They told him, “Stand on the corner with two of the biggest oranges in your hand and when an automobile goes by, smile and wave the oranges at them. Five cents each if they want one,” his uncle Jake said, “three for ten cents, thirty-five cents a dozen. Smile big,” he said. “You can smile, can’t you, Luke? You got it in you to smile once in a while, ain’t you?”
He tried very hard to smile and his uncle Jake made a terrible face, so he knew it was a bad smile. He wished he could laugh out loud the way some people laughed, only they weren’t scared the way he was, and all mixed-up.
“I never did see such a serious boy in all my life,” his uncle Jake said. ”Luke,” he said.
His uncle squatted down, so his head would be level with his, so he could look into his eyes, and talked to him.
“Luke,” he said, “they won’t buy oranges if you don’t smile. People like to see a little boy smiling, selling oranges. It makes them happy.”
He listened to his uncle talking to him, looking into his uncle’s eyes, and he understood the words. What he felt, though, was: Jake is mixed-up, too. He saw the man stand up and heard him groan, just as his father used to groan.
“Luke,” his uncle Jake said.” Sometimes you can laugh, can’t you?”
“Not him,” said Jake’s wife. “If you weren’t such a coward, you would be out selling them oranges yourself. You belong the same place your brother is,” she said. “In the ground. Dead,” she said.
It was this that made it hard for him to smile: “the way this woman was always talking, not the words only, but the meanness in her voice, always picking on his uncle Jake. How did she expect him to smile or feel all right when she was always telling them they were no good, the whole family no good?1
Jake was his father’s younger brother, and Jake looked like his father. Of course she always had to say his father was better off dead just because he was no good selling stuff. She was always telling Jake, “This is America. You got to get around and meet people and make them like you.” And Jake was always saying, “Make them like me? How can I make them like me?” And she was always getting sore at him and saying.
“Oh, you fool. If I didn’t have this baby in my belly, I’d go out and work in Rosenberg’s and keep you like a child.”
Jake had that same desperate look his father had, and he was always getting sore at himself and wanting other people to be happy. Jake was always asking him to smile.
“All right,” Jake said.”All right, all right, all right, kill me, drive me crazy. Sure. I should be dead. Ten boxes of oranges and not a penny in the house and nothing to eat. I should be dead. Should I stand in the street, holding oranges? Should I get a wagon maybe and go through the streets? I should be dead,” he said
Then Jake made a face, so sad it looked, as if nobody was ever that sad in the world, not even he, and wished he didn’t want to cry because Jake was so sad. On top of that Jake’s wife got sorer than ever and began to cry the way she cried when she got real sore and you could just feel how terrible everything was because she didn’t cry sad, she cried sore, reminding Jake of all the bills and all the hard times she had had with him and all about the baby in her belly, to come out, she said, ”Why, what good is another fool in the world?”
There was a box of oranges on the floor, and she picked up two of them, crying, and she said, “No fire in the stove, in November, all of us freezing. The house should be full of the smell of meat. Here,” she cried, “eat. Eat your oranges. Eat them until you die,” and she cried and cried.
Jake was too sad to talk. He sat down and began to wave back and forth, looking crazy. And they asked him to laugh. And Jake’s wife kept walking in and out of the room, holding the oranges, crying and talking about the baby in her belly.
After a while she stopped crying.