His first conscious recollection was of sitting on a high chair drawn
up to a table at which he was having a meal. He could never recall
whether this was in Harlem, Hoboken, Brooklyn, Jersey City, or the
Bronx. Because they moved so often he had little more memory of places
than he had of clouds. Tenements, streets, and suburbs of New York
melted into one big sense of squalor. It was not squalor to him because
he was used to it. It only obscured the difference between one dwelling
and another, as monotony always obscures remembrance. Wherever their
wanderings carried them, the background was the same, crowded, dirty,
seething, a breeding place rather than a home.
What marked this occasion was a question he asked and the answer he got
back.
"Mudda, id my name Gracie, or id it Tom?"
The mother spoke sharply, as she whisked about the kitchen. "What do
you want to know for?"
The question was difficult. He knew what he wanted to know for, and yet
it wasn't easy to explain. The nearest he could get to it in language
was to say: "I'm a little boy, ain't I?"
"Yes, you're a little boy, but you should have been a little girl. It
was a little girl I wanted."
"But you want me, don't you, mudda?"
She dropped whatever she was doing to press his head fiercely against
her side. "Yes, I want _you_! I want _you_! I want _you_!"
He remembered this paroxysm of affection not because it was special
but because it was connected with his gropings after his identity.
Paroxysms were what he lived on. They were of love or of anger or of
something which frightened him and yet was nameless. He thrummed to
himself, beating time on the table with his spoon, while he worked on
to another point.
"Wadn't there never no Gracie, mudda?"
She wheeled round from the gas-stove. "For goodness' sake, what's
putting this into your head? Of course there was a Gracie. You're her.
You don't suppose I stole you, do you?"
He ceased his thrumming; he ceased to beat on the table with his spoon.
The mystery of being grew still more baffling.
"Mudda!"
"What's it now?"
"If I wad Gracie I'd be a little girl, wouldn't I?"
She stamped her foot. "Stop it! If you ask me another thing I'll slap
you."
He stopped it, not because he was afraid of being slapped. Accustomed
to that he had learned to discount its ferocity. A sharp stinging
smart, it passed if you grinned and bore it, and grinning and bearing
had already entered his life as part of its philosophy. If for the
minute he asked no more questions it was in order not to vex his mudda.
She was easily vexed; she easily lost her self-control; she was easily
repentant. It was her repentance that he feared. It was so violent, so
overwhelming. He loved love; he loved caressing; he loved to sit in her
lap and sing with her; but her tempests of self-reproach alarmed him.
As she washed the dishes or switched about the kitchen, he watched
her with that trepidation which makes the children of the poor
sharp-witted. Though under five years of age, he was already developing
a sense of responsibility. You could see it in the gravity of a wholly
straightforward little face, which had the even tan of a healthy
fairness, in keeping with his crisp ashen hair. He knew when the moment
had come to clamber down from his perch, and snuggle himself against
her petticoats.
"Mudda, sing!"
"I can't sing now. Don't you see I'm busy! Look out, or this hot
dish-water'll scald you."
Nevertheless, a few minutes later they were settled in the rocking
chair, he on her knee, with his cheek against her shoulder. She was not
as ungracious as her words would have made her seem, a fact of which he
was aware.
"What'll I sing, Troublesome?"
"Sing 'Three Cups of Cold Poison.'"
So she sang in a sweet, true voice, the sort of childish voice which
children love, her little boy joining in with her whenever he knew the
words, but with only a hit-or-miss venture at the tune.
"Where have you been dining, Lord Ronald, my son?
Where have you been dining, my handsome young man?"
"I've been dining with my true love, mither, make my bed soon,
There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon."
"And what did she give you, Lord Ronald, my son?
And what did she give you, my handsome young man?"
"Three cups of cold poison, mither, make my bed soon,
There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon."
"What'll you will to your mither, Lord Ronald, my son?
What'll you will to your mither, my handsome young man?"
"My gowd and my silver, mither, make my bed soon,
There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon."
"What'll you will to your brither, Lord Ronald, my son?
What'll you will to your brither, my handsome young man?"
"My coach and six horses, mither, make my bed soon,
There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon."
"What'll you will to your truelove, Lord Ronald, my son?
What'll you will to your truelove, my handsome young man?"
"A rope for to hang her, mither, make my bed soon,
There's a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon."
His next conscious memory was more dramatic. He had been playing in
the street, in what town he could never remember. They had recently
moved, but they had always recently moved. A month in one set of rooms,
and his mother was eager to be off. Rarely did they ever stay anywhere
for more than the time of moving in, giving the necessary notice, and
moving out again. When they stayed long enough for him to know a few
children he sometimes played with them.
In this way the thing happened. The boy's name was Frankie Bell, a
detail which remained long after the larger facts had escaped him.
Frankie Bell and he had been engaged in scraping the dust and offal of
the street into neat little piles, with the object of building what
they called a "dirt-house." The task was engrossing, and to it little
Tom Coburn gave himself with good will. Suddenly, as each bent over his
pile, Frankie Bell threw off the observation, casually uttered:
"My mother says your mother's crazy."
Tom Coburn raised himself from his stooping posture, standing straight,
and looking straight. The expression in his dark blue eyes, over which
the eyebrows even now stood out bushily, was of pain, and yet of pain
that left him the more dauntless. Though knowing but vaguely what the
word crazy meant, he knew it was insulting.
"She ain't."
Frankie Bell, a stout young man, lifted himself slowly. "Yes, she is.
My mother says so."
"Well, your mudda id a liar."
One rush and Frankie Bell lay sprawling with his head in the cushioned
softness of his own dirt-heap. The attack had taken him so much by
surprise that he went down before he could bellow. Before he could
bellow his enemy was upon him, filling his mouth with the materials
collected for architectural purposes. Victor in the fray, Tom Coburn
ran homeward blinded with his tears.
He found his mother at the stove, stirring something with a tablespoon.
"Mudda, you're _not_ crazy, _are_ you?"
His reply was a blow on the head with the spoon. The woman was beside
herself.
"Who said that?"
Rubbing his head, he told her.
"Don't you ever let them say no such thing again. If you do I'll kill
you." She threw back her head, her arms outstretched, the spoon in her
right hand. "God! God! What'll they say next? They'll say I stole him.
It'll be twenty years for me; it'll be forty; it may be life. I won't
live to begin it. I know what'll end it before they can...."
He was terrified now, terrified as he had never been in all his
terrifying moments. Throwing himself upon her, he clutched at her
skirts.
"Don't, mudda, don't! I'm your little boy! You didn't steal me. Don't
cry, mudda! Oh, don't cry! don't cry!"
When, in one of her sudden reactions, she sank sobbing to the floor, he
sank with her, petting her, coaxing her, wiping away her tears, forcing
himself to laugh so that she should laugh with him; but a few days
afterward they moved.
V
"Mudda, can I have a book and learn to read?"
The ambition had been inspired in the street, where he had seen a
little boy who actually had a book, and was spelling out the words. Tom
Coburn was now nominally six years old, though it was in the nature of
things that of his age no exact record could be kept. His mother had
changed his birthday so many times that he observed it whenever she
said it had come round.
Bursting into the room with his eager question, he found her sitting by
a window looking out at a blank wall. Given her feverish restlessness,
the attitude called attention to itself. The apartment was poorer and
dingier than any they had lived in hitherto, while it had not escaped
his observation that she was living on the ragged edge of her nerves.
This made him the more sorry for her, and the more loving. He put his
hand on her shoulder, tenderly.
"What's the matter, mudda?"