The Innocent (10 page)

“Please don't be frightened, Edna. Nothing to be frightened of, not a thing in the world to be frightened of, Edna.” He did not anticipate further interference from Marjorie, whom he had put down as the woman the girl had worked for, and he was obviously surprised and rather offended when she interrupted him.

“Please don't take her yet. Wait a minute.”

“Now see here, madam, this girl made an attempt at suicide last night.”

“I know she did, but—if I can get her to acknowledge that it was a delusion, her killing her husband, I mean—”

“That doesn't make the slightest—”

“Oh, please!”

“I am not here as a sanity court and neither are you. Neither you nor I are competent to judge whether the girl is or isn't—”

“Oh, please! Edna! I want to speak to her first, that's all. Now that she understands where you are taking her—”

“Perhaps you don't understand yourself, madam. Edna's not going to jail. You can see her any visiting day, after she goes through observation.”

The short man grunted. “You should know better than to act like we were going to hurt Edna, lady. Nobody's going to hurt her. She'll be treated good and the docs will maybe fix her up, fix her up good as new, good as new,” he kept repeating while he wiped his forehead with a rather dirty handkerchief. He released Edna's arm to accomplish this but kept his eyes fixed on her carefully.

Edna moaned. “I don't want to—I don't want to—”

It seemed to Marjorie that Edna was begging her for help. She stepped closer to Edna and the short man grabbed Edna's arm again. “You don't have to stay in that place, Edna. Tell them you know now that you didn't do it. If you continue to say that you did, that makes them think you're—Oh, don't you see? Don't you see? Edna, listen, you don't have to punish yourself. God has judged this, hasn't He?” An inspiration, oh, perhaps this was an inspiration. Perhaps it was true. “God has judged this, Edna. He punished her himself, didn't He?” The church words came fluently. “God struck her down because she was an evil woman.”

Edna said simply. “God didn't have anything to do with her dying.”

He did. Status—(She was using the word again. Marjorie thought quickly, death from shock, death from fear. Yes.) “Please” she found herself pleading with Edna, “please, God did do it. He did!”

Edna repeated solemnly, “God didn't have nothing to do with it.”

“Sure He didn't,” the short attendant agreed, winking at the doctor. “I suppose you killed her, too, whoever she may be.” He winked again, but Edna didn't appear to notice.

Edna answered him soberly, steadily, very sanely. “In a way.” Then her lips trembled. “That's why I—That's why, last night, I—when you told Grace—oh, my God, I killed her too, I killed her too!”

The short one nodded, the tall doctor shrugged. “You hear that, madam? She's killed somebody else as well. Don't you think it's a waste of time to hear the whole list of people she killed? For the love of Mike,” the doctor said, angry at Marjorie's stubbornness because he expected better than this from an educated white woman. “Doesn't this prove to you once and for all that she's—”

“No,” said Edna, pulling forward so that they immediately held her tighter. “No, I'm not crazy. I didn't mean that I killed her. I mean that she did it herself with that thing. She found it after I left, and she killed herself with it.”

“Sure,” said the attendant, thrusting his handkerchief into his trouser pocket, pulling up on the tight waist band of his trousers clumsily with his left hand. “Sure, she did it herself with that thing.”

Edna meant syringe when she said “that thing.”

“It's the truth, Doctor. I'm not crazy. Don't act like I'm crazy. I'm telling God's honest truth. She can tell you it's the truth. She can tell you that's what happened.” Edna turned to Marjorie, putting it directly to her. “I told her about you and Mr. Carter because I was so mad, so mad—and—When she told me it was all a joke and I'd told poor Andy and poor Andy he ran off—And I knew what he was going to do, I knew it and I didn't stop it—I didn't run out after Andy that morning and try to find him and stop him. I didn't do that, do you see? I went to work there that day, as if it was any other day. I should have been trying my best to find Andy. I should have called the cops, but I didn't. I went to work that day and then she told me it was all a joke and she wasn't going to do anything for me. I was mad. I got mad and then I told her about him and you. You're the one, aren't you? I told her about him and you!”

“What's all this?” the doctor asked.

“She” was Claire. “I told Claire about you and him.” “Him” was Charles. “I told Claire about you and Charles.”

Edna screamed. “And then she killed herself with that thing. After I left, after I told her about you, she found that thing and she killed herself with it!”

“Sure she found that thing, sure she did. Sure 'nuff she did. Now come on, Edna, be a good girl and you can tell us all about it on the way over.”

“No,” said Edna. She looked like an animal surrounded by a pack of hounds. She turned from the attendant to the doctor, from Mrs. Brown to Marjorie, looking at each of them as a possible weak spot, a means of escape. But because she wasn't an animal, because Edna was a human being, she tried speech too, addressing a phrase to each in turn, trying each one with a phrase, seeking weakness. “No,” she said to the attendant, “I didn't do it.” To Marjorie: “I said I did it because I told her. I mean she wouldn't have done it if I hadn't told her, that's why I said I did it.” To the doctor: “No, no, I'm not going.” She said to Mrs. Brown, “Emma, I'm not crazy, I'm not going there With them. Don't let them take me, Emma.”

“Now, honey!”

“Don't let them,” she begged Marjorie, the weakest one, the one who wavered. “Show them the papers, then they'll know. Tell them I'm not crazy. Show them!”

“Show them! Tell them! Nobody needs to tell us nothing! Come on, be a good kid. Take it easy. Be a good kid.” The attendant was becoming bored with this.

“No,” screamed Edna. “No. No. No.” She twisted her head from side to side; spittle hung from her lips. Her eyes were closed now.

It was the screaming that brought the policeman in. He had been hanging around in the outside hall, finishing a cigarette. Some smoke still crept from his nostrils. “Need an assist, Doc?”

“Certainly do. You get out your notebook, Kirby. Now you tell him about it, Edna. Tell Kirby about that
thing
. Tell him how many you killed.”

Edna opened her eyes. “She knows what I mean.” Edna could not point at Marjorie because they were holding her hands, but she nodded, jerking her chin, pointing Marjorie out as well as she could. For she had made up her mind now, Marjorie was the weak spot in the pack. If escape was still possible, it would be through Marjorie.

But Marjorie was looking into the face of the policeman, Kirby. It seemed to her that she had never seen a policeman before, that they had always been blank symbols of law and order, blank symbols of protection for her, for her kind. Now she saw the large reddened ears, the alert nostrils with the thin, wisping smoke, the thick red lips and faded blue eyes. She saw Kirby's beefy hands pendant, and imagined them on her shoulder, clamped there, directing her, pushing, pressing, ordering. She knew that she wanted to get away, to run from the no longer blank face, no longer protective symbol, and she knew at the same time that she must not run. She forced herself to shake her head at the policeman, a small, deprecating shake accompanied by an almost indiscernible grimace. What she was doing, shrugging, shaking her shoulder, grimacing, was to make them allies, to put herself back where she had always been, where everybody she knew had always been, on the side of law and order. On Kirby's side.

The need for the gesture frightened her very badly.

The wild pity, the hatred for what Claire had done to this girl, the tumult inside her which made Marjorie come here, disregard her baby, order Mrs. Brown around, were all gone now, lost in a cold caution. The whole set of her face became smaller, tighter. She stood differently and held her muff differently. Held it so that no one would suspect the papers in it. Held it proudly, so that if Edna, instead of pointing at her face pointed at the muff and said that the papers were there, the proof that she was not talking windy madness was there, she, Marjorie, would retort, “What papers? I have no papers.” She now carried herself in such a way that no policeman would dare doubt her or accept the word of a colored girl against hers. Marjorie did not know what she was going to do yet, but she did know she had better not do anything on impulse. She did know that she must think out whatever she did, think it through, see the end of any action she might decide on.

“Don't let them take me,” Edna said, beginning to weep. “For God's sake, don't let them take me.”

Marjorie closed her eyes for a moment and reviewed the reasonable, judicious tone she would employ. “You go with them quietly, Edna. Just do as the doctor says, Edna. There isn't any doubt that it's the best thing to do, the only thing. I promise you,” she said, “I promise you I won't forget you if you go.” And that's an easy promise, Marjorie thought. That's a promise I won't break because whatever I do, I'll not forget her. “You better go with them, Edna.”

After this the quality of Edna's weeping changed. As Marjorie had progressed from one woman in sympathy with a sister woman, with no regard for the different color of their skins, the difference in their social position, to a respectable white woman who was slumming in Harlem on a Lady Bountiful mission, so Edna became a Negro whose experience had accustomed her to subservience and injustice. When Marjorie had appeared to be in league with her against authority, as represented by the thin doctor and the attendant, Edna could struggle for her rights. Now she subsided; this was apparent in the hopeless way she sobbed. She hardly protested when, between the doctor and the attendant, she was hustled out of the door. They did not need the policeman's assistance. Relieved of the pressure from the well-dressed white woman, they were quite able to deal with a distraught Negro whose protestations they naturally ignored as inconsequential raving. They did not use the strait jacket to take Edna to Bellevue Hospital.

Marjorie wished Edna had screamed and raved. She wished Edna had pulled away from the two men and attacked her. She wished those poor thin hands had scratched her face and made the blood come. It would not have changed anything, but it would have been easier than to stand there and watch them hustle her off.

“Wasn't that something?” clucked Mrs. Brown. “Before God, wasn't that something?” She had already forgiven Marjorie. She was quite prepared to talk over the whole thing with her.

Marjorie took her hand out of her muff and threw it up to her face, trembling so violently that she brought out all of Mrs. Brown's motherliness which had been lost in her human enjoyment of enacted melodrama. “Don't take on so. Eddie couldn't stay on here this way. You got to let them take her when she done like she done. You heard that doctor there. They going to treat Eddie good. They not going to hurt Eddie. Don't take on, now.” She peered into Marjorie's face. “You sick?”

“No, I'm all right, Mrs. Brown. I'm just—just—”

“Sure,” soothed Mrs. Brown. “Me, too. I'm all upset the way you are. Who wouldn't be, Lord God, the way she screamed—and Eddie such a quiet girl. Lord God!”

“I've got to go. Grace is waiting for me. I've got to go,” she insisted fiercely, as if it were Mrs. Brown who was stopping her. But it wasn't Mrs. Brown. It wasn't Mrs. Brown.

And she did leave, anyhow.

This trip, the taxi driver didn't have a word to say for himself, but Marjorie saw a big gilt jeweler's clock on 112th Street and that kept her busy. It was after twelve o'clock. It was past time for Pete's bottle, and he would be crying. His fists would screw up in minuscule anger. His mouth would be stretched like a baby bird's waiting for the mother bird to drop the worm in, only it would not be the worm, the food, that little Pete protested waiting for; his whole body would be proclaiming the tardiness of his mother's loving solicitude. He would know it was past time for the firm arms to lift him up, for the voice to say to him that he must eat, must live and eat. Little Pete was very jealous of his mother's attention. He would certainly be in revolt when Marjorie returned and she was glad he would be. Then she would not be able to say much to the sister, to Grace. “They came for her,” she would have to tell her, that's all. “They took her.” They had taken Edna, and she hadn't stopped them. She couldn't stop them. Nobody could stop them. Once the call was put through to Police Headquarters, once Mrs. Brown had persuaded Grace to inform the authorities that Edna had attempted suicide, it was out of Grace's hands or Marjorie's hands or anybody's hands. She would simply say to Grace that it was finished and that Grace could go home now. Let her go home to Mrs. Brown, who would tell her that Edna belonged in Bellevue Hospital, that Edna would be better off there, that they would cure Edna there! Mrs. Brown would comfort Grace, say that she had done the right thing. Marjorie couldn't possibly tell her that, and little Pete's crying would cover the gap in which she, Marjorie, should offer, without thinking it over first, without caution, without finding first just where the offer might lead her, to help. Her baby would keep Marjorie so busy that she need not reveal that something had happened while she was gone which had changed her from a decent person free to assist a poor Negro in trouble to a shivering coward. Charity begins at home. Charity had begun at home, but had ended when Marjorie saw the policeman. Safety first.