Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

"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 wasn't like that at all. She was little and skinny and wore 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 no\r," 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.