Neighborhood Stories. Gale Zona
tell her,” says Absalom, “if she didn’t have no washings, then there’d be something to cry for.”
But he said it sort of lack-luster, and like it come a word at a time.
“Do you get out any?” says Mis’ Toplady, to improve the topic.
“Out where?” says Gertie. “We ain’t no place to go. I went down for the yeast last night.”
It kind of come over me: Washing all day and her half sick; Absalom by the stove tending fire and turning wringer; his old mother humming on one note; the children yelling when they wasn’t shouting. I thought of their cupboard and I could see what it must hold – cold boiled potatoes and beans, I bet. I thought of their supper-table … of early mornings before the fire was built. And I see the kind of a life they had.
And then I looked over to the two loaves of bread and the can of fruit and the dozen eggs and the old coat of Timothy’s that we’d brought, and it seemed to me these touched the spot of what was the trouble in that house about as much as the smoke that oozed into the room from the chimney. And I glanced over to Mis’ Toplady and there she set, with ideas filterin’ back of her eyes.
“We’ve brought you a few things, being you’re sick – ” she begun, sort of embarrassed; but Absalom, he cut in short, shorter than I ever knew him to speak.
“Who’s we?” he says.
“Why-a,” says Mis’ Toplady, stumbling some over her words, “the new society.”
Absalom flushed up to the roots of his hair. “What society?” says he, sharp.
Mis’ Toplady showed scairt for just a minute, and then she met his eyes brave. “Why,” she says, “us – and you. You belong to it. We had it in the paper, and met to the Post-Office Hall the other night. It’s for everybody to come to.”
“To do what?” says Absalom.
“Why-a,” says Mis’ Toplady, some put to it, “to – to do nice things for – for each other.”
“The town?” says Absalom.
“The town,” agrees Mis’ Toplady – and pressed ahead almost like she was finding something to explain with. “We meet again to-morrow night,” says she. “Couldn’t you come – you and Gertie? Come – and mebbe belong?”
Absalom’s mad cooled down some. First he looked sheepish and then he showed pleased. “Why, I dunno – could we, Gertie?” he says.
“Is it dress-up?” says Gertie.
“Mercy, no,” says Mis’ Toplady, “it’s every-day. Or not so much so. You’ll come, won’t you?”
“Mebbe,” says Gertie.
When we got outside, I looked at Mis’ Toplady, kind of took aback; and it was so that she looked at me.
“Silas’ll talk charity his way to that meeting, you know,” I says. “I’m afraid he’ll hurt Absalom and Gertie. I’m afraid…”
Mis’ Toplady looked kind of scairt herself. “I done that before I meant to do it no more’n nothing in this world,” she says, “but I dunno – when I begun handin’ ’em out stuff I was ashamed to do it without putting it like I done.”
“I know,” I says, “I know.” And know I did. I’ve give things to poor folks lots of times and glowed up my spine with a virtuous feeling – but something big was always setting somewhere inside me making me feel ashamed of the glow and ashamed of the giving. Who am I that I should be the giver, and somebody else the givee?
We went to the Bettses’ and caught Mis’ Betts washing up two days’ of dishes at four o’clock in the afternoon, and we heard about Joe’s losing his job, and we talked to the canary. “We’d ought not to afford him,” Mis’ Betts says, apologetic. “I always hate to take the money to get him another package of seed – and we ain’t much of any crumbs.”
And we went to the Haskitts’ and found her head tied up with the toothache. Folks looks sick enough with their heads tied up around; but when it comes to up and down, with the ends sticking up, they always look like they was going to die. And we went to the Doles’ and the Hennings’ and carried in the stuff; and one and all them places, leaving things there was like laying a ten-cent piece down on a leper, and bowing to him to help on his recovery. And every single place, as soon as ever we’d laid down the old clothes we’d brought, we invited ’em to join the organization and to come to the meeting next night.
“What’s the name of this here club?” Joe Betts asks us.
By that time neither Mis’ Toplady nor me would have tied the word “Charity” to that club for anything on earth. We told him we was going to pick the name next night, and told him he must come and help.
“Do come,” Mis’ Toplady says, and when Mis’ Betts hung off: “We’re goin’ to have a little visiting time – and coffee and sandwiches afterwards,” Mis’ Toplady adds, calm as her hat. And when we got outside: “I dunno what made me stick on the coffee and the sandwiches,” she says, sort of dazed, “but it was so kind of bleak and dead in there, I felt like I just had to say something cheerful and human – like coffee.”
“Well,” I says, “us ladies can do the refreshments ourselves, so be the rest of the Board stands on its head at the idee of doing ’em itself. As I presume likely it will stand.”
And this we both of us presumed alike. So on the way home we stopped in to the post-office store and told Silas that we’d been giving out a good many invitations to folks to come to the meeting next night, and mebbe join.
“That’s good,” says Silas, genial; “that’s good. We need the dues.”
“We kind of thought coffee and sandwiches to-morrow night, Silas,” says Mis’ Toplady, experimental, “and a little social time.”
“Don’t you go to makin’ no white-kid-glove doin’s out o’ this thing,” says Silas. “You can’t mix up charity and society too free. Charity’s religion and society’s earthy. And that’s two different things.”
“Earthy,” I says over. “Earthy! So’m I. Ain’t it a wonderful word, Silas? Well, us two is going to do the coffee and sandwiches for to-morrow night,” I added on, deliberate, determined and serene.
When Silas had done his objecting, and see he couldn’t help himself with us willing to solicit the whole refreshments, and when we’d left the store, Mis’ Toplady thought of something else: “I dunno,” she says, “as we’d ought to leave folks out just because they ain’t poor. That,” she says, troubled, “don’t seem real right. Let’s us telephone to them we can think of that didn’t come to the last meeting.”
So we invited in the telephone population, just the same as them that didn’t have one.
The next night us ladies got down to the hall early to do the finishing touches. And on Daphne Street, on my way down, I met Bess Bones again, kind of creeping along. She’d stopped to pat the nose of a horse standing patient, hitched outside the barber-shop saloon – I’ve seen Bess go down Daphne Street on market-days patting the nose of every horse one after another.
“Hello, Mis’ Marsh,” Bess says. “Are you comin’ down with another meeting?”
“Yes, sir, Bess,” I says, “I am.” And then a thought struck me. “Bess,” I says – able now to hold up my head like my skull intended, because I felt I could ask her – “you come on up, too – you’re invited to-night. Everybody is.”
Her face lit up, like putting the curtain up.
“Honest, can I?” she says. “I’d love to go to a meeting again – I’ve looked in the window at ’em a dozen times. I’ll get my bread and be right up.”
I tell you, Post-Office Hall looked nice. We’d got in a few rugs and plants, and the refreshment table stood acrost one corner, with a screen around the gas-plate, and the