The Female of the Species by Lionel Shriver
“Gray Kaiser. My colleague Errol McEchern. My assistant Raphael Sarasola.”
“Lord,” said Leonia, looking Raphael up and down. “Do come in, honey. You’ll brighten up this place in no time.”
Errol sat on the couch. The springs were broken, and Errol found he had either to perch on the edge or sink so far back it would be hard to get out.
“Where’d you get an assistant like that is all I’d like to know,” said Leonia. “Wouldn’t mind that kind of assistance myself! So tell me, darlin’,” she said to Raphael. “You talk?”
“Not much.” Of course, he’d found the one comfortable chair in the whole living room.
“Smart, honey. Boys like you open your mouth, it most always be terrible disappointing. Now, can I get you folks a cup of coffee?”
“Yes, I’d love a cup,” said Gray.
While Leonia was in the kitchen Errol looked around the room. It was neat and clean. While much of the furniture looked like curbside salvage, the wood was polished and rips were repaired. Travel posters covered the walls.
Leonia returned; her wide arms didn’t jiggle as she set down the tray. Though not fat, she had breadth. Her shoulders stretched her cotton dress taut. Her calves swelled as big around as Gray’s thighs. If Errol were ever in a fire and needed saving, this is the kind of woman he’d want to pull him out.
“You a professor?” she asked Gray.
“I’m an anthropologist,” said Gray. “I study people and the way they live.”
“So what can I do for you, Missus Kaiser?”
“Miss.”
Leonia raised her eyebrows. “Too smart for ’em, huh?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Gray softly. “If you end up by yourself after fifty-nine years, how smart is that?”
“’Pends on what you pass up. Sometimes pretty damn smart. Sometimes not.”
“And you’re married.”
“More or less. You ask Raymond that same question, I wonder what he’d tell you. That is, if you could find him.”
“Your husband has taken a—leave of absence.”
“That’s a real sweet way of putting it.”
“How long ago did he leave?”
“Six years. But he be back. Ray be back. I just waitin’. I ain’t in no big hurry, neither. But he be back.”
“Why?” asked Raphael.
She turned to him and pointed her finger. “You boys think you so precious. You thinkin’ you don’t need nobody. I look at you, I see right through your little head. I’s a hundred years ahead of you. You got a big surprise comin’. Time come and you get in on it, but I’s already in on it. I got this big secret, an’ every man in the world gotta take so long gettin’ to it, something I knowed when I’s fourteen.”
“What’s the secret?” Raphael seemed to really want to know.
“All these men afraid of bein’ crowded, ain’t they? They need all this room, they afraid some woman gonna crawl in their head and take over. Well, surprise, surprise. Ain’t nobody crawlin’ in there ’cept you, honey, and you get older and older and it get stuffy in there. Let me tell you, you afraid of other folks takin’ away your elbow room, well, just relax. You born alone, you die alone, and you get any kind of company in between, you one lucky boy. Bein’ by yourself ain’t no accomplishment. Ain’t like being no kind of hero. Ray, see, Ray sho ’nough figures he gettin’ away with somethin’, understand me? He think he a clever boy, runnin’ round with whores, gettin’ diseases, drinkin’ his heart out till five in the a.m. Lucky Ray, huh? Well, what Raymond Harris gettin’ away with is not see his kids grow up, and when he do come back they call him Mr. Harris ’steada Daddy, and they shake his hand ’steada kiss his cheek, and they spit when he turn his back. And I spit, too, though I’ll take him in again and love him, ’cause that’s what I’s here to do. But I spit anyways, ’cause he such a dumb sucker, understand me? ’Less stupid ole Ray Harris die by hisself in some alleyway. Sho, run away. Best way in the world to be nothin’. Risk endin’ up croaked by garbage cans, when he could die in my arms?” Leonia put her coffee cup in its saucer, and it rattled softly. “That no way to be the big man, baby. That just be dumb and sad. You got me?”
Raphael’s brow creased ever so little. “There’s something missing,” he said after some consideration.
“’Course you think so. You a baby. A pretty baby at that, so you think you extra precious.”
Raphael seemed actually to be thinking. Errol had never seen this. “Yes, something is precious. Maybe Raymond is keeping it. I’m keeping it.”
“And what’s that, baby?”
“He means,” said Gray slowly, “he never stays home for even ten extra minutes to see if the phone will ring. That even if he is home and it rings, he can choose not to answer it. That he goes to movies by himself and has a wonderful time.” Gray leaned back heavily in her chair, as if the exertion of these last statements had been exhausting.
“You’re waiting,” said Raphael. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“Waitin’?”
“For Raymond.”
She shrugged. “It’s somethin’ to do.”
“I’m alive,” said Raphael. “That’s enough to do.”
“So you happy by yoself?”
“Happy. Unhappy. I don’t make those distinctions. I can remain as I am.”
“How lucky for the world.” Errol couldn’t restrain himself.
Leonia cocked her head, her eyes moving between her three guests. They were not just colleagues.
“How do you make a living, Mrs. Harris?”
“I work for the Water Department, filin’, answerin’ phones. It’s part-time, but I’m goin’ to school now down the way, at College of New Rochelle, South Bronx campus? I’m learnin’ computers.”
“How many children do you have?”
“Four.”
“And you support the family?”
“Best I can.”
“You mentioned you’d be willing to take your husband back.”
“That’s right.”
“Would you support him?”
“Honey, I’d have to. Ray can’t do nothin’ but drink. I hear that don’t pay so good.”
“You’d call yourself the head of the family now?”
“I spose.”
“If your husband returned, who would be the head of the family then? Or would there be one?”
“Oh sho. Ray’d be head. He the man, ain’t he?”
“Yes,” said Gray slowly, with professional lack of irritation. “But you’d consider him your superior even if you were supporting the whole family?”
“Superior. I don’t mean he better than me. But a man gotta be top dog in his own castle, don’t he?”
“Even if—”
“Maybe you don’t understand, Miz Kaiser,” Leonia interrupted. “Out there on the street Ray Harris get treated no better than a wad of gum stuck on somebody shoe. One of the reasons Ray don’t come back home is he embarrassed. He don’t have no job. He losin’ his muscle, gettin’ a belly. Where else but here he gonna get treated like somebody?”
“Have you seen him since he left here?”
“Oh…” Leonia resettled in her chair, perhaps none too comfortable with her memories. “Couple times he show up. Stewed, as usual. I gots to send the kids next door…”
“Why?”
“Ray can get a little—charged up when he drinkin’.”
“Did he hit you?”
“I spose that what I’s gettin’ at.”
“But you’d still take him back, and as the head of your household.”
“Yep.”
“Would you do what he told you to do?”
“’Pends on what it was, maybe,” she said warily.
“First, in general.”
“…Yes.”
“Would you go somewhere he wanted to go, even if you wanted to go somewhere else?”
“Yes.”
“What if he told you to quit school?”
“You never know. Maybe he’d be afraid you were getting smarter than he is.”
“I already smarter than him.”
“All the worse, then. Would you quit?”
“If it mean he stay—yes.”
“Mrs. Harris, what if he continued to beat you?”
“…Yes…” Her yeses were getting harder, and so more important. Having taken a certain tack, though, Leonia seemed doggedly determined to see it through.
“Mrs. Harris, what if Raymond threatened to kill you? Would you still keep him in your home?”
“I kick him out, he so much as touch my children.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“To kill me?”
“Yes.”
Leonia was struck with a peculiar paralysis. “I got a lot to say, or somethin’ anyway. It not too clear.”
“Take your time.”
“I’d—die for that man, Miz Kaiser. Not ’cause he so special. I know he a drunk, and gettin’ old, and surly. He not so smart, nor handsome, nor nothin’, really. But I’s a bit heavy myself, and doin’ awful in my English class…That not what I mean.” She seemed flustered.
“Relax. We’ll listen. Some things are difficult to say.”
“I can see from the questions you been askin’, Miz Kaiser, you think I’s some kind of a—”
“These are simply the questions of my study. I don’t intend—”
“You think I’s a duck.”
“I’m not familiar—”
“An easy mark,” Raphael interpreted. “A pushover.”
“I don’t—”
“A duck. You a lady don’t let no man tell you what’s what, that right?”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Errol.
“But see,” Leonia went on, “I could tell Ray at my door, I go to school, I earn the green, you do what I say. And Ray say, Woman, look at my back. There his back be, lower and lower down the stairs. Bye, Ray. And then I got my school. I got my kids. I got my say. I got everything I got now. Well, that ain’t enough, Miz Kaiser. My bed big and messy and lonely. If I gotta say, Ray, you the head, and he say, You bet, all right. If I gotta do this, I gotta do that, all right. ’Cause the main thing is, Ray Harris in my house. If I gotta convince him he the boss, all right, ’cause in the end I still gettin’ my say. I got a man in my bed. I got somebody to cry over if he dead. I got somebody who, wherever he be, don’t hear the name Leonia Harris without perkin’ up his ears and feelin’ funny inside. That what I say—I want. All that other stuff, movin’ and followin’ orders and even gettin’ hit around once in a while—that be nothin’. And if he threaten to kill me, or even if he kill me—well, he crazy, but he still gonna hear ’Leonia Harris’ and feel real funny. But you think I’s crazy, doncha, Miz Kaiser?”
“I don’t know.” Gray shook her head. “I don’t know what’s crazy anymore.—I’m sorry,” she said, trying to pull herself out of whatever she’d gotten herself into. “I don’t understand what I’m studying. That’s why I study anything, because I don’t understand it. Otherwise there’d be no point. Thank you so much. You’ve been most helpful.”
On the way out the door, Gray turned resolutely to Leonia and told her, “We’ve located your husband, Mrs. Harris.”
“Oh?” she asked in a small voice.
“He’s in a city shelter a few blocks from here. Mr. Sarasola is going to interview him after leaving here.”
“Well—tell him hey,” she said limply.
“Anything else?”
She suddenly seemed plunged into despondency, and for all her romanticism, her real situation must have presented itself in all its unpleasant complexity. “No,” she said. “Don’t even say hey. Don’t bother.”
Errol turned from the door with a general feeling that everything was impossible and oppressive and bound for no good.
Downstairs, Gray sighed and told them, “For every Leonia Harris, there are five other women who would meet their hus bands at the door with a Colt .44. Errol, you’re right, this place does feel like a war zone.” Gray gave Raphael directions to the shelter where Raymond Harris had been found; she and Errol would do the next two interviews and they’d all meet back at the car. Once Raphael had launched down the dusty streets, Gray suggested she and Errol split up and do the two interviews separately.
“Well…” Errol scanned the old men with bottles in doorways and the group of teenage boys on the corner kicking the parking sign and smoking pot. “Maybe we should stick together.”
“Oh, Errol, this whole place is beginning to get to me. I want to get this over with; 182nd is right up there. Don’t forget to record everything. I’ll meet you at the car.”
Errol paused, and thought of calling her back as he watched her stride with that characteristic lope down the crumbling sidewalk. The men in the nearest doorway, too, watched her swing by, the gray silk skirt rippling, her white blouse blazing in the hard sun of early afternoon. But Errol could never call her back from anywhere, ’l-oo-lubo, ol-changito, ol-murani, and he shook his head at the picture of this striking woman ranging so casually through burned-out streets and past junkies with swollen arms. Errol turned to do as she’d told him.
The woman Errol was supposed to interview was not home. Par for the course. Standing at her doorway, Errol kept hearing sounds in the hallway and looking over his shoulder. Quickly he left the building. This area was unnerving. So far he had yet to see another white person in the whole neighborhood. As an anthropologist he was used to standing out, but somehow, in his own country he felt far more uncomfortable as an outsider. When he walked back to the car he was conscious of being watched, and strode briskly and efficiently, as if he were an important person who was running late, though he had nothing to do once he reached the Porsche but wait. While Errol leaned on the hood, their hired guard eyed him suspiciously and clanged his metal pipe against a bus stop, as if Errol would somehow try to gyp him out of his second ten.
Half an hour later Raphael showed up, disgusted. “He was drunk,” said Raphael. “Incoherent. Smelled bad.” Suddenly Raphael froze. “Where is Gray K.?”
“She went to do an interview on her own. Mine was a no-show. Gray’s not back yet.”
Raphael looked at Errol with angry incredulity. “Look around you,” he ordered distinctly. “We are now in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the United States of America. You let her walk by herself through this?”
“I don’t let her do anything. She does what she likes.”
“She has to be controlled.”
“You haven’t been paying attention to her angle on this study, then, have you?”
“I don’t care about her study. That woman needs babysitting. Especially here. You are obviously not up to the job.”
“Gray can take care of herself,” said Errol through his teeth.
“She cannot! Give me that address.—That’s straight down this street, six blocks. Six blocks! In this? McEchern, are you out of your mind? We’re going to pick her up.”
Errol trailed angrily behind Raphael. Errol was almost twice this man’s age, and here Ralph was ordering him about like a child. What was particularly irritating, as they walked double-time past the black carcasses of apartment buildings, many of them shooting galleries where heroin addicts would warm their spoons, was that Raphael was right. This place was worse than Belfast, or the villages of the Lone-luk. Errol felt like an idiot. Gray had no business by herself here.
Errol waited on the street as Raphael went up to the apartment. He returned more quickly than Errol expected, running, and without Gray. His eyes were blazing.
Raphael’s fist came down furiously on Errol’s shoulder. “She never made it there!” Errol was left aching on the sidewalk as Raphael took off down the block, ducking into each lobby and every burned-out cavity, and running out again.
“Gray!” Errol called. Her name echoed between the deserted buildings.
Errol started r
As Errol ran toward the phone, the sun shone through polluted air with parodic cheer. The cold white light gleamed in the broken green glass under his feet. The buildings rose harsh and mocking, staring down at Errol with chary eyes.
When Errol got to the phone he found the receiver had been ripped off the cord. He could see there was another phone down the next block. Breathing hard, he bolted for that one. The receiver was on the cord this time, but there was no dial tone. He jiggled the cradle; nothing. Again, Errol ran a couple of blocks and spotted another phone; his side hurt, and he had to slow down. He kicked an empty bottle of Thunderbird as he went, and it splattered against the curb beside him as two old men in a doorway laughed dryly.
Errol wheeled around and went back to the doorway. “Have you seen a woman—white—older—”
“Maybe,” one of them said nonchalantly. “Maybe not.”
“Please—” Errol took out five dollars. “If you’ve seen anything.”
The man reached out quickly and took the bill, slipped it in his pocket, then swigged his beer.
“Well? Tall, handsome, fifty-nine but doesn’t look it—”
The man smiled grimly through a chin full of stubble showing yellow, crumbling teeth. “Nobody round here never see nothin’, don’ you know that?”
“That’s right,” said Errol, feeling the pressure build behind his eyes. “I’m an anthropologist. I do know that. Now, for five dollars can you tell me where there’s a phone that works?”
“Another five?”
“Sure. But tell me first.”
The man’s eyes narrowed as if he was afraid of being cheated.
“Come on!” Errol shouted. “Five dollars for where the phone is?”