“Walter will never face the facts about things,” was one of my grandmother’s sayings about him.
Then a year or so ago my mother happened to tell me that she had finally found out what my grandmother was trying to tell her as she died, but hadn’t the strength to. “Your grandmother kept pointing at the bureau, and later I found out that she had her corset in there with several hundred dollars sewed up in it!”
(Published 1964)
Mama’s Old Stucco House
Mr. Jimmy Krenning wandered into the noon blaze of the kitchen for his breakfast coffee just wearing the shorts he had slept in. He’d lost so much weight that summer that the shorts barely hung on his narrow hipbones and thin belly. At first the colored girl, Brinda, who had lately taken the place of her bedridden mother at the Krennings’, had been offended as well as embarrassed by this way he had of walking around in front of her as if she were not a young girl and not even human, as if she were a dog in there waiting on him. She was a shy, pretty girl, brought up with more gentility than most white girls in the town of Macon, Georgia. At first she thought he acted with this kind of impropriety around her because she was colored. That was when it offended her. Now she’d come to understand that Mr. Jimmy would have acted the same way with a white girl, with anybody of any race or any age or upbringing—he really and truly was so unconscious of being with anybody when he entered the kitchen for his coffee that it was a wonder he smiled or spoke when he entered. It was Mr. Jimmy’s nights that made him behave that way. They left him as dazed as a survivor of a plane crash in which everyone but Mr. Jimmy had died, and now that she understood this, Brinda was no longer offended, but she was still embarrassed. She kept her eyes carefully away from him, but this was hard to do because he sat on the edge of the kitchen table, directly in the streak of noon blaze through the door, drinking coffee out of the Silex instead of the cup she’d put on the kitchen table.
She asked him if the coffee was hot enough for him. It had been off the stove since she heard him get out of bed half an hour ago. But Mr. Jimmy was so inattentive this morning he thought she was making a reference to the weather and said, God yes, this heat is breaking my balls.
This was the kind of talk that Brinda’s mother had advised her to pretend not to hear. He don’t mean nothing by it, her mother had explained to her. He’s just acting smart or been drinking too much when he talks that way, and the best way to stop it is to pretend you don’t hear it. When I get back to the Krennings’, I’ll straighten that boy out.
Brinda’s Mama still expected, or pretended to expect, to return to work at the Krennings’, but Brinda knew that her Mama was on her deathbed. It was a strange thing that Brinda’s Mama and Mr. Jimmy’s Mama had both took mortally sick the same summer, Mr. Jimmy’s with a paralytic stroke and Brinda’s with chronic liver trouble which had now reached a stage where she wasn’t likely to ever get back on her feet. Even so, Brinda’s Mama was better off than Mr. Jimmy’s, who lay up there in that big old brass bed of hers absolutely speechless and motionless so that nobody knew if she was conscious or not, and had been like that since the first week of June which was three months ago. Although Brinda’s Mama didn’t know that it was the end for herself, she knew it was the end for old Mrs. Krenning and she sorrowed for her, asking Brinda each evening if Mrs. Krenning had shown any sign of consciousness during the day. Sometimes there were little things to report, some days it seemed that Mrs. Krenning was more alive in her eyes than other days, and a few times she had seemed to be making an effort to speak. She had to be spoon-fed by Brinda or the nurse and some days she’d reject the spoon with her teeth and other days accept it and swallow about half what she was given before beginning to let the soft food spill out her sunken gray jaw.
Brinda also cooked for Mr. Jimmy, she prepared his lunch and dinner, but he rarely would eat. She told her Mama it was a waste of food and time to cook for him, but her Mama said she had to keep on preparing the meals anyway and set the dining-room table for him whether he came down to it or not when she rang the dinner bell for him. Now Brinda only made cold things, such as thin-sliced sandwiches which she could wrap in glazed paper and leave in the icebox for him. The icebox was packed full of Mr. Jimmy’s uneaten lunches and dinners, saucers and little bowls were stacked on top of each other, and then some mornings she would come in to find that during the night the big supply was suddenly cut down as if a gang of hungry guests had raided the icebox, and the kitchen table would be littered with remnants in dishes, and Brinda knew that that was exactly what had happened, that Mr. Jimmy had brought a crowd home the night before and they’d raided the icebox and devoured its store of meals for Mr. Jimmy that he had ignored. But Brinda no longer told her Mama how things were going at the Krennings’ because one day her Mama had struggled out of bed and come over to the house to make an effort to straighten out Mr. Jimmy. But when she got there she was too weak and breathless to talk. All she could do was look at him and shake her head and shed tears and she couldn’t get up the stairs to see Mrs. Krenning, so Mr. Jimmy had to support her out to his car and drive her back home. In the car she panted like an old dog and was only able to say. Oh, Mr. Jimmy, why are you doing like this?
So this morning Brinda waited outside long enough for Mr. Jimmy to finish his breakfast coffee. Sometimes after his coffee he would come blinking and squinting out the back screen door and cross to his “studio,” a little whitewashed building with a skylight, which no one but he ever entered. Its walls had no windows to peek in, but once when he drove into town he’d left the door open, and Brinda went out to close it and saw inside a scene of terrible violence as if a storm, or a demon, had been caged in it, but now it was very quiet, only a fly buzzed in it, as if the storm or the demon that had smashed and turned everything over beneath the skylight’s huge blue eye had fallen exhausted or died. Brinda had considered going in to try to straighten it up, but there was something about the disorder, something unnatural about it, that made it seem dangerous to enter, and so she just closed the door and returned to the comforting business of making up beds in the house. In the house there was always more than one bed to make up, not counting Mrs. Krenning’s. The old woman’s bed was made up by her night nurse and the soiled sheets put in the hall for Brinda to wash. There had been five night nurses for Mrs. Krenning since Brinda had taken her Mama’s place at the house, and each of them had left with the same complaint, that the nights in the house were too outrageous to cope with. Now there was a male nurse taking care of the old lady at night, a repulsively coarse young man, redheaded, with arms as big as hams, covered with a fuzz of white hair. Brinda was too scandalized by this change to even speak of it to her Mama. She was afraid to go upstairs at the Krennings’ until the day nurse came on at eleven. Once, when she had to go up to rouse Mr. Jimmy for a long-distance telephone call from New York, the male nurse had blocked her way on the back stairs, crouching, grinning and sticking his tongue out at her. She said. Excuse me, please, and tried to duck past him, and he had reached up after her and snatched her back down with one arm, like a red ham come to life, while the hand of the other made rough, breathtaking grabs at her breasts and belly, so that she screamed and screamed till Mr. Jimmy and his guest for the night ran naked out of his bedroom and the nurse had to let her go, pretending that he was just kidding. He called Mr. Jimmy “Cookie” and Mrs. Krenning “Old Faithful,” and filled the sickroom with candy-bar wrappings and empty pint bottles and books of colored comics, and ever since he had gone on duty at night Brinda felt she could see a look that was like an outcry of horror in the paralyzed woman’s eyes when she would come up with her soft-boiled eggs in the mornings.
This morning it was the male nurse, not Jimmy, who stumbled out, blinking and squinting, onto the little porch off the kitchen. Hey, Snow White, he hollered, come in here. Cookie wants you!
Brinda had taken out some of Mrs. Krenning’s washed bedclothes to dry in the yard and had deliberately stretched out, as long as she could, t
he process of hanging the heavy wet sheets on the clothesline to give the male nurse time to leave before she returned to the house, but he had hung around, this morning, a whole hour longer than usual when he came out to holler at her. Brinda returned to the kitchen to find that Mr. Jimmy was still sitting in there, although he had switched from coffee to whiskey and from the edge of the table to a kitchen chair.
Miss Brinda, he said, blinking and squinting at her as if at the noonday sun, that son-of-a-bitch night nurse says Mama’s just gone…
Brinda began to cry, automatically but sincerely, standing before Mr. Jimmy. He took her hand gently in his, and then, to her shame and dismay, Brinda moved a step forward and took his bare white shoulders into her arms, enfolded them like a lost child’s in her dark honey-colored bare arms, and his head dropped down to her shoulder, rested on it lightly for a moment, and to her still greater dismay. Miss Brinda felt her hand seize the close-cropped back of his head and pull it tighter against her as if she wanted to bruise her shoulder with it. He let her do it for a moment or two, saying nothing, making no motion, before he pushed her gently away by his two hands on her waist, and said. Miss Brinda, you better go up and clean the room up a little before they come for Mama…
Brinda waited at the foot of the back stairs till she was certain the male nurse wasn’t up there, then she went up and entered old Mrs. Krenning’s bedroom. One glance told her that the old lady was gone. She caught her breath and ran about the room making a quick collection of sticky candy-bar wrappings, pint bottles and chocolate-smeared comic books, the litter in which Mrs. Krenning had flown from the world, still speechless, unable to cry, and then Brinda ran back down to the kitchen. She found herself shouting orders at Mr. Jimmy.
Mr. Jimmy, go upstairs and take a cold shower and shave and put on some clean white clothes because your Mama has gone!
Mr. Jimmy grunted in a vague sort of agreement, drew a long breath and went back upstairs while Brinda phoned the white people’s undertaker, whose name and number, at her mother’s instruction, she had penciled on the back leaf of Mr. Jimmy’s little black book of telephone numbers. From the upstairs she could hear Mr. Jimmy’s voice on the downstairs phone, speaking very low and unexcitedly to someone about what had happened, and presently the front doorbell started ringing and various young friends of Mr. Jimmy’s began coming into the house, all seeming sober and talking in unusually quiet voices. Brinda put on her simple, clean white hat and ran to her Mama’s. She knew that her Mama would make another effort to get out of bed and come over, but it seemed justified, this time, by the occasion. She was right about it. Her Mama wept a little and then said. Help me get up, Brinda, I got to go over there and see that it’s handled right.
This time she seemed much firmer, although the effort to rise was probably even greater. Brinda got a cab for her. Holding her Mama’s waist she could feel how thin the old dying woman had gotten, skin and bones now, but she walked with a slow, steady stride to the cab and sat up very straight in it. Presently they arrived at the Krennings’ big house of worn-out stucco, now full of the friends of Mr. Jimmy with only two or three older people who were, or had been at some time, close friends of old Mrs. Krenning’s. The atmosphere in the house was appropriately subdued, shades drawn, and everyone looking politely sympathetic, not putting on a false show, but observing the conventional attitude toward a death. There were a good many young men from the local air base present, but they were being nice too, talking softly and acting with suitable decorum. They all had drinks in their hands, but they were all keeping sober, and when the undertaker’s assistants carried old Mrs. Krenning downstairs and out of the house on a sheet-covered stretcher, they kept a perfect silence except for one sobbing girl, who had risen abruptly and clutched Mr. Jimmy’s shoulders, enjoying her burst of emotion.
Mr. Jimmy’s glaze of detachment fell off him the very moment the door closed behind the men removing his mother from the house.
Okay, she’s gone! And now I’m going to tell about my Mama! She was hard as my fist!
Oh, Jimmy, the sobbing girl pleaded. He pushed her away and struck his fist on a little chair-side table so hard that his drink bounced off it.
She was harder than my fist on this table! And she never let up on me once in my whole life, never! She was hard as my fist, she was harder than my goddam fist on this table, and that’s the truth about her. But now she’s gone from this house and she’s not going to come back to it, so the house is mine now. Well, she owned me, she used to own me, like she owned this house, and she was hard as my fist and she was tight as my fist, she set on her goddam money like an old hen on a glass egg, she was tight and hard as my fist. I just got away once, that’s all, just once in my life did I ever get away from her—an old faggot took me to New York with him and got tired of me there and told me to hit the street, and that’s what I did, oh brother!
You want to know something? Even after I came back to this place, I never got a key to it, I never had my own door key. Not until after her stroke did I even have my own door key.
She’d lock up the house after supper, and if I’d gone out, she’d sit here waiting for me in this here chair. And you know what gave her the stroke? One night I came home and saw her through a front window sitting here waiting for me, to let me in when I rung the friggin’ front doorbell, but I didn’t ring it, I didn’t knock or call, I just kicked the goddam door in. I kicked it in and she let out with a cry like a pig being slaughtered. And when I entered, when I come in the kicked-open door, she was lyin here paralyzed on this here livin’-room floor, and never spoke or moved since, that was the way the old woman got her stroke. Well now, look here! Look at what I’m keepin’ now in my pocket. See? Ev’ry goddam key to Mama’s old stucco house!
He took out of his pants pocket and raised up and jangled a big bunch of keys on a brass ring ornamented by a pair of red dice.
Then a soft voice stopped him by calling, Mr. Jimmy!
It was Brinda’s Mama, in the shadowy next room. He nodded slightly, his outburst over as suddenly as it burst out. He threw the keys in the air and caught them and thrust them back in his pocket and sank back down in a chair, all in one movement it seemed, and just at that moment, luckily no sooner, the minister and his wife arrived at the door and the former decorum fell back over the parlor as if it had only lifted to the ceiling and hung up there until the outburst was over and then had settled back down again undamaged.
Brinda was amazed by the strength of her Mama. It seemed to come back like a miracle to the old woman. She set to work in the kitchen preparing a large platter of thin-cut sandwiches, boiled two Silexes of coffee and emptied them into the big silver percolator, and set the dining-room table as nicely as if for a party, knowing where everything was that would make the best show, the best linen and silver, the five-branched candelabra and even a set of finger bowls and lace napkins.
Mr. Jimmy stayed in the parlor, though, and drank his liquor till late in the afternoon, ignoring the buffet lunch that Brinda’s Mama set for condolence callers. Only the minister and a few other old ladies drifted into the living room and ate a little bit of it. Then sundown came, the company dispersed and Mr. Jimmy went out. Brinda’s Mama lay down on a cot in the basement, her hand on the side that pained her but her face, which was only slightly darker than Brinda’s, looking composed and solemn. Brinda sat with her awhile and they talked in a desultory fashion as the light faded through the small high windows in the basement walls.
The talk had run out completely and the light was all but gone when Mr. Jimmy was heard coming back in the house. Brinda’s Mama had seemed to be dozing but now her dark eyes opened and she cleared her throat and, turning her head to Brinda still seated beside her, directed her to ask Mr. Jimmy to come downstairs for a minute so she could talk to him before they went back home.
Brinda delivered this message to Mr. Jimmy who said, in reply. Bring your Mama upstairs and I’ll drive you all back in the car.
Brinda
’s Mama’s strength had all gone again and it was a struggle getting her up from the basement. She sat down, panting, by the kitchen table while Mr. Jimmy took a shower upstairs. Several times her head jerked forward and Brinda caught at her to hold her in the chair. But when Mr. Jimmy came down, she summoned her force back again and rose from the chair. They rode through the town in silence, to the section for Negroes, and not till Mr. Jimmy was about to pull up at their door did Brinda’s Mama speak to him. Then she said:
Mr. Jimmy, what in the name of the Lord has happened to you? What kind of life are you leading here nowadays!
He answered her gently: Well, y’know, I did no good in New York…
That’s the truth, said Brinda’s Mama, with sad conviction. You just got mixed with bad people and caught their bad ways…. And how come you give up your painting?
Brinda was scared when her Mama asked that question because, soon after she’d taken her Mama’s place at the Krennings’, she’d said to Mr. Jimmy one morning, when she was giving him coffee, Mr. Jimmy, Mama keeps askin’ me if you work in your studio after breakfast an’ when I tell her you don’t, it seems to upset her so much that now I tell her you do, but I hate to lie to Mama, ‘cause I think she knows when I’m lyin’…
That morning was the one time that Jimmy had been unkind to Brinda, not just unkind but violent. He had picked up a Silex of coffee and thrown it at the wall in the kitchen, and the kitchen wall was still brown-stained where the glass coffeepot had smashed on it. He had followed this action with a four-letter word, and then he had dropped his head in his shaking hands.
So Brinda expected something awful to happen at this moment, in response to her Mama’s bold question, but all Mr. Jimmy did was to drive right through a red light at a street intersection.