Cecilia of the Pink Roses

The Madden flat was hot and the smell of frying potatoes filled it. Two or three flies buzzed tirelessly here and there, now and again landing with sticky clingingness on a small boy of four who screamed with their advent. When this happened a girl of seven stepped from the stove and shooed them away, saying: "Aw now, Johnny!" and Johnny would quiet.

The perspiration stood out on her upper lip and there were shadows, deeper than even Irish ones should be, beneath her eyes. The sun beat in cruelly at one window which was minus a shade. At another the shade was torn and run up crookedly.

In the hall there was the sound of a scuffle, then a smart slap, and a child's whimpering wail.

"What's—that?" came in a feeble voice from the bedroom off the kitchen.

"It's the new gent in the flat across whackin' his kid," answered the small girl.

"Oh," was the weak answer, and again there was quiet, broken by the sizzle of hot fat, the tireless buzz of the flies, and now and then the little boy's cry.

"Here, Johnny," commanded the small maiden, "come have your face washed off." Johnny objected. She picked him up with decision, and set him on the table with resounding emphasis, where he screamed loudly during the rite.

The door opened. A man in overalls came in. "Hello, Paw," said Cecilia Evangeline Agnes Madden. He answered her with a grunt and kicked off his heavy shoes.

"Gawd, it's hot!" he said with his first contribution to the conversation. "Two Dagos got sunstruck. One of 'em he just went like a goldfish outa water, keeled over, then flop,—flop. The Boss he up an'—"

"Supper, Paw," said Cecilia. She pushed a chair up to the oil-clothed table, and the man settled, beginning to eat loudly. He stopped and pointed with his knife to the bedroom door. "How's she?" he asked in a grating whisper.

"She ain't so good," answered the small girl. Her eyes filled with tears and she turned away her face.

"Maw—Maw—Maw!" cried Johnny.

"Aw now!" said his sister while she picked up his hot little person to comfort him.

"Maw—Maw!" he echoed.

Cecilia looked up. Her eyes were like those of a small dog that has been whipped. "I ain't the same," she said across his brick-dust curls. "He wants her, I ain't the same. I do my best, but I ain't her."

The man laid aside his knife. He set his teeth on his lower lip, and then he asked a question as if afraid to.

"Has the doctor been here?"

"Yes," answered Cecilia.

"Whatud he say?"

"He sez she wasn't so good. He sez she wouldn't be no better 'til the weather was cooler an'—"

"Celie!" came in the voice from the bedroom. Cecilia put down Johnny.

"Yes, Maw," she answered gently.

"Celie!" came again in almost a scream. Celie vanished. She reappeared in a few moments. She was whiter than before.

"She throwed up fierce," she said to her father; "something fierce, an' all black. Don't you want no coffee?" The man shook his head. He reached for his shoes.

"Where yuh goin'?" asked Cecilia.

"Doctor's," she was answered. He went into the bedroom. "Well, old woman," he said loudly, "how yuh feelin', better?" The thin creature on the bed nodded, and tried to smile. The smile was rather dreadful, for it pulled long lines instead of bringing dimples. Her blue lips stretched and the lower cracked. A drop of blood stood out on it.

"Gawd, it was hot to-day," said the man. He settled by her bed in a broken-backed chair. She stretched out a thin hand toward him.

"Mary—!" he said, then choked.

"Aw, Jerry!" said the woman. In her voice was little Cecilia's tone of patience, with the lilt removed by a too hard life.

"Do yuh feel some better?" he entreated.

"Sure—I do. Gimme that glass of water—" She drank a mouthful and again vomited rackingly.

"Oh, Gawd!" said Jeremiah Madden. He laid a rough hand on her forehead and she pulled it down against her cheek.

"Jerry," she said between long gasps, "I been happy. I want you should always remember that I been happy. Awful happy, Jerry."

"Oh, Gawd, Mary!" said the man. "If I'd a knew how hard you'd a had to work, I wouldn't have brung yuh!"

"Don't!" she begged. "Don't say that!" She looked at him, time faded, and with it a hot and smelling flat. She stood on a wind-swept moor. Jerry, only eighteen, stood by her. His arm was around her with that reverent touch that comes in Irish love. "I'll send fer yuh," he'd said, "after I make me fortune in America."

She had cried and clung to him. With her touch, reason and a rolling moor had faded for him. "I can't leave you," he had said, "I can't! Mary, you come with me." And Mary had come. Those days had been beautiful.... But fortunes in America did not come as advertised. Sometimes Mary thought of green turf, and the gentle drip-drip of fog, like rain. That rain that came so often.... Now she thought of it more than ever. She hoped that the Virgin would allow her a little corner of Heaven that would look like an Irish moor.... The gold the priest talked of was "grand," but heresy or not, she wanted a bit of green, with the gentle drip of rain on it.

Jeremiah bent and kissed her. Then he rubbed the spot of blood of her lip from his. "It wasn't no mistake," he said. Her eyes grew moist.

"Jerry," she said, "Celie is a good kid. She kin do fer yuh. Ain't she, right along? She won't give yuh no trouble neither. But the kid—he ain't so easy. It's the kids growin' up in America better'n their folks, that go to the devil. Watch him, Jerry, watch him good. Won't yuh now?" The man nodded; she closed her eyes. After a few moments that throbbed with the heat of the flat, she spoke again.

"Jerry," she said.

"Darlin'?"

"It's this way, Jerry. I always wanted to be a lady—"

"Yuh are!" he interrupted hotly.