Jane Bowles - My Sister's Hand in Mine - The Collected Works of Jane Bowles

“I hoped we’d get a visitor or two while we were here,” she said to her. “That’s why I arranged this little sitting place. All the rest of the rooms are being painted, or else they’re still too smelly for visiting. Last time we were here we didn’t see anyone for the whole two weeks. But he was a baby then. I thought maybe this time he’d contact when he went out. He goes out a lot of the day.” She glanced at her son. “You’ve got some dirt on that chair,” she remarked in a tone which did not express the slightest disapproval. She turned back to Mary. “I’d rather have a girl than a boy,” she said. “There’s nothing much I can discuss with a boy. A grown woman isn’t interested in the same things a boy is interested in.” She scratched a place below her shoulder blades. “My preference is discussing furnishings. Always has been. I like that better than I like discussing styles. I’ll discuss styles if the company wants to, but I don’t enjoy it nearly so well. The only thing about furnishings that leaves me cold is curtains. I never was interested in curtains, even when I was young. I like lamps about the best. Do you?”

Mary was huddling as far back into her chair as she could, but even so, without drawing her legs up and sitting on her feet, it was impossible to avoid physical contact with the woman, whose knees lightly touched hers every time she shifted a little in her chair. Inwardly, too, Mary shrank from her. She had never before been addressed so intimately by a grown person. She closed her eyes, seeking the dark gulf that always had separated her from the adult world. And she clutched the seat cushion hard, as if she were afraid of being wrenched from the chair.

“We came here six years ago,” the woman continued, “when the Speeds had their house painted, and now they’re having it painted again, so we’re here again. They can’t be in the house until it’s good and dry because they’ve both got nose trouble — both the old man and the old lady — but we’re not related. Only by marriage. I’m a kind of relative to them, but not enough to be really classed as a relative. Just enough so that they’d rather have me come and look after the house than a stranger. They gave me a present of money last time, but this time it’ll be clothes for the boy. There’s nothing to boys’ clothes really. They don’t mean anything.”

She sighed and looked around her.

“Well,” she said, “we would like them to ask us over here more often than they do. Our town is way smaller than this, way smaller, but you can get all the same stuff there that you can here, if you’ve got the money to pay. I mean groceries and clothing and appliances. We’ve got all that. As soon as the walls are dry we go back. Franklin doesn’t want to. He don’t like his home because he lives in an apartment; it’s in the business section. He sits in a lot and don’t go out and contact at all.”

The light shone through Mary’s tightly closed lids. In the chair next to her there was no sound of a body stirring. She opened her eyes and looked down. His ankles were crossed and his feet were absolutely still.

“Franklin,” the woman said, “get some candy for me and the girl.”

When he had gone she turned to Mary. “He’s not a rough boy like the others,” she said. “I don’t know what I’d do if he was one of the real ones with all the trimmings. He’s got some girl in him, thank the Lord. I couldn’t handle one of the real ones.”

He came out of the freshly painted room carrying a box.

“We keep our candy in tea boxes. We have for years,” the woman said. “They’re good conservers.” She shrugged her shoulders. “What more can you expect? Such is life.” She turned to her son. “Open it and pass it to the girl first. Then me.”

The orange box was decorated with seated women and temples. Mary recognized it; her mother used the same tea at home. He slipped off the two rubber bands that held the cover on, and offered her the open box. With stiff fingers she took a stick of green candy from the top; she did not raise her eyes.

A few minutes later she was running alone down the stone steps. It was almost night, but the sky was faintly green near the horizon. She crossed the highway and stood on the hill only a few feet away from the pit. Far below her, lights were twinkling in the Polish section. Down there the shacks were stacked one against the other in a narrow strip of land between the lower road and the river.

After gazing down at the sparkling lights for a while, she began to breathe more easily. She had never experienced the need to look at things from a distance before, nor had she felt the relief that it can bring. All at once, the air stirring around her head seemed delightful; she drank in great draughts of it, her eyes fixed on the lights below.

“This isn’t the regular air from up here that I’m breathing,” she said to herself. “It’s the air from down there. It’s a trick I can do.”

She felt her blood tingle as it always did whenever she scored a victory, and she needed to score several of them in the course of each day. This time she was defeating the older woman.

The following afternoon, even though it was raining hard, her mother could not stop her from going out, but she had promised to keep her hood buttoned and not to sit on the ground.

The stone steps were running with water. She sat down and looked into the enveloping mist, a fierce light in her eyes. Her fingers twitched nervously, deep in the recess of her rubber pockets. It was unbelievable that they should not at any moment encounter something wonderful and new, unbelievable, too, that he should be ignorant of her love for him. Surely he knew that all the while his mother was talking, she in secret had been claiming him for her own. He would come out soon to join her on the steps, and they would go away together.

Hours later, stiff with cold, she stood up. Even had he remained all day at the window he could never have sighted her through the heavy mist. She knew this, but she could never climb the steps to fetch him; that was impossible. She ran headlong down the stone steps and across the highway. When she reached the pit she stopped dead and stood with her feet in the soft clay mud, panting for breath.

“Men,” she said after a minute, “men, I told you we were going to specialize.” She stopped abruptly, but it was too late. She had, for the first time in her life, spoken to her men before summoning them to order with a bugle call. She was shocked, and her heart beat hard against her ribs, but she went on. “We’re going to be the only outfit in the world that can do real mountain-goat fighting.” She closed her eyes, seeking the dark gulf again; this time she needed to hear the men’s hearts beating, more clearly than her own. A car was sounding its horn on the highway. She looked up.

“We can’t climb those stone steps up there.” She was shouting and pointing at the house. “No outfit can, no outfit ever will.…” She was desperate. “It’s not for outfits. It’s a flight of steps that’s not for outfits … because it’s … because.…” The reason was not going to come to her. She had begun to cheat now, and she knew it would never come.

She turned her cold face away from the pit, and without dismissing her men, crept down the hill.

Andrew’s mother looked at her son’s face. “He wants to get away from us,” she thought, “and he will.” She felt overcome by a mortal fatigue. “He simply wants to spring out of his box into the world.” With a flippant and worldly gesture she described a flight through the air. Then abruptly she burst into tears and buried her face in her hands.