Maggie Now by Betty Smith
"Where do you live?"
"At the Bedford Y."
"I'll walk you home.'
"Good! Then I'll walk you home."
He urged her to tell him more about the years of her
growing up. She demurred at first, saying it wasn't
interesting and that he was asking just to be polite.
Besides, she said, she'd like to know something about his
childhood.
"No," he said. "I want to know all about you. I want to
walk every step of the way with you through your
childhood so that I'll know you from the beginning of your
life."
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She told him all she could remember (excepting the boy
upstairs who had kissed her). They walked to the Bedford
Y.M.C.A. and back to her house and it was nearly
midnight. She stood on the bottom step of her stoop and
looked down at him and smiled.
"So you see," she said, "my childhood wasn't much of
anything. The beach once a year, the cemetery on
Decoration Day, a trip to Boston, the few girl friends I
had the few people I knew. Church, school, home and
parents. And that's all."
"Ah, my little Chinee," he said, "again belittling
something that was quite wonderful. You don't know how
wonderful.... Oh, how you take everything for granted.
Why, one thing! Even the sewing of beads on slippers for
pin money . . ."
"I forgot 1 told you that," she interrupted. "That was
kind of silly.7'
"Stop it!'7 he said. "Nothing was silly. It was all part of
the wonder of a girl growing up into a woman.7'
He told her how moved he had been at her stories and
hov.amused, too. He spoke ecstatically about the wonder
of her childhood.
What's so wo'~derf?'l, she thought. Wasn't he ever a child?
After a while, she saw it a little through his eyes and
she was strangely disturbed. It was as though he had lived
her childhood but on a more wonderful plane than she
had. She felt, vaguely, that she had given away her
childhood that night. She had given it to him or he had
taken it from her, and made it into something wonderful.
In a way, her life was his now.
A light came on in the window. "My father," she
whispered, and trembled a little bit.
He grasped her arms as she stood above him.
"Tomorrow night," he whispered. "I'll come by for you.
Eight o'clock. I want to meet your father."
"Yes, yes," she whispered nervously. She scuttled into the
house.
"Out again," was her father's greeting.
"Yes," she said.
"You was out last night, too.'
"I know."
"1 suppose you're going out tomorrow night."
L /9/ ]
"Well, you ain't," he said flatly.
"I'm over twenty-one...." she began.
"Age's got nothing to do with it because I'm going out
tomorrow night and somebody's got to stay with the boy."
"I'll ask the tenant upstairs. Mrs. Heahly? She'll keep an
eye on Denny while you slip out for a beer."
"I ain't going out for no beer. I'm going out. I have a
friend. For once I'd like to spend an evening with her."
"Here You mean another woman?" Maggie-Now was
shocked and indignant. "All these years you've gone out
with some woman and enjoyed yourself w bile I . . ." her
voice broke as though she were going to cry, ". . . while I,
a young girl growing up, who should have been out with
boys and girls my own age, stayed home and cooked and
washed and cleaned and took care of the baby?" She
paused. When she spoke again, her voice was steady.
"Ah, no, Papa," she said gently. "You couldn't. You
couldn't after having been married to Mama."
"Your mother, God rest her soul, was a good woman.
The best there ever was. But she's been gone from me
these seven years or nearly, and, well, a man's a man."
"Then a man should love and marry in love. Otherwise,
a man is no better than an animal."
"Where'd you hear that nonsense?"
"Father Flynn said so. He had this special sermon for
young people."
"And what would he be knowing about it the way he
prays and fasts all the time?" Suddenly he had one of his
rages. "How cast he!" he shouted. "Talk about such things
to them what is innocent or should be? I'll get him
fired...."
"Priests can't be fired."
"Well then, defrocked . . . unfrocked. Something. At
least transferred. I'll talk to the bishop."
"Now, Papa, you stop it. He said nothing out of the way.
He is a good man and you l~now it. Look how good he
was to Mama You forget."
"It is true," he said. "He was good to your mother."
"And he is to everybody. Oh, Papa," she sighed, "when
I was sixteen, you never thought of me as a child. You let
me handle a grown-up woman's job. And now that I am
a grown-up woman, ~ 792 ]
you're trying to pretend I'm a child. Papa, you must face
it. I'm going to live my own life from now on."
He had to think out an answer to that. This man she just
met: He's putting her up to it. I bet he's been giving her a lot
of blarney and making her feel like she's somebody. Now I
must watch me step, he planned craftily. Be nice to her like
l know how everything is. 'Twould be the same like throwing
her in his waiting arms was I strict flu ith her now.
"You are right, girl dear. You're a child no longer.
You're a fine figger of a woman and you can thank the
good food I worked me life away to get the money to buy
for you that made you the fine woman what you are."
"No. It wasn't the food." She turned her wide smile on
him. "Because you're a fine rigger of a man yourself,
Papa, and to hear you tell it, you were brought up on
hard, little potatoes and chicken only once a year on
Christmas and that tough, too, back in Kilkenny."
That's me girl, he thought with pride. Smart as a whip.
Like meself.
He said: "Don't be changing the subject on me. Sure
and you're a grown woman and it's right and healthy that
you want a man of your own. And do I not want
grandchilthren round me knees in me old days?"
And so l do! he thought with surprise. Or am I talking
meself into it?
"'Tisn't that I'm not willing to give you up but I don't
want you to throw yourself away on the first man what
says, 'Ah there,' to you. Remember, he's not the only
pebble on the beach."
"Who wants a pebble?"
"You know what I mean. There's always another
streetcar coming along."
"You'd never let me look for a pebble on the beach or
stand on a corner to wait for the next car and you know
it."
"You know what I mean, i~laggie dear. Me thoughts
don't always come out in the right words. But I have only
your good in me mind." Then
conceal his craftiness, he said: "Now here's what we'll do:
You bring the young man . . .
"What young man?"
~ ~931
"Now, now," he said roguishly, "I know. Bring him
around to meet your father, like the decent girl what you
are, and I'll size him up and tell you whether he's good
enough for you."
"Oh, Papa! Even if he was the Sheik of Araby, you still
would say he wasn't good enough."
"Listen!" he yelled, forgetting to be diplomatic. "Child,
girl, woman whatever you are, don't give your father
none of your sass.
She didn't answer. She went out to the kitchen and
noisily filled the kettle with water. I le followed her.
"Hear me?"
"Oh, Papa, stop annoying me, do," she said. Whenever
her speech sounded Irishy, he knew it was a sign that she
was going to lose her temper.
"I'll say no more," he said with quiet dignity. But he did.
And he said it loudly. "But you're not going out tomorrow
night!" He hurried out and into his own bedroom before
she could answer. He wanted the last word.
The long walk had made her hungry. She thought of
Claude as she made coffee and cut some of the supper's
pot roast for a sandwich. She thought of the way he
talked to her the way he listened, with that quick turn of
his head when she spoke, and how it made everything she
said seem so wonderful and important. She thought how
different her father was from Claude.
She wondered where people got the idea that girls were
inclined to marry men who were like their father. Sure,
she loved her father and she'd feel bad if anything ever
happened to him. But she was in love with Claude
because he was so very different from her f ether.
She poured a cup of coffee and poured heated gravy
over her sandwich and thought briefly of Annie Vernacht,
spending the best years of her life, as Van Clees put it,
making open sandwiches. And she felt a little grateful that
her life was easier than poor Annie's.
"Mama? I mean, Maggie-NoNv?" The little boy, in
pajamas, stood in the doorway.
"I thought you were asleep this good while, Denny."
"I was. But now I'm awake."
I Ig} I
"Hungry?" He nodded. "Come on then. Sit down. I'll get
you ginger snaps and milk."
His eyes strayed from his milk and crackers to her hot
sandwich and rested there longingly.
"Can I have some of that?"
"No. It's too heavy to eat late at night."
"You're eating it."
"Never mind, now."
"Just a taste?"
"Just a taste, then. No more." She gave him a fork. He
ate from one end of the sandwich, she from the other. "Do
your crayon work?"
"This afternoon. You saw me. You forgot," he said
reproachfully.
"That's right. You did. N'ell, what did you do tonight,
then?" "Me and Papa played checkers."
"Who won?"
"Papa. I let him."
"Now why did you do that?"
"Because he won't play with me if he don't win."
"If you are winning, you shouldn't back up like that."
"Oh, I don't care if I don't win."
"You should care. You shouldn't do anything if you don't
care. Drink your milk.''
"You drink half with mc.''
"I've got coffee."
"I helped you eat half your sandwich. Now you gotta
help me drink my milk."
"Oh, all right." She pour d half his milk into her coffee
cup.
"Maggie-Now, if you c ver get married, would he be my
father? "
"Your father?"
"You know. Like you're my mother, only you're my sister?"
"What's the matter with you, Denny?"
"Would he?"
"Let's see: If I was ever lucky enough to get married,
why, my husband would be your brother-in-law. Whv did
you ask?"
"Because Papa told me you were going to get married,
he
1 9; ]
guessed. He said he guessed you knew a man, now. But
he said I shouldn't tell you what he said."
"And you shouldn't tell, then, if he asked you not to."
She paused. "What else did Papa say?"
"He told me to tell you that you shouldn't get married
and leave me here alone. And leave Papa alone, too."
"Oh, he did, did he?" she said grimly.
"But don't tell I told because he said not to tell you."
"Do you know what a tattletale is?"
"Sure. But you ain't going away like Papa said, are you?"
"No." She put an arm around his shoulder. "I'll stay with
you until you get old enough to find some nice girl to
take my place. Okay?" He nodded. "And if I ever have to
leave here before then, I'll take you with me."
"And Papa, too?"
"No. Papa's a big man and can look out for himself. But
don't tell him I said that, hear?" She knew full well he
would tell their father the next morning.
"And now, bed! And don't beg because you can't stay
up any longer."
"I want more milk first. You drank half of mine."
"Oh, no, you don't. You had your chance with the milk.
Come on, now. I'll put you away for what's left of the
night."
She tucked him in. He tried to prolong her stay. "Do I
hafta have a blanket?"
"Yes."
"But it's hot out."
"It's warm now. But it will get cool towards morning."
"What time will it get cool?"
"Four o'clock."
"How do you know?'
"Now stop it! I'm not going to get tricked into a long
conversation with you."
"I want the light on, rhen."
"No!"
"Then I hafta have a drink of water."
"No! Good gosh, Denny, it's one o'clock in the morning.
Now shut up!" She smiled and kissed him.
About to turn out the light, she gave her usual
hotlsevife's
~ ~ 1
last look around the room, trying to imagine what it would
look like if she were a stranger seeing it for the first time.
It wasn't a room, really. It was a corridor with a window.
It was an oblong partitioned off Maggie-Now's room.
There was space only for Denny's cot and a small dresser.
He had tacked a Dartmouth pennant to the wall. She
smiled, remembering he had traded two of the flags he
had taken from the cemetery for it. He had two flags left
from the handful he'd swiped from the graves two years
ago. They stood in an empty soda-water bottle next to his
mother's picture. The photograph had been made soon
after her marriage.
To Denny, thought Maggie-Now, Mama will always be a
young woman whom he's never seen.
Then there was a dirty baseball with a strip of bicycle
tape covering a tear in the horsehide and one of
Maggie-Now's good sauce di
clay marbles. His glass shooters were gone and she
surmised that he'd played a bad game that day.
There was the inevitable ball of tin foil. Like other kids,
he garnered discarded cigarette packages and gum
wrappers, the foil of which he added to the ball. When it
got as big as a baseball and twice as heavy, it was believed
that any junkman would give you a dollar for it. To make
sure it would be heavy enough, Denny had placed an iron
washer in the core of it.
He was making a rubber ball, too. It started with a wad
of paper and every rubber band he could get was
stretched and wound tightly around it. It went slowly.
He'd been working on it for months and it was only the
size of a golf ball. He persisted because he knew if it ever
got to be the size of a regular ball, it would be the
bouncingest ball in the whole world.
On an impulse, Maggie-Now picked it up and bounced
it. It hit the ceiling on the rebound. She scrambled after
it awkwardly, her hands cupped to catch it before it
bounced again. She missed it and had to c base a couple
of more bounces. Denny giggled into his pillow.
"That's enough out of you," threatened Maggie-Now. "If
you don't go to sleep . . ."
A newly-made slingshot on the dresser caught her eye.
The kids called it a beanshooter. It was made of a
crotched twig which she suspected was broken Of a tree
in the park when nobody
[ '97 1
was looking, two strips of rubber and a square of fine
supple leather. She felt the leather.
"Oh, no!" she moaned. "Oh, no!"
She picked up his shoes and, as she had feared, the
tongue of one of them had been cut off and used in the
slingshot.
"Oh, Denny," she said despairingly, "what did you do to
your good shoes?"
"Don't start no conversations with me," he said, afraid
of a scolding, "because I'm sleeping like you told me."
When she put his shoes away under his cot, she saw his
sled there where he liked to keep it until it snowed again.
But now it was spring. Soon it would be kite-flying time
and he'd get sticks and tie them together into a sort of
rhomboid and paste a sheet from the colored comics of
the Journal over the frame and tease her for rags which
he'd tear into strips and knot together for a tail, and hint
for two cents to buy a ball of cord to fly it.
Maybe I'll buy him a ready-made loon kite this year. It
would he nice if we could afford to get him a two-wheel
bike, but . . . Maybe there'll lee some money for a catcher's
mitt. Oh, well, Papa can get him a new baseball, at least.
Still and all, he seems content with what he has or makes or
gets on his own. He has what the other boys have. If he had
less, he'd be sad. If he had more, he wouldn't fit in with the
other boys. Anyway, he seems satisfied.
She smiled toward her mother's photograph and said
aloud: "You know. It's relative?"
"What-cha say?" asked Denny sleepily.
"Nothing. I'm going to turn the light out now." She did so.
"Don't close the door all the way, Mama."
"Afraid? "
"Naw."
"I'll leave it open anyway. For air," she added tactfully.
Preparing for bed, she thought: Funny that something
that makes me so very happy makes Denny so sad and
worried and Papa so mad and worried. Papa, she thought
scornfully, who makes believe he's got another woman! As
if he could've kept it a secret all these years if he did have
one! Still and all . . .
Gratefully she settled into bed and started to recall
dreamily her whole wonderful evening with Claude; what
he said, what she said how he had looked when he spoke
to her and the won
1 ~98]
derful nuances of the silences made by the pauses in the
conversation.
But she was so tired from the long walk so used up