You OUGHTA HEAR Mrs. B … moanin’ and groanin’ about her troubles. I tell you, If you listen long enough, you just might break down and cry your heart out. That woman don’t have nothin’ but one problem on top of the other! If it ain’t her, it’s her husband or her brother or her friends or some everlastin’ sorrow tryin’ her soul. She’s got sixty-’leven jars of face cream and lotions and stuff, but she’s gettin’ a big frown creased ’cross the front of her forehead just the same.
Girl, you oughta see all the stuff she’s got! A handsome mink coat, a big old apartment overlookin’ the river, me and a cook and a nurse for the children, a summer cottage in the country and a little speedboat that she can chug up and down the river in any time she might take the notion…. Hello! And what did you say! … Yes, indeed, that just should be me!
Today she was almost out of her mind about her brother. Her brother’s name is Carl, and he is a caution! Seems like he doesn’t know whether to paint pictures or write books, and it just keeps his mind in torment and turmoil. Whenever the problem gets too much for him, he drinks up a case of whiskey and goes into the shakes.
Whenever this happens, they get him into a private home that costs about three hundred dollars a week. He will hang around there while the doctors study his mind for about seven or eight weeks, and then hell come out again to go through the same merry-go-round all over again.
… You ain’t heard nothin’ yet! She also had a very close friend who was a awful successful actress, but she got to be a dope addict, and Mrs. B … told me that she got that way ’cause she had so much work and personal appearances ’til it drove her to the drugs. I told her that she could turn down some of that work and do just enough to take it kinda easy-like, but all Mrs. B … said about that was, “Oh, the poor thing, I feel so sorry for her.”
Another time her mother’s arm broke out in a little rash and that thing developed into the biggest long drawn out to-do! The doctors had to analyze that woman’s mind for almost a year and even then they couldn’t tell whether she had a rash because of her dog’s fur or on account of her husband’s personality. No, I don’t know if the thing is straightened out yet.
This mornin’ Mrs. B … was all tore up because Carl wants to get married. Marge, she is in a pacin’-up-and-down fit! She thinks the girl will aggravate Carl’s condition because she can paint pretty pictures, and it will hurt Carl because he can’t. Honey, she worries my soul-case out with all them troubles. I have listened to more tales of woe comin’ out of that woman…. No, she won’t want no advice ’cause she never listens to a word you say. I do believe it would break her heart half-in-two if anybody told her somethin’ that would end all the misery ’cause she’s so used to it by now she wouldn’t know what to do without it!
That woman has a pure-artful knack of turnin’ the simplest things into a burnin’ hellfire problem! When she gives a dinner party, she worries herself to death about whether she’s invited the wrong people and left out the right ones! If her daughter ain’t laughin’ and talkin’ every single minute of every single day, she turns herself inside-out worryin’ if somethin’ is the matter with her. If her husband sneezes she annoys him to death until he goes to the doctor for a complete check-up. She will eat too much lobster salad and then swear she’s got a heart ailment when one of them gas pains hit her in the chest….
Whenever things go kinda smooth-like, she takes time out to worry about the stockmarket and who’s gonna be our next president! That poor woman has harried herself into the shadow of a wreck!
Marge, sometimes I think that all she would need to cure her is one good-sized real trouble. You know, like lookin’ in your icebox and seein’ nothin’ but your own reflection! I guess she’d know what trial and trouble really was if she had a child with a toothache, no money, and a dispossess all at the same time! … That’s what happened to Gloria last spring! … Sure, I guess Gloria cried a little but she took that child to the clinic, and then they moved with her brother for a while, and her brother only had four rooms for his wife and their four children!
… Sure, I remember the time you lost your uncle and he didn’t have any insurance! And what about the time I had to send all my little savin’s down home so that my niece could stay in college? You know everybody’s so busy talkin’ ’bout us gettin’ into these schools ’til it never crosses their mind what a hard time we have stayin’ there. It costs money!
I bet Mrs. B … would think twice about what trouble is if she had one dollar in the house and had to fix dinner for a bunch of kids like Mrs. Johnson who lives downstairs. She’d also think twice if her husband had lost his job ’cause the boss had to cut down and decided to let the colored go first.
… Marge, you may be right, perhaps their troubles are as real to them as ours are to us. I don’t know about that though. I don’t think I’d be goin’ through the same miseries if I was in her shoes.
I’ve seen some trouble in my life, and I know that if I was to call up my aunt and tell her that I’d been too quiet all day or had a hang-over or didn’t know whether to paint or write or something like that, she’d say, “Girl, are you out of your mind! Don’t be botherin’ me with no foolishness!”