Ellen Glasgow - The Sheltered Life

Before going out by the tall green gate in the alley wall, she ran back to the house and stole up the steps of the porch to the window that looked into the dining-room. Inside, Mrs. Birdsong was moving softly about, preparing supper before her husband's return. Jenny Blair knew that old Aunt Betsey, the cook, had gone to her sister's funeral in Manchester, and that Mrs. Birdsong was alone with the fascinating process of laying the table and stirring up batterbread in the big yellow bowl. Often Jenny Blair had dropped in to help on one of Aunt Betsey's afternoons "off," which occurred only when there was a funeral.

It was as good as a play, the child thought, and far better than improving the mind, to help Mrs. Birdsong at work. How they would laugh together while they arranged a few flowers in the silver loving-cup Mr. Birdsong had won at a shooting-match, or placed the thread-mats and knives and forks as carefully as if they were having a party. All the time Mrs. Birdsong's gay and lovely voice would ripple on in a silver stream, and as a final reward the child would be permitted to stir the batterbread and pour it out, very slowly and evenly, into the muffin-cups. "And this," Eva Birdsong would exclaim, as she closed the door of the oven, "is the true story of the Queen of the Ball!"

This afternoon, it seemed to Jenny Blair, peeping in from the back window, Mrs. Birdsong appeared less happy than usual. But she might look that way merely because she was alone and there was no one to laugh with her. Even in Queenborough, which contained as much laughter as any place of its size in the world, a celebrated belle and beauty could scarcely be expected to laugh by herself. Mirth required company, as Jenny Blair had learned long ago, since even her mother's cheerful twitter was as silent as a wren's in winter when she was left alone in a room.

"I wish I could stop," Jenny Blair thought, vaguely disturbed without knowing why, "but if I don't walk on Canal Street, Bena will make my life a burden to-morrow." Repeating her mother's favourite phrase in the hour of necessity, she slipped away from the porch window, and stole down the flight of steps into the garden. As soon as she had shut the alley gate behind her and reached the brick pavement of Hickory Street, she strapped on her skates and rolled to the end of the block. There, since the street was deserted, she picked her way over the cobblestones and wheeled in long reckless curves on the opposite side.

In the middle of the third block, when she could see the walls of the prison sharply cutting the golden blue of the horizon, she met Uncle Warner, the old negro rag-picker, and stopped to exchange greetings. His figure was bent beneath the weight of his pickings, which he carried in a hempen bag on his back, and he thumped the pavement, as he walked, with the hickory pole he used to poke out scraps from the trash-heaps. Long before she had known Old Mortality, Jenny Blair remembered the stooping figure, the swollen bag, and the thumping stick of Uncle Warner. Twice a week he came to the bag gate for slops, which he carried away in a borrowed cart with a white mule named Posey, and every Saturday night he was given all the cold meat and stale bread that were left over. Whenever the Archbalds had a ham cooked, the bone, with a little of the meat still left on it, was put aside for Uncle Warner. He had always been there, a familiar figure to two generations; yet nobody could recall whether he had been free or a slave in his youth.

"Uncle Warner," Jenny Blair asked now, "have you ever been down yonder where the bad smell comes from?"

Uncle Warner chuckled. "Go way, chile. Whut you wanter know 'bout dat ole stink fuh?"

"I want to see what it is like down there. I want just to look. If I go far out on top of the hill, can I look over and see?"

"Ef'n you does, I'se gwinter tell yo' Ma on you jes' ez sho' ez I live."

"Have you ever been down there?"

"I'se done slept down dar fuh mos' a hunnard year chile, fuh mos' a hunnard year, fuh mos' a hunnard year."

He passed on mumbling and thumping, as if he had forgotten her, while Jenny Blair balanced herself on her skates and lingered to decipher the hieroglyphics left in chalk on the board fence by horrid little boys. "I wonder if there is anything in it," she thought in disgust. "Boys think they know everything."

By the time she reached Canal Street, the sun was going down in a ball of fire, and the deep and thrilling shadows of the penitentiary slanted over the pavement. Suddenly, as if by magic, the spirit of adventure seized her, and she felt that life was thronging with perils. Warlike but ungallant boys were fighting in bands over the cobblestones; from the windows, where soiled lace curtains streamed out on the breeze, women of dubious colour made remarks in a language that Jenny Blair found exciting and unfamiliar. "I don't believe even Aunt Etta could tell what they are saying," she reflected; for it seemed to her that Aunt Etta's education had been the sort that included the misunderstood tongues.

So absorbed was she in watching the combat in the street that she was more astonished than hurt when her skate tripped over a loosened brick, and a sudden shower of stars sprinkled the pavement.

"Is you hurt yo'self, little girl?" asked a warm, husky voice, which brought back to her the scent of earth by the pool in which Old Mortality lived.

Opening her eyes, she looked up into a handsome face, very nearly but not quite coloured, and felt herself lifted by hard, smooth arms and pressed against a deep bosom in clean-smelling blue gingham. "Come in and let me wash the blood off yo' head. It ain't nothin' worse than a cut."

"I'm afraid I've knocked out my front tooth."

"There. Let me see. No, you ain't. Just spit out the blood, an' you'll find your tooth is all right. Don't you want to come in an' lie down till you feel better?" Bending down, she unstrapped the roller-skates and examined the fresh scraped place on the child's knee.

"Have I ever seen you before?"

"I'm Memoria. You've seen me bringin' the clothes to Mrs. Birdsong. I wash for the Birdsongs."

Jenny Blair struggled to her feet. Yes, she remembered now. Memoria was the name of the proud-looking coloured woman who carried away a clothes-basket covered with a piece of striped calico and brought it back foaming over with fluted cambric and lace ruffles. She walked with long, graceful strides, and seldom had anything to say to the children. Occasionally, her eldest child, a boy of ten, very light in colour, would accompany her, and then the basket would arrive perched on top of a red wagon. Jenny Blair had always stood a little in awe of Memoria; for she knew that she was what her mother called a superior negro, and had almost dropped the friendly dialect when her "white folks," Mr. Birdsong's parents, had sent her to school.

"Yes, you're Memoria. What are you doing here?"

"I live here. This is Canal Street. What made you come down to Canal Street? It ain't a good place to skate."

"Oh, I came just so. Is this the house you live in?"

"Yes, I live here. I've got Mrs. Birdsong's clothes hangin' out now in the back yard. Are you able to walk home?"

"It's only my head that hurts," Jenny Blair answered, "but that hurts very bad." She tried to take a step forward; but the evening air thickened and grew suddenly cold. Horror seized her lest she be sick out in the street, where all the rude boys and the young women at windows could see her. A sensation more of despair than nausea surged up like a black chill from the pit of her stomach. Hurriedly, with all the politeness she could summon for so dreadful a fact, she said, "I'm afraid I'm going to throw up, Memoria," and did so immediately.

"Don't you bother, honey. I'll take care of you," Memoria said kindly. "You just hold on to me till you feel better." Then, when the worst was over, she picked up Jenny Blair as if she had been a baby, and carried her through the broken gate and into a small frame house with curtains of Nottingham lace at the front windows. Here, after she had been properly sick in private and in a basin, the child was stretched out on a hard sofa, which had once belonged to a good family and was still upholstered in respectable horsehair. Shutting her eyes as tight as she could, she opened them quickly and looked at the pots of begonia on the window-sill, and beyond the flowers to the back yard, where she could see the white and coloured garments swinging on the clothes-line.