I stood there, clenching my fists, sucking for breath. I got a crazy feeling of being penned in by my own emotions; of getting out of my own grasp; of not being able to control my actions any longer. I didn't know whether to be mad, indifferent, or sympathetic; whether to turn and walk out, or sit down beside her and try to work it out. Finally I dropped back into my chair.
'Baby, I wish you'd try to understand,' I said. 'I don't want to think about it either. Goddamn, it hurts me too. Probably more than you. Can't you understand that? I feel like a damn simple fool.' I took a breath, let it out, felt my legs tightening so they lifted my feet off the floor. 'Every time I kiss you now I'm scared you might be laughing.'
She opened her eyes and looked at me for a long time. It was as if she was searching for something. Then suddenly her whole face took on a soft tender look and way back in her eyes there was something like a shadow of hurt. She got up and came over and sat on the arm of my chair. 'You're just a baby,' she murmured. 'Just a big little baby.' And lifted my face and kissed me like she never had before.
I put my arm about her waist and pulled her down into my lap and rubbed my face in her soft silky hair, smelling its faint perfume and feeling its soft caress. I felt all alive inside for the first time in days, on the brink of something wonderful. I felt as if all of a sudden everything was going to be all right; as if I was going to know all the answers and never have anything to worry about again as long as I lived.
She drew back her head and shoulders to look at me. Her gaze was level, pure, but not tender any more. 'Bob darling, won't you believe me when I tell you that I am not a Lesbian?' she said.
I could feel the frown pop between my eyes. 'But you'd been there before,' I said.
She broke away and jumped to her feet, wheeled to look down at me. 'So that's it,' she said. 'So that's why you came here tonight-to cross-examine me.'
I put my hands on the arms of the chair, stood up. I felt resigned, tired, let down, as if I was locked up and would never get out. 'You wanna know why I came here tonight?' I asked her. It didn't make any difference one way or another now. I could tell her. I didn't even give a damn what she might think about me. 'Not because I wanted to, I'll tell you that. I didn't want to see you again until I could get you straightened out in my mind. I sure as hell didn't come here to argue with you about all that mess that happened last night. I didn't come here to argue at all.' I took a breath. 'I came here because I had to. Because I thought you were my girl and I didn't have no other goddamned place to go. Maybe that don't sound so bright, but it's the truth. I had to get somewhere to cool off, to get myself straightened out. I had to get off the goddamned streets out of the goddamned peckerwoods' eyes before I killed some son of a bitch and went to the chair.' I let my breath out, sighed, started turning away. 'Now I'm gonna quit bothering you with it and go home,' I said.
She stepped around in front of me, clutched me by the arms, held me, made me look down into her eyes. 'What is it, darling?' she asked. 'Tell me, please.'
'I don't know,' I muttered. I wanted to tell her; I wanted to get it out of me. 'Every goddamn thing. My nerves are on edge. I keep expecting trouble every minute. Everything's going wrong all at once-it's pressing me too hard. Goddamnit! You! And the job! And just living in the world-'
'Has anything happened on the job?' she asked quickly.
I looked away from her. 'No, just the same old grind,' I lied. 'The white folks trying to see how much we'll take.' I paused, then said, 'But it don't never lighten up. I tell you, I can't take much more of it.'
She let go my arms and turned away from me. 'Bob, if you continue brooding about white people you are going insane,' she said.
'You're not just saying it.'
She sat down again. 'How do you expect me to help you, Bob?' she asked. 'I've talked to you time and time again about your attitude toward white people. I've exhausted every argument, and still you don't listen-'
'I'll listen to anything you've got to say tonight,' I told her.
'No, you won't.' She sighed. 'All you've done tonight is fight against me. You've tried to hurt me in every way you know. You won't even give me a chance to help you, darling. You keep throwing what happened last night back into my face. Nothing I say about it seems to make any difference to you.'
I dug out another cigarette and lit it, drank the melted ice in my highball glass, sank down on the love seat. 'Do you really want to know, Alice?' I asked her.
'How to help you?' She was looking at me steadily. 'Yes, I really do.'
'Well, I'll tell you,' I said, puffing at my cigarette. 'There are three ways-' I spread my hands. 'Maybe you couldn't do any of them anyway, but I'll tell you.' I took another puff. 'You can sit up and drink with me until I go blotto,' I said. 'That'll keep me put as long as I stay blotto. Or you can let me go to bed with you. If I go to sleep afterward that'll hold me until tomorrow morning-I don't know for how long after that.' I got up and found an ash tray, mashed out my cigarette, walked over to the window, and looked down into the soft warm night. A man and a woman were getting out of a car across the street; she looked like a girl I knew slightly named Monica; I watched them go into the house. 'Or you can talk to me, let me talk to you,' I said without looking around. 'You can tell me why you went to Stella's; how it happened you went there the first time.' I paused and when she didn't say anything I went on, 'I'll tell you everything I know about myself, about my waking up scared every morning, about the way I feel toward white people, why I resent them so goddamned much-resent the things they can do when all they got is colour-tell you all about what happens inside of me every time I go out in the street.' I waited for her a moment, then went on. 'Maybe we can find out what's wrong with both of us, even find out how we really feel toward each other. Maybe you can convince me I'm wrong about a lot of things-I've got an open mind tonight, honestly, baby.' I breathed again. 'Or if you can't convince me maybe you can make it worth while for me to try to be different. If I was really sure about you-' I broke off without finishing, turned to look at her.
She had her head turned around toward me, but when I looked she looked away. I went across and sat down facing her again. 'Listen, baby,' I said. 'If I have to keep on like I'm going-not being sure about you-and getting kicked around by every white tramp who comes along, I'm gonna hurt somebody as sure as hell.'
She sat quite still for a long time after I'd stopped speaking, studying me. 'Bob, your greatest difficulty stems from your not knowing what you want to do in life,' she said. I don't think she put on her social worker's attitude intentionally; she just couldn't help it. 'If you concentrated your energies on a single objective and worked very hard toward that end-for instance if you applied yourself to your studies and thought more about re-entering college this fall-these minor incidents and day-to-day irritations would not affect you so greatly.' She paused to let it sink in.
I gave a long deep sigh and looked away from her, wondering if it was too much to ask of her to face it for a minute. Maybe she really couldn't, I thought-maybe none of her class could face it. Maybe that was why it was so insane when it broke out-because she had to keep it buried as much as possible, refuse to look at it, to recognize it, to discuss it; maybe that was her way of keeping on living, to keep her frustrations hidden, covered over with compromises, just like staying on my muscle and trying to fight back and getting kicked in the mouth every minute was mine. Maybe we'd never get together, I thought. But I listened.
'A certain amount of frustration is latent in most people-people of all races,' she went on. 'But in you-'
'It won't help to generalize,' I cut her off. 'I'm willing to talk about myself without any prompting or analysis or-'
Now she cut me off. 'Bob, I've been thinking seriously that perhaps I'm not the type of woman for you. I'm ambitious and demanding. I want to be important in the world. I want a husband who is important and respected and wealthy enough so that I can avoid a major part of the discriminatory practices which I am sensible enough to know I cannot change. I don't want to be pulled down by a person who can't adjust himself to the limitations of his race-a person who feels he has to make a fist fight out of every issue-a person who'd jeopardize his entire future because of some slight or, say, because some ignorant white person should call him a nigger-'
'That lets me out,' I said, standing up. 'I may as well tell you, baby, a white woman called me a nigger at the yard Monday morning and I called her a cracker slut and lost my job.'
'Lost your job?' She recoiled as if I had slapped her. 'So that's what's wrong with you.' She was suddenly indignant. 'So that's why you need my help-'
'Hear my story first,' I said, and told her about my run-in with Madge and my getting downgraded.
She jumped up and took a turn about the room. 'If the white people hated you as much as you hated them-'
'They'd kill me now and have it done with,' I supplied. 'And that'd be fine with me.'
She stopped and looked at me. 'Do you want to be white, Bob?'
