And as I sit here, thought Jimmy Herf, print itches like a rash inside me. I sit here pockmarked with print. He got to his feet. A little yellow dog was curled up asleep under the bench. The little yellow dog looked very happy. ‘What I need’s a good sleep,’ Jimmy said aloud.
‘What are you goin to do with it, Dutch, are you goin to hock it?’
‘Francie I wouldnt take a million dollars for that little gun.’
‘For Gawd’s sake dont start talkin about money, now… Next thing some cop’ll see it on your hip and arrest you for the Sullivan law.’
‘The cop who’s goin to arrest me’s not born yet… Just you forget that stuff.’
Francie began to whimper. ‘But Dutch what are we goin to do, what are we goin to do?’
Dutch suddenly rammed the pistol into his pocket and jumped to his feet. He walked jerkily back and forth on the asphalt path. It was a foggy evening, raw; automobiles moving along the slushy road made an endless interweaving flicker of cobwebby light among the skeleton shrubberies.
‘Jez you make me nervous with your whimperin an cryin… Cant you shut up?’ He sat down beside her sullenly again. ‘I thought I heard somebody movin in the bushes… This goddam park’s full of plainclothes men… There’s nowhere you can go in the whole crummy city without people watchin you.’
‘I wouldnt mind it if I didnt feel so rotten. I cant eat anythin without throwin up an I’m so scared all the time the other girls’ll notice something.’
‘But I’ve told you I had a way o fixin everythin, aint I? I promise you I’ll fix everythin fine in a couple of days… We’ll go away an git married. We’ll go down South… I bet there’s lots of jobs in other places… I’m gettin cold, let’s get the hell outa here.’
‘Oh Dutch,’ said Francie in a tired voice as they walked down the muddyglistening asphalt path, ‘do you think we’re ever goin to have a good time again like we used to?’
‘We’re S.O.L. now but that dont mean we’re always goin to be. I lived through those gas attacks in the Oregon forest didnt I? I been dopin out a lot of things these last few days.’
‘Dutch if you go and get arrested there’ll be nothin left for me to do but jump in the river.’
‘Didnt I tell you I wasnt goin to get arrested?’
Mrs Cohen, a bent old woman with a face brown and blotched like a russet apple, stands beside the kitchen table with her gnarled hands folded over her belly. She sways from the hips as she scolds in an endless querulous stream of Yiddish at Anna sitting blearyeyed with sleep over a cup of coffee: ‘If you had been blasted in the cradle it would have been better, if you had been born dead… Oy what for have I raised four children that they should all of them be no good, agitators and streetwalkers and bums…? Benny in jail twice, and Sol God knows where making trouble, and Sarah accursed given up to sin kicking up her legs at Minski’s, and now you, may you wither in your chair, picketing for the garment workers, walking along the street shameless with a sign on your back.’
Anna dipped a piece of bread in the coffee and put it in her mouth. ‘Aw mommer you dont understand,’ she said with her mouth full.
‘Understand, understand harlotry and sinfulness…? Oy why dont you attend to your work and keep your mouth shut, and draw your pay quietly? You used to make good money and could have got married decent before you took to running wild in dance halls with a goy. Oy Oy that I’ve raised daughters in my old age no decent man’d want to take to his house and marry…’
Anna got to her feet shrieking ‘It’s no business of yours… I’ve always paid my part of the rent regular. You think a girl’s worth nothin but for a slave and to grind her fingers off workin all her life… I think different, do you hear? Dont you dare scold at me…’
‘Oy you will talk back to your old mother. If Solomon was alive he’d take a stick to you. Better to have been born dead than talk back to your mother like a goy. Get out of the house and quick before I blast you.’
‘All right I will.’ Anna ran through the narrow trunkobstructed hallway to the bedroom and threw herself on her bed. Her cheeks were burning. She lay quiet trying to think. From the kitchen came the old woman’s fierce monotonous sobbing.
Anna raised herself to a sitting posture on the bed. She caught sight in the mirror opposite of a strained teardabbled face and rumpled stringy hair. ‘My Gawd I’m a sight,’ she sighed. As she got to her feet her heel caught on the braid of her dress. The dress tore sharply. Anna sat on the edge of the bed and cried and cried. Then she sewed the rent in the dress up carefully with tiny meticulous stitches. Sewing made her feel calmer. She put on her hat, powdered her nose copiously, put a little rouge on her lips, got into her coat and went out. April was coaxing unexpected colors out of the East Side streets. Sweet voluptuous freshness came from a pushcart full of pineapples. At the corner she found Rose Segal and Lillian Diamond drinking coca-cola at the softdrink stand.
‘Anna have a coke with us,’ they chimed.
‘I will if you’ll blow me… I’m broke.’
‘Vy, didnt you get your strike pay?’
‘I gave it all to the old woman… Dont do no good though. She goes on scoldin all day long. She’s too old.’
‘Did you hear how gunmen broke in and busted up Ike Goldstein’s shop? Busted up everythin wid hammers an left him unconscious on top of a lot of dressgoods.’
‘Oh that’s terrible.’
‘Soive him right I say.’
‘But they oughtnt to destroy property like that. We make our livin by it as much as he does.’
‘A pretty fine livin… I’m near dead wid it,’ said Anna banging her empty glass down on the counter.
‘Easy easy,’ said the man in the stand. ‘Look out for the crockery.’
‘But the worst thing was,’ went on Rose Segal, ‘that while they was fightin up in Goldstein’s a rivet flew out the winder an fell nine stories an killed a fireman passin on a truck so’s he dropped dead in the street.’
‘What for did they do that?’
‘Some guy must have slung it at some other guy and it pitched out of the winder.’
‘And killed a fireman.’
Anna saw Elmer coming towards them down the avenue, his thin face stuck forward, his hands hidden in the pockets of his frayed overcoat. She left the two girls and walked towards him. ‘Was you goin down to the house? Dont lets go, cause the old woman’s scoldin somethin terrible… I wish I could get her into the Daughters of Israel. I cant stand her no more.’
‘Then let’s walk over and sit in the square,’ said Elmer. ‘Dont you feel the spring?’