Her First American by Lore Segal

Author:Lore Segal
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497655003
Publisher: Open Road Media

CARL CALLED and said, “This is Carl from Philip and Fanny’s wedding. How are you doing?”

Ilka asked Carl what he had said about Jews not drinking, and other people—about Negroes drinking.

Carl explained to Ilka that Negroes drink because they live in an oppressive society.

Carter called Ilka to meet him for lunch. He looked gray and ill and his arm trembled violently. Ilka took his arm. They walked to Madison Avenue and Ilka explained to Carter why he drank. “People are so stupid!” she said ardently. “People think you drink because you like to drink. They don’t understand it is because you live in an oppressive society.”

“ ‘And that’s true, too.’ Also,” Carter said, “I like it. I like the taste.”

Ilka laughed and said, “I love you.”

Carter said, “I wondered about that. Why do you?”

Ilka said, “Because you won’t let me be stupid. And because you tell me stories.”

Carter said, “ ‘She loved me for the dangers I had passed, and I loved her that she did pity them.’ ”

“Excuse me?” said Ilka.

They sat at their corner table and Carter ordered milk from a buxom dark young Spanish-speaking waitress, who had replaced the angry elderly German one.

“Is she a Negro?” Ilka asked Carter.

“Puerto Rican,” said Carter, thereby giving a name to the category into which Ilka was now able to file the woman in the early-morning subway who had sighed for her mother; the skimpy brown man with the antique smile and no overcoat; the little brown girl who settled her father, mother and fat brother into the subway booth; the man who had hung on Ilka’s strap, whom she had asked if there was going to be war; the one with the extravagant mustache whose teeth had smiled at her across the aisle; and the old woman who brought her parcel into the corner post office on Broadway and had not understood what the clerk said to her, and carried the parcel away again. Ilka had acquired the word by which to distinguish this group of people from other groups of people, with the concomitant loss of the likelihood that she would henceforward distinguish any member within the group from any other.

“So,” Carter said, “are you and I going to be married?”

Ilka said, “Yes,” there being no way she could think of, quickly, to say “No.” Ilka was appalled at the glad emotion in Carter’s face. “You’ll see,” he said, “I won’t drink if I’m not sitting alone in that bloody hotel room! Do you want to move in with me, or would you rather we have an apartment? We’ll pick up a Times.”

They picked up a Times and went and sat in the park with their backs against the stone back of the Forty-second Street library. Carter put on his glasses and got out his fountain pen. “Amsterdam and Hundred-twenty. I can’t go back Uptown. Trouble is I’m scared of Downtown. Downtown is scared of me. There are parts of the Village we can live in. Are we looking for two bedrooms? Your mother will live with us? It’ll be murder, but we can hack it.

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