The Ways of White Folks (15 page)

Always, by ten o’clock, she was back with Flips in her flat. A cup of hot milk then maybe, with a little in a saucer for Flips, and to bed. In the morning she would let Flips run down the back steps for a few minutes, then she gave him more milk, left a pan of water, and went to work. A regular routine, for Miss Briggs took care of Flips with
great seriousness. At night when she got back from the Rose Bud Tea Shoppe, she fed him biscuits; or if it were dog meat night, she looked out on the back porch for the package the janitor was paid to leave. (That is, Miss Briggs allowed the Swede fifty cents a week to buy bones. He could keep the change.)

But one night, the meat was not there. Miss Briggs thought perhaps he had forgotten. Still he had been bringing it regularly for nearly two years. Maybe the warm spring this year made the young janitor listless, Miss Briggs mused. She fed Flips biscuits.

But two days later, another dog meat night, the package was not there either. “This is too much!” thought Miss Briggs. “Come on, Flipsy, let’s go downstairs and see. I’m sure I gave him fifty cents this week to buy your bones.”

Miss Briggs and the little white beast went downstairs to ask why there was no meat for her dog to eat. When they got to the janitor’s quarters in the basement, they heard a mighty lot of happy laughter and kids squalling, and people moving. They didn’t sound like Swedes, either. Miss Briggs was a bit timid about knocking, but she finally mustered up courage with Flips there beside her. A sudden silence fell inside.

“You Leroy,” a voice said. “Go to de door.”

A child’s feet came running. The door opened
like a flash and a small colored boy stood there grinning.

“Where—where is the janitor?” Miss Briggs said, taken aback.

“You mean my papa?” asked the child, looking at the gaunt white lady. “He’s here.” And off he went to call his father.

Surrounded by children, a tall broad-shouldered Negro of perhaps forty, gentle of face and a little stooped, came to the door.

“Good evenin’,” he said pleasantly.

“Why, are you the janitor?” stammered Miss Briggs. Flips had already begun to jump up on him with friendly mien.

“Yes’m, I’m the new janitor,” said the Negro in a softly beautiful voice, kids all around him. “Is there something I can help you to do?”

“Well,” said Miss Briggs, “I’d like some bones for my little dog. He’s missed his meat two times now. Can you get him some?”

“Yes’m, sure can,” said the new janitor, “if all the stores ain’t closed.” He was so much taller than Miss Briggs that she had to look up at him.

“I’d appreciate it,” said Miss Briggs, “please.”

As she went back upstairs she heard the new janitor calling in his rich voice, “Lora, you reckon that meat store’s still open?” And a woman’s voice and a lot of children answered him.

It turned out that the store was closed. So Miss
Briggs gave the Negro janitor ten cents and told him to have the meat there the next night when she came home.

“Flips, you shan’t starve,” she said to the little white dog, “new janitor or no new janitor.”

“Wruff!” said Flips.

But the next day when she came home there was no meat on the back porch either. Miss Briggs was puzzled, and a little hurt. Had the Negro forgotten?

Scarcely had she left the kitchen, however, when someone knocked on the back door and there stood the colored man with the meat. He was almost as old as Miss Briggs, she was certain of it, looking at him. Not a young man at all, but he was awfully big and brown and kind looking. So sort of sure about life as he handed her the package.

“I thought some other dog might get it if I left it on the porch,” said the colored man. “So I kept it downstairs till you come.”

Miss Briggs was touched. “Well, thank you very much,” she said.

When the man had gone, she remembered that she had not told him how often to get meat for the dog.

The next night he came again with bones, and every night from then on. Miss Briggs did not stop him, or limit him to three nights a week. Just after eight, whenever she got home, up the back porch steps the Negro would come with the dog meat.
Sometimes there would be two or three kids with him. Pretty little brown-black rather dirty kids, Miss Briggs thought, who were shy in front of her, but nice.

Once or twice during the spring, the janitor’s wife, instead, brought the dog meat up on Saturday nights. Flips barked rudely at her. Miss Briggs didn’t take to the creature, either. She was fat and yellow, and certainly too old to just keep on having children as she evidently did. The janitor himself was so solid and big and strong! Miss Briggs felt better when he brought her the bones for her dog. She didn’t like his wife.

That June, on warm nights, as soon as she got home, Miss Briggs would open the back door and let the draft blow through. She could hear the janitor better coming up the rear stairs when he brought the bones. And, of course, she never said more than good-evening to him and thank you. Or here’s a dollar for the week. Keep the change.

Flips ate an awful lot of meat that spring. “Your little dog’s a regular meat-hound,” the janitor said one night as he handed her the bones; and Miss Briggs blushed, for no good reason.

“He does eat a lot,” she said. “Goodnight.”

As she spread the bones out on paper for the dog, she felt that her hands were trembling. She left Flips eating and went into the parlor, but found that she could not keep her mind on the
book she was reading. She kept looking at the big kind face of the janitor in her mind, perturbed that it was a Negro face, and that it stayed with her so.

The next night, she found herself waiting for the dog meat to arrive with more anxiety than Flips himself. When the colored man handed it to her, she quickly closed the door, before her face got red again.

“Funny old white lady,” thought the janitor as he went back downstairs to his basement full of kids. “Just crazy about that dog,” he added to his wife. “I ought to tell her it ain’t good to feed a dog so much meat.”

“What do you care, long as she wants to?” asked his wife.

The next day in the office Miss Briggs found herself making errors over the books. That night she hurried home to be sure and be there on time when he brought the dog meat up, in case he came early.

“What’s the matter with me,” she said sharply to herself, “rushing this way just to feed Flips? Whatever is the matter with me?” But all the way through the warm dusky streets, she seemed to hear the janitor’s deep voice saying, “Good evenin’,” to her.

Then, when the Negro really knocked on the door with the meat, she was trembling so that she could not go to the kitchen to get it. “Leave it right there by the sink,” she managed to call out. “Thank you, Joe.”

She heard the man going back downstairs sort of humming to himself, a kid or so following him. Miss Briggs felt as if she were going to faint, but Flips kept jumping up on her, barking for his meat.

“Oh, Flips,” she said, “I’m so hungry.” She meant to say, “
You’re
so hungry.” So she repeated it. “You’re so hungry! Heh, Flipsy, dog?”

And from the way the little dog barked, he must have been hungry. He loved meat.

The next evening, Miss Briggs was standing in the kitchen when the colored man came with the bones.

“Lay them down,” she said, “thank you,” trying not to look at him. But as he went downstairs, she watched through the window his beautifully heavy body finding the rhythm of the steps, his big brown neck moving just a little.

“Get down!” she said sharply to Flips barking for his dinner.

To herself she said earnestly, “I’ve got to move. I can’t be worried being so far from a meat shop, or from where I eat my dinner. I think I’ll move downtown where the shops are open at night. I can’t stand this. Most of my friends live downtown anyway.”

But even as she said it, she wondered what friends she meant. She had a little white dog named Flips, that was all. And she was acquainted with other people who worked at Wilkins and Bryant,
but she had nothing to do with them. She was the head bookkeeper. She knew a few women in the Civics Club fairly well. And the Negro waiters at the Rose Bud Shoppe.

And this janitor!

Miss Briggs decided that she could not bear to have this janitor come upstairs with a package of bones for Flips again. She was sure he was happy down there with his portly yellow wife and his house full of children. Let him stay in the basement, then, where he belonged. She never wanted to see him again, never.

The next night, Miss Briggs made herself go to a movie before coming home. And when she got home, she fed Flips dog biscuits. That week she began looking for a new apartment, a small one for two, her and the dog. Fortunately there were plenty to be had, what with people turned out for not being able to pay their rent—which would never happen to her, thank God! She had saved her money. When she found an apartment, she deposited the first month’s rent at once. On her coming Saturday afternoon off, she planned to move.

Friday night, when the janitor came up with the bones, she decided to be just a little pleasant to him. Probably she would never see him again. Perhaps she would give him a dollar for a tip, then. Something to remember her by.

When he came upstairs, she was aware a long
time of his feet approaching. Coming up, up, up, bringing bones for her dog. Flips began to bark. Miss Briggs went to the door. She took the package in one hand. With the other she offered the bill.

“Thank you so much for buying bones for my little dog,” she said. “Here, here is a dollar for your trouble. You keep it all.”

“Much obliged, m’am,” said the astonished janitor. He had never seen Miss Briggs so generous before. “Thank you, m’am! He sure do eat a heap o’ bones, your little dog.”

“He almost keeps me broke buying bones,” Miss Briggs said, holding the door.

“True,” said the janitor. “But I reckon you don’t have much other expenses on hand, do you? No family and all like me?”

“You’re right,” answered Miss Briggs. “But a little dog is so much company, too.”

“Guess they are, m’am,” said the janitor, turning to go. “Well, goodnight, Miss Briggs. I’m much obliged.”

“Goodnight, Joe.”

As his broad shoulders and tall brown body disappeared down the stairs, Miss Briggs slowly turned her back, shut the door, and put the bones on the floor for Flipsy. Then suddenly she began to cry.

The next day she moved away as she had planned to do. The janitor never saw her any more. For a few days, the walkers in the park beside the lake
wondered where a rather gaunt middle-aged woman who used to come out at night with a little white dog had gone. But in a very short while the neighborhood had completely forgotten her.

——

W
HEN THE BOY ARRIVED
on the four o’clock train, lo and behold, he turned out to be colored! Mrs. Osborn saw him the minute he got out of the station wagon, but certainly there was nothing to be done about it that night—with no trains back to the city before morning—so she set him to washing dishes. Lord knows there were a plenty. The Scandinavian kitchen boy had left right after breakfast, giving no notice, leaving her and the cook to do everything. Her wire to the employment office in Jersey City brought results—but dark ones. The card said his name was Milberry Jones.

Well, where was he to sleep? Heretofore, the kitchen boy and the handy-man gardener-chauffeur shared the same quarters. But Mrs. Osborn had no idea how the handy-man might like Negroes. Help were so touchy, and it was hard keeping good servants in the country. So right after dinner, leaving Milberry with his arms in the dish water, Mrs. Osborn made a bee line across the side lawn for Dr. Renfield’s cottage.

She heard the kids laughing and playing on the
big screened-in front porch of the sanatorium. She heard one of the nurses say to a child, “Behave, Billy!” as she went across the yard under the pine and maple trees. Mrs. Osborn hoped Dr. Renfield would be on his porch. She hated to knock at the door and perhaps be faced with his wife. The gossip among the nurses and help at Dr. Renfield’s Summer Home for Crippled Children had it that Mrs. Osborn was in love with Dr. Renfield, that she just worshipped him, that she followed him with her eyes every chance she got—and not only with her eyes.

Of course, there wasn’t a word of truth in it, Mrs. Osborn said to herself, admitting at the same time that that Martha Renfield, his wife, was certainly not good enough for the doctor. Anyway tonight, she was not bound on any frivolous errand toward the Doctor’s cottage. She had to see him about this Negro in their midst. At least, they’d have to keep him there overnight, or until they got somebody else to help in the kitchen. However, he looked like a decent boy.

Dr. Renfield was not at home. His wife came to the door, spoke most coldly, and said that she presumed, as usual, the Doctor would make his rounds of the Home at eight. She hoped Mrs. Osborn could wait until then to see him.

“Good evening!”

Mrs. Osborn went back across the dusk-dark
yard. She heard the surf rushing at the beach below, and saw the new young moon rising. She thought maybe the Doctor was walking along the sea in the twilight alone. Ah, Dr. Renfield, Dr. Ren.…

When he made the usual rounds at eight he came, for a moment, by Mrs. Osborn’s little office where the housekeeper held forth over her linens and her accounts. He turned his young but bearded face toward Mrs. Osborn, cast his great dark eyes upon her, and said, “I hear you’ve asked to see me?”

“Yes, indeed, Dr. Renfield,” Mrs. Osborn bubbled and gurgled. “We have a problem on our hands. You know the kitchen man left this morning so I sent a wire to the High Class Help Agency in the city for somebody right away by the four o’clock train—and they sent us a Negro! He seems to be a nice boy, and all that, but I just don’t know how he would fit in our Home. Now what do you think?”

The doctor looked at her with great seriousness. He thought. Then he answered with a question, “Do the other servants mind?”

“Well, I can’t say they do. They got along all right tonight during dinner. But the problem is, where would he sleep?”