Henry Roth - Mercy of a Rude Stream - The Complete Novels

Minnie was faring no easier than Ira. One afternoon she flung herself through the doorway, flung herself at him with a cry of woe, inarticulate with weeping, woe, a lamentation, loud and louder, disfiguring, eyes crimped together, tears in droplets and glistering in liquid braid down her cheeks as far as chin, her mouth open to its widest, red-curled tongue and tissue flaming, bawling.

“Shut up! What the hell’s the matter with you!” Ira closed the door as quickly as he could — to confine her frenzy, her hysteria, to the kitchen interior. “What happened to you? For Christ’s sake, talk!”

“Oh, my dear brother! Ira, dear! Ira-a-a!” Her sob soared from coherence to a prolonged wail, then trailed away into a moan: “A-a-a-ah!”

“For Christ’s sake, I heard that!” Brutal with dismay, he yelled at her. “A-a-h, what? What the hell happened?”

“Oh, oh, oh, what happened,” she wailed, and with the same hand that let her briefcase drop onto a chair, she stroked his. “Oh, Ira, my darling brother!”

“Well, what, for Christ’s sake?” He yanked his hand clear.

“They didn’t want me, they didn’t wanna take me into teachers college,” she sobbed.

“Into what? What d’you mean?”

“Into Hunter. Into the teachers college. That I was taking an academic course for. Taking Latin for.”

“Why the hell not? What the hell’s wrong? If you’ll stop your goddamn bawling, I’ll know what you’re talking about. Why wouldn’t they take you?”

“My s ,” she wept. “Wait, I’ll get my handkerchief — I failed.”

“Failed what?” He was beginning to surmise.

“The test, the test for normal school. The speaking test. I failed.” It seemed as if her spirit were scourged, not her body. “Ah-ah-ah!”

“Will you cut it out and talk!” he shouted at her.

“Oh, Ira.”

“Yes! Yes! Yes! Bullshit! You failed what? What s ?”

“I have a lateral s ,” she moaned.

“You have a lateral s . What in hell!”

“That’s what she said. The lady that came to test us. From the Board of Education. I don’t talk right. She gave everyone something to read. A hundred we were nearly. . so. Oh, Ira.” Forlorn, she seemed without a will of her own. She pushed the briefcase from chair to floor, but didn’t sit down, kept standing. “You know how I wanted to teach in the public school,” she continued brokenly, fingers crooked above the collar of her gray dress, and chin drooping to rest on them. “If I could get my teacher’s degree, we could move out of this dump. We could move to the Bronx. We could have a decent apartment. We could have a phone. Decent dates. Jewish fellers who could come to the house.”

“All right. All right.”

“You don’t care. You’re a man. You don’t care.”

“I do care. What the hell good is all that crying gonna do?”

“Oh, Ira, I can’t help it. Oh, I tried so hard. I read every word. I knew what everything meant when she asked me. And I didn’t pass. I didn’t pass. They don’t want me.” She slumped into a morbid silence. When she spoke again, her sobs had dried. She panted rather than spoke, words arid with bitterness: “A lateral s . A lateral s . A kid’s gonna know I got a lateral s . Who ever told me I had a lateral s ? Nobody. No English teacher. That’s how they took us out. That’s how they got rid of us. I think it’s only the Jews that they got like that.”

“Yeah?”

“I could swear. It was only the Jewish girls that failed in the speech test.” She brooded. “I’m glad you were here, not Mama, when I came home.”

“I am too. Your shriek. You would have scared the life out of her.”

“Oh. My darling brother. Oh.”

“Aw, c’mon. For Christ’s sake! Teaching isn’t the only thing in the world.”

“So why do you wanna teach?”

“Because I’m a malamut , as Pop says. What the hell’s that got to do with it? I hate business. I don’t want to have anything to do with it, and you don’t. You’ve had—” He gesticulated. “Experience. You’ve worked in stores, in a shop. You’ve been in an office — you like people. You get along with people. You like to talk with people.”

“But I wanted to be a public school teacher.”

“Listen, don’t tell me what you wanted to be. You got that half year left next term: then take business courses. Didn’t I get all screwed up with those commercial courses in the beginning of high school, junior high school, that I didn’t want?” He tried to talk as fast as he could, as forcefully as he could, anything to get her out of the sagging collapsed creature that sat as if dumped into a chair. “I’m telling you. I’m really sorry. No bull. But Jesus, Mom comes home and looks at you. You — you act like the end of the world. Immediately her ears are gonna start roaring. You’re gonna get her all worked up. Oy, gevald! Oy, a brukh iz mir! Mein orrim kindt! ” He rocked in disgusted mimicry.

“That lousy supervisor. She should croak! I know it was only the Jewish girls.”

“So we’re up against the same goddamn thing. What’re you gonna do? At least the other way you can tell her — calm. “They didn’t take me. I didn’t pass the test. I’m going into all commercial courses next term.’ Make it natural. You didn’t pass the test, so—”

“My dear brother. Oh, you’re so smart. Oh, I’m glad you were here. You make me feel better. I could hardly come home. I could hardly walk. I was so fertsfeilet , I didn’t know where I was going. I swear I could have walked downtown from Richmond. I could have died. I wanted to die. You know what I thought of: the subway tracks.”

“Listen, you didn’t steal anything. You weren’t going to get expelled from school.” Harsh memory steeled his harsh voice, against itself, against sympathy.

“My poor brother.”

“Yeah.”

“I feel just like it.”

“Like what?”

“Like you. When you were expelled from Stuyvesant.” She lifted her face, nodded drearily several times. “When you came home, and gave Papa the stick to hit you with. I’m no good. No good, that’s all.”

“Aw, come one. The two things don’t compare. I didn’t fail. I stole fountain pens. I got caught. I was expelled. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I did. I did. I let you lay me. How many times? How many times did we go in the bedroom? How many Sunday mornings?”

“What the hell’s that got to do with it?”

“A lot. Everything. Everything it’s got to do with. That’s why I’m no good.”

“Listen, for Christ’s sake, Minnie. Now, listen.” With hands extended, he summoned full exigency of plea. “Try coming back to yourself, will you? You’re way, way too excited. I mean, it’s a shock you’ve been through. Come on. Be sensible, Minnie. You’ll get over it.” He gesticulated. “Listen, there are other girls failed that test.”

Her hysteria blocked out the outside world, the world of Larry and Edith. In the preternatural light of the musty kitchen, Ira looked from the door back to his sister. Her hair disheveled, bronze locks hanging tear-drenched in her tortured face, she looked more like a Bacchant than a sister. The evident madness of his own horror contrasted so vividly with Larry’s descriptions of his shipboard romance, of the sweetness of salty-aired love: firm, cool, and far removed from this frenzy.

At last, she did go to the sink and wash, freshened her appearance, brought the dapple back to her cheeks, combed her reddish bobbed locks, primped. Fortunately another half hour passed, and Mom and Pop still hadn’t come home. By that time she seemed completely recovered, presentable, engrossed in a textbook, as he was.