Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin

“Oh, I’ve got enough bagels,” I said.

“Just stay here a little while,” she said under her breath.

There was a little rim of moist at her eye.

“Really, Claire, I got enough bagels.”

“Stay awhile,” she whispered.

“Claire,” I said, trying to move away, but she had a hold of my elbow like she was clutching a last piece of twine.

“After everyone leaves?”

I could see the little tremble going in her nostrils. She had the type of face when you look closely at it, you think it’s gone all a sudden old. There was a pleading in her voice. Janet and Jacqueline and Marcia were down the far end of the corridor, tickling their ribs now at one of the paintings on the wall.

Sure, I didn’t want to leave Claire there with all those leftover crumbs on the carpet, and the crushed-out cigarettes in the ashtrays and I suppose I could’ve easily stayed, rolled up my sleeves, and started washing the dishes and cleaning the floor and tucking the lemons away in the Tupper-ware, but the thing is, I had the thought that we didn’t go freedom-riding years ago to clean apartments on Park Avenue, no matter how nice she was, no matter how much she smiled. I had nothing against her. Her eyes were big and wide and generous. I was pretty sure I could’ve just sat down on the sofa and she would’ve served me hand and foot, but we didn’t go marching for that either.

“Mercy,” I said.

I couldn’t help it.

“Ah-hem,” went Jacqueline from the front door, like she was clearing her throat for speech.

“Coca-Cola one two three,” said Marcia.

I could hear the tip-tap of Janet’s shoes against the wooden floors. Jacqueline gave another little cough. Marcia was adjusting her hair in the mirror and muttering something under her breath.

There it was, I might never have believed it at any other time in my life — three white women wanting me to leave with them, and one of them trying to get me to hold back with her. I was flat-out dilemma’d, tied to a galloping horse. My heart began going hammer and tongs. There was moistness gathering in Claire’s eyes and she was looking at me like I had to decide quickly. One choice was, I went with the others, down the elevator and out into the street, where we could stand and say our goodbyes. The next choice was I stayed with Claire. I didn’t want to lose our run of mornings by playing favorites, no matter how good-hearted she was, or how fancy her apartment, and so I stepped back and flat-out lied to her.

“Well, I got to make my way home to the Bronx, Claire, I got a church appointment in the afternoon, the choir.”

I felt plain-out awkward for the way I was lying. She said of course, yes, she understood, how silly of her, and then she kissed me gentle on the cheek. Her lips brushed against the side of my hair clip and she said: “Don’t worry.”

I don’t know the words for how she looked at me — there are few words — it was a welling up, a rising, a lifting up on the surface from the water, it was the sort of thing that could not be told. It felt for a moment that something had unthreaded down my spine, and my skin got tight, but what could I say? She grabbed hold of my wrist and tweaked it, saying a second time that she understood and she didn’t mean to take me away from the choir. I stood away from her. It was over then, I was sure, happily solved, and the corridor brightened up for me and a few more smiles went around among us, and we declared we’d see each other at Marcia’s next time — though it felt to me that there’d probably never be another time, that was the heartbreaker, I had a good idea that we’d let it slip away now, we had all had our chance, we’d brought our boys back to life for a little while — and we stepped out into the hallway, where Claire pressed the button for the elevator.

The iron gate was opened by the elevator boy. I was last to step in, and Claire pulled me back by the elbow and brought me close again, a sadness settling over her face.

She whispered: “You know, I’d be happy to pay you, Gloria.”

MY GRANDMOTHER WAS a slave. Her mother too. My great-grandfather was a slave who ended up buying himself out from under Missouri. He carried a mind-whip with him just in case he forgot. I know a thing or two about what people want to buy, and how they think they can buy it. I know the marks that got left on women’s ankles. I know the kneeling-down scars you get in the field. I heard the stories about the gavel coming down on children. I read the books where the coffin ships groaned. I heard about the shackles they put on your wrists. I was told about what happened the first night a girl came to bloom. I heard the way they like their sheets tight on the bed so you can bounce a coin off them. I’ve listened to the southern men in their crisp white shirts and ties. I’ve seen the fists pumping in the air. I joined in the songs. I was on the buses where they lifted their little children to snarl in the window. I know the smell of CS gas and it’s not as sweet as some folks say.

If you start forgetting you’re already lost.

Claire panicked the moment she said it. It was like all of her face whirlpooled down to her eyes. She got sucked up into her own unexpected words. The bottom of her eyelids trembled a second. She opened a limp, resigned palm, and stared at it as if to say that she had disappeared from herself and all she had left was this strange hand she was holding out in the air.

I stepped quickly into the elevator.

The elevator boy said: “Have a nice afternoon, Mrs. Soderberg.”

I could see her eyes as the door was pulled across: the tender resignation.

The door slid shut. Marcia sighed with relief. A giggle came from Jacqueline. Janet made a shushing sound and stared ahead at the elevator boy’s neck, but I could tell she was holding back a grin. I just thought to myself that I wasn’t going to fall into their game. They wanted to go off and whisper about it. You know, I’d be happy to pay you, Gloria. I was sure they had heard it, that they’d dissect it to death, maybe in some coffee shop, or some luncheonette, but I couldn’t stand the thought of any more talking, any more doors closing, any more rattle of cups. I would just leave them behind, go for a walk, a little way uptown, clear my head, glide a little, put one foot in front of the other, and just mash this over in my mind.

Downstairs, the light was pouring clear across the tiles. The doorman stopped us and said: “Excuse me, ladies, but Mrs. Soderberg called down on the intercom and she’d like to see you again a moment.”

Marcia gave one of her long sighs, and Jacqueline said how maybe she was bringing us some leftover bagels, like it was the funniest thing in the world, and I felt the heat pulse up in my cheeks.

“I have to go,” I said.

“Ooh, somebody’s hot under the collar,” said Marcia. She had sidled up beside me and laid her hand on my forearm.

“I’ve got choir practice to go to.”

“Lordy,” she said, her eyes reduced to a slit.

I stared right back at her, then stepped out the door, up the avenue, the burn of their eyes on my back.

“Gloria,” they called. “Glor-ia.”

All around me, people were walking surefooted and shiny down the street. Businessmen and doctors and well-dressed ladies on the way to lunch. The taxis were driving by with their lights off all of a sudden for a colored woman, since they didn’t want to pick me up, even in my best dress, in the bright afternoon, in the summer heat. Maybe I’d take them the wrong way, out of the city, where the money and the paintings were, to the Bronx, where the money and the paintings weren’t. Everyone knows the taxi drivers hate a colored woman anyway — she won’t tip him, or at the very best she’ll nickel-and-dime him, that’s the thinking, and there’s no way to change it, no amount of freedom-riding is ever going to shift that. So I just kept placing one foot in front of the other. They were my best shoes, my going-to-opera leathers, and they were comfortable at first, they weren’t too bad, and I thought the walking would shuck the loneliness.