“I DO believe if I was a woman I would be a nervous wretch,” said Simple. “They are always worrying about dusting something, cleaning up something, or washing something, especially in the spring. Now, you take Joyce, every time I go by her place, either she, or her landlady one, is bulldozing the house—sweeping or mopping or dusting or washing out curtains, or ironing slip-covers. I swear there is many a thing to keep clean in a house. But a man do not worry about it as much as a woman.”

“That’s true,” I said. “Still, a man has to worry about a few things, mostly personal. They take up enough time.”

“Right,” said Simple. “If you got any clothes at all, you have to keep them pressed. And laundry! I don’t know which is worse, to have too little shirts or too many. If you only got three, you rotate them. If you got a dozen, it costs you more than you make to get them washed. And shoes, one pair ain’t so bad to keep shined. You can do it yourself. But if you got three or four pair, skippy! Shining them is a nuisance. And paying good money to have them shined is more so, especially when the shine boy’s hand is out for a tip each and every time.”

“Well, anything one owns demands care,” I said. “Did you ever read Thoreau’s Walden when you were in school?”

“I never got that far.”

“Thoreau says that his few belongings took up so much of his time when he was living in the woods trying to write and think, that he started to simplify life by eliminating things. He said to himself, ‘More than one chair just means another one to dust,’ so he threw out his chairs. ‘Shelves are things on which one accumulates more things,’ so he threw them out. Then he said, ‘I can sleep on the floor,’ so he discarded his bed. After a while his house was bare. But he didn’t have to worry about a thing.”

“He really cleaned house,” said Simple. “But there ain’t a Negro living would throw out his bed. A Negro might throw out his rug if it was summertime. He might throw out his chairs if they broke down. But bed, uh-uh, no, never would a Negro throw out his bed. It is too useful—even if it do have to be made up every morning and the sheets changed every week. Beds and Negroes go together.”

“You certainly are race-conscious,” I said. “Negroes, Negroes, Negroes! Everything in terms of race. Can’t you think just once without thinking in terms of color?”