Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

They walked past a saloon with door open to the warm night. The drinkers were discussing the impending war.

"I got nothing against the Germans theirselves," said a man, "I figure they're yu-men like everybody else. It's the Goddamned Kaiser…."

Claude and Maggie-Now smiled at each other. Children played on the streets, calling to each other in muted voices (because night-time street playing was a privilege not to be abused), while their parents sat on the stoop or in chairs lined up before closed stores. And there was music. An opened tenement window, a Victrola playing a recording of Lee Morse singing and her Blue Grass Boys helping out. Oh, her husky voice. .

This is me, thought Maggie-Now, walking so. With him on such a night as this. I can't believe it's me that this is really happening to me. This is something I'll remember all my life.

After a while they talked. That is, she did all the talking that night. He wanted to know everything about her life;

especially her childhood her mother, brother, father and grandfather. He prodded her with questions and drew her out and she spoke freely as if dictating an honest autobiography. As she had everything else, she had taken her childhood for granted. But as she noted his delighted and interested reactions, her childhood seemed very wonderful all of a sudden.

[is9] He laughed in delight when she told him how she had always wanted cousins and how her mother had found Sheila and her bouquet in Boston, and he grinned when she told of her father spanking her publicly for dancing on the street, and he pressed her arm very tight when she told of how Sister Mary Joseph had to have the wedding ring sawed off and how she, Maggie-Now, had felt about it. He blew his nose very hard after she told how her mother had told her to pick up the new-born baby….

She told how Gus Vernacht had said his Annie would be her friend. . and how he had forgotten to tell Annie.

And MaggieNow said she still felt sad when she thought about it because she had wanted a friend so badly. And then Gus had died….

After she had finished that story, he lifted her hand, which was resting so lightly on his forearm, and kissed it.

Then she was much embarrassed, though pleased, and she said she had talked too much and that they had walked past her house and she'd really have to go in because her father. .

"You don't have to go in yet," he said. "It's only a little after nine."

"No, I don't. But it's better that I do."

She knew her father would be waiting and he'd fuss and scold and maybe take the extra dollar out of the teapot.

But, she decided, he'll complain Nether I come in at nirle or at twelve. I might as~u~ell stay out.

"Please?" he asked.

"All right," she said. "After all, I'm almost twenty-three."

"And I'm thirty. Where shall we walk?"

"Where do you live?"

"At the Bedford Y."

"I'll walk you home.' "Good! Then I'll walk you home."

He urged her to tell him more about the years of her growing up. She demurred at first, saying it wasn't interesting and that he was asking just to be polite.

Besides, she said, she'd like to know something about his childhood.

"No," he said. "I want to know all about you. I want to walk every step of the way with you through your childhood so that I'll know you from the beginning of your life."

~ 190] She told him all she could remember (excepting the boy upstairs who had kissed her). They walked to the Bedford Y.M.C.A. and back to her house and it was nearly midnight. She stood on the bottom step of her stoop and looked down at him and smiled.

"So you see," she said, "my childhood wasn't much of anything. The beach once a year, the cemetery on Decoration Day, a trip to Boston, the few girl friends I

had the few people I knew. Church, school, home and parents. And that's all."

"Ah, my little Chinee," he said, "again belittling something that was quite wonderful. You don't know how wonderful…. Oh, how you take everything for granted.

Why, one thing! Even the sewing of beads on slippers for pin money. ."

"I forgot 1 told you that," she interrupted. "That was kind of silly.7' "Stop it!'7 he said. "Nothing was silly. It was all part of the wonder of a girl growing up into a woman.7' He told her how moved he had been at her stories and hov.amused, too. He spoke ecstatically about the wonder of her childhood.

What's so wo'~derf?'l, she thought. Wasn't he ever a child?

After a while, she saw it a little through his eyes and she was strangely disturbed. It was as though he had lived her childhood but on a more wonderful plane than she had. She felt, vaguely, that she had given away her childhood that night. She had given it to him or he had taken it from her, and made it into something wonderful.

In a way, her life was his now.

A light came on in the window. "My father," she whispered, and trembled a little bit.

He grasped her arms as she stood above him.

"Tomorrow night," he whispered. "I'll come by for you.

Eight o'clock. I want to meet your father."

"Yes, yes," she whispered nervously. She scuttled into the house.

"Out again," was her father's greeting.

"Yes," she said.

"You was out last night, too.' "I know."

"1 suppose you're going out tomorrow night."

L /9/] "Well, you ain't," he said flatly.

"I'm over twenty-one…." she began.

"Age's got nothing to do with it because I'm going out tomorrow night and somebody's got to stay with the boy."

"I'll ask the tenant upstairs. Mrs. Heahly? She'll keep an eye on Denny while you slip out for a beer."

"I ain't going out for no beer. I'm going out. I have a friend. For once I'd like to spend an evening with her."

"Here You mean another woman?" Maggie-Now was shocked and indignant. "All these years you've gone out with some woman and enjoyed yourself w bile I. ." her voice broke as though she were going to cry, ". . while I, a young girl growing up, who should have been out with boys and girls my own age, stayed home and cooked and washed and cleaned and took care of the baby?" She paused. When she spoke again, her voice was steady.

"Ah, no, Papa," she said gently. "You couldn't. You couldn't after having been married to Mama."

"Your mother, God rest her soul, was a good woman.

The best there ever was. But she's been gone from me these seven years or nearly, and, well, a man's a man."

"Then a man should love and marry in love. Otherwise, a man is no better than an animal."

"Where'd you hear that nonsense?"

"Father Flynn said so. He had this special sermon for young people."

"And what would he be knowing about it the way he prays and fasts all the time?" Suddenly he had one of his rages. "How cast he!" he shouted. "Talk about such things to them what is innocent or should be? I'll get him fired…."

"Priests can't be fired."

"Well then, defrocked. . unfrocked. Something. At least transferred. I'll talk to the bishop."

"Now, Papa, you stop it. He said nothing out of the way.

He is a good man and you l~now it. Look how good he was to Mama You forget."

"It is true," he said. "He was good to your mother."

"And he is to everybody. Oh, Papa," she sighed, "when I was sixteen, you never thought of me as a child. You let me handle a grown-up woman's job. And now that I am a grown-up woman, ~ 792]

you're trying to pretend I'm a child. Papa, you must face it. I'm going to live my own life from now on."