Free Talk Stories by Jamaica Kincaid Page B

going to Macy’s every day for the last two weeks. I am very big on Macy’s. I mean, it’s such a big store. They say it’s the biggest department store in the world. And there are always lots of people there. Ordinary people. I am very big on ordinary people. I got interested in Macy’s when I read somewhere that Queen Salote of the Tonga Islands attended Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953 wearing an outfit that came from the tall girls’ shop at Macy’s. And I got interested again when I read somewhere that President Tubman of Liberia had his plumbing furnished and installed by Macy’s. I read that about two weeks ago. Since then, I have bought a bed there, and a peach-colored bed ruffle for it, and peach-colored pillowcases, and peach-colored sheets, and a peach-colored comforter. I love peach. Then I bought bath towels and wineglasses and water goblets and a set of knives for carving and pots and pans and a stereo set and an umbrella and straight-leg corduroy jeans and a leaf-green linen shirt made in France and huge mugs made in Italy and a Poly Hot-Pot
(in avocado green, which is another one of my favorite colors, and which used to be the most popular color in the country) for making tea in my office, and chicken and sheep cheese for a dinner party I was giving, and nightgowns, and then I got one of their credit cards, because I was out of money. But the thing I like most about this particular store is how everything I buy there is something I really need. I am the one person I know who doesn’t have to participate in meatless days, because I am not doing anything, such as over-consuming, to unnecessarily deplete the world’s natural resources.”
    We could have asked her to explain that last line of reasoning, but we had never asked this young woman to explain any of her intense interests or the reasons she gave us for them, and we had no intention of starting now.
    â€œOf course,” she went on, “they have things other than what I need, and I know where it all is. I know, for instance, exactly where girls’ T-shirts are kept and where boys’ T-shirts are kept. I know where to find ladies’ undergarments, men’s leisure suits, school clothes for boys, school clothes for girls. I also know that in a single year Macy’s New York uses up sixty-nine hundred miles of poly twine, three thousand miles of gummed tape, nineteen hundred miles of Scotch Tape, eleven thousand miles of packing tissue, twenty-five million paper bags, and five million gift boxes. Also, I know that Mr. Macy was a whaler from Nantucket before he decided to start selling things.”
    â€” May 16, 1977

Charm
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    For the last twenty-nine years, Ophelia DeVore, through her Ophelia DeVore School of Charm, has taught thousands of young black women how to do just about everything properly. She has given them lessons in Essentials of Good Grooming, Social Graces, Visual Poise, The First Step into an Adventure of Loveliness, Positive Thinking, Microphone Technique, and Figure Control with Fencing and Ballet. She has had some famous successes. Diahann Carroll, the singer-actress, is a graduate of the Ophelia DeVore School of Charm. So is the WABC newscaster Melba Tolliver. The actress Cicely Tyson used to be an instructor.
    We recently visited Miss DeVore at the school, which is in midtown Manhattan, for a chat and a tour. She greeted us with a cheery “Hi!” A strikingly beautiful woman, with a smile that is both ready and winning, she wore a smartly tailored blue suit, a brown blouse, a brown scarf with blue dots, gold earrings, two gold rings on each hand, and brown shoes. Miss
DeVore told us, “I started out as a model in New York in 1946, when I was sixteen years old, and then it was very hard for a black girl. In 1946, there were very few good, sophisticated career jobs for the black girl. In 1947, I started doing this. I had my first class in a