of empty barges upstream
A little girl feeding her mother an apple
A helicopter
A kindergarten class, in two sections
Clouds in a blue sky
A flowering cherry tree
Seven freight cars moving imperceptibly, against the tidal current, in the wake of the
Herbert E. Smith
A man with a pipe in his mouth and a can of Prince Albert smoking tobacco on the bench beside him
A man sorting his possessions into two canvas bags, one of which contains a concertina
Six very small children playing in the sandpile, under the watchful eyes of their mothers or nursemaids
An oil tanker
A red-haired priest reading a pocket-size New Testament
A man scattering bread crumbs for the pigeons
The Coast Guard cutter
CG 40435
turning around just north of the lighthouse and heading back toward Hell Gate Bridge
A sweeper with his bag and a ferruled stick
A little boy pointing a red plastic pistol at his father’s head
A pleasure yacht
An airplane
A man and a woman speaking French
A child on a tricycle
A boy on roller skates
A reception under a striped tent on the lawn of the mayor’s house
The fireboat station
The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Drive, a cinder path, a warehouse, seagulls, and so on
Who said
Happiness is the light shining on the water. The water is cold and dark and deep
.…
“I T ’ S perfectly insane,” George said when he met Iris coming from Gristede’s with a big brown-paper bag heavy as lead under each arm and relieved her of them. “Don’t we still have that cart?”
“Nobody in the building uses them.”
“But couldn’t you?”
“No,” Iris said.
“A LL children,” Cindy said wisely, leaning against him, with her head in the hollow of his neck, “all children think their mommy and daddy are the nicest.”
“And what about you? Are you satisfied?”
She gave him a hug and a kiss and said, “I think you and Mommy are the nicest mommy and daddy in the whole world.”
“And I think you are the nicest Cindy,” he said, his eyes moist with tears.
They sat and rocked each other gently.
A FTER Bessie had taken the breakfast dishes out of the dishwasher, she went into the front, dragging the vacuum cleaner, to do the children’s rooms. She stood sometimes for five or ten minutes, looking down at East End Avenue — at the drugstore, the luncheonette, the rival cleaning establishments (side by side and, according to rumor, both owned by the same person), the hairstyling salon, and the branch office of the Chase Manhattan Bank. Together they made a canvas backdrop for a procession of people Bessie had never seen before, or would not recognize if she had, and so she couldn’t say to herself, “There goes old Mrs. Maltby,” but she looked anyway, she took it all in. The sight of other human beings nourished her mind. She read them as people read books. Pieces of toys, pieces of puzzles that she found on the floor she put on one shelf or another of the toy closet in Cindy’s room, gradually introducing a disorder that Iris dealt with periodically, taking a whole day out of her life. But nobody told Bessie she was supposed to find the box the piece came out of, and it is questionable whether she could have anyway. The thickness of the lenses in her eyeglasses suggested that her eyesight was poorer than she let on.
She was an exile, far from home, among people who were not like the white people she knew and understood. She was here because down home she was getting forty dollars a week and she had her old age to think of. She and Iris alternated between irritation at one another and sudden acts of kindness. It was the situation that was at fault. Given halfway decent circumstances, men can work cheerfully and happily for other men, in offices, stores, and even factories. And so can women. But if Iris opened the cupboard or the icebox to see what they did or didn’t contain, Bessie popped out of her room and said, “Did you want something?” And Iris withdrew, angry because she had been driven
A little girl feeding her mother an apple
A helicopter
A kindergarten class, in two sections
Clouds in a blue sky
A flowering cherry tree
Seven freight cars moving imperceptibly, against the tidal current, in the wake of the
Herbert E. Smith
A man with a pipe in his mouth and a can of Prince Albert smoking tobacco on the bench beside him
A man sorting his possessions into two canvas bags, one of which contains a concertina
Six very small children playing in the sandpile, under the watchful eyes of their mothers or nursemaids
An oil tanker
A red-haired priest reading a pocket-size New Testament
A man scattering bread crumbs for the pigeons
The Coast Guard cutter
CG 40435
turning around just north of the lighthouse and heading back toward Hell Gate Bridge
A sweeper with his bag and a ferruled stick
A little boy pointing a red plastic pistol at his father’s head
A pleasure yacht
An airplane
A man and a woman speaking French
A child on a tricycle
A boy on roller skates
A reception under a striped tent on the lawn of the mayor’s house
The fireboat station
The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Drive, a cinder path, a warehouse, seagulls, and so on
Who said
Happiness is the light shining on the water. The water is cold and dark and deep
.…
“I T ’ S perfectly insane,” George said when he met Iris coming from Gristede’s with a big brown-paper bag heavy as lead under each arm and relieved her of them. “Don’t we still have that cart?”
“Nobody in the building uses them.”
“But couldn’t you?”
“No,” Iris said.
“A LL children,” Cindy said wisely, leaning against him, with her head in the hollow of his neck, “all children think their mommy and daddy are the nicest.”
“And what about you? Are you satisfied?”
She gave him a hug and a kiss and said, “I think you and Mommy are the nicest mommy and daddy in the whole world.”
“And I think you are the nicest Cindy,” he said, his eyes moist with tears.
They sat and rocked each other gently.
A FTER Bessie had taken the breakfast dishes out of the dishwasher, she went into the front, dragging the vacuum cleaner, to do the children’s rooms. She stood sometimes for five or ten minutes, looking down at East End Avenue — at the drugstore, the luncheonette, the rival cleaning establishments (side by side and, according to rumor, both owned by the same person), the hairstyling salon, and the branch office of the Chase Manhattan Bank. Together they made a canvas backdrop for a procession of people Bessie had never seen before, or would not recognize if she had, and so she couldn’t say to herself, “There goes old Mrs. Maltby,” but she looked anyway, she took it all in. The sight of other human beings nourished her mind. She read them as people read books. Pieces of toys, pieces of puzzles that she found on the floor she put on one shelf or another of the toy closet in Cindy’s room, gradually introducing a disorder that Iris dealt with periodically, taking a whole day out of her life. But nobody told Bessie she was supposed to find the box the piece came out of, and it is questionable whether she could have anyway. The thickness of the lenses in her eyeglasses suggested that her eyesight was poorer than she let on.
She was an exile, far from home, among people who were not like the white people she knew and understood. She was here because down home she was getting forty dollars a week and she had her old age to think of. She and Iris alternated between irritation at one another and sudden acts of kindness. It was the situation that was at fault. Given halfway decent circumstances, men can work cheerfully and happily for other men, in offices, stores, and even factories. And so can women. But if Iris opened the cupboard or the icebox to see what they did or didn’t contain, Bessie popped out of her room and said, “Did you want something?” And Iris withdrew, angry because she had been driven
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