for a dish towel and bound it tightly around his wrist.
“Quick, let’s get him into the car,” she cried. “Get his coat.”
Richard stood sobbing in choking gulps. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”
Nan threw a coat over Paul’s shoulders and pushed them both towards the door. She was swift and efficient.
“I did this,” moaned Richard. “This is my doing.”
She had a moment, at the elevator, to place a hand on his shoulder and lean against him. “Oh, Richard,” she said gently in a soft wail, “you can’t leave now. Oh, you can’t. You see how much he needs you.”
Richard nodded again and again, wiping his eyes with his fist.
The towel was sopping with blood, but luckily Nan had remembered to bring along extras. She changed the bandage and dropped the dripping red towel in a trash can outside the front door.
“Poor child,” she murmured. “Oh, my poor baby.”
“I’ll do anything for him now,” said Richard. He had stopped crying and was slamming the car door shut and starting the engine. “He’ll need more intensive treatment. I’ll have a consultation with Dr. Crewes. Can you stand to have me—”
“We’ll work everything out, everything. Just so long as he’s all right,” said Nan from the back seat, where she sat cradling Paul’s head in her lap.
THE MIDDLE CLASSES
T HEY SAY MEMORY ENHANCES places, but my childhood block of small brick row houses grows smaller every year, till there is barely room for me to stand upright in my own recollections. The broad avenue on our corner, gateway to the rest of the world, an avenue so broad that for a long time I was not permitted to cross it alone, has narrowed to a strait, and its row of tiny shops—dry cleaners, candy store, beauty parlor, grocery store—has dwindled to a row of cells. On my little block itself the hedges, once staunch walls guarding the approach to every house, are shrunken, their sharp dark leaves stunted. The hydrangea bush—what we called a snowball bush—in front of the house next to mine has shrunk; its snowballs have melted down. And the ledges from each front walk to each driveway, against whose once-great stone walls we played King, a kind of inverse handball, and from whose tops we jumped with delectable agonies of fear—ah, those ledges have sunk, those leaps are nothing. Small.
In actuality, of course, my Brooklyn neighborhood has not shrunk but it has changed. Among the people I grew up with, that is understood as a euphemism meaning black people have moved in. They moved in family by family, and one by one the old white families moved out, outwards, that is, in an outward direction (Long Island, Rockaway, Queens), the direction of water—it seems not to have occurred to them that soon there would be nowhere to go unless back into the surf where we all began—except for two of the old white families who bravely remained and sent reports in the outward directions that living with the black people was fine, they were nice people, good neighbors, and so these two white families came to be regarded by the departed as sacrificial heroes of sorts; everyone admired them but no one would have wished to emulate them.
The changes the black families brought to the uniform block were mostly in the way of adornment. Colorful shutters affixed to the front casement windows, flagstones on the walkways leading to the porch steps, flowers on the bordering patches of grass, and quantities of ornamental wrought iron; a few of the brick porch walls have even been replaced by wrought-iron ones. (Those adjacent porches with their low dividing walls linked our lives. We girls visited back and forth climbing from porch to porch to porch, peeking into living room windows as we darted by.) But for all these proprietary changes, my block looks not so very different, in essence. It has remained middle class.
Black people appeared on the block when I lived there too, but they were maids, and very few at that. Those few came once a
“Quick, let’s get him into the car,” she cried. “Get his coat.”
Richard stood sobbing in choking gulps. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”
Nan threw a coat over Paul’s shoulders and pushed them both towards the door. She was swift and efficient.
“I did this,” moaned Richard. “This is my doing.”
She had a moment, at the elevator, to place a hand on his shoulder and lean against him. “Oh, Richard,” she said gently in a soft wail, “you can’t leave now. Oh, you can’t. You see how much he needs you.”
Richard nodded again and again, wiping his eyes with his fist.
The towel was sopping with blood, but luckily Nan had remembered to bring along extras. She changed the bandage and dropped the dripping red towel in a trash can outside the front door.
“Poor child,” she murmured. “Oh, my poor baby.”
“I’ll do anything for him now,” said Richard. He had stopped crying and was slamming the car door shut and starting the engine. “He’ll need more intensive treatment. I’ll have a consultation with Dr. Crewes. Can you stand to have me—”
“We’ll work everything out, everything. Just so long as he’s all right,” said Nan from the back seat, where she sat cradling Paul’s head in her lap.
THE MIDDLE CLASSES
T HEY SAY MEMORY ENHANCES places, but my childhood block of small brick row houses grows smaller every year, till there is barely room for me to stand upright in my own recollections. The broad avenue on our corner, gateway to the rest of the world, an avenue so broad that for a long time I was not permitted to cross it alone, has narrowed to a strait, and its row of tiny shops—dry cleaners, candy store, beauty parlor, grocery store—has dwindled to a row of cells. On my little block itself the hedges, once staunch walls guarding the approach to every house, are shrunken, their sharp dark leaves stunted. The hydrangea bush—what we called a snowball bush—in front of the house next to mine has shrunk; its snowballs have melted down. And the ledges from each front walk to each driveway, against whose once-great stone walls we played King, a kind of inverse handball, and from whose tops we jumped with delectable agonies of fear—ah, those ledges have sunk, those leaps are nothing. Small.
In actuality, of course, my Brooklyn neighborhood has not shrunk but it has changed. Among the people I grew up with, that is understood as a euphemism meaning black people have moved in. They moved in family by family, and one by one the old white families moved out, outwards, that is, in an outward direction (Long Island, Rockaway, Queens), the direction of water—it seems not to have occurred to them that soon there would be nowhere to go unless back into the surf where we all began—except for two of the old white families who bravely remained and sent reports in the outward directions that living with the black people was fine, they were nice people, good neighbors, and so these two white families came to be regarded by the departed as sacrificial heroes of sorts; everyone admired them but no one would have wished to emulate them.
The changes the black families brought to the uniform block were mostly in the way of adornment. Colorful shutters affixed to the front casement windows, flagstones on the walkways leading to the porch steps, flowers on the bordering patches of grass, and quantities of ornamental wrought iron; a few of the brick porch walls have even been replaced by wrought-iron ones. (Those adjacent porches with their low dividing walls linked our lives. We girls visited back and forth climbing from porch to porch to porch, peeking into living room windows as we darted by.) But for all these proprietary changes, my block looks not so very different, in essence. It has remained middle class.
Black people appeared on the block when I lived there too, but they were maids, and very few at that. Those few came once a
Similar Books
