“Didntcha know our terlit was inna cella’?” she preceded him down.
“Yea, but I fuhgod.” He shrank back a moment at the cellar door.
“Stay close!” she warned.
He followed warily. The corrupt damp of sunless earth. Her loose shoes scuffed before him into dissolving dark. On either side of him glimmered the dull-grey, once-white-washed cellar bins, smelling of wet coal, rotting wood, varnish, burlap. Only her footsteps guided him now; her body had vanished. The spiny comb of fear serried his cheek and neck and shoulders.
— It’s all right! All right! Somebody’s with you. But when is she — Ow!
His groping hands ran into her.
“Wait a secon’, will yuh?” she whispered irritably.
They had come mid-way.
“Stay hea.” A door-knob rattled. He saw a door swing open — A tiny, sickly-grey window, matted with cobwebs, themselves befouled with stringy grime, cast a wan gleam on a filth-streaked flush bowl. In the darkness overhead, the gurgle and suck of a water-box. The dull, flat dank of excrement, stagnant water, decay. “You stay righd hea in de daw!” she said. “An’ don’ go ’way or I’ll moider you — Srooo!” Her sharp breath whistled. She fumbled with the broken seat.
“Can I stay outside?”
“No!” Her cry was almost desperate as she plumped down. “Stay in de daw. You c’n look—” The hiss and splash. “Ooh!” Prolonged, relieved. “You ain’ god a sister?”
“No.” He straddled the threshold.
“You scared in de cella’?”
“Yea.”
“Toin aroun’!”
“Don’ wanna!”
“You’re crazy. Boys ain’t supposed t’ be scared.”
“You tol’ me y’d give anyt’ing?”
“So waddayuh wan’?” In the vault-like silence the water roared as she flushed the bowl.
“Yuh god skates?”
“Skates?” She brushed hastily past him toward the yard-light, “C’mon. We ain’t god no skates.”
“Yuh ain’? Old ones?”
“We ain’ god no kind.” They climbed into the new clarity of the yard. “Wadduh t’ink dis is?” her voice grew bolder. “A two-winder kendy staw? An’ if I had ’em I wouldn’ give yuh. Skates cost money.”
“So yuh ain’ god?” Like a last tug at the clogged pulley of hope. “Even busted ones?”
“Naaa!” Derisively.
Despair sapped the spring of his eager tread. Her smudged ankles flickered past him up the stairs.
“Hey, Polly!” He heard her squeal as she burst into the kitchen, “Hey, Polly—!”
“Giddaddihea, stinker!” The other’s voice snapped.
“Yuh know wot he wants?” Esther pointed a mocking finger at him as he entered.
“W’a?”
“Skates! Eee! Hee! Hee! Skates he wants!”
“Skates!” Mirth infected Polly. “Waddaa boob! We ain’ god skates.”
“An’ now I don’ have to give ’im nott’n!” Esther exulted. “If he wants wot we ain’ got, so—”
“Aha!” Aunt Bertha’s red head pried into the doorway. “God be praised! Blessed is His holy name!” She cast her eyes up with exaggerated fervor. “You’re both up! And at the same time? Ai, yi, yi! How comes it?”
The other two grimaced sullenly.
“And now the kitchen, the filthy botch you left last night! Coarse rumps! Do I have to do everything? When will I get my shopping done?”
“Aaa! Don’ holler!” Esther’s tart reply.
“Cholera in your belly!” Aunt Bertha punned promptly. “Hurry up, I say! Coffee’s on the stove.” She glanced behind her. “Come out, David, honey! Come out of that mire.” She pulled her head back hurriedly.
“Aaa, kiss my axle,” Polly glowered. “You ain’ my modduh!” And snappishly to David. “G’wan, yuh lummox! Gid odda hea!”
Chagrined, routed, he hurried through the corridor, finding a little relief in escaping from the kitchen.
“Skates!” Their jeers followed him. “Dopey Benny!”
He came out into the store. Aunt Bertha, her bulky rear blocking the aisle, her breasts flattened against the counter was stooping over, handing a stick of licorice to a child on the other side.
“Oy!” She groaned, straightening up as she collected the penny. “Oy!” And to David. “Come here, my light. You don’t know what a help you’ve been to me by getting them out of bed. Have you ever laid eyes on such bedraggled, shameless dawdlers? They’re too lazy to stick a hand in cold water, they are. And I must sweat and smile.” She took him in her arms. “Would you like what I gave that little boy just now — ligvitch? Ha? It’s as black as a harness.”
“No.” He freed himself. “You haven’t got any skates, have you Aunt Bertha?”
“Skates? What would I do with skates, child? And in this little dungheap? I can’t sell five-cent pistols or even horns with the red, white and blue, so how could I sell skates? Wouldn’t you rather have ice-cream? It is very good and cold.”
“No.”
“A little halvah? Crackers? Come, sit down awhile.”
“No, I’m going home.”
“But you just came.”
“I have to go.”
“Ach!” she cried impatiently. “Let me look at you awhile — No? Take this penny then,” she reached into her apron. “Buy what I haven’t got.”
“Thanks, Aunt Bertha.”
“Come see me again and you’ll have another. Sweet child!” She kissed him. “Greet your mother for me!”
“Yes.”
“Keep hale!”
X
SPIT someone?
He glanced up and backward overhead. To the north and south the cogged spindle of the sky was an even stone-grey.
— Dope! Ain’t spit. Hurry up!
Umbrellas appeared. The black shopping bags of hurrying housewives took on a dew-sprent glaze. Inside their box-like newstands, obscure dealers tilted up shelves above the papers. As the drizzle thickened the dull façades of houses grew even drabber, the contents of misty shop-windows indeterminate. A dense, soggy dreariness absorbed all things, drained all colors to darkness, melted singleness, muddied division — only the tracks of the horse-cars still glinted in the black gutter as whitely as before. He felt disgusted with himself.
— Wet on my shirt, hair, gee! Two blocks yet. Giddap!
Rain had coated sidewalk and gutter with a slimy film. On flattened tread, he jogged cautiously homeward, ducking under awnings when he could, skirting the jutting stoops. Not too drenched, he reached his corner.
“Run! Run! Sugar baby! Run! Run! Sugar baby!” Sheltered from the downpour, children in the dry covert of hallways relayed the cry — a mocking gauntlet for those who hurried in the rain. There were several such bantams snugly crowing in his own doorway. One or two of the faces belonged to those who had sat on the curb while Kushy had told about the canary. Resentfully, he fixed his eyes before him and ran up the iron stairs of the stoop. He wasn’t going to talk to them at all. But as he was about to enter the hallway one of them stepped in his path—
“Hey, you’re Davy aintcha?”
“Yea.” He looked up sullenly. “Waddayuh wan’?”
“Dey’s a kid lookin’ fuh yuh.”
“Yea,” another chimed in. “W’it’ skates he had.”
“Fuh me? A kid w’it’ skates?” His heart bounded with incredulous joy. Sudden warmth gushed through every vein. “Fuh me?”
“Yea.”
“Leo? Did he say he wuz Leo?”
“Leo, yea; futt flaw, sebm futty fi’. He’s a goy.”
“So wad he wan’?” eagerly.
“He says comm op righd away.”
“Me?”
“Yea, he wuz jost lookin’—”
But David had already leaped down the stairs and was sprinting through the rain toward Leo’s house. Up the stoop he went, proudly, as though Leo’s call had saturated the fabric of his spirit with a tingling, toughening glow, as though his being were pursed into a new shape of assurance. Here also children crowded the hallway, but he brushed by them without a word or a moment’s hesitation. He was Leo’s friend! And he climbed the obscure stairs without a wisp of fear. At the top floor, he stopped, looked about — all the shadowy doors were closed.