Living Up to Billy Part 2

X

_Dear Kate_:

I am back in my old room and I guess there is where I belong. I did intend to stick, and I didn't think I would ever see this old room again, but here I am, and guess here I will stay. You know I was getting along real well in that place where I worked, and things got much easier, as I kind of learned to save my steps and plan the work, and it didn't make me so tired as it did at first. I had saved up twelve dollars too, and was going to buy Billy's winter clothes and send you five, then the darn thing fell. I had been over on Sunday to see Billy and was chasing along home about half past ten at night along 33rd Street to catch the subway, when one of them old rounders pa.s.sed me by and stuck his old face down into mine and as I didn't say nothing, he kept chasing after me and saying something in a low voice. I pretended I didn't hear and went on a little faster and he kept right after me.

When we got near to Fourth Avenue, he came up close to me and said, "Don't be in such a hurry, little girl," and I didn't say nothing, then he stuck his face right down into mine and said something, and it just made me sick, and before I knew what I did I slapped his dirty old mouth for him. He stood still a minute, and almost turned white and then what do you think the piker did? He called the cop from the corner and had me arrested for speaking to him. It was Casey who knew me and I told Casey he was a liar, and Casey said to the man, "Are you going to court and make a charge against this girl?" And the man says, "I am, and if you don't take her I will have you broke." I honestly think Casey believed me, but he couldn't do nothing, and they took me down to Jefferson Court. I hoped I would never see that place again, but there I was with the girls and the b.u.ms and the plain clos.e.m.e.n and the cops and the s.h.i.+ster lawyers and the probation officer who knew me at once as your sister, and I kinda felt I was up against it. But I told my story straight to the Judge, and the man told his, and of course the Judge took his word against mine and he fined me ten dollars or ten days. When I thought of that ten dollars and what it meant and how hard I had saved and scrimped for it, and how I had gone without things and that Billy wouldn't have the winter things that he ought to have, I just lost my head and I told the Judge he was an old fool, that if he couldn't tell a lie from the truth, he had not orter be a setting up there like an old brooding hen. I told him he didn't see nothing but crooks, and he couldn't tell a crook from a decent person and then he got back at me by saying, "_Did_ I say ten dollars or ten days, I made a mistake, I meant ten dollars _and_ ten days," and I had to go to the Island. I don't think I was ever so broke up in my life, it didn't seem I was getting a square deal. I suppose I did say things I shouldn't have, cause I was so mad I couldn't see and then I cried all night. I wrote a letter to Mrs.

Smith and told her just how it was and asked her to go and see the woman I worked for and tell her about it and not blame me. Now, Mrs. Smith believed me and came over to see me on the Island but that other woman didn't believe me and went down to the night court and saw the probation officer and I guess she got the idea you built the Jefferson Court with your fines. Anyway, she said she didn't want me in her house no more. I guess she is afraid I would hurt the dishes. When I got out I went up to see her and her face was hard and nasty and she wouldn't take my word at all. I asked her if she seen a thing out of the way for four months, if I hadn't done my work right and if I hadn't stayed in nights and been as good as any girl she ever had. She said "yes" to them all, but she didn't believe in encouraging vice and she never could tell what I might do because I come of a bad family. She got your record from A to Z and she even knew about father and she acted as if she thought perhaps, that all the cussedness of the family was stored up in me and might have busted any minit.

Well, it made me all sore, and I come right down to the old room and told Mrs. Murphy that she quite likely would have me for the rest of her life, I had all I wanted a working. I went out that night to Kelly's dance hall and danced till closing time trying to forget my troubles. It did make me forget because I can dance, Kate, and if I ain't a fine dish washer nor fit to be in somebody's kitchen, I sure can tango. I fished out all my pretty clothes again and done them two maid's dresses up in a wad and threw them under the bed. It is me for the slit skirt and the high heeled slippers, and I am going to be the best dancer on Broadway or know the difference.

Yours, _Nan_.

XI

_Dear Kate_:

I have been dancing at Rudolph's, it is awful hard work there and the hours are long, but it is better than it was down at the corner inn. I am working up, Kate, and I expect one of these days to be dancing on Broadway. The manager from Casey's come in and watched me dance the other night, and he said he thought I was the lightest thing on my feet in New York. Billy Flynn is my partner now, and he is working real hard.

We go mornings to a teacher up at 59th Street who learned me a lot of new steps. We practise most every afternoon. I have met some of the other dancers in the cabarets and they are mostly a nice lot of girls.

It ain't so hard for me as it is for some of them, as I have been dancing all my life, and I only have to see a new step once to be able to do it. I don't see why the people are against dancing, it is awful good for everybody. Why, you see old men and women that never done nothing before but stay at home and read The Christian Advocate, dancing in the restaurants, and it makes them forget all their troubles. Dancing makes you say with your body what you would like to say with your tongue, and you don't know how. Lots of people have beautiful thoughts and they can't tell them, so they have to read books writ by people who say just what they think, but can't tell, or they go to the theatre and hear acted all the love and beautiful things that they would like to have come to them, but can't. With dancing they can say themselves all the things they feel and the swaying of their body in time to the music is just a telling the love and the romance and the poetry that is inside of them. Why, when I am dancing with a good partner, I forget all the ugly things of life and it seems to me that if there ever is a G.o.d, he is a speaking to me and I sometimes feel as if I had wings and could fly right away with them. There is nothing wrong with the dancing itself, as I keep a telling Mrs. Smith. She wants me to leave it all the time, and of course in some of the places where I have to dance, there is a b.u.m crowd and you do have to talk to the men and lots of the women that you wouldn't choose for your sister. I tell you I am going to work out of this, I am a good dancer and there ain't no reason why I shouldn't be working in the better places where the management won't allow the men to get fresh with the girls. If I live long enough and don't get paralyzed in my legs, you will see at the Winter Garden "Nancy Lane" in great big electric lights. I have been around some of them places and if I ever get a chance, I know I can do as well as the girls there now. Why, Kate, I would rather dance at the Winter Garden than have a front seat in Heaven, and I got a mighty poor chance of either one, but I am going to try for them both. You know I believe when you want a thing real bad and just keep thinking of it night and day, you are going to get it some way and when you come out, Kate, I think you are going to be straight, and you won't queer me as you have so many times, just when I was beginning to get along.

I am sending you twenty. You ought to own that boarding house you are in, with the money I've sent you the last year. Mamie Callahan was in yesterday, she is working in a chorus somewhere. Gee, she does look swell! She must have cost a thousand just as she stood. She wants me to go back to Miner's, but the restaurants pay more. One of the boys I met the other night at Kelley's wants me to join him and go dance out West somewhere, but I don't want to go so far away from Billy. I know he would be all right with the Smiths, but I kinda like to see him, and I am always planning little things about him and what he will say to me and what I will say to him and what I am going to buy him. I kind of feel that if I wasn't able to go out there once in two or three weeks, and touch him and play with his hair and wash his little hands and notice how he is growing out of his clothes, that I wouldn't care to live. The money I could earn wouldn't mean nothing without him. I had just as much happiness out of him when I was earning six dollars a week and I could only take him out a ten cent jumping jack, as I would if I was earning fifty and could buy him fur coats. Babies just love, they don't think of the price of the thing you give them, but they seem to feel the heart behind it. Billy put his arms just as tight around Nannie's neck when she didn't have nothing in her hands for him, as when they was full.

I heard through Long Dave that Jim has been pinched in Chicago, but they think he will get off. He struck me for fifty but I wouldn't cough up, he can go to the pen for all I care. I always did tell him that stripes become his style of beauty. You know he is like a lot of crooks that even hate to look at a barber's pole cause of the stripes on it, and when you stop to think about it, you never see a crook wear a striped suit of clothes. They will wear plain colors, pepper and salts, cheques, but no stripes for the con man, they make him nervous.

I am coming down next week. I wish I could bring you something but I don't know what you could use. I am glad you are getting along so well, Kate, you will get four months off, won't you? I miss you awful, you are the only one I can talk to, and though you don't see some things my way, you are my sister, the only mother I ever knew. I wish when you are quiet there, Kate, you would think things over and decide to do different. You and me and Billy could go away somewhere. You must see by this time, Kate, that thieving don't pay. Why you are only thirty-three years old, and you have had five years in the pen and you are getting bitter and sour and you will have a grouch against life, and you know you are awfully clever, if you could only turn your brain to something honest, I don't see why you couldn't get along. I believe we could save up some money and go somewhere and start a boarding house. I can cook real well, and I believe something could be doing in that line.

Billy had a party and it sure was some party. Mrs. Smith asked some of the farmers' children in, and she gave them cake, and I brought him out presents and give each of the children a toy. Billy ate too much cake and was awful sick in the night. Mrs. Smith give him some medicine and he was all right the next day, and ready to eat more cake. Why, he eats all the time, Kate, and he is the fattest, biggest boy. We dress him awful swell. Mrs. Smith makes her boy's clothes and I help her and we made Billy some funny little linen pants like a Dutch baby, and he is the cutest looking thing. We cut his hair off square, but it still curls and don't look Dutch at all.

Good night, I must go to bed.

_Nan_.

XII

_Dear Kate_:

Say, but I am having a good time! And what do you think? I am having my picture painted. Some artist people blew into the cafe the other night, and after I had danced a couple of times they talked to the manager, then they asked me to come over and talk to them. I set down to the table and they were awful nice to me, didn't get fresh, but asked me a lot of questions about myself and where I learned to dance. I told them I could dance ever since I could walk, that I danced as a kid at Coney Island, and Miner's theatre had got in trouble twice with the Children's Society because of me. I laughed and said, "Why, I never _learned_ to dance, I just _danced_." The artist man said he wanted to paint my picture. It is a funny idea it seems to me. He wants to paint me in this dirty cabaret with the tables all around me and the b.u.m men setting around and me a dancing in the center with the lights on me. He said he is going to call it "Youth." He said to one of the men that was with him, "Can't you see it, Phillip, can't you see it? That pretty girl the very spirit of youth with her gold hair around her face and her wonderful body swaying to the time of the music and all those bloated beasts looking up at her through the smoke?" I don't see how he is going to paint the picture, but that is his business. Mine is to go to his studio every day at ten o'clock.

Do you remember Will Henderson who used to play in the orchestra in the Grand Opera and who lived next to us when we was at 129? Well, what do you think? He is playing the piano in this joint here. Isn't that a come-down? He got to taking c.o.ke and he couldn't be trusted to keep his dates and he lost all his good jobs and now he can only get a place in the joints, but he does play wonderful! And when he is not too dopey, he sets down at the piano and makes music that draws the heart right out of you. He won't touch his violin cause it makes him remember, he says.

It is a lucky thing for me in a way, as he likes me and he has wrote some music for me to dance by. He wrote a piece for me called "The Poppy," and that artist chap who is painting my picture got me a dress made for the dance, and oh, Kate, it is grand! It is red chiffon, and over it green chiffon like the leaves of the poppy, and I wear red slippers with pale green silk stockings that are so thin I can hardly get them on, and he had my hair all fluffed out and piled on top of my head, where it made a "golden halo," whatever that is. Him and Will explained to me about the dance. It seems that opium is made out of the flower, and they wanted me to show by dancing all the beautiful dreams that come with opium, and then the sleep afterward. I have known a lot of people who hit the pipe, and I don't know as they have ever had many beautiful dreams, but anyway the dance is awful pretty. The artist gave a party the other night, and had me come and do it. All the lights in the room was turned off and a greenish light was thrown on me and I danced fast at first and then I went slower and slower until at the last I dropped down on the stage and the lights went out and I run away in the dark. Everybody was crazy about it, and one of the big restaurants on Broadway is going to have me give the dance every night at midnight.

Do you see, Kate, I told you if I got a chance I would get away from Seventh Avenue. I begun at 14th Street, and I am working up. I am up to 42nd and one of these days, I tell you, I am going to be dancing at the Winter Garden. I don't see why I shouldn't, I can dance as well as any girl in New York City, and now that Jim and your gang ain't around to queer me, there ain't no reason why I shouldn't be in the best places in town. I have had to stick to a lot of b.u.m joints just because the managers of decent places didn't want to have a person who was mixed up with the crowd that I was in, around their place.

I am really having an awful good time. I get home about three in the morning and I sleep until about nine. I make my breakfast in my room yet, cause I like my own coffee, and then Jim Kelly who is my dancing partner now, comes up and we practise steps or else Will Henderson and Jim and me go over to Mamie Callahan's who has got a piano, and we work at some new thing. I don't have to be at the cafe till night and most every afternoon, I go around to some of the other places or to the shows to see what the other girls are dancing. I thought I would take some lessons from some of the swell teachers, but Lord, I can dance as well as any of them so what is the use of me spending my money.

I bought a swell new suit yesterday, and I sure do look some going up the avenue and, hear _me_, it is Fifth Avenue instead of Seventh. Oh, there is some cla.s.s to your sister, Kate, and when I get on the new lid that the milliner made me, well--I should worry.

I went up to a party the other night at Rose Fisher's. I couldn't blow in until after work, but even as late as it was, I won $4.90 at penny ante, and it tickled me most to death. I have been trying to learn a new game called bridge that the girls are crazy about. I guess it is not in my line cause it is a thinking part. I can't remember what cards are out or what is trumps or what is anything else, and set sort of making over my old clothes or thinking up new steps when we are playing, and you can't do that with bridge. I lost a lot of money the other afternoon, and what is worse, Katie Regan was my partner and she took it hard and gave me an awful call-down. I got sore and felt like slapping her face, but I guess she is right. Don't play a game with other people's money unless you attend to business.

Do you remember that fat old brewer that use to come hanging around you?

Well, he blew in while I was dancing the other night, and claimed to be a long lost friend. He come down every night for about a week, and then tried that old gag of putting some money for me in a wheat deal or some such thing where it was tails I win and heads you lose. I told him I was on to that chorus trick, and wasn't at all crazy about it. You see, whether he won or lost he would have handed me over three or four hundred dollars and kinda felt he owned me body and soul. I simply laughed at him, and said with a voice of a Wall Street broker, "Man, I am making so much money that it is quite impossible to find investments for my income, so I am planting it around the yard in tin cans." I even offered to make him a loan if business was bad. He went away in a huff, and I got a call-down from the manager because the brewer owns the bar the same as he does all the other saloons around our district, and the saloon-keeper is only in on a percentage. If the temperance people would only go after the brewer and the distiller, instead of the poor devil of a saloon-keeper, they might do something worth while, cause there ain't one bar in twenty in New York that is owned by the man who keeps it.

Well, good-bye, I am going to dinner in a place in 39th Street where they say they have an awful pretty dancer. I am saving up my money, Kate, so when you come out, you will have enough to live on for awhile until you find out what you want to do. Now don't worry, and don't write me any more letters like that last one. Everything is fine and dandy.

Billy is all right, and I am as happy as a clam and getting fat. I have put on two pounds in three months. I weigh 118 now, which is a lot for me, and if I keep on like this I will look like Taft one of these days.

I am coming down to see you next week, and I have got something for you.

Oh, Kate, I am fond of you and I get just crazy to see you.

Yours, _Nan_.

XIII

_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 gla.s.ses s.h.i.+ning, 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 sc.r.a.p 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 pa.s.s 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 c.o.ke 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 was.h.i.+ng 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 was.h.i.+ng 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_.

XIV

_Dear Kate_: