The Street Read Online Free PDF

and mailed the money to Jim. Seventydollars. Jim and Bub could eat on that and pay the interest on the mortgage. On her first trip to the postoffice, she realized she had never seen a street like that main street in Lyme. A wide street lined with old elm trees whose branches met high overhead in the center of the street. In summer the sun could just filter through the leaves, so that by the time its rays reached the street, it made a pattern like the lace on expensive nightgowns. It was the most beautiful street she had ever seen, and finally she got so she would walk to the little postoffice hating the street, wishing that she could get back to Jamaica, back to Jim and Bub and the small frame house.
    In winter the bare branches of the trees made a pattern against the sky that was equally beautiful in snow or rain or cold, clear sunlight. Sometimes she took Little Henry Chandler to the postoffice with her and she couldn’t help thinking that it wasn’t right. He didn’t need her and Bub did. But Bub had to do without her.
    And because Little Henry Chandler’s father manufactured paper towels and paper napkins and paper handkerchiefs, why, even when times were hard, he could afford to hire a Lutie Johnson so his wife could play bridge in the afternoon while Lutie Johnson looked after Little Henry. Because as Little Henry’s father used to say, ‘Even when times are hard, thank God, people have got to blow their noses and wipe their hands and faces and wipe their mouths. Not quite so many as before, but enough so that I don’t have to worry.’
    Her grip on the subway strap tightened until the hard enameled surface cut into her hand and she relaxedher hand and then tightened it. Because that kitchen sink in the advertisement or one just like it was what had wrecked her and Jim. The sink had belonged to someone else—she’d been washing someone else’s dishes when she should have been home with Jim and Bub. Instead she’d cleaned another woman’s house and looked after another woman’s child while her own marriage went to pot; breaking up into so many little pieces it couldn’t be put back together again, couldn’t even be patched into a vague resemblance of its former self.
    Yet what else could she have done? It was her fault, really, that they lost their one source of income. And Jim couldn’t get a job, though he hunted for one—desperately, eagerly, anxiously. Walking from one employment agency to another; spending long hours in the musty agency waiting-rooms, reading old newspapers. Waiting, waiting, waiting to be called up for a job. He would come home shivering from the cold, saying, ‘God damn white people anyway. I don’t want favors. All I want is a job. Just a job. Don’t they know if I knew how I’d change the color of my skin?’
    There was the interest to be paid on the mortgage. It didn’t amount to much, but they didn’t have anything to pay it with. So she answered an advertisement she saw in the paper. The ad said it was a job for an unusual young woman because it was in the country and most help wouldn’t stay. ‘Seventy-five dollars a month. Modern house. Own room and bath. Small child.’
    She sat down and wrote a letter the instant she saw it; not telling Jim, hoping against hope that she wouldget it. It didn’t say ‘white only,’ so she started off by saying that she was colored. And an excellent cook, because it was true—anyone who could fix good meals on practically no money at all was an excellent cook. An efficient housekeeper—because it was easy to keep their house shining, so she shouldn’t have any trouble with a ‘modern’ one. It was a good letter, she thought, holding it in her hand a little way off from her as she studied it—nice neat writing, no misspelled words, careful margins, pretty good English. She was suddenly grateful to Pop. He’d known