U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [416]
It was a relief when Agnes said one evening when she came home before supper looking quite stylish, Margie thought, in her city clothes, that she'd taken a position as
-171-cook with a family on Brooklyn Heights and that she was going to send Margie to the Sisters' this winter.
Margie was a little scared al the time she was at the convent, from the minute she went in the door of the grey-stone vestibule with a whitemarble figure standing up in the middle of it. Margie hadn't ever had much religion, and the Sisters were scary in their dripping black with their faces and hands looking so pale always edged with white starched stuff, and the big dark church ful of candles and the catechismclass and confession, and the way the little bel rang at mass for everybody to close their eyes when the Saviour came down among angels and doves in a glare of amber light onto the altar. It was funny, after the way Agnes had let her run round the house without any clothes on, that when she took her bath once a week the Sister made her wear a sheet right in the tub and even soap her-self under it. The winter was a long slow climb to Christmas, and after al the girls had talked about what they'd do at Christmas so much Margie's Christmas was awful, a late gloomy dinner with Agnes and the old people and only one or two presents. Agnes looked pale, she was deadtired from getting the Christmas dinner for the people she worked for. She did bring a net stocking ful of candy and a pretty goldenhaircd dol y with eyes that opened and closed, but Margie felt like crying. Not even a tree. Al-ready sitting at the table she was busy making up things to tel the other girls anyway.
Agnes was just kissing her goodnight and getting ready putting on her little worn furpiece to go back to Brooklyn Heights when Fred came in very much under the influence and wanted to take them al out on a party. Of course they wouldn't go and he went away mad and Agnes went away crying, and Margie lay awake half the night on the cot made up for her in the old peoples' parlor thinking how awful it was to be poor and have a father like that.
-172-It was dreary, too, hanging round the old people's house while the vacation lasted. There was no place to play and they scolded her for the least little thing. It was bul y to get back to the convent where there was a gym and she could play basketbal and giggle with the other girls at recess. The winter term began to speed up towards Easter. Just before, she took her first communion. Agnes made the white dress for her and al the Sisters rol ed up their eyes and said how pretty and pure she looked with her golden curls and blue eyes like an angel, and Minette Hardy, an older girl with a snubnose, got a crush on her and used to pass her chocolatepeppermints in the playground wrapped in bits of paper with little messages scrawled on them: To Goldilocks with love from her darling Minette, and things like that.
She hated it when commencement came, and there was
nothing about summer plans she could tel the other girls. She grew fast that summer and got gawky and her breasts began to show. The stuffy gritty hot weather dragged on endlessly at the Fishers'. It was awful there cooped up with the old people. Old Mrs. Fisher never let her forget that she wasn't real y Agnes's little girl and that she thought it was sil y of her daughter to support the child of a noaccount like Fred. They tried to get her to do enough housework to pay for her keep and every day there were scoldings and tears and tantrums.
Margie was certainly happy when Agnes came in one
day and said that she had a new job and that she and Margie would go over to New York to live. She jumped up and down yel ing,