T. Boyle - The Women

And then she remembered: she’d meant to speak to the cook, to Gertrude, about baking something special that afternoon for Martha. Or rather Martha’s friend Edna, who was planning on riding her pony over so the two of them could put on their party dresses and have tea like little ladies out on the screened-in porch. Some finger cakes, maybe, something with coconut and crème — Gertrude was a marvel with coconut. And if John promised not to pester the girls, she supposed he could join the party at some point — and Billy Weston’s son, Ernest, who was a year older than John and more rough and tumble, more a country boy, but who at least gave John someone to tag along with. Or maybe that wasn’t such a good idea — the boys could have a separate party, yes, that would be better, perhaps down by the lake where they could work off some of their high spirits.

She got up from the chair — Billy had taken the mower himself now and was cutting a swath away from Brunker, who hadn’t moved save to shove his hands in his pockets — and crossed through the dining room to the kitchen. She rarely came into the kitchen anymore — there was no need to really, and when she did she felt almost as if she were intruding. Especially when both the Carletons were there. It was nothing they said or did particularly, but they seemed to tense when she entered the room, which was only natural, she supposed. Though Mrs. Swenson never seemed to mind. She wouldn’t have cared if Mamah had camped out under the sink — would have preferred it, for that matter, so she’d have someone to complain to all day long in her high ratcheting whine. But the Carletons were different and she respected that.

It wasn’t till she was there, her hand on the doorknob, that she sensed something wasn’t right. A noise alerted her, a sharp wet sound, as of meat pounded with a mallet, succeeded by a curse — a man’s voice, Carleton’s, rising up the scale. She pushed open the door. And entered a room that was like an oven, like a furnace, the windows drawn shut and smoke in the air, something burning in a pan on the stove. She saw Carleton then, his back to her, standing over what looked to be a pile of washing on the floor, but wasn’t washing at all. It was Gertrude. Her left eye was swollen shut and there was a bright finger of blood at the corner of her mouth. She crouched in the corner, shrinking away from him, her head bowed, her arms clutched to her chest.

“You stupid fucking cow!” Carleton shouted. “I’ve told you a thousand times if I’ve told you once: I want my meat cooked rare. Rare, do you hear me? ”

The door was ajar. The smoke erupted from the pan. Carleton didn’t seem to notice. Or care. He was secure. He’d pulled the windows shut on the scene, closed the room off so he could assault his wife and no one to interfere. Mamah stood there in the doorway, paralyzed.

Carleton’s shoulders jumped beneath the fabric of his shirt. He dropped his voice. “You stupid, stupid Bajan slut,” he whispered, and lashed out with the toe of his tarnished tan boot, once, twice, as if he were trying to kick through the wall, and Gertrude drew in two sharp breaths in succession and he kicked her again. “What does it take to get some respect around here? Huh? What do I have to do, kill you? Is that what you want? Is it, woman? Is it?”

That was when Mamah stepped in. She was terrified, panicked, her every instinct to turn and run, but she took hold of the enameled edge of the wash basin and flung herself between them, raising it up like a shield. He was right there, right in her face, the smell of him as raw and unrelieved as anything she’d ever experienced, as death, as mangled flesh, rotten flesh, flesh set afire and burning up in the pan. He didn’t move, didn’t flinch or back off or acknowledge her, and for the fraction of a moment she thought he was going to come at her next, but then she saw that he was as shocked as she was, his eyes retreating from the scene as if he’d just awakened from a dream to this nightmare of abuse and outraged whiteness and the flame under the pan and the smoke rising, rising. “Don’t you dare,” she said.

He took a step back, dropped his arms to his sides.

Mamah could barely control her voice. She was shaking. “You get out of here!” she shouted. “Get out!”

And then the strangest thing happened: he grinned at her. His eyes went cold and up came that automatic grin. But he wasn’t moving. And his hands were clenched. “You speak to me like that?” he said, without a trace of emotion. “Who do you think you are? You’re nothing but a—”

“No,” Gertrude groaned, trying to get to her feet. “Julian, no—”

“Nothing but—” And then, only then, did he turn away, jerking the handle of the cast-iron pan so that it skittered away from the flame and clattered to the floor, pausing only to give it a savage kick before he made his way to the door. But he wasn’t finished, not yet. He swung back round on her. “You people,” he spat, “with your books. This woman is my wife here. My wife. Can you understand that?”

“I’m giving you your notice, right here and now, as of this minute,” she said, but the words sounded hollow in her ears, and she knew it and so did he.

He shook his head slowly, as if the motion of it pained him—“And you call us niggers,” he said — and then he was gone.

He was lost and he knew it, hot blood beating in his temples with the certain knowledge of every degraded inconsolable thing to come, the hurt, the yellow-haired train, Chicago, the island, back to the island with his tail between his legs like a whipped cur, and who was to blame? Who else? Gertrude. That bitch. That cow. And how he’d ever got mixed up with a woman like that was a mystery to him — the ignorance of her and the insipidity, the barefooted low peasant drivel that came out of her mouth — but it was his fault too, he knew that, the fault of his lust that was like a dog’s lust. He saw her naked breasts in the eye of his mind, and the tight sweet insuck of her belly, the place between her legs, the way she swayed beneath the maubey pot perched up on the flat crown of her head sashaying her derriere through the marketplace in Bridgetown, and it was Maubey, maubey for sale, and you t’ink you be wantin’ somet’in’ else, little sir? she seventeen and he too weak to deny himself. That’s right. And now it was over. Now it was ruined. One slip and he had his notice and where would he go now? Women. They squeezed you, oh, they did. Squeezed you. Squeezed you. Till there was no juice left.

Only then did he realize that he was talking to himself, that he’d spoken aloud for anybody to hear, and he took a moment to lean forward and spit on the corner of the rug he’d brushed himself and brushed again till the nap stood up and laid itself down twice over. But the door. The door was right there beside him, still half-open, because he’d stalked out of that room and stopped in his traces, his back pressed to the wall, too worked up and twisted with the sick clutch of despair to make his legs work. Through the gap of the door came the smoke, black as skin, twisted like a pot of eels, eelskin, rising in a column to fan across the ceiling. He could hear her in there sobbing as if she had something to sob about — he had half a mind to go back through that door and finish what he’d started, finish both of them, both of the bitches, one black and one white. Mamah. Mamah Bouton Borthwick. Translator. Suffragist. Soul mate. He’d read in that book and it was nothing but cant and heresy. Who was she to interfere between a man and his wife? She might have been free with her love but even the whores on Baxter Road had the sense to charge for it.