Aunt learnt the tricks of begging from their attic talk at night, as each described the day they’d had; how men’s brains were unfastened with their braces; how careless waiters were with tips; which restaurant chefs would give a back-step meal to any girl who’d volunteer to mop the floor. You’d eat the meal — then run; what places were the worst and best for palming cash from strangers. She learnt how just a dab of zinc and vinegar could make a girl look feverish. It didn’t work with men, but women — older ones — would pay to make you go away. She learnt a gallery of beggars’ faces, how to slide her tongue between her teeth and lips to look the simpleton, how to fake the single floating eye of the insane, how picking noses is just as good as picking pockets for getting cash if it is done on restaurant terraces and in a childish, not a vulgar way.
So she did well on city streets. She begged and importuned enough to count herself — by country standards — well set up. She was much plumper than the girl who’d skivvied in the kitchen. She had her hat as talisman and her Princesses for family. She did not think about the coming day — or much about the day just passed. She liked to place her hat upon her head and wander streets as if they were country lanes and she was simply searching for free fruit. She never tired of putting out her hand or challenging — this was her favourite trick — the drinking men in bars to toss and land a coin in the canyon brim of her straw hat.
Despite the drama of the hat, she was an ill-built, scruffy girl. The pits and craters on her face were blessings in disguise. They kept the men at bay. She did not have her sister’s looks. But what she had was something better, rarer in those days than mere good looks. She had a sense of unembarrassed self-esteem. She liked the way she was. So when she heard her sister calling from beneath her green and yellow parasol, ‘Please help. Please help. My baby’s dying,’ Aunt was not the least put out. She’d heard a hundred stories of the saddest kind of why and how her Princesses had fallen on hard times. Tough tales that made her wonder how animals, as frail as adolescents are, could surface with such buoyancy from depths so cold and bitter. She guessed that there was death in Em’s own tale or illness or the loss of work. She was not shockable. It seemed to fit, not flout, the patterns of the world that Em, like her, should end up in this place. Fate — the fate of being born a country woman in those days — was not Coincidence, nor was it Chance. The poor take trams. They travel on fixed lines. It’s only the rich that go at will in carriages.
Aunt stooped below the parasol and matched her sister with the voice she’d heard. They were the same, except that Em was poorer, thinner than a head of corn that had been stripped of ears. Aunt knew — from just one glance — that her sister was forlorn and ill and underfed. She heard the whimpers of the child. Her niece or nephew, she presumed. She felt content to have a sister once again, to be an aunt. She knew that she could help.
So Em became the oldest of the Princesses — and Victor was their little Prince. Most of the girls were glad to have a child at first. They passed him to and fro and petted him as if he were a cat. They teased him with their little fingers in his mouth and marvelled at the power of his gums and lips. They loved to belch him on their knees, his fingers wrapped so bonelessly round theirs, or to press their noses to his head and smell the honey-must of cradle cap. They kissed the baby dimples on his arms, his back, his chin, and called him ‘Little rogue’ and sang ‘Dimple in chin, Devil within’. They made noises like you hear in zoos from those determined that the parakeets should talk. But Victor was in no mood for games. You see, already he was malcontent, and not because of his acid rash alone. He wanted food. Warm lips and murmurs do not serve supper. He tried to push his hand between the buttons of their dresses. He wet and creased the fabric of their blouses with his mouth.
‘They’re all the same,’ a Princess said. ‘Men only want one thing.’
Aunt found some floorboard for Em and Victor below the sloping attic roof. She scrounged a little matting and some cloth for blankets. Aunt carried Victor to the street, and within twenty minutes had returned with a topless conserve jar containing tepid mashed potato, manac beans and gravy which she had begged at a restaurant’s back door.
‘This kid’s a gold mine.’ She crushed the beans and made a mixture with the potatoes and gravy. ‘There’s plenty here for all of us,’ she said, though softly so that ‘all of us’ meant Victor, Aunt and Em. She made stewballs in her palms, four large ones the size and shape of eggs, and smaller pellets for her nephew, Victor. His first solid meal. He was almost nine months old. His first milk teeth were winking through the gum.
Together they poked the food into his mouth. It was too dry for him. He coughed. And when he closed his mouth the food was squeezed between his lips and fell into his mother’s hand. He did not cry, though. This was not distress. He simply did not have the knack of swallowing such lumps. Perseverance won the day. The sisters had a score of fingers to keep the food inside the baby’s mouth. Fingertips are like enough to nipples for Victor to be confused and suck. The sucking did the trick. For every scrap that slithered out across his chin a small amount went down his throat. His sucking dragged the gravy from the mixture. He liked the smell and salt. He had his fill. He slept — for once — without his mother’s breast.
Em told her story of how she’d come to town, and how the town had almost beaten her. Then Aunt replied with hers, and how the town was better than a friend. It took more care of waifs and strays than any village in the land. ‘If that weren’t so,’ she said, ‘the countryside would be the place for girls like us. The trees and fields would overflow with widows and orphans. But look around you, Em. Look on the streets. It’s cities take us in.’ And then she added, ‘City air makes free.’
They talked like artisans at lunch, about the problems of the begging trade. Their jobs were like all jobs. Why should they be abject? They had their colleagues, rivals, clientele. They had their working rituals, too — and the pride and purpose that such employment brings. The problem was that Em’s breasts were nearly dry, and still too sore for comfort. Giving solid food to Victor might give them time to heal — but would the child return to the breast when he and Em were begging once again?
‘When Victor isn’t feeding,’ Em explained, ‘I don’t make money on the streets.’
‘If that’s the only problem you’ve got, then you’re the lucky one!’ said Aunt. She took her sister by the hand. ‘Just sleep,’ she said. ‘I told you, Victor’s gold to us. A baby at the breast earns cash. You don’t need milk for that. You don’t need spit to stick your tongue inside your boyfriend’s ear.’
At dawn, while Em and Victor were still asleep, Aunt put on her hat and went down to the bars where the traders, warehousemen, and porters had coffee-and-a-shot before they started work. She found the comic angle for her hat. She wore her sweetest, daftest smile. She stood against the walls of bars and called for pitch-and-toss. She’d show the men her plump and mottled knees if anyone could throw a coin in her hat. The man who stepped up to her and softly dropped a coin in, imagined he had got the best of Aunt. She showed her knees. He departed poorer than he’d come, but she, quite soon, had earned enough for food. She bought a bruised banana, cheap. A fresh, warm turban of bread. A bottle of root-water. A twist of honey. Cheese. She was a cheerful sight upon the street. She skipped like someone half her age. She took the stairs two at a time. She found a dancing path between the sleeping Princesses, and spread the breakfast on the boards. She broke the bread and cheese. She snapped the banana into three, and mashed one third with rootwater in a spangled cup until it ran like gruel and was thin enough for Victor to swallow.