Break It Down

The Fears of Mrs. Orlando

Mrs. Orlando’s world is a dark one. In her house she knows what is dangerous: the gas stove, the steep stairs, the slick bathtub, and several kinds of bad wiring. Outside her house she knows some of what is dangerous but not all of it, and is frightened by her own ignorance, and avid for information about crime and disaster.

Though she takes every precaution, no precaution will be enough. She tries to prepare for sudden hunger, for cold, for boredom, and for heavy bleeding. She is never without a bandaid, a safety pin, and a knife. In her car she has, among other things, a length of rope and a whistle, and also a social history of England to read while waiting for her daughters, who are often a long time shopping.

In general she likes to be accompanied by men: they offer protection both because of their large size and because of their rational outlook on the world. She admires prudence, and respects the man who reserves a table in advance and also the one who hesitates before answering any of her questions. She believes in hiring lawyers and feels most comfortable talking to lawyers because every one of their words is endorsed by the law. But she will ask her daughters or a woman friend to go shopping with her downtown, rather than go alone.

She has been attacked by a man in an elevator, downtown. It was at night, the man was black, and she did not know the neighborhood. She was younger then. She has been molested several times in a crowded bus. In a restaurant once, after an argument, an excited waiter spilled coffee on her hands.

In the city she is afraid of being carried away underground on the wrong subway, but will not ask directions from strangers of a lower class. She walks past many black men who are planning different crimes. Anyone at all may rob her, even another woman.

At home, she talks to her daughters for hours on the telephone and her talk is all premonition of disaster. She does not like to express satisfaction, because she is afraid she will ruin a run of good luck. If she does happen to say that something is going well, then she lowers her voice to say it and after saying it knocks on the telephone table. Her daughters tell her very little, knowing she will find something ominous in what they tell her. And when they tell her so little then she is afraid something is wrong — either their health or their marriage.

One day she tells them a story over the telephone. She has been downtown shopping alone. She leaves the car and goes into a fabric store. She looks at fabrics and does not buy anything, though she takes away a couple of swatches in her purse. On the sidewalk there are many blacks walking around and they make her nervous. She goes to her car. As she takes out her keys, a hand grabs her ankle from under the car. A man has been lying under her car and now he grabs her stockinged ankle with his black hand and tells her in a voice muffled by the car to drop her purse and walk away. She does so, though she can hardly stand. She waits by the wall of a building and watches the purse but it does not move from where it lies on the curb. A few people glance at her. Then she walks to the car, kneels on the sidewalk, and looks under. She can see the sunlight on the road beyond, and some pipes on the belly of her car: no man. She picks up her purse and drives home.

Her daughters don’t believe her story. They ask her why a man would do such a peculiar thing, and in broad daylight. They point out that he could not have simply disappeared then, simply vanished into thin air. She is outraged by their disbelief and does not like the way they talk about broad daylight and thin air.

A few days after the assault on her ankle, a second incident upsets her. She has driven her car down at evening to a parking lot beside the beach as she sometimes does, so that she can sit and watch the sunset through her windshield. This evening, however, as she looks over the boardwalk at the water, she does not see the peaceful deserted beach that she usually sees, but a small knot of people standing around something that seems to be lying on the sand.

She is instantly curious, but half inclined to drive away without looking at the sunset or going to see what is on the sand. She tries to think what it could be. It is probably some kind of animal, because people do not stare so long at something unless it has been alive or is alive. She imagines a large fish. It has to be large, because a small fish is not interesting, nor is something like a jellyfish that is also small. She imagines a dolphin, and she imagines a shark. It might also be a seal. Most likely dead already, but it could also be dying and this knot of people intent on watching it die.

Now at last Mrs. Orlando must go and see for herself. She picks up her purse and gets out of her car, locks it behind her, steps over a low concrete wall, and sinks into the sand. Walking slowly, with difficulty, in her high heels through the sand, legs well apart, she holds her hard shiny purse by its strap and it swings wildly back and forth. The sea breeze presses her flowered dress against her thighs and the hem of it flutters gaily around her knees, but her tight silver curls are motionless and she frowns as she plunges on.

She moves in among the people, and looks down. What is lying on the sand is not a fish or a seal but a young man. He is lying perfectly straight with his feet together and his arms by his sides, and he is dead. Someone has covered him with newspapers but the breeze is lifting the sheets of paper and one by one they curl up and slide over the sand to tangle in the legs of the bystanders. Finally a dark-skinned man who looks to Mrs. Orlando like a Mexican puts out his foot and slowly pushes aside the last sheet of newspaper and now everyone has a good look at the dead man. He is handsome and thin, and his color is gray and beginning to yellow in places.

Mrs. Orlando is absorbed in looking. She glances around at the others and she can see they have forgotten themselves too. A drowning. This is a drowning. This may even be a suicide.

She struggles back over the sand. When she gets home, she immediately calls her daughters and tells them what she has seen. She starts by saying she has seen a dead man on the beach, a drowned man, and then she starts over again and tells more. Her daughters are uneasy because she becomes so excited each time she tells the story.

For the next few days, she stays inside her house. Then she leaves suddenly and goes to a friend’s house. She tells this friend that she has received an obscene phone call, and she spends the night there. When she returns home the next day, she thinks someone has broken in, because certain things are missing. Later she finds each thing in an odd place, but she can’t lose the feeling that an intruder has been there.

She sits inside her house fearing intruders and watching out for what might go wrong. As she sits, and especially at night, she so often hears strange noises that she is certain there are prowlers below the windowsills. Then she must go out and look at her house from the outside. She circles the house in the dark and sees no prowlers and goes back in. But after sitting inside for half an hour she feels she has to go out again and check the house from the outside.

She goes in and out, and the next day too she goes in and out. Then she stays inside and just talks on the phone, keeping her eyes on the doors and windows and alert to strange shadows, and for some time after this she will not go out except in the early morning to examine the soil for footprints.