them, too close a space. They grew against each
other like teeth grinding together, each shaping the
other. Yin, quick to smile, easygoing. Tom, a sort
of sour puss, God-knows-what eating on him, maybe
thinking that Yin was crowding him out. Especially
after Yin got a job. Three months of relief, and
then the investigator comes with a job-pick and
shovel, twelve a week, and offers it to the three of
them, Pete and the two sons. And Yin saying, Sure,
why not? A fellow gets flabby sitting on his hams
all day. And Pete saying, Thank God, to get the
stink of relief out of the house. Only Tom wanting
something better, because he fancied himself a
brainy guy with a white-collar neck. In the year's
head-start that he had over his brother, Tom learned
something. He was a young man going somewhere,
knew what it was to work and have his girl. He was
a young man going somewhere ... walking the street
in the pride of a white collar, in his hair a fine drug-
store smell, none of your shop smells about him.
Walking down the street and going to see his girl.
Then came depression, and he wasn't going any-
where any more. He was standing on the corner with
the other punks ...
the guys who didn't say, Let's
go, because there was no goddamn place to go. The
guys who said, It's a racket, and It's a lousy break,
and It's a raw deal. Inheritors of the lousy break
and raw deal. They were wondering what they were
born for, and what they were living for, and what
the girls on the block were for ...
no money even
to take a girl to the movies to a dark place, where
you can feel what she's like under her dress.
Tom went to the relief people and asked for a
job, and the man told him it was no use. One job
to a family.
Tom said: One job to a family, it don't make
sense. There's seven of us.
The man said, Too bad, seven's too many.
Too many, for sure. The three kids had to sleep
together, all in one bed, like a tangle of snakes.
And Mrs. Carney, thanking her stars every time
Pete didn't take her, and blessing the choking fits
because they made him want her less. Because she
wasn't sure yet if a baby could still take root in her
or not. Maybe it couldn't any more. She'd starve
it inside of her first. Because there was no room in
the house for another one, and no money to get it
born, and not a crumb of extra food at table. The
stink of relief was out of the house, but who'd say
they were better off? Because the landlord came,
as if it was prosperity again, and asked for the whole
rent. And Pete learned, the way they all did in 4
Thompson, that you can deal with the belly, you can
cheat it here and there; but you can't cheat the roof
and the four walls. You're in the place or out of it.
They managed to keep their furniture off the street,
but hunger was a shame they all knew, each one
secretly to himself. When they sat at table, they
were silent, eating as if it was a serious business-
4
like animals at a trough, who know there's a stern
master somewhere watching the food closely.
Tom tried to make sense of it, day after day. And
meanwhile" Vincent was war-king, growing small
first-of-the-crop muscles on his thin arms. At least
Yin was living, his pocket lined with the pay enve-
lope every week, throwing the money down on the
table every pay-day with a gesture that Tom hated.
Tom got so he wouldn't talk to his brother. He
fenced himself round with silence when Yin was
there, looked at his brother with eyes from which
hatred shot like a whip. And so things stood between
them, until the trouble started over Tom's girl, and
there was the night of the big scene when Tom didn't
care what he shouted.
II
That day, Annette went out ...
red lip-smear
slashing her face, made up to kill. She draws her
coat tight to her body, flaunting lean hips to the
eyes of men. Last year's coat and hat, cast-off shoes.
Her feet are cold and unlovely, slopping on the side-
walk in shoes not their own.
She curses the sun because there's no warmth in
it, because it's warm. Warm and giving life to the
thing that grows inside of her. She curses this life,
now three months old. Curses the fulness of her
breast and the hard blossoming of the nipples. Soon
they'll see, talk among themselves, make sounds with
their tongues. Soon they'll wonder who it is, rake
their memories to comb out the name. She goes with
Dan Anderson, she goes with Tom Carney
Ah,
the sly one, maybe she doesn't know herself
.
If she could pluck the baby out of her body, be
empty as she was before. There is nothing to nour-
ish it with, no flesh not needed to cover her bones,
no blood in her that flows rich and strong. But the.
baby is stubborn, it feeds on her, and it grows
.
grows until they can't help seeing. Dan Anderson .
Tom. Tom ...
Dan Anderson. Go on, wonder till
your brains burst. Who would want to be touched
by Dan Anderson? With his pudgy body rubbing it-
self against you like a dog ....
She remembers how the doctor kept his hand on
her longer than necessary. But there's nothing we
can do, nothing. Spoke to her that way, as if being
pregnant was an incurable disease. Then in the relief
office. The thin face back of the desk had stared at
her. It happens sometimes, the lips said, mechanical-
ly smiling. We can give you a dollar-twenty extra,
that's if you're sure, if you're really sure ....
The
woman lowered her voice: there were women who
pretended they were, and then when there was no
baby to show, they said they fell down a flight of
stairs and miscarried. There were women who would
lie for that dollar-twenty ....
Here, Annette wanted to say, feel my breasts.
Maybe you know how they change. She hated the
woman at the desk. She wanted to lift her hand and
strike her full in the face, on the lips that were too
JUNE,
1936
