Maggie Now

by Betty Smith

outside on the sidewalk.

  New, shallow, white-wood boxes held a dozen plants

  each. The plants were in bright terra-cotta clay pots fresh

  from the kiln. There were geraniums, passionately bright

  and clear and perfectly formed; red, rose, pink, white and

  even fuchsia. Blue hyacinths, with white veins, looked like

  clubs. (For some reason, the people called them "lilies.")

  Then there were pots of blue-purple ageratum; a name no

  one could pronounce. Women asked the price of "them

  purplish flour-iss."

  There were baby pots of lusty and eternal-looking ivy,

  and, for people with money, large pots of steel-blue

  hydrangea or coral-bell azaleas.

  The plants were sprinkled hourly and little rivers of

  water ran down the sidewalk to the gutters. The awnings

  made shade, and the damp sidewalks and the flowers

  fresh-smelling from their sprinkling, and all the flower

  colors, and the way everyone looked so excited and the

  beautiful, sunny day all put together were like a gallant

  gauntlet slapped across the cheek of death.

  Each year, Mary bought a geranium to plant on her

  father's grave. She let Maggie-Now choose the colon The

  girl went into a state of ecstatic indecision. Mary waited

  patiently, knowing that in the end the child would choose

  the brightest red in the lot. ~ Of 1

  Mary, looking at the awnings and flowers and the smiling,

  eager vendors and the leisurely-moving people, said:

  "It's just like Paris."

  "Was you ever in Paris, 1lama-" aslred the girl.

  ``No."

  "I'll take this red one, Ilama."

  "That'll be thirty cents,' said the flower man, "and a

  nickel back when you bring the flower pot back."

  Maggie-Now walked proudly with the geranium in the

  crook of her arm. She smiled at other little girls who

  carried potted plants and they smiled back.

  There was a tombstone place on one corner. Its yard

  was crowded with stone angels and stone books opened in

  the middle, large stone crosses and smooth stone

  blocks all with smooth, blank spaces, waiting for a name.

  One time they saw a m.m sitting in the sun on a camp

  chair in back of the store's yard. He worked with hammer

  and chisel, putting the finishing touches to a monument.

  A child with stone curls rested with closed eyes, with her

  cheek on her folded arms. Thick stone angel wings s.

  emed to sprout from the child's neck. The sculptor, noting

  Mag`,rie-Now's interest, said:

  "It's for an only child.'

  There was another tomhsto1e place a few blocks further

  on. It had a sign:

  When you think ot me, don't think of tombstones. But

  when you thinly of tombstones, think of me.

  ,Nlary always stopped to read it as though it were

  something new and she always smiled at the message.

  A man, in business for himself, had a pushcart filled

  with watering cans. You could rent one for a dime, but he

  asked a quarter deposit on a can. Only the foolish threw

  money away like that. People brought their own tin cans

  from home for watering purposes Maggie-Now had

  brought her sand bucket for hauling water and the toy

  shovel and rake that went with it for gardening.

  They went past the Hcbrew cemetery. The gates were

  high, like, Maggie-Now thought, three men standing on

  top of each other. There was a big it on star on top of the

  iron arch of the gate.

  ~ '' 9 1

 

  "Why don't they have a cross like we do?" asked

  Maggie-Now. "Because it's a Jewish cemetery. That's their

  star of David and they pray to the star the way we pray to

  the cross. I told you that last year."

  They got to the cemetery and Mary nodded to the care-

  taker sitting at the little wirldov of the little stone house

  inside the gates.

  "A nice day," said Mary.

  "Sure is," agreed the caretaker.

  The cemetery looked like a lawn party that had gotten

  out of hand. It was crowded with women, children and

  even a few men. The young women wore light summer

  dresses and hats with ribbons and flowers. The older

  women wore whatever had been around the

  house usually a black dress or a suit skirt whose jacket

  had been given to the Salvation Army years ago, and a

  shirtwaist. They wore hats that looked as though they had

  been hanging in the cellar for five years. In short, the

  older women "made do" and used new-clothes money for

  more important things, like well, say food.

  There were three times as many children as adults. They

  ran, jumped, hollered, wrestled with each other and played

  tag among the tombstones. They tumbled about as though

  they'd been spilled out of a bag. They were deliriously

  happy to be out of the dark, crowded tenement rooms and

  off the narrow, crowded streets, and away from the

  streetcars and trucks which made their street games

  hazardous, and to have this great, big, green beautiful

  cemetery to play in for an hour or so.

  Mary saw a boy chinning himself on the outstretched

  arm of a granite angel. "I wouldn't do that if I were you,

  little boy," she said.

  "Okay, teacher," said the kid cheerfully and ran away.

  After all these years thought Mary ruefully, I still look aim

  act like a schoolteacher. Imagine!

  Everybody was sociable. One felt that even the dead

  were sociable. They had to be, the way the plots were so

  close together with only a footpath between the graves.

  And the way some graves held three departed people, one

  on top of the other, because few families could afford to

  buy a separate grave for each r /70 |

  of their dead. Also, land was getting very scarce in

  Greater Next York.

  Maggie-Now skipped ahead. She wanted to be the first

  to find the grave. "Here it is, Mama!" she shouted. "Here!"

  "Don't scream," said Mary. "It won't run away."

  Mary took the sand bucket, spade and shovel from her

  net shopping bag and stood them in a row. She added

  some rooted ivy cuttings that she had brought with her.

  Maggie-Now set the plant at the end of the row of things.

  "Look at that trash on the grave," said Mary. "Perpetual

  c are indeed! Why, they don't even cut the grass! " She

  lifted her veil over her hat and pulled off her gloves.

  "Well, let's get to work."

  Maggie-Now threw herself on her knees and furiously

  began raking the litter from the plot. A woman waved

  frantically from two graves away. When she couldn't catch

  Mary's attention, she called: "Yoo boo, Miz Moore. Yoo

  hog!"

  "Oh, Mrs. Schondle," Mary called back. "Hello! I missed

  you last year."

  "Yeah. I wasn't here," said Mrs. Schondlc, waddling over.

  Mrs. Schondle, a stout vie omen to start with, wore a

  black dress several sizes too large for her. The neckline

  gaped loosely, exposing her chest and the upper part of

&
nbsp; her breasts, which were already burned a lobster red from

  sudden exposure to the sun for a few hours, after a year

  of living indoors.

  She wore a lumpy black hat draped with thick black

  mourning veils. The hat had slipped down over one ear

  and the veils were hanging wild. This gave her beet-red,

  smiling face a what-thehell-do-I-care look.

  "Yeah, I wasn't here last year," she explained. "Because

  my oldest daughter vitas down from Jamaica. You know.

  The one by my first husband? She didn't want to come to

  the cemetery with me, being's," she nodded toward her

  grave, "Mr. Schondle was the stepfather. You know. Not

  the real father? Anyways, I thought I'd stay home with her

  being's I don't see her much because," her voice dropped

  to a whisper, "I don't get along so good with him her

  husband. He's . . . " she looked around carefully to make

  sure no one ~ Ise v as listening. "he's a Prattisssent! F I

  ~ I I

  One of them kind, you know. What thinks every time a

  Catholic boy is born they bury a gun under the church for

  him?"

  "That's too bad," said Mary.

  "Oh, I got my troubles," said Mrs. Schond]e cheerfully.

  "But you look good, Miz Moore."

  "You look fine, too, Mrs. Schondle."

  "Oh, I'm the kind w hat never changes. I look the same

  like I looked when I was first married. Everybody tells me

  that," she said. "But your little girl, now! My, she got big!

  Two years ago, she was a baby."

  "They shoot up fast, ' said Mary.

  "Too fast. You slave for them and sacrifice and the first

  thing you know, they're young ladies and married."

  A diversion was caused by a mother yelling at her sons

  who were playing tag and running back and forth over the

  family plot a few graves away.

  "Now, Frankie," said the mother, "I told you before.

  Stop running over your grandmother. Do you want to have

  hard luck?" In answer, the boys ran over the grave again.

  "All right, then," said the mother reasonably enough. Then

  she hauled off and gave each kid a slap alongside the ear.

  "The next time you'll listen," she said.

  "Tech! Tsch!" commented Mrs. Schondle. "The way

  children is brought up nowadays. No respect for

  nothing nobody. Living or dead." She straightened her

  hat. It fell over the other ear. "Well, I better leave you

  plant your plant," she said. "Say! Your ive-ree's growing

  good. Soon your father will have a whole ive-ree blanket.

  I wish I had luck with ive-ree. But it won't grow for me."

  Hat bouncing, veils quivering, she made her way back to

  Mr. Schondle's grave.

  Maggie-Now had the grave raked of debris. She had a

  little mound of trash. "Where'll I put it, Mama?"

  "Over there on that big pile where other people are

  putting their trash."

  They pulled up the dry stalk of last year's geranium and

  planted the new one. Ilaggie-Now made a dozen trips

  with her bucket to one of the nearby spigots. They planted

  the new ivy shoots. They commented on how well the last

  year's planting ~ 1121

  had taken hold. The final thing was pinching off six sprigs

  of the established ivy. Mary would root them in water,

  plant them and nurture them through a summer, fall and

  winter and plant them on the grave come next Decoration

  Day.

  All the things were stowed away, including the flower

  pot, in the net shopping bag. Mary and Maggie-Now went

  to sit on a nearby stone bench. They sat in silence for a

  while. Mary thought of her father. She thought of the

  passage of time.

  It is ten years, she thought, since ='e laid him at rest. And

  the combs he bought me more than thirty years ago are still

  new. Things last longer than people.

  "It's time now," said Mary.

  Mother and daughter stolid by Michael Moriarity's grave.

  Mary clasped her hands, bowed her head and said a prayer

  for the dead. Maggie-Now joined her in the amen. Mary

  took a long, last look at the engraved name, Michael

  Moriarity, and they took their leave. They walked over to

  say good-by to Mrs. Schondle.

  "You going for pot cheese?" asked Mrs. Schondle.

  Mary hesitated. "Yes."

  "Then do you care if I go along?"

  "Why, we'd love to have you. Wouldn't we, Maggie-Now?"

  The girl scowled. She had looked forward to the trip all

  year especially eating alone with her mother in the

  restaurant. Now that Mrs. Schondle had to spoil it.

  "Say yes," whispered her mother. "It's only a white lie."

  "Yes," said Maggie-Now sullenly.

  "And smile." Maggie-Now gave Mrs. Schondle a distorted

  grimace.

  "That's awfully nice of youse," said Mrs. Schondle. "It's

  just that I don't like to eat alone. I always got to eat alone

  when I'm home."

  It took them a long time to get out of the cemetery

  because Mrs. Schondle walked slowly and had to stop from

  time to time to get her breath and, besides, she liked to

  stop and look at things.

  They paused by the new graves; a dozen or so the dead

  of the week. The raw-soil mounds were still high. A couple

  of men were working efficiently and briskly, stripping dead

  foliage and withered flowers from the funeral pieces. They

  piled up the

  [ ~ ~3 1

 

  wire forms, pillows, stars, crosses and hearts. They sold

  these frames to the florists to make new floral pieces for

  new dead people. The men paid for the privilege of

  salvaging these wire frames.

  A group of little girls stood by patiently waiting for the

  ribbons from the pieces. They were of the neighborhood

  and they got their hair bows that v. ay. The men gave the

  big girls the black ribbons, the in-between girls the

  lavender, and the little girls ot the white ribbons.

  "Want a hair bow, girlie?" said one of the men,

  proffering a lavender ribbon to Maggie-Now.

  The girl shuddered and squeezed tip close to her

  mother. "No," she said.

  "No, what?" prodded her mother.

  "No, thank you."

  The restaurant was across the street from the cemetery.

  It was nearly a block long v. ith open doors every twenty

  feet or so. Inside it was dim and cool. White-aproned

  waiters wove in and out among the tables and a joyous

  babble of voices rose and fell. It was very festive even

  though most of the women wore black dresses.

  They had barely seated themselves at a little round table

  when a waiter materialised and gave the table top a ritual

  wipe with his napkin.

  "What s yours, ladies " he asked.

  "I'll have pot cheese and chives," said Mary. "And coffee.'

  "Make mine the same," said llrs. Schondle. "Only beer,

  instead-a coffee. And sour cream on the side."

  "And the young lady?" asked the waiter.

  Maggie-Now was about to open her mouth and order a

  piece of pound cake
with chocolate ice cream on top and

  a bottle of strawberry soda, when Mary said: "She'll have

  just a cream soda. '

  "But, Mama . . ." wailed Maggie-Now.

  "Never mind." Mary pressed the girl's thigh under the

  table. 'You can have the nickel deposit from the flower

  pot and buy anything you like."

  "All right," sighed Maggie-NoN`-.

  Mary did some quick figuring. She had fifty cents for her

  1 1141

 

  lunch and Maggie-Now's, a nickel tip for the waiter, ten

  cents carfare home and ten cents for emergencies. She

  had enough money to be sure, but four years ago, the time

  she had lunched with Mrs. Schondle, the poor woman had

  been fifteen cents short and Mary had had to pay it.

  Fearing another emergency like that, she held back on

  Maggie-Now.

  The waiter brought the food and, to nobody's surprise,

  an extra plate and fork for Maggie-Now. He was used to

  people ordering and saying the child didn't want anything

  and, after the food was served, being requested to bring an

  extra plate and fork. So he brought the extra plate and

  fork along with the order to save time. Mary divided her

  pot cheese and chives with Maggie-Now.

  "She can have some of mine," said Mrs. Schondle,

  reluctantly pushing her bowl toward YIaggie-Now.

  "Oh, no," said Maggie-Now.

  "She has enough, thank you," said Mary.

  "All right, then." Eagerly:, Mrs. Schondle pulled her bowl

  back.

  While the women talked, Maggie-Now gulped down her

  soda, dabbled with the pot cheese and let her eyes rove

  around the restaurant. She fastened her attention on a

  handsome boy at a nearby table. She stared at him and he

  stared back. Mrs. Schondle noticed this and said

  portentously to Mary:

  "It won't be long now."

  "Well, you can't hold back time," sighed Mary.

  "Just so's she don't throw herself away and marry

  somebody what's no good like mine did."

  "Oh, she's got a lot of sense," said Mary.

  Suddenly, Maggie-Now realized that they were talking

  about her and the possibility of her marrying. It made her

  feel important and mature. She threw back her head, half

  closed her eyes, and smiled languidly at the boy. His eyes

  popped for a second, then he put his thumb to his nose

  and wiggled his four fingers at her. Her face got red and

  she dropped her eyes to her plate.

  "I'm never going to get married," she said. "Because I

  hate boys."

  "What brought that on?' asked Mary.

  The waiter came and asked: one check or two? "Two

  checks,"

  ~ ~ ~5 1

 

  said Mrs. Schondle. She explained to Mary: "Some would

  hang back and wait for the other party to pay. But I don't

  sponge. I pay my way."

  Mary put a quarter and a nickel on her check.

  Twenty-five cents for her lunch and a nickel for the cream

  soda. A little to one side, she put his nickel tip.

  "Carfare!" he bawled over toward the bar. "Thank you,

  lady,' he said to Mary.

  Mrs. Schondle emptied her purse of all its coins. She

  took a nickel back for carfare. The waiter noticed she set

  nothing aside for a tip. He waited. She looted up at him

  with a bleak, pleading look.

  "That's all right, lady," he muttered.

  Mary took a nickel from her purse and edged it over

  toward Mrs. Schondle's check. The waiter scooped up the

  coins. "It's just that a man has to make a living," he said,

  as if in apology.

  "That's the truth," agreed Mrs. Schondle. "Only I left all

  my other money home."

  Mary and Maggie-No~v were going one way and Mrs.

  Schondle another. So they said their good-bye outside the

  restaurant. Marv took the woman's hand in hers and

  pressed it warmly.

  "Good-by, Mrs. Schondle."

  "You're so nice," said llrs. Scholldle. Fears came to her

  eyes. So nice to me."

  "We'll see you next year, God hilling," said Marv.