I
Primarily, there were the conditions under which she was brought
to fifteen years of age: the crowded, scummy tenements; the narrow
green-painted halls with their dim gas-jets, making the entrance look
more like that of a morgue than a dwelling-place; the dirty halls and
rooms with their green or blue or brown walls painted to save the cost
of paper; the bare wooden floors, long since saturated with every type
of grease and filth from oleomargarine and suet leaked from cheap fats
or meats, to beer and whiskey and tobacco-juice. A little occasional
scrubbing by some would-be hygienic tenant was presumed to keep or make
clean some of the chambers and halls.
And then the streets outside—any of the streets by which she had ever
been surrounded—block upon block of other red, bare, commonplace
tenements crowded to the doors with human life, the space before
them sped over by noisy, gassy trucks and vehicles of all kinds. And
stifling in summer, dusty and icy in winter; decorated on occasion
by stray cats and dogs, pawing in ashcans, watched over by lordly
policemen, and always running with people, people, people—who made
their living heaven only knows how, existing in such a manner as their
surroundings suggested.
In this atmosphere were always longshoremen, wagon-drivers, sweepers
of floors, washers of dishes, waiters, janitors, workers in laundries,
factories—mostly in indifferent or decadent or despairing conditions.
And all of these people existed, in so far as she ever knew, upon that
mysterious, evanescent and fluctuating something known as the weekly
wage.
Always about her there had been drunkenness, fighting, complaining,
sickness or death; the police coming in, and arresting one and another;
the gas man, the rent man, the furniture man, hammering at doors for
their due—and not getting it—in due time the undertaker also arriving
amid a great clamor, as though lives were the most precious things
imaginable.
It is entirely conceivable that in viewing or in meditating upon an
atmosphere such as this, one might conclude that no good could come
out of it. What! a dung-heap grow a flower? Exactly, and often, a
flower—but not to grow to any glorious maturity probably. Nevertheless
a flower of the spirit at least might have its beginnings there. And if
it shrank or withered in the miasmatic atmosphere—well, conceivably,
that might be normal, although in reality all flowers thus embedded in
infancy do not so wither. There are flowers and flowers.
Viewing Madeleine Kinsella at the ages of five, seven, eleven and
thirteen even, it might have been conceded that she was a flower of
sorts—admittedly not a brave, lustrous one of the orchid or gardenia
persuasion, but a flower nevertheless. Her charm was simpler, more
retiring, less vivid than is usually accorded the compliment of beauty.
She was never rosy, never colorful in the high sense, never daring or
aggressive. Always, from her infancy on, she seemed to herself and
others to be slipping about the corners and out-of-the-way places of
life, avoiding it, staring at it with wide, lamblike eyes, wondering at
things, often fearfully.
Her face, always delicately oval and pale, was not of the force which
attracted. Her eyes, a milkish blue-gray with a suggestion of black
in the iris, her hair black, her hands long-fingered and slim, were
not of a type which would appeal to the raw youth of her world.
Unconsciously, and ever, her slender, longish body sank into graceful
poses. Beside the hard, garish, colorful, strident types of her
neighborhoods—the girls whom the boys liked—she was not fascinating,
and yet, contemplated at odd moments as she grew, she was appealing
enough—at times beautiful.
What most affected her youth and her life was the internal condition
of her family, the poverty and general worthlessness of her parents.
They were as poor as their poorest neighbors, and quarrelsome, unhappy
and mean-spirited into the bargain. Her father came dimly into her
understanding at somewhere near her seventh or eighth year as an
undersized, contentious and drunken and wordy man, always more or less
out of a job, irritated with her mother and her sister and brother, and
always, as her mother seemed to think, a little the worse for drink.
“You’re a liar! You’re a liar! You’re a liar! You’re a liar!”—how well
she remembered this sing-song echoing reiteration of his, in whatever
basement or hole they were living at the time! “You’re a liar! I never
did it! You’re a liar! I wasn’t there!”
Her mother, often partially intoxicated or morose because of her own
ills, was only too willing to rejoin in kind. Her elder sister and
brother, much more agreeable in their way and as much put upon as
herself, were always coming in or running out somewhere and staying
while the storm lasted; while she, shy and always a little frightened,
seemed to look upon it all as unavoidable, possibly even essential.
The world was always so stern, so mysterious, so non-understandable to
Madeleine.
Again it might be, and often was, “Here, you, you brat, go an’ get
me a can o’ beer! Gwan, now!” which she did quickly and fearfully
enough, running to the nearest wretched corner saloon with the “can” or
“growler,” her slim little fingers closed tightly over the five-cent
piece or dime entrusted to her, her eyes taking in the wonders and
joys of the street even as she ran. She was so small at the time that
her little arms were unable to reach quite the level of the bar, and
she had to accept the aid of the bartender or some drinker. Then she
would patiently wait while one of them teased her as to her size or
until the beer was handed down.
Once, and once only, three “bad boys,” knowing what she was going for
and how wretched and shabby was her father, not able to revenge himself
on any one outside his family, had seized her en route, forced open her
hand and run away with the dime, leaving her to return fearsomely to
her father, rubbing her eyes, and to be struck and abused soundly and
told to fight—“Blank-blank you, what the hell are you good for if you
can’t do that?”
Only the vile language and the defensive soberness of her mother at the
time saved her from a worse fate. As for the boys who had stolen the
money, they only received curses and awful imprecations, which harmed
no one.
Wretched variations of this same existence were endured by the other
two members of the family, her brother Frank and her sister Tina.
The former was a slim and nervous youth, given to fits of savage temper
like his father and not to be ordered and controlled exactly as his
father would have him. At times, as Madeleine recalled, he appeared
terribly resentful of the conditions that surrounded him and cursed
and swore and even threatened to leave; at other times he was placid
enough, at least not inclined to share the dreadful scenes which no one
could avoid where her father was.
At the age of twelve or thirteen he secured work in a box-factory
somewhere and for a while brought his wages home. But often there was
no breakfast or dinner for him, and when his father and mother were
deep in their cups or quarreling things were so generally neglected
that even where home ties were strong no one of any worldly experience
could have endured them, and he ran away.
His mother was always complaining of “the lumbago” and of not being
able to get up, even when he and Tina were working and bringing home
a portion of their weekly wage or all of it. If she did, it was only
to hover over the wretched cookstove and brew herself a little tea and
complain as before.
Madeleine had early, in her ignorant and fearsome way, tried to help,
but she did not always know how and her mother was either too ill or
too disgruntled with life to permit her to assist, had she been able.
As it had been with Frank so it was with Tina, only it came sooner.
When Madeleine was only five Tina was a grown girl of ten, with
yellow hair and a pretty, often smiling face, and was already working
somewhere—in a candy store—for a dollar and a half a week. Later, when
Madeleine was eight and Tina thirteen, the latter had graduated to a
button-works and was earning three.
There was something rather admirable and yet disturbing connected
dimly with Tina in Madeleine’s mind, an atmosphere of rebelliousness
and courage which she had never possessed and which she could not have
described, lacking as she did a mind that registered the facts of
life clearly. She only saw Tina, pretty and strong, coming and going
from her ninth to her thirteenth year, refusing to go for beer at her
father’s order and being cursed for it, even struck at or thrown at by
him, sometimes by her mother, and often standing at the foot of the
stairs after work hours or on a Sunday afternoon or evening, looking at
the crowded street or walking up and down with other girls and boys,
when her mother wanted her to be doing things in the house—sweeping,
washing dishes, making beds—dreary, gray tasks all.
“Fixin’ your hair again! Fixin’ your hair again! Fixin’ your hair
again!” she could hear her father screaming whenever she paused before
the one cracked mirror to arrange her hair. “Always in front of that
blank-blank mirror fixin’ her hair! If you don’t get away from in front
of it I’ll throw you an’ the mirror in the street! What the hell are
you always fixin’ your hair for? Say? What’re you always fixin’ your
hair for? Say! What? What’re you always fixin’ your hair for?”
But Tina was never cast down apparently, only silent. At times she
sang and walked with an air. She dressed herself as attractively as
possible, as if with the few things she had she was attempting to cast
off the burden of the life by which she was surrounded. Always she
was hiding things away from the others, never wanting them to touch
anything of hers. And how she had hated her father as she grew, in
bitter moments calling him a “sot” and a “fool.”
Tina had never been very obedient, refusing to go to church or to do
much of anything about the house. Whenever her father and mother were
drinking or fighting she would slip away and stay with some girl in the
neighborhood that she knew. And in spite of all this squalor and misery
and the fact that they moved often and the food was bad, Tina, once
she was twelve or thirteen, always seemed able to achieve an agreeable
appearance.
Madeleine often remembered her in a plaid skirt she had got somewhere,
which looked beautiful on her, and a little gilt pin which she wore at
her neck. And she had a way of doing her yellow hair high on her head,
which had stuck in Madeleine’s mind perhaps because of her father’s
rude comments on it.