Read Online In the Slammer With Carol Smith by Hortense Calisher - Free Book Online
Authors: Hortense Calisher
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marathons.’
He has something for me, from his mother. One of the mate gourds with its silver spoon, and a sack of mate.
I say, ‘I’ll send you a card.’
Now that the bike is gone, the freed desk looks at-the-ready. Like it’s upended only at night, to give the sleeper on the cot more elbow-room. Like it’s waiting, like any good desk, for me to practice my secretarial skills on it, including some not too classic Spanish. From the opposite wall, the rolled-up backpack answers it.…
In Dedham, September was the month we brought out the Hudson Bay blankets; in the mornings their stripings glowed like grates. Once a week we burned one of the lumps of cannel coal which were—as I had learned to say after the aunts each Sunday—‘As big as Titus’s heart’—he being the owner of the coal-and-wood yard who every New Years sent over the quarter ton we stretched throughout the year.
Titus’s great-grandfather, helped to come North by the abolitionists, the aunt’s great-grandfather among them, ended his days in that man’s household service, as what was known in the turreted mansions of that era as ‘the useful man’—his tasks, where other servants were of course kept, being to carry and sweep for them, attend the furnace and polish the brass only, the silver being the butler’s or housekeeper’s chore. All duties of lower degree, but in no sense a slave’s. Titus’s father had established the coal-yard. Titus’s own son, who went to Howard University and died in a war, attended high school with my aunts; in the pile of yearbooks he stands in the class picture between the two of them. He too perhaps had a heart.
A night-wind is moving the blind. We face the east here also, though city chill is not the same as in a house with enough windows for the decades to rattle through, and a staircase wide enough for all that had blown in. City steam swells and steeps you in your own juices, rather than truly warms. Cannel coal burned cleaner than the low-grade bits which served the one wing of the house that we kept open in winter, though any that came to us from Titus’s yard was first washed down. When the old man died my aunts, two fiercely single women who had learned from manuals how to solder burst pipe and rewire cables the mice had gnawed, took to washing the coal themselves. I—the useful child, helping. The aunt who taught in the daytime roused me for school; the one who taught in the evenings greeted my return. The air in that house was pure—like an ethic one didn’t know one had. I didn’t know they were saving for more than the college I mightn’t get a scholarship to. For the trust.…
Time for my pill. I’ll miss the refrigerator, which whenever I open it spoons out its own mite of encouragement. My Miss Tidy, waiting every day to be refilled, it belongs to a stationary future. A backpack is always urging you on. When I go, I’ll stick the note already in my pocket on the fridge door. ‘I’m off, Gold. For what you did for me there is no substitute. Keep on the room here if you want to. For yourself, not for me. Carmen will tell you where to pay the rent. Good luck. I’ll send you a card.’ Once the note was written up I saw I should have said Daisy instead of Gold, but let it be.
I take my pill. The past—the pills bury it. Else why do those on the ward, both the meek and the violent, try to refuse them, until forced? A pill buries the self that you are, that others must make manageable. Docile, one feels guilty for not being faithful to those depths.
Gold sleeps on, heavily. A ‘good’ SW is instructed not to ‘identify’ with the ‘clients.’ That is their lingo. But Gold is now merely the SW of herself. Before she slept we had a long gab, from cot to floor, floor to cot. I am in Angel’s Boy Scout sleeping-bag, which his mother pressed on me the night Gold came; it smells of boy, and woodsmoke. Gold, bending down at me, smells of her new hair. ‘You never did tell
He has something for me, from his mother. One of the mate gourds with its silver spoon, and a sack of mate.
I say, ‘I’ll send you a card.’
Now that the bike is gone, the freed desk looks at-the-ready. Like it’s upended only at night, to give the sleeper on the cot more elbow-room. Like it’s waiting, like any good desk, for me to practice my secretarial skills on it, including some not too classic Spanish. From the opposite wall, the rolled-up backpack answers it.…
In Dedham, September was the month we brought out the Hudson Bay blankets; in the mornings their stripings glowed like grates. Once a week we burned one of the lumps of cannel coal which were—as I had learned to say after the aunts each Sunday—‘As big as Titus’s heart’—he being the owner of the coal-and-wood yard who every New Years sent over the quarter ton we stretched throughout the year.
Titus’s great-grandfather, helped to come North by the abolitionists, the aunt’s great-grandfather among them, ended his days in that man’s household service, as what was known in the turreted mansions of that era as ‘the useful man’—his tasks, where other servants were of course kept, being to carry and sweep for them, attend the furnace and polish the brass only, the silver being the butler’s or housekeeper’s chore. All duties of lower degree, but in no sense a slave’s. Titus’s father had established the coal-yard. Titus’s own son, who went to Howard University and died in a war, attended high school with my aunts; in the pile of yearbooks he stands in the class picture between the two of them. He too perhaps had a heart.
A night-wind is moving the blind. We face the east here also, though city chill is not the same as in a house with enough windows for the decades to rattle through, and a staircase wide enough for all that had blown in. City steam swells and steeps you in your own juices, rather than truly warms. Cannel coal burned cleaner than the low-grade bits which served the one wing of the house that we kept open in winter, though any that came to us from Titus’s yard was first washed down. When the old man died my aunts, two fiercely single women who had learned from manuals how to solder burst pipe and rewire cables the mice had gnawed, took to washing the coal themselves. I—the useful child, helping. The aunt who taught in the daytime roused me for school; the one who taught in the evenings greeted my return. The air in that house was pure—like an ethic one didn’t know one had. I didn’t know they were saving for more than the college I mightn’t get a scholarship to. For the trust.…
Time for my pill. I’ll miss the refrigerator, which whenever I open it spoons out its own mite of encouragement. My Miss Tidy, waiting every day to be refilled, it belongs to a stationary future. A backpack is always urging you on. When I go, I’ll stick the note already in my pocket on the fridge door. ‘I’m off, Gold. For what you did for me there is no substitute. Keep on the room here if you want to. For yourself, not for me. Carmen will tell you where to pay the rent. Good luck. I’ll send you a card.’ Once the note was written up I saw I should have said Daisy instead of Gold, but let it be.
I take my pill. The past—the pills bury it. Else why do those on the ward, both the meek and the violent, try to refuse them, until forced? A pill buries the self that you are, that others must make manageable. Docile, one feels guilty for not being faithful to those depths.
Gold sleeps on, heavily. A ‘good’ SW is instructed not to ‘identify’ with the ‘clients.’ That is their lingo. But Gold is now merely the SW of herself. Before she slept we had a long gab, from cot to floor, floor to cot. I am in Angel’s Boy Scout sleeping-bag, which his mother pressed on me the night Gold came; it smells of boy, and woodsmoke. Gold, bending down at me, smells of her new hair. ‘You never did tell
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