_Dear Kate_:
I have been working again. Mrs. Smith got at me about the dancing, not
that she thinks the dancing is bad, but she don't like the places where
I dance nor the people I have to be with, and she is dead sore at the
rooming house where I live. She don't like the girls I float around
with, and that hang around my room. I can't understand it, because they
are all right, and I have known them kind of girls all my life. She came
up to see me one afternoon, and there was half a dozen in the room, and
the smoke was so thick you could cut it with a knife, and she cried
after they left, and said a lot of rot about me being too good to throw
my life away with them sort of people. She talked and she talked to me,
and I thought I would try to work again, not but what dancing ain't
work and there ain't nothing wrong with it either, but there is a hard
crowd down at Kelley's, and sometimes it kinda makes me sick. She talked
to me a lot about Billy, and said it will make a great difference in his
life if he can look back to his folks as being respectable. I myself
don't see why he should be any prouder of his aunt being a servant than
he would be if she was a dancing girl, and I get thirty per for dancing,
and only six little bucks for housework. I stayed awake two nights
thinking about it, wondering if I was getting tough and didn't know it,
cause things that I don't think nothing about at all, Mrs. Smith thinks
awful, and she says that the longer you live in that kind of life and
with people who have no "ideals"--whatever them is, one is just bound to
go down. I don't want to go down, and I don't want to get so I will
think crookedness is right, and that decent people are wrong, so I just
piped it out to myself as I lay awake at night that I would give the
honest work job another chance.
I answered an "ad" in the paper. I got a place up on West End Avenue. I
stayed there two months, then I had bad luck again. I liked the place
real well, and the people liked me, and I suppose I would have been
there yet, if I hadn't of cut my hand, because, take it from me, Kate I
am a dandy housekeeper and I like it too. I can't imagine nothing nicer
than having a little home of your own and taking care of it yourself. It
even give me a little thrill to walk into some body else's kitchen and
see it all clean and nice, the dishes and the glasses shining, and the
pretty white cloth on the table, and a bird singing in a cage before the
window, and know that all looked so home-like cause I made it so. If
somebody else's kitchen can make me feel that way, if I had one of my
own, I suppose I'd just naturally bust. The woman I worked for was one
of those sort of no-good women who ain't bad or who ain't good, who is
just _nothing_. She didn't do a thing around the house, didn't even take
care of her own clothes. She read a little in the morning, then went
down town every afternoon of her life, either to the theatres or to the
restaurants or shopping. Then at night as often as she could, she made
her poor husband put on his dress clothes and go somewhere with her.
They use to scrap a lot about it, as he was tired and generally wanted
to put on a pair of old slippers and set and smoke and read. Sometimes I
use to wonder what she done to earn her board, as she wasn't as much of
a help as a wife of a crook generally is. Even you, Kate, used to pass
the leather on when Jim pinched one, which was doing your share in
buying your meal ticket. She was dippy on the dancing, and women used to
come in the afternoon and dance with the victrola. I didn't let her know
that I danced at first.
One night I was a cutting bread and the knife slipped and cut my hand
between my thumb and first finger. The woman was awful nice about it,
and kept me on for two weeks. It didn't seem to get no better and the
doctor thinks I poisoned it. I didn't have the nerve to stay there
without doing something, so one day when she and some of her friends
were dancing like a lump of cheese, I told her I would learn her the
dance if she wanted me to, and--gee, didn't those females work me after
that! They didn't care nothing about the housework. It could go hang,
but morning, night and noon I was a holding some fat lady or some tall
lady or some short one from breaking her neck, as she tried to do the
Castle Glide or the Maxixe. I must say my boss was generous, she was
perfectly willing to loan me to all her friends and they grabbed after
me like a cat after a mouse, cause they was getting five-dollar lessons
for nothing. I stayed two weeks and I lost six pounds and my hand didn't
heal none and I didn't see where I was doing any better being a private
dancing teacher for a lot of fool women who really think no better than
a lot of the girls I had to go with, but who only know how to say it
better. Here I was working harder for six a week and at the same kind of
work, than I would be if I was dancing at thirty, so I told the woman I
must go. I spent all my money with the doctor and I didn't know what to
do, as I didn't want to go back to my room. Mrs. Smith was awful nice
and told me to come with her. I did and I am there now. My hand is a
little better but I still can't do much work and have to keep it tied
up. I can't wash dishes, nor do nothing where it will get wet.
Billy has learned his letters and he knows a lot of stories, especially
Bible stories out of a book that is full of pictures. He is awful funny.
He was showing me the book the other day, and he come to an old man with
long whiskers and I said, "Who is that old guy, Billy?" and he looked at
me so shocked and said, "Why, aunt Nannie, where have you been? That is
Moses," and he told me all about him and the Israelites which is another
name for Jews. I said if he has got anything to do with Jews, I orter
know something about them, cause there ain't much else in New York, yet
they ain't much in my line, as I just naturally hit the Irish.
Do you remember Rosie O'Grady who got married about three years ago?
Well, she is only twenty years old now. She has got a kid and supporting
it herself. That fellow she married was a coke fiend, and she fired him,
and she is doing real well. Her brother is a driver at McCreey's, and
between them they hire a little flat down on 20th Street and her mother
takes care of the baby and they are real happy. I went down to see her
the other night. A lot of women live there who scrub offices or go out
washing or do any kind of day work they can get. Most every one of them
support a drunken husband. One woman next door to Rosie has both her
husband and her brother on her hands, and her brother has been full for
three months and that poor woman goes out washing to give these
good-for-nothing men their food. I'd let their stomachs grow to their
back bone before I'd feed them. You see an awful lot of drink down
around Eighth Avenue, and it seems like it is done by the men that most
need the money. Yet I suppose when they are out on the wagon all day in
the cold and the wet, that a saloon looks awful nice and warm and the
free lunch tastes mighty good. They can't afford to go to the
restaurants, even cheap ones, so they go to the saloon and drink that
rotten whiskey that drives them crazy. That is one thing I never saw no
fun in, and I must say for you, Kate, that with all the rotten crowd you
run with, you didn't take to booze nor dope. If you hadn't just
naturally not known the difference between what belonged to you and what
belonged to the other man, you might have been a pretty respectable
member of society. I tell you I am watching Billy mighty close to see
that he don't have too small fingers. By the looks of him now, the way
he is growing, his hands are going to be like hams, and if he ever got
them in another man's pocket, he would never get them out again.
I can't send you no money. I tell you I am absolutely flat strapped. I
hocked my two rings and I even sold my dancing slippers. I ain't paid
Mrs. Smith for Billy's board in most a month, and I know they need the
money. Cheer up, old girl, you only have a short time now. I keep a
trying to think what you can do when you come out, but I don't seem to
light on nothing you would like. Anyway, you know I am thinking of you.
Yours,
_Nan_.