A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago Part 25

In the evening Mrs. Rodjezke usually rode home in the street car. There were several odd items about Mrs. Rodjezke that one could observe as she sat motionless and staring in her seat waiting for the 2900 block to appear. First, there were her clothes. Mrs. Rodjezke was not of the light-minded type of woman that changes styles with the season. Winter and summer she wore the same.

Then there were her hands. Mrs. Rodjezke's fingernails were a contrast to the rest of her. The rest of her was somewhat vigorous and buxom looking.

The fingernails, however, were pale--a colorless light blue. And the tips of her fingers looked a trifle swollen. Also the tips of her fingers were different in shade from the rest of her hands.

Another item of note was her coiffure. Mrs. Rodjezke was always indifferently dressed, her clothes looking as if they had been thrown on and pinned together. Yet her coiffure was almost a proud and careful-looking thing. It proclaimed, alas, that the scrubwoman, despite the sensible employment of her time, was not entirely free from the vanities of her s.e.x. The deliberate coiling and arranging of her stringy black hair must have taken a good fifteen minutes regularly out of Mrs.

Rodjezke's otherwise industrious day.

These items are given in order that Mrs. Rodjezke may be visualized for a moment as she rode home on a recent evening. It was very hot and the papers carried news on the front page: "Hot Spell to Continue."

Mrs. Rodjezke got off the car at 29th and Halsted streets and walked to her flat. Here the two Rodjezke children, who were 8 and 10 years old respectively, were demanding their supper. After the food was eaten Mrs.

Rodjezke said, in Bohemian:

"We are going down to the beach to-night and go in swimming."

Shouts from the younger Rodjezkes.

When the family appeared on the 51st Street beach it was alive with people from everywhere. They stood around cooling off in their bathing suits and trying to forget how hot it was by covering themselves in the chill sand.

Mrs. Rodjezke's bathing suit was of the kind that attracts attention these days. It was voluminous and hand made and it looked as if it might have functioned as a "wrapper" in its palmier days. For a long time n.o.body noticed Mrs. Rodjezke. She sat on the sand. Her head felt dizzy. Her eyes burned. And there was a burn in the small of her back. Her knees also burned and the tips of her fingers throbbed.

These symptoms failed to startle Mrs. Rodjezke. Their absence would have been more of a surprise. She sat staring at the lake and trying to keep track of her children. But their dark heads lost themselves in the noisy crowds in front of her and she gave that up. They would return in due time. Mrs. Rodjezke must not be criticized for a maternal indifference.

The children of scrubwomen always return in due time.

Mrs. Rodjezke had come to the lake to cool off. The idea of going for a swim had been in her head for at least three years. She had always been able to overcome it, but this time somehow it had got the better of her and she had moved almost blindly toward the water front.

"I will get a rest in the water," she thought.

But now on the beach Mrs. Rodjezke found it difficult to rest. The dishes weren't washed in the kitchen home. The clothes needed changing on the beds. And other things. Lots of other things.

Mrs. Rodjezke sighed as the shouts of the bathers floated by her ears. The sun had almost gone down and the lake looked dull. Faintly colored clouds were beginning to hide the water. It was no use. Mrs. Rodjezke couldn't rest. She sat and stared harder at the lake. Yes, there was something to do. Before it got too dark. Something very important to do. And it wasn't right not to do it. The scrubwoman sighed again and put her hand against her side. The burn had dropped to there. It had also gone into her head.

But that was a thing which must be forgotten. Mrs. Rodjezke had learned how to forget it during the eight years.

A girl saw it first. She was laughing in a group of young men from the hotel. Then she exclaimed, suddenly:

"Heavens! Look at that woman!"

The group looked. They saw a middle-aged woman in a humorous bathing costume crawling patiently down the beach on her hands and knees. Soon other people were looking. n.o.body interfered at first. Perhaps this was a curious exercise. Some of them laughed.

But the woman's actions grew stranger. She would stop as she crawled and lift up handfuls of water from the edge of the lake. Then she would start scratching in the sand. A crowd collected and the beach policeman arrived.

The beach policeman looked down at the woman on her hands and knees.

She had stopped and her face had grown sad.

"What's the matter here?" the policeman asked of her.

The woman began to cry. Her tears flooded her round worn face.

"I can't finish it to-night," she sobbed, "not now anyway. I'm too tired.

I can't finish it to-night. And the soap has floated away. The soap is gone."

Mrs. Rodjezke was taken up by the policeman with the two Rodjezke children, who had, of course, returned in due time. They cried and cried and the group went to the police station.

"I don't know what's wrong with the poor woman," said the beach policeman to the Hyde Park police sergeant. "But she was moving up and down like she was trying to scrub the beach."

"I guess," said the sergeant, "we'll have to turn her over to the psychopathic hospital."

There's a lot more to the story, but it has nothing to do with Mrs.

Rodjezke's last job.

QUEEN BESS' FEAST

Elizabeth Winslow, who was a short, fat woman with an amazing gift of profanity and "known to the police" as "Queen Bess," is dead. According to the coroner's report Queen Bess died suddenly in a Wabash Avenue rooming house at the age of seventy.

Twenty-five years ago Queen Bess rented rooms and sold drinks according to the easy-going ideas of that day. But there was something untouched by the sordidness of her calling about this ample Rabelaisian woman. There was a noise about Queen Bess lacking in her harpy contemporaries.

"Big-hearted Bess," the coppers used to call her, and "Queenie" was the name her employees had for her. But to customers she was always Queen Bess. In the district where Queen Bess functioned the gossip of the day always prophesied dismally concerning her. She didn't save her money, Queen Bess didn't. And the time would come when she'd realize what that meant. And the idea of Queen Bess blowing in $5,000 for a tally-ho layout to ride to the races in! Six horses and two drivers in yellow and blue livery and girls all dressed like sore thumbs and the beribboned and painted coach bouncing down the boulevard to Was.h.i.+ngton Park--a lot of good that would do her in her old age!

But Queen Bess went her way, throwing her tainted money back to the town as fast as the town threw it into her purse, roaring, swearing, laughing--a thumping sentimentalist, a clownish Samaritan, a Madam Aphrodite by Rube Goldberg. There are many stories that used to go the rounds. But when I read the coroner's report there was one tale in particular that started up in my head again. A mawkish tale, perhaps, and if I write it with too maudlin a slant I know who will wince the worst--Queen Bess, of course, who will sit up in her grave and, fastening a blazing eye on me, curse me out for every variety of fat-head and imbecile known to her exhaustive calendar of epithets.

Nevertheless, in memory of the set of Oscar Wilde's works presented to my roommate twelve years ago one Christmas morning by Queen Bess, and in memory of the six world-famous oaths this great lady invented--here goes.

Let Bess roar in her grave. There's one thing she can't do and that's call me a liar.

It was Thanksgiving day and years ago and my roommate Ned and I were staring glumly over the roofs of the town.

"I've got an invitation for Thanksgiving dinner for both of us," said Ned.

"But I feel kind of doubtful about going."

I inquired what kind of invitation.

"An engraved invitation," grinned Ned. "Here it is. I'll read it to you."

He read from a white card: "You are cordially invited to attend a Thanksgiving dinner at the home of Queen Bess, ---- Street and Wabash Avenue, at 3 o'clock. You may bring one gentleman friend."

"Why not go?" I asked.