Free The Street by Ann Petry Page A

astonishment made her strike him again—this time more violently, and she hated herself for doing it, even as she lifted her hand for another blow.
    â€˜But Mom—’ he protested, raising his arm to protect his face.
    â€˜You get in the house,’ she ordered and yanked him to his feet. He leaned over to pick up the shoeshine box and she struck him again. ‘Leave that thing there,’ she said sharply, and shook him when he tried to struggle out of her grasp.
    Her voice grew thick with rage. ‘I’m working to look after you and you out here in the street shining shoes just like the rest of these little niggers.’ And she thought, You know that isn’t all there is involved. It’s also that Little Henry Chandler is the same age as Bub, and you know Little Henry is wearing gray flannel suits and dark blue caps and long blue socks and fine dark brown leather shoes. He’s doing his home work in that big warm library in front of the fireplace. And your kid is out in the street with a shoeshine box. He’s wearing his after-school clothes, which don’t look too different from the ones he wears to school—shabby knickers and stockings with holes in the heels, because no matter how much you darn and mend he comes right out of his stockings.
    It’s also that you’re afraid that if he’s shining shoes at eight, he will be washing windows at sixteen and running an elevator at twenty-one, and go on doing that for the rest of his life. And you’re afraid that this street will keep him from finishing high school; that it may do worse than that and get him into some kind of trouble that will land him in reform school because you can’t be home to look out for him because you have to work.
    â€˜Go on,’ she said, and pushed him ahead of her toward the door of the apartment house. She wasaware that Mrs. Hedges was, as usual, looking out of the window. She shoved Bub harder to make him go faster so they would get out of the way of Mrs. Hedges’ eager-eyed stare as fast as possible. But Mrs. Hedges watched their progress all the way into the hall, for she leaned her head so far out of the window her red bandanna looked as though it were suspended in midair.
    Going up the stairs with Bub just ahead of her, Lutie thought living here is like living in a tent with everything that goes on inside it open to the world because the flap won’t close. And the flap couldn’t close because Mrs. Hedges sat at her street-floor window firmly holding it open in order to see what went on inside.
    As they climbed up the dark, narrow stairs, darker than ever after the curious brilliance the setting sun had cast over the street, she became aware that Bub was crying. Not really crying. Sobbing. He must have spent a long time making that shoeshine box. Where had he got the money for the polish and the brush? Maybe running errands for the Super, because Bub had made friends with the Super very quickly. She didn’t exactly approve of this sudden friendship because the Super was—well, the kindest way to think of him was to call him peculiar.
    She remembered quite clearly that she had told him she wanted all the rooms in the apartment painted white. He must have forgotten it, for when she moved in she found that the rooms had been painted blue and rose color and green and yellow. Each room was a different color. The colors made the rooms look even smaller, and she had said instantly,‘What awful colors!’ The look of utter disappointment on his face had made her feel obligated to find something that she could praise and in seeking for it she saw that the windows had been washed. Which was unusual because one of the first things you had to do when you moved in a place was to scrape the splashes of paint from the windows and then wash them.
    So she said quickly, ‘Oh, the windows have been washed.’ And when the Super heard the pleased note in her voice,