A BED FOR THE NIGHT
A drizzling rain had begun to fall. I was wet and chilled to the bone. I had just left the free ward of a hospital, where I had been taken when ill with the flu. It was good to be home again! Even though what I called home were but the dim, narrow halls of a lodging-house. With a sigh of relief, I dropped my suitcase in the vestibule.
As the door swung open, the landlady met me with: “Your room is taken. Your things are in the cellar.”
“My room?” I stammered, white with fear.
“Oh no—please, Mrs. Pelz!”
“I got a chance to rent your room at such a good price, I couldn’t afford to hold it.”
“But you promised to keep it for me while I was away. And I paid you for it——”
“The landlord raised me my rent and I got to get it out from the roomers,” she defended. “I got four hungry mouths to feed——”
“But maybe I would have paid you a little more,” I pleaded. “If you had only told me.I have to go back to work to-day. How can I get another room at a moment’s notice?”
“We all got to look out for ourselves. I am getting more than twice as much as you paid me from this new lodger,” she finished triumphantly. “And no housekeeping privileges.”
“You must give me time!” My voice rose into a shriek. “You can’t put a girl out into the street at a moment’s notice. There are laws in America——”
“There are no laws for roomers.”
“No law for roomers?” All my weakness and helplessness rushed out of me in a fury of rebellion. “No law for roomers?”
“I could have put your things out in the street when your week was up. But being you were sick, I was kind enough to keep them in the cellar. But your room is taken,” she said with finality. “I got to let my rooms to them as pay the most. I got to feed my own children first. I can’t carry the whole world on my back.”
I tried to speak. But no voice came to my lips. I felt struck with a club on the head. I could only stare at her. And I must have been staring for some time without seeing her, for I had not noticed she had gone till I heard a voice from the upper stairs, “Are you still here?”
“Oh—yes—yes—I—I—am—going—go-ing.” I tried to rouse my stunned senses, which seemed struck to the earth.
“There’s no money in letting rooms to girls,” my landlady continued, as she came down to open the door for me. “They’re always cooking, or washing, or ironing and using out my gas. This new roomer I never hear nor see except in the morning when he goes to work and at night when he comes to sleep.”
I staggered out in a bewildered daze. I leaned against the cold iron lamp-post. It seemed so kind, so warm. Even the chill, drizzling rain beating on my face was almost human. Slowly, my numbed brain began to recollect where I was. Where should I turn? To whom? I faced an endless maze of endless streets. All about me strangers—seas of jostling strangers. I was alone—shelterless!
All that I had suffered in lodging-houses rushed over me. I had never really lived or breathed like a free, human being. My closed door assured me no privacy. I lived in constant dread of any moment being pounced upon by my landlady for daring to be alive. I dared not hang out my clothes on a line in the fresh air. I was forced to wash and dry them stealthily,at night, over chairs and on my trunk. I was under the same restraint when I did my simple cooking although I paid dearly for the gas I used.
This ceaseless strain of don’t move here and don’t step there was far from my idea of home. But still it was shelter from the streets. I had almost become used to it. I had almost learned not to be crushed by it. Now, I was shut out—kicked out like a homeless dog.
All thought of reporting at my office left my mind. I walked and walked, driven by despair. Tears pressed in my throat, but my eyes were dry as sand.
I tried to struggle out of my depression. I looked through the furnished room sections of the city. There were no cheap rooms to be had. The prices asked for the few left were ten, twelve and fifteen dollars a week.
I earn twenty-five dollars a week as a stenographer. I am compelled to dress neatly to hold down my job. And with clothes and food so high, how could I possibly pay more than one-third of my salary for rent?
In my darkness I saw a light—a vision of the settlement. As an immigrant I had joined one of the social clubs there, and I remembered therewas a residence somewhere in that building for the workers. Surely they would take me in till I had found a place to live.
“I’m in such trouble!” I stammered, as I entered the office of the head resident. “My landlady put me out because I couldn’t pay the raise in rent.”
“The housing problem is appalling,” Miss Ward agreed with her usual professional friendliness. “I wish I could let you stay with us, my child, but our place is only for social workers.”
“Where should I go?” I struggled to keep back my tears. “I’m so terribly alone.”
“Now—now, dear child,” Miss Ward patted my shoulder encouragingly. “You mustn’t give way like that. Of course, I’ll give you the addresses of mothers of our neighbourhood.”
One swift glance at the calm, well-fed face and I felt instantly that Miss Ward had never known the terror of homelessness.
“You know, dear, I want to help you all I can,” smiled Miss Ward, trying to be kind, “and I’m always glad when my girls come to me.”
“What was the use of my coming to you?” I was in no mood for her make-believe settlement smile. “If you don’t take me in, aren’t youpushing me in the street—joining hands with my landlady?”
“Why—my dear!” The mask of smiling kindness dropped from Miss Ward’s face. Her voice cooled. “Surely you will find a room in this long list of addresses I am giving you.”
I went to a dozen places. It was the same everywhere. No rooms were to be had at the price I could afford.
Crushed again and again, the habit of hope still asserted itself. I suddenly remembered there was one person from whom I was almost sure of getting help—an American woman who had befriended me while still an immigrant in the factory. Her money had made it possible for me to take up the stenographic course. Full of renewed hope, I sped along the streets. My buoyant faith ever expectant could think of one outcome only.
Mrs. Olney had just finished dictating to her secretary, when the maid ushered me into the luxurious library.
“How good it is to see you! What can I do for you?” The touch of Mrs. Olney’s fine hand, the sound of her lovely voice was like the warming breath of sunshine to a frozen thing. A choking came in my throat. Tears blinded me.
“If it wasn’t a case of life and death, I wouldn’t have bothered you so early in the morning.”
“What’s the trouble, my child?” Mrs. Olney was all concern.
“I can’t stand it any longer! Get me a place to live!” And I told her of my experiences with my landlady and my hopeless room-hunting.
“I have many young friends who are in just your plight,” Mrs. Olney consoled. “And I’m sending them all to the Better Housing Bureau.”
I felt as though a powerful lamp went out suddenly within my soul. A sharp chill seized me. The chasm that divides those who have and those who have not yawned between us. The face I had loved and worshipped receded and grew dim under my searching gaze.
Here was a childless woman with a houseful of rooms to herself. Here was a philanthropist who gave thousands of dollars to help the poor. And here I tried to tell her that I was driven out into the street—shelterless. And her answer to my aching need was, “The Better Housing Bureau.”
Again I turned to the unfeeling glare of the streets. A terrible loneliness bled in my heart.Such tearing, grinding pain was dragging me to the earth! I could barely hold myself up on my feet. “Ach! Only for a room to rest!” And I staggered like a dizzy drunkard to the Better Housing Bureau.
At the waiting-room I paused in breathless admiration. The soft greys and blues of the walls and hangings, the deep-seated divans, the flowers scattered in effective profusion, soothed and rested me like silent music. Even the smoothly fitting gown of the housing specialist seemed almost part of the colour scheme.
As I approached the mahogany desk I felt shabby—uncomfortable in this flawless atmosphere, but I managed somehow to tell of my need. I had no sooner explained the kind of room I could afford than the lady requested the twenty-five cents registration fee.
“I want to see the room first,” I demanded.
“All our applicants pay in advance.”
“I have only a two-dollar bill, and I don’t get my pay till Monday.”
“Oh, that’s all right. I’ll change it,” she offered obligingly. And she took my one remaining bill.
“Where were you born? What is your religion?”
“I came for a room and not to be inquisitioned,” I retorted.
“We are compelled to keep statistics of all our applicants.”
Resentfully, I gave her the desired information, and with the addresses she had given me I recommenced my search. At the end of another futile hour of room-hunting there was added to the twenty-five cents registration fee an expense of fifteen cents for car fare. And I was still homeless.
I had been expecting to hear from my sister who had married a prosperous merchant and whom I hadn’t seen for years. In my agitation I had forgotten to ask for my mail, and I went back to see about it. A telegram had come, stating my sister was staying at the Astor and I was to meet her there for lunch.
I hastened to her. For although she was now rich and comfortable, I felt that after all she was my sister and she would help me out.
“How shabby you look!” She cast a disapproving glance at me from head to foot. “Couldn’t you dress decently to meet me, when you knew I was staying at this fashionable hotel?”
I told her of my plight.
“Why not go to a hotel till you find a suitable room?” she blandly advised.
My laughter sounded unreal so loud it was, as I reminded her, “Before the French Revolution, when the starving people came to the queen’s palace clamouring for bread, the queen innocently exclaimed, ‘Why don’t they eat cake?’”
“How disagreeable you are! You think of no one but yourself. I’ve come here for a little change, to get away from my own troubles, and here you come with your hatefulness.”
I hadn’t known the relief of laughter, but now that I was started I couldn’t stop, no more than I could stop staring at her. I tried to associate this new being of silks and jewels with her who had worked side by side with me in the factory.
“How you act! I think you’re crazy,” she admonished, and glanced at her wrist-watch. “I’m late for my appointment with the manicurist. I have to have my nails done after this dusty railway trip.”
And I had been surprised at the insensate settlement worker, at my uncomprehending American friend who knew not the meaning of want. Yet here was my own sister, my ownflesh and blood, reared in the same ghetto, nurtured in the same poverty, ground in the same sweat-shop treadmill, and because she had a few years of prosperity, because she ate well and dressed well and was secure, she was deaf to my cry.
Where I could hope for understanding, where I could turn for shelter, where I was to lay my head that very night, I knew not. But this much suddenly came to me, I was due to report for work that day. I was shut out on every side, but there in my office at least awaited me the warmth and sunshine of an assured welcome. My employer would understand and let me take off the remainder of the day to continue my search.
I found him out, and instead awaiting me was a pile of mail which he had left word I should attend to. The next hour was torture. My power of concentration had deserted me. I tapped the keys of my typewriter with my fingers, but my brain was torn with worry, my nerves ready to snap. The day was nearly spent. Night was coming on and I had no place to lay my head.
I was finishing the last of the letters when he came. After a friendly greeting he turned tothe letters. I dared not interrupt until the mail was signed.
“Girl! What’s wrong? That’s not like you!” He stared at me. “There are a dozen mistakes in each letter.”
A blur. Everything seemed to twist and turn around me. Red and black spots blinded me. A clenched hand pounded his desk, and I heard a voice that seemed to come from me—scream like a lunatic. “I have no home—no home—not even a bed for the night!”
Then all I remember is the man’s kindly tone as he handed me a glass of water. “Are you feeling better?” he asked.
“My landlady put me out,” I said between laboured breaths. “Oh-h, I’m so lonely! Not a place to lay my head!”
I saw him fumble for his pocket-book and look at me strangely. His burning gaze seemed to strip me naked—pierce me through and through from head to foot. Something hurt so deep I choked with shame. I seized my hat and coat and ran out.
It was getting dark when I reached the entrance of Central Park. Exhausted, I dropped to the nearest bench. I didn’t even know I was crying.
“Are you lonely, little one?” A hand slipped around my waist and a dapper young chap moved closer. “Are you lonely?” he repeated.
I let him talk. I knew he had nothing real to offer, but I was so tired, so ready to drop the burden of my weary body that I had no resistance in me. “There’s no place for me,” I thought to myself. “Everyone shuts me out. What difference what becomes of me? Who cares?”
My head dropped to his shoulder. And the cry broke from me, “I have no place to sleep to-night.”
“Sleep?” I could feel him draw in his breath and a blood-shot gleam leaped into his eyes. “You should worry. I’ll take care of that.”
He flashed a roll of bills tauntingly. “How about it, kiddo? Can you change me a twenty-dollar bill?”
As his other hand reached for me, I wrenched loose from him as from the cloying touch of pitch. “I wish I were that kind! I wish I were your kind! But I’m not!”
His hands dropped from the touch of me as though his flesh was scorched, and I found I was alone.
I walked again. At the nearest public telephone office I called up the women’s hotels. None had a room left for less than two dollars. My remaining cash was forty cents short. The Better Housing Bureau had robbed me of my last hope of shelter.
I passed Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue mansions. Many were closed, standing empty. I began counting the windows, the rooms. Hundreds and hundreds of empty rooms, hundreds and hundreds of luxuriously furnished homes, and I homeless—shut out. I felt I was abandoned by God and man and no one cared if I perished or went mad. I had a fresh sense why the spirit of revolution was abroad in the land.
Blindly I retraced my steps to the park bench. I saw and felt nothing but a devouring sense of fear. It suddenly came over me that I was not living in a world of human beings, but in a jungle of savages who gorged themselves with food, gorged themselves with rooms, while I implored only a bed for the night. And I implored in vain.
I felt the chaos and destruction of the good and the beautiful within me and around me. The sight of people who lived in homes and ate threemeals a day filled me with the fury of hate. The wrongs and injustices of the hungry and the homeless of all past ages burst from my soul like the smouldering lava of a blazing volcano. Earth-quakes of rebellion raced through my body and brain. I fell prone against the bench and wept, not tears, but blood.
“Move along! No loitering here!” The policeman’s club tapped me on the shoulder. Then a woman stopped and bent over me.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t lift my head.
“Tell your friend to cut out the sob-stuff,” the officer continued, flourishing his club authoritatively. “On your way, both of youse. Y’know better than to loaf around here, Mag.”
The woman put her hand on mine in a friendly little gesture of protection. “Leave her alone! Can’t you see she’s all in? I’ll take care of her.”
Her touch filled me with the warmth of shelter. I didn’t know who or what she was, but I trusted her.
“Poor kid! What ails her? It’s a rough world all alone.”
There was no pity in her tone, but comprehension, fellowship. From childhood I’d had my friendships and many were dear to me. Butthis woman, without a word, without a greeting, had sounded the depths of understanding that I never knew existed. Even as I looked up at her she lifted me from the bench and almost carried me through the arbour of trees to the park entrance. My own mother couldn’t have been more gentle. For a moment it seemed to me as though the spirit of my dead mother had risen from her grave in the guise of this unknown friend.
Only once the silence between us was broken. “Down in your luck, kid?” Her grip tightened on my arm. “I’ve been there myself. I know all about it.”
She knew so well, what need had she of answer. The refrain came back to me: “Only themselves understand themselves and the likes of themselves, as souls only understand souls.”
In a darkened side street we paused in front of a brown stone house with shutters drawn.
“Here we are! Now for some grub! I’ll bet a nickel you ain’t ate all day.” She vaulted the rickety stairs two at a time and led the way into her little room. With a gay assertiveness she planted me into her one comfortable chair, attempting no apology for her poverty—a povertythat winked from every corner and could not be concealed. Flinging off her street clothes, she donned a crimson kimono, and rummaged through her soap-box in which her cooking things were kept. She wrung her hands with despair as though she suffered because she couldn’t change herself into food.
Ah! the magic of love! It was only tea and toast and an outer crust of cheese she offered—but she offered it with the bounty of a princess. Only the kind look in her face and the smell of the steaming tray as she handed it to me—and I was filled before I touched the food to my lips. Somehow this woman who had so little had fed me as people with stuffed larders never could.
Under the spell of a hospitality so real that it hurt like divine, beautiful things hurt, I felt ashamed of my hysterical worries. I looked up at her and marvelled. She was so full of God-like grace—and so unconscious of it!
Not until she had tucked the covers warmly around me did I realize that I was occupying the only couch she had.
“But where will you sleep?” I questioned.
A funny little laugh broke from her. “I should worry where I sleep.”
“It’s so snug and comfy,” I yawned, my eyes heavy with fatigue. “It’s good to take from you——”
“Take? Aw, dry up, kid! You ain’t taking nothing,” she protested, embarrassed. “Tear off some sleep and forget it.”
“I’ll get close to the wall and make room for you,” I murmured as I dropped off to sleep.
When I woke up I found, to my surprise, the woman was sleeping in a chair with a shawl wrapped around her like a huge statue. The half of the bed which she had left for me had remained untouched.
“You were sleeping so sound I didn’t want to wake you,” she said as she hurried to prepare the breakfast.
I rose, refreshed, restored—sane. It was more than gratitude that rushed out of my heart to her. I felt I belonged to someone, I had found home at last.
As I was ready to leave for work I turned to her. “I am coming back to-night,” I said.
She fell back of a sudden as though I had struck her. From the quick pain that shone in her face I knew I had hurt something deep within her. Her eyes met mine in a fixed gaze but she did not see me, but stared through me into thevacancy of space. She seemed to have forgotten my presence, and when she spoke her voice was like that of one in a trance. “You don’t know what you’re asking. I—ain’t—no good.”
“You no good? God from the world! Where would I have been without you? Even my own sister shut me out. Of them all, you alone opened the door and spread for me all you had.”
“I ain’t so stuck on myself as thegoodpeople, although I was as good as any of them at the start. But the first time I got into trouble, instead of helping me, they gave me the marble stare and the frozen heart and drove me to the bad.”
I looked closely at her, at the dyed hair, the rouged lips, the defiant look of the woman driven by the Pharisees from the steps of the temple. Then I saw beneath. It was as though her body dropped away from her and there stood revealed her soul—the sorrows that gave her understanding—the shame and the heartbreak that she turned into love.
“What is good or bad?” I challenged. “All I know is that I was hungry and you fed me. Shelterless and you sheltered me. Broken in spirit and you made me whole——”
“That stuff’s all right, but you’re better off out of here.”
I started towards her in mute protest.
“Don’t touch me,” she cried. “Can’t you see—the smut all over me? Ain’t it in my face?”
Her voice broke. And like one possessed of sudden fury, she seized me by the shoulder and shoved me out.
As the door slammed I heard sobbing—loosened torrents of woe. I sank to my knees. A light not of this earth poured through the door that had shut on me. A holiness enveloped me.
This woman had changed the world for me. I could love the people I had hated yesterday. There was that something new in me, a light that the dingiest rooming house could not dim nor all the tyranny of the landlady shut out.
Vague, half remembered words flashed before me in letters of fire. “Despised and rejected of men: a woman of sorrows acquainted with grief.”