Invisible man - Ralph Ellison [121]
Turning, I saw a little woman standing on the stoop with a green coat covering her head and shoulders, its sleeves hanging limp like extra atrophied arms.
"I mean you," she called. "Come on back an' get your trash. An' don't ever put your trash in my can again!"
She was a short yellow woman with a pince-nez on a chain, her hair pinned up in knots.
"We keep our place clean and respectable and we don't want you field niggers coming up here from the South and ruining things," she shouted with blazing hate.
People were stopping to look. A super from a building down the block came out and stood in the middle of the walk, pounding his fist against his palm with a dry, smacking sound. I hesitated, embarrassed and annoyed. Was this woman crazy?
"I mean it! Yes, you! I'm talking to you! Just take it right out! Rosalie," she called to someone inside the house, "call the police, Rosalie!"
I can't afford that, I thought, and walked back to the can. "What does it matter, Miss?" I called up to her. "When the collectors come, garbage is garbage. I just didn't want to throw it into the street. I didn't know that some kinds of garbage were better than others."
"Never mind your impertinence," she said. "I'm sick and tired of having you southern Negroes mess up things for the rest of us!"
"All right," I said, "I'll get it out."
I reached into the half-filled can, feeling for the package, as the fumes of rotting swill entered my nostrils. It felt unhealthy to my hand, and the heavy package had sunk far down. Cursing, I pushed back my sleeve with my clean hand and probed until I found it. Then I wiped off my arm with a handkerchief and started away, aware of the people who paused to grin at me.
"It serves you right," the little woman called from the stoop.
And I turned and started upward. "That's enough out of you, you piece of yellow gone-to-waste. Unless you still want to call the police." My voice had taken on a new shrill pitch. "I've done what you wanted me to do; another word and I'll do what I want to do --"
She looked at me with widening eyes. "I believe you would," she said, opening the door. "I believe you would."
"I not only would, I'd love it," I said.
"I can see that you're no gentleman," she called, slamming the door,
At the next row of cans I wiped off my wrist and hands with a piece of newspaper, then wrapped the rest around the package. Next time I'd throw it into the street.
Two blocks further along my anger had ebbed, but I felt strangely lonely. Even the people who stood around me at the intersection seemed isolated, each lost in his own thoughts. And now just as the lights changed I let the package fall into the trampled snow and hurried across, thinking, There, it's done.
I had covered two blocks when someone called behind me, "Say, buddy! Hey, there! You, Mister . . . Wait a second!" and I could hear the hurried crunching of footsteps upon the snow. Then he was beside me, a squat man in worn clothes, the strands of his breath showing white in the cold as he smiled at me, panting.
"You was moving so fast I thought I wasn't going to be able to stop you," he said. "Didn't you lose something back there a piece?"
Oh, hell, a friend in need, I thought, deciding to deny it. "Lose something?" I said. "Why, no."
"You sure?" he said, frowning.
"Yes," I said, seeing his forehead wrinkle with uncertainty, a hot charge of fear leaping to his eyes as he searched my face.
"But I seen you -- Say, buddy," he said, looking swiftly back up the street, "what you trying to do?"
"Do? What do you mean?"
"I mean talking 'bout you didn't lose nothing. You working a con game or something?" He backed away, looking hurriedly at the pedestrians back up the street from where he'd come.
"What on earth are you talking about now?" I said. "I tell you I didn't lose anything."
"Man, don't tell me! I seen you. What the hell you mean?" he said, furtively removing the package from his pocket. "This here feels like money or a gun or something and I know damn well I seen you drop it."
"Oh, that," I said. "That isn't anything -- I thought you --"