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JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

Live in my body, O my town and my people: Do not perish!
I am part of you and you partook of me, in this marriage, and
it became two marriages - the marriage of myself to him, the
marriage of myself to you and you to me, O town, O people. And
inside you, Town, I had suffered, and from you, People, I had
hidden and covered my face and walked alone. And now, through
him and through you I have partaken of full life, you have par-
taken of full life. Deep in us, living its strange life, we are
ripe together and complete and round with this perfect taste of
living fruit. And in this moment of marriage, of perfect
tasting and absorbing and fulfilling, I received and ate the best
of you, the marvelous fruiting of your lives, the complete willing
surrender of you all, lifted for a moment into full bodied and
sweet blooded giving with eyes and bodies radiant, never to die
but always to live.

So live on in my body, O my town and my people, and when the
evil river comes to sweep us down and away and along with its
dark current, then, O then, do not die in me, do not be washed
out of me, even though my body is swept along with yours and
with all the wreckage and all the broken parts. O do not perish
then, my perfect marriage! Live in my dark bones and burn behind
my sightless eyes if I, too, am swept away forever, forever.

This poem it will be noted does a something more than use slagg for its
own sake In this instance I believe I believe, inevitably functions to express
the content, and the contrast contained in this poem. And it is my contention
that a poet, for one reason or another inhibited from % its use, would have
registered nothing more than faulty expression. For Whitman wished to
bring into strong relief in his own modern position as contrasted with
historical theology, and this surely could be best accomplished by juxtapos-
ing such words as Kronos, lithographing buying drafts, Isis, and sp on.

Here then we have Whitman in a profound use of slang. This use has its
negative application in that it will serve to check a superficial and hasty
usage of new words. And, positively, it will inspire a
fused
and creation for current idiom,
and creative functioning for current idiom.

We are fastened in. We are little children, all of us. Win them through
what you really are in your soul.

You always said to be above gossip and the horrid things that are said but
how can I when I am no better and no different from the ones who say it about
me? There is such confusion in knowing that your soul is open to all - to all -
and then that there are millions of tiny wings closing and opening that make a
pure childlike act impossible. There is always some mud. You can say, "I love
you, I adore you, I shall always love you." The wind blows. You turn
toward town. "Oh, you ruined my life, you blighted me, you tore the trimmings
off my hat." Rain falls. "Oh, I am lonely, Oh, my father in heaven, there are
no friends on earth, there are only people like me who are not steadfast."
The sun comes out. "I love you. I am happy. I can never again feel set apart."
Dinner time. "I was mistaken. You are a hypocrite. You can't tell me the truth.
You can only play formulas behind your face." Supper time. "It is evening
and as the air darkens all my particles fall down from me mixing with the dense
earth and my life that bears no relation to the outdoors fills me with everything
that is unblemished and large and rich." Now in the end there are two things -
"I love you wholly" and "You gave me a wound, I gave you a wound."

Is there some way of adapting one's self - like composing a sonata, for
example. Music that rests above the conflict and the disappointment of torn
fibers and blemishes - it cannot come without utter honesty, like K. Mansfield's
play house whose whole front swung open. I try to reveal all my responses -
but people say, "Chase yourself. Zomeo. Love's toe nails. Stick it in your hat.
Who care anyhow, we want to say how do to Mr. Peewee. We haven't time, we have to
have a fitting. We have to lower Miss Gooseneck's wages. Does my skirt hang
longer on the right side to the extreme north of my ankle bone? Oh, you use pepper-
we never do - neither did my grandmother."

What a beautiful period to do it in - Lent, all these weeks before Easter.
I shall try to make myself good enough for you, just as young, simple,
honest, direct, essential as you are - and then perhaps I shall be washed
of that ugly caring about what others say or minding or suffering or
letting such things separate me. And then I can wait again for what you
want and decide and care to do. I would rather follow you.

After she makes the drawing of mother, seeing through the ugliness,
she loves her more, possesses her, understands, and looks for a deeper
relationship with her.

## Mother.

Over and over she had said it, each time she fell in love - "Oh, now
I'm willing to die. Now I've experienced the greatest happiness
possible to any one. Now I'm willing to die." And then with a great
lift of her breast, as if she were drawing up her breath through every
tiny fiber and vessel from the soles of her feet to her brain, through the
miraculous network of $$$$ life within her - "Oh, I have never
loved before. This is eternal. This can never change. Oh, now I am
young and innocent and I don't mind dying now. You know my life up to this
has been so tragic. ..." Then she would press her hands over his face.
"What can I give to you? What would you like?"

## Ethel Dates.

Likes to play tricks on people. Thinks of herself as the soul
of humor and light gaiety. On a picnic calls for help in agony and when
then rush to her, tearing themselves on the branches, she has covered
her face to keep from laughing and is leaning against a tree for support,
both hands pressed over her mouth and her small blue eyes very bright and
gay. Does this when the other girls are getting the attention. Moans
the night before she leaves, after her long walk to the village to send
the wire, and when they finally tap on the door she appears, trying to
smile and looking as bright and enchanting as possible. "Am I ill?
Why no, I never felt better in my life. Come on and sit down. We'll play
anagrams. My head is full of words. No? Well, I'm so sorry. No,
I'm feeling wonderful and I've been thinking over the wonderful time
you've all given me and I think it's up to me to thank god over and over
tonight for the pleasure and the privileges he's putting in my way all
the time."

Mother. Later she would say, "We had best end it. I'm ruining you.
You aren't the same. It breaks my heart but I shall have to let you go.
No, I shall have to give you up....."

Hal. "Well it's obvious that Ehel is wretched, y homely and deformed. If she can imagine she's otherwise then I take my hat off to her. Why try to disillusion her? If she once knew how hideous she really is she couldn't live without either killing some one or making every one miserable. As it is she is quite harmless and filled with sweetness and light and I for one don't want her disenchanted. Lord, to be deformed would be bad enough but to have such eyes and such a face! Give her all the rope you can. She needs it. And thank god that she is blind to her real self. It's one of the greatest gifts ever given to us that we can't ever see ourselves. It's a privilege and we'd never go on living if it hadn't been made that way - so that no matter how hard we try we'll never actually see what we are or how we look to others. That's one thing to be thankful for," he said laughing hugely and then quieting his face until he had that startled look again, his lips opened and his eyes amazed and steady. "And you don't realize the feat it probably was for her to get into this condition. Imagine looking like that and believing you were one of the enchantresses of the world. That takes imagination and courage and persistence."

outside and there it lay beating and shining on the infinite activity
of forms revolving about her and for a second she saw the face of the
innocent child

2

embarrassment, if not the actual shame, of being misrepresented in Congress. To make myself perfectly clear I will ask you to get down the constitution and the preamble thereto, and then spend some time reading Thomas Jefferson's speeches and writings on the constitution. Also read John Marshall and I believe you will join the few of us who believe "Back to the Constitution" is the only way to save this nation from chaos and monarchy.

When a majority of lawyers advocate a referendum on a social question in defence of the constitution and the ideals of a representative democracy, I hold it in time we get back to the old system that produced parties and leadership in those parties and above all - statements that are partients

body of the child they could have together, born from this
strange open sight that made all other activity into a fantasy, a dream
of impossible joy and pain never to be remembered, weaving in and out
its life of chaos and habitual attitudes and movements, hatreds, loves
and revenge, dreams and disenchantment, and all of it far from the
pure calm of the infinite self.

It seemed to her that she could not stop looking at him in this pure
contact and he too seemed unable to stop looking and to speak. Now
he walked close to her, his hands on her shoulders so that she felt the
direct contact of their weight and essence. And now her own flesh
seemed pure and definite to her. She wanted to say as she cut the
rush of desire burn her, "Will we have a child?" (all the old
pain of longing making her desperate again and taunt, ready for death
or any fresh agony that could strike her down) but now that was
impossible and all questions, all requests were impossible, and suddenly
she placed her hands in his, and everything in her too
quiet to form a word or give it breath, and then, with her
eyes still opened on his, she saw his face come closer and closer.

all the old longing making her desperate again and taunt, with each fresh
agony striking her down to a lower place, and each fresh
# all purpose.

I'm resigned to it now and I want to be let alone. Do you understand?"
She backed away with her hands up and her face stony and mute with fright.

"Let's finish lunch," said Alicia with a little laugh.
"But I want to make you understand for the last time."

"Darling, there are no last times. Let's get out of this tension.
Why, every $$$$ since I can remember you've been hysterical about the
last time, I've given and given and tried in all ways -"

"That's what I don't want you to do," she moaned. "I want you to
let me alone. I put you're out when I was nine years old. I've never
gone a day without thinking of it and trying to make it up to you and
now I'm at the end. I can't any more. I can't. I have to have some
life!"

"Yes, I know," said Alicia gently. "I understand. But let me help
you out of it, darling. Let me help. You're trying the wrong way.
Let me help."

Now Edith went over to her dressing table and sat down. She put some
powder over her cheeks and opened the box with her handkerchiefs in it.
Then she let her hands fall into her lap and she lowered her face.

"Oh, Edith, I wish I could make you understand. Oh, truly, truly,
I don't hold anything against you. You always have thought that I did.
But I don't. I'm just - simple -" she said, the tears starting to her
eyes. "I just want love from people. Not anything else. Just love."
Oh, when you were away at school I used to mark off the days on the
calendar until you'd be back and then you never seemed glad to see me.
I don't know why it is," she murmured, "but no one is ever as glad to see
me as I am to see them - no one -"

She leaned to him suddenly and kissed him, shrinking back as he smiled boyishly and said "Thank you," in embarrassment, as if he hadn't really expected her to do it. Then he followed her down the steps and stood with the fare in his fingers ready to slip it into the slot, while she waited with her hands on the turnstile(?) looking back at him. "Who are you going there?" Emily said, gauging his straggle at her.

Just then the train came rushing in, with the great single eye burning in the darkness, and the long black train of cars clanging in the dark rails. She waved back in confusion, forgetful now of every relationship, every possibility and joy and sadness, her face turned toward the crowds that pushed out the doors. "I don't know - I don't know - I don't know -" she kept saying, turning back again to wave in his direction, and then rushing in just as the doors snapped shut. She sat down and turned again toward the place where he might be standing but those were no ways of being pushed and she had to the door. There he was, standing with his hat off, moving his hands, one all the while, his eyes watching up and down at the bright windows of the train. She waved both hands, smiling and shaking their heads and then without speaking aloud she formed the words, "I don't know - I don't know - I don't know -", her eyes big with surprise and sudden loneliness, her fur scarf trailing off her sleek shoulder.

2.

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PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY:

I can't be good - not yet - I'm not good and I don't want to be - not yet -

The soul cannot bear forever the domination of some one of the same sex. Caesar has lived in Brutus. And Brutus has worshipped Caesar. There has to be an end. The soul has to breathe. It could have breathed with woman but not with Caesar. He kills for the primary reason - self preservation - the inability to worship any longer - the sense of wrong, betrayal, one of the cruel tangled inexplicable things in a human being, or one who feels deeply. Caesar loves Brutus and resents Caesar's hold on Brutus and his superiority. This is probably only a revelation of my own subconscious ugliness. Anyway, if I'm the only one one earth who feels that way or is conscious of it then so much the better. It's good to think the race as a whole is free from anything like that. Then humanity is something to be aspired toward and worshipped.

An eagerness to reveal - to show all that you see of another - not to hide the bad but to bear it and reveal it as well as the good - I did that with mother - it seems inhuman but I couldn't help it - and she was never a real mother - never - I gave her all that I saw, no secrets, nothing -

Oh, I wouldn't want any one to see or know that I knew, said Bessie. Oh, I would suffer if they knew I had changed or if they saw the ugliness in themselves. I would want to bury it deeply, hide it somewhere, and never let them see - Oh never, never -

But why? I want to see myself whole and people whole. Are we so weak?

No, no, but I would want to shield her from that - she is all you say - but I don't want her to know - Oh, it's too horrible for her - she thinks she's so lovely all through - No, no, I couldn't - I couldn't -

Not even for her own salvation.

I'd think I was doing it for revenge or just to hurt her.

Oh, really. Well when I'm loved I want to be loved the way I love. I want to see my faults and the suffering I cause and I want to face it and overcome it. God, I've loved her more and felt more tender toward her than I ever did since I got all this out of me...

Yes, yes, but why show it to her, why make her suffer - If it helped you all right - but don't odon't -

The only help I've ever had in life was from doing wrong. It's been the most help of all - particularly when I knew it was wrong -

That's so hard on others -

They could learn from it, too, if they pleased. It's good to do evil sometimes. It makes on move faster than joy and sweetness and all that christian stuff you preach. You get a move on you when you've done wrong. You develop. No, I have to do it. I don't know why but I have to do it and I'm going to. I don't want to escape evil. I want to experience it and be able to choose.

Oh, you'll suffer - you'll get hurt - you'll - Oh, - Let me save you -

Nothing doing.

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BSomething has come about in me," she said, "let me give it to you." I didn't think so.

He smiled slowly, then his face closed. "All right, Miss Sunday school teacher. Am I so far gone that I need a little cherry talking to and jacking it? Go ahead. If it gives you pleasure, go ahead..." "That's not what I meant!" she cried, as if now she must make him understand. "Not what I meant - Oh, David, what we felt in love - so gentle, so pure and tender, so far-opened to the world...! You know, just the other night we felt that way in the darkness, so tender and at the mercy of the world. I am at your mercy. Do not defile me."

"Let's put that little bow in her hair," cried Margaret, her face gleaming with light as she raised her hand to her cheek. "Oh, let's put it right here..." She leaned over the coffin and touched her mother's head. "Right here," she whispered, leaning closer, her face in that tranced silent gleam. "Shall I?" she asked, turning to her brother and sister. "Don't you think so...?"

They stood in shocked silence, their hands around bodies apart and stiff, as if any contact, any brief brushing of clothes or fingers would start that flood of grief, that stream of unconscious obliterating anguish. Eleanor shook her head, her fingers over her mouth.

"But why? Why? Why?" she whispered mutely, her eyes opening wider, her mouth forming that strange blissful smile.

Hugh turned his back. He stood with his strong shoulders drooped and sunken, his head down, his hands lifted to his face.

Eleanor glanced down again at her mother. "How lovely you look - how beautiful -" she whispered. "Not any wrinkles," she said aloud to them, turning again with her inhuman innocent gaze. "All smooth..." She put her hands up to her own face and felt of her cheeks but she seemed to be feeling of no flesh, she seemed to be moving her hands as if her cheeks were not there. She turned again to the coffin, "Oh, Mama," she said with a little laugh.

Then it grew silent with those two fixed in their postures of grief, unable to move, unable to speak or cry out or moan. Eleanor went out of the room, her flowered siak blowing out as she ran up the stairs. She went into her mother's room half singing, her face lifted in its tranced bliss, gleaming with a strange opened look, as if her old usual self had died or dropped away and only this opened, far opened part of her, her very cells far opened, as if only that were left, no talk, no consciousness of anything but this free opened state. She opened the top drawer of the old chest and pushed away the gloves and handkerchiefs until she found a little bow of taffeta with a hairpin on it. She picked it up. It was the bow her mother used to wear when she went to parties in the evening. She wore it at the side of the gleaming knot on top of her head, and her dress was of black taffeta with pleatings in the skirt and the neck, yolk was black lace over turquoise velvet with a high boned collar.

She was the sort of person who asked you to lunch and you went, feeling you were conferring a favor on her.

I feel myself slowly separating from my conceptions of things.
First it was a terrific shock of pain and fright, like terror,
as I felt no contact with my beliefs about life. For an
instant it was unendurable. I felt my head whirl inside in
fright and I thought for a second I might lose my mind. The
next day I felt my body of life and illusions being slowly
dragged out of me, as if the whole substance of life had been
fastened by flesh threads to the cavern of my chest and
**unendurable ribs.** Now my vision has changed. My action has
stopped. I don't feel that pure positive gleam in the darkness
like the precious set of a ring shining from a hand at night.
Instead there is the great mystery of things with nothing but
that fact to clench to, the impenetrable infinite ocean of
mysteries, spreading and stretching out before me wherever I
look.

Couldn't some one rise from his sense of his own pettiness and
futility and build from that honestly, enlarging himself and
expanding through love and loyalty and work? Couldn't he come
in time to be a real whole person with solid beliefs and
solid qualities that are stone in the changing whirling unstatic
dance of living? How is one to know what would be noble for
him? How is one to clench some permanent working tool?

8

She leaned over and suddenly kissed him and then she plunged down the stairs.
He was following her and when she reached into her purse for the fare he slipped
it into the slot and put his hand on her shoulder before she could go through
the gate.

"Why are you going there?"

The great light of the train came suddenly round the dark corner. She
turned back to him, feeling his breathing on her cheek and it seemed that she
must run away before their happiness ceased and any of his beauty vanished.
"Don't let it change," she said, putting one hand on her throat.

"Why are you going there?" he said again, sternly, gazing straight at her.

She felt blank, not confused or fearful or hurt. "I -" she said softly,
running her fingers over her cheek and gazing off at the hideous tile wall,
"I -"

The express came rushing in with its single terrifying eye burning ahead and the
long black train of cars clanging on the dark rails. She waved back at him $\$\$
as she started forward in a panic to be sure of a seat, her body pressing
hard with the crowd that suddenly appeared and rushed for the doors. She tried
to turn and wave once more but some one trod down hard on her toe and she was
pushed into the car just as the doors began to close. Now with a great effort
she twisted herself around so that she was pressed against the glass. There he
was, standing with his hat off, his eyes moving desperately over all the bright
windows. Now the train was moving and she waved both hands, her mouth/breaking
into that big/smile$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$
lonely. Now they were in the black tunnel, g$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$\$
speed, and she leaned against the door, not breathing, her head and body
empty with "I don't know - I don't know -" going through her senselessly.

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passing. Then she sank down, again.

"I'm so happy now with you, - it's so strange, so different from anything
before - that I want to die before I'm unhappy again." Suddenly her eyes
filled with tears and she closed them, bending down over her muffin and milk.

"Never mind."

They were silent and he pressed his hair back several times with his hand,
and then watched her as she turned away from the table with her handkerchief
and wiped her eyes, one hand up to hide his view, and then he pretended to
blow her nose, and took her hand away, laughing.

"Emily, what about it? Tell me." You want to see him sometimes?"
he said gently, as if he were asking an impersonal question.

"No," she said. "Honestly."

"Did you want to see him now?"

"No, no," she answered quickly and then glanced away.

"Well - he was your husband - and even though gone." He swallowed and
then smiled. "Don't mind me, Emily. Go ahead the way you want to." He was
the same after a matched pause,
your husband, and you ought to feel something, I suppose - but - maybe -
anyway, he was and - perhaps that's just -"

They were silent again and she slowly picked up the tiny crumbs from her
muffin and put them gravely into her mouth, her whole face silent and still,
shining, burning with radiance that
seemed to be turning and rising in her body until now she had to sit.
mindless and senseless with this burning sun of bliss, unable to speak or
to act, waiting, waiting, linked for a moment with every one in the world.

"Were you going to say something, Emily?"

"Oh, let's laugh together, Kate. Come on, let's laugh together." She
gazed into his face as if some great understanding for him had come on her
and then she jumped up and put her fur around her neck. "Let's get with
the people. Let's walk. Let's feel all those millions of arms coming out
from us to them. Come on, darling," she said and rushed to the door.

"Now my stomach aches," she said when they were on the pavement. "Every time I eat $$$$ anything - but I don't care - Oh, hello, everybody! Hello! This is me. Hello!"

He smiled, too, and seemed to be greeting all the people who passed without looking or else stared coldly or perhaps gave a shadow smile and aager flashing look as they saced along. "You aren't thinking up anything unusual to do, are you?" he asked, bending one he

"I guess I am," she said in tight.

"What?"

But -

She shivered, 

"What?"

"I have to see him. Listen, Bob, I have to. Somehow, I feel as if She said, looking at him in fear. He raised his eyes to meet us, but something tells me we have to meet - today!" You know, I don't know why - but he will come to me we have to meet -" She turned away for a second, and then said brightly, as if he had discovered a secret.

"But, dear, he didn't know you were sick?"

"I know he didn't. But - Oh, we have to meet today," she said with a strange smile. "I can't explain."

"Of course, that's all right." He looked again over the people, the moving motors, over the shops and apartment buildings, far off, into the distance with his clear straight gaze, his lips closed tightly, one hand on her arm, the other straight beside him with the fingers clenched. "Shall I - do you want me - perhaps it would be better if I didn't?"

"What?"

over

He turned to look at her face, at her eyes that seemed to gaze through him as if he were a wind shield or a bulwark to protect her from some other natural catastrophe. "I was wondering if I'd better go with you."

"No, she said, smiling. "You're a darling to think of it." But you'd better not."

They walked on until they came to the subway entrance. Then they stopped, both looking at their hands. She opened her lips as if she

"You belong with the Peterkins," my friends said to me, "you belong with
Eliza who played the piano through the window or the little boys and their
rubber boots. You're absolutely crazy." They went into gales over my
story of how I had lain in a dark room for three days trying to sleep, trying
so forget the hideous pain in my eye that was nearly swollen shut, trying to
overlook my cold and my three fever sores and my feeling of my side pointing
north instead of east.

I had lived in the city three years trying to be a great writer. I was
in love, I had experienced most of the emotions I wanted to experience -
being utterly happy, desperate, obsessed by another person, sitting in a
chair and grabbing hold of it to keep from pulling out my hair and eyes,
in love with the city, no longer afraid of it, and I had leaned out of my small
dark window and felt as if doves were flying out of me.

Now I faced myself and no longer fancied I was my hat and coat. I had
to face other problems, food, lodging, small dark women who attracted the man
I loved, love, warm and choking me, so that his heart lay in my hands, so that
I said over and over, "I love your heart, I love your body," and saw him
pick up the morning paper and light a cigarette. I had it all. And I fell
sick and there was no one to bring me a class of water, ask me how I was feeling,
offer to raise the shades in the daytime.

It was this way. My room was small and dark looking onto a hard cement
garden and an old stable with one star window high up where on Sundays a horse
would stick his head out and nod at me. Early in the morning I would hear
sound of hoofs on boards and shouts, early, early as they led the horse out
my horse. Next door to me was a laundry where odors came, warm, moist
the air, mixed with manure from the Boarding Stables and the deliciousness
of pastry from the Hudson Street Bakery.

DECORATIVE ART

then I shouted to the horses behind the ⑧⑧⑧ brick walls and ran to the corner to buy food to feed my beloved who usually fell asleep or broke something in my absence. But this day I was sick. I was alone. I had lived three years in the city still believing I was to be a great writer, still looking at the dark figures I had created and saying more and more that I would make bright figures that had never before been seen, bright people who thought it a privilege to be alive, strong, courageous men and women, happy children in the sand. I was to write so that every one would want to live, want to adventure, do the things they had been afraid to do. When I thought of it I would feel close to every one, I would start my story, talking it out as if all the people in the universe were there, close to me, and me in love with all, each one, giving myself from head to foot to each, giving not only my words but my self forever. Then they would go away changed, no longer the same, new men and women, stronger, more conscious, ready now to live vividly, death making them quick, pain making them strong, truth giving them love for everything created and uncreated. Those were the thought I had in that little room whether he loved me or not.

At night I would see our child in the room, after he had gone and it was all dark and quiet, no horse hoofs from the stable, nothing, then I would reach out in the darkness and touch our child. I could close my eyes and see it. I could draw a picture of it, I could talk to it day and night. The more I loved him, the more I was enriched by him, the stronger our child became until I would scream out loud sometimes, seeing it so close in the air, feeling it near me, knowing that if it did come into life I would be deserted, I would have only it, not him, because he would go far away from me then, far away. "Men want children," some one said, "they always want them but they don't want to support them - see."

"Now, if you're going to try to change me and reproach me and say the same thing over and over then I'm going," He would say. "Oh, never leave me, let me sit by you let me feed you, never go, please, anything, anything but don't go, let me be near you." It seemed as if I must be a mother first, a great writer second. What if my books and stories did keep coming back to me

why should any one read the dark things I created, the dark knotted words,
the stories of defeat, when all my body was waiting for another creation,
for the bright child that would make me eternal. Who was I to write about
life, about babied being born, about love, death, $$$, the spirit of
existence. Why couldn't I bear loving but not being loved? Often before
it had been turned around. Now I knew, now the bodies of those who had loved
me hung from my neck. I wanted to hunt for them all, I wanted to say to
them, "Now I know what it meant, what you meant, how you suffered." But
the story is how I went to the free clinic when I got sick.

I lay for three days with no one to get me a glass of water, my eye
sending down tears and feeling as if a small branch were caught in the lid.
My skin was dry and turning slowly to dust. Jy mouth tasted strange as if
my tongue were spread with gall. I thought over diseases I might have,
I was sure blindness was coming from some secret internal derangement. One
day I would wake up blind, the branch in the lid of my eye would be gone and
darkness would be around me. I put on my clothes. I felt old, older than
ever before. I went into the sun.

The light was so intense that tears ran down my face and the air seemed
to cut into my eyes. I held one hand cupper over the worst eye and walked
along, hardly watching as I crossed the streets, angry with myself for being
so pitiful and helpless. I thought of a man who might help me across the
streets or take me in a taxi to the clinic. I passed four men, two lying
stretched out asleep, the others silent, their faces down, their faces gnarled
up, pipes out, hands in pockets. I thought of the man I loved and how he was
probably asleep, his rent due, his mail waiting - a pile of rejected
manuscripts. A cat with a hole in its coat dragged past me to the garbage
can. $$$ An Italian woman passed, her child swelling her out so that her
coat would not meet in front. I hurried, I closed my eyes, I walked near her
to be close to that unborn child, to pretend, I too, was going to be a mother.

4.

When I closed my eye it ached as if coal were stuck in it, sharp fine pains
that spread up. I held it open. I dared not even wink. I realized I
didn't care how I looked, how my coat dragged on one side, how my stockings
were twisted so that the seams were toward the front. I passed the red house
where my beloved lay sleeping and then I wondered where I had got the idea
that because $$$ you loved a man he ought to be your staff and your
support, your helper and deliverer and your everything, water carrier,
food lugger, $$$ father, brother, lover, husband, son, mother, sister,
everything. Why should that one man be everything? I went into the clinic.

"Where would I go to see about my eye?" I asked the nurse.

"We haven no eye clinic here. You will have to go over to Twelfth Street and Second Avenue."

I was almost relieved because now that I faced it my eye seemed better
but in the air outside it began aching, as if that branch were caught in the
lid and all over me I felt like dropping down and yet I was thinking, "There
is a way of writing that will change people. You needn't know the secret of
existence to write, but there is a way that changes them, makes them want to
come out of dark into light, out of death into birth, bright, alive, full
of the spirit and life of God." But as I walked at the same time I was busy
with memories, my mother's hands on my head, my father bringing me a present
when I was sick, my sister picking the batchelor buttons. It seemed a long
way to the clinic and the wind was cutting me. I went inside, into a room
full of people, women on one side, men on another. I said to the guard that
was packing back and forth, the jailor, "Where would I find out about my eye?"

"One o'clock."

"But where?"

"One o'clock. Go and sit down."

He had on a black shirt. He was well developed, fat shoulders, fat
hips, black trousers. His face was hard and white, his voice impossible to

describe. I sat down between two large warm women. I felt some one pull my coat collar. I turned. A face was near me. "Wint't it awful the way they treat us. You'd think they was the doctors themselves."

The jailor was pacing now as if he had a long curling whip in one hand. He was standing now infront of the desk where two women were, one with her dark hair done straight on and arranged in a potato on top, a red pencil through it. She had glasses with a gold chain and a small waist. The other woman was blonde, indifferent, a rose on her front. She wrote, lifting her face occasionally, staring over the heads of the waiting people.

There were about fifty women, some with shawls on, some with handkerchiefs tied over their heads. An old lady came in her foot wrapped in a gunny sack, a crutch in one arm, all her teeth gone.

"Sul, you wan tooie sul frong...."

She stood still looking at him. "Sul you...."

He shoved her along toward the chairs where the women were. "One O'clock!"

She stood looking at him. "Sit down." But she didn't sit down and so he helped her down, pushing her from the shoulders. She sent out a long sharp green as she met the chair.

"Aint it terrible the way they treat us."

I felt myself choke down words. I saw myself going up to the jailor, shrieking at him, "What do you mean by treating these people so, isn't it enough to be poor and desperate, isn't it bad enough to be sick without being treated like a dog. Don't you know that you aren't good enough to lick their rage or the ragged soles of their shoes, don't you know, you dirty dog, that you're the most inferior, lowdown rat that ever slung across this earth gnawing people's bones. Damn you, anyway!" But I didn't get up. I was afraid. I was horrified at the feeling in myself of murder, killing him, watching his blood stain that neat black shirt that fitted across his fat shoulders so smartly. I thought of how he would probably

5.

kick me out the door. "How grand we are in imagination," I thought, "how just, how courageous, how strong." But I huddled in my coat closer and clapped my hand over my eye.

Suddenly a young boy ran in leading an old dark man. The man had one hand on his throat and his cheeks were purple and full as if he hadn't swallowed for some time. His black hat was in his other hand. The boy screamed, "A doctor quick. He's got something caught in his throat."

"One a'clock."

"Say, for God's sake, he's got it in his throat, he can't swallow."

"Go and sit down."

The woman with her hair in a potato stood up and pushed the two vials with her hands. The boy pounded the desk with his fist. The old man's mouth stood open, his hand tight on his neck, his body leaning toward her. "Well, here, take this card," she screamed. "My gracious, I'm sure the doctors has to eat sometime. They're all at their lunch now. Well, go over in the other room and sit down 1811 have you taken care of as soon as I can and don't you come back here." Again she pushed them away with her hands. "Now I've done all I can for you and don't you come back here." They disappeared. "Heaven sakes," she said to the jailor, "these people are ready to order you all over and they expect everything for nothing. How much do you suppose they care about us? Say, the impudence, of that young fellow, ordering me that way. They make me sick."

"But the doctors are just lovely," said the woman behind me. "It's just these that treats us this way."

A young man ran in with his hand clapped over his eye. "Glass," he cried.

"Sorry but the doctors are at lunch. Go and sit down. One O'clock."

As the clock struck one the man in black shouted. "Those without cards from in line here. Those with red cards stay there." We made a line. "Go and sit down. You've got a card. You've got a card. What's the matter with you? Sit down." It came my turn. The lady with the blonde hair and the rose, the pad of

paper.

"Name. Occupation."

"Writer."

"How much do you make?"

"Nothing."

"What?"

"Married?"

"No."

"Parents living."

"Yes."

"Could they take care of you?"

"I suppose so but I take care of myself."

"Sorry we can't take you here then."

"But why?"

"If you have any one who would be responsible for you we can't take you here. Parents in business etc. I'm sorry. I'm a writer too so I can sympathize with you. Go down to the Graduate School. It's only a few blocks. They take anyone."

It came to me I should have said my parents were dead or junk dealers. But the thought of saying they were dead frightened me, they might die, if I had said they were not living I might be punished by having them die suddenly. Oh, God, I thought, my eye, Oh, I'm sick, I'm lonely. I remembered our family doctor who always let us choose what color pills we wanted. He would open his beautiful black case and let us point to the red or the blue or the apricot ones and then he would call for a half a glass of water please and let it dissolve. Papa would ask what his little girl wanted from down town. Mama would hover. Sister would read aloud from the books she preferred, but she would read. The room would be darkened, quiet, the dolls all in bed, the lamb with the sore foot standing in the little shed near the radiator. Surprise baked apple with raisins, surprise

Gramma Godbird predicted that he would never marry. Even as a boy in a round hard patent leather hat and with soft loose cheeks she said every time he passed the house with his mother, "That fellow will never marry." Perhaps it was his odd secluded walk, his mincing steps, or his glazed eyeballs and dumpling cheeks but no one could imagine him changing or marrying. "Wouldn't catch me out with him," the girls said. "I should say not. Rather be dead." When he passed their deeks in school, toe down first, then heel, a mute startled look on his face, they would giggle and make a screen with their hands, pursing out their cheeks and rolling their eyes. "He's sure a pill."

They usually saw him with his mother, walking beside her, adjusting his steps to her small genteel ones and swinging his arms lightly and ridiculously for his clumsy figure. When the girls passed he would be discussing something addenfly with bent head and his mother would say gently, "Hello, Mildred. Hello, Elizabeth." He cheeks always bobbed at little as he walked and his serious eyes were fringed with sand coloured lashes. He would turn anxiously to his mother even as a boy of six: "Is the throat better, Mother?"

"Yes, indeed. Thank you, Thomas. Much better. Those drops are helping."

Mrs. Bowles had white hair and a stiff hat with feathers. She wore suits with tabs on the shoulders and her best dress had a long gold tassel hanging from each elbow. She walked tightly, happily, her gloves always buttoned and without a wrinkle.

"How lovely Mrs. Melchor's verbenas are this year!"

They would stop by the whitewashed fence and lean over toward the flowers. Birds would be pecking on the garden path and under the rhubarb least there was always a cat lying streoned in the cool. Sometimes he looked up at them with yellow eyes, one leg stretched out stiffly, being washed. Mrs. Bowles would smile, her eyes opening and her nostrils spreading as if a June humming were all through her. Sometimes she wiped her nose on a crisp handkerchief.

"Son, how lovely they are!"

"Oh, yes, Mother. Indeed they are."

"We'll stop in at Gramma Godbird's for a moment, son. You don't mind do you?" She would always turn to him with her exquisite hesitation as if one word from him would change everything, a frown, a flicker of those strange glazed eyeballs. "I know she would be glad to see you, Thomas. I want you to tell her about your report card for this month. Will you, son?"

"Why certainly, Mother."

He always removed his patent leather hat as soon as he reached the top step of the tiny vined porch with a swinging cage and cans of geraniums in the sun. Then Gramma Godbird came her feet laced in grey felt shoes lined with down, a green pickle brooch at her collar and a clean white apron tied on.

"My soul, you folks always insist on being formal. I want you should walk right in any time." She went ahead of them making a sound like aaah-ya as if she were preparing her throat to speak and all the time she was pushing the tufted chair with doilies on them out into the center of the bright room.

"Aaah-ya and how's Thomas?"

"Quite well, thank you, Gramma."

Later they went into the parlor bedroom where Aunt Weir sat in her wheel chair. She wore enormous grey nightgowns trimmed with tatting and her bloodless ears always showed. She held her lower jaw out with the lip drawn down so that her teeth gleamed grimly. Sometimes she would suddenly wheel herself straight into the kitchen, light the gas, and sing off the grey curling hairs on the back of her hand. Usually she sat staring at the oldITCHING POST with a proud black iron horse head on top, a ring through his jaws.

"Why aren't you out with the boys?" demanded Aunt Weir. "Eh?" She turned to him slowly, grinding her jaws together. "Playing ball never hurt any one."

When he stood motionless, startled and mute, his hard hat shining against
his short pants, she added, "Well, when I was young a game of ball didn't
hurt but nowadays everything's different. Everything changes."

"It don't either," said Gramma Godbird. "Wish it did." She laughed
and drew Mrs. Bowles into the sitting room. "Asah-ya," she said again.
"When Berdine dies I shall live different, yes, I shall. I'm old but I've
a mind to make some plans for myself even now. Berdine's been a good
husband to me but now he's sick and there's my poor sister in there and
before it was my father to nurse. My soul and body," she cried, "how ever
did I torn my skirt?" She slipped off her white apron muttering, "Isn't
that astrocious now."

Mrs. Bowles went swiftly back to the bedroom where Thomas stood with all
his weight on one leg, his red cheeks monstrous below the mute eyes. He was
smiling politely at the old woman, his eyes straight ahead. She had
grasped the arms of her chair as if she were holding herself down, pushing
herself back with all her strength, gazing hard at the iron hitching post.

"Auntie," said Mrs. Bowles gently, "as Thomas told you about his report
card?"

The woman made no reply and Mrs. Bowles nodded, entreated with her white
hands, stretched her eager face all soft and misty toward him, pleading.

"I received one hundred in Language," he began shrilly. "Bird Study,
spelling, history, Arithmetic one hundred. I fell below this month in
marking and manual training. I received 96 in those. My deportment was A."

"Well, that don't mean a solitary thing to me," snapped the woman.

"I torn my new dress, Sarah," cried Gramma Godbird. She came in with
her skirt held up in her hands, a striped petticoat with small ruffles below
the knew crackling like ice. "Just look how I torn it, sister."

"Mind your own business."

to the one," said Gramma Godbird smiling on them, "let's talk about the social

to the church. I think we'd ought to have cold ham and potato salad and pickles...." Her stiff high corsets pushed her mother-breast up toward her chin in a soft plateau. "I'm making five pounds of jell again this year," she said #$$%&'()" proudly. "I always make my five pounds every year. Now, Thomas you aren't comfortable. Would he play with a ball-bat if I gave it him?" she whispered, leaning toward Mrs. Bowles.

"No, no, don't trouble, Gramma. We're running away now," said Mrs. Bowles. Her eyes gazed back sweetly at the woman but her face was set and white. She held her mouth straight, her chin hard, and the pressure on her features made her seem small and harrassed. But there was nothing deliberate in her eyes when she said goodbye to Gramma Godbird. It was as if, no matter how her body responded, her eyes always softened when they met eyes or flowers or animals anywhere. Even the quaint wooden houses along the street changed her eyes when she saw them breathing there in the palmy #$$% foliage or looking startled behind fences and hollyhocks, or in the evening resting deep in the velvet blackness and quiet of the grass.

"You folks come back soon remember," called Gramma.

"Thank you," she cried back, turning and suddenly waving her white hand. But at their own gate she said bitterly, "Five pounds of jell isn't much." She looked at her son, her head back and her eyes filling. She put her hand on his coat when they were in the dark hall with the wraps and card trays. She did not speak. "I'm going to make those biscuits you like for supper," she finally said and turned sharply and went away to the kitchen.

2.

He graduated from everything with honors and finally took some sort of job in the city. He was very proud and secretive. Gramma Godbird couldn't make out what his salary was or how he was doing or if there was any chance of big money and promotion in the work. It worried her considerably. One day Aunt

5.

now bed-ridden, cried at her sister, "Say my soul forget that fellow. The
day I set eyes on him my soul went out of my body and I haven't been the
same since." She turned over in bed, her sad eyes toward the wall, "No,
sir, a different soul come and took possession of me." But when her
deceased husband was mentioned she would usually say, "He had tonsilitis
one winter something terrible. That sickness changed him. The soul went
out of his body and he got a different one. He wasn't the man I married
after that."

"Eat a little of this pickle," Gramma would usually say, or she would
read some of the death notices in the paper or describe an ulcer she had
seen. But every one mentioned Thomas Bowles often. Whenever Mrs. Bowles
went outside the house they came to the fence or the garden and inquired
about him. "Doing well, is he? Doing as well as he expected? Is it
permanent work? Just what is it he's engaged in, Mrs. Bowles, I heard but
it slipped my mind the line of work he's in."

He was now twenty-eight but most of his hair was gone. He still had the
dumpling cheeks of his childhood but since living in the city they had turned
from apple red to harvest yellow and when he set his large ffet down the
cheeks bobbed a little and his lips pursed out just above the collar of his
ulster. When he came home to visit his mother he brought wictrola records
with him, not the/singlers she liked or the band pieces and bird imitators
but symphony music. If the Bope girls came in or the Briggs family or Mrs.
Tier or Gramma wodbird she always said when the selection was finished. "Wasn't
it beautiful?" She would watch him from time to time during the music,
catch the emotion from the tilt of his head, know utterly now he was feeling
by his face or the way he shrank behind the bowl of columbines on the table and
covered his eyes. Then she would whisper, "beautiful!. Oh, beautiful!" shaking
her white head back and forth, her lips pressed tightly, head in wrinkles of

PREPARATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL RESTRICTED

ecstasy. When he didn't like it so well he would toss about, gaze at the top of the piano, stir restlessly. Then she would say, "That wasn't so good, was it dear."

"It was amusing anyway."

"What was it, dear?"

always

"It was amusing anyway. Modern music is $$$ amusing."

"What is the name of it, son?"

"Love For Three Oranges."

When he laughed, she laughed too. She put her delicate white hands on her throat and raised her head against the chair. Her feet were crossed discreetly on the rug and she were a print gown with little primroses in it and a high net guimpe, cruelly boned at the neck. The flash about her lovely eyes was gathered in wrinkles and her cheeks had crisscross marks on them and frail little lines running to her nose or lips.

He tried to teach her something about politics, government as it should be, religion as it should be, marriage, primitive customs, animal behaviorism. He explained chemical attraction as nearly as he could and told her why communism should be adopted in America. But she would only look tortured and say, "But I don't see what needs to be different, son? I don't notice anything wrong except ourselves." She always spoke gently, looking at him with her large eyes, leaning forward as if he were trying to be strange and frighten her. "Aren't you wearing the underwear I sent?"

"Mother," he would say sternly, "put your mind on it. This world isn't what you think. People are not good. They're out for themselves every one. You have to protect yourself at every turn from some assassin. Every advance in anything is made at the expense of some one else's life. You even have to struggle and push and beat old ladies back getting in the subway."

"Sam!" she cried, "What are you saying?"

He swallowed, his mouth drawn down and his eyes staring at the rug. "It's

true. I wouldn't get to work if I didn't. Then I'd lose my job. Then I'd be lost for weeks getting another."

"Shall I make pancakes for supper?" she asked brightly.

"Why should we think for an instant that there's a God who made us or cares what happens to any of us on this god forsaken planet of ours? Whole spaces are wiped out, civilizations die, and here we sit thinking that if we get hit in the lungs today that god will give us a raise tomorrow or make someone love us or send us an automobile for our birthday. No!" he cried rising above her and glaring wildly at the piano. "No, it isn't the way we think. Look at the women. All of them out to nail some one so she can have an easy time being supported for the rest of her days. If she loves her husband, if she happens to, why he happens to love some one else. No one who has a really big love for anyone ever has it returned. He can't love - he can't go to hell." He rushed out.

She heard him running upstairs to his room and then, as she sat looking ahead of her, all her sweet peace and happiness in him gone, she put her hand on her head and then her throat. She moistened her lips. She saw him again with the sweat standing out, wrenching out his words as if he were having to maintain himself at terrific cost. She remembered the necktie she had given him for his birthday. He hadn't worn it, he hadn't spoken or it even. "As if I didn't know the pain of love," she thought. But it seemed to her that she could not bear their separation, that she must beg him, charm him, force him, even, to acknowledge and praise one thing in her world, show her that he could move in her world as well as in his own cruel bitter place. She remembered one of the records he had brought the night before. She could see his face as he listened, the utter joy, then the sadness. She could feel his happiness in the music pour through her. She got up quickly and put it on, flicking a bit of dust off with her crisp handkerchief.

But in my room were sea green curtains to the floor, my large black fireplace,
my picture of a fat girl with a modest lamb and clover, the old broken chest of
drawers and my table and chair. When he was in love with me or when he knew I
was in existence, then my room was beautiful, then I shouted to the horses
behind the brike walls and ran to the corner to buy food for my beloved who
usually fell asleep or broke something during my absence. But this day I was sick.
I was alone. I had lived three years in the city still believing I was to be a
great writer, still looking at the dark figures I had created and saying more
and more that I would make bright figures that had never before been seen, bright
people who thought it was a privilege to be alive and breathing in air, strong
men and women, happy children in sand. I was to write so that every one would
want to live, want to adventure, do the things they had always been afraid to do.

When I thought of it I would feel close to every one, I would start my story
out loud, talking it out as if all the people in the world were there, close to
me, and me in love with all, each one, giving myself from head to foot to each,
giving not only words but my self forever. Them they would go away changed,
never again the same, new men and women, ready to live vividly, the thought of
death making them quick, pain making them strong, truth giving them love for
everything created and uncreated. Those were the thoughts I had in that little
room whether he loved me or not.

At night I would see our child in the dark, after he had gone and it was
lent and thick, no horse hoofs from the stable, nothing but thick deep black,
then I would reach out my hand and touch our child. I could close my eyes and
see it. I could draw a picture of it, I could talk to it day and night. The
I loved him, the more I was enriched by him, the strong our child became
would speak out in the dark, seeing it so close, feeling it, and I would
have a little scream sometimes, knowing that if it did come into reality I would
be deserts, I would have only it, not him, because he would go far away from me.

then, far away to those dark women, those all-women.

"Now, if you're going to try to change me and reproach me and say the same thing over and over then I'm going," he would say.

"Oh, never leave me, let me sit by you, let me feed you, never go, please, anything, anything but don't go, let me sit near you, let me touch your sleeve."

But it seemed as if I must be a mother first, a writer second. And what if my books and stories did keep coming back to me? Why should any one read the dark things I created, the dark knotted words, the deftast, when all my body was waiting for another creation, for the bright child that would make me eternal in flesh. Who was I to write about life, about babies being born, about death, love, the spirit of existence that is tasted in the throat, seen with the eye, felt in a room with the eyes shut tight, heard with the ears? Why couldn't I bear loving but not being loved? It had always been turned around before. Now I knew, now the base of those who had loved and wanted me hung from my neck. I wanted to hunt for them, I wanted to say to them, "Now I know what it meant, what you meant, how you suffered." But the real story is how I went to the free clinic when I got sick.

I lay for three days with no one to get me a glass of water, my eye sending down tears and feeling as if a small branch were caught in the lid. My skin was dry and slowly turning to dust. My mouth tasted thick and bitter, my tongue was spread with gall. I thought over diseases I might have, I was sure kindness was coming from some internal derangement. One day I would wake up and find the branch in the lid of my eye would be gone and darkness would be there. I put on my clothes. I felt old, older than ever before. I went into the sun. Snow was falling in the warmth. Snow water ran into my shoes. My stockings were wet and walked.

66.

watching, one ankle sunk deep in gutter snow-mud. I thought of a man who
might help me across or take me in a taxi without my having to pay the fare.
I passed four men, two lying stretched out asleep, the others silent, their
cops down, their faces gmarled up, pipes out, hands in pockets. I thought of
the man I loved and how he was probably asleep, his rent due, his mail
waiting for him under the telephone in the hall - a stack of rejected
manuscripts. A coat with muddy paws and a hole in its coat dragged past me to
the garbage can. An Italian woman passed, her child swelling out about so that
her coat did not meet. I hurried, I closed my eyes, I walked near her to be
close to the unborn, to pretend that I too was going to be a mother.

But my closed eye, in spite of the dream behind it, ached as if coat were
stuck in it, sharp fine pains that spread up. I held it open. I dared not
even wink. Then I realized that I didn't care how I looked, how my coat dragged
on one side, how my stockings were damp and twisted so that the seams came in
front. I passed the red house where my beloved lay sleeping and then I
wondered where I had got the idea that because you love a man he ought to be
your staff and your joy, your helper and sufferer, water carrier, food lugger,
father, husband, lever, brother, sister, son, mother, all in all. I went into
the clinic.

"We have no eye clinic here. You will have to go over to Twelfth Street and
Second Avenue."

"Dying," I thought, "Yes, I'm dying, for want of a tough mind, a strong
stomach, a hard clear eye." I felt like dropping down and yet I thought, "There
is a way of writing that will change people, change me, too. There is a way
that will bring them out of dark into light, out of death into birth, up out
of the body fear-bed into life, the world." But all the time I was busy with
memories, my mother's hand on my head and me looking up at her, my father bringing

my toe in his seat. "What do you mean by treating these people this way?
Don't you know you aren't good enough to lick their rage or the soles of
their shoes? Has it ever occurred to you, you dirty dog, that you're the
most inferior, low down rat that ever scratched across this black earth?
Damm you anyway! Ien't it enough to be poor and sick without being treated
like a dog?" But I didn't get up. I was afraid. I was horrified at the
thought of my fingers bringing blood out on the black shirt that fitted so
neatly across his shoulders. I thought of how he would kick me out the door,
hawling after me. I thought of how he, too, was earning his salary.

"How grand we are in imagination," I thought, "how just, courageous,
how strong." I huddled in my coat bloser, made myself smaller all over, and
looked at my damp shoes.

A young boy ran in leading an old man. The man had one hand clapped over
his throat and his upper teeth all showed. His cheeks stood out purple and
stiff as if he hadn't swallowed for a long time. His black hat was in his
other hand and the ends of his thick overcoat dropped down, down far in front.

"A doctor quickly's got something in his throat. Can't swallow!" The
boy pointed to his own throat and then slammed his fist on the table.

"One o'clock."

"Say, for God's sake, he can't swallow!"

"Go and sit down."

The woman with her hair in a potato stood up and handed the boy a card.
"Well then take this," she screamed. "Wait in the other room. My gracious,
the doctors have to eat, I'm sure. They can't work for you forever without
eating sometimes, I'm sure. Keep still. I'll have you taken care of as soon
as I can." She pushed them away with her hands and when they did not move
back she fluttered with in their faces, the boy shaking his fist in hers,
the old man clutching his throat. "I've done all I can, I said, and don't

"They live in Wisconsin. They need their money. I take care of myself."
"Sorry we can't take you here." She pushed my quarter back at me. "If you have parents that could pay we can't take you here. This is for the poor."
"But there aren't any poorer than I, really."

"Sorry. I'm a writer myself and I can sympathize with you but we can't take you. Go up to the Graduate Hospital. They don't care up there. They ask fifty cents - we're a quarter."

It came to me then that I should have said my parents were dead or junk dealers. But the thought of saying they were dead frightened me - they might die, if I said that, I might be punished by having them die suddenly for lying about them. "Oh, God," I thought, "my eye, I'm sick, I'm lonely." I remembered our firmly doctor leaning over my bed. He always let us choose what color pills we wanted. He would open his black case and let us point to the red or the lilac or the apricot and then he would call for half a glass of water please and let it dissolve. Papa would ask his little girl what she wanted from down town, Mama would hover, sister would read aloud from the book she preferred. The room would be cool, darkened, quiet, the dolls all in bed, the lamb with a sore foot standing in the little shed near the radiator. Surprise jelly with two pills concealed. "Oh, Mama, please sit by me, please, oh...."

At the Graduate Hospital the line extended to the stairway. I stepped into it. Twenty minutes later I found it was the wrong one and stepped into another that went upstairs. I drew nearer.

"What does your husband do?" "Tin pedlar." "Junk dealer".

I paid fifty cents after stating that my parents were alive. "Yes," said the nurse, "this is the eye clinic but we don't open until three o'clock."

"Some one must do something for me now."

"Three o'clock." She started telephoning.

I sat on a shiny bench, my hand over my eye. What if I would have to wear