Morning Is a Long Time Coming by Bette Greene
Her eyes checked me over as though I were a raw recruit standing inspection. “That depends,” she answered, while her elbow poked into the ribs of the girl next to her. And the girl, as if on cue, fell into syncopated laughter with Iris. I waited for them to explain further. I waited ... wanting so much to join Iris and her pal inside the laughter.
But instead I watched the two girls as they began supporting each other from the pure debilitating effects. What were they doing? Ridiculing me? People who live in fine houses don’t ridicule their guests, do they? Maybe I accidentally said something funny. Maybe in just another moment, they’ll apologize for excluding me and then explain with real patience and kindness exactly what it is that’s so hysterically funny.
I asked, “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing you’d be interested in,” said Iris while falling into a still more acute attack of snickered laughter. “Nothing at all.”
Face the truth. I am not wanted. That much is clear. I looked directly at her and spoke in deliberate tones. “Thank you for inviting me to your party, Iris.”
Before I turned away, I saw that my hostess had lost every last ounce of her laughter. As I walked through the front door, there were two things I carried with me that kept my humiliation from being complete.
Somewhere above Iris’s haughty cheekbones, I had caught something surprised, almost frightened, by my response. And then there was that other thing: Beneath her pale silk blouse her breasts were flat as matzohs.
When I left the air-conditioned house, the night struck me with its heavy warmth. I walked the narrow parklike turns of Cypress Drive knowing only that I had to be somewhere else. Someplace where nobody could see me ... or call my name.
All I know is that growing up hurts too much. Growing down is what I’d really like to do. Be little enough again so that it would be perfectly natural to be protected from the wind and the rain—and the world.
By the time I crossed North Parkway to enter a restaurant called The Cotton Boll, the soles of my feet were burning because it was well past midnight and I had already walked too long. I bought a pack of filter-tip cigarettes from the cashier and gave the waitress my order for a barbecue (dark meat only) and a cup of coffee.
The coffee comforted me somewhat while the sandwich encouraged me to believe that my ability to enjoy hadn’t been permanently destroyed, but only temporarily impaired. And I think I’m almost steady enough now to lay it all out. Look at what happened tonight and why.
First, I didn’t do anything wrong. Nothing that I’m ashamed of. I wondered if Iris Glazer could make that same statement. Remembering that none of the guys and only that one girl who was trying hard to be Iris’s mirror-image joined in the attack, I wondered how she could justify it to the rest of them. More important, how can she justify it to herself? ’Cause isn’t it desirable, even for girls with high and mighty cheekbones, to like themselves?
Suddenly I caught a glimpse at what might have been a truth and I wanted to share my findings with Melvin. The Melvin of mushy-greeting-card fame. “Oh, Melvin,” I’d tell him. “You don’t have a thing in this world to be ashamed of.”
With love you reached out for somebody else. Sure, she laughed, but maybe that was only because she understood one thing you didn’t: That within Iris Glazer, there is precious little worth loving.
9
THE NEXT MORNING, grandmother asked the predictable question. “I heard you come in after one o’clock. You had a good time?”
“Oh, very nice, thank you.”
“See,” she said, smiling as though being right had left a delicious taste in her mouth. “Now, aren’t you glad you listened to your grandmother? Stayed over an extra day to go to the party? How did you get home?”
“... Well, Roderick took me.”
Her face looked uncertain. “Roderick? What kind of a name is that? Not a Yiddisher?”
“Why, Grandmother,” I said, acting as though my integrity was being questioned. “Sure, he is. Why, he’s practically a dentist!”
“That’s nice. They’re almost as good as real doctors.”
I wanted to retreat from my lie. “Well, he’s not sure, though. He still may decide to become something else.”
She showed surprise. It was as though the very next best thing to clipping brain tumors was pulling molars and if Roderick didn’t understand that, there was something a little shaky about his sanity.
Suddenly I wanted to defend him from her unfair and unfounded suspicions. “It’s not as simple a decision as you may think. You see, Roderick’s got this phobia about people’s mouths. He admitted to me (and only to me) that he’s deathly afraid that one of his patients might ... bite him!”
But when I saw Grandma gently shaking her head, I knew that I had only worsened it. “That’s nonsense,” she said. “A real mishegoss.”
“You know,” I told her, “that’s exactly what I told him.”
At one o’clock in the afternoon, after much insisting from me: “I will feel absolutely terrible if you miss your Mah-Jongg game on account of me.” And her counter-arguments: “After twenty-five years of Mah-Jongg, is it such a terrible crime to spend the last day of my granddaughter’s visit with her?”
Finally she wearied of arguing and so trailing a scent of Chanel No. 5, she left for Ida Baum’s. And, for the first time ever, I had complete freedom of the house. But I didn’t feel free. Not a bit! Who could while being padlocked deep within the intrusive and compulsive confines of an obsession?
Just off the lobby of the Peabody Hotel was the American International Travel Agency. While still on the lobby side of the plate glass, I studied the dramatic interior with its electric blue rug woven with the A.I.T.A. logo over a fast-whirling globe.
The personnel consisted of two men and a woman each sitting at a walnut desk shaped like the top of an aircraft carrier and topped by two telephones. The longer I looked, the more I was certain that they shared something besides identical office equipment, for they each emanated a sort of “take-charge” quality.
“No, madam, we do not recommend Casablanca in March. The high winds from nearby dunes make it impossible to enjoy a cup of tea with anything that approaches sandless serenity.”
Abruptly I closed my eyes against all distractions. Pursue the obsession, I commanded myself, or ditch it. Ditch it now. You can’t have it both ways, nobody can. And here only an arm’s reach from the American International Travel Agency is the perfect spot to jettison forever this embarrassing and impractical dream. For me to chase a ridiculous compulsion across an alien continent would be too upsetting for both my parents and my grandparents. Isn’t it possible—can’t I, at least, try to become the kind of daughter and granddaughter that they would like?
Somebody has got to get it through my head that Hans Christian Andersen and a few others may have written fairy tales, but almost nobody has ever lived one. Please ... please ... before it’s too late, give it up. For everybody’s sake, please give it up now! Because the truth is, it doesn’t make any sense—not even to me!
I don’t know if I can give up what I need so much. Anyway, I don’t know how to become the perfect daughter and granddaughter. Wouldn’t even begin to know how to conform to some idealized specifications that are locked deep within the hearts and minds of others. Even Grandmother’s pattern which was carefully prepared for me with a large quantity of love doesn’t come anywhere close to fitting me. She, for example, certainly didn’t figure on my social ineptitude or Iris Glazer’s arrogant inhospitality. Maybe we all have to learn to custom tailor our lives for ourselves. Only for ourselves!
I opened my eyes to look again at the round polished brass of the doorknob, but what I saw was my own hand reaching out, reaching out for it. Okay, okay! So go. But don’t you dare come crying back to me when things go exploding in your face. Don’t you dare come crying back to me. Do you hear?
I turned; it clicked. It made a decisive sound.
10
ORDINA
Of course, sooner or later he’s got to know. Sooner or later, I’ll have to break it to them. But in the meantime, I don’t want him to present me with a letter from either the passport office or the travel agency. If that happened, I’d be too rattled from fright even to try to explain why I’m going to Europe. What could I possibly tell him that would help him understand?
Try telling him that Paris may be the greatest cultural capital of all time. Known throughout the world for its architecture, museums, theaters. If my sense of humor weren’t consumed by raw fear, I would have laughed. Imagine telling that to my father!
Without bothering to ask the widow Rhodes if there would be anything else, I counted back change from a five-dollar bill and while almost running toward the front door called out, “Come again.”
The double box numbered 1010 was stuffed. I twirled the dial clockwise, counterclockwise, and finally clockwise until the catch released. The magazine Modern Retailer was wrapped around a batch of business letters, and the second one was addressed to me. And there it was: the A.I.T.A. letters emblazoned across a whirling globe. With trembling hands and an overexcited heart, I tore into the envelope and allowed myself a close-to-the-body peek. A typed ticket read: S.S. Ryndam (Holland-America) lv N.Y. Sept 15, 1950 arrv LeHavre, France Sept 22, 1950.
As soon as I re-entered the store, I could see that the Saturday rush was on. All it takes is a truckload or two of Mexicans. Our local farmers have been having to import more and more of them for seasonal work ever since World War II when the Negroes began moving to places like Detroit and Chicago. They’re getting jobs in manufacturing plants for as much as forty dollars a week which doesn’t take into account the overtime.
Funny thing is I can’t remember hearing anybody from around here ever saying a decent word about Negroes until they started moving away. Use to always call them lazy, no-good, and shiftless. Now the white farmers are constantly saying things like, “I have to hire me seventy-five wetbacks to do the work of fifty niggers.” And there’s that other widely spoken compliment: “At least when the niggers talked you could understand them.”
According to my father, though, the biggest problem with the Mexicans is that practically none of their earned money ever sees the light of morn until it crosses the Mexican border. “A Mex just won’t spend a nickel in this country that he doesn’t have to,” said my father to Mr. Bert Oliver who owns the Sav-mor Market, “while the Negro, on the other hand, worked from sunup to sundown to earn a dollar, and an hour after the sun went down he was already ten cents in debt.”
But I guess if you’re honest then you can find something about everybody that’s worth bragging about. I could even brag about my father, if I wanted to. He’s a really sharp dresser and he’s more democratic than the other merchants, who seem to operate on the principle that the richer you are, the better discount you deserve.
Once, for example, I was with Edna Louise when she stopped by the Sav-mor for a package of Hydrox cookies, and since she didn’t have her purse, I offered to lend her the money till she got home. She laughed an all-knowing laugh. “Don’t be silly. We get the same discount whether we pay cash or charge.”
Well, I’m proud to say that my father has the same ticket-marked price for everybody, and it’s not all that easy either ’cause even if this is Bergen’s Department Store’s twentieth-anniversary year, I still hear the more well-to-do customers asking my father to “knock a little off, Harry.”
He’s a regular incorruptible though, ’cause he’s always giving them the same response. “I wouldn’t knock anything off, not even if you were my mother-in-law. And specially not if you were my mother-in-law!”
What I like best about him is that sometimes I’ll overhear him tell a story that reminds me that, at least for others, he can exhibit a real sense of humor. I guess that’s also what I dislike about him. I mean why is it that he can show good things to others—fairness and a democratic spirit to his customers, a sense of humor to the proprietor of the Sav-mor, and compliments to the most overcomplimented girl in Jenkinsville—but can give nothing to me? Never ever a good word for me!
As soon as my father saw me, he yelled across the breadth of the store, “Patricia!” I thought he wanted to know about the mail, so I called back, “I left it in the usual place. On the side of the register.”
But he only yelled again, “Come here.”
“Yes, sir.” I walked as quickly as I could without actually breaking into a run. I wouldn’t want him to ever suspect that he scares me. The problem is that I don’t know when he’s going to be set off. Sometimes he explodes over almost nothing. Something that nobody could have ever predicted.
Like a week ago Sunday when my mother tried to force me to wear that blouse that Uncle Irv and Aunt Dorothy gave me for Chanukah. It was my least favorite color, orchid; my least favorite fabric, rayon; and my least favorite style, tiny cone-shape buttons marching in single-filed monotony up to the very top of its lacy peter-pan collar.
And since nobody could ever accuse my father of trying to please either his wife or his in-laws, I was shocked when he came butting into the argument. “If you don’t put that blouse on,” he shouted, “I’m going to beat the living hell out of you.”
When I went into my room to put on the blouse, he stood just outside my closed door yelling about how I get so much I don’t appreciate a thing. “Not a goddamn thing! ’Cause you’ve been spoiled rotten since the day you were born. I work my head off to give you things that my daddy could never afford to give me!”
I mentally catalogued my extravagances: some lovely new clothes that Grandma bought me, a twenty-five-dollar dictionary (also from Grandmother), an eight-year-old bike, membership in both the Book-of-the-Month Club and the Literary Guild, and a Parker pen and pencil set. Are those the things that my father wants and resents my having? Dummy, he could afford to buy any and all of those things ... but still he does resent something. Only if it’s nothing more than my having a father who could give me things that his could never afford.
I sat on my bed looking at the hateful blouse and remembered what it was that Uncle Irv once said about his wife: “Dorothy would buy a truckload of manure if she got the notion that it was a bargain.” Well, thanks a bunch, Aunt Dorothy.
At eighteen, I may be legally an adult, but now that his will and pride were involved, there was no way, absolutely no way, that I could get away without wearing that thing.
... Unless of course, the blouse was in some way ... indecent. This blouse indecent? Why, my God, that collar would hug my throat the way a reformed sinner would hug his Bible. But if I could make this indecent, then it would become a battle between his need for absolute obedience—Hail Hitler—and his need to keep me in perfect purity—Hail Mary!
With a razor blade, I ever so imperceptibly lengthened the buttonholes until now with only the slightest of pressure, the conical-shaped button jumped through the opening.
I went into the living room where they were both engrossed in the thick Sunday Commercial Appeal. They looked up: My mother was actually wearing a pleasant expression. “Now, aren’t you ashamed of all the fuss you’ve made? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you looking so nice. And you know, your Uncle Irv and Aunt Dorothy are going to be as pleased as punch.”
“Yes, but I’m not pleased, Mother. Actually, I’m very upset that you would sacrifice my pleasure for theirs,” I said, filling my lungs and watching the “trained” buttons obediently pop through their holes.
Above unfathomable depths of contempt, my mother wore a rice-paper-thin covering of pretended civility. “It won’t hurt you to make a sacrifice once in a while
“Oh, you know how cheaply these blouses are made,” I said with just about the right amount of surprised innocence, while watching my father cringing beneath the mid-South news pages. See no evil.
What, I wondered, are you really seeing? All those girls that you’ve taken advantage of? Once, I remember, your brother Max was saying that no man understood women, and then he had a second thought. Gave you some gentle jabs to the ribs to say, “Well, maybe a few alley cats like you, Harry!”
Minutes later when we were ready to leave for Memphis, my father told me to check that the back door was securely locked.
I filled every available lung space with air as I nonchalantly pulled back my elbows. “Want me to latch the screen door, too?”
His eyes caught themselves on the fleshy part of my breast that spilled over my bra. “Er—yes! Lock that, too.”
“Yes, sir,” I answered, heading toward the kitchen door.
“And if you can’t keep that blouse buttoned,” he called out, “then put something else on, understand?”
“Yes, sir,” I answered, careful to hide my pleasure. “I understand.” But I don’t understand why my father gets so upset about things like that, not really. Unless, it’s that you’re so afraid that some boy is going to do to me what you’ve already done to so many girls.
But that was then and what I’m worried about now is what he could possibly want, standing in the middle of the store, yelling my name. It couldn’t have anything to do with my boat ticket to Europe because there was absolutely, positively nobody in that post office and even if there was, I only allowed myself a few quick peeks within the envelope before hiding it deep inside my skirt pocket.
He was impatiently watching a particularly short Mexican who pointed toward the toes of his dusty huaraches saying, “Parche ... parche, para callo.”
My father responded by pointing to his highly polished black brogues saying, “Zapato ... zapato?”