by Betty Smith
that must have weighed a hundred pounds. She was not
above falling down in pretended exhaustion and death to
give reality to her game.
She bounced back into the classroom, windblown, rosy
and glowing. Although Sister Veronica frowned when she
left, she always smiled when she re urned.
She told Sister Mary Jos'ph: "She brings the smell of the
wind back into the room with her." She pronounced
~ui7~d to rhyme with kind.
19/1
"A pity you gave up writing poetry, Sister, when you
took holy orders," said Sister Mary Joseph.
The rules of the order forbade any nun to walk abroad
alone. She had to go with another nun or a lay person.
The nuns liked children to go shopping with them.
Maggie-Now vitas much in demand as an escort. When
she turned up at the convent on a Saturday morning, the
sisters pretended to quarrel over w ho'd get Maggie-Now.
This thrilled the girl.
Sister Veronica needed new shoes. Maggie-Nov went to
the shoe store with her. She knelt down and helped the
nun try on the shoes. She kneaded the leather over the
toes and asked anxiously: "Are you sure they fit? Have you
got room for all your toes? "
"You'll wear them out, child, before I have a chance to
ovally in them."
Sister Mary Joseph wore a wedding ring, as did the
other nuns, because she was the bride of Christ. Through
the years, the ring had become too tight. Maggie-Now
escorted her to the jeweler's to have it sawed off.
Maggie-Now liked Sister Mary Joseph but was afraid of
her because she said unexpec ted things. When
Maggie-Now escorted Sister Veronica, she held the nun's
hand and skipped along and chattered. With Sister Mary
Joseph, she walked sedately no hand holding, no
skippin,, no chatter. Maggie-Now had to stretch her legs
to match the mln's long stride. They had been walking
three blocks in complete silence when Sister said in an
ordinary, conversational tone:
"What's your horse's name?"
The girl quivered and wondered how Sister knew. She
gave her a quick look. The nun was staring straight ahead.
"What horse?" hedged Maggie-Now.
"The one you keep in the schoolyard."
"His name is Drummer." The nun nodded.
Does that mean, thought Maggie-Now, that it's a nice
rzame? Or does it mean that she caught me?
They walked another block in silence. Then Sister Mary
Joseph said with her usual bluntness: "I used to play
basketball when I was in high school."
1 Hi
"You never did!" said Maggie-Now in instinctive
disbelief. "I mean," she gulped, "did you?"
"Why not?" said the nun crossly.
"I mean, I thought Sisters prayed all the time."
"Oh, we take a day off now and then to have a
toothache or something. Just like other people."
"Nobody ever told me," said Maggie-Now.
"Margaret, are you afraid of me?"
"Not so much as I used to be." Maggie-Now smiled up at
her.
When Mr. Freedman, the jeweler, began to saw on the
ring, Maggie-Now threw her al ms around the nun and
buried her face in her habit.
"What's the matter, Margaret?"
"It goes all through me,' shuddered the child.
"The finger, I wild nor take off," promised Mr.
Freedman. "Only the ring."
"Take deep breaths, Margaret, and be brave," said Sister
Marv Joseph, "and it wails be out r before you know it."
~ CHAP PER t 1t TEEN ~
`LMA.fA, why don t eve hat e relations like other
peoples"
"We do."
"Where? "
"Oh, Ireland. .nd y OL: have HI gralldlllOther in
BostOtl, yoLl know."
"But why don't I have sisters and brothers and aunts and
uncles and lots and lots of cousin`. Iike other girls do?"
"Maybe you will have a sister or brother someday. And
we might go to Boston and trv and find some cousins for
you."
"When are we going to Boston?"
"Summer vacation, maybe. if you pass your catechism
and make your first communion, and if yOtl do your
homework and get promoted.''
I 9,, 1
"Chee! Other kids have relations without passing
everything first."
"Don't say, 'Gee,' and I've told you that a kid is a baby
goat and not a child."
"Sometimes you talk like Sister Veronica, Mama."
Mary sighed and smiled. "I suppose I do. Once a
schoolteacher, always a schoolteacher."
"Well, it ain't every kid . . . girl . . . has a schoolteacher
for a mama."
Maggie-Now waited patiently to be corrected on the
"ain't." To her surprise, her mother didn't correct her, but
hugged her instead.
Mary took ten dollar; from the bank and to her surprise
Patsy gave her ten dollars more for the Boston trip.
"Maybe you can talk your old lady into coming back to
live with us."
"It's nice that you like my mother, Patrick," she said,
"but it seems odd. It's not your way."
"She's never been against me.''
"No one's against you, Patrick."
"Oh, no?" he said with a crooked smile.
"You are against yourself."
He raised two fingers in the air. "May I leave the room,
teacher?" he said sarcastically.
They rode the day coach to Boston. To Maggie-Now it
was like a trip to the moon. As they walked through the
Boston streets, she said, surprised: "Why, they speak
English!"
"What did you think they spoke?"
"Oh, Italian, Jewish, Latin."
"No. English is the language of America."
"Brooklyn's America. But Anastasia's father and mother
speak Italian, there."
"Many old people speak foreign languages because they
came from foreign countries and never did learn English."
"What does Grandma speak?"
"English, of course."
"But you said she came from Ireland."
"They speak English there."
"Why don't they speak Irish?"
[ Y4 ]
"Some do. They call it Gaelic. But most of them speak
English with an Irish accent."
"What's a . . . an . . . accent?"
"The way people fix the words together when they speak
and the different way they make the words sound."
"Mama, I guess you're the smartest lady in the whole
world."
The Missus was a great disappointment to Maggie-Now.
The girl's idea of a grandmother was a woman with a high
stomach and a gingham apron tied about her waist, grey
hair parted in the middle and steel-rimmed spectacles. She
had this idea from a colored lithograph illustrating the
poem "Over the river and through the woods, to
grandmother's house we go." But Grandmother Moriarity
a black sateen dress and her hair was coal black and she
wore it in curls on top of her head.
Henrietta was Grandmother's sister and Mother's aunt.
MaggieNow was instructed to call her "Aunt Henrietta."
She didn't look like an aunt. A girl on Maggie-Now's
block in Brooklyn had an aunt who was young and blonde
and laughed a lot and smelled like sweet, sticky candy
Aunt Henrietta, now, was old and withered and smelled
like a plant that was dead but still standing in the dirt of
the flower pot.
She heard talk of Cousin Robbie, who was coming over
that night. Robbie was Henrietta's son. Maggie-Now had
seen a cousin in Brooklyn; he'd had shiny blond hair and
wore a Norfolk suit with buckled knickerbockers, Buster
Brown collar, Windsor tie, long black ribbed stockings and
button shoes.
She'd been disillusioned about her grandmother and her
aunt. She didn't expect Cousin Robbie to be wearing a
Buster Brown collar. But did he have to show up
baldheaded and fat and making jokes about his big
stomach which he called a bay window?
He kissed Maggie-Now on the cheek. The kiss was like
an exploded soap bubble. He handed her a square of
blotting paper.
"I always give out blotting paper with my wet kisses," he
said. He waited. No one laughed. "Oh, well," he sighed.
"I'd do my rabbit trick for you if I had a rabbit."
Maggie-Now giggled. He gave her a quarter and ignored
her for the rest of the evening.
The three women and Robbie settled down to an
evening of genealogy. "Let me see nor," said l'lary. "Pete
married Liza . . .'
~ ~ 1
"No," said Robbie. "Pete when he was three years old."
"I'm sorry."
"That's all right. That was thirty years ago. Adam
married Liza. Let's see, Aunt Molly," he said to The
Missus. "You married a Moriarity? Mikes" The Missus
nodded. "I understand he died."
"Yes," agreed The Missus. "That was some time ago,
God rest his soul."
"Whatever became of Roddy? Your wife's brother?"
asked Mary.
"Oh, him," sniffed Robbie. "He married a girl, name of
Katie Fogarty. I remember the name well because it was
the same name he had. He was a Fogarty, too.
Understand, they were not relations. They just had the
same name. Well, sir, when they got the license, the clerk
didn't want to give it to them. He said it was insects or
something."
"What's that?" asked The Missus.
"Oh, the baby might be born funny," explained Robbie.
"How was the baby?" asked Aunt Henrietta.
"They never had one," said Robbie.
"What finally happened to Roddy?" asked Mary.
"He moved to Brooklyn, where people is more
broadminded, and, for all I know, he might be dead or
still living."
The saga of Roddy seemed dull to Maggie-Now. Lulled
by the rise and fall of Robbie's voice, comforted by the
warmth of the room and feeling safe surrounded by her
mother, grandmother and aunt, she went into a half sleep.
The conversation droned on. A word came up. A sharp
word. A name. It kept piercing her drowsiness.
"Sheila! "
"No good," said Aunt Henrietta. Her voice was whippy
and sharp, like a fly swatter coming down on a fly.
"It was just that she had hard luck," said Robbie.
"No good from the beginning, even if she was my grand-
daughter," swatted Aunt Henrietta. "Took after her
mother." (Swat!) "Aggie was no good."
"Let the dead rest in peace," said Mary.
"She was pretty, so pretty," said Robbie. "The youngest,
the prettiest of all my daughters."
1~ sac ]
Maggie-Now was awake but she feigned sleep, knowing
that the growm~ps would talk in a way she couldn't
understand if they knew she was listening.
"The way she was pretty was the ruin of her," said
Robbie. "The boys were after her like bees after a honey
flower by the time she was twelve." lie sounded the way
people sounded at funerals.
"She had a baby when she was fifteen," swatted Aunt
Henrietta.
"She was married at the time," said Robbie with dignity.
"Seven months married," swatted back Aunt Henrietta.
"It was a premature baby."
"Like fun! Premature babies don't have fingernails. Rose
did. Don't tell me!"
"In Brooklyn," said The Missus, "an awful lot of first
babies are premature. The trolled cars shakes the houses
and makes them nervous."
"Humpf!'' said Aunt I ienrietta.
"I remember," said Mary, "when Aggie brought Sheila to
visit us in Brooklyn, once. I guess Sheila was six or seven.
And my, visas she pretty! Beautiful! I'd like to see her
again."
"No, you wouldn't, Mary," said Robbie. "She looks bad
and lives poor. Where her man is no one knows. He shows
up from time to time, though. She dives in a slum. And
believe me, a Boston slum is something. She takes in
washing and Lord knows how many children she has."
"I'll go to see her before we leave Boston," said lYlary.
"Not while you're staying in my house," said Aunt
Henrietta.
"It's half my house," said The Missus, "and don't tell
Mary what not to do or she'll do it, the way she got
married when her father told her not to."
"Maybe it would be a good idea if she did go," said Aunt
Henrietta. "Yes, go, Mary, and take your daughter so she
sees what happens to a girl when she lets the fellers chase
her. Not that you got to worry about that, Mary, the way
she's so plain."
"She is not plain," said 1 lary. She put her arm around
the child. "She's not pretty the way Sheila was with blond
curls and dimples and pink cheeks. She's handsome! Look
at those wide cheekbones and the way her chin comes to
sort of a point. Why, she has a face like a heart."
~ Y7 1
Maggie-Now opened her eyes wide and stared hard into
Aunt Henrietta's eyes, mutely daring her to contradict her
mother.
"She's got tan eyes," said Aunt Henrietta.
"She has not!" said Mary. "She has golden eyes."
"Tan!" insisted the old woman.
"Now, Henrietta," said The Missus, "they're the same
color y ours were when you w ere young."
"She has golden eyes," conceded the old woman.
"I promised I'd find cousins for you, Maggie-Now, and
I will,' said Mary. "So be patient. Let me see." She
consulted Robbie's directions on a slip of paper. "Turn
right, go one block, no, three . . ." She lifted her veil
because the chenille dots before her eyes made threes out
of twos. "That's better. Two more blocks . . ."
They climbed up four flights of stairs.
Ilarv knocked
quietly on the door. It was flung open with a bang.
"Come in! Come in!" said a big woman.
Her strong arms were bare to the shoulders. The front
of her apron was wet. Her tousled hair was half blond,
half brown. Her face shone with sweat.
The room seemed to be boiling with life. A whole mob
of children ran for cover when the visitors entered. They
hid behind bundles of dirty wash standing on the floor
and the smallest one burrowed into a loose pile of soiled
clothes, half sorted, on the floor.
The window shades ~ ere up and the sun, full of dusty
motes which seemed to quiver with life, poured in through
the open windows. A network of filled clotheslines
obscured the sky outside the windows. A breeze was
blowing and the drying clothes billowed and collapsed and
writhed and gyrated. The clothes seemed alive. There
were bundles of dirty wash on the floor. The chairs were
filled with clothes waiting to be ironed. A clothesline
strung across the kitchen had freshly ironed shirts on it,
and a bubbling boiler stood on the gas stove with the
dirtiest of the wash boiling in it.
"Mary! " cried the big woman. She threw her arms
around Mary and lifted her off the floor and swung her
around. "Oh, Mary, I recognized you right away. You
didn't change. You still
! 9~1
look so sweet and so refined with your veil and gloves and
all." Then she noticed Maggie-Now. "This yours?" she
asked.
"Mine," said Mary. "We call her Maggie-Now."
"She's beautiful!" The big woman knelt down and put
her arms around the child.
"This is your cousin Sheila," said Mary.
Sheila!
Maggie-Now quivered in the woman's arms. Words she
had heard when half asleep cane back to her. "No good!"
"No good from the beginning!" "No good like her mother
before her!" Maggie-Now was confused. How could
someone who was "no good" be Sf, nice? Maybe this was
another Sheila. But no. She heard her mother say:
"This is Cousin Robbie's girl. Aunt Henrietta is her
grandmother. The mother of Aunt Henrietta and of my
mother is her great grandmother and yours, too. That
makes you cousins. There! "
"Do I have little cousins, too?" asked Maggie-Now.
"You certainly do," said Sheila. She called gently: "Come
out, come out, wherever you are!" No response. Then she
hollered: "Come out or I'll give it to you! Good!"
They came out of the dirty wash. There were four of
them all girls. The youngest was two, the next four, the
third six and the oldest ten. Sheila lined them up, pulling
a dirty sock out of the four-year-old's hair.
"Kids, this is your cousin Maggie-Now what came all the
way from Brooklyn to see yoga."
The four girls and Maggie-Now stared solemnly at each
other. The four-year-old was wearing a thumb guard. She
pulled it off, took two good sucks on her thumb and
replaced the guard.
All of the girls had tangled golden curls, heavenly blue
eyes, dirty pink cheeks and dimples that went in and out
like the first stars of night. They wore odds and ends of
clothing which made them look like the illustrations of the
children who had followed the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
"Oh, Sheila," said Mary, "they're pretty. So pretty the
way you were.... I mean, there you stand, Sheila, four
times over."
"Oh, go on, Mary, I v. as never as pretty as my kids.
Anyhow. this is Rose, the oldest, this one is Violet, the
thumb sucker is
1 99 1
Daisy and Lily's the baby. She's two."
"What pretty names."
"I call them my bow-key," said Sheila.
"Why, they've all got fingernails," said Maggie-Now clearly.
"Oh, Maggie-Now," noaned Mary.
"Oh, my sainted grandmother," laughed Sheila. "Will she
ever let up on me? She told my father . . ."
To change the subject, Mary asked: "what are you going