ENG-102 READING QUIZ
Read: Bambara, “The Lesson” (248); Joyce, “Araby” (126); Updike, “A & P” (382)
Please read all stories and take the quiz. (use your own words)
From the feedback I have given you on previous quizzes, by now you should know what I am looking for. Your responses can be brief (1-3 sentences) if you directly answer the question. Do not tell me everything that you know about the stories; stay focused on the question. If there are two parts to a question, be sure to answer both parts.
Most of all, answer the questions in YOUR OWN WORDS. It is immediately apparent to me if you are responding based on what an outside source says about the stories rather than on your own reading of them. I know what those sources have to say. I am interested in your ideas and words!
Bambara/Joyce/Updike 1
ENG 102: English Composition II
Mrs. Saitta-Ringger
Name:__________________
Quiz: Toni Cade Bambara, James Joyce, and John Updike
“The Lesson,” by Toni Cade Bambara
1. Who is Miss Moore, and why does she feel responsible for educating the children in this neighborhood?
2. Why does the narrator initially not understand Miss Moore’s declaration that they are “all poor and live in the slums”?
3. What reaction does Sylvia imagine receiving from her mother if she asked for “a $35 birthday clown”?
4. How do Sylvia and Sugar end up with an unexpected four dollars?
“Araby,” by James Joyce
5. Describe the narrator’s feelings for Mangan’s sister. How would you characterize this relationship?
6. When Mangan’s sister says that she cannot go to Araby (the bazaar), what does the narrator say that he will do for her?
7. How do the train and the “young lady” at the bazaar become obstacles between the narrator and “the purpose of [his] journey”?
“A & P,” by John Updike
8. Why can’t the narrator take his eyes off the three girls who walk into the A & P?
9. Who is Stokesie, and what distinguishes him from Sammy (the narrator)?
10. What does Sammy announce to Lengel, and why does he make this decision? At the end of the story, do you think that Sammy regrets his decision?
Extra credit: Describe the relationship between the adults and children in these three stories. Will Sammy, Sylvia, and the narrator of “Araby” grow up to be similar to or different from the adults in their lives? Refer briefly to each character.
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In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits. I’m in the third check-out slot, with my
back to the door, so I don’t see them until they’re over by the bread. The one that caught my eye
first was the one in the plaid green two-piece. She was a chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet
broad soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under it, where the sun never seems
to hit, at the top of the backs of her legs. I stood there with my hand on a box of HiHo crackers
trying to remember if I rang it up or not. I ring it up again and the customer starts giving me hell.
She’s one of these cash-register-watchers, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no
eyebrows, and I knowit made her day to trip me up. She’d been watching cash registers forty years
and probably never seen a mistake before.
By the time I got her feathers smoothed and her goodies into a bag — she gives me alittle snort in
passing, if she’d been born at the right time they would have burned her over in Salem — by the
time I get her on her way the girls had circled around the bread and were coming back, without a
pushcart, back my way along the counters, in the aisle between the check-outs and the Special bins.
They didn’t even have shoes on. There was this chunky one, with the two-piece — it was bright
green and the seams on the bra were still sharp and her belly was still pretty pale so I guessed she
just got it (the suit) — there was this one, with one of those chubby berry-faces, the lips all bunched
together under her nose, this one, and a tall one, with black hair that hadn’t quite frizzed right, and
one of these sunburns right across under the eyes, and a chin that was too long — you know, the
kind of girl other girls think is very “striking” and “attractive” but never quite makes it, as they very
well know, which is why they like her so much — and then the third one, that wasn’t quite so tall.
She was the queen. She kind of led them, the other two peeking around and making their
shoulders round. She didn’t look around, not this queen, she just walked straight on slowly, on
these long white prima donna legs. She came down a little hard on her heels, as if she didn’t walk
in her bare feet that much, putting down her heels and then letting the weight move along to her
toes as if she was testing the floor with every step, putting a little deliberate extra action into it.
You never know for sure how girls’ minds work (do you really think it’s a mind in there or just a
little buzz like a bee in a glassjar?) but you got the idea she had talked the other two into coming in
here with her, and now she was showing them how to do it, walk slow and hold yourself straight.
She had on a kind of dirty-pink – – beige maybe, I don’t know — bathing suit with a little nubble
all over it and, what got me, the straps were down. They were off her shoulders looped loose
around the cool tops of her arms, and I guess as a result the suit had slipped a little on her, so all
around the top of the cloth there was this shining rim. If it hadn’t been there you wouldn’t have
known there could have been anything whiter than those shoulders. With the straps pushed off,
there was nothing between the top of the suit and the top of her head except just her, this clean
bare plane of the top of her chest down from the shoulder bones like a dented sheet of metal
tilted in the light. I mean, it was more than pretty.
She had sort of oaky hair that the sun and salt had bleached, done up in a bun that was
unravelling, and a kind of prim face. Walking into the A & P with your straps down, I suppose it’s
the only kind of face you can have. She held her head so high her neck, coming up out o fthose
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white shoulders, looked kind of stretched, but I didn’t mind. The longer her neck was, the more of
her there was.
She must have felt in the corner of her eye me and over my shoulder Stokesie in the second slot
watching, but she didn’t tip. Not this queen. She kept her eyes moving across the racks, and
stopped, and turned so slow it made my stomach rub the inside of my apron, and buzzed to the
other two, who kind of huddled against her for relief, and they all three of them went up the cat-
and-dog-food-breakfast-cereal-macaroni-ri ce-raisins-seasonings-spreads-spaghetti-soft drinks- rackers-
and- cookies aisle. From the third slot I look straight up this aisle to the meat counter, and I
watched them all the way. The fat one with the tan sort of fumbled with the cookies, but on
second thought she put the packages back. The sheep pushing their carts down the aisle — the girls
were walking against the usual traffic (not that we have one-way signs or anything) — were pretty
hilarious. You could see them, when Queenie’s white shoulders dawned on them, kind of jerk, or
hop, or hiccup, but their eyes snapped back to their own baskets and on they pushed. I bet you
could set off dynamite in an A & P and the people would by and large keep reaching and checking
oatmeal off their lists and muttering “Let me see, there was a third thing, began with A, asparagus,
no, ah, yes, applesauce!” or whatever it is they do mutter. But there was no doubt, this jiggled them.
A few house-slaves in pin curlers even looked around after pushing their carts past to make sure
what they had seen was correct.
You know, it’s one thing to have a girl in a bathing suit down on the beach, where what with
the glare nobody can look at each other much anyway, and another thing in the cool of the A & P,
under the fluorescent lights, against all those stacked packages, with her feet paddling along naked
over our checkerboard green-and-cream rubber-tile floor.
“Oh Daddy,” Stokesie said beside me. “I feel so faint.”
“Darling,” I said. “Hold me tight.” Stokesie’s married, with two babies chalked up on his fuselage
already, but as far as I can tell that’s the only difference. He’s twenty-two, and I was nineteen this
April.
“Is it done?” he asks, the responsible married man finding his voice. I forgot to say he thinks he’s
going to be manager some sunny day, maybe in 1990 when it’s called the Great Alexandrov and
Petrooshki Tea Company or something.
What he meant was, our town is five miles from a beach, with a big summer colony out on the
Point, but we’re right in the middle of town, and the women generally put on a shirt or shorts or
something before they get out of the car into the street. And anyway these are usually women
with six children and varicose veins mapping their legs and nobody, including them, could care
less. As I say, we’re right in the middle of town, and if you stand at our front doors you can see
two banks and the Congregational church and the newspaper store and three real-estate offices and
about twenty-seven old free-loaders tearing up Central Street because the sewer broke again. It’s not
as if we’re on the Cape; we’re north of Boston and there’s people in this town haven’t seen the
ocean for twenty years.
The girls had reached the meat counter and were asking McMahon something. He pointed, they
pointed, and they shuffled out of sight behind a pyramid of Diet Delight peaches. All that was left
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for us to see was old McMahon patting his mouth and looking after them sizing up their joints.
Poor kids, I began to feel sorry for them, they couldn’t help it.
Now here comes the sad part of the story, at:least my family says it’s sad but I don’t think it’s sad
myself. The store’s pretty empty, it being Thursday afternoon, so there was nothing much to do
except lean on the register and wait for the girls to show up again. The whole store was like a
pinball machine and I didn’t know which tunnel they’d come out of. After a while they come
around out of the far aisle, around the light bulbs, records at discount of the Caribbean Six or
Tony Martin Sings or some such gunk you wonder they waste the wax on, sixpacks of candy bars,
and plastic toys done up in cellophane that faIl apart when a kid looks at them anyway. Around
they come, Queenie still leading the way, and holding a little gray jar in her hand. Slots Three
through Seven are unmanned and I could see her wondering between Stokes and me, but Stokesie
with his usual luck draws an old party in baggy gray pants who stumbles up with four giant cans
of pineapple juice (what do these bums do with all that pineapple juice’ I’ve often asked myself) so
the girls come to me. Queenie puts down the jar and I take it into my fingers icy cold. Kingfish
Fancy Herring Snacks in Pure Sour Cream: 49¢. Now her hands are empty, not a ring or a bracelet,
bare as God made them, and I wonder where the money’s coming from. Still with that prim look
she lifts a folded dollar bill out of the hollow at the center of her nubbled pink top. The jar went
heavy in my hand. Really, I thought that was so cute.
Then everybody’s luck begins to run out. Lengel comes in from haggling with a truck full of
cabbages on the lot and is about to scuttle into that door marked MANAGER behind which he
hides all day when the girls touch his eye. Lengel’s pretty dreary, teaches Sunday school and the
rest, but he doesn’t miss that much. He comes over and says, “Girls, this isn’t the beach.”
Queenie blushes, though maybe it’s just a brush of sunburn I was noticing for the first time,
now that she was so close. “My mother asked me to pick up a jar of herring snacks.” Her voice kind
of startled me, the way voices do when you see the people first, coming out so flat and dumb yet
kind of tony, too, the way it ticked over “pick up” and “snacks.” All of a sudden I slid right down
her voice into her living room. Her father and the other men were standing around in ice-cream
coats and bow ties and the women were in sandals picking up herring snacks on toothpicks off a
big plate and they were all holding drinks the color of water with olives and sprigs of mint in
them. When my parents have somebody over they get lemonade and if it’s a real racy affair Schlitz
in tall glasses with “They’ll Do It Every Time” cartoons stencilled on.
“That’s all right,” Lengel said. “But this isn’t the beach.” His repeating this struck me as funny, as if
it hadjust occurred to him, and he had been thinking all these years the A & P was a great big dune
and he was the head lifeguard. He didn’t like my smiling — -as I say he doesn’t miss much — but he
concentrates on giving the girls that sad Sunday- school-superintendent stare.
Queenie’s blush is no sunburn now, and the plump one in plaid, that I liked better from the
back — a really sweet can — pipes up, “We weren’t doing any shopping. We just came in for the one
thing.”
“That makes no difference,” Lengel tells her, and I could see from the way his eyes went that he
hadn’t noticed she was wearing a two-piece before. “We want you decently dressed when you come
in here.”
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“We are decent,” Queenie says suddenly, her lower lip pushing, getting sore now that she
remembers her place, a place from which the crowd that runs the A & P must look pretty
crummy. Fancy Herring Snacks flashed in her very blue eyes.
“Girls, I don’t want to argue with you. After this come in here with your shoulders covered. It’s
our policy.” He turns his back. That’s policy for you. Policy is what the kingpins want. What the
others want is juvenile delinquency.
All this while, the customers had been showing up with their carts but, you know, sheep, seeing
a scene, they had all bunched up on Stokesie, who shook open a paper bag as gently as peeling a
peach, not wanting to miss a word. I could feel in the silence everybody getting nervous, most of
all Lengel, who asks me, “Sammy, have you rung up this purchase?”
I thought and said “No” but it wasn’t about that I was thinking. I go through the punches, 4, 9,
GROC, TOT — it’s more complicated than you think, and after you do it often enough, it begins to
make a lttle song, that you hear words to, in my case “Hello (bing) there, you (gung) hap-py pee-pul
(splat)”-the splat being the drawer flying out. I uncrease the bill, tenderly as you may imagine, it just
having come from between the two smoothest scoops of vanilla I had ever known were there, and
pass a half and a penny into her narrow pink palm, and nestle the herrings in a bag and twist its
neck and hand it over, all the time thinking.
The girls, and who’d blame them, are in a hurry to get out, so I say “I quit” to Lengel quick
enough for them to hear, hoping they’ll stop and watch me, their unsuspected hero. They keep
right on going, into the electric eye; the door flies open and they flicker across the lot to their car,
Queenie and Plaid and Big Tall Goony-Goony (not that as raw material she was so bad), leaving me
with Lengel and a kink in his eyebrow.
“Did you say something, Sammy?”
“I said I quit.”
“I thought you did.”
“You didn’t have to embarrass them.”
“It was they who were embarrassing us.”
I started to say something that came out “Fiddle-de-doo.” It’s a saying of my grand- mother’s, and I
know she would have been pleased.
“I don’t think you know what you’re saying,” Lengel said.
“I know you don’t,” I said. “But I do.” I pull the bow at the back of my apron and start shrugging it
off my shoulders. A couple customers that had been heading for my slot begin to knock against
each other, like scared pigs in a chute.
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Lengel sighs and begins to look very patient and old and gray. He’s been a friend of my parents
for years. “Sammy, you don’t want to do this to your Mom and Dad,” he tells me. It’s true, I don’t.
But it seems to me that once you begin a gesture it’s fatal not to go through with it. I fold the
apron, “Sammy” stitched in red on the pocket, and put it on the counter, and drop the bow tie on
top of it. The bow tie is theirs, if you’ve ever wondered. “You’ll feel this for the rest of your life,”
Lengel says, and I know that’s true, too, but remembering how he made that pretty girl blush
makes me so scrunchy inside I punch the No Sale tab and the machine whirs “pee-pul” and the
drawer splats out. One advantage to this scene taking place in summer, I can follow this up with a
clean exit, there’s no fumbling around getting your coat and galoshes, I just saunter into the
electric eye in my white shirt that my mother ironed the night before, and the door heaves itself
open, and outside the sunshine is skating around on the asphalt.
I look around for my girls, but they’re gone, of course. There wasn’t anybody but some young
married screaming with her children about some candy they didn’t get by the door of a powder-
blue Falcon station wagon. Looking back in the big windows, over the bags of peat moss and
aluminum lawn furniture stacked on the pavement, I could see Lengel in my place in the slot,
checking the sheep through. His face was dark gray and his back stiff, as if he’d just had an
injection of iron, and my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me
hereafter.
- John Updike
1
Araby
by James Joyce
North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the
Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at
the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground. The other houses of the
street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown
imperturbable faces.
The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing-room. Air, musty
from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room behind the
kitchen was littered with old useless papers. Among these I found a few paper-covered
books, the pages of which were curled and damp: The Abbot, by Walter Scott, The
Devout Communicant, and The Memoirs of Vidocq. I liked the last best because its
leaves were yellow. The wild garden behind the house contained a central apple-tree and
a few straggling bushes, under one of which I found the late tenant’s rusty bicycle-pump.
He had been a very charitable priest; in his will he had left all his money to institutions
and the furniture of his house to his sister.
When the short days of winter came, dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners.
When we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. The space of sky above us was
the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble
lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed
in the silent street. The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes
behind the houses, where we ran the gauntlet of the rough tribes from the cottages, to the
back doors of the dark dripping gardens where odours arose from the ashpits, to the dark
odorous stables where a coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook music from
the buckled harness. When we returned to the street, light from the kitchen windows had
filled the areas. If my uncle was seen turning the corner, we hid in the shadow until we
had seen him safely housed. Or if Mangan’s sister came out on the doorstep to call her
brother in to his tea, we watched her from our shadow peer up and down the street. We
waited to see whether she would remain or go in and, if she remained, we left our shadow
and walked up to Mangan’s steps resignedly. She was waiting for us, her figure defined
by the light from the half-opened door. Her brother always teased her before he obeyed,
and I stood by the railings looking at her. Her dress swung as she moved her body, and
the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side.
Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. The blind was
pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen. When she came out
on the doorstep my heart leaped. I ran to the hall, seized my books and followed her. I
kept her brown figure always in my eye and, when we came near the point at which our
ways diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her. This happened morning after
morning. I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was
like a summons to all my foolish blood.
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Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On Saturday
evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some of the parcels. We
walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid
the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels
of pigs’ cheeks, the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you about
O’Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native land. These noises
converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely
through a throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and
praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not
tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I
thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I
spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp
and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.
One evening I went into the back drawing-room in which the priest had died. It was a
dark rainy evening and there was no sound in the house. Through one of the broken panes
I heard the rain impinge upon the earth, the fine incessant needles of water playing in the
sodden beds. Some distant lamp or lighted window gleamed below me. I was thankful
that I could see so little. All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling
that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my hands together until they
trembled, murmuring: `O love! O love!’ many times.
At last she spoke to me. When she addressed the first words to me I was so confused that
I did not know what to answer. She asked me was I going to Araby. I forgot whether I
answered yes or no. It would be a splendid bazaar; she said she would love to go.
`And why can’t you?’ I asked.
While she spoke she turned a silver bracelet round and round her wrist. She could not go,
she said, because there would be a retreat that week in her convent. Her brother and two
other boys were fighting for their caps, and I was alone at the railings. She held one of the
spikes, bowing her head towards me. The light from the lamp opposite our door caught
the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and, falling, lit up the hand
upon the railing. It fell over one side of her dress and caught the white border of a
petticoat, just visible as she stood at ease.
`It’s well for you,’ she said.
`If I go,’ I said, `I will bring you something.’
What innumerable follies laid waste my waking and sleeping thoughts after that evening!
I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days. I chafed against the work of school.
At night in my bedroom and by day in the classroom her image came between me and the
page I strove to read. The syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the
silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over me. I asked for
leave to go to the bazaar on Saturday night. My aunt was surprised, and hoped it was not
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some Freemason affair. I answered few questions in class. I watched my master’s face
pass from amiability to sternness; he hoped I was not beginning to idle. I could not call
my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life
which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child’s play, ugly
monotonous child’s play.
On Saturday morning I reminded my uncle that I wished to go to the bazaar in the
evening. He was fussing at the hallstand, looking for the hat-brush, and answered me
curtly:
`Yes, boy, I know.’
As he was in the hall I could not go into the front parlour and lie at the window. I felt the
house in bad humour and walked slowly towards the school. The air was pitilessly raw
and already my heart misgave me.
When I came home to dinner my uncle had not yet been home. Still it was early. I sat
staring at the clock for some time and, when its ticking began to irritate me, I left the
room. I mounted the staircase and gained the upper part of the house. The high, cold,
empty, gloomy rooms liberated me and I went from room to room singing. From the front
window I saw my companions playing below in the street. Their cries reached me
weakened and indistinct and, leaning my forehead against the cool glass, I looked over at
the dark house where she lived. I may have stood there for an hour, seeing nothing but
the brown-clad figure cast by my imagination, touched discreetly by the lamplight at the
curved neck, at the hand upon the railings and at the border below the dress.
When I came downstairs again I found Mrs Mercer sitting at the fire. She was an old,
garrulous woman, a pawnbroker’s widow, who collected used stamps for some pious
purpose. I had to endure the gossip of the tea-table. The meal was prolonged beyond an
hour and still my uncle did not come. Mrs Mercer stood up to go: she was sorry she
couldn’t wait any longer, but it was after eight o’clock and she did not like to be out late,
as the night air was bad for her. When she had gone I began to walk up and down the
room, clenching my fists. My aunt said:
`I’m afraid you may put off your bazaar for this night of Our Lord.’
At nine o’clock I heard my uncle’s latchkey in the hall door. I heard him talking to
himself and heard the hallstand rocking when it had received the weight of his overcoat. I
could interpret these signs. When he was midway through his dinner I asked him to give
me the money to go to the bazaar. He had forgotten.
`The people are in bed and after their first sleep now,’ he said.
I did not smile. My aunt said to him energetically:
`Can’t you give him the money and let him go? You’ve kept him late enough as it is.’
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My uncle said he was very sorry he had forgotten. He said he believed in the old saying:
`All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’ He asked me where I was going and, when
I told him a second time, he asked me did I know The Arab’s Farewell to his Steed. When
I left the kitchen he was about to recite the opening lines of the piece to my aunt.
I held a florin tightly in my hand as I strode down Buckingham Street towards the station.
The sight of the streets thronged with buyers and glaring with gas recalled to me the
purpose of my journey. I took my seat in a third-class carriage of a deserted train. After
an intolerable delay the train moved out of the station slowly. It crept onward among
ruinous houses and over the twinkling river. At Westland Row Station a crowd of people
pressed to the carriage doors; but the porters moved them back, saying that it was a
special train for the bazaar. I remained alone in the bare carriage. In a few minutes the
train drew up beside an improvised wooden platform. I passed out on to the road and saw
by the lighted dial of a clock that it was ten minutes to ten. In front of me was a large
building which displayed the magical name.
I could not find any sixpenny entrance and, fearing that the bazaar would be closed, I
passed in quickly through a turnstile, handing a shilling to a weary-looking man. I found
myself in a big hall girded at half its height by a gallery. Nearly all the stalls were closed
and the greater part of the hall was in darkness. I recognized a silence like that which
pervades a church after a service. I walked into the centre of the bazaar timidly. A few
people were gathered about the stalls which were still open. Before a curtain, over which
the words Café Chantant were written in coloured lamps, two men were counting money
on a salver. I listened to the fall of the coins.
Remembering with difficulty why I had come, I went over to one of the stalls and
examined porcelain vases and flowered tea-sets. At the door of the stall a young lady was
talking and laughing with two young gentlemen. I remarked their English accents and
listened vaguely to their conversation.
`O, I never said such a thing!’
`O, but you did!’
`O, but I didn’t!’
`Didn’t she say that?’
`Yes. I heard her.’
`O, there’s a… fib!’
Observing me, the young lady came over and asked me did I wish to buy anything. The
tone of her voice was not encouraging; she seemed to have spoken to me out of a sense of
duty. I looked humbly at the great jars that stood like eastern guards at either side of the
dark entrance to the stall and murmured:
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`No, thank you.’
The young lady changed the position of one of the vases and went back to the two young
men. They began to talk of the same subject. Once or twice the young lady glanced at me
over her shoulder.
I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in her
wares seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly and walked down the middle of the
bazaar. I allowed the two pennies to fall against the sixpence in my pocket. I heard a
voice call from one end of the gallery that the light was out. The upper part of the hall
was now completely dark.
Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and
my eyes burned with anguish and anger.
By Toni Cade Bambara
Back in the days when everyone was old and stupid or young and foolish and me and
Sugar were the only ones just right, this lade moved on our block with nappy hair and
proper speech and no makeup. And quite naturally we laughed at her, laughed the way
we did at the junk man who went about his business like he was some big-time president
and his sorry-ass horse his secretary. And we kinda hated her too, hated the way we did
the winos who cluttered up our parks and pissed on our handball walls and stank up our
hallways and stairs so you couldn’t halfway play hide-and-seek without a goddamn gas
mask. Miss Moore was her name. The only woman on the block with no first name.
And she was black as hell, cept for her feet, which were fish-white and spooky. And she
was always planning these boring-ass things for us to do, us being my cousin, mostly,
who lived on the block cause we all moved North the same time and to the same
apartment then spread out gradual to breathe. And our parents would yank our heads into
some kinda shape and crisp up our clothes so we’d be presentable for travel with Miss
Moore, who always looked like she was going to church, though she never did. Which is
just one of the things the grown-ups talked about when they talked behind her back like a
dog. But when she came calling with some sachet she’d sewed up or some gingerbread
she’d made or some book, why then they’d all be too embarrassed to turn her down and
we’d get handed over all spruced up. She’d been to college and said it was only right that
she should take responsibility for the young ones’ education, and she not even related by
marriage or blood. So they’d go for it. Specially Aunt Gretchen. She was the main
gofer in the family. You got some ole dumb shit foolishness you want somebody to go
for, you send for Aunt Gretchen. She been screwed into the go-along for so long, it’s a
blood-deep natural thing with her. Which is now she got saddled with me and Sugar and
Junior in the first place while our mothers were in a la-de-da apartment up the block
having a good ole time.
So this one day Miss Moore rounds us all up at the mailbox and it’s puredee hot
and she’s knocking herself out about arithmetic. And school suppose to let up in summer
I heard, but she don’t never let us. And the starch in my pinafore scratching the shit outta
me and I’m really hating this nappy-head bitch and her goddamn college degree. I’d
much rather go to the pool or to the show where it’s cool. So me and Sugar leaning on
the mailbox being surly, which is a Miss Moore word. And Flyboy checking out what
everybody brought for lunch. And Fat Butt already wasting his peanut-butter–and-jelly
sandwich like the pig he is. And Junebug punchin on Q.T.’s arm for potato chips. And
Rosie Giraffe shifting from one hip to the other waiting for somebody to step on her foot
or ask her if she from Georgia so she can kick ass, perferable Mercedes’. And Miss
Moore asking us do we know what money is, like we a bunch of retards. I mean real
money, she say, like it’s only poker chips or monopoly papers we lay on the grocer. So
right away I’m tired of this and say so. And would much rather snatch Sugar and go to
the Sunset and terrorize the West Indian kids and take their hair ribbons and their money
too. And Miss Moore files that remark away for next week’s lessons brotherhood, I can
tell. And finally I say we oughta get to the subway cause it’s cooler and besides we
might meet some cute boys. Sugar done swiped her mama’s lipstick, we ready.
So we heading down the street and she’s boring us silly about what things cost
and what our parents make and how much goes for rent and how money ain’t divided up
right in this country. And then she gets to the part about we all poor and live in the
slums, which I don’t feature. And I’m ready to speak on that, but she steps out in the
street and hails two cabs just like that. Then she hustles half the crew in with her and
hands me a five-dollar bill and tells me to calculate 10 percent tip for the driver. And
we’re off. Me and Sugar and Junebug and Flyboy hangin out the window and hollering
to everybody, putting lipstick on each other cause Flyboy a faggot anyway, and making
farts with our sweaty armpits. But I’m mostly trying to figure how to spend this money.
But they all fascinated with the meter ticking and Junebug starts laying bets as to how
much it’ll read when Flyboy can’t hold his breath no more. Then Sugar lays bets as to
how much it’ll be when we get there. So I’m stuck. Don’t nobody want to go for my
plan, which is to jump out at the next light and run off to the first bar-b-que we can find.
Then the driver tells us to get the hell out cause we there already. And the meter reads
eight-five cents. And I’m stalling to figure out the tip and Sugar say give him a dime.
And I decide he don’t need it bad as I do, so later for him. But then he tries to take off
with Junebug foot still in the door so we talk about his mama something ferocious. Then
we check out that we on Fifth Avenue and everybody dressed up in stockings. One lady
in a fur coat, hot as it is. White folks crazy.
“This is the place,” Miss Moore say, presenting it to us in the voice she uses at the
museum. “Let’s look in the windows before we go in.”
“Can we steal?” Sugar asks very serious like she’s getting the ground rules
squared away before she plays. “I beg your pardon,” say Miss Moore, and we fall out.
So she leads us around the windows of the toy store and me and Sugar screamin, “This is
mine, that’s mine, I gotta have that, that was made for me, I was born for that,” till Big
Butt drowns us out.
“Hey, I’m goin to buy that there.”
“That there? You don’t even know what it is, stupid.”
“I do so,” he say punchin on Rosie Giraffe. “It’s a microscope.”
“Whatcha gonna do with a microscope, fool?”
“Look at things.
“Like what, Ronald?” ask Miss Moore. And Big Butt ain’t got the first notion.
So here go Miss Moore gabbing about the thousands of bacteria in a drop of water and
the somethinorother in a speck of blood and the million and one living things in the air
around us is invisible to the naked eye. And what she say that for? Junebug go to town
on that “naked” and we rolling. Then Miss Moore ask what it cost. So we all jam into
the window smudgin it up and the price tag say $300. So then she ask how long’d take
for Big Butt and Junebug to save up their allowances. “Too long,” I say. “Yeh,” adds
Sugar, “outgrown it by that time.” And Miss Moore say no, you never outgrow learning
instruments. “Why, even medical students and interns and, “blah, blah, blah. And we
ready to choke Big Butt for bringing it up in t he first damn place.
“This here costs four hundred eighty dollars,” say Rosie Giraffe. So we pile up
all over her to see what she pointin out. My eyes tell me it’s a chunk of glass cracked
with something heavy, and different-color inks dripped into the splits, then the whole
thing put into a oven or something. But the $480 it don’t make sense.
“That’s a paperweight made of semi-precious stones fused together under
tremendous pressure,” she explains slowly, with her hands doing the mining and all the
factory work.
“So what’s a paperweight?” asks Rosie Giraffe.
“To weigh paper with, dumbbell,” say Flyboy, the wise man from the East.
“Not exactly,” say Miss Moore, which is what she say when you warm or way off
too. “It’s to weigh paper down so it won’t scatter and make your desk untidy.” So right
away me and Sugar curtsy to each other and then to Mercedes who is more the tidy type.
“We don’t keep paper on top of the desk in my class,” say Junebug, figuring Miss
Moore crazy or lyin one.
“At home, then,” she say. “Don’t you have a calendar and a pencil case and a
blotter and a letter-opener on y our desk at home where you do your homework?” And
she know damn well what our homes look like cause she nosys around in them every
chance she gets.
“I don’t even have a desk,” say Junebug. “Do we?”
“No. And I don’t get no homework neither,” say Big Butt.
“And I don’t even have a home,” say Flyboy like he do at school to keep the
white folks off his back and sorry for him. Send this poor kid to camp posters is his
specialty.
“I do,” says Mercedes. “I have a box of stationery on my desk and a picture of
my cat. My godmother bought the stationery and the desk. There’s a big rose on each
sheet and the envelopes smell like roses.”
“Who wants to know about your smelly-ass stationery,” say Rosie Giraffe fore I
can get my two cents in.
“It’s important to have a work area all your own so that …”
“Will you look at this sailboat, please,” say Flyboy, cuttin her off and pointin to
the thing like it was his. So once again we tumble all over each other to gaze at this
magnificent thing in the toy store which is just big enough to maybe sail two kittens
across the pond if you strap them to the posts tight. We all start reciting the price tag like
we in assembly. “Handcrafted sailboat of fiberglass at one thousand one hundred ninety-
five dollars.”
“Unbelievable,” I hear myself say and am really stunned. I read it again for
myself just in case the group recitation put me in a trance. Same thing. For some reason
this pisses me off. We look at Miss Moore and she looking at us, waiting for I dunnno
what.
Who’d pay all that when you can buy a sailboat set for a quarter at Pop’s, a tube
of blue for a dime, and a ball of string for eight cents? “It must have a motor and a whole
lot else besides,” I say. “My sailboat cost me about fifty cents.”
“But will it take water?” say Mercedes with her smart ass.
“Took mine to Alley Pond Park once,” say Flyboy. “String broke. Lost it. Pity.”
“Sailed mine in Central Park and it keeled over and sank. Had to ask my father
for another dollar.”
“And you got the strap,” laugh Big Butt. “The jerk didn’t even have a string on it.
My old man wailed on his behind.”
Little Q.T. was staring hard at the sailboat and you could see he wanted it bad.
But he too little and somebody’d just take it from him. So what the hell. “This boat for
kids, Miss Moore?”
“Parents silly to buy something like that just to get all broke up,” say Rosie
Giraffe.
“That much money it should last forever,” I figure.
“My father’d buy it for me if I wanted it.”
“Your father, my ass,” say Rosie Giraffe getting a chance to finally push
Mercedes.
“Must be rich people shop here,” say Q.T.
“You are a very bright boy,” say Flyboy. What was your first clue?” And he rap
him on the head with the back of his knuckles, since Q.T. the only one he could get away
with. Though Q.T. liable to come up behind you years later and get his licks in when you
half expect it.
“What I want to know,” I says to Miss Moore though I never talk to her, I
wouldn’t give the bitch that satisfaction, “is how much a real boat costs? I figure a
thousand’d get you a yacht any day.”
“Why don’t you check that out,” she says, “and report back to the group?” Which
really pains my ass. If you gonna mess up a perfectly good swim day least you could do
is have some answers. “Let’s go in,” she say like she got something up her sleeve. Only
she don’t lead the way. So me and Sugar turn the corner to where the entrance is, but
when we get there I kinda hang back. Not that I’m scared, what’s there to be afraid of,
just a toy store. But I feel funny, shame. But what I got to be shamed about? Got as
much right to go in as anybody. But somehow I can’t seem to get hold of the door, so I
step away for Sugar to lead. But she hangs back too. And I look at her and she looks at
me and this is ridiculous. I mean, damn, I have never ever been shy about doing nothing
or going nowhere. But then Mercedes steps up and then Rosie Giraffe and Big Butt
crowd in behind and shove, and next thing we all stuffed into the doorway with only
Mercedes squeezing past us, smoothing out her jumper and walking right down the aisle.
Then the rest of us tumble in like a glued-together jigsaw done all wrong. And people
looking at us. And it’s like the time me and Sugar crashed into the Catholic church on a
dare. But once we got in there and everything so hushed and holy and the candles and
the bowin and the handkerchiefs on all the drooping heads, I just couldn’t go through
with the plan. Which was for me to run up to the altar and do a tap dance while Sugar
played the nose flute and messed around in the holy water. And Sugar kept givin me the
elbow. Then later teased me so bad I tied her up in the shower and turned it on and
locked her in. And she’d be there till this day if Aunt Gretchen hadn’t finally figured I
was lyin about the boarder taking a shower.
Same thing in the store. We all walkin on tiptoe and hardly touchin the games
and puzzles and things. And I watched Miss Moore who is steady watchin us like she
waiting for a sign. Like Mama Drewery watches the sky and sniffs the air and takes note
of just how much slant is in the bird formation. Then me and Sugar bump smack into
each other, so busy gazing at the toys, ’specially the sailboat. But we don’t laugh and go
into our fat-lady bump-stomach routine. We just stare at that price tag. Then Sugar run a
finger over the whole boat. And I’m jealous and want to hit her. Maybe not her, but I
sure want to punch somebody in the mouth.
“Watcha bring us here for, Miss Moore?”
“You sound angry, Sylvia. Are you mad about something?” Givin me one of
them grins like she tellin a grown-up joke that never turns out to be funny. And she’s
lookin very closely at me like maybe she plannin to do my portrait from memory. I’m
mad, but I won’t give her that satisfaction. So I slouch around the store bein very bored
and say, “Let’s go.”
Me and Sugar at the back of the train watchin the tracks whizzin by large then
small then gettin gobbled up in the dark. I’m thinkin about this tricky toy I saw in the
store. A clown that somersaults on a bar then does chin-ups just cause you yank lightly at
his leg. Cost $35. I could see me asking my mother for a $35 birthday clown. “You
wanna who that costs what?” she’d say, cocking her head to the side to get a better view
of the hole in my head. Thirty-five dollars could buy new bunk beds for Junior and
Gretchen’s boy. Thirty-five dollars and the whole household could visit Grandaddy
Nelson in the country. Thirty-five dollars would pay for the rent and the piano bill too.
Who are these people that spend that much for performing clowns and $1,000 for toy
sailboats? What kinda work they do and how they live and how come we ain’t in on it?
Where we are is who we are, Miss Moore always pointin out. But it don’t necessarily
have to be that way, she always adds then waits for somebody to say that poor people
have to wake up and demand their share of the pie and don’t none of us know what kind
of pie she talkin about in the first damn place. But she ain’t so smart cause I still got her
four dollars from the taxi and she sure ain’t getting it. Messin up my day with this shit.
Sugar nudges me in my pocket and winks.
Miss Moore lines us up in front of the mailbox where we started from, seem like
years ago, and I got a headache for thinkin so hard. And we lean all over each other so
we can hold up under the draggy-ass lecture she always finishes us off with at the end
before we thank her for borin us to tears. But she just looks at us like she readin tea
leaves. Finally she say, “Well, what did you think of F.A.O. Schwarz?”
Rosie Giraffe mumbles, “White folks crazy.”
“I’d like to go there again when I get my birthday money,” says Mercedes, and
we shove her out the pack so she has to lean on the mailbox by herself.
“I’d like a shower. Tiring day,” say Flyboy.
Then Sugar surprises me by sayin, “You know, Miss Moore, I don’t think all of us
here put together eat in a year what that sailboat costs.” And Miss Moore lights up like
somebody goosed her. “And?” she say, urging Sugar on. Only I’m standin on her foot so
she don’t continue.
“Imagine for a minute what kind of society it is in which some people can spend
on a toy what it would cost to feed a family of six or seven. What do you think?”
“I think,” say Sugar pushing me off her feet like she never done before, cause I
whip her ass in a minute, “that this is not much of a democracy if you ask me. Equal
chance to pursue happiness means an equal crack at the dough, don’t it?” Miss Moore is
besides herself and I am disgusted with Sugar’s treachery. So I stand on her foot one
more time to see if she’ll shove me. She shuts up, and Miss Moore looks at me,
sorrowfully I’m thinkin. And somethin weird is goin on, I can feel it in my chest.
“Anybody else learn anything today?” looking dead at me. I walk away and
Sugar has to run to catch up and don’t even seem to notice when I shrug her arm off my
shoulder.
“Well, we got four dollars anyway,” she says.
“Uh hunh.”
“We could go to Hascombs and get half a chocolate layer and then go to the
Sunset and still have plenty money for potato chips and ice-cream sodas.”
“Uh hunh.”
“Race you to Hascombs,” she say.
We start down the block and she gets ahead which is O.K. by me cause I’m going
to the West End and then over to the Drive to think this day through. She can run if she
want to and even run faster. But ain’t nobody gonna beat me at nuthin.
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- The Lesson
By Toni Cade Bambara