Without Prejudice Read online

  ‘I told you, she’s not here,’ Lily said, and went towards the kitchen without further explanation. Puzzled, he left the apartment and went downstairs, where he tried to help unload the car. But everything was too heavy and he had to make do with carrying his baseball glove upstairs to the apartment.

  When they finally finished unloading, his father and Uncle Larry sat down in the kitchen, each with a cold beer from the icebox, not saying much and paying no attention to him – not deliberately, but almost dreamily; he realised for the first time that grown-ups could get tired, too. He went back to the bedroom he now shared with his brother, having been displaced the year before from his own room by his sister’s sudden demand for privacy, which to his fury his parents had encouraged, not just acceded to.

  Mike was reading on his bed. He looked up from his book. ‘You wanna wrestle?’

  ‘Where’s Lily?’ His sister got upset if they wrestled in front of her, and then their father would get mad.

  Mike gestured, like he was shooing a fly. ‘She’s in the sun porch. Shut the door.’ He came down off his bed and got on all fours. ‘Ready when you are.’

  It was a standard ritual. Bobby ran and jumped onto his back and they were away. Within minutes, just as Mike was about to pin him for the second time, Bobby squirmed in desperation and bit his older brother on the shoulder. Mike howled, then hit Bobby right below the eye. His crying ended the fight. This was standard, too.

  His father came in, drawn by Bobby’s wailing, but for once he wasn’t angry. He didn’t shout at Mike and he was too old to be spanked; he didn’t comfort Bobby; he just stood in the doorway with a pained expression on his face. ‘Come on, you guys,’ he said. His voice sounded unexpectedly sad. ‘Not today, okay?’

  They had an early supper, which his father did his best to put together – pork chops, and some lettuce, and a scoop of Boston baked beans, which Bobby liked for their molasses. Then his grandparents appeared, and he played fish with his grandfather, a dapper man who combed his sleek greying hair straight back, and wore a tie pinned to his crisp ironed shirt with a gold clip. They sat at the dining-room table, until Gramps said it was time for bed and began to play gin rummy with Lily and Mike, which Bobby wasn’t old enough to play, or so his grandfather said.

  He had a shower and since his mother wasn’t there his father came and rubbed his hair dry with one end of the towel until Bobby thought his skull would bleed. Then he got into bed and his grandmother came in to read to him. It was a long story he found very boring, despite Gram’s efforts to use different voices for the different characters, and he stopped trying to follow it, since he had other things on his mind. He was about to ask when his mother would come in to say goodnight when suddenly it was light outside again and Gram had gone and he realised it was the morning and that he had fallen asleep unawares.

  He sat up and yawned twice then waited, since normally his mother would be there by now – she would wake him up in the mornings, saying ‘Hello, sleepyhead’ – and as soon as he had shaken the sleep out of his eyes she would choose his clothes and help him get dressed for nursery school. She was always cheerful and energetic; Bobby would struggle happily just to keep up with her.

  But now she wasn’t there, so he simply waited – a long, long time it seemed, and his mother didn’t appear. Then Lily came in, saying impatiently, ‘Come on, let’s get your clothes on.’

  ‘Where’s Mommy?’ he asked.

  ‘In the hospital, silly. You know that already.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, and even to himself his voice seemed flat.

  In the kitchen he found his father, standing at the stove where his mother usually cooked breakfast. His brother was sitting reading the sports section at the rickety pine table, which had a leaf that had once collapsed during lunch. Bobby sat down, feeling uncertain, and his father passed him a glass of orange juice. It was warm and frothy, made out of frozen concentrate in the blender – the water from the tap was never cold. Then his father gave him a plate with a fried egg on it that was sliding in grease and speckled by black bits from the pan. He looked at it dubiously – he was never hungry at breakfast. His mother could always cajole him into appetite with a piece of fruit (apple in winter; berries when the weather was warm), or a thin slice of toast with cherry jam – bits and pieces to tempt him until with the aid of a glass of milk they somehow added up to breakfast.

  He must have made a face because his father said sternly, ‘Eat what’s on the plate, Bobby.’ So he did, slowly slurping up the egg white, and then when a piece of half-toasted bread appeared from his father’s hand dabbing up the yoke with the soft centre of the slice hoping his father would ignore the crusts he left on the outer edge of the plate. He did.

  His father walked him to school, which at least was unbewildering, and he was happy to play with a large plastic tractor on his own, since every now and then Miss Partridge would come by and see how he was. She had soft eyes, and blonde hair the colour of bleached straw, and she wore a scent that gave off a faint whiff of peach which he liked to smell when she hugged him – which was often, if not as often as he liked.

  Today she spent more time than usual with him, then when nursery was over he found his father standing at one end of the room. He had come from work, wearing a jacket and tie, and in his hand he held a brown fedora, which Bobby was told not to play with each time he tried to bring it out from the front hall closet.

  They walked home along 57th Street, past one block of low shop fronts, then a series of four-storey apartment buildings. Ahead of them he could see Sarnat’s on the corner across from their own apartment, the drugstore where his brother and sister would take him to buy candy or in summer months Popsicles, lifted out of a freezer compartment like Ice Age statuettes. ‘Where’s Mom?’ he asked his father, trying to sound hopeful.

  ‘She’s in Billings,’ his father said. ‘The hospital.’ Bobby could tell he was trying to be patient. ‘She’s going to be there for a while.’

  ‘So are you going to look after me?’ he asked doubtfully, for if this were the case, why was his father wearing a tie?

  ‘Gladys is home today,’ his father said, and Bobby’s heart sank. Gladys usually came once a week to clean the apartment. She was immensely fat – when Bobby hugged her his arms went nowhere near around her waist – and not much fun at all. If his father was taking him home, why did Gladys have to be there, too?

  When they got to the apartment Gladys was in the kitchen, frying something at the stove. ‘Here we are,’ his father said, with a cheery note Bobby could tell was forced.

  ‘I’m making the supper, Mr Danziger,’ she said. She wore an enormous apron that accentuated her girth, and held an oversized fork in her hand, poised over the sizzling skillet. ‘You just leave the boy here with me. He’ll be fine. Go on, you get on back to work.’

  Bobby’s face froze – what was she thinking of, telling his father to go away? He grabbed his father’s hand and looked up at his face, where his father’s dark eyes were watching him anxiously. ‘You’ll be okay,’ his father said. ‘Lily and Mike will be home in a while.’

  He gripped his father’s hand more tightly, clinging to it for dear life. He figured as long as he didn’t let go, his father couldn’t leave him behind.

  ‘I bet Gladys will let you help her do the cooking.’

  This seemed unlikely to Bobby: the fat woman didn’t even look at him when his father said this. He didn’t want to help Gladys with the cooking anyway, which looked hot, sweaty kind of work.

  ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Bobby?’ his father went on, and there was a tone to his voice which he sensed meant his father was trying to reassure himself, and that he wanted Bobby’s help. So he nodded and smiled weakly.

  ‘Atta boy,’ said his father, and then he was gone.

  He did not know what to do with himself, so he sat at the kitchen table while Gladys stayed standing at the stove. ‘You want something to eat?’ she said without kindness in her voic
e, and he just shook his head. She turned, fork in hand, and looked at him. ‘What you starin’ at, boy? Why don’t you go and play?’

  He shook his head again, because awkward as he felt here in the kitchen, with no toys to play with and no sense that Gladys wanted him around, he knew that he didn’t want to leave the room – not with no one else in the apartment. Who knows what could happen to him back in the bedroom with no one within calling distance? This scary fat woman was paying no attention to anything but the sizzling going on in the skillet right beneath her eyes.

  He knew about choice now – between, say, chocolate and butterscotch top cones at the Dairy Queen in Michigan – but had never faced a situation where the choices seemed equally bad. The strain was too much and he began to cry, and he hoped this would somehow resolve the situation. And normally it would have – someone would have comforted him. Even Mike was nice to him when he cried – unless it was Mike who had made him cry.

  But Gladys ignored him, and concentrated on the pork chops she was lifting now, one by one, onto a platter lined with paper towel. ‘Don’t that smell good?’ she said out loud, which made Bobby only cry harder. She put down her fork and turned off the gas burner on the white enamel stove top, then began to untie her apron. Bobby moved towards her, still wailing, and she stood stockstill – which encouraged him to think she had time for him now, and he held his arms out, unambiguously asking to be hugged.

  She reached out and patted him on top of his head, but ignored his outstretched arms. ‘Child, you stop your crying now.’

  But he couldn’t, and as the tears kept running down his face he saw through his watery eyes a look of exasperation start to spread on Gladys’s face. Suddenly, she reached down and grabbed his wrist, then waddling towards the door began to lead him out of the room. He resisted at first, but she tightened her grip and kept moving her bulky frame until he was forced to go with her or risk being dragged across the floor.

  She took him all the way to the back of the apartment, down the dark hall, then along the short passageway to the back bedroom.

  ‘Go on and play with them,’ she said, pointing at the pool of marbles he’d left on the thin carpet between the twin beds. He looked at them dumbly, wondering why his mother wasn’t there and why in the world he had been left alone with this fat mean woman. And then she left, too.

  He sat on the floor with his legs crossed Indian-style, staring at the marbles almost without recognition, so focused was he on his own misery. He cried again, and kept crying, unselfconsciously, although a little part of him hoped that by crying louder – he did this at one point – it would somehow draw someone back to comfort him.

  In desperation, he twice went up to the kitchen: the first time Gladys said nothing at all but simply clutched him again by the wrist and led him back to the back bedroom. The second time she wasn’t in the kitchen, and he started to panic, since somehow being left alone was worse even than being left with this Gladys creature, and he ran out into the dining room and into the sun porch and through the living room, his fears growing into uncontrolled agitation, until he found her in the front hall dusting the big chest of drawers.

  His relief was so great that he could not understand why Gladys did not share it, for she gave an exasperated sigh and this time when she deposited him again in the bedroom in front of the untouched array of marbles, she closed the door solidly behind her as she left.

  He waited as he heard her slow heavy steps go along the hallway towards the front of the apartment, then he quickly went to the door. But he couldn’t open it: the brass handle would start to turn in his small hand then slip back. He tried using both hands but it didn’t work.

  This time his crying was solely for himself – he had given up on the idea that it would bring comfort from Gladys, or even her presence. He cried for so long that he wondered if there could be tears left inside him to come out. He thought with desperation about his mother. Normally she would collect him from school, his face lighting up as he saw her, tall in a cotton dress in the kindergarten doorway, her hair a mass of blonde curls. They’d bustle along the street towards home, while she chattered away, and then she would give him a snack in the kitchen and plan the rest of their afternoon – he could watch Captain Kangaroo and Mickey Mouse, then sit in the kitchen with a pad of paper and a fistful of pens while she started supper and sang along with the radio.

  But he found the images of her kept being replaced by an entirely imagined one of her lying in a hospital bed, which did not comfort him at all. He lay down himself, on his back on the floor, and stared without interest at the cracks that ran like routes on a road map across the ceiling.

  He was still lying there when the door suddenly opened and Gladys stood there, breathing heavily. ‘Y’all come eat now,’ she said, and at first he looked at her with incomprehension.

  ‘Food,’ she said, and at first he thought she’d said ‘fool’, which would not surprise him, since recently it had been Lily’s favourite putdown for him, but then Gladys added, ‘Come get your supper now, child.’

  He followed her reluctantly back to the kitchen and he sat at the rickety table as she put his plate down. It was heaving: an immense fried pork chop with a long protective rib of fat, a mound of mashed potato and a heap of yellow corn kernels, a biscuit, and a large cup of milk. She eyed him carefully as he took his fork, unsure whether he was meant to use the knife as well – his mother always cut his meat for him – but then blessedly the phone rang, which distracted Gladys.

  From the way she answered and talked he realised she was speaking with his father. ‘Yes, sir, we be just fine. I’m giving him fried food for his supper and I bet he eats it all. Now don’t worry, and I’ll see you later at the end of the day.’

  She paused and he could hear his father’s voice – rich and deep – on the line. Gladys said, ‘Yes, he cried after you left, Mr Danziger. That boy cried his share, and then some. But he done crying now.’

  Which was true. His tears had stopped the very moment futility had taken over.

  After this, Gladys was there every day. He didn’t know if he hated her more than he feared her, just that he felt both emotions. He tried to tell Lily this, but she scolded him in that prim way of hers that made him realise it had been a mistake to tell her how he felt. ‘She’s a Negro,’ Lily said. ‘That’s why you don’t like her.’

  ‘What?’ he’d tried to protest, astonished by her accusation. What was a Negro anyway? It couldn’t be anything good if Gladys was one.

  At first, he asked for his mother each morning at breakfast, and daily his father replied evenly that she was still in hospital. One morning inspiration seized him and he asked if he could go and see her. No, his father explained, little kids were not allowed there, and Bobby wondered what he could do that might make his mother even worse.

  His father always took him to school in the morning, and sometimes his father would tell the funny stories he had always told – about the polar bear field, which is what he called the empty lot on Dorchester, and the exotic animals that lived there whom only he and his father could see. But now he was often preoccupied and in a rush to get to his own grown-up kind of school, and even at home he would hole up in his study, typing and smoking, leaving Bobby to Gladys.

  Miss Partridge was his sole ray of light. ‘Your teacher is a bird,’ Mike said at breakfast one day, and Bobby said, ‘But a nice bird’ so seriously that his father’s laugh got cut short when he saw Bobby’s expression. And then one day at school she wasn’t there, and Mrs Jacobs, who was perfectly all right but not a woman he had any real liking for, told him in the sickly sweet voice he was learning to associate with bad news that Miss Partridge had got married and wouldn’t be teaching there any more. And he was baffled at first, then stunned by yet another betrayal.

  Within two weeks his father didn’t even reply to his daily question about his mother’s whereabouts, only shrugging slowly as he stood like a poor man’s Gladys over the morning’s skillet of
bacon and eggs. So Bobby stopped asking. He brought it up with Mike once, but Mike said tersely, ‘She’s real sick, Bobby. I think Dad’s scared she’s going to die.’ Which explained the evening when right before bed he heard his father speaking on the phone to Gramps, saying, ‘It’s kind of tough, Dad,’ and then suddenly his father’s voice seemed to choke and Bobby realised he wasn’t saying anything because sobs had replaced words in his throat. That scared him more than almost anything, because he had never seen his father cry – he had been a captain in the army way back in a war, so how could he cry? Did this mean his mother was really going to die?

  He felt he was in a dark tunnel, like the lightless hallway in the apartment that ended in the back bedroom. He could not understand why this had happened to him – he had no previous awareness of misfortune. Sometimes his parents had talked about an ‘accident’, and he knew that people sometimes died, which meant they went away for good. Like his mother? Not according to Mike and Lily, though he detected uncertainty there too, and they grew angry with him now when he asked when their mother would come back. Yet truth was, if his mother wasn’t dead, then why wasn’t she at home? She might as well be dead, he thought in an inchoate way, since four weeks seemed a year at least to a little boy his age.

  He was too little to understand anything about memory or time, but he knew enough to conclude that life was something to be endured, and that in this respect he had a long, long way to go before it was over. He felt he had been propelled out of a happy existence into a misery which bore only the most superficial relationship to what he’d had before. He still had a brother and sister, there were still meals to be eaten; he still slept in a bed – but the switch to happiness was now turned off.

  Then one day his father picked him up from nursery, and as they left the big brick house on Kimbark Avenue he said enigmatically, ‘I’ve got a little surprise for you.’