Джон Краули - New Haven Noir

The church was a small brick building on Dixwell Avenue just up from Munson Street. That was how he always heard people describing things, just up from. Their house was just up from the church. The doctor was just up from their house. The school was just up from the doctor. But the stores where his mother liked to shop were down, not up. They were down by Yale. The boy liked to go with her. He would watch her try on dresses and she would smile at him over her shoulder. Sometimes she would stand on the sidewalk and look in the window and say, I sure would love to try that dress, but then she would not go in the store. The boy would ask why and his mother would say, Hush, sweetie pie, don’t worry about it. But the white women would walk right past her and go into the store and come out with big boxes and bags. He asked an older kid at church who told him that some of the stores down by Yale did not serve Negroes.

One afternoon his mother took him downtown to Malley’s to buy shoes. There were lots of department stores on Chapel Street but Malley’s, with its colorful awnings and big picture windows, was his favorite. Today the windows featured a display about the store’s history. The boy looked at the mannequins in their costumes from the olden days. Each diorama moved forward a few years. The styles kept changing. One window said, Bride of Today and Her Attendants. The bride and her attendants were all white. The last window showed the bride and groom boarding a shiny new train on the New Haven line. The groom was white too. The boy stared. His mother told him to stop gawking and hurry up. She thought he was looking at the train.

Children’s shoes were on the second floor, and that was where the birdcage was too. The boy loved the cage. He ran over. The cage was taller than his father. There were parakeets chirping and singing. They jumped and fluttered from branch to branch. A blue one flapped broad-feathered wings and looked at him. The boy looked back. A sign said not to feed the birds. The boy stood there with his nose against the wire, waiting for the parakeets to start talking, but they never did.

The boy wanted red shoes but the man said red was for girls. The man said he should try blue. The boy said no. His mother said his dress shoes were always blue. She said, You love blue. The boy said, I don’t love blue. I hate it. His mother said, God doesn’t want us to hate. You shouldn’t say things like that. So the boy said he was sorry. He tried on the blue and said he liked them. This was a lie but it wouldn’t make any difference because he was going to hell anyway. When they got in line to pay for the shoes, two of the big kids who went to Yale were standing behind them. The big kids who went to Yale all seemed to wear blue scarves or white sweaters with big blue Y s on them. One of the big kids who went to Yale asked the other why the line was taking so long, and the other big kid made a joke about Darktown ladies. At least the boy thought it must be a joke because the first one laughed. But his mother blushed and grabbed the boy’s hand and hurried him out of the store, and that was the day the boy decided that Yale had happened to his mother.

The boy thought his mother was very pretty. She had big brown eyes and smooth brown skin. She loved to play the piano. She loved to dress up. People called her elegant. The boy was not sure what elegant meant but he liked hearing people call his mother that. When his parents went out on Saturday night his father would always wait downstairs in the foyer in a gray suit, and when his mother came down in one of her fancy outfits he would say things like, The most beautiful woman in the world has arrived! or, Look, it’s the Queen of Sheba! Then he would hold out his hand and she would take his arm and they would walk out the door.

The rest of the week his mother did not put on a fancy outfit. She worked at Yale. She wore a gray uniform with a white ruffled collar. She left for work very early, before the boy was awake. She had to take care of the offices before the professors got there. That was what she called it, taking care of the offices. She was not supposed to bother the professors, not ever. The boy did not know what a professor was, but in his mind he saw a big scaly blue monster, because of those blue scarves the big kids who went to Yale liked to wear.

The boy liked when his parents went out. Nana would take care of him. Her hair was thin and gray. She wore very thick glasses. She loved to sit in the kitchen eating snickerdoodles and reading her magazines. The magazines had funny names. The League for the Freedom of Darker Peoples and All Oppressed or The Ethiopian World Federation . When his parents went out, Nana would feed him his supper and make sure he said his prayers. The boy knew the words to “Now I Lay Me down to Sleep” and one or two others, but his father told him it was better to come up with his own bedtime prayer, a different one every night. The boy found this hard, which was another reason that he was sure he was going to hell.

Nana didn’t seem to care which prayers the boy said. If he wanted to say “Now I Lay Me down to Sleep,” that was fine with her. Then she would tuck him in and sit on his bed and tell him stories about how her own father had escaped from Virginia and how they sent a man to make him go back and her father had shot and killed him. Or about how when her brother went to France in what she called the First War, he was treated better there than back home. Or about how the Negroes of New Haven tried to build a college of their own a hundred years ago but the white folks wouldn’t let them. Or about how Marcus Garvey would have saved the whole darker nation except that the white folks wouldn’t let him. One night he asked her if the man her father had shot went to heaven. She laughed and said, He was a wicked man, but th’ Lord’s mercy don’t know no bounds. After the day his mother bought him the blue shoes at Malley’s, the boy asked Nana if maybe he could go to Europe one day. Nana laughed and said he could do pretty much anything he wanted.

The boy decided that Yale had never happened to his Nana.

On Tuesdays through Saturdays the boy went to Vacation Bible School in the basement of the church. The boy liked Vacation Bible School. It was summer and the days were very hot. There were ten big signs around the walls, one for each of the Commandments. The kids would sit there in the basement sweating in the heat and Miss Deveaux would lead them in prayer. Miss Deveaux never sweated. She was very strict, but the boy liked her. She also had the best job in the whole wide world. She worked for the A.C. Glibert Company, painting the American Flyer trains. She was surrounded all day long by black engines and green Pullman cars and red cabooses. The boy wished he had her job. So he was going to hell for envy too.

After prayers the class would sing a hymn and then one of the kids would read a psalm and then Miss Deveaux would read them a story from a thick brown book. One morning the story was about a boy named Dick who was trying to win the prize for never missing a day of third grade. Dick was so proud of never missing. Then one day he saw an old man who needed help with his apple cart. Dick helped the man and missed a day of school. The moral of the story was that helping the old man was better than winning the prize. The boy didn’t know if that was right. What if Dick really needed that prize? What if Dick was a Negro and the prize was a trip to France? What if the prize was an American Flyer train set? But the boy never asked questions like that. Just thinking those questions was probably enough to send him to hell.

After story time, the class would sing another hymn and then Miss Deveaux would read them another story, like about why Jesus came and how he died for them, or about how Hannah wanted a baby and prayed until God gave her one. Then they would stand up and make a circle and join hands and sing some more, and then it was time for lunch and school would be over for the day. Usually the boy had to stay late, because his mother could not pick him up until three o’clock. Miss Deveaux or Mrs. Percy would look after him and a few of the others whose mothers had to work. Mrs. Percy would shake her head and say how terrible it was that a woman should have to work. Supporting the family was the husband’s job, she would say. The boy wondered whether that meant it was sinful for Mrs. Percy to run the candy store.