by Betty Smith
house."
"I have an empty room waiting."
"The home pays five dollars a week for each child. No
foster mother must profit from that; nor divert the money
to her own uses. It is for the child's food and necessities.
Therefore, there must be proof that the husband works
and has a steady income."
She bowed her hea.l and squeezed her hands together
in anguish. She did not ha e that kind of husband. The
priest's heart went out to her.
"Of course, in the case of a widow, a son or daughter
living at home and supporting the mother . . . or if she has
a small legacy . . i"
"I own my own home," said Maggie-Now, with eager
hope, "and I have rental property and it's my money and
Papa has a
F33'1
steady job. And Claude brings home money . . .
sometimes. And he always works for a Mole after he
comes home and gives me every cent...."
"You would surely get an 'A' on finances and on a
suitable home," he said with a smile. "Of course, there
must be no history of sickness in the family, like
tuberculosis or congenital . . . well, social diseases."
"Oh, we're all so healthy," she exclaimed. "Nobody's ever
been sick in the family with anything catching, except the
time Denny and Papa had measles."
"That would be an easy 'A,"' he conceded. "However . .
." he paused a long time before he continued. "The woman
must have, or must have had, children of her own. She
must be rearing, or have reared, children of her ov. n."
"I brought up Denny ever since he was born," she said.
"I have experience."
"Of her own," he repeated.
"I see." All the eagerness left her and she bowed her head
again.
He rose, beginning to terminate the visit. She rose with
him. "But you're a good mother, Margaret, even if you
have no children of your own. If you have no child of your
own within a year, come to me again. I'll speak to Mother
Vincent de Paul and see what I can do. You can wait a
year, Margaret?"
Yes, Maggie-Now could wait a year. She was used to
waiting.
Denny got through that year without getting into too
much trouble. He was grudgingly promoted. The only
thing, he took to hanging out on the streets with a bunch
of slightly older kids. He'd stay out until ten o'clock at
night if he could get away
. . .
with It.
Claude came home with the winter. There was that same
tender reunion. He brought her a pair of white buckskin
moccasins to wear as bedroom slippers. The name of a
shop in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was stamped on the
inner sole. At least, she thought, he divas where it divas
warm. The gold piece was still pinned in his coat and she
knew he had not been in want.
Their reunion was tender and their love-making seemed
new again, the way it had been on their honeymoon night.
He worked a few weeks, someplace or other. He gave her
all
[333]
of his pay except the money he used for Christmas
presents. He gave her a singing canary in a lovely bamboo
cage. She named him Timmy. It was a nerd cross for Pat
to bear. He was superstitious and instinctively his lips
formed the words "rest his soul" whenever she called the
bird by name.
Pat kept up a nudging feud with Claude all winter. To
compensate, Denny openly worshiped Claude, and worked
hard in school for good marks to get Claude's
approbation.
It was a wonderfully happy winter for Maggie-Now. But
he left again on that day when that certain wind called to
him.
And she knew another year would pass and she would
have no child.
~ CHAPTER FORTY-SE VEN ~
Now when Maggie-Nt~w made her visits to Lottie, she
was, in a way, visiting Timmy, too. Lottie acted as though
Timmy were in the same room with them and she had
stopped saying, "I make believe."
"Well, Aunt Lottie, I guess I'll start for home before the
rain comes."
"Oh, it's not going to rain. L)o you think it's going to
rain, Timmy?" She spoke to the empty chair. She waited.
"There! Timmy says he thinks the rain will hold off until
nighttime."
Once Widdy was there and he drew Maggie-Now aside.
"I just happened to drop in," he said, "and Mom was
eating her supper. But there was a full plate where Pop
used to sit, and you know, Maggie, she was talking to him
just like he was sitting there eating supper with her? Poor
Mom!"
"Oh, I don't know," said Maggie-Now. "She's found a
way to be near Timmy."
Annie had her worries that year. Tessie was growing too
fast. She was thin and frai I and coughed all the time,
Annie said. Maggie-Now assured Annie that Tessie would
be all right when summer came and she :ould get out in
the air and sun. Maggie
1 7541
Now took ~I essie over to Dr. Scalani but he wasn't
there. A young Dr. Mahony, who had taken his place, said
Dr. Scalani had gone into some other business. And have
this prescription filled and see that the little girl gets
plenty of rest and lots of milk, he said.
Maggie-Now was curious about Dr. Scalani and she
went to Mr. Van Clees, who knew everything that went on
in the neighborhood.
"That doctor goes by the school now to learn how to
take care of the dead. He marries the widow of the
undertaker on Humbol' Street when is a year the
undertaker is dead. This for respect. Then he takes the
undertaking business."
"Why, he must be in his fifties," said Maggie-Now.
"So; For twenty years Dr. Scalani goes by a woman's
house every Sunday. And now, he don't marry her. She
too is old as him."
"Poor thing!" said Magrie-Now.
(Dr. Scalani married the undertaker's widow. A week
later, neighbors smelled gas coming from one of the flats
of a side-street tenement. They broke open the locked
door and smashed the kitchen windows. Dodie, the
doctor's dressmaker friend, was lying on the black leather
lounge. There was a small item in the paper.
. . . fell asleep on the couch while waiting for the coffee
to boil. It boiled over and extinguished the flame.
Neighbors became aware of the odor of escaping gas.
When the police arrived, it was too late to . . .)
Denny and some other kids stood in front of Golend's
Paint Shop. Out front was a big plate on a tripod. A scar
of healing cement ran across what looked like a bad break
in the plate. A chain went through a hole drilled in the
plate and a heavy iron weight hung from the chain. It said
on the plate that the cement was like iron a
nd would hold
the hundred-pound weight without breaking.
"I bet that plate would break right away if you even
touched it," said Denny.
"Go 'head, then. Try it." One of the boys handed Denny
a baseball bat. Denny tapped the plate.
Sure, it broke. It was made of cast iron, enameled
white.
[ 33S 1
Maggie-Now heard tile hubbub on the street. She went
to the window to look. To her horror, she saw Denny
being escorted home by a tall policeman. A bunch of kids
and some adults were following after. When they got to
the stoop, the young cop dispersed the crowd with a
genial: "Why don't you all beat it, now?"
They stood in the front room. The cop removed his hat.
Maggie-Now looked up at him. He was a clear-eyed
young man with a nice, homely Irish face. He told about
the plate.
"Golend was all for sending the kid to the electric
chair," said the cop. "I talked him out of it. I said, let the
kid's mother punish him. So here he is."
"I don't know how to thank you' Officer.... Anyone else
would arrest him...."
"Oh, I expect to hate kids of my own, someday," he said.
"I vouldn't want a boy of mine crucified just because it
was vacation and the kid was full of beans and got into
mischief."
"I don't know how t J thank you," she said again.
"Say, you look awful young to be the mother of such a
big boy."
"I'm his sister."
"Well, that's fine! Just fine!" He grinned down at her.
She looked up at him with her wide smile.
After the policeman had left, Maggie-Now started in on
lecturing Denny. But her heart wasn't in it. She kept
thinking how nice it was to have a man look at her with
admiration.
The following Friday, she went to the fish store to buy
a flounder for supper. She was waiting for the man to
dress it into fillets when the policeman came in. The
fish-store man's wife smiled at the cop.
"Where's my fish sandwich?" he asked.
"In a minute, Eddies" said the woman. She stuck a fork
in a thick wedge of halibut which w as browning in a
caldron of boiling oil. "In a minute."
~ good Catholic boy, thought Maggie-Now. Fish for him
077 Fridays.
He recognized Mag. de-Now. "Hello," he said.
"Hello," she answered. They smiled at each other.
"How's your brother?"
1 3,6 1
'iFine."
"That's fine."
It seemed they had run out of conversation until
llaggie-Now said: "My father went around and gave Mr.
Golend a dollar for the plate and Mr. Golend said he was
satisfied."
"That's fine."
"Here you are, Maggie.' The fish dealer pushed the
package across the counter. "Fifty-~wo cents."
"Look," said the cop. "NVould it be all right if I came
around to see you some night; I mean in plain clothes?"
"I'm married," she said.
"Oh, I see!" The smile washed off his face. "I'm sorry,"
he said sincerely.
"I'll always appreciate what you did for my brother."
"That's all right," he said. She left the store.
"What do you want on your fish sandwich, Eddie?" asked
the woman.
"Nothing," he said. "Just some catsup."
She prepared for bed as usual that night. She undressed,
put on the Chinese kimono and the moccasins that Claude
had given her. She went out and covered Timmv's cage.
She sat before the dressing table he had given her and
brushed her hair. She ran her hand over the smooth
leather of the little red suitcase, read his postcard and
read a line car two from the SOm?ets. It was her nightly
communication with her husband.
She lay awake in bed thinking. Make believe, she thought,
that I had never met and married Clande (and that would
have been just terrible!). But make believe anyhow. Suppose
I had married someone like this Eddie. I know I would've
liked him if I wasn't married. We would live in a house on
the Island. We'd all go to Mass together on Sundays and sit
in the back pew so that in case the children got restless, they
wouldn't annoy too many people back there. He would come
hoagie to me and the children every single night and . . .
The next day, Saturday, she `ent about with a heavy
heart. She had to go to confession that night and she had
a grave sin to confess and she did not know its name. I
CJ??'t say I committed adultery in my thoughts: that l was
lewd in Any thoughts . . . what name can I give this sill?
[ 337 1
She went to confession late and let others go before her.
She was trying to think of a name for her sin. The church
was empty; she was the last one. She knelt in the dark
confessional and confessed the usual sins in a whisper and
then she came to the big sin.
"I lusted after a man, Father." It was the only way she
knew how to say it. She thought she heard a snort from
the other side of the tiny screened opening, but she wasn't
sure.
"Explain, my child," said the priest.
"I thought how it would be if I were married to a man
other than my husband."
He made no comment. She finished her confession, and
was kneeling in a pew saying her penance, when she saw
Father Flynn come out: of the confessional. He went to
the altar and extinguished the candles. He genuflected and
then knelt to pray before the altar.
When she left the church, Father Flynn was waiting on
the steps. "Margaret," he said, "Monday I will take you to
the home. I will do whatever I can to get you a foster
child or two."
"Oh, Father!" she said, tears of joy coming to her eyes.
"I think it is time," he said.
~ CHAPTI,R FORTY-EIGHT ~
MAGGIE-NOW sat on a long bench while she waited for
Father Flynn to confer with Mother Vincent de Paul. The
room was combined office and waiting room. A nun sat at
a typewriter briskly tapping out letters from shorthand
notes. Another nun had six varicolored sheets and five
carbons in her typewriter and was filling out forms. A very
young nun stood at a filing case expertly filing documents
and letters away. Another sat at a table and filled in a
printed form with the answers of an applicant who stood
before her.
All the clerical activity should have made it seem like an
efficient office. But the habited nuns and a large picture
of Christ holding a lamb in His arms gave it the feeling of
a busy church. Aside from the woman having a form filled
out, there were four other
f338]
women with Maggie-Now on the bench. Two had children
with them. The woman next to Maggie-Now was evidently
foster mother to a beautiful child of six who quietly
wandered about the room, returning to the bench at
intervals. She addressed the woman as "Mama."
Maggie-Now struck up a conversation with the woman.
"She's very pretty."
"Yes. I hate to give her up. My husband and I got very
attached to her. We get attached to all of them. But she's
six now and they have to take her back to put her in
school. Well, in the twenty years I been a foster mother,
I had to give up many a one I would have liked to keep.
This one especially." She returned the smile the little girl
gave her across the room before she resumed talking. She
dropped her voice.
"This one's different. Her mother was a rich and
beautiful society girl and her father was a poor artist. Her
parents wouldn't let her marry this artist. But they had
this child anyhow."
"Did they tell you that here? " asked Maggie-Now.
"Not in so many words," evaded the woman. "But I
kr~o~v." She whispered: "She's a love child. That's why
she's so beautiful."
Father Flylm came out of Mother Vincent de Paul's
office and instructed Maggie-Now to file an application.
He stood by her side. The nun asked the routine questions
and filled in the answers. Then she came to "Husband."
"Occupation? "
"He travels...." Maggie-Now looked appealingly at Father
Flynn.
"Traveling man," said the priest.
The nun's pen hovered over the blank space for a
second or two before she wrote: "Travels."
"Income? "
"I live with my father. He's in Civil Service." She stated
his salary. "And I get twenty-five a month from rental
property and I own my own house free and clear."
"Husband's income?"
"He earns fifty dollars, sometimes thirty dollars a week."
She paused. "When he works," she added honestly. The
nun put a question mark in that space.
The nun picked up the application and said: "I'll take you
to
~ 339 ~
Mother Vincent de Paul. This way."
The nun put the paper on the desk and quietly
withdrew. It was a small room holding only a desk and a
chair. A large crucifix hung on the wall behind the desk.
The mother wore bifocals and may have been in her
sixties, although it was hard to tell the age of a nun; no
matter what age, their faces were unlined and serene.
Maggie-Now stood quietly she had not been asked to
sit down and waited. Without looking up, the mother
said: "As you know, there are certain irregularities in your
application." She pointed to the printed word "Children,"
and the inked "None" in the space following. "But Father
Flynn spoke highly of you and we'll waive that. Do you
agree to take two children?"
"Oh, yes! Yes!"
"Children must grow up with other children."
"Yes, Mother."
"When a child reaches the age of six, he will be taken
from you. There must be no pleas, no tears, no requests
to keep in touch with the child and no requests for
adopting the child. Do you understand? "
"Yes, Mother."
"In due time, a nurse will visit you and examine the
premises. If her report is satisfactory, your application will
be accepted."
"Thank you, Mother."
The mother pressed a buzzer and a nun came in and
took the application and went out again. Without looking
up, Mother Vincent de Paul said: "Whatever became of
your horse?"
"My horse, Mother? ' gasped the girl, astonished.
"Drummer."
"Why, gone I guess, Mother," she said, bewildered.
The mother looked up at her. "I used to know Sister
Mary Joseph," she explained. She smiled; Maggie-Now
smiled back. "God bless you, my child."
Maggie-Now rode home on the trolley with Father
Flynn. The priest read from his little black-bound book
and Maggie-Now beamed happily at all the people in the
car.
The nurse came in due time. She was a middle-aged
woman in a tailored suit. She had a large black handbag
