I am going to write a history of my life. The things that happen in this
place are the same things, just like our breakfasts, dinners, and
suppers. They wouldn't be interesting to hear about, so while waiting
for something real exciting to put down, I am going to write my history.
I don't know very much about who I am. I wish my Mother had left a diary
about herself, but she didn't. Nobody, not even Miss Katherine, will
tell me who I was before I came here, which I did when I was three. I
know my nurse brought me, but I can't remember what she looked like, and
when she went away without me: I never saw nor heard of her again. I
don't even know her name. I thought it was fine to play in a big yard
with a lot of children, and I soon stopped crying for my nurse.
I never did see much sense in crying. Everybody was good to me, and not
being old enough to know I was a Charity child, and by nature happy,
they used to call me Cricket. Sometimes some of them call me that now.
A hundred dozen times I have asked Miss Katherine to tell me something
about myself, but in some way she always gets out of it. I know my
mother and father are dead, but that's all I do know; and I wouldn't ask
Miss Bray if I had to stand alone for ever and ever.
Sometimes I believe Miss Katherine knows something she won't tell me,
but since I found out she don't like me to ask her I've stopped. And not
being able to ask out what I'd like, I think a lot more, and some nights
when I can't go to sleep, it gives me an awful sinking feeling right
down in my stomach, to think in all this great big world there isn't a
human that's any kin to me.
I might have come from the heavens above or the depths below, only I
didn't, and being like other girls in size and shape and feelings, I
know I once did have a Mother and Father. But if they had relations
they've kept quiet, and it's plain they don't want to know anything
about me, never having asked.
It would make me miserable--this aloneness would, if I let it. I won't
let it. I have got to look out for Mary Cary, frequently Martha, and
when you're miserable you don't get much of anything that's going
around. I won't be unhappy. I just won't. I haven't enough other
blessings.
But not being able to speak out as much as I would like on some things
personal, I got into the habit of talking to my other self, which I
named Martha, and which I call my secret sister. Martha is my every-day
self, like the Bible Martha who did things, and didn't worry trying to
find out what couldn't be found out, specially about why God lets
Mothers die.
Mary is my Sunday self who wonders and wonders at everything and asks a
million questions inside, and goes along and lets people think she is
truly Martha when she knows all the time she isn't. And if I do hold out
and write a history of my life, it's going to be a Martha and Mary
history; for some days I'm one, some another, and whichever I happen to
be is plain to be seen.
When I grow up I am going to marry a million-dollar man, so I can travel
around the world and have a house in Paris with twenty bath-rooms in
it. And I'm going to have horses and automobiles and a private car and
balloons, if they are working all right by that time. I hope they will
be, for I want something in which I can soar up and sit and look down on
other people.
All my life people have looked down on me, passing me by like I was a
Juny bug or a caterpillar, and I don't wonder. I'm merely Mary Cary with
fifty-eight more just like me. Blue calico, white dots for winter, white
calico, blue dots for summer. Black sailor hats and white sailor hats
with blue capes for cold weather, and no fire to dress by, and freezing
fingers when it's cold, and no ice-water when it's hot.
Yes, dear Mary, you and I are going to marry a rich man. (Martha is
writing to-day.) I will try to love him, but if I can't I will be polite
to him and travel alone as much as possible. But I am going to be rich
some day. I am. And when I come back to Yorkburg eyes will bulge, for
the clothes I am going to wear will make mouths water, they're going to
be so grand. Miss Katherine would be ashamed of that and make me
ashamed, but this writing is for the relief of feelings.
But there's one thing I'm surer of than I am of being rich, and that is
that there are to be no secrets about my children's mother. They are to
know all about me I can tell, which won't be much or distinguished, but
what there is they're to know. And that's the chief reason I'm going to
write my history, so as to remember in case I forget.
Well, now I will begin. I am eleven years and eleven months and three
days old. I don't have birthday parties. The Yorkburg Female Orphan
Asylum is a large house with a wide hall in the middle, and a wing on
one side that makes it look like Major Green, who lost one arm in the
war.
There are large grounds around the house, and around the grounds is a
high brick wall in front and a wooden fence back and sides. The children
and the chickens use the grounds at the back; the front has grass and
flowers, and is for company, which is seldom. Sometimes, just because I
can't help it, I chase a chicken through the front so as to know how it
feels to run in the grass, which it is forbidden to do.
Forbidden things are so much nicer than unforbidden. I love to do them
until they're done.
The Asylum is on King Street, almost at the very end, and there isn't
much passing, just the Tates and the Gordons and a few others living
farther on. The dining-room is in the basement, half below the ground,
and on cloudy days the lamps have to be lighted--that is, they used to.
Now we have electric lights, and I just love to turn them on. It's such
a grand way to get a thing done, just to press a button.
The dining-room has a picture over the mantel of a cow standing in
yellow-brown grass, and, though hideous, it's a great comfort. That cow
understands our feelings at mealtimes, and we understand hers.
Humane meals are very much like yellow-brown grass, and our clothes are
on the same order as our meals. As for our days, if it wasn't for
calendars we wouldn't know one from the other, except Sundays, for,
unlike the stars mentioned by St. Paul, they differ not.
The rising-bell rings at five o'clock, and all except the very littlest
get up and clean up until seven, when we march into the dining-room. At
7.25 we rise at the tap of Miss Bray's bell, and those who have more
cleaning up-stairs march out; those who clear the table and wash the
dishes stay behind. At 8.30 we march into the school-room, where we
have prayers and calisthenics. The calisthenics are fine. At nine we
begin recitations.
We have a teacher who lives in town, Miss Elvira Strother. She's a good
teacher. The older girls help teach the little ones, and next year I'm
to help.
This Asylum is over ninety (90) years old, but looks much older. There
is just money enough to run it, and it hasn't had any paint or
improvements in the memory of man, except the electric lights. The town
put those in for safety, and don't charge for them.
I wish the town would put in bath-tubs for the same reason. It would
make the children much nicer. They just naturally don't like to wash,
and one small pitcher of water for two girls don't allow much splashing.
But Yorkburg hasn't any water-works, not being born with them. I mean,
water-works not being the fashion when Yorkburg was first begun, nobody
has ever thought of putting them in. Mr. Loyall, he's the mayor, says
everybody has gotten on very well for over two hundred years without
them, and he don't see any use in stirring up the subject. So there'll
never be any change until he's dead, and in Yorkburg nobody dies till
the last thing.
There wouldn't be any electric lights if the shoe factory hadn't come
here. The men who brought it came from New Jersey, and they wanted
light, and got it. And Yorkburg was so pleased that it moved a little
and made some light for itself; and now everything in town just blazes,
even the Asylum.
I used to sleep in No. 4, but I don't sleep there now. It is a big room,
and has six windows in it, and in winter we children used to play we
were arctic explorers and would search for icebergs. The North Pole was
the Reagan's house, half-way down the street, and it might as well have
been, for it was as much beyond our reach.
But it was the one thing we were all going to get some day when we
married rich. And when we got it, we were going to drive up to the Galt
House--that's the Home for Poor and Proud Ladies--and ask for Mrs.
Reagan, who was to be in it in the third floor back, and leave her some
old clothes with the buttons off, and old magazines. None of us could
bear Mrs. Reagan--not a single one.
It is a beautiful house, Mrs. Reagan's is. It has large white pillars
in the front and back, and it's got three bath-rooms, and a big tank in
the back yard. And it has velvet curtains over the lace ones, and gold
furniture and pictures with gold frames a foot wide.
I heard Miss Katherine talking about it to Miss Webb one night. They
were laughing about something Miss Katherine said was the most
impossible of all, and Miss Webb said it was desecrating for such a
stately old house to fall into the hands of such bulgarians. What are
bulgarians? I don't know. But they're not ladies.
Mrs. Reagan is not a lady. The way I found it out was this. Miss Jones,
she's our housekeeper, sent a message to her one day by Bertha Reed and
me about some pickles. Bertha is awful timid, and she didn't know
whether or not we ought to go to the front door; but I did, and I told
her to come on.
"I don't go to back doors, if I don't know my family history," I said.
"I know who I am, and something inside of me tells me where to go." And
I pressed the button so hard I thought I'd broken it unintentional.
The man-servant opened the door and looked at us as if weary and
surprised, and said nothing.
"Is Mrs. Reagan in?" I asked.
"She is."
That's all he said. He waited. I waited. Then I stepped forward.
"We will come in," I said. "And you go and tell her Mary Cary would like
to see her, having a message from Miss Jones." And he was so surprised
he moved aside, and in I walked.
I had heard so much about this house that I wasn't going to miss seeing
what was in it, if that fool man was rude; so while he was gone to get
Mrs. Reagan I counted everything in the front parlor as quick as I
could, and told Bertha to count everything in the back.
There were three sofas and two mirrors and nine chairs and six rugs and
six tables and two pianos, one little old-fashioned one and a big new
one; and three stools and seventeen candlesticks and four pedestals with
statuary on them, some broken, all naked; and seven palms and
twenty-three pictures and two lamps and five red-plush curtains, three
pairs over the lace ones and two at the doors; and as for ornaments, it
was a shop. And not one single book.
I am sure I got the things right, for I'd been practising remembering
at observation parties, in case I ever got a chance to see inside this
house; and I looked hard so I could tell the girls.
Poor Bertha was so frightened she didn't remember anything but the clock
and a china cat and an easel and picture, and before I could count Mrs.
Reagan came in.
She stopped in the doorway, and had we come from leper-land she couldn't
have held herself farther off.
"What are you doing in here?" she asked, and she tried the haughty
air--"What are you doing in here?"
"We were waiting for you," I said. "We have a message from Miss Jones."
"Well, another time don't wait in here, and don't come to the front door
if you have a message from Miss Jones or Miss Any-body-else. I don't
want any pickles this year. Had I wanted any I would have sent her word.
You understand? Don't ever come here again in this way!" And she waved
us out as if we were flies.
For a minute I looked at her as if she were a Mrs. Jorley's wax-works,
and then I made a bow like I make in charades.
"We understand," I said. "And we will not come again. We've heard a
good many people in Yorkburg have been once and no more." And I bowed
again and walked past her like she was a stage character, which she was,
being a pretence and nothing else.
Mad? I tell you, I was Martha for a week, and then I saw, real sudden,
how silly I was to let a bulgarian make me mad.
But if I'm ever expected to love anything like that, it will be
expecting too much of Mary Cary, mostly Martha, for she isn't an enemy.
She's just a make-believe of something she wasn't born into being and
don't know how to make herself. She don't agree with my nature, and if I
had a parlor she couldn't come into it either. She could not.