Maud Martha

She would have liked a lotus, or China asters or Japanese Iris, or meadow lilies—yes, she would have liked meadow lilies, because the very word meadow made her breathe more deeply, and […] fling her arms […] rapturously up to whatever was watching in the sky. But dandelions were what she chiefly saw. Yellow jewels for everyday, studding the patched green dress of her back yard. She liked their demure prettiness second to their everydayness; for in that latter quality she thought she saw a picture of herself, and it was comforting to know that what was common could also be a flower.

That train—a sort of double-deck bus affair, traveling in a blue-lined half dark. Slow, that traveling. Slow. More like a boat. It came to a stop before the gorilla’s cage. The gorilla, lying on its back, his arms under his head, one leg resting casually across the other, watched the people. Then he rose, lumbered over to the door of his cage, peered, clawed at his bars, shook his bars. All the people on the lower deck climbed to the upper deck.

But why would they not get off?

“Motor trouble! Called the conductor. “Motor trouble! And the gorilla, they think, will escape!”

How alone they were, how removed from this woman, this ordinary woman who had suddenly become a queen, for whom presently the most interesting door of them all would open, who, lying locked in boards with her “hawhs,” yet towered, triumphed over them, while they stood there asking the stupid questions people ask the sick, out of aw, out of half horror, half envy.

“I never saw anyone die before,” thought Maud Martha. “But I’m seeing somebody die now.”

She had never understood how people could parade themselves on a stage like that, exhibit their precious private identities; shake themselves about; be very foolish for a thousand eyes.

She was going to keep herself to herself. She did not want fame. She did not want to be a “star.”

To create—a role, a poem, picture, music, a rapture in stone: great. But not for her.

What she wanted to donate to the world was a good Maud Martha. That was the offering, the bit of art, that could not come from any other.

She would polish and hone that.

Then just what was important? What had been important about this life, this Uncle Tim? Was the world any better off for his having lived? A little, perhaps. Perhaps he had stopped his car short once, and saved a dog, so that another car owner could kill it a month later. Perhaps he had given some little street wretch a nickel’s worth of peanuts in its unhappy hour, and that little wretch would grow up to forget Uncle Tim but all its life would carry in its heart an anonymous, seemingly underivative softness for mankind. Perhaps. Certainly he had been good to his wife Nannie. She had never said a word against him.

But how important was this, what was the real importance of this, what would—God say? Oh, no! What she would rather mean was, what would Uncle Tim say, if he could get back?

She did not know what it was. She had tried to find the something that must be there to imitate, that she might imitate it. But she did not know what it was. I wash as much as Helen does, she thought. My hair is longer and thicker, she thought. I’m much smarter. I read books and newspapers and old folks like to talk with me, she thought.

But the kernel of the matter was that, in spite of these things, she was poor, and Helen was still the ranking queen, not only with the Emmanuels of the world, but even with their father—their mother—their brother. She did not blame the family. It was not their fault. She understood. They could not help it. They were enslaved, were fascinated, and they were not at all to blame.

[Often] had Helen given her opinion, unasked, of the whole house, of the whole “hulk of rotten wood.” Often had her cool and gentle eyes sneered, gently and coolly, at her father’s determination to hold his poor estate! But take that kitchen, for instance! Maud Martha, taking it, saw herself there, up and down her seventeen years, eating apples after school; making sweet potato tarts; drawing, on the pathetic table, the horse that won her the sixth-grade prize; getting her hair curled for her first party, at that stove; washing dishes by summer twilight, with the back door wide open; making cheese and peanut butter sandwiches for a picnic. And even, crying, crying in that pantry, when no one knew. The old sorrows brought there!—now dried, flattened out, breaking into interesting dust at the merest look….

Maud Martha loved it when her magazines said, “New York,” described “good” objects there, wonderful people there, recalled fine talk, the bristling or the creamy or the tactfully shimmering ways of life. They showed pictures of rooms with wood paneling, softly glowing, touched up by the compliment of a spot of auburn here, the low burn of a rare binding there. There were ferns in these rooms, and Chinese boxes; bits of dreamlike crystal; a taste of leather. In the advertisement pages, you saw where you could buy six Italian plates for eleven hundred dollars—and you must hurry, for there was just the one set; you saw where you could buy antique French bisque figurines […] Her whole body become a hunger, she would pore over these pages.

But I am certainly not what he would call pretty. Even with all this hair (which I have just assured him, in response to his question, is not “natural,” is not good grade or anything like good grade) even with whatever I have that puts a dimple in his heart, even with these nice ears, I am still, definitely, not what he can call pretty. Pretty would be a little cream-colored thing with curly hair. Or at the very lowest pretty would be a little curly-haired thing the color of cocoa with a lot of milk in it. Whereas, I am the color of cocoa straight, if you can even be that “kind” to me.

Still, mused Maud Martha, I am what he would call—sweet, and I am good, and he will marry me. Although, he will be thinking, that’s what he always says about letting yourself get interested in these incorruptible virgins, that so often your manhood will not let you concede defeat, and before you know it, you have let them steal you, put an end, perhaps, to your career.

He will fight, of course. He will decide that he must think a long time before he lets it happen here.

But in the end I’ll hook him, even while he’s wondering how this marriage will cramp him or pinch at him—at him, admirer of the gay life, spiffy clothes, beautiful yellow girls, natural hair, smooth cars, jewels, night clubs, cocktail lounges, class.

And these things—roaches, and having to be satisfied with the place as it was—were not the only annoyances that had to be reckoned with. She was becoming aware of an oddness in color and sound and smell about her, the color and sound and smell of the kitchenette building. The color was gray, and the smell and sound had taken on a suggestion of the properties of color, and impressed one as gray, too. The sobbings, the frustrations, the small hates, the large and ugly hates, the little pushing-through love, the boredom, that came to her from behind those walls (some of them beaver-board) via speech and scream and sigh—all these were gray. And the smells of various types of sweat and of bathing and bodily functions […] and of fresh or stale love-making, which rushed in thick fumes to your nostrils as you walked down the hall—these were gray.

He sat playfully on part of her thigh. He gently kicked her toe.

Once home, he went immediately to the bathroom. He did not try to mask his need, he was obvious and direct about it.

“He could make,” she thought, “a comment or two on what went on at the musicale. Or some little joke. It isn’t that I’m unreasonable or stupid. But everything can be done with a little grace. I’m sure of it.

When he came back, he yawned, stretched, smeared his lips up and down her neck, assured her of his devotion, and sat down on the bed to take off his shoes. She picked up Of Human Bondage, and sat at the other end of the bed.

“Snuggle up,” he invited.

“I thought I’d read awhile.”

“I guess I’ll read awhile, too,” he decided[.]

Maud Martha could not bear the little look.

“Go home to your children,” she urged. “To your wife or husband.” She opened the trap. The mouse vanished.

Suddenly, she was conscious of a new cleanness in her. A wide air walked in her life. A life had blundered its way into her power and it had been hers to preserve or destroy. She had not destroyed. In the center of that simple restraint was—creation. She had created a piece of life. It was wonderful.

“Why,” she thought, as her height doubled, “why, I’m good! I am good.”

She ironed her aprons. Her back was straight. Her eyes were mild, and soft with a godlike loving-kindness.

Maud Martha was so glad that they had not gone to the Owl! Here was technicolor, and the love story was sweet. And there was classical music that silvered its way into you and made your back cold. And the theater itself! It was no palace, no such Great Shakes as the Trivoli out south, for instance (where many colored people went every night). But you felt good sitting there, yes, good, and as if, when you left it, you would be going home to a sweet-smelling apartment with flowers on little gleaming tables; and wonderful silver on night-blue velvet, in chests; and crackly sheets; and lace spreads on such beds as you saw at Marshall Field’s. Instead of back to your kit’n’t apt., with the garbage of your floor’s families in a big can just outside your door […]

“It’s not,” thought Maud Martha, “that they love each other. It oughta be that simple. Then I could lick it. It oughta be that easy. But it’s my color that makes him mad. I try to shut my eyes to that, but it’s no good. What I am inside, what is really me, he likes okay. But he keeps looking at my color, which is like a wall. He has to jump over it in order to meet and touch what I’ve got for him. He has to jump away up high in order to see it. He gets awful tired of all that jumping.”

[…]

“I could, considered Maud Martha, “go over there and scratch her upsweep down. […] I could scream, ‘I’m making a baby for this man and I mean to do it in peace.’”

But if the root was sour what business did she have up there hacking at a leaf?

Here he was, whipping himself to death daily, that Maud Martha’s stomach and Paulette’s stomach might receive bread and milk and navy beans with tomato catsup, and he was taken to task because he had not furnished, in addition, a velvet-lined buggy with white-walled wheels! Oh yes, that was what Maud Martha wanted, for her precious princess daughter, and no use denying. But she could just get out and work, that was all. She could just get out and grab herself a job and buy some of those beans and buggies. And in the meantime, she could just help entertain his friends. She was his wife, and he was head of the family, and on Christmas night the least he could do, by God, and would do, by God, was to stand his friends a mug of beer. And to heck with, in fact, to hell with, her fruitcakes and coffees. Put Paulette to bed.

The one-roomer next to the Whitestripes was occupied by Maryginia Washington, a maiden of sixty-eight, or sixty-nine, or seventy, a becrutched, gnarled, bleached lemon with smartly bobbed white hair; who claimed, and proudly, to be an “indirect” descendant of the first President of the United States; who loathed the darker members of her race but did rather enjoy playing the grand dame, a hobbling, denture-clacking version, for their benefit, while they played, at least in her imagination, Topsys—and did rather enjoy advising them, from time to time, to apply lightening creams to the horror of their flesh—“because they ain’t no sense in lookin’ any worser’n you have to, is they, dearie?”

“You know, why I didn’t catch her up on that, is—our people is got to stop feeling so sensitive about these words like ‘nigger’ and such. I often think about this, and how these words like ‘nigger’ don’t mean to some of these here white people what our people think they mean. Now, ‘nigger,’ for instance, means to them something bad, or slavey-like, or low. They don’t mean anything against me. I’m a Negro, not a ‘nigger.’ Now, a white man can be a ‘nigger,’ according to their definition of the word, just like colored man can. So why should I go getting all stepped up about a thing like that? Our people is got to stop getting all stepped up about every little thing, especially when it don’t among to nothing….”

“It hasn’t been bad,” she thought.

“It’s been interesting,” she thought, as she put Paulette in the care of Mrs. Maxawanda Barksdale and departed for the doctor’s.

She looked at the trees, she looked at the grass, she looked at the faces of passers-by. It had been interesting, it had been rather good, and it was still rather good. But really, she was ready. Since the time had come, she was ready. Paulette would miss her for a long time, Paul for less, but really, their sorrow was their business, not hers. Her business was to descend into the deep cool, the salving dark, to be alike indifferent to the good and the not-good.

The baby was getting darker all the time! She knew that he was tired of his wife, tired of his living quarters, tired of working at Sam’s, tired of his two suits.

He is ever so tired, she thought.

He had no money, no car, no clothes, and he had not been put up for membership in the Foxy Cats Club.

Something should happen. He was not on show. She knew that he believed he had ben born to invade, to occur, to confront, to inspire the flapping of flags, to panic people. To wear, but carelessly, a crown. What could give him his chance, illuminate his gold?—be a happening?

She smiled at Maud Martha. When she looked at Maud Martha, it was as if God looked; it was as if—

“Now just how much, Madam, had you thought you would prefer to pay?”

“Not a cent over five.”

“Five? Five, dearie? You expect to buy a hat like this for five dollars? This, this straw hat that you can’t even get any more and which I showed you only because you looked like a lady of taste who could appreciate a good value?”

“Well,” said Maud Martha, “thank you.” She opened the door.

“Wait, wait,” shrieked the hat woman. Good-naturedly, the escaping customer hesitated. “Just a moment,” ordered the hat woman coldly. “I’ll speak to the—to the owner. He might be willing to make some slight reduction […]”

There was no introduction, but the elder Burns-Cooper boomed, “Those potato parings are entirely too thick!”

There was no remonstrance; no firing! They just looked. But for the first time, she understood what Paul endured daily. For so—she could gather from a Paul-word here, a Paul-curse there—his Boss! when, squared, upright, terribly upright, superior to the President, commander of the world, he wished to underline Paul’s lacks, to indicate soft shock, controlled incredulity. As his boss looked at Paul, so these people looked at her. As though she were a child, a ridiculous one, and one that ought to be given a little shaking, except that shaking was—not quite the thing, would not quite do. One held up one’s finger (if one did anything), cocked one’s head, was arch. AS in the old song, one hinted, “Tut tut! Now now! Come come!” Metal rose, all built, in one’s eye.

Tragedy.

She considered that word. On the whole, she felt, life was more comedy than tragedy. Nearly everything that happened had its comedic element, not too well buried, either. Sooner or later, one could find something to laugh at in almost every situation. That was what, in the last analysis, could keep folks from going mad. The truth was, if you got a good Tragedy out of a lifetime, one good, ripping tragedy, thorough, unridiculous, bottom-scraping, not the issue of human stupidity, you were doing, she thought, very well, you were doing well.

Helen, she thought, would not have twitched, back there. Would not have yearned to jerk trimming scissors from purse and jab jab jab that evading eye. Would have gathered her fires, patted them, rolled them out, and blown on them. Because it really would not have made much difference to Helen. Paul would have twitched, twitched awfully, might have cursed, but after the first tough cough-up of rage would forget, or put off studious perusal indefinitely.

She could neither resolve or dismiss. There were these scraps of baffled hate in her, hate with no eyes, no smile and—this she especially regretted, called her hungriest lack—not much voice.

But the sun was shining, and some of the people in the world had been left alive, and it was doubtful whether the ridiculousness of man would ever completely succeed in destroying the world—or, in fact, the basic equanimity of the least and commonest flower: for would its kind not come up again in the spring? come up, if necessary, among, between, or out of—beastly inconvenient!—the smashed corpses lying in strict composure, in that hush infallible and sincere.

And was this not something to be thankful for?

And in the meantime, while people did live they would be grand, would be glorious and brave, would have nimble hearts that would beat and beat. They would even get up nonsense, through wars, through divorce, through evictions and jiltings and taxes.

And, in the meantime, she as going to have another baby.

The weather was bidding her bon voyage.