The Colored Car: Gender, Trauma, and Uncanny Films in the Weimar Republic

2. The Baker Streetcar

2 24 The Baker Streetcar The next morning, the girls were jammed in together between the dresser and the foot of the bed in their parents’ bedroom off the dining room. The heavy scent of their mother’s perfume—Desert Flowers—hung in the air as Patsy dabbed some behind her sisters’ ears. Laura squeezed ahead of Jean, and Annie May poked her head between the two of them. “You gave Jean more than you gave me!” Laura said, leaning forward. “Put some more on me.” “Me, too,” Annie May insisted. “I want to smell, too!” “I didn’t give Jean more than you,” Patsy answered, turning to Laura. “You have enough. Now shush before Mama comes in here!” “Shush nothing,” May Ford said, walking into 25 The Colored Car the bedroom. Patsy quickly hid the bottle of perfume behind her back. “I know what you’re doing.” Their mother held out her palm, and Patsy slowly put the bottle in her hand. “I could smell you girls in my perfume when I walked into the dining room,” she said, putting the bottle back on the dresser. Then she clapped her hands. “Come on, now. Into the kitchen. Oatmeal’s ready.” The girls hurried into the kitchen and sat around the table in their usual places. Their mother lifted Annie May into the high chair, but she was almost too big to fit. “Goodness, girl,” the mother said, “I’m going to have to find a place for you around this table.” Then she turned to Patsy. “Go call your father and brother in for breakfast.” Douglas Ford and his drivers had brought in an extra-large haul of scrap wood from the auto factories the day before. He had been out in the wood yard late last night cutting the lumber down to size at the big, loud donkey saw, tossing the smaller pieces into the huge pile behind him. Patsy could hear him back at it, Pointo barking with the sound of the saw, even as she woke 26 Jean Alicia Elster up that morning. She looked out the kitchen window and did as she was told. She pushed her forehead against the screen as she called out to them. She could see her father at the saw and her brother, Doug, busy filling one of the trucks with armfuls of wood for deliveries later in the day. “Oatmeal!” she called. Patsy had to call just once. She could tell they heard her as she pulled her head back: first to stop was the hee-haw sound from the donkey saw. Then she didn’t hear her brother throwing any more wood into the bed of the truck. They were heading in for breakfast. When they came into the house, Douglas Ford took one look at the table before he sat down and said, “May, I need some milk for my oatmeal.” “Mr. Scott hasn’t been by yet,” she said, filling her husband’s bowl last of all. Mr. Scott, the milkman, delivered a quart bottle of milk each morning to the Ford home on Halleck Street, leaving it on the back porch. Their house was his only delivery in the neighborhood. He was also a neighbor: he, his 27 The Colored Car wife, and their two boys lived one street north on McLean. Mr. Scott would sometimes come by in the evening if he needed to see if their father happened to have a spare part or a tool he might be able to use when he was working on his truck or just to talk business. In the morning, Patsy listened for the sound of his deep voice calling out, “Miiiiiilk!” He sounded almost like her father. He had dark brown skin like her father, too. If Patsy didn’t hurry to bring in the milk, Laura would beat her to it and most times drink the thick cream that had risen to the top of the bottle before Patsy or her mother had a chance to shake up the milk in the bottle. Laura always said she didn’t do it, that the milk came without the cream, but Patsy knew better and rushed to get the milk just the same. “No matter,” their father said, already eating. “Are you going to the train station to get the tickets today?” May asked him as she sat down close to Annie. “W-w...