to his father-in-law. Like the broom propped in the alcove against a jumble of wooden clothes pegs, tapered candles, tins of rat poison, boxes of nails and Dutch Boy cleanser. Leftovers from the days when Mrs O’Brien’s father had sold hardware as well as food.
The sawdust on the floor, caked with dirt and dust, made Miss Hortense sneeze. So, often when she had needed something, I was sent with her shopping list scribbled on a torn piece of brown paper bag. Those regular trips down our dim, narrow staircase and out the door which was ten steps from Mack’s gave me the same odd feeling that I had in his store that afternoon as the rain fell.
When Mack explained what a shank was, it must have been mid or late September. Hardly a matter of weeks between my request for a whistling lesson and the end of Mrs O’Brien’s life; between hope for the future and the Depression.
He pointed to my exposed shin saying, ‘That’s your shank and if you come closer, you can feel mine.’
Mack drew up his pants leg. His ghostly skin looked so white to me. And hairy. I couldn’t have been more interested had he offered to let me stroke a live mink. I touched the orange fuzzy hairs with my index finger and allowed him to run his thumb along mine while he quizzed me about school.
I said, ‘I’m the youngest girl in Sister Elizabeth’s class.’
Mack teased, ‘Does that make you ten?’
‘I’m six … seven on 11 November. On Armistice Day.’
He pulled up my socks. ‘11 November?’ he said. ‘So that’s how come there’s a parade downtown! It’s your birthday!’
I didn’t expect to be lifted up, but I liked seeing the store at that height. Up with the cans of potted meat that I had seen him take down for Miss Hortense whenever I’d come as errand girl. His thick fingers curled around my thighs, but I was embarrassed to ask him to put me down. He hugged me so close that my instinct told me to wriggle free.
So close that the only air left to breathe was heavy with his smelly breath … When he finally put me down, some sweat from his forehead was on my leg but I didn’t dare wipe it and just clung to my copybook.
He patted me on the behind and said, ‘When Ruthie gets home, tell her Mack said everything’s okay.’
He’d been smart to treat me to a caramel. Unlike a mint, it left no scent of our encounter on my breath.
That September of ’29 turned out to be the last time Mother paid him rent. I recall standing with her in his store and she was holding my hand. Mack’s voice was high pitched and he had a habit of starting a sentence without finishing it, but whenever he spoke to her, she’d get so anxious, she’d finish them for him. I remember him saying ‘Your Irene …’ and leaving my name to dangle in the stinky air.
Mother clutched my hand tighter and pulled me nearer and her normally lazy speech was punctuated by a note of alarm. ‘She ain’t but six! She’s my baby!’ Then she fell silent, head bowed like an obedient child. And while I looked from her to him I felt something was wrong but I knew better than to ask what.
While Mack was telling her that he loved to sit me on his lap and recall his days in Patterson as a butcher’s apprentice, Mother’s palm grew sweaty. ‘She don’t fidget,’ he’d said, ‘and asks intelligent questions.’
Of course I used to sit still while his dinky grew hard under the weight of my behind.
Was it in ignorance that Mother imagined that I would have no aversion to Mack’s breath or the way that he would sit me too squarely on his lap? Not on one knee but drawn back against his blubbery belly so that all I could think about was his belt buckle pressing against my spine.
That afternoon, Mack closed the shop after his wife had emptied the cash register and drove home, leaving him to pull the blind down before slamming the door on the dust, the food, the odours and those caramels which were flat and round with a vein of white sugar running through them.
Were we playing out our part in the great scheme of things? Maybe, like Charlie used to say, we’re all just dominoes … maybe Mack had to do what he did to twist me towards becoming what I became.
Anyway, sitting out here tonight I’d be lying if I claimed that I ever lost sleep over him.
When the O’Malleys opened a grocery store two blocks away, across from the Italian bakery, people like Mother still bought a few items on credit from Mack but O’Malley’s attracted the neighbourhood’s Irish customers.
So, while I waited impatiently for my seventh birthday, praying for the days to gallop by, Mack, with business lagging, would lure me with caramels to his storeroom every time I played Miss Hortense’s errand girl.
Worried that Lilian might spot candy juice in the corners of my mouth, I’d stand at the bottom of the stairs to gobble that caramel before running back up with Miss Hortense’s items.
Mack told me about his plan to give away items to customers spending over fifty cents, and though I couldn’t read the sign when he placed it amongst the dead flies and the faded Corn Flakes boxes, I knew it said something about his offer.
When Mother received a free bar of Sunlight soap, I expected Miss Hortense to receive something better. A can of condensed cream or even a tin of kerosene. Some lanolin or a bottle of Karo Syrup, because she was a regular, thanks to me. But Mother was speechless when she heard that Miss Hortense had received two pork chops.
And what upset Mother most was who told her the news.
She had arrived home early from work that evening, hanging her coat on the back of the door as the six o’clock whistle blew.
I helped her slip off her shoes which she always removed before her hat. Lilian and I knew better than to try and talk to her till she’d had her cup of sweet tea, but we also knew when she switched on the radio and hummed along with a tune that she was in a good mood.
The afternoon’s rain had sweetened the evening air and the sunset was dark apricot. While Lilian studied her catechism, I slid my chair nearer the radio. Mother hadn’t noticed that my hair was still damp, because earlier I’d gone to the butcher for Mack. I was eager to explain, though she looked too tired for details, and I prayed that we could get through the evening without her noticing that my shoes had got wet.
Mother still had her hat on when Mrs O’Brien rapped at our door. ‘Ruthie, I want you out!’ she yelled like someone might yell ‘Fire!’. Within that second our peaceful lives felt as overturned as dirty clothes tossed from a laundry basket. Mrs O’Brien had never been to our room before and to hear her snap at my mother from the doorway made me wish for my funeral. Casket. Hearse. Mourners. Death seemed easiest.
Though I’d told no one about my visits to Mack’s storeroom, I sensed from his wife’s violent rap on our door that he must have. My ears started ringing and I thought I would vomit as my lips quivered, my mouth went dry, and my knees seemed to buckle under me.
Today kids have rights, but in those days white people could do anything to coloured children, and I burst into tears,
