Kitabı oku: «The Unfortunates», sayfa 2
Her pertness dissolved.
‘I’m so sorry, Miss Poppy,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss. He went back for my muff. I begged him not to, but he would go …’
We stood face to face but at cross purposes, and people flowed around us, away, out of the church and back into life.
‘… it was my Persian broadtail muff,’ she said, ‘and it was an awful cold night.’
I said, ‘So you did see him? Were you close to him? Did he say anything?’
‘He said “Go to the boat station, Nellie. I’ll come to you there.”’
Then her tears started.
‘He lived and died a gentleman,’ she said. ‘Whatever people may say, there were no irregularities between us. I was there by way of secretary to him.’
I said, ‘How could you be? Mr Levi was his secretary. And anyway, can you read?’
‘I can,’ she said. ‘Well. I was more of an assistant. A personal assistant. There was no one could take away his headaches the way I could. And that’s how things stood. I’d swear to it on the good book.’
They always said that when they were lying. Next thing she’d be asking for wages still owed.
I said, ‘Where do you live? Where are you going?’
‘To my sister,’ she said. ‘Or maybe to my cousin.’
The slipperiness of the Irish. How right my mother was.
It was a long walk home. Three miles, I now know, but then I had no idea of distance or time. My shoes rubbed holes in my stockings and my toes were pinched and sore, but I pressed on as fast as I could. I knew the streets were full of robbers and murderers and women who drank sherry wine.
It wasn’t exactly fear kept me hurrying along. Now my Pa had died, dead seemed an easy thing to be. Still, I wasn’t sure I’d be as brave as he had been. ‘Go to the boat station, Nellie.’ When the moment came, I might squawk, or not quite die, and lie in agony in the gutter.
I knew, too, I’d be the subject of a full inquiry at home, and I preferred to face it as soon as possible. There was no predicting what grief would make of Ma. She might forgive all, in a fit of tenderness, or she might turn on me, like a wounded beast. In any event, it has always been my nature to take whatever I have coming to me as quickly as possible.
As I passed the New Theater, nearly home, I heard an automobile chugging toward me and I knew it was a search party in the shape of Harry Glaser. He all but threw me into the car. I didn’t think he had it in him.
‘You damned fool,’ was all he could say. ‘You goddamned fool!’
I said, ‘You were the one abandoned me. I waited for you. And does Honey know you use language?’
‘Don’t we have hard enough times ahead of us with your Ma,’ he said, ‘without you disappearing and putting me in a bad odor? What’s your game?’
I said, ‘I lost you in the crowd, that’s all. Why are you so afraid of Ma? What did she say? What’s my punishment?’
‘Consider yourself mighty lucky,’ he said. ‘So far you haven’t been missed, but you’re not home and dry yet. You’ve still got to get back into the house and into your bed, and I suppose you’ll be expecting my help? You’re a brat, no two ways.’
‘Harry,’ I said, ‘a porter told me there was a Minkel on the list of survivors. Did you see that?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I definitely did not, and neither did you if you know what’s good for you. Anyway, it was clearly a clerical error.’
A lamp was burning in the parlor, but it was only Uncle Israel Fish, smoking a last cigarette. He appeared in the doorway as I tiptoed up the stairs but seemed not to notice me. We only see what we expect to see, I suppose. It was another lesson for me, and I had learned so many in just one day. I listed them as I lay in bed, too tired for sleep.
1. My Pa was not indestructible.
2. Personal assistants got Persian lamb muffs and trips to Europe.
3. I was blessed with powers of invisibility.
4. Harry Glaser was a half-wit, my sister married him, therefore I would be expected to marry a half-wit, therefore I would not marry.
I got up, lit a candle, and one by one I committed to its flame my ear-correcting bandeaux. First the pink one, then the apricot, then the eau-de-Nil. They created an interesting and rather satisfying smell.
FOUR
It was Aunt Fish who came into my room next morning. She was wearing her black bombazine.
‘Poppy,’ she said, gravely, ‘a terrible sadness has come to this house, so you must now make great efforts to be a good girl, for your dear mother’s sake.’
I said, ‘I’m sure I always do try to be good.’
‘There is all the difference in the world between trying and succeeding,’ she said, ‘and quibbling with me is not a promising way to begin.’
I said, ‘I know Pa is drowned, Aunt Fish. I know Ma is a poor widow now.’
She leapt up and knotted the ends of her shawl in despair.
‘That is precisely the kind of heartless remark good girls do not make,’ she said. ‘Your duty is to spare your mother from harsh reminders.’
I got up and put on my wrapper. Aunt Fish was looking at my ruined stockings and muddied shoes.
I said, ‘Am I to pretend then that Pa isn’t drowned? Am I to pretend he may come back some day?’
‘You are to wash your face and show respect,’ she said. ‘You are to go to your mother, and try to persuade her to sip a little peptonized milk, to keep up her strength. And you are never ever to speak of drownings, or steam ships or … oceans. How worn out your shoes are, Poppy. I’d suggest a new pair, but you’ll be going out so seldom now it hardly seems worth the expense.’
And with those words, Aunt Fish raised the curtain on a whole new period of my life.
Ma was propped up with extra pillows. Her night table was cluttered with various bottled remedies, her little helpers. I could see she had been crying. I suppose she could see I had, too. She patted the bed beside her.
‘What a blessing I have you, Poppy,’ she said. ‘I see now, this was all meant to be. If you had been as favored with beauty as Honey you’d soon make a good match and then what would I do, left all alone in the world?’
I opened my mouth to say I didn’t think Honey was all that favored with beauty, but Ma was getting into her stride.
‘But it’s so clear to me now,’ she continued. ‘I was given a beauty for the consolation her children will bring me, and I was given a plain one for companionship in my old age. How wise Nature is!’
I said, ‘Does this mean I don’t have to go to Cincinnati for a new nose?’
‘The nose is cancelled,’ she said. ‘And the singing lessons and the French and the cotillions. There’s no sense in exerting ourselves in that direction anymore.’
The husband hunt had been called off. Still, I had rather enjoyed my singing lessons.
I said, ‘Shouldn’t you like me to be able to sing for you sometimes, Ma?’
‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘I should like you to read to me sometimes from the Home Journal. And mend stockings.’
She tried to stroke my hair, but her fingers caught in it. Standing in the rain had given it a particularly vicious kink.
‘We’ll just live quietly now,’ she said. ‘No more dinners.’
Dinners had always been a trial to her, as she clambered the foothills of society. She had once committed the solecism of following a potage crème with creams of veal en dariole. It was only the dessert, a Prune Shape, produced by Reilly, our cook, in a moment of whimsy, as a substitute for the Almond Shape that had been ordered, which saved Ma from the social ruin of presiding over a completely beige meal.
As far as I know she never descended to the kitchen. Her negotiations with Reilly were conducted entirely through a speaking tube that connected the parlor to the scullery. The temperature of their exchanges rose as the dinner hour drew near, and neither party ever seemed to understand that they could not only hear and be heard. They could also be overheard.
‘Reilly has been nipping at the brandy,’ was one of Ma’s favorite asides.
Reilly herself was fond of the prefix ‘fecken’’, as in, ‘I’ll give her fecken’ fricandeau of sweetbreads, all right.’
I took this to be a quaint usage from Reilly’s home country and sometimes repeated it, in imitation of her. I had no idea what it meant, and neither did Ma, so no harm was done.
On the day of a dinner, Ma required an extra dose of Tilden’s, for her nerves. The day after a dinner, her shades were kept tightly closed and she took nothing stronger than seltzer water. That Pa’s death meant an end to all this was no cause of regret to me.
I said, ‘What about the backboard? Do I still have to wear that?’
‘Good posture is always an asset,’ she said, ‘even in a homely girl.’
I sensed, though, that this was the moment to strike as many bargains as possible, and I was just about to sue for a ceasefire in the war against my protruding ears, when Aunt Fish appeared in the doorway. In her hand were the ashes of my corrective nightwear bandeaux.
‘Dora!’ she said. ‘I have had the candle removed from Poppy’s vanity table. I fear she is not yet to be trusted with unguarded flames.’
FIVE
Like Great Uncle Meyer, Aunt and Uncle Fish had not been blessed with children of their own, and perhaps they had expected Ma and Pa to follow Grandpa Minkel’s example and hand over their spare. At any rate, Aunt Fish seemed to believe she had some lien over me and the bigger I grew, the more forthcoming she was with her advice and opinions.
On the subject of molding and polishing Honey, she had deferred to my mother. Clearly she, the elder sister, understood better than Aunt Fish, a younger and childless person, how to raise a daughter, especially a daughter as perfectly pink and golden as Honey. But my aunt sensed the moment would come when her talents for, as she put it, ‘the handling of more difficult cases’ would be gratefully received. If Aunt Fish ever had a career, it was me.
After Pa’s death she deemed her normal daily visits to be inadequate and she moved into our house for an indefinite period, to spare Ma the burden of household decisions and make good my deficiencies as a tower of strength. Ma suggested that this might be a great inconvenience to Uncle Israel, but he insisted that nothing could be more convenient to him. He would dine at his club, he said, and be occupied until late every night going through Pa’s complicated business affairs with Mr Levi, ensuring everything was in order.
Complicated was a word that filled Ma with terror.
‘Are they not all in order, Israel?’ she asked him, handkerchief at the ready.
‘Nothing to worry about, Dora,’ he said. ‘I’m just going through things to make sure. Abe would have done the same for me.’
I said, ‘Are we ruined, Uncle Israel? Am I still a mustard heiress?’
‘Poppy!’ Aunt Fish said. ‘That is a thing to have said about one. One should not say it of oneself!’
‘Never fear, Pops,’ Uncle said, ‘you’ll come into a handsome amount.’
Ma said, ‘Not that you’ll have any need of it, since you will always have a home here and be provided for. You might think, Poppy, when you are of age, of making donations and helping with good works.’
‘There’ll certainly be plenty for that,’ Uncle said. ‘The Education Alliance is doing fine work with the immigrants. And The Daughters of Jacob. Both very worthy causes.’
Aunt Fish said, ‘Dora didn’t mean that kind of cause, Israel. One has to be careful in selecting one’s charities. They reflect on one so. Poppy might do better sending money to the little black babies in Africa.’
I’m sure it’s very easy to spend someone else’s inheritance. I didn’t bother to tell them I intended spending mine on silk harem pants and a gasoline-powered automobile and cake.
So Uncle dined at the Harmonie Club every night and Aunt Fish moved in with us and began nursing my mother through a carefully planned convalescence. At first, no callers were received. Ma stayed in her room and toyed with a little calf’s-foot jelly. I was allowed to brush her hair for fifteen minutes each day, and sometimes Honey came and read to her from Fashion Notes.
The name Minkel had only appeared in the first list of survivors published in The New York Times. By the time the next edition went to press, the phantom Mrs Minkel had disappeared and Ma seemed to be none the wiser. Harry Glaser had done something useful for once in his life.
By the middle of May, Ma had progressed to a small, baked fillet of sole with bread and butter fingers, followed by vermicelli pudding or perhaps an orange custard, by way of variety, and she felt able to receive Mrs Lesser and Mrs Schwab, and eventually the Misses Stone.
Mrs Schwab was herself a widow and understood what was appropriate, but Mrs Lesser was unpredictable. Sometimes she simply reported on the refreshments and gossip at her latest crush – she was very keen to be known for her afternoon teas – but sometimes she would canter off into more dangerous territory. Would there ever be a funeral for Pa, she would suddenly wonder out loud. If not, could there be a funeral monument? And if there could, what form should it take?
One of my duties was to anticipate this kind of conversational turn and head off Mrs Lesser at the pass, but sometimes my attention wandered and before I knew it Aunt Fish would be fanning Ma and tutting at me and suggesting to Mrs Lesser that she had already given us more than enough of her valuable time.
The thing was, I had questions myself, most of them far more macabre than Mrs Lesser’s. I knew, for instance, that the bodies of drowned persons were often hooked out of the East River and the Hudson, but I suspected things worked differently in an ocean. Still, sometimes I imagined Pa’s poor body, slowly finding its way to Pier 32. And other times I imagined he had never boarded that accursed boat. That he was still in London, inspecting his subsidiaries, and Irish Nellie had been, as usual, telling whoppers.
None of these ideas could ever be aired, of course. They were merely evidence of the unhealthy state of my mind and I knew better than to draw that kind of attention to myself. Apart from my sleeplessness and loss of appetite, daily life had become easier with Pa gone. Since April eighteenth my hair had been left au naturel. This alone gave me such a fierce appearance, I doubt even Aunt Fish would have dared to suggest resuming the applications of neck-whitener. We had reached a kind of accommodation. No one troubled me with beauty regimes, and I troubled no one with my questions. Then the Misses Stone came to call.
‘It occurs to us,’ one of them began, ‘we might be of assistance, at this sad time, in the … disposal of … unhappy reminders.’
The Misses Stone were collecting unwanted clothes for their Immigrant Aid Fund. It had never crossed my mind that Pa’s things wouldn’t hang forever in their closets. I visited them every day and buried my face in the cloth of his coats, to smell his cologne. The possibility that the Misses Stone might bundle them away and give them to strangers hit me much harder than the news of the sinking. I sprang from my chair while Ma and Aunt Fish still sat, pudding-faced, absorbing the request.
‘We have only happy, treasured reminders of my dear father and there are no plans to dispose of any of them’ was what I intended to say. But it came out as ‘They’re mine, you hateful crows! Pa’s things are mine! And no one else shall ever take them.’
They were unnerved by the sight of me, I know. Even diminished by grief, there was enough of me to make two of the birdlike Misses Stone, and then there was my hair, which weeks of neglect had turned from a deformity into an instrument of terror. They fluttered toward the door under cover of Aunt Fish’s bosom.
‘Unhinged by our loss,’ I heard her whisper. ‘Perhaps, when a little more time has passed …’ and the Misses Stone made little gobbling noises of sympathy.
Ma was looking at me in amazement.
‘Don’t let them take his things,’ I yelled at her. ‘Don’t let anyone take them. I miss Pa. I have to have the smell of him.’
‘Oh Poppy,’ was all she said. ‘Oh Poppy …’
‘Well!’ Aunt Fish said, when she returned from seeing off the Misses Stone. ‘That was a fine display you made of yourself.’
Ma struggled to her feet. I realize now she was only forty-two and not at all the old lady she seemed. She put out her arms and held me stiffly to her jet stomacher.
‘Oh Poppy,’ she said, ‘how stricken you are. I think perhaps one of my powders …’
She turned to Aunt Fish, who was all for smacking me, I dare say.
‘Zillah,’ she said, ‘I think poor Poppy needs a powder. Or perhaps some of my special drops?’
‘Hmm,’ said Aunt Fish. ‘And time alone, in her room, to compose herself and consider what embarrassment she has caused.’
I said, ‘I’m sure it wasn’t me who came begging for a dead man’s clothes. I’m sure we are not the ones who should feel embarrassed.’
Ma released me from our awkward embrace.
‘They are crows, Aunt Fish,’ I cried, as I fled the room. ‘They are crows and you are a gull for allowing them.’
I hid for an hour inside Pa’s closet, comforted a little by its smells but anxious, too, that they might be fading. When I returned to my room, a small bottle had appeared on my night table. Pryce’s Soothing Extract of Hemp, recommended for cases of nervous excitement.
SIX
All through June and July our household was run by Aunt Fish, and then she stayed on through the worst of the August heatwave because we had an electric fan and she did not, and she feared she might expire without it. Uncle Israel struggled on without her, quite weary I suppose of having to dine out every night and drink champagne and play cards with other poor bachelors.
The days hung dead and hopeless. We visited no one, we had nothing to refresh our conversations, and every exchange was hobbled by unmentionable subjects. Water, travel, Europe, mustard, Iowa, money, joy, happiness, unhappiness; these were the main taboos. But to those I added my own secret list: Irish secretaries, gowns by Mr Worth, death by drowning and ghosts.
I was employed in a series of sewing assignments, trimming handkerchiefs with black ribbon, and turning slightly worn sheets sides to middle, a pointless exercise made all the more absurd by the fact that I had ten thumbs. In the privacy of my room, when I made clothes for my dolls and stitched them with my preferred left hand, I sewed very well indeed, but in the parlor, of course, only the use of the correct hand was permitted.
‘How awkward you look, Poppy,’ Ma said. ‘But you must persevere.’
While I stitched, Ma and Aunt Fish conversed. In the morning, dinner was discussed, and the social events none of us would be attending. Just once a week my aunt would tear herself away from us to attend the opera.
‘It gives me no pleasure, Dora,’ she always said, ‘but a box cannot go to waste.’
Otherwise the evenings were spent considering next day’s luncheon and reviewing our health, two not unconnected subjects.
‘An omelette is very binding,’ Aunt Fish would bid.
‘But celery is invigorating,’ Ma would counter-bid.
My only release from this was that once a week I was allowed to visit Honey. She and Harry had a red-brick on West 74th Street with a bay window high above the street that made it lighter and more cheerful than home. The serviceable, dark plum chintz had been picked out on Ma’s advice, and I now recognize, recalling the abundance of valances and frilled portières, other signs of her hand. If society abhorred a naked door frame, who was she to argue?
Still, I loved to visit there and play Chinese checkers and try on Honey’s new hats, and she enjoyed my being there. Sometimes, without Ma around, or Harry, she could be quite gay.
But in the fall of 1912 something changed. On my weekly visit there was no gaiety. All afternoon Honey just sat in her cushioned rocker and sucked peppermints. And the next week, and the next. It was December before I found out why. A baby was coming to live with Honey and Harry.
This news made me very happy. I had often wished to have a brother or a puppy and Honey’s baby seemed to promise a good alternative.
‘Where is it coming from?’ I asked, and Honey turned scarlet.
‘A little star fell from heaven,’ Ma said, ‘and has come to rest under her heart.’
I had noticed that the area beneath and around Honey’s heart had expanded recently, but I’d attributed this to the quantity of violet creams she ate.
‘And then what?’ I asked.
‘The stork will bring it from a special baby garden,’ Aunt Fish cut in.
‘Yes,’ said Ma, abandoning her story about the star, ‘and give it to the nurse and she’ll place it in the cradle.’
I was confused. So next time I was down in the kitchen, looking for company and cookies, I asked the Irish. We had a rosy-cheeked one at that time, quite pretty.
‘I wonder where Honey’s baby will come from?’ I said, drawing on the oilcloth with my wetted finger.
The Irish put down the silver cloth.
‘How old are you, Poppy?’ she asked.
I was just fifteen.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘you know you get your monthly health …?’
Reilly slammed down a tureen in front of her.
‘Wash out your mouth and get on with your work,’ she said.
The Irish grinned at me and polished on in silence until Reilly disappeared into the pantry. Then she leaned across the table.
‘’Tis very simple,’ she whispered. ‘Mr Harry had his way with her and put a bun in her oven and now she’ll blow up and up till her time comes and then she’ll be brought to bed of it and scream and scream and drop it like a sow-pig, and then there’ll be a grand pink little baby.’
I ran to my room and tried to compose myself before luncheon. I vowed, on my next visit to West 74th Street, to tell Honey what I’d learned. She seemed so calm, languid even, I couldn’t believe she understood what a terrible fate awaited her.
‘Harry will do it,’ Ma always said. ‘Leave it to Harry.’
Leave it to Harry indeed. I might have guessed he had something to do with it.
My sister was brought to bed of a baby boy on May 28, 1913. Three weeks before, she had taken up residence in her old room, so Ma and Aunt Fish could keep watch for the stork, so I supposed. In the event, things turned out much as the Irish had said they would, with Harry being sent away and Honey screaming, and a nurse arriving who drank quantities of tea, and finally a doctor in a top hat, with something in his bag that put a stop to all the yelling.
I was allowed to see my nephew when he was two hours old, and then it devolved to me to start breaking the news to Ma that he would not be named Abe, for his dear departed grandpa.
‘How well he suits “Sherman”,’ I said. Honey had suggested this as an opening.
‘Sherman?’ Ma said. ‘Sherman? As usual you are quite mistaken, Poppy. In this family we do not name our children after … hotels.’
‘Not after the hotel, Ma,’ Harry tittered, when he was finally admitted to see his wife and child. ‘Sherman, as in General William Tecumseh Sherman.’ And he attempted to sing ‘While We Were Marching Through Georgia’, as though that explained everything.
Ma was quiet for a while.
‘It seems to me,’ she said, returning to the battlefield, ‘that if you wish to name my grandson for a public figure, it should be for our new president. Abraham Woodrow Glaser sounds very well.’
‘’Fraid not, Ma,’ Harry said. ‘Can’t tar the boy with a Democrat brush. His name will be Sherman Ulysses, and that’s my final word on it.’
Ma’s knuckles whitened round her handkerchief.
‘Tell you what though,’ he said, backtracking a little at the prospect of tears. ‘Tell you what. If the next one’s a girl, we’ll name her Dora, for you.’
From what I had seen and heard that day, I doubted there would be a next one. I planned to consult the Irish again and see whether such things could be prevented.
Meanwhile ugly little Sherman Ulysses Glaser cried and slept and cried some more, and eventually I was allowed to cradle him.
‘I’m your maiden aunt Poppy,’ I told him, and he curled his little fingers around my thumb. Honey had three weeks lying-in before she took him home to West 74th Street, and Ma didn’t waste a moment of it.
‘Abraham,’ she kept whispering to him as he slept. ‘Grandma’s special little Abraham.’
Down in the kitchen I heard talk.
‘Is Mrs Honey’s baby to be cut?’ the Irish asked me.
‘Why?’ I asked, and she and Reilly exchanged annoying little smiles. I took the question straight to Ma, who was sitting with Aunt Fish and Honey and Harry’s mother, the senior Mrs Glaser.
‘Poppy!’ Ma said. ‘Not in the parlor!’
I had to wait until the company had left. Then I was taken to Ma’s bedroom to have it explained that some baby boys underwent a procedure, but the Minkels and the Glasers were unanimous in judging it quite unnecessary.
‘It’s just an old-fashioned racial thing,’ Honey said, ‘and we are civilized New Yorkers.’
I said, ‘I wish you could stay here, Honey. I’d help you with Sherman Ulysses and we could make dolls’ clothes and have fun.’
‘I’m a mother now, Pops,’ she said. ‘I don’t have time for fun.’
So the party was over. Honey took Sherman home, and time slowed down again, crawling past me while I read to Ma from Collier’s Weekly, and danced imaginary cotillions, but very quietly, so as not to tire her.
Mrs Schwab visited, and Mrs Lesser, and even the Misses Stone returned. They had forgiven me my hysterical outburst and after I turned sixteen they seemed more inclined to take me seriously. They knew better than to mention the distribution of second-hand clothes, but some of their projects, their work amongst ‘the element’, sounded adventurous and exciting. They raised money for the settlement houses where the Russian Hebrews could be washed and fed and trained out of their rude oriental ways. They arranged classes where the unfortunates could learn hygiene and gymnastics. They sent them to summer camp.
I said, ‘Gymnastics and summer camp! I’m sure I shouldn’t mind being an unfortunate.’
The Misses Stone laughed.
‘No, Poppy,’ one of them said, ‘you wouldn’t say so if you saw how people lived. Workers and donations are what we need. Perhaps some day, when you’re not so much needed at home?’
‘I hope,’ Ma sighed, ‘some day I may feel strong enough to spare Poppy for a few hours.’
Her true intention was that I should never set foot anywhere near such dangerous territory, but I wore away her resolve with the daily drip, drip, drip of my requests. It took many months. Then suddenly, one summer morning, she threw down her needlepoint and said, ‘I see you are determined to break my heart, Poppy, so go and be done with it.’
Two days later I was taken by trolley-car to the Bowery, and then, with a Miss Stone on either side of me for safety, I was swept into the tumult of Delancey Street, the very place where Pa had enjoyed his cherry blintzes.
I tried to tell the Misses Stone about this exciting coincidence, and they smiled, but I wasn’t at all sure they could even hear me. I had never in my life encountered so much noise or seen so many people. Then we turned onto Orchard Street and the buildings and the noise of the stinking, shouting unfortunates pressed in on me even closer.
There were dead ducks and chickens hanging from hooks, and women with dirty hands selling eggs from handcarts, and pickle barrels, and shop signs in foreign squiggles, and small boys carrying piles of unfinished garments higher than themselves, and ragged girls playing potsy on the sidewalk.
‘Why is everyone shouting?’ I shouted.
‘Because they’re happy to be here.’ That was the best explanation the Misses Stone could offer.
I said, ‘I’m sure abroad must be a very terrible place if Orchard Street makes them happy.’
We went to The Daughters of Jacob Center where the element could learn to dress like Americans and raise healthy children. And then to the Edgie Library where they could study our language.
‘You see, Poppy,’ they said, ‘how much needs doing?’
I said, ‘I don’t come into my money until I’m twenty-one and I don’t know how much there’ll be because Pa had complicated affairs.’
But the Misses Stone said it wasn’t only money they needed but helpers, and why didn’t I try sitting, just for five minutes, and helping someone with their English reading.
A small girl stood in front of me with a primer in her hands, trying to stare me down. I turned to tell the Stones I probably wouldn’t be very good at it, but they were hurrying away to inspect another class, and the staring girl was still waiting with her book.
I said, ‘The first thing you should learn is not to stare, especially not at your elders and betters.’
She was pale as wax, and skinny.
‘What’s your name?’ she said. She spoke perfect English.
I said, ‘And if you’re going to read to me you had better start immediately because I have to go home very soon.’
I sat on a stool and she stood beside me, a little too close for my liking, and read. She was pretty good.
I said, ‘You can read. You don’t need good works doing for you.’
She grinned.
I said, ‘Have you been to summer camp?’
She shook her head.
I said, ‘How about gymnastics?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I did do that, but now I can’t be spared. I have to help make garters. We get one cent a piece. My name’s Malka but I like Lily better. What do you think?’
I didn’t really know what gymnastics were. As I had never been allowed them I surmised they were something desirable.
‘How old are you?’ she asked. She was one impertinent child.
‘And how were the gymnastics?’ I asked, feeling my way.
‘They were fun,’ she said. ‘Are you married? I like your coat. Want to see how I can turn a somersault?’ And she just flipped over, like a toy monkey. She went over so fast, I couldn’t see how she did it. This attracted the attention of the other little monkeys, who all left off their studying and gathered around me, fingering the fabric of my coat.
Ücretsiz ön izlemeyi tamamladınız.
