“After You, My Dear Alphonse” (1943)

Some interesting points over at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB) about this very short Shirley Jackson story. First, as always, ISFDB's sort of inverted bias makes them quick to declare anything suspiciously realistic as “non-genre.” “Although this story is listed in Ashley & Contento's Supernatural Index, there isn't anything supernatural in it,” they note. And that’s certainly true, at least if you exclude a certain level of future-seeing prescience. It’s a story about racism, and it couldn’t be any more clear, though what’s remarkable may be more the publication date, arguably early in terms of 20th-century integration, even before the U.S. military was formally desegregated in 1948. Mrs. Wilson’s son Johnny has brought home a new friend for lunch. Boyd is “a Negro.” They are about 8 or 9 years old. The moment Mrs. Wilson sees Boyd everything changes. Her bigotry is not based exactly on hatred but more on a mix of uninformed compassion and condescension. She assumes Boyd is poor, has numerous siblings, and doesn’t get enough to eat. She offers to make up a box of blankets and used clothes for his family. She means well, maybe, but she is also overbearing. Boyd very tactfully turns her down, which annoys her. You get the feeling Boyd has encountered this treatment before. He appreciates the kindness, but plainly all he wants is to be treated like anyone else. Johnny is the only person who seems to be genuinely colorblind here. The giveaway about Mrs. Wilson is when she becomes annoyed Boyd won’t accept anything but a small lunch from her. And what works more than anything is the clarity of this story, clarity being one of the greater virtues in Shirley Jackson’s work. It’s a very short story, maybe four pages, and you may want to call it obvious but Jackson packs a lot into it. The title comes from a joke whose sources lie in a turn-of-the-century comic strip about hobos, a joke that Johnny and Boyd share, politely exchanging with one another, “After you, my dear Alphonse,” and then, from the other, “No, after you, my dear Alphonse.” The story is excellent, as clear a crystallization of racism as you could hope to find even today and a painful reminder of how deeply enmeshed with race so many of our problems still are.

Shirley Jackson, Novels and Stories
Read story online.
Listen to story online.