Henry Roth - Call It Sleep

Only his own face met him, a pale oval, and dark, fear-struck, staring eyes, that slid low along the windows of stores, snapped from glass to glass, mingled with the enemas, ointment-jars, green globes of the drug-store — snapped off — mingled with the baby clothes, button-heaps, underwear of the drygoods store — snapped off — with the cans of paint, steel tools, frying pans, clothes-lines of the hardware store — snapped off. A variegated pallor, but pallor always, a motley fear, but fear. Or he was not.

— On the windows how I go. Can see and ain’t. Can see and ain’t. And when I ain’t, where? In between them if I stopped, where? Ain’t nobody. No place. Stand here then. BE nobody. Always. Nobody’d see. Nobody’d know. Always. Always No. Carry — yes — carry a looking glass. Teenchy weenchy one, like in pocket-book, Mama’s. Yea. Yea. Yea. Stay by house. Be nobody. Can’t see. Wait for her. Be nobody and she comes down. Take it! Take looking-glass out, Look! Mama! Mama! Here I am! Mama, I was hiding! Here I am! But if Papa came. Zip, take away! Ain’t! Ain’t no place! Ow! Crazy! Near! I’m near! Ow!

His eyes glazing with panic, he crept toward his house, and as he went, grasped at every rail and post within reach — not to steady himself, though he was faint, but to retard. And always he went forward, as though an ineluctable power tore him from the moorings he clutched.

A boy stood leaning against the brass bannister on the top step of the stoop. He held in his hands the torn tissue of a burst red balloon which he sucked and twisted into tiny crimson bubbles. As David, fainting with terror, dragged himself up the stone stairs, the other nipped at a moist, new-made sphere. It popped. He grinned blithely.

“Yuh see how I ead ’em? One bite!”

David stopped, stared at him unseeingly. In the trance that locked his mind only one sensation guttered with a bare significance. The chill of the tarnished railing under his palm, the chill and the memory of its lustre and the flat taint of its corruption.

“Now, I’ll make a real big one!” said the boy. “Watch me!” The stretched red rubber hollowed into a small antre in his mouth, was engulfed, twisted, revealed. “See dot! In one bite!”

Pop!

Despair.…

XVIII

“FAH a penny, ices, Mrs! Fah a penny, ices! Fah a penny, ices, Mrs!”

The grimy six-year-old who had just come in, rapped on the marble counter with his copper.

“Fah a penny, ices, Mrs!”

But neither the slight, long-nosed owner of the store, gnawing bitterly at his sallow mustache, nor his slovenly, red-haired wife glaring at him, nor their pimpled, frightened daughter in the rear moved to do his bidding.

“Fah a penny, ices, Mrs! Hey!”

Another six-year-old came into the store.

“Yuh gonna gimme a suck, Mutkeh?”

“Dey dowanna gib me even!” Mutkeh turned to his friend with an injured look.

“Let’s go t’ Solly’s. Yea?”

“Noo!” muttered the owner in Yiddish. “Are you going to give it to him or will you let him clamor there all evening?”

“Boils and pepper, that’s what I’ll give him!” she crossed her arms defiantly. (The six-year-olds looked hurt.) “Can’t you do it? Are you dead?”

“I won’t!” His small peevish jaw shot as far forward as its teeth would allow. “Let the whole store be burnt to the ground! I won’t!”

“Then be burned with it!” She spat at him. “I need you and your penny business! A candy-store he saddled me with — good husband! Polly, go give it to him.”

Sullenly, red underlip curled out like a scarlet snail-shell, Polly left off pinching the sides of her dress and came out into the front. There she lifted the rusty lid of the can floating in the half-melted ice of the tub, ladled out the pale-yellow, smoking, crystalline mush into a paper cup and handed it to the boy. The two children went out. And as the girl retreated to the rear of the store, her mother nodded at her vindictively—

“And you had to tell him, ha? Foul-piss-in-bed! After I warned you not to!”

“You ain’ my moddeh,” Polly mumbled in English.

“I’ll give you something in a minute,” her stepmother unlocked her arms, “You think you’re safe because your father’s here?”

“Leave her alone!” her husband interfered resentfully, “Do you think she’s wrong maybe? Had it been your own flesh and blood, you would have been there in a wink, no? You’d have watched. You wouldn’t have sat in front on your fat hole, while that Esau scum handled my poor daughter—”

“Be a scape-goat for dogs!” her voice rose in a browbeating stormy scream. “And for rats! And for snakes! Can I watch everything? The store! The customers! The salesmen! The kitchen! And your stinking daughters as well! Isn’t it enough you’ve given me a candy-store to age me, and with a candy-store loaded my belly with one of yours — Here!” She lifted the chocolate-stained, mounded apron as though she meant to throw it at him. “And besides all this, you ask me to watch those filthy hussies! If they don’t even listen to me, how can I watch them? Aren’t they old enough? Don’t they know enough? And that one in the kitchen where she pretends to weep — a wench of twelve! Let her choke there! And you — you don’t deserve to have the earth cover you! Telling me to watch them! And if you want to know something else, you’ll make no more fuss about it, but you’ll go into the kitchen and eat your supper!” Gasping breathlessly, she stopped.

“Yes?” Though he groped for words, it wasn’t fury that halted his speech, but a kind of invincible stubbornness that kept laboriously intrenching itself deeper and deeper. “Supper — me — you ask — me — to eat? Your zest — and may your zest — for life — be as little all your life — as I — as mine is for food! Supper — after what’s happened! Woe to you! But this once — I—You won’t straddle me like a — a good horse! No! This — you — this once you won’t ride—”

“Kiss my arse!” She broke in on him again. “Riding you! I’m not ridden, ha? Oh what a fool you are — choking over it! As if it’s never happened before that two brats should be playing like animals. Is she maimed! Has he snatched it from her — the prize? Won’t it heal before she’s married?”

“How do you know? Do you know how big he was? What has he wrought? Did you even look to see?”

“Look? Yes!” she suddenly snorted mockingly. “I looked! Her drawers were dirty — as they always are! Why don’t you go inside and look at her yourself!”

“Go break a blood vessel!” he muttered.

“Brats at play and he’s worrying! About what, God knows — the future, marriage, suitors. They’ll explore her before they’ll marry her, is that it? Oh, idiot! Do you want a suitor for her? Blow your nose — she’ll have a tall one!”

His small frame stiffened. Blood flared in his sallow face.

“That’s how your mother answered your father, ha? Over your sister, Genya, ha? And exactly the same way — a goy! It’s a family trait by now! To you it’s nothing!” The spurt of anger that had driven his words failed him suddenly. He retreated.

“Burn like a candle!” She advanced upon him furiously. “Will you vomit up past shame! A secret I told you, you dare mock me with? I’ll give you something to make your world keel over!”

His back against the glass doors of the toy closet, he had lifted his arms defensively. “Go away! Let me alone! If you’ll swill refreshments at my funeral, I’ll swill them at yours!”

“Be slaughtered by a chinaman!” She turned her back on him contemptuously. “Manikin! I don’t hear you any more! Go talk to my buttocks!”