Living Up to Billy

Dear Kate:

I didn't write you before cause I wanted to be able to tell you what we are going to do about the kid. Jim was up and we talked it all over and I said I would take him. I don't want none of Jim's friends to have him cause he ain't no good, Kate, and I have always told you so. I made him promise if I take Billy that he will leave him alone. I won't have him hanging around and I don't want Billy to see nothing more of him than he has to. I blame him for all that has come to you. Before you married him and got in with his crowd, you was on the level, but--it ain't no use kicking now, it is all done; only I want him to keep his hands off Billy. There is a roomer on the floor below that has got a little girl who will come in and kinda look after Billy when I am out. I can take him out for a walk every day and perhaps I can get him in one of those kids' schools for two or three hours in the afternoon.

Jim brought him up at night, and he was all sleepy and soft and warm and cuddled up to me just like a little kitten. I never noticed before how pretty he was, but I watched him as he lay there with his red lips half open and his long black lashes laying on his cheeks and his hair all curling around his face, and I just could not go to sleep for looking at him. He is too pale, I think. Seems to me he ought to have more color in his cheeks. I suppose it is cause he hasn't had enough outdoor exercise that babies should have. Roomers should not have kids. It don't seem just right to shut a baby up in four walls when he would like to run and play outside with other young things. But I am going to do the best I can by him, so don't you worry, he will be all right.

Jim is pretty sore about you getting pinched, and says he is going to leave town. The crowd is kinda scared, and I think they are going to scatter. Irene went to St. Louis the other day, cause she said the cops are getting too familiar with her face. I told the whole bunch what I thought of them, and that they had better clear out. Do you remember Jenny Kerns? She was that little blond that use to clerk in Siegel's store. She has got the room right next to me, and say, she is awful sick. I have been setting up nights with her till I am dippy for want of sleep. I think she is all in. I didn't let her know it, but I have sent for her mother. I snooped around her place the other night till I found her mother's address, and I wrote her a letter telling her just how Jenny was, and that some one orter come and get her. Jenny would kill me if she knew it, cause she don't want her folks to know what she is doing, but it seems too bad to have her die here alone in a rotten little room on 28th Street when she has got a mother, who, no matter what she has done, would be glad to see her. Say what you will Kate, girls that have got mothers have a darned sight better chance than girls like you and me who was brought up on the street, and when she gets sick and lonely, no matter how tough she has been, if she can reach out her hand and touch her mother, she can sort of begin over again.

I have been learning a lot of the new dances, and Fred Stillman and me took the prize the other night for the best hesitation waltz. I am going to try to get a job dancing in one of the restaurants. I am tired working like a dog in these cheap theatres, and I know I can dance as well as any girl on Broadway. A crowd of us blew in the other night at that big dance hall at 59th Street, and everybody stopped to watch me and Fred. It kinda makes you feel good to know you can do anything well, if it is only tangoing, and I do love it! When I get a good partner it seems to me I hear voices calling, and the music ain't made just by some niggers in the corner, but it is just something speaking to me and something inside of me answers and I forget I am in a hall with a lot of people looking at me, I am just a dancing by myself to the things I hear. Jim says you have fixed it with a guard so as you can get all the letters you want. I can't slip you over twenty dollars a month to save my soul. That orter be able to fix him enough, but if it ain't, let me know, cause you know Kate, you can have every dollar I make except just enough to keep the kid a going, if it will make things easier for you. Get me out a letter whenever you can. Remember I am always thinking of you.

Nan.

Dear Kate:

I told you, didn't I, of sending for Jenny Kerns' mother. Well, she come and she was just the kind you read about in story books. The moment I opened the door I knew who she was and I took her in my room and had her take her hat off and smooth her hair and try to make it easy about Jenny. I told her she had been working too hard, and had caught cold and that if she was took home where she had the right kind of things to eat and real nursing, not just us girls going in when we had the time, that she would soon get all right. The mother could hardly wait until I had finished, and she sort of trembled all over. When I took her into Jenny's room, Jenny was laying with her eyes shut, not asleep, but just like she lays most of the time, and she looked so white and little and her lashes were so black against her white face, that I could see it went right into that mother's heart. She went up to the bed, and put her arms around Jenny, and her face against hers, and said, "My little girl, mother's own little girl," and then I left, 'cause I am kinda soft, and I could see it was the hose cart for me. In about half an hour, I went in to see if they was hungry, and Jenny was laying there with her mother's hand in hers looking as if she had found peace. I just wanted to put my arms around that little old fashioned woman and cry. You know, style don't seem to count when it is your mother. The old lady is going to stay until Jenny is better, then they are going home, and I hope we will never see Jenny again. Being a chorus girl ain't her place. She belongs in a little town playing the church organ.

But say, you would laugh to see the old lady. She don't fit in a rooming house in 28th Street. She has a nice, sweet, old face and she combs her hair back from it, parted in the middle, and she smiles at all of us in a loving way, cause she thinks we have been good to Jenny. And the girls! It is funny to see them when they first blow into the room and run into her. They look as if they saw a ghost, and then they set back quiet, and let her talk. She tells them all about Iowa or wherever it is she is from, and about Jenny when she was a little girl, and her father and her two brothers, and how sorry they were when Jenny come to New York to study music, but they didn't want to stand in her way. All the girls come in whenever they have a chance and bring Jenny some little thing from the delicatessen or some plants or flowers. Her room is awful pretty, cause they keep it just filled with flowers. Mary Callahan took the mother out the other afternoon to a moving picture show. She didn't want to leave Jenny, but we told her she must get out a little or she would get sick too. Mary said that everyone stared at her, and some of the crowd at the corner were going to guy her, but she gave them one look, and they said nothing. I stayed with Jenny and she talked about her mother all the time that she was gone and about the home and the little berg where she comes from. She is crazy to get back, cause I think she knows it won't be for long, and she wants to pass in her checks with the folks around her. She said to me, "Oh, Nan, I have had my lesson, and it has cost me dear, but I won't kick, as I wouldn't have been satisfied till I had tried it." But I thought, if all the preachers could bring up a few girls who think they want to try the Great White Way, and let them take a good look at Jenny, it would be better than all their sermons. Any girl with half a brain would say, "Oh, little Oskaloosa is good enough for me."

No, I won't bring Billy up to see you, Kate. He is big enough to remember things, and I don't want him to know what a prison is, and his first remembrance of his mother must not be that he saw her behind the bars. I know you want to see him and I can understand it, because I love him too, but I would die without ever touching his hand rather than ever let him see me in stripes. He will be five years old when you get out Kate, and he grows cunninger each day. He don't look a bit like Jim, has got our curly reddish hair, and his eyes are blue like yours instead of brown like mine. I suppose I orter have his hair cut, as it is so thick and curly, but I can't bear to, as it is the only thing he has of mine, and I like to look at it, and feel he is a little bit like me. I make him up a bed at night on the morris chair, cause Jenny's mother sleeps with me, and do you know, at night when she is sound asleep if she hears Jenny cough, she raises up and listens and if it don't stop right away, she slips out of bed and goes into her room. I tell you, I am going to have a mother some day if I have to get you to steal one for me.

Yours, Nan.

Dear Kate:

I ain't wrote you for quite a time, cause I have been in a lot of trouble, and so busy and kinda tired out that any time I set down long enough to write a letter, I go to sleep. Billy had an awful accident. I was making some hot chocklate in my room, and he pulled the pan over on him and burned his hand and arm and shoulder. I took him to St. Vincent's hospital and they fixed him up, but said he didn't look well and I orter leave him there awhile. They put him in a ward with a lot of other babies, and I go every day to see him. He can set up now and play. I take him up something every time I go, and some things for the other kiddies too. There are twelve little tads in the room, and they are awful good when you think that they are sick. One little kid had both his hips broke, and he lies on his back with his feet in a sling that holds his legs straight up and he plays with his toys and talks to himself and never whimpers except when he sees the doctor come in the ward. Then his face gets awful scared, and his eyes get big and black with a helpless look of fear in them, cause he knows the doctor means changing his bandages and that hurts. The doctors and the nurses talk and handle the children just as if they loved them. There is a little boy in the bed next to Billy who is only six months older than Billy, and he looks something like him. He has got Billy's blond curls, and great big eyes, only he is much stronger. I suppose it is because he lives in the country. His mother is an English woman with an awful funny accent, but I like her real well. She lives out in New Jersey, somewhere on a little farm. Her kid is going to leave next week, and she asked me to bring Billy and come and see her. I told her I would, but Lord, I don't believe I know where New Jersey is. When I come to think of it, I ain't never been even to Hoboken. All the United States of America I know is bounded on the north by 59th Street, and on the south by 14th Street, on the east by Third Avenue, and the sun sets on Seventh Avenue for me. I never stopped to think that people lived anywhere else, but I suppose all these folks that we see chasing up and down with packages in their hands must be going somewhere. You know, Kate, we ain't never been in the country in our lives. Honest, I don't believe we have ever seen real grass and I never wanted to before, but when I saw the look in that little woman's face, and how different her baby was than Billy, I kinda thought I would like to see how she lived. I wonder if country kids do have a better time than city kids? We had an awful good time, if doing just as you please is having a good time. Do you remember how you used to shake my teeth out for following the hand organ men around town? It is funny we young ones didn't get run over or killed, the way we was always in the streets. It might have been all right, but I would hate to see Billy bringing himself up the way I did.