Beautiful Golden-Haired Mamie

A Story

by ARTHUR FOFF

MAMIE rested on her back, reading slowly, mouthing the words. Through the tear in the window shade behind her a bright stripe of sunlight fell across the back of the davenport and on the page of her magazine. She finished her story, reread the part where Ronald saved the girl from being attacked, and glanced over the posed photographs again. Then she put the magazine face downward on her large stomach and shut her eyes. She could think all kinds of things with her eyes shut.

Ronald walked in when George was knocking her around and he wore a suit and a tie and looked like a gentleman beside George, who always sat around in his undershirt when he wasn’t out getting drunk. And Ronald said, “You’ll have to quit that,” and she half fell against the davenport, then slipped to the floor in a long white dress sort of like the one she’d had at school years ago and had only worn once because she’d married George afterwards and had started to have kids. But George wouldn’t quit shoving her around, so Ronald had to light him. Then Ronald knocked him out, of course, and that meant Ronald was pretty good because George was plenty tough for a little guy. George was out cold on the floor. Ronald picked her up in his arms and carried her to his huge black shiny car and they escaped to the airport. She was beautiful in a new red dress and high, high little heels that twinkled on the sidewalk and didn’t hurt because her feet were tinydainty, not gouty, to go with her small, glamorous shape. Ronald crushed her to him and drank the nectar from her lips in one long, lingering kiss.

Mamie opened her eyes to slits, staring at her crossed feet on the end of the davenport. Ronald whispered, “You’re as beautiful as you are brave.” The blood was streaming from her shoulder where she’d been wounded. She fainted into his arms with a low moan. And she silently bore the pain and did not yell like that woman upstairs did when she had her baby a month early. “I can’t live without you,” Ronald said. “ I love you.” She tried to answer. She was terribly brave, only it was no use. She fainted again. Her head dropped against his broad shoulder with her long golden hair streaming over his arm.

Mamie closed her eyes and felt the tears starting to burn inside her lids. She cried. The tears ran down her puffed cheeks and the sobs shook her fat, shapeless form. After a while she stopped. She stared at the wall, trying to think of another story to do, but she got to tracing the way the gold cord looped around the maroon stripes on the wallpaper and the way they all ended up in tassels and she couldn’t think.

The noise of the streetcars banged up from the street, and the sound of cars shifting gears, and the whistle from the traffic cop on the corner. Someone was swearing on the floor above her and the radio in the flat across the hall was blaring music. Mamie listened for a few minutes, trying to follow the voices. The music was too loud. She got up, walked panting across the room and clicked on her own radio. While she waited for the station to come in she leaned against the table, trying to get some of the weight off her feet. Her feet always hurt, even in slippers, so that she had to shift heavily from one foot to the other. When she had turned the radio up as loud as it would go she went back across the room and sank onto the davenport.

The programs followed each other at fifteen-minute intervals. Road of Life, Valiant Lady, Stella Dallas, Helen Trent. Mamie listened vacantly, her arms folded across her pillow-like breasts. Soon she rolled over and dozed. She awoke, listened to the radio, dozed off again.

Once, someone knocked on the door. The pounding woke her but she didn’t gel up. Landlady, gasman, bill collector, it didn’t matter, since whoever it was wanted money for sure. They always wanted money and how could she give it to them if she didn’t have it? She shut her eyes and thought of Ronald and after a while the knocking stopped.

The chimes from the church down the block jarred against the station announcement and Mamie sighed and shifted her position so that she faced the wall. She hadn’t realized it was so late. It was funny lately the way she was never sure what time it was. She ought to get up and start fixing lunch for the kids, she thought. They’d be home at twelve-ten and she hadn’t washed the dishes or made the beds or done anything. She shut her eyes. She and Ronald and Helen Trent stepped into the huge black car and hurried to the airport. She was just coming to the good part where Ronald smothered her with burning kisses, when she dozed off again.

2

SHE was still sleeping when Johnnie and Petey and Marie came banging up the stairs and slammed open the door. The noise only half penetrated her fog of sleep and she burrowed her head deeper into the cushion that was wet beneath her mouth. Johnnie shook her by the shoulder.

“Ma,” he said. “Ma!”

Mamie rolled over on her back and partly opened her eyes. She stared at him and swallowed a few times to get the phlegm out of her throat. The radio was on yet and her head hurt and her eyes stung from crying.

“You haven’t got us lunch today neither, have you?” Johnnie said. He walked over and shut off the radio. “Have you?”

Mamie grasped the back of the davenport and pulled herself forward to sit up. She pushed herself to her feet finally and walked unsteadily into the kitchen. Johnnie followed her, and Petey and Marie tagged behind him. The dishes were still on the table from breakfast and a fly was kicking in a ring of milk spilled on the peeling oilcloth top. Mamie cleared off the dishes, breathing heavily, and piled them in the sink.

Johnnie said, “You couldn’t get it ready for a change.” Mamie went right on wetting the dishrag and swiping at the top of the table. Finishing, she turned and tossed the dishrag into the sink on top of the dirty dishes. She pulled out a loaf of bread and a roll of bologna and a couple of knives, and slid them onto the table.

“What a lunch.” Johnnie said. “What a slophouse.”

Mamie sat at one end of the table, sliced off several slices of meat for Petey and Marie, started to make herself a sandwich.

“What a mother,” Johnnie said. Petey and Marie were busy stuffing down their food.

Mamie bit into her sandwich, her teeth leaving a large semicircle. Her cheeks bulged as she ate. “I was tired,” she said.

“Sure, you were tired. You’re always tired. I’ll bet you’re not too tired to go to the movies this afternoon.”

Johnnie was a fresh, mean kid. Mamie didn’t pay him no mind. She went on eating instead, with her elbows on the table and her eyes fixed on a hole in the yellow oilcloth. Petey and Marie stood beside her dressed in little red suits with real fur around the collars, like those twins she’d seen that time when George took them all out to the park. Petey and Marie looked bright and smart, not dumb like she sometimes was afraid they were.

“You never do anything no more,” Johnnie said. He watched Mamie eat, watched her look at the oilcloth. “Ma!” he yelled suddenly. “Don’t you even hear me?”

Mamie gazed with beautiful sad tenderness at her son. She was hiding the pain so he wouldn’t know she was about to die after she’d sacrificed her own life to save him. Her eyes filled with tears.

Johnnie stood at the other end of the table uncertainly. “I didn’t mean nothing,” he said.

Mamie was chewing slowly. The pain was something awful. Soon it would all be over. Tears rolled down her wadded cheeks and dropped upon her chin.

Chairs knocking, feet scraping, door slamming: the kids had gone back to school. Life was so unhappy. She made herself another sandwich, walked through the living room into the bedroom eating it. Her head ached and her feet hurt, so she sat on the edge of the unmade bed to rest. Without getting up she reached into the lower dresser drawer and pulled out a blue silk tam which she stretched down around her ears.

The alarm clock on the dresser pointed to one o’clock. The matinee started at one-fifteen and she didn’t want to be late. She started to rouge her cheeks but did only one, round and orange, and then felt tired and sat back on the bed. She rested a moment, then reached under the bed and pulled out a pair of Cuban-heeled sandals. Her feet were hot and swollen, and puffed out in small rolls between the straps. She picked up her purse, counted her change as she limped into the living room. The movies . . . and Mamie went down the stairs and into the street in a red chiffon dress and a wide lace hat and her little feet twinkled on the pavement.

The theater was on the corner of the block. Mamie paid her admission and hobbled down the aisle to her usual seat in the fourth row. She was early. She slipped off her shoes and leaned back into the soft chair, listening to the music and smiling happily.

The lights went out. She could feel the quiver of happy excitement inside her. A newsreel flashed on the screen. She yawned. She didn’t like newsreels. Wars and Senators — noise and confusion. Her aching head made her think of George and she didn’t like to think of George, so she closed her eyes and didn t watch the screen and she thought about her and Ronald.

It was easy to think about Ronald because he was always with her now, almost. She used to think she would go crazy always worrying about George getting mad and knocking her around and Johnnie so mean and petey and Marie dumb and the bills not paid and George drunk most of the time. All that — gone. Cozy warm darkness. The main picture started. Mamie sight’d contentedly.

She watched the film hazily, sometimes dozing. She’d already seen it twice before, so if she slept a little she knew she hadn’t missed anything when she woke up. Once, it seemed she’d been sleeping a long time, but the picture was just in the middle when she snapped awake, so she wasn’t sure. She got hungry later but she dozed off again pretty soon and forgot about it. When she woke up this time she was so cramped it hurt her to move. She sat stiff and watched the whole story, but when the newsreel came along, her head dropped to her breast.

The house lights were on and somebody was shaking her by the arm. It was the usher and he was pointing to the rows of empty seats and Mamie began to cry. Everybody had gone and left her alone and she had to go home. The usher helped her up the aisle to the exit door. It was dark and cold out on the street and she wanted to go back into the theater and she tried to find the door but she couldn’t because they were all closed, so she had to start back to the flat.

She hurried along in the sharp wind, limping a little because she hadn’t fastened the straps of her sandals and they kept slipping off her heels. She could see the lights on inside and she was afraid George would be there mad or maybe drunk. She pulled herself up the stairs by the banister, breathing heavily when she reached the landing. She had to knock on the door because slic’d forgotten the key.

George opened the door and said, “ Wherenell you been?” And Mamie could see his woolen undershirt and the black hair on the back of his hand and the hand on the knob shutting the door after her. And George said, “Wherenell you been?” The haired hand came toward her, palm first, so she stepped away and lost her balance and fell heavily against the end of the davenport. She slid to the floor. Above her was the ceiling with the unshaded bulb. She squinted at the light, trying desperately to remember. Then, smiling happily, she crawled toward him.

“Ronald,” she whispered, “Ronald.”