Бетти Смит: Maggie-Now

Patsy stood on the l urkey-red carpet and looked around the dim room. The windows were hung with Brussels lace curtains and maroon velvet draperies tied back with golden cords, and green velvet portieres, hung from a fretwork arch that led into an alcove, were tied back to display a shiny upright piano with a velvet-covered stool.

There were silver-framed photographs on the piano and a whatnot in a corner, its shelves filled with little

"friendship" cups, and Boston ferns on the window ledges.

And gilt chairs upholstered in pink and blue satin and a love seat. A big statue of a blackamoor was on the newel post of the stairs leading to the second floor. The blackamoor held a bowl over his head in which a gas light flickered. On the stair landing was a concave, oval, leaded, stained-glass window.

Patsy thought it was all beautiful. . beautiful. He promised himself that he would have a house like that someday. Until I get ale own, he thought, I'll be content to live here.

Moriarity came into the room and greeted him boomingly. Then he shouted for his wife. A timid little woman scuttled into the room.

"Missus, this is the new stable boy," he said. "Boy, this is your [36] Missus." The Missus bobbed her head in a scared way and scuttled back into the shadows of the room.

"And me daughter, Mary." The plain girl gave Patsy her sweet smile. "American loom," said Moriarity. It was obvious that he was proud of his daughter. "And she studied to be a teacher. This here is Biddy, the cook. She comes from County Down." He addressed Biddy.

"Biddy, me bird, Yathrick here is a fine-looking feller.

Nov. don't you go making eyes at him when the both of youse should be working."

Patsy looked at the big-busted Biddy with aversion and she looked at him with distaste. There's nothing there what I ~*'ant, thought Patsy.

"And afther, I'll introduce you to me two best girls, Jessie and Daisy," Mike said to Patsy. "And now: Where's your satchel? "

"A young man took it off me. He said he worked for you and that you said he should." Patsy thought it best to say nothing about the two pounds.

"He took your satchel? ' "Yes. Me 'sack."

"Are you standing there and telling me you was taken in by that old thrick?" He laughed. "Yah-ha-ha! Yah-ha-ha!"

The booming laugh scared The Missus. She threw up her hands in fright and scuttled from the room.

"Yah-ha-ha!" laughed Mike. "Wait'll I tell the boys down at headquarters."

"Now, Papa, don't laugh," said Mary Moriarity.

"Remember the same thing happened to you when you came over. Only the man said he was your uncle's cousin.

And he got your trunk. And all your money, too."

Patsy gave her a grateful look. Ah, she's kind, he thought. But then, 'tis the nature of plaits women to be kind.

"Har-umph!" The Boss cleared his throat. "'Tis so. Was so. But sure 'twas only an old thmnk filled with rags.

Mary, go below stairs with Biddy and see that she fixes a dish of hot supper for the new boy." The women left.

"And now Pathrick, me boy, I'll show you to your room.' [37 1 Patsy turned and went toward the stairs. "Not up there."

The Boss laughed. "Across the yard. Folly me."

They had to go through the downstairs hall to get to the yard. Patsy heard Mary and Biddy talking in the kitchen.

Biddy was saying: "Hot dish, me foot! Cold dish! I'm not the one to cook after hours for inny greenhorn just landed."

"Now, Biddy," came Mary's gentle voice: "Don't call him that. You know you didn't like people to call you greenhorn when you came over five years ago."

Ah, she's the sweet girl, thought Patsy. But plain. Ah, the pity of ill Patsy was introduced to the two mares, and shown a ladder which led to the loft above. "Your new home is up there. 'Tis small but you'll be as snug as a bug in a rug, ha-ha. Now get yourself a bite of supper and go to bed.

I'll let you ok work until tomorrow."

Patsy had his supper, not the hot one that Mary had ordered or the cold one Biddy had threatened: a slightly warmed-over dish of leftovers. When she had finished, Biddy told him that he'd use the water trough to wash in and the water closet in the basement. She gave him a towel and a cake of soap and a box of kitchen matches.

Patsy was disappointed to know he had a kerosene lamp.

He had expected gaslight.

He climbed up the ladder and lit the lamp. He surveyed his kingdom. It was a small room with one window. It had a cot, a chair, a kitchen table with the lamp on it, and three nails in the wall for his clothes and towel.

'Tis barer than a convent cell, he thought. And in America the horses do be living better than us honest immigrants. He sat in his cubicle, dead tired, but too wrought up to sleep.

What am' I doing here, he mused, in this strange place amongst strange people? Why did that sport give me that card and none other? Some of the other boy-sis on the boat got cards for jobs to build a railway that ran on tracks over your head; the elevated, they called it. And they to get grand wages for it, and meself here. Was I born, now, to be a servant? No! Ah, he sighed, the good Lord must have had it in for me, the way He sent me here.

He fell asleep but woke up in the middle of the night.

He woke up in a panic because he didn't know where he was. He walked [3~]

lopsided across the dark room to find the lamp. 'Tis strange, he thought, the boat still rocl ing Old did I not get or front it this morning? He found the table and lit the lamp. He looked around the tiny roonn. 'Tis Lo dry am, he told himself. I am here, alone amongst strangers. I am without one mother and one girl and me f riend, Rory-Boy.

Maybe, he mused, that ballad tlJat Henny, the Hermit, made up afloat me was not bad a-tall. Had I but stayed to hear the all of it, I might not be here this night.

Too many things was dance to one this day. And from now oil, I'll make everyone who pelts a finger to one life do penance for.eh,7t has been done to me, to me? I'atrick Dennis Moore.

~ (~HA l'TER Fl VE ~

«II~l. iNloR'.\RIrY, called ions all file lloss, was a stout, ruddy man with a big belly and big mustaclles. He wore his pepperand-salt hair parted in the middle with a thick lap on either side which looked like a pair of gra,v-and-black pigeons nesting on top of his head. He wore a black broadcloth suit with a white vest that looked as though it never had been spotless even when new. A

watcl1 chain, the links big enough for a dog leash, bisected his belly. I le was never without an uptilted cigar in the corner of his mouth. Outdoors, he wore a square-crowned derby tilted over one eye to almost touch the tip of his up-tilted cigar. He looked like a caricature of a Tammany ward heeler.

He was a Tammany ward heeler.

Molly, his wife, known as The Missus, w as a person soon overlooked. She was tiny, four feet ten, and weighed eighty pounds. She was forever frightened and put in her days scuttling back and forth, up and down the house.

Mary Moriarity, but for her kind ways, would hate walked through life unnoted. Her face was plain. She was too tall for a woman and she lacked the curves that one looks for in a w omen. One didn't notion e her plainness at all w hen she spoke 1'91

or smiled. But she was not given to talking much and she smiled rarely.

Bridget, that is, Biddy, the cook, could not possibly be ignored. She w as all pervading. Patsy hated her at first sight. She wore her coarse, black hair in two walloping braids around her head. She had the biggest bust Patsy had ever seen and he came from a land of big-breasted women. Her bust was pushed up and out by tightly laced and high-riding corsets.