Maggie Now

by Betty Smith

come into Mike's fortune. The reform party won the next

  election, and, true to its platform, the new administration

  started the Big Cleanup. The bright, new District Attorney

  polished up his armor, buckled himself into it and went

  out after the grafters crying, "Corruption! Corruption! " all

  the way. Little grafters ran for their holes. Medium-sized

  grafters, like Moriarity, couldn't find holes tc, hide in.

  The Big Cheese saved his rind, that is, his skin, by

  turning state's evidence. Officious men came to Mike

  Moriarity's house and shook rattling papers in his face and

  attached everything he had: his house and furniture and

  stable and horses and carriage and even Mary's piano.

  Too late, Mike wished he had let Mary take it with her.

  The men busted open the locked door of his desk and

  attached deeds, notes, stocks and bonds. They even

  attached a couple of bankbooks stamped Accost Canceled.

  One reformer, a plainclothes man, found Mike's last

  withdrawal in an old sock under Mike's mattress. The sock

  held two thousand dollars in small bills. The reformer

  pocketed the money and neglected to give Mike a receipt.

  Probably he neglected to turn in the money, too.

  The only things they couldn't touch were the house that

  Mike had deeded over to Mary and Patsy, and a paid-up

  life-insurance policy in The Missus' name.

  Moriarity, along with a dozen others, was indicted. It

  was in all the papers.

  Patsy, commenting on the indictment to Mary, said: "So

  I was never good enough for your father. So he always

  looked down on me. But I'm the one what's looking down

  on him, now. The thief!"

  "Oh, Patrick," she said, tears coming to her eyes, "don't

  call him that."

  [ 7S ]

 

  He felt ashamed. Wl~y do I say things like that to her,

  he thought. I get no satisfactioiZ alit of it. It Flakes me feel

  like Jack the Ripper, or somebody.

  "There now, Mary," he said. "Who am I to talk? Did not

  one of me own relations steal a pig in Ireland? Yes."

  She smiled through her tears and looked up at him with

  her hands clasped appealingly on her breast. "Did he,

  Patrick? Did he? "

  "Sure," he said. "But be was a relation by marriage only."

  So Mike was indicted for graft and corruption. But he

  never stood trial. Just before the trial. he had a stroke and

  his "ticker" gave out.

  It was nearly night when they got home from the

  funeral. Mary sat in the dark kitchen. Her face was pale

  and drawn. Patsy tried to find something ~ omforting to

  say to her.

  "After all, he was your father," he said.

  "Yes."

  "And he was good to you."

  "Not always, Patrick I remember 1 must have been

  about ten years old when I thought I didn't like him. I

  thought he wasn't nice to my mother and it seemed that

  he was always punishing me or scolding me.

  "One night, I suppose he got free tickets somewhere, he

  took me over to Manhattan to hear a singer. I remember

  it was snowing and everything looked so beautiful. I had

  a little white muff and tippet with ermine tails. There was

  an old woman selling violets on the street. I remember the

  cold, sweet smell. He bought a bunch and pinned them to

  my muff. He gave the old woman a bill and he wouldn't

  take his change.

  "He had a friend who had a high-class saloon. We sat in

  the ladies' back parlor, of course. My father introduced

  me to the man as though I were a grown-up lady. The

  man bowed as he shook my hand. He served me a big

  glass of lemonade on a silver tray. There was a tablespoon

  of claret in the lemonade to make it pink and a cherry on

  top. I thought it was wonderful. Papa and the man had a

  brandy together and talked about old times in Ireland.

  1-6 1

 

  "The man had left the door leading into the saloon open

  and I saw it all. The bar was beautiful! All the shining

  cut-glass decanters on the shelves with silver stoppers and

  glasses as thin as bubbles and that big mirror over the bar

  with a filigreed brass frame and oh, the chandelier with

  cut-glass crystals, or do they call them prisms? It was so

  beautiful with the gas lights in ruby bowls here and

  there....

  "Then we went to the concert. I don't remember now

  what the lady sang, except her encore song, 'The Last

  Rose of Summer.' I saw Papa take out his handkerchief

  and wipe his eyes.

  "After the concert we were walking down to the cab

  stand and there was this little store still open. They sold

  trinkets and things. Papa took me in and told me to pick

  out a little bracelet or a locket. But there was a pair of

  side combs in the showcase. They were tortoiseshell and

  all full of rhinestones. I couldn't stop looking at them.

  "Papa said, 'You know you're too little to wear them

  and they'll be out of style by the time you grow up. Now

  here's a nice little locket. It opens. . . ' But I couldn't take

  my eyes off the combs.

  "Then Papa said: 'You krlow you can't wear them. What

  do you want them fort' I said I didn't know. Then he said:

  'You want them just to have them, don't you?' I said, yes,

  and he told the lady to wrap them up

  "I loved my father that night. I loved him so much I

  didn't know what to do.

  "That was the only time he ever took me out. Well,

  there came times after that night when I felt I didn't like

  him very much. When I got that feeling, I'd go and take

  the combs out of the tissue paper and hold them and I'd

  feel the same love I felt that night when he took me to the

  concert."

  After the funeral, The Missus took her insurance money

  and went to Boston to live cut her days there with

  Henrietta, her widowed sister. Patsy W1S sorry to see her

  go. This contrary man really loved his mother-in-law.

  "She's like me own mother was," Patsy told his wife.

  "She sees no fault in me."

  ~ 7~ ]

 

  Well, after the reform administration cleaned out all the

  Tammany grafters, they put in their own grafters. Once

  more, tithes were collected from the brothels. Once again,

  small storekeepers paid "insurance" against plate-glass

  windows being broken. Again, the poor Jewish merchants

  whose pushcarts lined both side of the curbs on Moore,

  Siegal and McKibben Streets, paid protection "rent"

  against their pushcarts being overturned and the

  merchandise trampled in the dirty gutters. The rent was

  fifty cents a week but often the grafters settled for a

  quarter.

  The citizens didn't like the new administration. They

  stood around on corners and in the saloons and sat on

  where grass should have been in the public parks and

  knocked the reformers.

 
; "It stands to reason Where there is politics, there's graft.

  Right? "

  "Right."

  "So we expect graft Rio matter what party's in. Right?"

  "Right. '

  "But when TammanN collected graft we got something

  back `'ut of its'

  "That's right."

  "Yeah. Like they ran block parties for us and paid the

  band."

  "And they ran free excursions up the Hudson and

  everything on the house."

  "Sure."

  'Take me: The time I was laid Up with my broken leg.

  Why, they sent over a basket of groceries every week."

  "Take this guy: I forgot his name. They paid to bury

  him when he died with no insurance and his wife divas

  afraid she'd have to plant him in Potter's Field."

  "Why sure! Many's the ton of coal they gave me that

  hard vinter when I couldn't get work."

  "Well, this here party what's in noNv takes graft but

  what do we get out of it?"

  "Nothing. Just plain nothing.'

  So when the time came, these complaining citizens went

  to the polls and voted out the reform parts and got the

  old ticket bac

  in again. And some of them were so anxious to get

  Tammany back in again that they voted two or three times

  the way they had been taught to do by the Machine.

  L~? 1

 

  Well before this time, Patrick Dennis Moore put away

  all his dreams and hopes. He hated his job but wouldn't

  dare give it up with no other work to be had. He was

  grudgingly grateful that he was working for the city and

  couldn't be laid off because times were hard. He realized,

  nova, that he would always be a street cleaner. That was

  all he had to look forward to. He would always have to

  live in the shabby house on Ewen Street.

  His last dream had died out when his mother-in-law

  went to live with her sister in Boston- instead of with

  him and Mary and took all her insurance motley with

  her.

  ~ CHAPTER TWELVE >~

  MARY kept the upstairs rented and banked the rent

  money and used it throughout the years to keep the taxes

  and the interest on the mortgage paid up and sometimes

  she was able to pay a little on the principal. She was liked

  and respected on Ewen Street (which, for some reason,

  was now called Manhattan Avenue). The neighbors

  referred to her as "that refined schoolteacher what's

  married to that slob yore know. The street cleaner? "

  Mary became friends with Father Flynn, the priest who

  had performed her marriage ceremony and never criticized

  her and Patsy for having a civil ceremony first. One time

  when his housekeeper took a week off to visit a married

  daughter in Albany, Mary went to the parish house every

  day and cooked the priest's food and laundered his collars

  and mended the torn lace on his alb. Thereafter, she

  visited him once in a while or he came to her home. They

  exchanged opinions on the news of the day and analyzed

  the rapid changes that were taking place that would

  eventually change the once dreamy village of Williamsburg

  into a city slum.

  They had something in common in that both were

  strangers in the neighborhood, she having come from the

  prosperous and fashionable Bushwick set tion, and he

  from the Middle West.

  ~ ~9 1

 

  Father Flynn had been born and reared in a small town

  in Minnesota. He had been educated in Midwestern

  schools. At college he had excelled in sports: football,

  baseball, basketball, hockey and especially skiing. He had

  been popular with faculty and classmates.

  The time came, while he was still young, to put aside his

  dearly loved sports and his no less dearly loved

  contemporaries and, as an ordained priest, to take up his

  life and his work in an alien place. His Bishop had said:

  "You'll have your work cut out for you there." It was true.

  It was a swarming neighborhood. Fifty per cent of the

  population were Irish and Gcrman with a few English and

  Scottish families. l here was a neighborhood saying that

  the Irish and the Germans "got along good together."

  Evidently this was so as there was a great deal of

  intermarriage between the Germans and the Irish.

  The Jews and Italian; were called foreigners by the Irish

  and Germans, presumably because they were not Nordic.

  There were some Dutch families left over from the time

  when Brooklyn had been called Breuckelen. They were

  classified with the Germans. Because there vrere some

  similarities in the languages, Germans were called

  Dutchmen. Then there were Poles, Hungarians, Swedes,

  some Chinese who lived among bundles of laundry in

  rooms back of one-windowed stores, sloe-eyed Armenians

  and swarthy Greeks.

  There revere even some Indians. They were of the

  Canarsie tribe and they made their homes in run-down,

  abandoned, onewindowed stores. The ot'Tier nationalities

  looked down on them. No one believed they were Indians

  because they dressed like everyone else and did not wear

  feathers in their hair. They were called gypsies.

  There divas a small colony that was hard to classify.

  They had their own small neighborhood within the larger

  neighborhood. All the men worked in a one-story factory,

  where, stripped to the waist, they stood iTI lurid firelight

  blowing their lives into long tubes with a glob of molten

  glass on the end, to make green beer bottles. They wen

  loosely classified as Bohemians and referred to as

  Bobunks.

  To add to the confusion, the nationalities were split up

  among

  ~ y 1

 

  themselves. The Jews, although of the same race and

  religion, had the patina of diverse nationalities. There

  were English Jews and German Jews; Russian Jews, Polish

  Jews and Armenian Jews. There were dark-haired,

  dark-eyed nervous Germans and placid, flaxen-haired,

  blue-eyed Germans. Some were Catholic, some were

  Lutherans. There were Protestant Irish and Catholic Irish

  and they were continually breaking each other's heads over

  Irish freedom and religion and opinions of Great Britain.

  Also, there were the much-feared Sicilian Italians, who

  were always making vendettas against other Italians the

  aftermath of some internecine warfare back in Italy's

  history. Many a kid in the neighborhood was kept in line

  by his parents telling him that the Blackhand would get

  him if he didn't watch out.

  There were many churches: Roman and Greek Catholic

  and Russian Orthodox. There was a Polish Catholic

  church where the priest spoke Polish. There was the high

  church of England and the low church. There were

  Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists, Unitarians

  and many other sects. All scattered over Brooklyn.

  Th
e steamship companies dumped all races, all creeds

  onto Ellis Island. Many of the immigrants went out to the

  Middle West and the West and a few went South. But

  many of them settled in Brooklyn: first because they

  wanted to be among Lands7na7777 who were already

  there, and second because they didn't have the means to

  go any farther.

  Whenever a few people of one sect got together, they

  built a church forthwith. There was a place of worship on

  nearly every block. There were temples or synagogues,

  twin-spired stone churches, modest wooden churches, a

  mosaic-domed church, a religious meeting place in a

  vacant store with a whitewashed cross on the window, a

  gathering in a hall over a beer saloon. For a while, a few

  people gathered in a tent set up on a vacant lot to worship

  in their own shouting way and to roll on the sawdusted

  ground in their religious ecstasy. And there were wan-

  dering evangelists who stood on street confers angrily

  shouting out The Message.

  Brooklyn was truly the city of churches.

  There were so many races; so many creeds and sects all

  huddled together in an area not more than a mile square.

  The people

  [81 1

 

  called each other names: Mick, Heinie, Guinea, Hunky,

  Polack, Wop, Sheeny, Squarehead, Bohunk, Chink and

  Greaseball. They called the few Indians, who they believed

  were really gypsies, riggers.

  Mary was of great help to Father Flynn. During her

  years of teaching public school, she'd had pupils of many

  nationalities and faiths. She had a general knowledge of

  the habits, temperaments and customs of various races

  and religions through her contact with her pupils. Father

  Flynn drew on her knowledge. He was grateful to her for

  it. It made his parish work somewhat simpler.

  Although Mary loved her home and loved her husband,

  she wasn't happy in her marriage. She was unhappy

  because Patrick did not love her. He was considerate

  toward her as considerate as a person of his cynical

  nature could be but he simply did not love her and she

  knew he never would. Withdrawn and sad after her

  father's disgrace and death, and lonesome after her

  mother had moved to Boston, she turned more and more

  to her church, where she always found comfort.

  She went to Mass each morning and lit a candle daily to

  the Virgin Mary and prayed for a child.

  ~ CHAP7~ER THIRTEEN ~

  MARY and Patrick had been married nearly three and a

  half years when she gave birth to a daughter. She had a

  very hard time. It was a dry birth and she was in agonising

  labor for two days. Her doctor told her not to have any

  more children. He told her that she wasn't built for

  childbearing.

  His warning meant nothing to Mary at that time. She

  was so quietly and intensely happy. Father Flynn came to

  the nursing home to bless the baby and to pray for the

  mother's speedy recovery. He gave her a small medal of

  the Holy Child to pin to her baby's shirt. She said:

  "I have something all of my own, Father. A child to love

  and to care for . . . a child who will grow to love me."

  [ 82 ]

 

  Patsy suggested that Mary name the child after her

  mother. "That's nice of you, Patrick, but I don't want to

  call her Molly even if it is a nickname for Mary."

  "Mary, then," he said. "There is no grander name."

  "No."

  "Me mother's name was Lizzie," he said tentatively.

  "Elizabeth's a good name."

  "Patrick, I'd like to name her after the one who sort of

  brought us together."

  "Biddy?" he asked horrified.

  "Oh, no!" She smiled. "After that girl you liked so . . .

  you know, Margaret Rose? It's such a pretty name. And

  I'm so happy that I have a baby now that I want to give

  her the name as a present to you, sort of."

  She saw his eyes flicker when she mentioned the name.

  She didn't know whether it was from surprise, pleasure,

  anger or memories.

  "You will please yourself," he said brusquely.

  "We'll have to get godparents," she said. "I don't know