Dance of the Happy Shades

unwashed, unliked and desolate Leona. When the men came in—the father, a cousin, a neighbour, bringing a load of wood or asking shamefacedly for something to eat—they were at once aware of something that shut them out, that reproved them. They went out and said to the other men, Yeah, they’re still at it. And the father who was getting a little drunk, and belligerent, because he felt that something was expected of him and he was not equal to it, it was not fair, said, Yeah, that won’t do Benny any good, they can bawl their eyes out.
    George and Irene had been playing their cut-out game, cutting things out of the catalogue. They had this family they had cut out of the catalogue, the mother and father and the kids, and they cut out clothes for them. Patricia watched them cutting and she said, Look at the way you kids cut out! Lookit all the white around the edges! How are you going to make those clothes stay on, she said, you didn’t even cut any fold-over things. She took the scissors and she cut very neatly, not leaving any white around the edges; her pale shrewd little face was bent to one side; her lips bitten together. She did things the way a grown-up does; she did not pretend things. She did not play at being a singer, though she was going to be a singer when she grew up, maybe in the movies or maybe on the radio. She liked to look at movie magazines and magazines with pictures of clothes and rooms in them; she liked to look in the windows of some of the houses uptown.
    Benny was trying to climb up on the couch. He grabbed at the catalogue and Irene hit his hand. He began to whimper.Patricia picked him up competently and carried him to the window. She stood him on a chair looking out, saying to him, Bow-wow, Benny, see bow-wow—It was Mundy’s dog, getting up and shaking himself and going off down the road.
    Bow-wow, said Benny interrogatively, putting his hands flat and leaning against the window to see where the dog went. Benny was eighteen months old and the only words he knew how to say were Bow-wow and Bram. Bram was for the scissors-man who came along the road sometimes; Brandon was his name. Benny remembered him, and ran out to meet him when he came. Other little kids only thirteen, fourteen months old knew more words than Benny, and could do more things, like waving bye-bye and clapping hands, and most of them were cuter to look at. Benny was long and thin and bony and his face was like his father’s—pale, mute, unexpectant; all it needed was a soiled peaked cap. But he was good; he would stand for hours just looking out a window saying Bow-wow, bow-wow, now in a low questioning tone, now crooningly, stroking his hands down the window-pane. He liked you to pick him up and hold him, long as he was, just like a little baby; he would lie looking up and smiling, with a little timidity or misgiving. Patricia knew he was stupid; she hated stupid things. He was the only stupid thing she did not hate. She would go and wipe his nose, expertly and impersonally, she would try to get him to talk, repeating words after her, she would put her face down to his, saying anxiously, Hi, Benny,
Hi
, and he would look at her and smile in his slow dubious way. That gave her this feeling, a kind of sad tired feeling, and she would go away and leave him, she would go and look at a movie magazine.
    She had had a cup of tea and part of a sugar-bun for breakfast; now she was hungry. She rummaged around among the dirty dishes and puddles of milk and porridge on the kitchen table; she picked up a bun, but it was sopping with milk and she threw it down again.
    This place stinks, she said. Irene and George paid no attention. She kicked at a crust of porridge that had dried on the linoleum. Lookit that, she said. Lookit
that!
What’s it always a mess around here for? She walked around kicking at things perfunctorily. Then she got the scrub-pail from under the sink and a dipper, and she began to dip water from the reservoir of the stove.
    I’m going to clean this place up, she said. It never gets cleaned up like other places. The first thing I’m going to do I’m going to scrub the floor and you kids have to help me—
    She put the pail on the stove.
    That water is hot to start with, Irene said.
    It’s not hot enough. It’s got to be good and boiling hot. I seen Mrs. McGee scrub
her
floor.
    They stayed at Mrs. McGee’s all night. They had been over there since the ambulance came. They saw Leona and Mrs. McGee and