The St. Louis of Lilly's little girlhood, sprung so thrivingly from the
left bank of the Mississippi and builded on the dead mounds of a dead
past, was even then inexplicably turning its back to its fine river
frontage; stretching in the form of a great adolescent giant, prone,
legs flung to the west and full of growing pains, arms outstretched and
curving downward in a great north-and-south yawn.
Taylor Avenue (then almost the city's edge, and which now is a girdle
worn high about its gigantic middle) petered out into violently muddy
and unmade streets and great patches of unimproved vacant lots that in
winter were gaunt with husks.
A pantechnicon procession of the more daring, shot with the growing
pains, was grading and building into the vast clayey seas west of
Kings-highway, but for the most part St. Louis contained herself
gregariously enough within her limits, content in those years when the
country rang hollowly to the cracked ring of free silver to huddle under
the same blanket with her smoke-belching industries.
A picture postcard of a brewery, piled high like a castle and with
stables of Augean collosity, rose from the south tip of the city to the
sour-malt supremacy of the world; boots, shoes, tobacco, and street cars
bringing up by a nose, Eads Bridge, across the strong breast of the
Mississippi, flinging roads of commerce westward ho.
For one rapidly transitional moment street-car traffic in St. Louis
stood in three simultaneous stages of its lepidopterous development: a
caterpillar horse-car system crawled north and south along Jefferson
Avenue, glass coin box and the backward glance of the driver, in lieu of
conductor. A cable-car system ready to burst its chrysalis purred the
length of Olive Street, and a first electric car, brightly painted, and
with a proud antenna of trolley, had already whizzed out
Washington Avenue.
When Lilly was twelve years old her walk to school was across quite an
intricacy of electric-car tracks, and on rainy days, out of a small fund
of children's car tickets laid by in Mrs. Becker's glove box for just
that contingency, she would ride to and from school, changing cars with
a drilled precision at Vandaventer and Finney Avenues.
For the first few of these adventures Mrs. Becker wrote tiny notes, to
be handed out by Lilly along with her street-car ticket:
Conductor, please let this little girl off at Jefferson Avenue: she
wants to change cars for the Pope School.
One day by some mischievous mischance Mrs. Schum's board receipt found
its way into Lilly's little pocketbook:
Received of Mrs. Ben Becker, forty-five dollars for one month's board
for three.
"Aw," said the conductor, thrusting it back at her, "ask your mamma to
tell her troubles to a policeman, little girl."
From that day Lilly rebelled.
"Guess I can find my way to school without having to carry a note like a
baby."
"But, Lilly, you might get mixed up."
"Nit."
"Don't sass me that way or I'll tell your father when he comes home
to-night."
A never quite bursting cloud which hung over the entire of Lilly's
girlhood was this ever-impending threat which even in its rare execution
brought forth no more than a mild and rather sad rebuke from a mild and
rather sad father, and yet which was certain to quell any rising
rebellion.
"I notice you never get sassy or ugly to your father, Lilly. I do all
the stinting and make all the sacrifices and your father gets all
the respect."
"Mamma, how can you say that!"
"Because it's a fact. To him it is always, 'Yes, sir, no, sir.' I'm
going to tell him a few things when he comes home to-night of what I go
through with all day in his absence. Elocution lessons! Just you ask him
for them yourself."
"Oh, mamma, you promised!"
"Well, I will, but I oughtn't."
Every evening until long after Lilly's dresses had descended to her shoe
tops and until the ritual came to have a distinctly ridiculous aspect,
there took place the one pleasantry in which Lilly and her father
ever indulged.
About fifteen minutes before seven, three staccato rings would come at
the front-door bell. At her sewing or what not, Mrs. Becker would glance
up with birdlike quickness.
"That's papa!" And Lilly, almost invariably curled over a book, would
jump up and take stand tensely against the wall so that when the room
door opened it would swing back, concealing her.
In the frame of that open doorway Mrs. Becker and her husband would
kiss, the unexcited matrimonial peck of the taken-for-granted which
is as sane to the taste as egg, and as flat, and then the
night-in-and-night-out question that for Lilly, rigid there behind the
door, never failed to thrill through her in little darts.
"Where is Lilly, Carrie?"
MRS. BECKER (assuming an immediate mask of vacuity): "Why, I don't know,
Ben. She was here a minute ago."
"Well, well, well!" looking under the bed, under the little cot drawn
across its baseboard and into a V of a back space created by a
catacorner bureau. "Well, well, well! What could have happened to her?"
At this juncture Lilly, fairly titillating, would burst out and before
his carefully averted glance fling wide her arms in self-revelation.
"Here I am, papa!"
"Well, I'll declare, so she is!" lifting her by the armpits for a kiss.
"Well, well, well!"
"Papa, I got ninety in arithmetic. I'd have got a hundred, but I got the
wrong common denominator."
"That's right, Lilly. Keep up well in your studies. Remember, knowledge
is power."
"Get your father's velveteen coat, Lilly."
"Papa, Ella McBride kisses boys."
"Then don't ever let me hear of your associating with her. The little
girl that doesn't keep her own self-respect cannot expect others to
respect her."
"And you ought to see, papa, she always rides her tricycle down past
Eddie Posner's house on Delmar just to show herself off to him."
"Lilly, go wash your hands for supper. How is business, Ben?"
"Nothing extra, Carrie."
"Oh, I get so tired hearing a poor mouth. Sometimes I could just scream
for wanting to do things we are not in a position to do. Go
housekeeping, for instance, have a little home of my own--"
"Now, now, little woman," at the invariable business of flecking his
neat gray business suit with a whisk broom, "you got up on the wrong
side of bed this morning. Lilly, suppose you shine papa's spectacles
for him."
"There is the supper bell. Quick, Ben and Lilly, before the Kembles."
The dining room, directly over the basement kitchen, jutted in an ell
off the rear of the house so that from the back parlor it was not
difficult to precede the immediate overhead response to that bell. A
black-faced genii of the bowl and weal, in a very dubiously white-duck
coat thrust on hurriedly over clothing reminiscent of the day's window
washing and furnace cinders, held attitude in among the small tables
that littered the room. There were four. A long table seating ten and
punctuated by two sets of cruets, two plates of bread, and two
white-china water pitchers; Mr. Hazzard's tiny square of individual
table, a perpetual bottle of brown medicine beside his place. The
Kembles also enjoyed segregation from the mother table, the family
invariably straggling in one by one. For the Beckers was reserved the
slight bulge of bay window that looked out upon the Suburban street-car
tracks and a battalion of unpainted woodsheds. A red geranium, potted
and wrapped around in green crêpe tissue paper, sprouted center table, a
small bottle of jam and two condiments lending further distinction. A
napkin with self-invented fasteners dangled from Mr. Becker's chair, and
beside Lilly's place a sterling silver and privately owned knife and
fork, monogrammed.
To Mr. Becker, the negro race was largely and genetically christened
Gawge, to be addressed solely in native patois.
"Evenin', Gawge."
"Evenin', Mistah Beckah."
"George, are you going to take good care of my husband to-night? That
piece of steak you served him yesterday wasn't fit to eat."
"Law now, Mis' Beckah, kin I help it if de best de kitchen has ain't
none too good?"
"Don't tell me! I saw the piece you brought Mr. Kemble."
"Now, Carrie ..."
"What have we to-night, George?"
"Fried steak, lamb, or corn'-beef hash."
"Bring us steak, and if it isn't tender, tell Mrs. Schum for me that
right back downstairs it goes! A little piece of lamb on the side in
case Miss Lilly don't like the steak, and bring up a dish of those sweet
pickles. You know, under the tray the way you always do. There's a pair
of Mr. Becker's old shoes, good as new, waiting to be given away."
"Carrie!"
"Miss Lilly loves pickles. George, do as I say."
"Carrie!"
"Law! Mistah Beckah, I knows Mis' Beckah and her ways. Law! I doan take
no offense."
"I wish if you want extras, Carrie, you would buy them. It is a darn
shame to make yourself so small before the other boarders."
"I haven't as much money as you have, Ben Becker. I'm not ashamed to ask
for my money's worth. Lilly, haven't I told you not to talk on your
fingers at meals?"
This form of digital communication between the children of the boarding
house seemed to break out in its most virulent form at dinner. In spite
of a sharp consensus of parental disapproval, there was a continual
flashing of code between Lilly, the Kemble twins, and Lester Eli at the
larger table.
"Ben, will you speak to Lilly? She won't mind me."
"Lilly!"
"Yes, sir," immediately subsiding to a contemplation of the geranium.
Poker played for penny stakes was a favorite after-dinner pastime. A
group including Mrs. Eli, the Kembles, and Mr. Hazzard would gather in
the Becker back parlor, Mrs. Becker, relieved of corsets and in a
dark-blue foulard teagown shotted all over with tiny pink rosebuds,
presiding over a folding table with a glass bowl of the "baby pretzels"
in its center.
The children meanwhile would forgather on the front hall stairs, the
peaked flare of an olive of gaslight that burned through a red glass
globe with warts blown into it, bathing the little group in a sort of
greasy fluid. Roy and Flora Kemble, Snow Horton, Lester Eli, and Stanley
Beinenstock, racked with bronchitis and lending an odor of creosote,
Lilly, and even Harry in his poor outlandish blouse.
"Snow, tell us a story; you're the oldest."
Snow was full of lore; would invoke inspiration with a very wide and
very blue gaze up to the ceiling, her thin hands clasping her thin neck.
"Once upon a time--once upon a time there was the most beautiful girl
in all the world and her name was--"
"Aw, give us one about boys."
LILLY: "You shut up, Roy Kemble. I guess Snow can tell a girl story if
she wants to. Go on, Snow, 'once upon a time there was the most
beautiful girl in all the world' and she had honey-colored curls and--"
"I didn't say she had honey-colored curls. Honey! Who ever heard of a
girl having honey curls?"
"Well, she had."
"Didn't."
"Did."
"--and her name was--was--Gladys."
"Oh no, Snow, call her--"
"I think Gladys is just a beautiful name for a girl," ventured Flora
Kemble on this occasion. "I like Elsie, too. I think Elsie Dinsmore is
my favorite name."
"Elsie Dinsmore!" flared Lilly. "Girls aren't pokey like her any more."
Thus diverted, there ensued a quick confetti of flung opinions.
"Minn is a pretty name."
"That's because you're stuck on Minnie Duganne in your class. Oh-oh, Roy
is stuck on Minnie Duganne!"
"Arabella--I just love that name. Don't you, Lilly?"
"If I was a girl, I would be named Mamma-Annie."
"Shut up, Harry; and, say, you better take back that can opener. You
stole it off Mr. Hazzard's dresser."
"What is your favorite name, Lilly?"
Her eyes on the warts blown into the glass globe, hugging her knees in
their sturdy ribbed stockings, her smooth brown hair enhancing her clean
kind of prettiness, Lilly gazed up roundly.
"I choose," she said, mouthing grandiloquently, her little pink tongue
waving like a clapper--"I choose--choose--ah--Zoe!"
"That isn't a name!"
"'Tis so."
"Who ever heard of a girl named Zoe! You never did yourself."
"I know I never did, Roy Kemble, but just the same I think it is the
most beautiful name in the world. It isn't so much what it really means;
names don't have to mean anything--it's what it feels like it means. To
me the name Zoe feels like it means--means--"
CHORUS: "She don't know what it means. She don't know what it means."
"She means doe! The doe in the zoo at Forest Park. Hauh-hauh--her
favorite name is Doe."
"Zoe," repeated Lilly, her eyes in a trance and lakes of reflected
vision. "Zoe--it means--it means something--something full of life.
Life--free--to me Zoe means free! Life!"