Not My Will and The Light in My Window (37 page)

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

A
nother day … and another chance … and if I don’t find work today I’ll start home tonight. “Oh, dear God, please help me to find a job and a place to stay. I just … can’t go home!”

With a deeply drawn breath that wavered in spite of her effort to hold it steady, the girl buried her face in the pillow and drew her coat closer about her shoulders. In the other corner of the rest room of this large railway station the young mother who had come in during the night was preparing to catch an early train. In the washroom other women and children were hurrying about. Of course they were hurrying! They were all going some place, and their trains would soon be leaving. In a minute she must get up and join them and give the impression that she, too, had to catch a train. Oh, if she only did! Wouldn’t it be wonderful to
know
where you were going and to have someone waiting for you at the end of the trip? To really belong some place where folks loved you and wanted you?

It was more awful than she had dreamed it could be, to live as she had been doing for the past three days. If she had heard of any other girl doing such a thing she would have been disgusted and shocked. Yet the events of the past week had happened so unexpectedly and so swiftly that she had had to do
something
, and this was all that occurred to her. Sleeping in railway stations was certainly not a thing to be done by the kind of girl she had always thought herself to be, and she had a horrible fear all the time that the ever-present attendants would discover her secret
—that she never caught a train at all but just pretended to be stopping over, so that she could sleep on the comfortable couches of the rest room. She had not dared to stay at the same station twice, and even in this great city there were only a few such rooms as this, where she could check her suitcases in the locker and get a real rest. If she did not find a room today she would
have
to go home.

Maybe that was what she was ordained to do. Surely the circumstance of losing her job and her room both in one week was such an unusual one that it must have been decreed by fate. None of it was of her planning or even her fault. She never had liked Mr. Skeen, that assistant department manager, but she had not had any trouble with him. She had hardly spoken to him and certainly did not know he was the kind of man who would act as he had done last Monday when he had come in and found her alone working overtime. Ugh! She became sick even yet when she remembered how startled she had been when she turned from her desk and found his smirking face close to hers and his clammy hand on her arm. She could still hear his grunt of astonishment as she gave him a shove that landed him in the wastebasket. Before he could get up she had snatched her purse and fled from the room. As the elevator door had clanged behind her, she had heard the office door bang but had reached the street without pursuit and caught a bus at once. What a mess! She had thought that such things did not happen to good girls. But she had not been to blame; she knew she had not. And if it happened once it could happen again. There might be danger of finding such a man in any office. What should be done?

Who could have thought up a more improbable coincidence than to have had to leave her room at Mrs. Moon’s the same night. Of course she
could
have stayed, but who would want to after finding the landlady’s daughter rummaging through her suitcases and dresser drawers? Who would have dreamed that a room in a hotel or the YWCA could not be found for even one night? There had been nothing to do but go to the station, and she could not stay there indefinitely—work must be found first, and then a room, that the threatening prospect of a return home might be dispelled.

Hope Thompson, don’t be a baby! You know you don’t want to go home today … or ever! So up and at it. You have to find a place today
.

She came from the washroom twenty minutes later, looking as if ready for travel, and joined the stream of humanity that was pouring from the train sheds toward the long ramp that led to the street above. Waiting on the sidewalk for the streetcar that would carry her to the heart of the city, she breathed again her waking prayer, “Please, God, help me to find a place to stay. I just can’t bear to go home.”

At the employment office Hope sat waiting her turn. For three days she had gone wearily from one such office to another. Several times the placement women had wanted to send her out on a prospective job. Each time Hope had been reluctant, and another had been sent instead. How could she ever dare to go into an office again to work? Some strange man might try to kiss her. She could not tell the efficient women at the placement desks about this fear, and she realized that they would not keep trying to help her if she were not willing to go out and apply for work.

The woman at this desk had been more kindly than any of the others, and Hope determined that when her turn came today she would ask if there were any places where the work would be among women only. Just now she felt very definitely and decidedly that she had no use for men!

When her turn came Hope managed, with flushing face and rapidly beating pulse, to state her unusual request. For a moment the woman looked at her in amazement, then her gaze softened. Perhaps she herself had once been a frightened small-town girl in a large city. Perhaps she had enough sympathetic understanding of human nature to recognize that the girl before her was near a complete breakdown. She spoke meditatively, shuffling the papers in the file drawer before her.

“I don’t know—I can’t think of such an office at all. Would you like a place in a dress shop? Have you had any experience in selling?”

“No—but I could try.”

The woman shook her head. “That wouldn’t do. The manager specifically asked for an experienced saleswoman. I’m afraid, my dear, that we haven’t any such place. Won’t you try a
large office? We have one place open …” She was interrupted by a girl from a desk in another corner of the room.

“It’s that Henderson girl again. She says they must have someone today, and for you to send out the first person coming in who can boil an egg!”

The woman turned and look at Hope. “Can you boil an egg?”

In spite of her nervousness, Hope laughed. “Yes, I could even boil two at a time without disaster.”

“Would you take a place as a mother’s helper and part-time cook?”

Hope thought quickly.
A place as cook would probably mean a place to room also. She was really a good cook, although not fond of cooking. She did like to care for children, and had enough experience of that kind to satisfy anyone. It would be a place to stay while hunting for a better job
.

“Yes, I would.”

The woman looked through the file drawer again and drew out a card. “Clean—refined—good cook … they don’t care so much about that now, I guess. H’m … a Christian. Are you a Christian?”

The woman looked embarrassed at having to ask that question, but Hope answered quickly, “Oh, yes, I am. I’ve been a church member since I was thirteen. I’ve always been regular in attendance at both church and Sunday school.”

“Well, I don’t see what difference that makes to your employer, but that’s not
my
business. I’ll fill out this card, and you can go out at once.”

Fifteen minutes later Hope found herself on the streetcar. In her purse was a card addressed to
Mrs. Philip King, 1239 West Sherman Street
. As she rode along with her purse clasped tightly in her hand, and with her eyes on the streets through which she was passing, she felt a growing sense of panic at the step taken. What had she got herself into? Should she stop now before it was too late and go back and tell that woman at the agency that she must look for another cook for Mrs. King or Mrs. Henderson, or whoever it was that wanted a person to boil eggs? No, she could not do that. The agency people would not try further to help her. They would be too disgusted with her for being so fussy. Her
only alternative was to go home, and she did not want to do that. As long as she lived she did not want to go home—not even for a visit.

The district through which she was passing was a shabby one. The high buildings and busy streets of the downtown section had been left far behind. This was a region of small factories, run-down frame apartment buildings, small shops with unattractive merchandise in not-too-clean windows, and more taverns than she could count. The houses had no yards, and the front doors opened onto small porches leading directly to the sidewalks. Some of the yards were three or four feet below the level of the walk, and by the dingy curtains at the windows Hope deduced that people lived in these basement hovels. How terrible it all was! She had heard of slums and thought that they probably were somewhat like Mrs. Moon’s rooming house, which had been one of a long row of brick flat buildings on a side street where the smoke of passing trains got on the curtains and where the children often played in the streets because the backyards were full of drying clothes. But this was so much worse that Mrs. Moon’s neighborhood seemed to her, as she looked back on it, like a pleasant, homey suburb. How
could
anyone live here? And why should anyone in this community be wanting a cook? For she was now nearing her destination. Sherman Street was only a block south of this car line, and the next street was where she would get off.

Even after she had alighted, Hope felt that she could not go through with this crazy scheme. If there had been a car coming from the opposite direction that she could have boarded, she would have taken it back to the depot.

While waiting in indecision, she thought of her recent office experience and a fresh wave of repulsion swept over her. Then she thought of what it would mean to have to go home. No—she could not. So, turning her back on the car line and facing toward Sherman Street, she determined to at least see what lay in that direction.

The houses got no better. Some of them looked ready to fall, and if one fell the whole crazy block would tumble, just like the long row of dominoes she used to patiently line up and push down when she was a youngster. Insecure looking stairways
climbed drunkenly up the outsides of some of the buildings, and on these stairs hung blankets and clothing, while overflowing garbage cans stood on the landings, on every one of which small children were playing.

Hope shuddered. How
could
she live in such a neighborhood? Then she remembered that Mrs. King had specified that she wanted a Christian cook. There came a vision of a little old lady who might have once been wealthy and was now perhaps ill and helpless, surely poor, and who had to live in this sad place. It might be fun to help such a person. Anyway, here she was, and she would do her best.

Then she turned the corner and stopped in amazement. There was only one house in the block, so it would have to be 1239. Feeling as if she were in some fairyland, Hope crossed the street and passed through the great gate before her.

O
n either side of the broad walk a tangle of shrubs and bushes, which had not been trimmed in many years, rose like a green jungle. Great trees spread their leafy branches so densely that the August sun, which blazed fiercely down on the streets and sidewalks outside the high iron fence, seemed dim and feeble here. In the center of the large grounds, which had once been beautifully landscaped, stood the house, and as Hope advanced toward it she gazed in wonder at finding such a house in such a place.

It was of time-mellowed gray stone, full three stories tall, with a great round tower at one corner and numerous gables and turrets breaking the line of the tile roof. A wide porch with huge pillars stretched across the front, and at one side a covered drive gave entrance onto the porch. All this Hope noted as she slowly came up the walk and mounted the broad steps which, she thought whimsically, reminded her of the pictures she had seen of the approach to the Capitol in Washington. Surely no little sick, poverty-stricken old lady lived in
this
house! Over the door she saw the tarnished bronze numerals 1239—so it must be the right place. Summoning all her courage, she rang the queer old bell, then jumped in nervousness at the clangor it made.