Living Up to Billy.
by Elizabeth Cooper.
I
_Dear Kate_:
Two years! Only two years, what do you think of it! Why, when I heard the judge say two years, I nearly fell off the bench. You were caught with the goods, and he had your record with its two stretches right before him, yet he only gave you two years. You told me yourself you thought you would get at least five. We tried to dope it out up to the room, and kind of figured that he had it in for the prosecuting attorney, and you got the benefit. Well, if you ain"t singing to-night in the tombs, you orter be. And two years, old girl, will go by so quick that when you see the lights of Broadway again, you won"t even see a change. You can get a lot off for good behavior, and you know how to work all the con games there is to be worked, so as it will make it easy for you, cause it ain"t as if it was your first time. Put on a good face, and don"t get sulky and you will be out before you have time to remember you was ever sent up.
Now, I will come up and see you just as often as I can, and I will get you a letter regular once a month anyway, and I will tell you all that is doing. Oh, Kate, it kinda breaks me all up to think of you being put away again. You"re all I got, and I don"t know what I will do without you. That last stretch of yours I nearly died. You and me have just got each other and we have been mighty close, more so than most sisters I think. You have not always treated me white, sometimes you have been mean, but it was not your fault. I suppose it is hard in a girl like you to have a sister left on her hands, and I was only a kid when you had to take me over and was lots of trouble to you. You have been good in your way, and Kate, I want you to know when you are setting alone at night, that I am just counting the days till you come back to me.
Yours, _Nan_.
II
_Dear Kate_:
I didn"t write you before cause I wanted to be able to tell you what we are going to do about the kid. Jim was up and we talked it all over and I said I would take him. I don"t want none of Jim"s friends to have him cause he ain"t no good, Kate, and I have always told you so. I made him promise if I take Billy that he will leave him alone. I won"t have him hanging around and I don"t want Billy to see nothing more of him than he has to. I blame him for all that has come to you. Before you married him and got in with his crowd, you was on the level, but--it ain"t no use kicking now, it is all done; only I want him to keep his hands off Billy. There is a roomer on the floor below that has got a little girl who will come in and kinda look after Billy when I am out. I can take him out for a walk every day and perhaps I can get him in one of those kids" schools for two or three hours in the afternoon.
Jim brought him up at night, and he was all sleepy and soft and warm and cuddled up to me just like a little kitten. I never noticed before how pretty he was, but I watched him as he lay there with his red lips half open and his long black lashes laying on his cheeks and his hair all curling around his face, and I just could not go to sleep for looking at him. He is too pale, I think. Seems to me he ought to have more color in his cheeks. I suppose it is cause he hasn"t had enough outdoor exercise that babies should have. Roomers should not have kids. It don"t seem just right to shut a baby up in four walls when he would like to run and play outside with other young things. But I am going to do the best I can by him, so don"t you worry, he will be all right.
Jim is pretty sore about you getting pinched, and says he is going to leave town. The crowd is kinda scared, and I think they are going to scatter. Irene went to St. Louis the other day, cause she said the cops are getting too familiar with her face. I told the whole bunch what I thought of them, and that they had better clear out. Do you remember Jenny Kerns? She was that little blond that use to clerk in Siegel"s store. She has got the room right next to me, and say, she is awful sick. I have been setting up nights with her till I am dippy for want of sleep. I think she is all in. I didn"t let her know it, but I have sent for her mother. I snooped around her place the other night till I found her mother"s address, and I wrote her a letter telling her just how Jenny was, and that some one orter come and get her. Jenny would kill me if she knew it, cause she don"t want her folks to know what she is doing, but it seems too bad to have her die here alone in a rotten little room on 28th Street when she has got a mother, who, no matter what she has done, would be glad to see her. Say what you will Kate, girls that have got mothers have a darned sight better chance than girls like you and me who was brought up on the street, and when she gets sick and lonely, no matter how tough she has been, if she can reach out her hand and touch her mother, she can sort of begin over again.
I have been learning a lot of the new dances, and Fred Stillman and me took the prize the other night for the best hesitation waltz. I am going to try to get a job dancing in one of the restaurants. I am tired working like a dog in these cheap theatres, and I know I can dance as well as any girl on Broadway. A crowd of us blew in the other night at that big dance hall at 59th Street, and everybody stopped to watch me and Fred. It kinda makes you feel good to know you can do anything well, if it is only tangoing, and I do love it! When I get a good partner it seems to me I hear voices calling, and the music ain"t made just by some n.i.g.g.e.rs in the corner, but it is just something speaking to me and something inside of me answers and I forget I am in a hall with a lot of people looking at me, I am just a dancing by myself to the things I hear. Jim says you have fixed it with a guard so as you can get all the letters you want. I can"t slip you over twenty dollars a month to save my soul. That orter be able to fix him enough, but if it ain"t, let me know, cause you know Kate, you can have every dollar I make except just enough to keep the kid a going, if it will make things easier for you.
Get me out a letter whenever you can. Remember I am always thinking of you.
_Nan_.
III
_Dear Kate_:
I told you, didn"t I, of sending for Jenny Kerns" mother. Well, she come and she was just the kind you read about in story books. The moment I opened the door I knew who she was and I took her in my room and had her take her hat off and smooth her hair and try to make it easy about Jenny. I told her she had been working too hard, and had caught cold and that if she was took home where she had the right kind of things to eat and real nursing, not just us girls going in when we had the time, that she would soon get all right. The mother could hardly wait until I had finished, and she sort of trembled all over. When I took her into Jenny"s room, Jenny was laying with her eyes shut, not asleep, but just like she lays most of the time, and she looked so white and little and her lashes were so black against her white face, that I could see it went right into that mother"s heart. She went up to the bed, and put her arms around Jenny, and her face against hers, and said, "My little girl, mother"s own little girl," and then I left, "cause I am kinda soft, and I could see it was the hose cart for me. In about half an hour, I went in to see if they was hungry, and Jenny was laying there with her mother"s hand in hers looking as if she had found peace. I just wanted to put my arms around that little old fashioned woman and cry. You know, style don"t seem to count when it is your mother. The old lady is going to stay until Jenny is better, then they are going home, and I hope we will never see Jenny again. Being a chorus girl ain"t her place. She belongs in a little town playing the church organ.
But say, you would laugh to see the old lady. She don"t fit in a rooming house in 28th Street. She has a nice, sweet, old face and she combs her hair back from it, parted in the middle, and she smiles at all of us in a loving way, cause she thinks we have been good to Jenny. And the girls! It is funny to see them when they first blow into the room and run into her. They look as if they saw a ghost, and then they set back quiet, and let her talk. She tells them all about Iowa or wherever it is she is from, and about Jenny when she was a little girl, and her father and her two brothers, and how sorry they were when Jenny come to New York to study music, but they didn"t want to stand in her way. All the girls come in whenever they have a chance and bring Jenny some little thing from the delicatessen or some plants or flowers. Her room is awful pretty, cause they keep it just filled with flowers. Mary Callahan took the mother out the other afternoon to a moving picture show. She didn"t want to leave Jenny, but we told her she must get out a little or she would get sick too. Mary said that everyone stared at her, and some of the crowd at the corner were going to guy her, but she gave them one look, and they said nothing. I stayed with Jenny and she talked about her mother all the time that she was gone and about the home and the little berg where she comes from. She is crazy to get back, cause I think she knows it won"t be for long, and she wants to pa.s.s in her checks with the folks around her. She said to me, "Oh, Nan, I have had my lesson, and it has cost me dear, but I won"t kick, as I wouldn"t have been satisfied till I had tried it." But I thought, if all the preachers could bring up a few girls who think they want to try the Great White Way, and let them take a good look at Jenny, it would be better than all their sermons. Any girl with half a brain would say, "Oh, little Oskaloosa is good enough for me."
No, I won"t bring Billy up to see you, Kate. He is big enough to remember things, and I don"t want him to know what a prison is, and his first remembrance of his mother must not be that he saw her behind the bars. I know you want to see him and I can understand it, because I love him too, but I would die without ever touching his hand rather than ever let him see me in stripes. He will be five years old when you get out Kate, and he grows cunninger each day. He don"t look a bit like Jim, has got our curly reddish hair, and his eyes are blue like yours instead of brown like mine. I suppose I orter have his hair cut, as it is so thick and curly, but I can"t bear to, as it is the only thing he has of mine, and I like to look at it, and feel he is a little bit like me. I make him up a bed at night on the morris chair, cause Jenny"s mother sleeps with me, and do you know, at night when she is sound asleep if she hears Jenny cough, she raises up and listens and if it don"t stop right away, she slips out of bed and goes into her room. I tell you, I am going to have a mother some day if I have to get you to steal one for me.
Yours, _Nan_.
IV
_Dear Kate_:
I ain"t wrote you for quite a time, cause I have been in a lot of trouble, and so busy and kinda tired out that any time I set down long enough to write a letter, I go to sleep. Billy had an awful accident. I was making some hot chocklate in my room, and he pulled the pan over on him and burned his hand and arm and shoulder. I took him to St.
Vincent"s hospital and they fixed him up, but said he didn"t look well and I orter leave him there awhile. They put him in a ward with a lot of other babies, and I go every day to see him. He can set up now and play.
I take him up something every time I go, and some things for the other kiddies too. There are twelve little tads in the room, and they are awful good when you think that they are sick. One little kid had both his hips broke, and he lies on his back with his feet in a sling that holds his legs straight up and he plays with his toys and talks to himself and never whimpers except when he sees the doctor come in the ward. Then his face gets awful scared, and his eyes get big and black with a helpless look of fear in them, cause he knows the doctor means changing his bandages and that hurts. The doctors and the nurses talk and handle the children just as if they loved them. There is a little boy in the bed next to Billy who is only six months older than Billy, and he looks something like him. He has got Billy"s blond curls, and great big eyes, only he is much stronger. I suppose it is because he lives in the country. His mother is an English woman with an awful funny accent, but I like her real well. She lives out in New Jersey, somewhere on a little farm. Her kid is going to leave next week, and she asked me to bring Billy and come and see her. I told her I would, but Lord, I don"t believe I know where New Jersey is. When I come to think of it, I ain"t never been even to Hoboken. All the United States of America I know is bounded on the north by 59th Street, and on the south by 14th Street, on the east by Third Avenue, and the sun sets on Seventh Avenue for me. I never stopped to think that people lived anywhere else, but I suppose all these folks that we see chasing up and down with packages in their hands must be going somewhere. You know, Kate, we ain"t never been in the country in our lives. Honest, I don"t believe we have ever seen real gra.s.s and I never wanted to before, but when I saw the look in that little woman"s face, and how different her baby was than Billy, I kinda thought I would like to see how she lived. I wonder if country kids do have a better time than city kids? We had an awful good time, if doing just as you please is having a good time. Do you remember how you used to shake my teeth out for following the hand organ men around town? It is funny we young ones didn"t get run over or killed, the way we was always in the streets. It might have been all right, but I would hate to see Billy bringing himself up the way I did.
Oh, Kate, he is the cutest thing! He has a cot in the corner of the room facing the doorway, and I step in the door and stand there a minute until he looks up, and then his face all changes and breaks in little dimples and smiles, and he holds out his arms to me and says, "Nannie, my Nannie is tum." Why you know, I all choke up and I hold him close in my arms and talk to him and play with him until the nurse comes with their suppers, and all the visitors must leave. I go back to the room which is empty without him. It is funny what a change a baby brings to a place, and how it makes home out of a b.u.m little six-dollar-a-week room.
I didn"t put his things away when he was took to the hospital, cause I like to see them laying around. His shoes look so funny under the bed setting by mine, and I got a lot of his clothes hanging up on a line behind the door. I washed lots of his clothes out myself, not so much to save the money as I like to be a doing something for him. I must say you dressed him nice, Kate, his clothes looked so pretty when they was all ironed and hung up in a row and his funny little white stockings--don"t he wear them out fast? When I undressed him at night, if there was a hole in his stocking, he would wiggle his little pink toe out of it and point to it and say, "Naughty, naughty Billy." The girls in the place were just crazy about him, but they gave him too much candy and fussed over him more than I liked, yet I hated to call them down, as the poor devils don"t have a chance to see a baby often.
Mary Callahan is sick. I want her to go to the hospital, but she won"t do it. The other night coming home from the theatre in a lot of slush and snow, she caught an awful cold. She is all in. I fussed around her all morning and put a mustard plaster on her chest, which burned the skin all off and made her awful mad at me. She says she won"t be able to cover it with make-up for a month, and it will mean a good fat call-down from the manager, but between you and me, she will have time to get a brand new skin before she will be able to show up at work again.
Well, so long, old girl. I must go to bed. Gee, how I do miss Billy.
Night-times I used to have to lift him over on his own side, cause he would lay cross wise on the bed, and when I would get in it would be all warm where his little body had been. Oh, Kate, he is the dearest kid! I bought him a funny little jumping jack to-day. You pull a string and a man"s neck goes away out and I can just see Billy"s eyes and hear his funny laugh when he first sees him.
_Nan_.
V
_Dear Kate_:
I got a lot to tell you cause things have shaken up a bit. Do you remember that little English woman who had a baby in the hospital next to Billy? Well, I went out to see her one Sunday. It was such a nice, warm spring day, just seemed as though I had to do something different, and the greatest shock I could give my system was to leave the pavements of New York for a time. I dressed Billy in a blue velvet coat I bought at Macy"s, and he had on a blue hat over his little red curls, and his shoes had dark blue ta.s.sels on the front of them, and he looked cunning enough to eat. He was so proud of his ta.s.sels that he showed them to everybody in the street car and in the train. It took us almost two hours to get out there, and the people met us with a horse and buggy and drove us to their house. Why, Kate, I didn"t know there was such places! The house is on a side hill with great trees around it, and in the front of it is a little lake with ducks and geese swimming on it.
They had a great big stable opening on to a pasture where there was calves and cows and horses and pigs. I think I stood half an hour looking at the pigs. It is funny, but I always thought a pig a sort of a ham hanging up in the window of a delicatessen, instead of being a live, friendly animal that will come when you call it. There were a lot of chickens, white leghorns, I think the woman called them, and they looked friendly and home-like wandering around the place talking and singing to themselves like a bunch of happy women. Mrs. Smith let me feed them. She gave me a milk pan full of corn and told me to hit on its edge with a spoon, and they came flocking from every direction, some half flying, half running, as if they were afraid they would miss the party. They were so tame that I had to hold the pan up high to keep some of the sa.s.sy roosters from climbing into it. Mrs. Smith knows them all and can tell if one is missing, though they all look alike to me. She says she hates to kill them cause it seems like eating some of the family. Her husband laughed and said, "I will tell you the tragedy of the wrong hen." He said, "You know once a week we have chicken pot pie, and for seven days Mary goes mourning around wondering which one of her precious chickens she can part with,--and live. We hear the virtues and the vices of each old biddy, cause my wife loves each feather. The other day after heart breakening talks Mary decided that Peggy could be killed, and a motherly old hen who wanted to set should be tied up. We caught them at night and put a blue string on Peggy, and a white string on the motherly hen, and tied them to the ice-house door. Mary took an hour and a half to explain to me that the chicken with the blue string was to be eaten, and she of the white string was to be left tied to the ice-house door until her longings toward motherhood would stop. In the morning when I went out to see those chickens, blest if I could tell which was to be killed, and which was not, but I thought I would take my chance on the fattest, and I took her head off. I suppose you noticed Mary"s eyes--it was the wrong head."
Billy and the kid played out-doors all day and his face got sun burnt and his eyes sparkled, and he looked just like another baby. Her boy is only six months older than Billy, but he is so much bigger, and it just makes me sick to think I can"t give this to Billy and let him have a chance to grow up big and strong like other boys. All the way in on the train, I kinda cussed under my breath, to think I had to take him back to that dirty little room, and the girls who were always talking to him and feeding him things he orter not have, and him a hearing things that perhaps he will remember when he grows up, and it may make him do a lot of thinking by himself. I wish I could do something, but I don"t know what I can do. I feel helpless, as if my hands was tied down by my sides, and I couldn"t get them loose. Good-bye, I am kinda sore to-night. Seems to me we got in wrong somewhere, Kate, and I don"t know where nor how. It ain"t your fault, and it ain"t mine, but it don"t seem to me we have had our chance like other women have. I saw a picture the other day on a calendar. It was a happy looking woman dressed in a long blue gown carrying a baby up a beautiful stairs with flowers everywhere, and they were looking over her shoulder at the father down below. Now, can you imagine anything nicer than that to be in a home of your own with a pretty dress on, your baby in your arms, going to put it in its bed and your husband looking up at you proud? Nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing to be afraid of. That is the biggest kind of heaven I know, but I guess it ain"t for us. We got in wrong from the start, but oh, Kate, I do wish things was different. I don"t care so much for myself, but I do want to get Billy out of this life where thieving and being a crook is the natural thing, and a person on the level is looked upon as being queer. Sometimes when I see Billy do some little thing or have a look in his face like Jim, my heart most stops beating. I don"t pray, but I do say, "Oh, if there is such a thing as a G.o.d, don"t let Billy grow up like his father." And, there are a lot of your little ways that I would just as soon not see cropping out in him.
Well, good night, I am glad you are getting along so well. I can"t send you any money this time, cause I am flat broke since I paid your storage bill, but I will give you twenty next month. Do write me a decent letter, Kate. Your last letter was simply a touch from the beginning to the end, and between you and your friends, I am kept pretty well cleaned up.
_Nan_.
VI
_Dear Kate_:
Say, but I am a happy girl! What do you think, Billy and me is in the country. I am going to stay a week, and Billy is going to stay always, I hope. After I had made that first visit to Mrs. Smith, I kept seeing that place with the pigs and the chickens and the trees and the lake and the nice green gra.s.s and the kids rolling over on it, and the room here got smaller and hotter, and Billy got whiter, and I felt I couldn"t stand it, so I sat down and wrote Mrs. Smith, and asked her if she wouldn"t take Billy to board. She was real nice and came over to see me one day, and ended up by taking me and Billy back with her. She asked me to stay a week so Billy would get used to her and the place and not be lonesome. The manager kicked, but I said I was sick, and I got a week"s leave. Mrs. Smith offered to take Billy for nothing, but I wouldn"t stand for that and we settled on $3.50 for his board. I offered to pay more, but she would not listen to me. She says he will be company for her baby, and that two is easier to take care of than one anyway.