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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780810135567 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Northwestern University Press |
| Publication date: | 07/15/2017 |
| Edition description: | Reissue |
| Pages: | 320 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.80(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d) |
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CHAPTER 1
Miss Muriel
Almost every day, Ruth Davis and I walk home from school together. We walk very slowly because we like to talk to each other and we don't get much chance in school or after school either. We are very much alike. We are both twelve years old and we are freshmen in high school and we never study — well, not very much, because we learn faster than the rest of the class. We laugh about the same things and we are curious about the same things. We even wear our hair in the same style — thick braids halfway down our backs. We are not alike in one respect. She is white and I am black.
Yesterday when we reached the building that houses my father's drugstore, we sat down on the front steps — long wooden steps that go all the way across the front of the building. Ruth said, "I wish I lived here," and patted the steps though ¿hey are very splintery.
Aunt Sophronia must have heard our voices, because she came to the door and said, "I left my shoes at the shoemaker s this morning. Please go and get them for me," and she handed me a little cardboard ticket with a number on it.
"You want to come with me, Ruth?"
"I've got to go home. I'm sure my aunt will have things for me to do. Just like your aunt." She smiled at Aunt Sophronia.
I walked partway home with Ruth and then turned back and went up Petticoat Lane toward the shoemaker's shop. Mr. Bemish, the shoemaker, is a little white man with gray hair. He has a glass eye. This eye is not the same color as his own eye. It is a deeper gray. If I stand too close to him, I get a squeamish feeling because one eye moves in its socket and the other eye does not.
Mr. Bemish and I are friends. I am always taking shoes to his shop to be repaired. We do not own a horse and buggy and so we walk a great deal. In fact, there is a family rule that we must walk any distance under three miles. As a result, our shoes are in constant need of repair, the soles and heels have to be replaced, and we always seem to be in need of shoelaces. Quite often I snag the uppers on the bull briars in the woods and then the tears have to be stitched.
When I went to get Aunt Sophronia's shoes, Mr. Bemish was sitting near the window. It is a big window and he has a very nice view of the street. He had on his leather apron and his eyeglasses. His glasses are small and they have steel rims. He was sewing a shoe and he had a long length of waxed linen thread in his needle. He waxes the thread himself.
I handed him the ticket and he got up from his workbench to get the shoes. I saw that he had separated them from the other shoes. These are Aunt Sophronia's store shoes. They had been polished so that they shone like patent leather. They lay alone, near the front of the table where he keeps the shoes he has repaired. He leaned toward me and I moved away from him. I did not like being so close to his glass eye.
"The lady who brought these shoes in. Who is she?"
I looked at him and raised one eyebrow. It has taken me two months of constant practice in front of a mirror to master the art of lifting one eyebrow.
Mr. Bemish said, "What's the matter with you? Didn't you hear what I said? Who was that lady who brought these shoes in?"
I moved further away from him. He didn't know it but I was imitating Dottle Smith, my favorite person in all the world. Dottle tells the most wonderful stories and he can act and recite poetry. He visits our family every summer. Anyway, I bowed to Mr. Bemish and I bowed to an imaginary group of people seated somewhere on my right and I said, "Gentlemen, be seated. Mr. Bones, who was that lady I saw you with last night?" I lowered the pitch of my voice and said, "That wasn't no lady. That was my wife."
"Girlie —"
"Why do you keep calling me girlie? I have a name."
"I cannot remember people's names. I'm too old. I've told you that before."
"How old are you, Mr. Bemish?"
"None of your business," he said pettishly. "Who —"
"Well, I only asked in order to decide whether to agree with you that you're old enough to be forgetful. Does the past seem more real to you than the present?"
Mr. Bemish scowled his annoyance. "The town is full of children," he said. "Its the children who bring the shoes in and come and get them after lye fixed them. They run the errands. All those children look just alike to me. I can't remember their names. I don't even try. I don't plan to clutter up my mind with a lot of children's names. I don't see the same children that often. So I call the boys boy, and I call the girls girlie. I've told you this before. What's the matter with you today?"
"It's spring and the church green is filled with robins looking for worms. Don't you sometimes wish you were a robin looking for a worm?"
He sighed. "Now tell me, who was that lady that brought these shoes in?"
"My Aunt Sophronia."
"Sophronia?" he said. "What a funny name. And she's your aunt?"
"Yes."
"Does she live with you?"
Mr. Bemish's cat mewed at the door and I let her in. She is a very handsome creature, gray with white feet, and really lovely fur. "May-a-ling, May-a-ling," I said, patting her, "where have you been?" I always have the feeling that if I wait, if I persist, she will answer me. She is a very intelligent cat and very responsive.
"Does your aunt five with you?"
"Yes."
"Has she been living with you very long?"
"About six months, I guess. She's a druggist."
"You mean she knows about medicine?"
"Yes, just like my father. They run the store together."
Mr. Bemish thrust his hands in Aunt Sophronia's shoes and held them up, studying them. Then he made the shoes walk along the edge of the table, in a mincing kind of walk, a caricature of the way a woman walks.
"She has small feet, hasn't she?"
"No." I tried to sound like my mother when she disapproves of something.
He flushed and wrapped the shoes in newspaper, making a very neat bundle.
"Is she married?"
"Who? Aunt Sophronia? No. She's not married."
Mr. Bemish took his cookie crock off the shelf. He lives in the shop. Against one wall he has a kitchen stove, a big black iron stove with nickel fenders and a tea kettle on it, and there is a black iron sink with a pump right near the stove. He cooks his meals himself, he bakes bread, and usually there is a stew bubbling in a pot on the stove. In winter the windows of his little shop frost over, so that I cannot see in and he cannot see out. He draws his red curtains just after dusk and lights his lamps, and the windows look pink because of the frost and the red curtains and the light shining from behind them.
Sometimes he forgets to draw the curtains that separate his sleeping quarters from the rest of the shop and I can see his bed. It is a brass bed. He evidently polishes it, because it shines like gold. It has a very intricate design on the headboard and the footboard. He has a little piece of flowered carpet in front of his bed. I can see his white china pot under the bed. A dark suit and some shirts hang on hooks on the wall. There is a chest of drawers with a small mirror in a gold frame over it, and a washbowl and pitcher on a washstand. The washbowl and pitcher are white with pink rosebuds painted on them.
Mr. Bemish offered me a cookie from the big stoneware crock.
"Have a cookie, girlie."
He makes big thick molasses cookies. I ate three of them without stopping. I was hungry and did not know it. I ate the fourth cookie very slowly and I talked to Mr. Bemish as I ate it.
"I don't think my Aunt Sophronia will ever get married."
"Why not?"
"Well, I never heard of a lady druggist before and I don't know who a lady druggist would marry. Would she marry another druggist? There aren't any around here anywhere except my father and certainly she couldn't marry him. He's already married to my mother."
"She looks like a gypsy," Mr. Bemish said dreamily.
"You mean my Aunt Sophronia?"
Mr. Bemish nodded.
"She does not. She looks like my mother and my Aunt Ellen. And my father and Uncle Johno say they look like Egyptian queens."
They are not very tall and they move quickly and their skins are brown and very smooth and their eyes are big and black and they stand up very straight. They are not alike though. My mother is business-minded. She likes to buy and sell things. She is a chiropodist and a hairdresser. Life sometimes seems full of other people's hair and their toenails. She makes a hair tonic and sells it to her customers. She designs luncheon sets and banquet cloths and guest towels and sells them. Aunt Ellen and Uncle Johno provide culture. Aunt Ellen lectures at schools and colleges. She plays Bach and Beethoven on the piano and organ. She writes articles for newspapers and magazines.
I do not know very much about Aunt Sophronia. She works in the store. She fills prescriptions. She does embroidery. She reads a lot. She doesn't play the piano. She is very neat. The men who come in the store look at her out of the corner of their eyes. Even though she wears her hair skinned tight back from her forehead, and wears very plain clothes, dresses with long, tight sleeves and high necks, but still looks like — well, like an Egyptian queen. She is young but she seems very quiet and sober.
Mr. Bemish offered me another cookie. "I'll eat it on my way home to keep my strength up. Thank you very much," I said primly.
When I gave the shoes to Aunt Sophronia, I said, "Mr. Bemish thinks you look like a gypsy."
My mother frowned. "Did he tell you to repeat that?"
"No, he didn't. But I thought it was an interesting statement."
"I wish you wouldn't repeat the things you hear. It just causes trouble. Now every time I look at Mr. Bemish I'll wonder about him —"
"What will you wonder — I mean —"
She said I must go and practice my music lesson and ignored my question. I wonder how old I will be before I can ask questions of an adult and receive honest answers. My family always finds something for me to do. Are they not using their power as adults to give orders in order to evade the questions?
That evening, about five o'clock, Mr. Bemish came in the store. I was sitting on the bench in the front. It is a very old bench. The customers sit there while they wait for their prescriptions to be filled. The wood is a beautiful color. It is a deep, reddish brown.
Mr. Bemish sat down beside me on the bench. His presence irritated me. He kept moving his hand up and down the arms of the bench, up and down, in a quick, nervous movement. It is as though he thought he had an awl in his hand, and he was going in and out making holes in leather and then sewing, slipping a needle in and out, as he would mend a saddle or a pair of boots.
My father looked at him over the top of his glasses and said, "Well, Bemish, what can I do for you?"
"Nothing. Nothing at all. I just stopped in to pass the time of day, to see how you all were —" His voice trailed away, softly.
He comes every evening. I find this very annoying. Quite often I have to squeeze myself onto the bench. Pritchett, the sexton of the Congregational church — stout, red-faced, smelling of whiskey — rings the bell for a service at seven o'clock and then he, too, sits in the front of the store, watching the customers as they come and go until closing time. He eyed Mr. Bemish rather doubtfully at first, but then ignored him. When the sexton and Mr. Bemish were on the bench, there was just room enough for me to squeeze in between them. I didn't especially mind the sexton, because he usually went to sleep, nodding and dozing until it was time to close the store. But Mr. Bemish doesn't sit still — and the movement of his hands is distracting.
My mother finally spoke to my father about Mr. Bemish. They were standing in the back room. "Why does Mr. Bemish sit out there in the store so much?" she asked.
"Nothin' else to do."
She shook her head. "I think he's interested in Sophronia. He keeps looking around for someone."
My father laughed out loud. "That dried-up old white man?"
The laughter of my father is a wonderful sound — if you know anything about music you know he sings tenor and you know he sings in the Italian fashion with an open throat and you begin to smile, and if he laughs long enough, you laugh too, because you can't help it.
"Bemish?" he said. And he laughed so hard that he had to lean against the doorjamb in order to keep his balance.
Every night right after supper, Mr. Bemish sits in the store rubbing the arm of the bench with that quick, jerking motion of his hand, nodding to people who come in, sometimes talking to them, but mostly just sitting.
Two weeks later I walked past his shop. He came to the door and called me. "Girlie," he said, beckoning.
"Yes, Mr. Bemish?"
"Is your aunt with the peculiar name still here — that is, in town, living with you?"
"Yes, she is, Mr. Bemish."
"Don't she ever go in the drugstore?"
"Not after five o'clock, Mr. Bemish. My father doesn't approve of ladies working at night. At night we act just like other people's families. We sit around the table in the dining room and talk, and we play checkers, and we read and we —"
"Yes, yes," he said impatiently. "But don't your aunt ever go anywhere at night?"
"I don't think so. I go to bed early."
"Do you think —" And he shook his head. "Never mind, girlie, never mind," and he sighed. "Here — I just made up a fresh batch of those big cookies you like so well."
I walked down Petticoat Lane toward the drugstore eating one of Mr. Bemish's thick molasses cookies. I wished I had taken time to tell him how cozy our downstairs parlor is in the winter. We have turkey-red curtains at the windows too, and we pull the window shades and draw the curtains, and there is a very thick rug on the floor and it is a small room, so the rug completely covers the floor. The piano is in there and an old-fashioned sofa with a carved mahogany frame and a very handsome round stove and it is warm in winter; and in the summer when the windows are open, you can look right out into the back yard and smell the flowers and feel the cool air that comes from the garden.
The next afternoon, Mr. Bemish came in the drugstore about quarter past three. It was a cold, windy afternoon. I had just come from school and there was a big mug of hot cocoa for me. Aunt Sophronia had it ready and waiting for me in the back room. I had just tasted the first spoonful; it was much too hot to gulp down, and I leaned way over and blew on it gently, and inhaled the rich, chocolatey smell of it. I heard my aunt say, "Why, Mr. Bemish, what are you doing out at this hour?"
"I thought I'd like an ice cream soda." Mr. Bemish's voice sounded breathless, lighter in weight, and the pitch was lower than normal.
I peeked out at him. He was sitting near the fountain in one of the ice cream parlor chairs. He looked very stiff and prim and neater than usual. He seemed to have flattened his hair closer to his skull. This made his head appear smaller. He was holding his head a little to one side. He looked like a bird but I cannot decide what bird — perhaps a chickadee. He drank the soda neatly and daintily. He kept looking at Aunt Sophronia.
He comes every day now, in the middle of the afternoon. He should have been in his shop busily repairing shoes or making boots, or making stews and cookies. Instead, he is in our store, and his light gray eye, the one good eye, travels busily over Aunt Sophronia. His ears seem to waggle when he hears her voice, and he has taken to giggling in a very silly fashion.
He always arrives about the same time. Sometimes I sit in one of the ice cream parlor chairs and talk to him. He smells faintly of leather, and of shoe polish, and of wax, and of dead flowers. It was quite a while before I could place that other smell — dead flowers. Each day he stays a little longer than he stayed the day before.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Miss Muriel and Other Stories"
by .
Copyright © 1971 Ann Petry.
Excerpted by permission of Northwestern University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Miss Muriel The New Mirror Has Anybody Seen Miss Dora Dean? The Migraine Workers Mother Africa The Bones of Louella Brown Olaf and His Girl Friend Like a Winding Sheet The Witness Solo on the Drums The Necessary Knocking on the Door In Darkness and Confusion Doby's GoneRelated Subjects
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