Sunny, after she left Jerry's apartment, might be likened to a little
wounded wild thing, who has trailed off with broken wing. She had never
consciously committed a wrong act. Motherless, worse than fatherless,
young, innocent, lovely, how should she fare in a land whose ways were
as foreign to that from which she had come as if she had been
transplanted to a new planet.
As she turned into Sixth Avenue, under the roaring elevated structure,
with its overloaded trains, crammed with the home-going workers of New
York, she had no sense of direction and no clear purpose in mind. All
she felt was that numb sense of pain at her heart and the impulse to get
as far away as possible from the man she loved. Swept along by a moving,
seething throng that pressed and pushed and shoved and elbowed by her,
Sunny had a sick sense of home longing, an inexpressible yearning to
escape from all this turmoil and noise, this mad rushing and pushing and
panting through life that seemed to spell America. She sensed the fact
that she was in the Land of Barbarians, where everyone was racing and
leaping and screaming in an hysteria of speed. Noise, noise, incessant
noise and movement--that was America! No one stopped to think; no polite
words were uttered to the stranger. It was all a chaos, a madhouse,
wherein dark figures rushed by like shadows in the night and little
children played in the mud of the streets.
The charming, laughing, pretty days in the shelter of the studio of her
friend had passed into this nightmare of the Sixth Avenue noise, where
all seemed ugly, cruel and sinister. Life in America was not the
charming kindly thing Sunny had supposed. Beauty indeed she had brought
in her heart with her, and that, though she knew it not, was why she had
seen only the beautiful; but now, even for her, it had all changed. She
had looked into faces full of hatred and malice; she had listened to
words that whipped worse than the lash of Hirata.
As she went along that noisy, crowded avenue, there came, like a breath
of spring, a poignant lovely memory of the home she had left. Like a
vision, the girl saw wide spaces, little blue houses with pink roofs and
the lower floor open to the refreshing breezes of the spring. For it was
springtime in Japan just as it was in New York, and Sunny knew that the
trees would be freighted with a glorified frost of pink and white
blossoms. The wistaria vines would hang in purple glory to peer at their
faces in the crystal pools. The fluttering sleeves of the happy
picnickers threading through lanes of long slender bamboos. The lotus in
the ponds would soon open their white fingers to the sun. Rosy cheeked
children would laugh at Sunny and pelt her with flower petals, and she
would call back to them, and toss her fragrant petals back.
It was strange as she went along that dirty way that her mind escaped
from what was before and on all sides of her, and went out across the
sea. She saw no longer the passing throngs. In imagination the girl from
Japan looked up a hill slope on which a temple shone. Its peaks were
twisted and the tower of the pagoda seemed ablaze with gold. Countless
steps led upward to the pagoda, but midway of the steps there was a
classic Torrii, in which was a small shrine. Here on a pedestal, smiling
down upon the kneeling penitents, Kuonnon, the Goddess of Mercy, stood.
To Her now, in the streets of the American City, the girl of Japan sent
out her petition.
"Oh, Kuonnon, sweet Lady of Mercy, permit the spirit of my honourable
mother to walk with me through these dark and noisy streets."
The shining Goddess of Mercy, trailing her robes among the million stars
in the heavens above, surely heard that tiny petition, for certain it is
that something warm and comforting swept over the breast of the tired
Sunny. We know that faith will "remove mountains." Sunny's faith in her
mother's spirit caused her to feel assured that it walked by her side.
The Japanese believe that we can think our dead alive, and if we are
pure and worthy, we may indeed recall them.
It came to pass, that after many hours, during which she walked from
67th Street to 125th, and from the west to the east side of that avenue,
that she stopped before a brightly lighted window, within which cakes
and confections were enticingly displayed, and from the cellar of which
warm odours of cooking were wafted to the famished girl. Sunny's youth
and buoyant health responded to that claim. Her feet, in the
unaccustomed American shoes--in Japan she had worn only sandals and
clogs--were sore and extremely weary from the long walk, and a sense of
intense exhaustion added to that pang of emptiness within.
By the baker's window, therefore, on the dingy Third Avenue of the upper
east side, leaned Sunny, staring in hungrily at the food so near and yet
so far away. She asked herself in her quaint way:
"What I are now to do? My honourable insides are ask for food."
She answered her own question at once.
"I will ask the advice of first person I meet. He will tell me."
The streets were in a semi-deserted condition, such as follows after the
home-going throngs have been tucked away into their respective abodes.
There was a cessation of traffic, only the passing of the trains
overhead breaking the hush of early night that comes even in the City of
New York. It was now fifteen minutes to nine, and Sunny had had nothing
to eat since her scant breakfast.
Kuonnon, her mother's spirit, providence--call it what we may--suffered
it that the first person whom Sunny was destined to meet should be Katy
Clarry, a product of the teeming east side, a shop girl by trade. She
was crossing the street, with her few small packages, revealing her
pitiful night marketing at adjacent small shops, when Sunny accosted
her.
"Aexcuse me. I lig' ask you question, please," said Sunny with timid
politeness.
"Uh-h-h?"
Miss Clarry, her grey, clear eye sweeping the face of Sunny in one
comprehensive glance that took her "number," stopped short at the curb,
and waited for the question.
"I are hungry," said Sunny simply, "and I have no money and no house in
which to sleep these night. What I can do?"
"Gee!" Katy's grey eyes flew wider. The girl before her seemed as far
from being a beggar as anyone the east side girl had ever seen.
Something in the wistful, lovely face looking at her in the dark street
tightened that cord that was all mother in the breast of Katy Clarry.
After a moment:
"Are you stone broke then? Out of work? You don't look's if you could
buck up against tough luck. What you doin' on the streets? You
ain't----? No, you ain't. I needn't insult you by askin' that. Where's
your home, girl?"
"I got no home," said Sunny, in a very faint voice. A subtle feeling was
stealing over the tired Sunny, and the whiteness of her cheeks, the
drooping of her eyes, apprized Katy of her condition.
"Say, don't be fallin' whatever you do. You don't want no cop to get 'is
hands on you. You come along with me. I ain't got much, but you're
welcome to share what I got. I'll stake you till you get a job. Heh! Get
a grip on yourself. There! That's better. Hold on to me. I'll put them
packages under this arm. We ain't got far to walk. Steady now. We don't
want no cop to say we're full, because we ain't."
Katy led the trembling Sunny along the dirty, dingy avenue to one of
those melancholy side streets of the upper east side. They came to a
house whose sad exterior proclaimed what was within. Here Katy applied
her latch key, and in the dark and odorous halls they found their way up
four flights of stairs. Katy's room was at the far end of a long bare
hall, and its dimensions were little more than the shining kitchenette
of the studio apartment.
Katy struck a match, lit a kerosene lamp, and attached to the one
half-plugged gas jet a tube at the end of which was a one-burner gas
stove. Sunny, sitting helplessly on the bed, was too dazed and weary to
hold her position for long, and at Katy's sharp: "Heh, there! lie down,"
she subsided back upon the bed, sighing with relief as her exhausted
body felt the comfort of Katy's hard little bed. From sundry places Katy
drew forth a frying pan, a pitcher of water, a tiny kettle and a teapot.
She put two knives and forks and spoons on the table, two cracked plates
and two cups. She peeled a single potato, and added it to the two
frankfurters frying on the pan. She chattered along as she worked,
partly to hide her own feelings, and partly to set the girl at her ease.
But indeed Sunny was far from feeling an embarrassment such as Katy in
her place might have felt. The world is full of two kinds of people;
those who serve, and those who are served, and to the latter family
Sunny belonged. Not the lazy, wilful parasites of life, but the helpless
children, whom we love to care for. Katy, glancing with a maternal eye,
ever and anon at the so sad and lovely face upon her pillow was
curiously touched and animated with a desire to help her.
"You're dog-tired, ain't you? How long you been out of work? I always
feel more tired when I'm out o' work and looking for a job, than when I
got one, though it ain't my idea of a rest exactly to stand on your feet
all day long shoving out things you can't afford to have yourself to
folks who mostly just want to look 'em over. Some of them shoppers love
to come in just about closin' hour. They should worry whether the girl
behind the counter gets extra pay for overtime or if she's suffering
from female weaknesses or not. Of course, if I get into one of them big
stores downtown, I can give a customer the laugh when the dingdong
sounds for closin', but you can't do no such thing in Harlem. We're
still in the pioneer stage up here. I expect you're more used to the
Fifth Avenue joints. You look it, but, say, I never got a look in at one
of them jobs. They favour educated girls, and I ain't packed with
learning, I'm telling the world."
Sunny said:
"You loog good to me,"--a favourite expression of Jerry's, and something
in her accent and the earnestness with which she said it warmed Katy,
who laughed and said:
"Oh, go on. I ain't much on looks neither. There, now. Draw up.
All--l-ler _ready_! Dinner is served. Stay where you are on the bed.
Drop your feet over. I ain't got but the one chair, and I'll have it
meself, thank you, don't mention it."
Katy pushed the table beside the bed, drew her own chair to the other
side, set the kettle on the jet which the frying pan had released and
proudly surveyed her labour.
"Not much, but looks pretty good to me. If there's one thing I love it
is a hot dog."
She put on Sunny's plate the largest of the two frankfurters and
three-quarters of the potato, cut her a generous slice of bread and
poured most of the gravy on her plate, saying:
"I always say sausage gravy beats anything in the butter line. Tea'll be
done in a minute, dearie. Ain't got but one burner. Gee! I wisht I had
one of them two deckers that you can cook a whole meal at once with.
Ever seen 'em? How's your dog?"
"Dog?"
"Frankfurter--weeny, or in polite speech, sausage, dearie."
"How it is good," said Sunny with simple eloquence. "I thang you how
much."
"Don't mention it. You're welcome. You'd do the same for me if I was
busted. I always say one working girl should stake the other when the
other is out of work and broke. There's unity in strength," quoted Katy
with conviction. "Have some more--do! Dip your bread in the gravy.
Pretty good, ain't it, if I do say it who shouldn't."
"It mos' nices' food I are ever taste," declared Sunny earnestly.
While the tea was going into the cups:
"My name's Katy Clarry. What's yours?" asked Katy, a sense of well-being
and good humour toward the world flooding her warm being.
"Sunny."
"Sunny! That's a queer name. Gee! ain't it pretty? What's your other
name?"
"Sindicutt."
"Sounds kind o' foreign. What are you, anyway? You ain't American--at
least you don't look it or talk it, though heaven knows anything and
everything calls itself American to-day," said the native-born American
girl with scorn. "Meaning no offence, you understand, but--well--you
just don't look like the rest of us. You ain't a Dago or a Sheeny. I can
see that, and you ain't a Hun neither. Are you a Frenchy? You got queer
kind of eyes--meaning no offence, for personally I think them lovely, I
really do. I seen actresses with no better eyes than you got."
Katy shot her questions at Sunny, without waiting for an answer. Sunny
smiled sadly.
"Katy, I are sawry thad I am not be American girl. I are born ad
Japan----"
"_You_ ain't no Chink. You can't tell me no such thing as that. I wasn't
born yesterday. What are you, anyway? Where do you come from? Are you a
royal princess in disguise?"
The latter question was put jocularly, but Katy in her imaginative way
was beginning to question whether her guest might not in fact be some
such personage. An ardent reader of the yellow press, by inheritance a
romantic dreamer, in happier circumstances Katy might have made a place
for herself in the artistic world. Her sordid life had been ever
glorified by her extravagant dreams in which she moved as a princess in
a realm where princes and lord and kings and dukes abounded.
"No, I are not princess," said Sunny sadly. "I not all Japanese, Katy,
jos liddle bit. Me? I got three kind of blood on my insides. I sawry
thad my ancestors put them there. I are Japanese and Russian and
American."
"Gee! You're what we call a mongrel. Meaning no offence. You can't help
yourself. Personally I stand up first for the home-made American article
but I ain't got no prejudice against no one. And anyway, you can _grow_
into an American if you want to. Now we women have got the francheese,
we got the right to vote and be nachelised too if we want to. So even if
you have a yellow streak in you--and looking at you, I'd say it was gold
moren't yellow--you needn't tell no one about it. No one'll be the
wiser. You can trust me not to open my mouth to a living soul about it.
What you've confided in me about being partly Chink is just as if you
had put the inflammation in a tomb. And it ain't going to make the least
bit of difference between us. Try one of them Uneeda crackers. Sop it in
your tea now you're done with your gravy. Pretty good, ain't it? I'll
say it is."
"Katy, to-night I are going to tell you some things about me, bi-cause I
know you are my good frien' now forever. I lig' your kind eye, Katy."
"Go on! You're kiddin' me, Sunny. If I had eyes like yours, it'd be a
different matter. But I'm stuck on the idea of having you for a friend
just the same. I ain't had a chum since I don't know when. If you knew
what them girls was like in Bamberger's--well, I'm not talkin' about no
one behind their backs, but, say--Sunny, I could tell you a thing or
two'd make your hair stand on end. And as for tellin' me about your own
past, say if you'll tell me yours, I'll tell you mine. I always say that
every girl has some tradgedy or other in her life. Mine began on the
lower east side. I graduated up here, Sunny. It ain't nothing to brag
about, but it's heaven compared with what's downtown. I used to live in
that gutter part of the town where God's good air is even begrudged you,
and where all the dirty forriners and chinks--meanin' no offence,
dearie, and I'll say for the Chinks, that compared with some of them
Russian Jews--Gee! you're Russian too, ain't you, but I don't mean no
offence! Take it from me, Sunny, some of them east side forriners--I'll
call them just that to avoid givin' offence--are just exactly like lice,
and the smells down there--Gee! the stock yards is a flower garden
compared with it. Well, we come over--my folks did--I was born
there--I'm a real American, Sunny. Look me over. It won't hurt your eyes
none. My folks come over from Ireland. My mother often told me that they
thought the streets of New York were just running with gold, before they
come out. That simple they were, Sunny. But the gold was nothing but
plain, rotten dust. It got into the lungs and the spine of them all.
Father went first. Then mother. Lord only knows how they got it--doctor
said it was from the streets, germs that someone maybe dumped out and
come flyin' up into our place that was the only clean spot in the
tenement house, I'll say that for my mother. There was two kids left
besides me. I was the oldes' and not much on age at that, but I got me a
job chasin' around for a millinery shop, and I did my best by the kids
when I got home nights; but the cards was all stacked against me, Sunny,
and when that infantile parallysus come on the city, the first to be
took was my k-kid brother, and me li-little s-sister she come down with
it too and--Ah-h-h-h!"
Katy's head went down on the table, and she sobbed tempestuously. Sunny,
unable to speak the words of comfort that welled up in her heart, could
only put her arms around Katy, and mingle her tears with hers. Katy
removed a handkerchief from the top of her waist, dabbed her eyes
fiercely, shared the little ball with Sunny, and then thrust it down the
neck of her waist again. Bravely she smiled at Sunny again.
"There yoh got the story of the Clarry's of the east side of New York,
late of Limerick, Ireland. You can't beat it for--for tradgedy, now can
you? So spiel away at your own story, Sunny. I'm thinkin' you'll have a
hard time handin' me out a worse one than me own. Don't spare me, kid.
I'm braced for anything in this r-rotten world."