Horizontal Woman (7 page)

Her first sight of the five houses on Boerum Street which held all of her family units was shattering, almost too overwhelming for her to take: to this day she can only recall a dim impression of moldering filth, heat, noise, disintegration, the tenements seeming to engorge her as she walked in and to carry her up like bile from one level to the other, rats and children scurrying in the halls, piles of dog filth … but as bad as that had been, her encounter with the landlord, Mandleman, on that same day had been worse. Mandleman had come up beaming to the fifth floor apartment in which she was trying to interview Callie Simmons and four of her six dependent children and had taken her down. “I just wanted to welcome the new investigator,” he had said as he led her, groping, lighting matches on the stairwells, laughing as the screams of the Simmons children floated down the well. “I thought on the first day — ”

“Disgusting,” she said when they finally got to the first floor and into the light; up until that point she had been wordless and appalled, shaking with the rage of it, “disgusting, how can you do this to people? Are these your buildings? Are you the landlord? How can people live this way? How can you do this to people?” and Mandleman had laughed, laughed and chuckled, held her elbow in a friendly way and escorted her to his office next door, a small real-estate and tax accounting office occupying a storefront and had sat her in a straight chair and brought her a drink of water. “Here,” he said, giving it to her. “You’re a lovely young girl, you’re a new investigator. It’s always a bit of a shock to come into these neighborhoods for the first time.”

“Are these
your buildings?”
Elizabeth said, thrusting the water from her and trying to get back a sense of orientation. “You are the owner of these? You have people living — ”

“I am the owner,” Mandleman said and shrugged. Standing above her he looked wizened, kindly, small shards and puffs of grey hair streaming from an otherwise bald scalp, his large eyebrows also white to say nothing of the stubble on his plump cheeks. He put his hands informally in the pockets of his oversize suit and said, “I have a sense of compassion and therefore I own these buildings. Anyone else would have sold them or run away from them three years ago. But I care. And so I see do you.”

“I’ll report you,” Elizabeth said. She had learned about building violations in the training institute. “You have insecure stairwells, filth in the halls, a fire hazard through the lobbies and stairways of all those buildings, cracks in the floor, signs of rodent infestation, complaints of no heat or hot water, torn linoleum — ”

“Ah Miss Moore,” Mandleman said, still shrugging and going for a straight chair to bring over to sit beside her, “you see, I like to meet every new investigator in these buildings. That is how much I care. Not just to take, to take money from the department which is not enough even to cover my bills, but also having some kind of relationship. That is why I went upstairs to greet you. It’s a bit of a shock — ”

“This is disgusting!”

“Salant was a good man,” Mandleman said, shaking his head. “He was a little bit stupid, Mr. Salant but essentially he was very sound. He had a good sense of situation and he was a realist. I was sorry to see him go but, of course, time moves on and nothing can remain forever. He became a parole officer, do you know that? That’s a very good job.”

“I don’t care what he became,” Elizabeth says. Surprisingly, she finds herself near crying. “Whatever he was doesn’t interest me. I’m the investigator and it’s my responsibility to help these people and I won’t, I won’t have my clients living in filth like this.”

“You see, Miss Moore,” Mandleman says, “let me, if I may, explain to you a few basic facts and so on and then your mind will be set at ease and there will be no difficulty. It is impossible to maintain these buildings properly. These people are pigs; the way they live is indescribable. They are not like you and me but are rather totally undisciplined and on a level of savagery. This is not a situation I caused but merely one which exists. I do not want it this way.” With curious formality, Mandleman lit a cigarette and put the match neatly on the floor underneath his foot, pressed his foot against it a few times. “I would far rather it would be otherwise. But this is the situation. Now, who wants to house these people?”

“They deserve decent — ”

“They deserve everything, Miss Moore, like you and me and all people everywhere they deserve only the best but unfortunately we do not get in this world exactly what we deserve. I spent three years in a concentration camp of which I will not speak. No one cares for these people, Miss Moore. The Fifth Avenue management company does not care for them. The Mayor’s office is not populated with people who would take them into their homes for bed and board. The liberal politicians are for relief only because giving them relief will keep them at a distance and keep the society from crumbling. I have thought of this often, I am a deep-thinking man. So it is left for people like Irving Mandleman to care for them. It is Irving Mandleman who gives them a place to live, who collects their rents from the Department of Welfare, who allows them to exist. Is this so reprehensible? Who else would want to look at them? No one in the entire city of New York except the welfare investigators and Mandleman ever have to deal with these people. Actually we are on the same side of the fence, Miss Moore. You and I are two of the last people left who will deal with them. So that is my explanation,” Mandleman said, putting out the cigarette with a flourish and pulling the chair, groaning, back from the desk. “Sometimes it is good to have a talk with an investigator when he or she begins. It makes things much easier. And there are a few orthodox Jews in these tenements which, I agree, somewhat lifts the level of tenancy. So all in all things are not so bad, eh?”

“You’ve got to do something,” Elizabeth said. “This can’t be permitted to exist. You have violations — ”

“Ah, Miss Moore,” Mandleman said with a chuckle, “you are so industrious and so dedicated but the fact is that you are only reacting to your own disgust. You have no more feeling for these people than the office of the Mayor, believe me. They mean nothing to you and very soon, when you become less frightened and less tolerant of your sensitivity you will understand that too.” He leaned toward her, suddenly a twenty-dollar bill appeared in his hands. He eased it toward her like a blessing. “Here,” Mandleman said. “I give this to you as a gift, not a bribe, merely as a little gift of greeting because you are a very lovely young girl, a girl who reminds me in certain ways of my daughter. With it you can go to the hairdresser, perhaps buy something to wear or a little perfume. Consider it as a gift. Mandleman’s gift, given freely and without strings. You will not be with this department long. Soon, perhaps even now, you will meet or are going with a fine young man and he will take you out of all of this and you will go to Queens Village or the Island and you will never see any of this again. In one year it will be unbelievable, in five years, you will not even remember it. You will live your life and enjoy it. Here. Take. It means nothing.”

“I won’t,” Elizabeth said standing, bolting from the chair, backing into the wall clutching her fieldbook, “I won’t take it. I won’t take your bribe! That’s graft. That’s — ”

“Ah Miss Moore — ”

“I
do
care,” she found herself saying rather hysterically. “I don’t know what you are or how you feel but I know about myself. I care about these people and I won’t let them live this way! I’ll help them! I’ll help them get out of this! If you don’t put that money away I’ll report you to the central office; they have a form to report bribe attempts, don’t you know that?” she said and before Mandleman could say anything further or she could even get a look at his expression (she never wanted to see his face again) she had turned: now she was running, running from his office and up the four steps and onto Boerum Street; on Boerum Street people were sitting on the stoops drinking, throwing garbage against the walls, setting up card tables for a midday game and looking at her with strange, taunting looks but it did not matter, nothing that these people could say to her would matter because they were
hers
, unlike Mandleman they were already a part of her and she would, somehow, stand between his corruption and their own miserable lives to change the direction of their history.

“I
do
care,” she said, grasping her fieldbook, “I do, I
do
,” and as Mandleman came up the stairs to look at her, she turned from him and went quickly down the street but she could not get out of her mind the feeling (and she still has it to this moment) that Mandleman was not looking at her with sadness or remonstrance, Mandleman was not trying, somehow, to reason her back to him: no, Mandleman was laughing, he was filling the street with cries of hysteria and if she were ever to turn and confront him wholly she would see this and somehow she would not be able to take it, she could take everything that Boerum Street could give but there was no way in which she could accept that.

“I
do
care,” she said, “I do, I do,” and went off to make her visits and it must have been that very afternoon (she is pretty sure that it was that afternoon) that she had inaugurated her policy; fucked Washington Williams, unemployed father of three in his kitchen in the empty spaces of the apartment, drawing Washington Williams into her, easing his tortured cries, stroking his agonized head and knowing,
knowing
, that whatever Mandleman would say, she was doing the right thing.

Elizabeth finds that the Buckingham apartment is jammed with youths: five or six of them, maybe seven or eight (it is difficult to count) in various positions around the living room and kitchen, some of them smoking, others looking sullenly at their nails, all of them regarding her with vast and hungry interest as Willie opens the door and moves her in. She thinks that she can recognize George Jones as one of the youths but then again it is difficult to tell; all of them look the same in this light and she is under a great deal of nervous strain. She wonders if Oved will really put her up on charges for running out on emergency duty and is already thinking about how she can get back to the welfare center as quickly as possible, maybe with apologies. “It was an emergency, didn’t I tell you?” she will say to Oved, “but I was able to settle things right down and now I’m back.” She is not exactly sure what she will describe the emergency as
being
. Maybe Willie will give her some ideas.

But Willie does not seem in that capacity now: she has never seen him so tense nor, for that matter, so detached from the situational fix as he appears now. It must be a neurasthenic block of some kind; he mutters and talks to himself as he leads her back to the living room. “Miss Moore, Miss Moore,” he is saying, “I knew you would come,” and the youths all look at her intently as she is led into the living room and there motioned to the sofa which is empty. She sits uneasily, clutching her fieldbook, holding it tightly against her groin as Willie stands above her and the others circle in. “Yes?” she says finally when she is aware that none of them will speak, “what is it, Willie? What can I do for you? What’s the problem?” Her voice seems high-pitched and nervous; Elizabeth tries to work herself into a professional calm. “There’s no problem I can see.”

“Well, Miss Moore,” Willie says, “Miss Moore, the reason I brought you up here — ”

“Don’t jive her,” one of the youths says. He comes over to the couch, looks at Elizabeth with murderous eyes, stretches out a hand suddenly and runs his fingers insultingly down her sleeve, staring at her. “Take it nice and slow and easy. Willie been telling us — we, by the way, a group of his very best friends — Willie been telling us that you been making love to him and a certain George Jones.”

“It’s the truth, Miss Moore,” Willie says, jumping nervously. He is in a highly agitated state; in some detached way Elizabeth wonders what could possibly be bothering him, how superficial her connection with him must have been if he can be so emotionally blocked, “now you know it’s the truth; you tell them.”

“Our relationship is confidential,” Elizabeth says. “I am Willie’s caseworker; he is part of my caseload that is to say and whatever occurs in that relationship is privileged. There’s no emergency at all, was there Willie?”

“Well,” the murderous youth says, “in a way there’s an emergency, sure. You see, we friends of Willie but we don’t believe him. We think he giving us a line of bullshit.”

“That’s a lady, man,” someone in the back says. “Keep your mouth clean for a lady.”

“Well, then,” the youth says, “we feel that what Willie been telling us is some falsehoods, hypocrisies and lies. We do not find this possible to believe, even if the very honorable George Jones who is not here today also says that Willie is telling the truth. All of us here are very interested in finding out the truth from your own lips so to speak or as evidence in fact.”

“I’m sorry,” Elizabeth says, crossing her legs. “I can’t talk about anything of that nature. You must be aware of that fact. Social work is a privileged position.”

“But you are no social worker, Miss Moore. You are a social investigator.”

“Please, Miss Moore,” Willie says. He seems to be in some obscure but real distress. “Please tell them. It’s important to me; I can’t go into explanations — ”

“Willie — ”

“Please,” he says. His eyes become soft, luminescent; sensitivity overtakes Willie’s face, he leans more closely toward her. “It would mean a great deal to me. And I’m not feeling so well, Miss Moore; didn’t you say you would do everything to make me feel better? This would make me feel better.”

“All right,” Elizabeth says, playing with her fieldbook and then looking up to confront the youth squarely in the eye. “If that’s the way you want it. Willie and I have had some sexual contact, yes.”

“Sexual contact?”

“Yes.”

“Sexual contact,” the youth says, musing. “You mean fucking, is that right?”

“I don’t know what you want to call it. And frankly,” Elizabeth says, not liking the situation at all and deciding that she is going to bring it to an end, “frankly,” she says then standing, “I am very upset at having been brought all the way out from the welfare center where I was on emergency duty just for something like this. I’m leaving now. You are not my responsibility. Willie is my responsibility but I’m very disappointed in him.”

“I’m sorry you’re disappointed,” the youth says softly. He seems to give a quiet signal and suddenly the others are around her. There is a juxtaposition of faces, forms, urgency. She feels heat in the room as they form a loose circle, all of them looking the same, cutting off her view of the walls, moving in more closely. Their faces are less threatening than curious; bland, unmoving eyes focusing on her. “Disappointment is a very bad emotion to have. But I am happy to know that Willie Buckingham was telling the truth. Now and then he has a lying problem.”

“You can’t intimidate me,” Elizabeth says. “You are not my cases. None of you are my responsibility. I’m going to leave now. Willie, I don’t like your attitude. I don’t like it; you’re abusing our relationship.”

“Miss Moore,” Willie says, showing his palms, “I couldn’t do nothing. These cats wouldn’t believe me, that’s all. I couldn’t lose face with my friends now, could I? It would have hurt my self-image, just like you were telling me. You got to build up my self-image.”

“Cut it out, Willie,” the apparent leader says. He turns back toward Elizabeth and gives her an enormous wink. “Bet you think that you got a right to be afraid now,” he says, “isn’t that so?”

“I’m not afraid of anything.”

“Bet you think that we got you up here to have a party and that you are going to be raped by a bunch of niggers, isn’t that the truth?”

“I don’t like that word. I’ve never used that word in my life.”

“Well that’s fine; that proves you’re real liberal and I’m pleased. But that’s the thought in your mind.”

“No it isn’t,” Elizabeth says. She makes a space for herself in the line, eases her way through. They do not resist. She walks toward the door. They do not come for her. At the door she turns. “You don’t understand at all, any of you. I’m not afraid of that because if I thought that it would do any of us any good it wouldn’t have to be rape. There’s no such thing as rape. But that isn’t going to happen because none of you except Willie are on my caseload and there’s nothing at all I can do for you.” She is vaguely aware that she does not seem to be making sense; nevertheless, they are at bay. Furthermore, she has no fear at all. This is one of the interesting aspects of this encounter; tensional elements are utterly lacking. If anything did happen in here it would, in the long run, probably be cathartic anyway. “Willie,” Elizabeth says, “I am ashamed of you,” and she walks through the door, closes it behind her and heads down the steps.

Whether or not there are sounds behind her means nothing. She does not even try to listen. Her primary feeling as she comes out onto the street is rage: rage that Willie would break the confidentiality of their relationship, rage that Willie would so misapprehend her motives as to hold her up for contempt and ridicule. But the rage wafts away like smoke as she walks toward the bus; wafts away in the realization that Willie is still sick, her efforts to the contrary he is a very sick boy and if he is still capable of behavior of this sort … then she must accept the fact that somehow she has failed him. She has failed them all. She has too much in opposition; there is too much to overcome, she was wrong in feeling that it would be easy. Nevertheless, she must try.

She must try: sitting on the bus now she can only hope that what she has done has been for Willie and that it has, in whatever way built up his self-esteem. For an instant, looking out the back window, she thinks that they may be pursuing her but it is merely a clump of high school boys on the street running from the yards (they all look the same to her, still: she acknowledges this) and her thoughts shift onto other terrain; she wonders, then, what she will manage to say to Oved.