Читать книгу A Child is Born - Charles Yale Harrison - Страница 8

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For some reason unknown to her husband Margaret Roberts insisted on calling her newborn son Arthur. There was no one in her family who had ever been known by that name, but she insisted. Her memory did not carry her beyond her mother about whom she had vague childhood memories. When Edward pressed her for a reason she could give none; but in some indefinable manner the name Arthur seemed to her to be associated with strength and size—and so the infant was called Arthur.

That was two years ago. Her dreams spent themselves in the caring for her three children, in staving off creditors when Edward was out of work, in protecting her brood when he came home tipsy.

Since the birth of Arthur they had moved half a dozen times from tenement to tenement, but always remained in the same neighborhood.

Before Arthur was born she had always taken good care of the two girls, but now there were months when the youngster was continually ailing and the girls played unnoticed in the streets. Once in a while as she went about her household duties she put her head out of the window and called warningly to them—but now even that ineffectual precaution was forgotten.

The house was a bedlam, the infant Arthur howled, the air reeked of boiling diapers and Margaret’s room smelled like the fetid Red Hook hallways.

All her life, it seemed, she had fought to keep that odor out of her house—but now she was beaten.

Miriam, the older girl, matured before her time. Although she was nearly twelve her features were clearly defined, her hair was a blazing red and her gray eyes had already frightened children of the neighborhood into submissive silence when they fought. Gladys, although a year younger, was a subdued little thing who tried her best to blend with the neutral colors of Red Hook.

The children fought for food at the table; listened with frightened faces when Margaret and Roberts quarreled with adult bitterness on pay night.

Since the day that Blumgarten had sold her an endowment policy on her life for Arthur, Margaret had taken out other policies.

In time of unemployment the policies lapsed after four weeks for nonpayment of premiums. Sometimes the arrears were so great that the insurance was forfeited altogether; when Roberts got work again Margaret would reinsure her whole brood.

Blumgarten followed the family from house to house as they moved, scenting them out like a bloodhound; begging and pleading with Margaret, sometimes paying a week’s premiums out of his own pocket. Roberts fought over the insurance man....

“Hangin’ aroun’ here when I’m at work—you an’ him prayin’ fer me t’ die.”

Desperate pleading—rent, furniture, the doctor, the grocer—and Edward banged out of the house, raving.... At other times he was silent and taciturn as he was before Arthur was born.

Lytton F. Coleman, Ph.D., D.Litt., passed a nervous tapering hand over the dome of his head before proceeding. He cleared his throat:

“Time,” he said, “time, as we have seen, may be distinguished: first as real, absolute or mathematical; second, as subjective or empirical. Both of these conceptions view time as a relation of change to continuity. Newton conceived constant time as flowing at a constant rate, unaffected by the speed or slowness of the motion of material things.

“The modern view of time is mainly a development of Kant’s doctrine that it is an a priori mental form which experience necessarily assumes. Time—”

Time with Margaret was constant. It was stationary. Every Monday was like every other Monday—Blumgarten, the collectors, the steaming wash, hurrying the kids off to school.

Time hung stagnant over Red Hook, down at the docks, in the schools, in the streets, in the stench-laden hallways, in the dark cellars where the children played.

Children were born, grew up, died ... pay night followed pay night, endlessly.

Four years is a short time in a slum.

First Arthur learned to walk, bumping his forehead and chubby little behind in the process. His mother cleaned him up in the afternoons when the girls came home from school and they took him, with unwilling hearts and scowling faces, for a walk near the canal. He romped in the muddy streets, eating dirt and smearing his face with the filth of a thousand passing wagons.

His sisters played with the boys of the neighborhood—those dangerous, groping, childhood games of the streets. Once in a while they looked in Arthur’s direction to see that he hadn’t fallen into the canal. When they played too far away from him he came running to them wobbling on his little bandy legs....

Margaret was frightened of Miriam’s living shock of red hair and her bitter, steady eyes. Already the points of her rapidly developing breasts pressed timidly against her thin, print dresses. The girl walked with a looseness that disturbed her mother. Even the heavy hand of her father could not subdue her flaming rebelliousness....

On a corner near the school which Miriam attended was a candy store.

It was owned by a man in his late fifties who the year before had lost his childless wife. He was gray and bald and one expected his brown wrapping-paper skin to crack when he smiled.

The children called him Pops.

On the way to school they hovered over his fly-specked show cases under which lay rows of black, yellow and pink candies. The store was pervaded by a musty, sweet odor.

Some mornings the Roberts girls had a penny between them and they trooped in with the other children, laughing and talking:

“Hey, Pops, how much a’ these ones?”

“Gimme six a’ dese.”

The children pointed grubby fingers and Pops ambled back and forth behind his show cases serving them.

One day as the electric gong in the school yard clanged and the children ran out of the store to fall in line before marching into class, Miriam lingered in the store with an instinctive indifference to the iron-voiced clangor of authority.

“Better hurry up,” the old man said. “Teacher’ll be mad.”

Miriam eyed him coldly and said:

“That’s all right—she can wait. How much a’ these?”

“Two fer a cent.”

“An’ these?”

She pointed her finger to the rear of the show case.

Pops reached his hand over and touched the back of the girl’s hand.

“Four fer a cent,” he said after a pause.

Pointing to the two-for-a-cent chocolates Miriam said:

“Gimme four of these for a cent.”

She smiled into the old man’s eyes. The man sucked in his lower lip for a moment.

“You got nice red hair,” he said finally.

“Will yuh gimme four of these for a cent?” the girl said again.

“If you come in here,” the man said, pointing to his solitary room in the rear of the store, “I’ll give ’em t’ yuh.”

He put four pieces of chocolate into a bag and dangled it over the show case.

Miriam walked behind the counter, past the cotton curtain which separated the room from the store.

The man followed.

“Gimme the candy,” she said.

“First yuh gotta gimme a kiss.”

“Yuh didn’t say that.”

“Gimme a kiss, redhead, and I’ll give yuh the candy.”

She walked over to him and held her face up. Pops spread his thin blue lips over hers.

“Gimme the candy,” Miriam said and she ran out of the store.

As Miriam hurried out of the store she ran past the policeman on the beat.

“Hurry up, red,” the cop said. “You’re late.”

The girl ran breathlessly into the girls’ entrance.

Patrolman James Parsons twirled his club adeptly at the end of the leather thong which bound it to his wrist and sauntered down the street.

He smiled in contemplation to himself; he glowed with a warm feeling of self-satisfaction.

What luck! To pick up Michael Doyle outside of Leo’s saloon dead stinking drunk! Well, he knew who Mickey Doyle was. Umbrella Doyle! Did he take him home? Not on your life. No, sir. Took him straight to his own flat ... the expression on Florence’s face when he dragged him into the parlor ... “here take this ... lemon juice ... contains the necessary acids to counteract the effects of the alcohol” ... and this morning Doyle said, yes, Mickey Doyle himself ... “drop around ... boy, you sure was a life-saver” ... “lemon juice, sir, that’s what did it ... God’s own remedy ... Mr. Doyle, if we all lived clean lives like our Maker intended us to ... oh, no I’m not preachin’ ... now look at this magazine ... yeah, some shape ... but don’t forget that the human body is the temple of God ... yes, sir ... well, let me tell you, Mr. Doyle, this man Powers knows what he’s talking about ... yes, sir....”