Read Everything That Rises Must Converge for Free Online Page B

leaves, then wander through the high-ceilinged hall into the parlor that opened onto it and gaze at the worn rugs and faded draperies. It occurred to him that it was he, not she, who could have appreciated it. He preferred its threadbare elegance to anything he could name and it was because of it that all the neighborhoods they had lived in had been a torment to him—whereas she had hardly known the difference. She called her insensitivity “being adjustable.”
    â€œAnd I remember the old darky who was my nurse, Caroline. There was no better person in the world. I’ve always had a great respect for my colored friends,” she said. “I’d do anything in the world for them and they’d…”
    â€œWill you for God’s sake get off that subject?” Julian said. When he got on a bus by himself, he made it a point to sit down beside a Negro, in reparation as it were for his mother’s sins.
    â€œYou’re mighty touchy tonight,” she said. “Do you feel all right?”
    â€œYes I feel all right,” he said. “Now lay off.”
    She pursed her lips. “Well, you certainly are in a vile humor,” she observed. “I just won’t speak to you at all.”
    They had reached the bus stop. There was no bus in sight and Julian, his hands still jammed in his pockets and his head thrust forward, scowled down the empty street. The frustration of having to wait on the bus as well as ride on it began to creep up his neck like a hot hand. The presence of his mother was borne in upon him as she gave a pained sigh. He looked at her bleakly. She was holding herself very erect under the preposterous hat, wearing it like a banner of her imaginary dignity. There was in him an evil urge to break her spirit. He suddenly unloosened his tie and pulled it off and put it in his pocket.
    She stiffened. “Why must you look like that when you take me to town?” she said. “Why must you deliberately embarrass me?”
    â€œIf you’ll never learn where you are,” he said, “you can at least learn where I am.”
    â€œYou look like a—thug,” she said.
    â€œThen I must be one,” he murmured.
    â€œI’ll just go home,” she said. “I will not bother you. If you can’t do a little thing like that for me…”
    Rolling his eyes upward, he put his tie back on. “Restored to my class,” he muttered. He thrust his face toward her and hissed, “True culture is in the mind, the mind ,” he said, and tapped his head, “the mind.”
    â€œIt’s in the heart,” she said, “and in how you do things and how you do things is because of who you are. ”
    â€œNobody in the damn bus cares who you are.”
    â€œI care who I am,” she said icily.
    The lighted bus appeared on top of the next hill and as it approached, they moved out into the street to meet it. He put his hand under her elbow and hoisted her up on the creaking step. She entered with a little smile, as if she were going into a drawing room where everyone had been waiting for her. While he put in the tokens, she sat down on one of the broad front seats for three which faced the aisle. A thin woman with protruding teeth and long yellow hair was sitting on the end of it. His mother moved up beside her and left room for Julian beside herself. He sat down and looked at the floor across the aisle where a pair of thin feet in red and white canvas sandals were planted.
    His mother immediately began a general conversation meant to attract anyone who felt like talking. “Can it get any hotter?” she said and removed from her purse a folding fan, black with a Japanese scene on it, which she began to flutter before her.
    â€œI reckon it might could,” the woman with the protruding teeth said, “but I know for a fact my apartment couldn’t get no hotter.”
    â€œIt must get the afternoon sun,” his