Make Room! Make Room!(75)

Lucky? Shirl thought, knotting her kerchief under her chin, looking around the dark bare room of the Welfare Special Ration section. The counter divided the room in half, with the clerks and the tiers of half-empty shelves on one side, the shuffling lines of people on the other. Here were the tight-drawn faces and trembling limbs of the sick, the ones in need of special diets. Diabetics, chronic invalids, people with deficiency diseases and the numerous pregnant women. Were these the lucky ones?

“What you going to have for dinner tomorrow?” Mrs. Miles asked, peering through the dirt-filmed window, trying to see the sky outside.

“I don’t know, the same as always I guess. Why?”

“It might snow. Maybe we might have a white Thanksgiving like we used to have when I was a little girl. We’re going to have a fish, I been saving for it. Tomorrow’s Thursday, the twenty-fifth of November. Didn’t you remember?”

Shirl shook her head. “I guess not. Things have been turned upside down since Sol has been sick.”

They walked, heads lowered to escape the blast of the wind, and when they turned the corner from Ninth Avenue into Nineteenth Street, Shirl walked into someone coming in the opposite direction, jarring the woman back against the wall.

“I’m sorry,” Shirl said. “I didn’t see you….”

“You’re not blind,” the other woman snapped. “Walking around running into people.” Her eyes widened as she looked at Shirl. “You!”

“I said I was sorry, Mrs. Haggerty. It was an accident.” She started to walk on but the other woman stepped in front of her, blocking her way.

“I knew I’d find you,” Mrs. Haggerty said triumphantly. “I’m going to have the court of law on you, you stole all my brother’s money and he didn’t leave me none, none at all. Not only that but all the bills I had to pay, the water bill, everything. They were so high I had to sell all the furniture to pay them, and it still wasn’t enough and they’re after me for the rest. You’re going to pay!”

Shirl remembered Andy taking the showers and something of her thoughts must have shown on her face because Mary Haggerty’s shout rose to a shrill screech.

“Don’t laugh at me, I’m an honest woman! A thing like you can’t stand in a public street smiling at me. The whole world knows what you are, you….”

Her voice was cut off by a sharp crack as Mrs. Miles slapped her hard across the face. “Just hold on to that dirty tongue, girlie,” Mrs. Miles said. “No one talks to a friend of mine like that.”

“You can’t do that to me!” Mike’s sister shrieked. “I already done it—and you’ll get more if you keep hanging around here.”

The two women faced each other and Shirl was forgotten for the moment. They were alike in years and background, though Mary Haggerty had come up a bit in the world since she had been married. But she had grown up in these streets and she knew the rules. She had to either fight or back down.

“This is none of your business,” she said.

“I’m making it my business,” Mrs. Miles said, balling her fist and cocking back her arm.

“It’s none of your business,” Mike’s sister said, but she scuttled backward a few steps at the same time.

“Blow!” Mrs. Miles said triumphantly.

“You’re going to hear from me again!” Mary Haggerty called over her shoulder as she drew together the shreds of her dignity and stalked away. Mrs. Miles laughed coldly and spat after the receding back.

“I’m sorry to get you involved,” Shirl said.

“My pleasure,” Mrs. Miles said. “I wish she really had started some trouble. I would have slugged her. I know her kind.”

“I really don’t owe her any money….”

“Who cares? It would be better if you did. It would be a pleasure to stiff someone like that.”

Mrs. Miles left her in front of her building and stamped solidly away into the dusk. Suddenly weary, Shirl climbed the long flights to the apartment and pushed through the unlocked door.

“You look bushed,” Sol told her. He was heaped high with blankets and only his face showed; his woolen watch cap was pulled down over his ears. “And turn that thing off, will you. It’s an even chance whether I go blind or deaf first.”

Shirl put down her bag and switched off the blaring TV. “It’s getting cold out,” she said. “It’s even cold in here. I’ll make a fire and heat some soup at the same time.”

“Not more of that drecky meat flake stuff,” Sol complained and made a face.