by Betty Smith
"You're Daddy's little girl, aren't you?" he said with a
sneer.
She flushed. "I don't mean to trick you into finding out
where you work. I just wanted to walk with you. I never
asked you to tell me. I never ask you questions any more.
I don't want to know what you don't want to tell me. Just
so I have you to love; just so you are with me."
He put his hand on hers across the table. "Margaret,
from the time I was born, everyone kept things from
me things I had a right to know; that everyone has a
right to know."
Intuitively, she knew he meant that no one would tell
him anything about his parents or where he had come
from.
"They put me oflf when I asked questions.... I grew up
learning the trick of putting others off when they asked eve
questions. Now it's a habit I can't put aside."
"I know," she said.
One Saturday night hi the middle of January, Claude
came home from work as usual. "Where's your flower?"
she asked.
"No more carnations for the wineglass. I'm fired," said
Claude cheerfully.
"But why . . ."
"They needed me only for the Christmas rush and for
the after rush customers exchanging presents. And now
they've all been changed." He gave her his final salary. "I'll
get another job," he said.
"Sure you will," she said.
The first week, he redid the ads and went out looking
for a job. The second week, he didn't bother. He still read
the ads but told her there was nothing for him. He got
into a routine.
He'd get up after Pat had left for work, eat a leisurely
breakfast, with Maggie-Nov joining him for coffee, talk to
her awhile and then go into the front room and sit at the
window. At ten o'clock, he'd ask her for a quarter for
cigarettes and a paper. She'd give it to him and tell him
to come right back, and he'd say he would, and kiss her
and be back in half an hour or so. Then he'd put in the
day reading the paper and smoking.
On Saturdays, howeve, he always took Denny somewhere
if
~ 3~6 ]
the weather wasn't too bad. Maggie-Now gave them a
dollar and they were off for the day. He took the boy to
the Aquarium, to Prospect Park another Saturday, for a
ride on the Staten Island ferry, to the Brooklyn Na, y
Yard, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and other places of
interest.
It was getting late into lilarch. Maggie-Now woke up at
dawn one morning, feeling strangely uneasy. She put on
her robe and went out on the stoop. Yes, the south wind
. . . the morning full of scented, tender promise of
springtime.
She fixed him a special breakfast: broiled ham and eggs
and poppy-seed rolls and sweet butter and coffee with real
cream. After breakfast, he opened the window and leaned
far out, feeling the soft wind on his face. He did not sit at
the window that morning. He walked up and down
restlessly.
Maggie-Now went into Denny's room and emptied his
marbles out of their cloth Bull Durham sack. She went
into her room and got the gold piece that her father had
given her as a wedding present. She wrapped it in tissue,
put it in the little sack and pinned it inside the breast
pocket of Claude's coat. She pinned it top and bottom so
that it wouldn't move about.
At ten o'clock, Claude said: "If you'll let me have a
quarter, love, I'll go out and get my cigarettes and the
paper."
She fumbled in her pocketbook and gave him a
five-dollar bill. "All I want is a quarter," he said.
"I have no change," she lied.
She held his coat for him and, when he had it on, she
turned him around and buttoned it for him. "Come right
back, hear?" she said as she said every morning.
"I will," he promised, as he promised every morning.
She took his hands in hers and pressed her cheek to his
hands. "Oh, Claude, I love you so much!" she said.
He kissed her and went out for cigarettes and the paper
as he did every morning.
But on this morning, hi did not come back.
[ 3/7 ]
~ CHAPTI,R FORTY-FOUR ~
'Now that he's out of the house, I'm going to move me
bedstead downstairs," said E'at.
"Leave it where it is, Papa. You'll only have to drag it
back up when Claude comes home."
She frowned over Denny's poor report card. "Oh,
Denny, if you get left back again, what will Claude say
when he gets home? He'll be so disappointed."
". . . every day, like clockwork, he'd show up for a pack
of cigarettes and a paper."
"He's gone on one of his trips, Mr. Brockman. He'll be
back again in the fall."
"Don't ask me how I know, Aunt Lottie. I just know
he'll come back. In the war, women had to wait for their
men to come back. I can wait, too."
". . . anything I can dot Father, to fill in the time until
my husband comes back."
"Perhaps Miss Doubleday over at the settlement house
could use some help," suggested Father Flynn.
"You mean hand sewing? Oh, yes, I could, Miss
Doubleday. I could teach them hemstitching and darning
and fagoting and how to make buttonholes. I'd love it!
Two hours, one night a week? That would be just fine!
Only I must tell you that I'd have to give up the class in
November when my husband comes home from his trip."
"You see, Annie, I kno x. Because if he wasn't coming
back, he would have taken me witl' him."
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"But, Jan, she knows he comes back again."
"Do I fight with you about it, Annie? Sure, he comes
back. Like a bad penny, he always comes back."
"He'll never come back," said Pat to Mick Mack. "Never!
When he knew I was onto him, he got out before I had a
chance to throw him out.
"You know, it got so I couldn't sit and talk with him no
more. He gave me the willies. He asked them
questions about me mother and did I remember me
father what died before I was born and did I know where
all me brothers was. He eats off-a people was the way I
fingered it out. He keeps chewing away at me life till he's
got it all for hisself, but he don't give me nothing of his
life; like where he ~ as born and where his relations is
now."
"Like that pitcher I seen," said Mick Mack. "Where them
zombies climb out-a their coffins nights and go upstairs
and eat the blood off-a people what's sleeping in their
bed."
"You danm fool!" said lent, contemptuously.
Maggie-Now was so sure Claude was coming back that
she prepared for his return the day after he left. She
sponged and pressed his new suit and hung it in the closet
with a sheet over i
t to keep it dust free. She shined his
new shoes and wrapped them in newspapers. She washed
and ironed his few shirts and wrapped them in tissue
paper and put them away in his drawer. She knitted a
dark maroon tie for him and two pair of socks. She
washed and ironed his palamas and put them under his
pillow and kept them there.
She made a sort of shrine of the little dressing table
he'd given her. On it, she placed the little red suitcase
he'd given her, The Book of Everything with his autograph,
and the postcard with its message, Wait for me.
While she waited, she filled in her days as best she
could. She visited Lottie each first and third Sunday of the
month, and Annie each second and fourth She had her
sewing class, and nearly every Saturday afternoon she had
the little girl sewers over to her house for hot chocolate
and crackers.
Again she took care of Tessie and Albie during Holy
Week and, when Annie came each afternoon to pick up
the children, she and
~ , 1 9 1
~`Iaggie-Now had coffee and cake together or some little
snack, and their friendship grew stronger.
She sat in church one Sunday afternoon and saw Gina
Pheid married to her Cholly. Outside the church, she
shook Cholly's hand and kissed Gina and wished them
both luck. Gina invited her to the reception but
Maggie-Now didn't go.
A month later, at Mass, she heard the banns read for
Thomas Pheid and Evelyn Delmar. She wondered whether
that was the girl who had once given Sonny the go-by
because he didn't have money to spend on her. I ler name
sounded like the name of a girl who liked spenders,
thought Maggie-Now.
Maggie-Now did not go to see Sonny married. Not that
she was jealous or anything. she assured herself, and not
that she didn't know he'd marry sometime or other. She
just didn't want to see him be married.
Denny caused her some concern that spring. He played
hooky from school a couple of times. The first time Father
Flynn brought him home; he had found Denny wandering
around the streets. The next time, the truant officer
brought him home and told Maggie-Now to see that it
didn't happen again.
"There's a law, you know," he said.
For the rest of the term, she walked to school with
Denny each morning and stood outside and waited until
he was safely inside before she went home.
When she told Lottie, Lottie said that it was nothing.
All boys played hooky now and then. Even her Widdy
had. "I remember like it was yesterday. Timmy caught him
and the next morning Timmy saicl: 'I want you to play
hooky today and if I ketch you sneaking in school, I'll give
you a licking you'll never forget.' So every morning, he
made Widdy go out and play hooky, and the first thing
you know, Wi,ldy was sneaking back in school and he said:
'Don't tell Pop that I'm going to school.'
"That Timmy!" Lottie smiled a tender, faraway smile of
affectionate memory.
Annie said it was nothing. Even Jamesie, she said, good
as he was, played hooky once in a while. "Boys is men,"
said Annie. "They like to go away from the woman folks
sometimes. Like your man: he plays hooky." Then, worried
that she had made an
~ 32 1
untactful remark, she put her hand on Maggie-Nov.~'s
arm and smiled beseechingly.
"Yes, Annie That's right." Maggie-Now smiled hack.
She pried ten dollars out of her father and sent Denny
to camp that summer for two weeks. Denny had been
gone but two days when Maggie-Now got so lonesome
that she went over to Lottie's to try to get her to stay v.
ith her.
"You've never been to our house, Aunt Lottie, since the
day I was christened. You can have Denny's room. I'll
cook the things you like. You owe me a long visit."
"No," said Lottie. "I got to be here when Timmy gets
home nights." Maggie-Now looked startled. "Don't look at
me so funny. I only make believe he's c oming home. I
put out the pan of hot water with Epsom salts for his poor
feet right in front of his chair. Don't think I'm funny in
the head. When I was a little girl I used to make believe
I had a little girl friend. I even gave her a name, Sherrv.
And I'd have a little tea party and talk to her and make
believe she talked to me. Well, that's how I do with
Timmy. Thanks anyway, Maggie-Now, dear. But I'd get
homesick if I went away."
Well, Denny didn't finish out his two weeks at camp.
He'd been gone only four days when Maggie-Now got a
letter from the head counselor saying Denny wanted to
come home; that he would not participate in the activities
of the camp, had to be coaxed to eat; and his tentmates
said he cried nights and said he wanted his sister. The
counselor wrote that she was sending him home.
Maggie-Now knelt before Denny and put her arms
around him when she noticed that his face had gotten thin
in the time he was away and that there were black circles
under his eyes.
"Why didn't you want to stay at camp, Denny?" she asked.
"Because I wanted to c ome home.''
"Did you have fun, swimming and . . ."
"I wanted to be home with you."
"Denny, you're a big boy now, almost nine years old.
You shouldn't be so dependent on me."
"I don't want to go no place if you don't come along."
Maggie-Now knew that she shouldn't be thrilled because
he needed her so much. But she fleas thrilled and moved.
What will
~ 3~' 1
I do, she thought in panic, ~vLeiZ he gets trig and does``'"
need me ally more? Oh, I must have children. I must! I need
so much to be needed.
She went to see Father Flvnn a few days later and asked
him how she could go about adopting a baby.
"I'm afraid that's impossible, Margaret. Babies are not
given out for adoption except to good devout Catholics."
"I try to be a good Catholic," she said.
"But your husband is non-Catholic." She hung her head.
"Couldn't I adopt a Protestant baby or a Jewish baby?"
"No, my child. Methodist orphanages permit only
Methodists to adopt their children. And the Baptists and
Lutherans and Episcopalians, the same. The Hebrew
orphanages place their children with good, orthodox I
iebrew families. You understand, Margaret? "
"Yes, Father," she whispered.
"We have an orphanage out on the Island and it boards
out some of its children with foster mothers. The foster
mother is given an infant and keeps it, and gives it a
mother's love and care until the child is six, when it is
taken back by the orphanage and put into school."
She leaned forward, tense and pleading and with her
could you . . . would you ask. . . please if I could have
one?"
"You should have your own children, Margaret. You're
young and strong and healthy...."
"But I don't have any! ' she said piteously.
"Be patient a while longer, my child. Pray to our Holy
Mother. And make a Novena. I will say a prayer each day
for your intention."
"Thank you, Father."
It was December and still there was no snow. Nobody
wanted snow but everybody was worried, thinking there
would be no white Christmas. Snow or no snow,
Maggie-Now prepared each day for her husband's
homecoming. He came back on a cold, crystal-clear night
full of stars, in the middle of December.
When she saw him, she held out her arms and smiled.
She didn't ask him where he'd been. She didn't ask him
never to leave her
[ 392 ]
again. She hugged him tight and smiled and said: "What
took you so long?" as though he had just stepped out an
hour ago to go to the store.
She said: "I knew you were coming back. And I'm so
happy."
She took him into the kitchen and shot home a small
bolt she had set up some weeks before, so that her father
or brother wouldn't walk in on them. He had brought
home some meat: half a loin of pork.
"Pork?" she asked.
"Not pork. A symbo!. It means that technically I'm your
provider."
"I'll cut off some for chops and broil them because it
takes all day to roast pork and you have to have
applesauce which I haven't got." He started to laugh. "All
right," she said. "So I'm practical. Laugh all you want to."
He grabbed her and hugged her tight. She felt the
pressure of the gold coin in his pocket. He didn't need it
there, she thought. She unbuttoned his coat and took it off
and hung it over the back of a chair. He had a package
under his pullover sweater. She pulled it out.
"What's this?" she asked.
"Open it."
She did so. It was a beautiful kimono of jade green, dull
silk. "Oh, how loNely . . . lovely . . ." she said. "Oh,
Claude!"
"I thought it vas time that my little Chinee had a
kimono. Put it on, love."
It looked beautiful on her. She held out her arms so he
could see how wide the sleeves were. She looked up into
a sleeve. She sane the label, The Chinese liazaar. She
couldn't read the street and number but the city was San
Francisco.
So he was way out there, she thought.
She admired the kimono profusely and he admired her
profusely and they had the broiled chops and coffee and
he asked her what she had been doing with herself and
she told him about the sewing class and Lottie and Annie
and Dennv. It was as if he had been away for but a day.
Early the next morning, he put on his good suit and
shoes and went out job hunting. She took the gold coin
out of his old coat and wadded up his old suit and shoes
and hid them on the top shelf
1 ,23 1
of Denny's closet. When he left in the spring, she wanted
him to wear the good suit, because the old one was
threadbare. Already, she was making preparations for his
leaving in the spring.
He got a job on the third day out. He didn't say where
or at what, but the first day he came home from work she
saw tufts of cotton clinging to his shoulders. She smiled
inwardly, but said nothing. He gave her his first week's
pay, thirty dollars. The second payday fell on (Christmas
Eve. He didn't bring home his pay. He had bought
Christmas gifts with it.
"I noticed, old sir, that you do not have the pipe I gave
you last year,' said Claude. "So I bought you another one.
Merry Christmas."
It was a cheap pipe in a cardboard box. Pat muttered a
reluctant thanks anal, under his breath, he said: "The
bastid!"
Claude gave Denny a Waterman fountain pen with a
fourteenkarat-gold clasp. Pat eyed it enviously. Claude