U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [447]
"Say, Tony, you might at least tel me what she's say-ing," Margo whined peevishly.
"Mother says this is your house and you are welcome, things like that. Now you must say muchas gracias, mamá." Margo couldn't say any-thing. A lump rose in her throat and she burst out crying.
-244-She cried some more when she saw their room, a big dark alcove hung with torn lace curtains mostly fil ed up by a big iron bed with a yel ow quilt on it that was al spotted with a brown stain. She quit crying and began to giggle when she saw the big cracked chamberpot with roses on it peeping out from under.
Tony was sore. "Now you must behave very nice," he said. "My people they say you are very pretty but not wel bred."
"Aw, you kiss my foot," she said.
Al the time she was in Havana she lived in that alcove with only a screen in front of the glass door to the court. Tony and the boys were always out. They'd never take her anywhere. The worst of it was when she found she was going to have a baby. Day after day she lay there al alone staring up at the cracked white plaster of the ceil-ing, listening to the shril jabber of the women in the court and the vestibule and the parrot and the yapping of the little white dog that was named Kiki. Roaches ran up and down the wal and ate holes in any clothes that weren't put away in chests.
Every afternoon a hot square of sunlight pressed in through the glass roof of the court and ran along the edge of the bed and across the tiled floor and made the alcove glary and stifling.
Tony's family never let her go out unless one of the old women went along, and then it was usual y just to market or to church. She hated going to the market that was so filthy and rancidsmel ing and jammed with sweaty jostling negroes and chinamen yel ing over coops of chickens and slimy stal s of fish. La mamá and Tia Feliciana and Carné
the old niggerwoman seemed to love it. Church was bet-ter, at least people wore better clothes there and the tinsel altars were often ful of flowers, so she went to confession regularly, though the priest didn't understand the few Spanish words she was beginning to piece together, and
-245-she couldn't understand his replies. Anyway church was better than sitting al day in the heat and the rancid smel s of the vestibule trying to talk to the old women who never did anything but fan and chatter, while the little white dog slept on a dirty cushion on a busted gilt chair and occasion-al y snapped at a fly. Tony never paid any attention to her any more; she
could hardly blame him her face looked so redeyed and swol en from crying. Tony was always around with a mid-dleaged babyfaced fat man in a white suit with an enor-mous double gold watchchain looped across his baywindow whom everybody spoke of very respectful y as el señor Manfredo. He was a sugarbroker and was going to send Tony to Paris to study music. Sometimes he'd come and sit in the vestibule on a wicker chair with his goldheaded cane between his fat knees. Margo always felt there was something funny about Sefior Manfredo, but she was as nice to him as she could be. He paid no attention to her either. He never took his eyes off Tony's long black lashes. Once she got desperate and ran out alone to Central Park to an American drugstore she'd noticed there