Without Prejudice Read Online Free PDF

again in the bedroom in front of the untouched array of marbles, she closed the door solidly behind her as she left.
    He waited as he heard her slow heavy steps go along the hallway towards the front of the apartment, then he quickly went to the door. But he couldn’t open it: the brass handle would start to turn in his small hand then slip back. He tried using both hands but it didn’t work.
    This time his crying was solely for himself – he had given up on the idea that it would bring comfort from Gladys, or even her presence. He cried for so long that he wondered if there could be tears left inside him to come out. He thought with desperation about his mother. Normally she would collect him from school, his face lighting up as he saw her, tall in a cotton dress in the kindergarten doorway, her hair a mass of blonde curls. They’d bustle along the street towards home, while she chattered away, and then she would give him a snack in the kitchen and plan the rest of their afternoon – he could watch Captain Kangaroo and Mickey Mouse , then sit in the kitchen with a pad of paper and a fistful of pens while she started supper and sang along with the radio.
    But he found the images of her kept being replaced by an entirely imagined one of her lying in a hospital bed, which did not comfort him at all. He lay down himself, on his back on the floor, and stared without interest at the cracks that ran like routes on a road map across the ceiling.
    He was still lying there when the door suddenly opened and Gladys stood there, breathing heavily. ‘Y’all come eat now,’ she said, and at first he looked at her with incomprehension.
    ‘Food,’ she said, and at first he thought she’d said ‘fool’, which would not surprise him, since recently it had been Lily’s favourite putdown for him, but then Gladys added, ‘Come get your supper now, child.’
    He followed her reluctantly back to the kitchen and he sat at the rickety table as she put his plate down. It was heaving: an immense fried pork chop with a long protective rib of fat, a mound of mashed potato and a heap of yellow corn kernels, a biscuit, and a large cup of milk. She eyed him carefully as he took his fork, unsure whether he was meant to use the knife as well – his mother always cut his meat for him – but then blessedly the phone rang, which distracted Gladys.
    From the way she answered and talked he realised she was speaking with his father. ‘Yes, sir, we be just fine. I’m giving him fried food for his supper and I bet he eats it all. Now don’t worry, and I’ll see you later at the end of the day.’
    She paused and he could hear his father’s voice – rich and deep – on the line. Gladys said, ‘Yes, he cried after you left, Mr Danziger. That boy cried his share, and then some. But he done crying now.’
    Which was true. His tears had stopped the very moment futility had taken over.
    After this, Gladys was there every day. He didn’t know if he hated her more than he feared her, just that he felt both emotions. He tried to tell Lily this, but she scolded him in that prim way of hers that made him realise it had been a mistake to tell her how he felt. ‘She’s a Negro,’ Lily said. ‘That’s why you don’t like her.’
    ‘What?’ he’d tried to protest, astonished by her accusation. What was a Negro anyway? It couldn’t be anything good if Gladys was one.
    At first, he asked for his mother each morning at breakfast, and daily his father replied evenly that she was still in hospital. One morning inspiration seized him and he asked if he could go and see her. No, his father explained, little kids were not allowed there, and Bobby wondered what he could do that might make his mother even worse.
    His father always took him to school in the morning, and sometimes his father would tell the funny stories he had always told – about the polar bear field, which is what he called the empty lot on Dorchester, and the exotic animals that lived