_Dear Kate_:
I know you will be dead sore at me, but I could not do nothing else and
perhaps some day you will understand why I done it. Anyway, I have given
Billy his chance. He has got just as good a show as any boy of growing
up and being a good man, and he won't ever need to know that there are
such things as thieves and prisons. He'll learn to think of Mrs. Smith
as mother and he won't ever know that his real mother was in the stir.
He will think of his aunt Nan, as a little red headed girl who loved him
and brought him toys, and he won't never have bitterness or wickedness
come into his life through us. He is going away.
I will tell you all about it, so as you can get the worst of your
madness off before you come out, cause I know when you read this you
will want to kill me, and perhaps you will, but I don't care, I have
done the only thing I knew to do for Billy.
After Mrs. Smith's baby died, she wouldn't look at Billy for a long
time. Then she got to holding him and rocking him to sleep at night, and
after a while she couldn't let him out of her sight. I was awful glad,
cause I thought perhaps she would be always glad to have him, and then
one day I heard them talk about going to Australia. Mrs. Smith didn't
like the house since Paul was gone. She stops and listens as if she
expects to hear him round the corner, and she don't want to go in his
room, and she acts queer. Mr. Smith thinks that if she got away where
everything was different, she would forget sooner, or if she didn't
forget she wouldn't remember with so much pain.
His brother wrote from Australia and asked them to come there a long
time ago. He is in the sheep business and doing very well. They talked
it over and talked it over, and now they have decided to go. It most
killed me, cause this is the only home I ever knew, and I didn't know
what would become of Billy. I felt I couldn't take him back to the room.
I said to Mrs. Smith one day that it kinda kicked my feet from under me
to think of Billy losing his home and the mother and things he has had
for two years. She looked at me a long time and then she said, "Nan,
Billy don't need to lose his home." I said, "What do you mean?" "I will
take him with me," she said. It took my breath away for a minit to think
of losing Billy, as he is all I got, and I guess she saw it in my face
cause she said quickly, "You can come too." I did not say nothing for a
long time. I thought that this was my chance, I would get away from the
old crowd, get away from all the things I hate and yet seemed kinda
drawed to. I could leave this life that may be will take me down and
down, and Billy and I could commence over again in a new country. Then I
thought of you, Kate, and how you are coming out soon, and if both Billy
and me was gone, you would have nothing to hold to, and I know you, and
I know you would go straight to Hell. There would be no half way place
for you, you would keep on sliding. And, Kate, I couldn't leave you.
Billy can get on without me, he won't never know no difference, but you
would be all alone, and it's hard enough to try to be decent when once
you've been in stir--even with friends to help you, and when you come
out, Kate, I am going to be waiting for you at the gate, and you are
going to make a fight and win out and live decent.
I thought of all this when I sat there looking at Mrs. Smith and then I
said, "No, I can't go, but you can take Billy." She said, "Nannie, I
won't take a baby unless I can adopt him and make him really mine. I
don't want any father and mother to come and take him when I have grown
to love him." I said nothing cause I knew neither you or Jim would give
him up unless you saw something in it for yourselves, and these people
are poor people and could not afford to pay you nothing. Then Mrs.
Smith moved over close to me and took my hand and said, "Nan, I am
going to say something that perhaps will hurt your feelings. Won't you
give Billy to me?" I said, "Why, I would love to, but I can't, he ain't
my Billy." Then Mrs. Smith said, "Now, don't be angry at me, I have
never said anything, but I have never believed that story about Billy
being your sister's baby. Isn't he your little boy?" At first I didn't
understand her, and then it all come over me what she meant. She thought
I had lied to her, thought I had made up that story about you being
Billy's mother. At first I was mad, not because she thought Billy was
mine, cause that don't make no difference one way or another, but I
hated to think she thought I had lied to her. She saw I was hurt and she
held my hand a little tighter and said, "Remember, child, I don't blame
you, and I don't think none the less of you. I have loved you for two
years and I will love you always, but if you want me to take Billy, I
must take him as his mother." Then she got up and kissed me and said,
"Don't answer me to-night, think it over and tell me to-morrow morning."
They left me alone that evening and I sat before the fire till midnight,
and when I went up to my room I stood by the window and looked over the
lake till the sun come up. And then it all come to me. I would give
Billy his chance. In a few months you were coming out, in a year Jim
would be out. You may settle down and be straight, but Jim--never. Billy
would grow up with crooks, would live around in little cheap rooms,
getting no education, playing on the streets nights, knowing nothing but
dirt all his life and quite likely spend most of his time after he grew
up in prison, all through no fault of his, but just because he didn't
have a chance. If he could go with Mrs. Smith he could live in a great
big out-of-doors country, where people have clean thoughts and live
clean lives, and instead of eating out of the garbage pails of life, he
could eat in a clean dining room with a white cloth on the table.
I went down in the morning and I did not say nothing until after
breakfast, then I said to Mrs. Smith, "Yes, you are right, I lied to
you. Billy is my baby." She come over and kissed me and said, "I knew
it, dear, and I will always like to think of you as his mother." I said
to her quick so she would not know how bad I felt, "What must I do to
give you Billy?" And she said, "We will go to the lawyer's and he will
make out the papers." So we went and I swore that I was his mother and
that his father was dead, and I give Billy to Mrs. Smith and when he
come back he was her little boy. Oh, Kate, I can't write more, my heart
is nearly broke.
_Nan_.