Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

1 Ifs] "You go in the house first," she said. "And go right upstairs to your own house, so I can go in."

"Now listen, kid, I'm wise. I know my way around. Sure, sure. You palm the kid off as your brother. Well, that's all right by me. So you made a mistake once. Well, we all make mistakes. That's why they put rubbers on lead pencils."

"But he is so my brother. Aren't you, Denny?"

"Mama?" murmured Denny. He held the spoon out to her.

"That's the ticket, buster," said the young man. "Spoon.

We'll do a little spooning first. ." i\laggie-Now started to tremble. He put his arms around her.

"Let me go!" she said, trying not to scream on account of the neighbors. He kissed her.

"You. . you. ." she searched for a word. "You slob!"

She was frantic with anger and with fear that a neighbor might be watching from a window. "I'll tell my father what you said. And he'll kill you."

He surrendered suddenly. "Okay, then. Only you can't blame a feller for trying. You know how it is. You been there."

She pulled Denny up and ran into the house. She slammed the door and locked it. She locked the front-room door. The y oung man pounded on the kitchen door.

"Hey! How am I gonna get in to go upstairs?"

"Go jump over the fence!" she shouted.

He did. It wasn't a very high fence. She heard him come i21 through the street door. 2 le went up the stairs whistling.

She didut leave the house for a week she was so frightened and ashamed. She thought that any man she might encounter on the street would think as the boy upstairs thought: that she was no good and had had a baby without being married. She sent a neighbor's little girl to the store for her groceries and aired Denny in the back yard. She sat close to the house so the boy upstairs couldn't see her without leaning far out the window. And always she worried about the boy upstairs. She didn't tell her father as she had threatened. She knew he would say: It's your fault. You must have encouraged him.

1:159 1 The time came when her father ran out of tobacco and busted the last of his clay pipes. He told her to go to Van Clees. She said she didn't want to go; she was no longer a child and it didn't look right for a young lady to go into a man's cigar store.

Pat went and came home in a rage. Van Clees had inquired about Maggie-Now and told Pat of Gus and Annie and hove much Annie had enjoyed her visit and Van Clees said he hoped Maggie-Now would go to Annie's new home to see her. He gave Pat the address on a slip of paper and Pat tore it up and threw the scraps at Van Clees and said he'd take his trade elsewhere. Van Clees said bluntly that there was no profit in clay pipes.

He carried them only to accommodate people he liked.

"And you are one people I don't like," he said in conclusion.

Pat took it all out on Maggie-Now. She listened at first with astonishment and then with weariness. She saw her father with new eyes. How wrong he vv es, she thought, talking about the Vernachts as though they were white slavers when she herself knew they were kind and gentle.

Before this time, the girl had always believed that her father was right not fair, but essentially right. NOW she doubted a lot of the things that her father had told her.

She was certain, now, that she couldn't tell him about the boy upstairs. He'd never believe her story. He'd have his own version of the incident and it would be lurid and poor Maggie-Now would be made to be at fault.

She was too wholesome of temperament and too resilient to brood too long. When she got tired of staying in the house and being afraid of the boy upstairs, she went out again and stopped being afraid.

Let people think what they want, she decided. They can't be arrested for thinking. And I can't walk around with a sign on my back which says: This is my baby brother and not my son. And as for the feller upstairs. . he just better stay out of my way, that's all.

The young man was removed from her life. The people upstairs defaulted in their rent and Pat went up to see about it.

"Being's your daughter won't let my son go in the yard, we're not going to pay the rent," said the tenant.

1 ~60] "The roof is for the people upstairs and the yard for the people downstairs," said pat.

"The roof is slanty," argued the tenant. "Nobody can sit on it."

"Pay the rent or move out."

"We'll move out."

"You can't move out unless you pay up the rent."

"We can't stay; we can't move. Make up your mind,"

sneered the tenant.

The tenants Ctlt this Gordiall knot by moving and not paying the rent. They got the iceman to move their furniture in his pushcart. Maggie-Now sent a little boy to where Pat was working. Pat came running, clutching his broom in his hand.

Pat started to pull a marble-topped bureau off the cart.

He figured that was the same value as the rent owed. The tenant called the cop on the bear. The cop judiciously listened to both sides, holding his nightstick in his hands behind his back and swinging it between his legs. When Pat and the tenant had done, the cop gave his verdict.

"I got no use for landlords," was his opening statement.

He handed down his opinion at length. He thought it was "funny" that a man working for the city could own his own home. He cited his own experience. He'd been on the force twenty years making good pay and he couldn't afford to own his own home. There was something fishy….

In short, he found for the tenant.

The iceman moved off with bells jangling and furniture swaying on the cart. Pat followed him with brandished broom. He was going to follow the cart to the new residence and badger his ex-tenants from there.

"Make him stop follying our furniture," ordered the tenant.

"I got me rights," said Pat. "I'm not follying anything.

I'm walking back to me work and the pushcart is in front of me."

Pat kept walking. The cop put his chin in his hand and squeezed it-thinking. There was nothing in rules and regulations about a man walking to u ork….

"Ain't you gonna do nothing? " inquired the tenant.

The pushcart and Pat rounded the corner. The cop solved the problem. "There's nothing I can do. He's off my beat now."

~ 16~ 1 The Italian iceman cropped. "Look wall-yo," he said to Pat. "I know how is. Me, I on your side. I give you address new place. You don't walk so far."

Pat thought that was a good idea. The Italian gave him a fake address.

Thus the feller who gave Maggie-Now her first kiss was gone forever. From now on, he'd he nothing hut a lifetime memory.

She took Denny to sec Van Clees on his third birthday.

It took the good man a few minutes to recognize her. She had grown tall in the year and now was quite buxom for her nineteen years. Tle was pleased to see her and delighted with Denny. He had three small blue candles for hilll.

He told her about Arluie; she'd anon ed again, to Flushing Avenue, the other side of Broadway; a very poor neighborhood. The two younger children went to nursery school or the day nursery as it was called and Jamesie such a good boy, said Van Clees ran the house while the mother worked.

"Yes, she w orks now," sighed Van Clees. "In the five-ten store on Broadway. Now she gives the best years of her life up for making open sandwiches." He sighed again.

Maggie-Now went over to the dime store. It was the lunch hour and the lunch counter was crowded. There was a woman, sometimes two and three, standing behind each lunch stool, breathing down the luncher's neck and watching each bite and making snide remarks to fellow standees about how long some people nursed a sandwich.