MISS DRUSILL AND Miss Lange, the permanent residence workers at Neighborhood Center House, decided to wait five minutes more before they turned on the lights in the recreation hall. Already the boys and girls were gathering on the street before the House. They’d swarm in the moment the lights went on, eager to start dancing. The Misses Drusill and Lange didn’t want to let them in before Miss Grayce arrived because Miss Grayce liked to stand in the doorway and greet each arrival personally. Miss Grayce was a volunteer worker who came all the way from Central Park West, New York, to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, once a month, to teach the young people dancing and social usage. Being greeted at the door by the hostess was part of the course. But Miss Grayce was late again and certainly, decided the ladies, you couldn’t keep the young people waiting on the street much longer. They agreed to wait another five minutes.
Miss Drusill and Miss Lange were plain-looking, conscientious, middle-aged spinsters. They had never had children but they knew how to love and care for the children of others. They had never had lovers but they had understanding and wise advice when young girls came to them with love problems. They had never known ambition—except as dedicating their lives to the poor could be called ambition—yet they knew how it was with boys who were anxious to get ahead. They had never known personal criminal tendencies, yet they appeared frequently before the police convincing the officer in charge that such and such a boy was not a criminal, merely an exceptionally bright boy who had chosen a wrong outlet for his capabilities.
They were well loved in the neighborhood. The people depended on them for so much. Yet, they were but two women and there were thousands of children and young people who needed their help. They couldn’t have kept the House going if it weren’t for the volunteer social workers. These men and women, all of good family and many with wealth, gave freely of their money and, what was more important, of their valuable time. Miss Drusill and Miss Lange frequently assured each other they couldn’t do without the volunteer workers. They were grateful.
Miss Grayce was different. The resident workers felt that she had no true vocation for the work; that she used it to escape boredom—or as a stopgap between betrothal and marriage. Miss Grayce always brought some of her friends with her. The friends were inclined to find the young people “amusing.” The resident workers worried about the friends. They did not like their young people to be patronized. However, they always ended their discussion of Miss Grayce by agreeing that she was popular with the young people and after all it was nice of her to give her time.
They turned on the lights and opened the doors. The boys and girls rushed in. Just as the last of them were going in, the car drew up to the door. Miss Grayce had finally arrived. This time she brought her fiancé and his friend along with her.
“Oh, dear, oh, dear!” said Miss Drusill.
“If we had only waited five minutes longer,” sighed Miss Lange.
Margy and Frankie saw the three New Yorkers arrive, the fiancé carrying a batch of new dance records. To Margy, they seemed like people from another world; a smoother, more polished world—a world she knew of only by reading about it.
Margy and Frankie were off in the first dance. Any fears he had had about her dancing were dispelled. She was what was known in the neighborhood as a nifty spieler. Like all Brooklyn girls she had a sure instinct for rhythm. She had learned to dance on the sidewalks of Williamsburg to the music of wandering German bands. Reenie and the other girls showed her new dance steps and she practiced with the girls whenever a rainy day cut short their afterlunch walk around the block. Her step suited Frankie’s and she followed nimbly where he led.
“You dance nicely,” she told him shyly.
He returned the compliment. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
Miss Grayce came along and introduced Margy to another boy. Miss Grayce liked the young people to change partners. Her premise was that no good came from the same couple dancing too much together. Besides, introductions and meeting of new people was part of the social function of the dancing class.
“Miss Shannon, may I present Mr. Ricci?” suggested Miss Grayce with bright correctness. Although Margy had known who Carmine Ricci was since grade-school days, she was considerate of Miss Grayce and played along.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Ricci,” she said.
“Likewise,” he responded.
Miss Grayce got a new girl for Frankie and fluttered off to unscramble the other couples. Then she announced a morris dance.
“Let’s sit this one out, Margy,” said Mr. Ricci. “I wouldn’t be caught dead in a hick dance. Morris dance, my eye! I know a square dance when I see one.”
“Okay, Carmy,” agreed Margy.
They found seats near the victrola. Margy looked over the warm happy scene and thought how nice it was to have a place to come to; where you were welcome; where you fitted in.
Miss Grayce had put her fiancé in charge of the victrola. He stood there, changing records and talking to his friend. Margy listened idly, enjoying the rise and fall of the well-modulated voices. Then a sentence came out of the context of their conversation which made Margy sit up straighter. The friend of the fiancé said it.
“What an outsider needs over here is an interpreter.”
At that moment, the figure of the dance brought Frankie Malone and his partner near the victrola. Frankie heard the last remark and jerked his head to stare at the New Yorkers. The fiancé smiled and saluted Frankie with a careless flick of his fingers. Frankie ignored smile and salute and followed the dance figure until he came to where Margy and Carmy were sitting. He pulled his partner out of the dance which was ending anyhow. They stood behind Margy and her partner. The men continued their conversation.
“Take Grayce: She understands them fine. It’s merely a question of getting the accent and she has it down pat. You should have been at the apartment the other night when she did an imitation of the fellow who complained about his partner.”
“Sorry I missed it.”
The morris dance ended. One of the gentlemen obligingly put a tango on. As the dreamy notes of “On the Alamo” came up, Carmy jumped to his feet.
“A dance with dips! Just my dish! Let’s go, Marge.”
“I don’t feel like a tango,” refused Margie. Carmy turned to Frankie.
“Mind if I muscle in?” he asked.
“Go ahead,” consented Frankie. Carmy asked Frankie’s partner for the dance.
“I’ll try anything once,” she said.
Frankie sat down beside Margy. They didn’t speak to each other. They listened to the two gentlemen at the victrola who had resumed their conversation. One was telling the other about Miss Grayce’s take-off on one of the kids.
“Well, it seems that this girl or should I say, ‘goil’”—the fiancé waited for his friend to smile—“wore a tight skirt . . .”
“Skoit,” corrected the friend.
“That’s right. Of course I’m not good at imitations—not as good as Grayce anyhow. According to her it went something like this:
“‘I’m dant-zin wid a goil, see? An’ her skoit’s so tight, we ain’t makin’ der dips all the way, see? So I tells her in a nice way . . .’”
As Margy listened, the world that she was used to swung into a different focus. Occasionally there is a moment in a person’s life when he takes a great stride forward in wisdom, humility or disillusionment. For a split second he comes into a kind of cosmic understanding. For a trembling breath of time he knows all there is to know. He is loaned the gift the poet yearned for—seeing himself as others see him.
Margy, listening to the gentlemen, saw her kind of people as others saw them. She’d given little thought to any world outside her own. She had been born in a certain environment—had taken it for granted. Her kind of people were different from each other in small things but alike in the fundamentals. Some were kinder than others; some meaner. A lot were poorer than most; a few better off than their fellows. Some were ambitious and a lot didn’t care about anything except living from day to day. She knew some who seemed happy and she knew too many who complained all the time. But all were confined in the same rigid frame that boxed in her life. The only difference among the people she knew was that some squirmed more than others in the box.
She was not entirely ignorant of people in other environments. She read the novels of her day. Black Oxen, This Side of Paradise—books like that. Certainly the characters in those books were different from the people she knew. She had supposed those fictional characters were as unusual, as unreal as characters in fairy tales or mystery stories. Now she had to wonder whether these fiction people weren’t the real people and her kind the unreal ones; the ones unknown to the world at large, whose lives were just as fantastic as those of people in books.
She tried to figure out why Miss Grayce would give of her time to the Williamsburg young people just to get a laugh out of them. That seemed mean. Yet she knew that Miss Grayce was not a mean person or she wouldn’t be there in the first place. Margy decided that Miss Grayce was a “pleaser.” She liked to please the poor but she liked to please her friends, too. If she could please them by making fun of some Brooklyn boy, all right; she felt that that made her a good hostess. But it still made Margy feel uncomfortable.
The tango ended and the fiancé put on “Beautiful Ohio.”
“You wouldn’t want to dance?” suggested Frankie half-heartedly.
“No,” said Margy.
“Let’s get out of here.”
She hesitated at the door. “Maybe we ought to say good-by to Miss Grayce, and thanks.”
“Nuts!” said Frankie.
“Still and all . . . to be polite . . .”
“Okay. Make out that you didn’t hear what those two guys said; make out that you still believe that Miss Grayce puts herself out to come over to Brooklyn to bring sunshine to a bunch of poor slobs. Go ahead! Tell her you had a gorgeous time.” His lips twisted sneeringly over the feminine adjective. “Do that and stay a sucker all the rest of your life.”
So she left without saying good-by and thanks. She had had such a nice little speech prepared, too. She had planned to speak very carefully and bring in words like “skirt” and “girl” and pronounce them right, and maybe when next Miss Grayce was asked to do her imitations, she’d back out, saying: “But I was wrong. Really, they don’t talk like that. I was speaking to a little Brooklyn girl and honestly her diction was as good as ours.” Well, it had been a moment’s rosy dream—Margy setting the world right.
Frankie and Margy walked through the streets toward her home. For a long time he said nothing, then, with his face straight ahead, he said:
“Her skirt was too tight. Miss Grayce noticed that I had trouble dancing with Irma and Miss Grayce took me aside and told me to tell her exactly what was bothering me. So I told her. And Miss Grayce said what a shame but Irma felt that she was dressed right for the dance and I must be a gentleman and put up with it. So I did. And while we’re dancing, Miss Grayce keeps smiling at me and I think everything’s on the up and up. And all the while she’s figuring out how to do an imitation of me to give her friends a laugh.
“I don’t talk the way she says. And even if I do, I’m not ashamed of it.” He leaned against a lamppost, his eyes searching for something on the ground. “What the hell!” He kicked viciously at a burned-out matchstick. “Must I say gur-r-rl because she says it that way? Sounds dumb to call a bird a burd. I guess I’m the one who should be doing impersonations.” He straightened up. “Ladies and gents! I will now give you a few impressions of uptown New York Miss Grayce!” He put one hand on his hip and fluttered the other one. “My dear, there was this here dee-lish-us gurl wearing a green blues and a pink skurt . . .”
Suddenly the spirit went out of him and he abandoned the impersonation. To Margy’s helpless horror, he began to sob. He wept standing there under the lamppost. He talked between sobs.
“I’ll go away from here and make a lot of money. I’ll come back someday with my pockets full of ten-dollar bills. And every kid on the street who talks the way I do will get a ten-dollar bill off of me,” he boasted boyishly. “And I’ll send all the poor kids to camp every summer just because I always wanted to go and never had the chance.”
Margy tried to find the words to tell the boy not to grieve because Miss Grayce had betrayed him; that it didn’t matter—it didn’t matter at all because she, Margy, believed in him and was sure he’d amount to something someday. He’d be an important man.
In fact, she told him, he was important already because he had become important to her. And as they walked and talked, he found it easier to believe Margy’s words than Miss Grayce’s cruelty. He began getting the feeling that he was somebody after all; that this quiet girl knew of all the potentialities within him. And so the twenty-year-old boy thought that he had fallen in love with her.
And because Margy was all ready to fall in love with someone—anyone, and because she was sorry for him and had a woman-need to save someone from hurt, and because at the moment of his tiny crucifixion she had been able to stand at his side and lessen a bit the ugly impact of man’s thoughtless inhumanity to man, she felt a warm, protective glow toward the boy.
And, as women are so prone to do, she mistook this protective glow for love.