Maggie Now

by Betty Smith

to call the next one?"

  Sheila patted her rounding stomach. "Fern! To trim up

  my bow-key." She nodded at ~~l~ggie-Nov.7. "This the

  only one you ot? "

  b

  "The only one."

  "What's the matter? Did you marry a night watchman or

  something?" She prodded Mary with her elbow and

  laughed. Mary looked a little apprehensively at

  Maggie-Now. Sheila understood the look. "Listen, kids,"

  she said, "why don't you go play with your cousin from

  Brooklyn so Cousin Mary and I can talk?"

  The kids stood rigid except for Daisy, who removed her

  thumb guard and took three big sucks.

  "Go on and play when I tell you'" veiled Sheila' "or I'll

  give it to you. Good!"

  Whooping like Comanches, the four kids dragged

  l/laggie-Nov. away into the dirty wash. They bounced on

  the bundles and scattered the sorted clothes. They delved

  into the basket of wet clothes waiting to be hung on the

  line and belted each other with wet towels, screaming and

  laughing all the time while Mary and Sheila talked.

  Finally, they knocked over the ironing board with a

  sadiron upended on it. The iron missed Daisy by about an

  inch.

  "Just for that," shouted Sheila, "you'll all get it!"

  They lined up somberly. Then Sheila did a strange thing.

  She put her arm around Rose, gave her a walloping slap

  on the backside, and a kiss on the cheek at the same time.

  She did the same to the other three. They sobbed. And

  grinned slyly at each other at the same time, making the

  dimples come and go.

  "My turn! My turn!" demanded Maggie-Now.

  Sheila gave her the same, explaining to Mary: "I give

  'em a slap and a kiss at the same time so they know

  they're getting punished with no hard feelings."

  ~ limo I

 

  Home again in Brooklyn, Maggie-Now remembered her

  "cousins." She spent her pennies on picture postcards to

  send to Boston. Her salutation was: "My dear Boston

  cousins." Her ending: "From your loving Brooklyn cousin."

  Sometimes she got a card back, always written by Sheila.

  "From cousin Sheila and all her flowers to the one rose,

  Maggie-Now."

  A few months after their return, Mary had a letter from

  her mother saying that Sheila had given birth to her fifth

  child; a son. She had named him Joe.

  "Why, oh why," wailed Maggie-Now, "didn't she ask me?

  I would have told her to call him Chris."

  "Why Chris?" asked her mother.

  "Chris is short for chris-san-thee . . . yak know what

  flower I mean, Mama. Then he would have fitted in the

  bouquet."

  Her next card had the salutation: "My dear Boston

  cousins and Joe."

  A' CHAPTER SIXTEEN ~

  THE growing years of Maggie-Now were not unhappy

  ones. She always had enough to eat, although the food was

  plain. She had warm clothes in winter even if they were

  not beautiful. She liked her school days although she

  didn't like to study. She loved the Sisters who taught her

  although they were very strict in their discipline.

  She was well adjusted because she knew where she

  belonged in the social SftUp of her small world. She had

  a friend who had a hair ribbon for every day in the week.

  Maggie-Now had but two one for Sunday, one for

  weekdays. On the other hand, another friend was too poor

  to have any hair ribbon. Her hair was tied back with a

  dirty shoestring. Maggie-Now was sorry she didn't have

  seven hair ribbons but she was glad she didn't have to use

  a shoestring to tie back her hair.

  As she grew older1 she gave some thought to poverty

  and riches. Her mother had asked her to read Little

  Wome7', explaining that ~ cot 1

  it was a book about four girls who were very poor but

  happy just the same. Maggie-Now read the book and took

  issue with her mother.

  "How can they be poor," she asked, "when they can

  waste hot potatoes to put in their muff. And I ain't . . .

  haven't a muff even. And then they have a servant and

  their father has money to go away on."

  "To some people who are, say, used to three servants, to

  have only one servant is being poor. Poverty is relative."

  The word "relative" puzzled Maggie-Now. How could

  "poor" be a relation, she wondered. She didn't probe

  further into the meaning of the word because she was

  anxious to go out to play. The word came up later, in

  another conversation.

  One night, Father Flynn was paying a parish call and he,

  Mary, Pat and lYlaggie-Now sat in the kitchen having

  coffee. Mary, as always, was talking eagerly with the priest.

  He was one of the few people who made her articulate.

  Patsy was listening with outward respect becau e he had

  been brought up to respect priests, but he didn't b. lieve

  a word Father Flynn was saying.

  "I came from a small town," Father Flynn was saying.

  "Everyone seemed the same. No one was rich and no one

  starved. I had an idea, then, that poor people wore

  colorful rags and had rosy cheeks and danced all night to

  the music of a concertina. Those were my Fran,cois Villon

  days. Later, I thought poor people lived in cellars and had

  lice and lived on hard crusts of bread which they stole

  from each other. I was reading the Russian novelists in

  those days. Why, I was quite mature before I knew that

  poverty, like so many other things, was relative."

  That word again, thought Maggie-Nov.

  The next day she asked her mother: "Why are some

  people rich and other people poor?"

  "Yesterday, you wanted to know how big was the sky.

  And last week you wanted to know where the wind went

  when it stopped blowing down Ainslie Street."

  "I mean like: Florry says we're poor. Bea thinks we're

  rich."

  "Florry9, father makes much more money than your

  father. Naturally, she thinks you're poorer than she is. But

  Beatrice's mother has to go out scrubbing for a dollar a

  day. Of course, she

  1 1021

 

  thinks that you, with a father who has a steady job, are

  richer than she is."

  "It's all relations, then."

  "Relations:" asked Mary, puzzled.

  "Relations. But different than my Boston cousins are

  relations." "Oh, you mean, relative. Yes, like everything

  else, I suppose it is relative."

  "What's relative?"

  "Oh, Maggie-Now! How high is the sky?"

  "I asked first."

  "Well, say a man has only one dollar in all the world.

  Somebody gives him a hundred dollars. Another man has

  a hundred dollars. He's always had a hundred dollars.

  Someone gives him a dollar. He's just as poor as he was

  before. Now both men have one hundred and one dollars.

  But one is rich and one isn't. That's relative, I suppose."

  "You're just talking, Mama. You're not telling me."
>
  "To tell you the truth, I don't know how to tell you."

  "Did you live in a rich house when you were a girl?"

  "Oh, dear!" sighed Marv. "Well, people who lived in

  crowded tenements thought we had a rich house. But the

  Mayor's wife thought our house was poor compared to

  hers."

  "What did you think, Mama?"

  "I didn't think one wan or the other," said Mary, trying

  not to get irritated by the incessant questioning. "I lived

  there."

  "Why? "

  "Don't be silly. I lived there because I was born

  there because my parents lived there."

  "Did you like it?"

  "Of course. I didn't know about any other home, you see."

  "Did that make it relative?"

  "Oh, Maggie-Now, please stop. I'm getting such a

  headache.' "So'm I," admitted Maggie-Now.

  Maggie-Now asked Sister Veronica what a rich home

  was and what was a poor home.

  "A cell," said the nun, "with a cot in it and a chair and

  a nail on the wall on which to hang a shawl, is a rich home

  if our Holy Mother and our Blessed Lord are there. A

  grand home, with thick

  ~ hod]

 

  carpets and velvet curtains and a golden harp in the

  parlor, is a poor home if our Blessed Lord and our Holy

  Mother are denied there."

  Maggic-Now asked her father: "Papa, did you have a

  rich home or a poor home when you were a boy back in

  Ireland?"

  "'Tis time you knew," he said, "how your poor father

  lived. It was a poor house. Poor. Poor. The poorest of the

  poor. A oneroom sod shanty with a leanto where me bed

  was and me bed a bag of straw. And the neighbor's

  starving pig sneaking in on cold nights and wanting to lcep

  with me for the warmth of it." The child laughed.

  " 'Tis not to laugh at the v. ay the slanty roof came

  down to the ground where me head lay and me bumping

  me head on it every time I moved ill me sled p.

  "And the black hole in the wall where the poor fire

  didn't keep us warm in winter but roasted us in summer

  when we cooked our food in it. And oh, the poor food!

  The small potatoes from the starving ground and the

  rough, black bread burned on the bottom, and an egg

  maybe once every two weeks, and our Christmas dinner,

  a hen, itself, tough, and she being too old to lay.

  "And water from the well, and the well a cruel walk

  from the shanty on a cold winter s morning and the

  bucket too heavy for a skinny boy. And no toil . . . no

  plumbing in the house a-tall and we using the woods in

  back of our shanty."

  "I betcha you were happy there, Papa."

  "Happy, she says!" h' commented bitterly. "I hated it and

  left

  ithout looking back once when the time came."

  But he thought of how green the fields were in summer

  and the meadow flowers hit den in knee-deep grass and

  the lake that took its color from the sky or did the sky

  take its color from the lake? And the way the thrown,

  dusty road to the village looked so lazy in the sun. He

  remembered the good nights in the tavern with the men

  liking the way he danced. His mind went to Rory-Boy in

  the great days when they had been true friends. He

  thought of his fiercely protective and possessive mother.

  And oh, the dear sweetness of his Maggie Rose! He

  thought of the idle, golden days of his youth and he wept

  in his heart.

  God forgive the lie size saying I hated it so, he prayed.

  Remembering, he spoke with bitterness to his daughter;

  his

  ~ i 4 1

 

  darling's namesake. "Your mother was the one raised in

  a rich house. Tell her to take you over to Bushwick

  Avenue and show you the house. Tell her to show you the

  stable where your father laid his head nights. Look good

  at that rich house what should have been mine . . . ours .

  . . if that crook . . ."

  Ah, he thought, let the dead rest in peace even if he was

  a black'ard in life.

  Walking over to the old house, Mary answered

  Maggie-Now's question: "Why didn't I take you there

  before? Because the house is so changed and it makes me

  sad."

  Yes, it was changed. The rooms on either side of the

  stoop had been made into shops. The bay windows were

  now store windows. One was a hairdressing parlor with

  intricately coifed wax dummy heads in the window. The

  other window showed only a swan, pure, white and

  immobile and with each feather in place. The swan sat

  proudly on a bed of swansdown. A card, dangling by a

  brass chain suspended from the swan's beak, read:

  Genuine Swansdown Filled Pillows.

  "Is it real>" breathed llaggie-Now.

  "It was. Once. Now it's stuffed."

  "Maybe it's still alive and they give it medicine to sit still."

  "Now you know better."

  The upstairs windows had a blank look. A card in one

  of them said: Rooms. The basement rooms had been

  converted. A swinging sign with a red seal informed

  people that a notary public was available there. A

  rooms-for-rent sign was attached to the notary's shingle.

  Mary figured it out that the man who'd bought the

  house was the notary in the basement. He was squeezing

  every penny of revenue out of his investment. She

  wondered how many transients had slept in her white

  room since she had left. She sighed as she thought of her

  piano once standing in the room that now held sewing

  machines, bolts of ticking and bags of down.

  The stable was now a separate property, divided from

  the big house by an iron picket fence. An unevenly

  painted sign over the barn door read: Pheid ~ Son.

  Plumbers. Day e; Night. A broken toilet lay on its side in

  the yard. A man, Pheid himself, was uncrating a pair of

  double, soapstone washtubs. A boy, a few year older than

  Maggie-Now, was helping the man. The man

  ~ ` s ]

 

  looked up as Mary and Maggie-Now approached.

  "Yes?" he asked.

  "I used to live here when I was a girl," explained Mary.

  "That so? Well, a E'etalian owns the house now. But I

  own the shop."

  "Is that so?"

  "That sign: Pheid & Son? Well, this here is son. Son

  Pheid." He put his arm about the boy's shoulder. His

  pride was evident. "I'm breaking him in young. I believe

  in that," he said.

  "I see," said Mary.

  "Well, help yourself. Look around." He went back to his

  work. "Where did Papa sleep?" asked Maggie-Now.

  "Up there. That little window. Where the pipes are

  sticking out.

  "Chee! "

  "After we were married, we lived in the big house, of

  course. For a little while, anyhow."

  "Where is . . . are, all the snowball trees you said was

  always in the yard?"

  "Someone cut them down, I suppose."
/>
  "I'm glad I never lived here."

  "Why, Maggie-Now, don't say that. It was very nice

  before it was all cut up into rental property. It was good

  to live here long ago. It was cool and dark in the summer

  and bright and warm in the winter."

  "Why did you all move away then, if it was so nice?"

  "Well, your grandfather died."

  "Why? "

  "Oh, Maggie-Now! 1r was his time tO die."

  "Papa said he died from being scared."

  "Your father didn't mean that."

  Mary knew this was a logical time to tell her of her

  grandfather. But how could she tell the child that her

  grandfather had been a thief? But was he? The others

  who had stood trial had been exonerated. And politicians

  still kept on doing the same things.

  No' I will not complicate her growing years by telling her.

  Patrick won't tell her since he hasn't so far. She may find

  out when she's grown up. 7Ry that time, his crimes if

  crimes they were will be softened; faded and far away.

  ~ ~o61

  "What did he die of then?" asked Maggie-Now.

  "What we all die of in the end. His heart stopped beating."

  "I'm glad . . . not that he died," amended Maggie-Now

  quickly. "I mean I'm glad I don't have to live here. I like

  our own house where we live now. And 1 don't care if

  it's rich or poor."

  l'n~ glad she's got that settled, thought Mary. A~Iaybe

  no~v she'll stop tcsirlg that Ivory "relative."

  "Of course," said Maggie-Now airily, "it's all relative."

  ~ (2HAPTkR SEVENTEEN ~

  MORE wonderful to Maggie-Now, almost, than Christmas,

  the first day of summer vacation or the trip to Coney

  Island, was Memorial Day, called Decoration Day in

  Brooklyn, when her mother took her on the yearly trip to

  the cemetery.

  "When will it come? When will it come?" she began

  asking her mother soon after Easter.

  "You'll know by the lilac bush in Father Flynn's yard.

  Lilacs always bloom for Decoration Day." And it was so.

  It was always a warm, sunny day with a sweet-smelling

  wind around the next corner. When Maggie-Now went to

  the baker's for the morning buns, thtre was usually a

  customer there who confided to the bakery woman: "I'm

  going to the cemetery in my shape today." That meant it

  was warm enough to go without a coat.

  Maggie-Now and her mother went to the cemetery in

  their shapes. The girl wore her Easter dress and Sunday

  hat and Mary dressed in her brushed and mended best.

  They let the cars go by, waiting for an "open" trolley to

  come along. They sat in the front seat so they could see

  far ahead. The car picked up people along the way until it

  was filled with people in fresh summer clothes. Most of

  the men wore new straw hats because Decoration Day was

  the official day to start wearing them.

  In no time at all, the car was out of the city and in the

  country heading for Cypress Hills in Queens County. Grass

  now grew

  ~ ion ~

 

  between the car tracks. Daisies, buttercups and sweet,

  purple clover grew in empty lots. Bouncing Bet grew along

  the car tracks and seemed to be running ahead of the

  trolley.

  "It has another name," explained Mary. "Soapwort. And

  it loves the tracks: car tracks, train tracks and wagon

  tracks. No matter w here you go, you see it along the

  tracks even growing out of cinders."

  "Oh, smell that country air!" said a woman in the seat

  behind them. "Just smell it!"

  "Yeah, it smells healthy," said her companion. "I feel

  years voungerd'

  Maggie-Now always remembered that warm,

  new-summer smell. It was like smelling buckwheat honey

  through warm dust.

  They got off the trolley and had to walk several long

  blocks to the cemetery. It was a beautiful walk. The stores

  had the summer awnings down; red, or.mge, green-striped

  and scalloped. All the stores save a tombstone-cutting

  store or two were flower stores with the flowering plants