdrawal from the family, his refusal to be someone worth while, the long hours spent … Wherever he spent his time it was wickedly spent—this she knew. And Laura must surely be aware of this, now that she was grown. Because of it, was she losing faith in her mother? Did she believe it her fault, that Tracy was no good, a failure? Could she be so unfair, she who had always been so close, so loving? Could she not see that all her life Alma had slaved to make something out of that boy? Was she going to take his side now—
She felt, for the first time in her life, that she might faint and sat down. “It’s the heat,” she whispered. The room turned black, and for a moment she could see nothing.
Then, with the infallible weapon of her belief in herself, she fought back doubt. She was right. She could not be wrong. With infinite patience she had planned Laura’s life. She had built it with care. Nothing—no one—could tear down what had been built with such thought and prayer. She began to breathe more quietly. Affirmations, soft to her bruised spirit, gathered about her:
Laura’s Yes, Mummie trailing through the years, like a little song … the baby Laura’s quick rush into her arms after being punished—the young Laura’s Mother dear, I have a good book, let’s read it together—But what kind of dress would you wear, dearest?—I’d rather stay home with you …” And then, fearing that the child was growing too dependent upon her, she had been firm about college and Laura had proved her right again, winning honors each year.
Alma breathed deeply, let her fingers relax, resting the figure on her lap. She had noticed lately that she was a bit nervous. Change of life makes you like that. She must not permit herself to go to pieces over something trivial. After all, this is a little thing. After all, it is a matter of idle hands. These months in Maxwell had made Laura restless. She quite likely copied this thing out of a book without realizing its—its—well, that it wasn’t so nice. She remembered now a book around the house on Greek sculpture. Though this didn’t look much like Greek sculpture. No Greek sculpture she had ever seen had looked so naked. Odd too, because of course it was naked, but there was a refined look about it, while this thing, with its great bulges, looked as naked as—once she had helped her old fat grandmother out of her chemise and she had looked—well this thing looked like that. And there was no art about Grandma.
She remembered that the young Laura had gone through a foolish period when she thought she wanted to be an artist. It had begun with the reading of a book. Laura rushed in to her one day, eyes shining, “Oh, Mother, I’m going to be an artist.” Mrs. Deen had taken care to smile sympathetically as she replied, “I am sure, dear, that your book must be interesting.” “Oh yes, it is, Mother! It makes me want to try—it makes me believe I can do something—really something!” Mrs. Deen smiled into the eager face, “You can do something. Mother has a plan for you.” And as Laura listened, Alma told her of college, of university, of teaching in some girls’ college. “You are all I have to count on, darling,” she’d whispered, and had smoothed back Laura’s light brown hair from her wide forehead and told of her wish for her to work for a Ph.D. “You would like that, wouldn’t you? And I should be so proud of you. It is what I have always wanted to do myself.” No more was said about art. And later Alma quietly burned the book.
