The Street: A Novel
Ann Petry
Language: English
Pages: 435
ISBN: 0395901499
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
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looked at it, trying to decide whether she should take all of it with her. Yes, she thought, tucking it in her pocketbook, because she had no way of knowing how much she would need. Before she left the room she patted the table gently. It was the best place to keep money she had ever found. She loved its smooth shiny surface and the way the curves of the claw feet gleamed when the light struck them, but the important thing about it was that secret drawer it contained. Until she got the table she
being in bed all night. Says he don’t know where he’s been or nothing.’ Min frowned as she listened to her. Sounded to her like the woman’s husband was fooling her. Probably with some other woman. ‘Prophet don’t know how to fix it?’ she asked and waited impatiently for the answer, beginning to doubt the Prophet’s power, beginning even to question his honesty, for it looked like to her anybody ought to be able to see the woman’s husband was fooling her. ‘Oh, yes, he don’t disappear quite so
more she wished that she hadn’t come or that while she was sitting waiting outside she had got up and gone home. Her heart started jumping so that she began to breathe heavily. Then the curtains swished together behind her and she was standing in a small room. The Prophet was already sitting behind a desk looking at her. ‘Will you close the door, please?’ he said. She turned to close it, thinking, That’s why there wasn’t any sound outside. Because there was a solid wall in back of the curtains,
climbed the stairs slowly, holding on to the railing. Once she stopped and leaned against the wall, filled with a sick loathing of herself, wondering if there was something about her that subtly suggested to the Super that she would welcome his love-making, wondering if the same thing had led Mrs. Hedges to believe that she would leap at the opportunity to make money sleeping with white men, remembering the women at the Chandlers’ who had looked at her and assumed she wanted their husbands. It
and devising ingenious ways of keeping them occupied. She sent them on errands. They brought back supplies: paper, pencils, chalk, rulers; they trotted back and forth with notes to the nurse, to the principal, to other teachers. The building was old and vast, and a trip to another section of it used up a good half-hour or more; and if the child lingered going and coming, it took even longer. Because the school was in Harlem she knew she wasn’t expected to do any more than this. Each year she
