U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [55]
-132-jus' beat him til he died sure couldn't a been nothin' but an oysterpirate JANEY
When Janey was little she lived in an old flatface brick house a couple of doors up the hil from M Street in Georgetown. The front part of the house was always
dark because Mommer kept the heavy lace curtains drawn to and the yel ow linen shades with lace inset bands down. Sunday afternoons Janey and Joe and El en and Francie had to sit in the front room and look at pictures or read books. Janey and Joe read the funnypaper together be-cause they were the oldest and the other two were just babies and not old enough to know what was funny any-way. They couldn't laugh outloud because Popper sat with the rest of The Sunday Star on his lap and usual y went to sleep after dinner with the editorial section crum-pled in one big blueveined hand. Tiny curds of sunlight flickering through the lace insets in the window shade would lie on his bald head and on one big red flange of his nose and on the droop of one mustache and on his speckled sundayvest and on the white starched shirt-sleeves with shiny cuffs, held up above the elbow by a rubber band. Janey and Joe'would sit on the same chair feeling each other's ribs jiggle when they laughed about the Katzenjammer kids setting off a cannoncracker under the captain's stool. The little ones would see them laugh-ing and start laughing too, "Shut up, can't you," Joe would hiss at them out of the corner of his mouth. "You don't know what we're laughing at." Once in a while, if there was no sound from Mommer who was taking her Sunday afternoon nap upstairs stretched out in the back
-133-bedroom in a faded lilac sack with fril s on it, after they'd listened for a long time to the drawnout snort that ended in a little hiss of Popper's snores, Joe would slip off his chair and Janey would fol ow him without breathing into the front hal and out the front door. Once they'd closed it very careful y so that the knocker wouldn't bang, Joe would give her a slap, yel "You're it" and run off down the hil towards M Street, and she'd have to run after him, her heart pounding, her hands cold for fear he'd run away and leave her. Winters the brick sidewalks were icy and there were colored women out spreading cinders outside their doors when the children went to school mornings. Joe never would walk with the rest of them because they were girls, he lagged behind or ran ahead. Janey wished she could walk with him but she couldn't leave her little sisters who held tight onto her hands. One winter they got in the habit of walking up the hil with a little yal er girl who lived directly across the street and whose name was Pearl. Afternoons Janey and Pearl walked home together. Pearl usual y had a couple of pennies to buy bul seyes or candy bananas with at a little store on Wisconsin Avenue, and she always gave Janey half so Janey was very fond of her. One afternoon she asked Pearl to come in and they played dol s together under the big rose of sharon bush in the back yard. When Pearl had gone Mommer's voice cal ed from the kitchen. Mommer had
her sleeves rol ed up on her faded pale arms and a checked apron on and was rol ing piecrust for supper so that her hands were covered with flour.
" Janey, come here," she said. Janey knew from the cold quaver in her voice that something was wrong.
"Yes, Mommer." Janey stood in front of her mother shaking her head about so that the two stiff sandy pig-tails lashed from side to side. "Stand stil , child, for gracious sake . . . Jane, I want to talk to you about some--134-thing. That little colored girl you brought in this after-noon . . ." Janey's heart was dropping. She had a sick feeling and felt herself blushing, she hardly knew why.
"Now, don't misunderstand me; I like and respect the colored people; some of them are fine selfrespecting peo-ple in their place . . . But you mustn't bring that little colored girl in the house again. Treating colored people kindly and with respect is one of the signs of good breed-ing . . . You mustn't forget that your mother's people were wel born