_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_.