the O’Malleys opened a grocery store two blocks away, across from the Italian bakery, people like Mother still bought a few items on credit from Mack but O’Malley’s attracted the neighbourhood’s Irish customers.
So, while I waited impatiently for my seventh birthday, praying for the days to gallop by, Mack, with business lagging, would lure me with caramels to his storeroom every time I played Miss Hortense’s errand girl.
Worried that Lilian might spot candy juice in the corners of my mouth, I’d stand at the bottom of the stairs to gobble that caramel before running back up with Miss Hortense’s items.
Mack told me about his plan to give away items to customers spending over fifty cents, and though I couldn’t read the sign when he placed it amongst the dead flies and the faded Corn Flakes boxes, I knew it said something about his offer.
When Mother received a free bar of Sunlight soap, I expected Miss Hortense to receive something better. A can of condensed cream or even a tin of kerosene. Some lanolin or a bottle of Karo Syrup, because she was a regular, thanks to me. But Mother was speechless when she heard that Miss Hortense had received two pork chops.
And what upset Mother most was who told her the news.
She had arrived home early from work that evening, hanging her coat on the back of the door as the six o’clock whistle blew.
I helped her slip off her shoes which she always removed before her hat. Lilian and I knew better than to try and talk to her till she’d had her cup of sweet tea, but we also knew when she switched on the radio and hummed along with a tune that she was in a good mood.
The afternoon’s rain had sweetened the evening air and the sunset was dark apricot. While Lilian studied her catechism, I slid my chair nearer the radio. Mother hadn’t noticed that my hair was still damp, because earlier I’d gone to the butcher for Mack. I was eager to explain, though she looked too tired for details, and I prayed that we could get through the evening without her noticing that my shoes had got wet.
Mother still had her hat on when Mrs O’Brien rapped at our door. ‘Ruthie, I want you out!’ she yelled like someone might yell ‘Fire!’. Within that second our peaceful lives felt as overturned as dirty clothes tossed from a laundry basket. Mrs O’Brien had never been to our room before and to hear her snap at my mother from the doorway made me wish for my funeral. Casket. Hearse. Mourners. Death seemed easiest.
Though I’d told no one about my visits to Mack’s storeroom, I sensed from his wife’s violent rap on our door that he must have. My ears started ringing and I thought I would vomit as my lips quivered, my mouth went dry, and my knees seemed to buckle under me.
Today kids have rights, but in those days white people could do anything to coloured children, and I burst into tears, believing that I would be jailed or killed and damned to Lucifer’s cauldrons by every caramel that Mack had given me.
Whenever I cried, whatever the circumstances, I have to admit that Lilian used to rush to console me. So while Mother stood at the door face to face with Mrs O’Brien, Lilian’s solidarity made me feel all the more guilty as she whispered, ‘Don’t cry … Don’t cry … That old witch can’t hurt Mother!’
I sobbed louder, staining my sister’s red sweater with tears and needing the toilet so badly that I was ready to pee myself.
‘Hush up, Irene!’ my mother yelled over her shoulder. Her being much wider than Mrs O’Brien, all that I could see of Mack’s wife in the doorway was the feather in her hat as her voice spat out an ultimatum that threw a pall over our room. ‘Out!’ shouted Mrs O’Brien, ‘I want you out of here before Thanksgiving.’
From the way that Mother stood with her shoulders drooping, her large arms folded in front of her and her flat feet planted too firmly on the floorboards, it was obvious that she was too weary to face an assault. There was a litany of reasons why she might have looked so beaten. Perhaps the Herzfeld girls had been bickering with each other all day or Mr Herzfeld had complained again about Mother’s cooking.
Miss Hortense said her rosary before night fell, and nothing could disturb her religious meditations. Not even the sound of Mrs O’Brien yelling, ‘Not only did Irene collect those chops from the butcher, but she delivered them to that snotty little hussy down the hall!’
A surge went through me as I was restored from darkness to light, realizing that Mrs O’Brien had only come to complain about my trip to the butcher for Mack.
Lilian held me tighter and I found enough confidence to explain that when Miss Hortense had sent me to Mack’s to buy crackers earlier, he’d sent me over to Enright’s Butcher’s for her gift.
I was too terrified of my mother’s reaction to mention that I’d gone in the rain and I was also afraid that Mrs O’Brien might guess that the free caramel Mack had given me wasn’t the first I’d swallowed.
When I’d set off, the distance had been less worrying than the big street I had to cross and the drunks that I expected to encounter on the way. But what made me certain that I could survive the long walk was that that morning before school I’d stuck what I believed to be a lucky penny in my shoe. My mind focused upon it as I made my way to the butcher’s, hopping and skipping to quell my fear as I was pelted by rain.
I can still remember the feel of the penny against the ball of my right foot as I skipped along. It must have been about four in the afternoon. There were no children out and clouds filled the sky. While I thought about the penny, the story of a chick named Henny Penny snuck into my mind. Having heard the story on the radio and seen an illustration of Henny Penny in a storybook at school, I suddenly felt that I was that yellow chick who had run around the farmyard to alert the animals that the sky was falling as a black cloud pursued him. A line from the story repeated in my head: ‘The sky is falling … the sky is falling …’
When I rounded a corner and spotted Enright’s, I saw it as shelter and ran in, more to seek safety than to do that errand for Mack.
Drenched and panting, I clutched his note so tightly that my fingers ached.
I’m not one for gasping. Hell, I didn’t gasp when I heard that I was up for that Oscar … nor when the doctor confirmed that there was something wrong with my little Nadine. But I definitely gasped that afternoon in Enright’s … Sucking my breath in hard at the sight of Mrs O’Brien standing there in a raincoat waiting to be served. Two women were ahead of her who both turned to look down at me when she snapped, ‘Mercy, Irene! Trust your mother to send you out in this storm.’
It was Mrs O’Brien’s sugary voice, reserved for Mack’s Irish customers. I wouldn’t have believed that she was addressing me had I not heard my name.
She’d called me I-rene with the stress on the ‘I’, but I-reen is correct.
And without meaning to, I actually looked into her eyes.
They were blue. A clear aquamarine. They sparked anger that went way, way back. Somewhere deep.
Mack’s wife. Nola O’Brien. More important to him than I was.
She spoke so loudly that the butcher and his boy and the two female customers heard her. ‘Your mother has owed me fifty cents since the first of the month. I knew she was lying when she claimed she didn’t have it, and it’d better not be my money she’s wasting on meat.’
Her husband had on several occasions fingered me in his dank storeroom, but I had yet to figure out that I had good reason to be fighting mad at her for that. All I knew was that Mrs O’Brien was calling Mother a liar, and insulting somebody’s mother in those days was a battle cry.
Scared to raise my head, with my eyes glued to Mrs O’Brien’s galoshes and my heart pounding, I found the gumption to say, ‘Leave my Mother alone!’ Coward that I was, I probably only said it above a whisper, but somebody heard, an old craggy woman in a headscarf who whacked me on the head with the handle of her umbrella saying, ‘No-account little niggers make you forget yourself.’ When my arms flew to protect my head,