14
SANFORD FRIEDMAN
evicted him and made sure the door was locked for the remainder
of the season.
When Stephen reached the end of Row A, he turned right briskly,
padded past Band C and D Streets, took a left at E Street, until
he reached the door marked 97, and inserted the key. Once inside,
he ignored the two turkish towels hanging on separate hooks on the
right hand wall, ignored the first one on the left and pulled down
the second. After locking the door behind him, he walked to the
end of E Street, turned left and meandered towards the men's
shower. On the way, between E and D Streets, he came to the wall
marked WOMEN.
As
always, as he passed, Stephen tried sur–
reptitiously to catch a glimpse of the women inside, but the barrier
obstructed his view. He knew what lay beyond was identical to what
lay beyond the wall marked MEN: one enormous room without a
ceiling, one long, green wooden bench, one clothes wringer and three
unpartitioned showers with rusty chains. After the showers came a little
house · with a cement floor, two · white
sinks,
two silver mirrors,
two white urinals, three gray booths and three white toilets. Long
ago, when he was little, Stephen had gone behind the wall marked
WOMEN almost every day with Mommy, except when Roggie took
him behind the wall marked MEN. On weekends, of course, he had
always gone behind the wall marked MEN with Daddy and that's the
way it had been for years and years until one summer when Mommy
announced he had grown too big to continue coming with her any–
more. When Stephen had asked her to come, instead, with
him,
Mommy only laughed and said she couldn't. That had left him
slightly confused. Not only had he grown accustomed to going to the
Women's, he considered it his proper place-until, that is, Daddy
explained that it was much more fun and natural "for the boys to
get off on their own" and "keep the girls out of their hair."
After that, the whole thing had seemed much more reasonable, and
Stephen didn't mind being restricted to the area behind the wall
marked MEN-as a matter of fact, he considered it a privilege. The
only thing that bothered him about the women and made him
try
to peer beyond the barrier every time he passed, was that Stephen
didn't know exactly what it was he had seen when he was little that
he was supposed to have forgotten now that he was big ...
.After crossing D Stteet, he came to the wall marked MEN,
