"DISTRICT NURSE"

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 60, 12 March 1938, Page 7

"DISTRICT NURSE"

Life is like a city street Where the waves of traffic beat, Tears and laughter, shade and sun, Old day ending, new begun. Kiss and quarrel, dream aud die, Life's a street of passerby— You and I —you and I. Sidewalks. The sidewalks of city streets; the sidewalks of any city; your city; mine. But not of my streets. Not the sidewalks of the manicured boulevards, the wide, tree-bordered avenues. Not the sidewalks which lie, relatively immaculate, before the doorsteps of the rich; not those lightly trodden upon by eighteen dollar, bench-made shoes, dotted with leashed and high-hat dogs; nor yet the sidewalk? decorated by the spotless uniforms of the Generalissimos in the Doorman's Army. Not these. Just sidewalks, over which the same *ky arches, but a sky made vocal with the hoarse shriek of the hurtling L'.*, just sidewalks built on a common soil beneath which, like as hot, that clamorous mole, the subway, weaves and burrows its vocal path. Just sidewalks, Uttered with paper, with casual garbage marked with the pressure of countless feet, hurrying feet, feet which go unshod, feet protected against heat and cold by the makeshift leathers of the poor. Sidewalks, endless highways, leading to birth to death, to success and to failure; leading to the cold, crowded windings of city rivers, leading out to freer, wider areas, leading—back. On The Sidewalks, people. Children, playing, quarreling, laughing; lovers kissing and lovers parting. Habies, in their mother's arms. Neat women, slatternly women, women old and young. Men, sober men, and drunk men. Men who walk upright and fear not man or God; men who lie in gutters; men who creep past in the indifferent shadows of old walls. Boys, on roller skates. Pushcarts loaded with flyspecked fruit. A baby carriage filled with pretzels. Open markets. A group of boys smoking cheap cigarettes outside a stationery store. One goes in, and comes out grinning. He is the first slot machine customer of the day. He has won.

Dogs, chasing each other, chasing their own tails. Dogs, consciously well fed, dogs lean, marked with mange, beset with fleas. Cats. Cats that sit on doorsteps and wash their complacent faces, cats that slink by, their apparent ribs quivering with the memory of heavy boots. Cars, flashing past. Old cars, new cars on their way up town. Cars with women leaning back against good upholstery, saying to one another, my dear such smells! Cars that stop before tenement houses, the cars of bootleggers, ot other traffickers in forbidden commodit

ies. - Sidewalks, teeming with sunlight, sinister in shadow, the breeding place of life, of death tragedy, of romance. Turn a corner. Here are houses which once looked out upon a quiet street, with shuttered and aristocratic eyes. The street is no longer quiet, many of the shutters hang, flapping, on rusty, broken hinges. But the houses remain, brownstone, sombre, four stories, fallen on evil days, dreaming perhaps of past position. They have yards, still, in which the grass grows with a feeble tenaciousness, in which are broken asphalt walks and stunted trees striving toward the sun. Some have little gardens.

In such a house, in the first floor back apartment Ellen Adams lived with her mother and her sister Nancy.

It was a small apartment. Two bedrooms, a rather leprous bathroom, a living room. The living room was large, comfortable furnished, high-ceil-ing, bay-windowed, with a fireplace which, if it did not draw too well on windy nights, supported an unusually fine mantelpiece. The breakfast table was laid, one sunny spring morning, in the bay window, as usual. Spring, in the city sidewalks, heralded is coming by a warmer wind swirling among the strewn papers, by a fragile veil of dusty green on shrub and tree, by roller skates and baseballs, and by, of an evening, people leaving the unknown intimacies of their roofs to sit on stoops or drag their broken chairs to the sidewalks itself.

“It's a grand day," said Ellen, contentedly, one blue eye on the clock. “Golly, that coffee smells good." Mrs Adams, immaculate, small, slender, with apprehensive eyes, a tight, petulant mouth, and very fine hands, looked up from her small, industrious clashing among silver and china. “Nancy's late again," she said. “Here she comes," Ellen answered, walking over to the window, 1 ‘Out of breath, as usual." Smiling a little, she watched Nancy making her dashing way down the street. Nancy was twenty. Ellen twenty-four. Nancy was a blue-eyed brunette. In contrast with Ellen's honey-coloured fairness. Nancy was teetering along on her high heels, whistling, and under her arm she had the newspapers, the giddy, youthful papers she herself perused on the way back from work, also the more sober news sheet affected by the mother. It was after seven in the morning and Nancy was returning from her work at a central telephone office, from the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift. “Hie, Family," said Nancy, a moment later, prancing into the living room, dropping her newspapers, casting her purse aside, flinging her small, ridiculous hat on a table. Gosh, I'm hungryl " Nancy was always hungry. After breakfast, after hot coffee and rolls and cereal, and maybe an egg. she would clear away and wash the dishes, yawning. Then, she would be sleepy; then she would be dog-tired. Then, she would settle her mother with paper or book or mending and wander into the bedroom whieh was hers by day and Ellen's by night, and wiggle her slim body out of its encasing garments, and pul! down the shades and open the windows and .'-leep and sleep with the concentration

(By FAITH BALDWIN) ♦ Instalment 1. |

of youth and health until late afternoon.

“How you can read," began Mrs Adams, as usual, picking up the papers. She never got any further. Nancy interrupted gaily: “I can't, very well; that's why I like my reading mostly pictures. Ellen, did you get the marmalade!" Ellen had. Mrs Adams mentioned mildly: “Your father always reads “The Times." He had been dead these many years. But his opinions were still his widow's opinions, his newspapers, her news paper. They sat down at the table after Ellen had brought the rolls hot from the little oven. Nancy said, suddenly, with authentic admiration: “You look like a million dollars, Sis. How you manage it in that uniform." Ellen looked down at the dark gray of her dress. Her coat was over a chair, nearby. Her uncompromising hat. Her small blatk bag. Sho replied amiably: “Thanks, and district nurses aren't expected to dress like Follies girls, after all." “Okay by me, Miss Nightingale," said Nancy. "How are the errands of mercy, by the way! And murders! You haven't given me the low-down for a year. By the way, will you be homo to night! Chick's asked me to go to the new Garbo picture." Up at four, a cup of tea; dinner, early, with the family; out to a show; report for work at 11. Time between the show and work for a sandwich somewhere. That was Nancy's usual routine. “I'll be home," Ellen told her, “but why don’t you stay in once in a while! You haven’t gotten rid of your cold yet you know." "‘I certainly have. I don’t know which was worse, the cold or youf treatment," Nancy told her. “Mustard paste and hot bath 9, blankets, and boiling lemon juice. And I haven't grown any skin on my chest yet as it is." “You don't take care of yourself,” Ellen told her absently, borrowing her mother's paper for a moment, running her wise, gray eyes over the headlines. “Don’t be professional, darling,” said Nancy, starting to clear away. Ellen rose and looked down at her mother. She was a slim girl, looking taller in the sedate, severely cut uniform than she really was. Her lovely, heavy hair, paler than gold, warmer than silver, was uncut and curled jut her broad temples. There was faint, glowing colour under the clear skin, and her generous, pretty mouth was healthily red, curving easily into smiling or the lines of pure compassion. There was strength in tho firm set of her square, small chin, more than a hint of stubbornness and, perhaps, quick temper. A moment later and she had kissed her mother and waved a casual affectionate farewell to Nancy, who was out in the kitchenette, slinging dishes loudly and haphazardly into the sink. s*aney vawned, ‘‘Bye," she said, * ‘don't catch measles or take any wooden money." “Aren't you leaving early!" he: mother called after her. Ellen's reply came faintly through the closing door “I have to stop at Joe's," she said. It was a gorgeous day. She was going toward work she loved with a single, astonishing passion. Her mother had not had a heart attack in four months. The house she had left had always been home; she had know no other. Once the Adams family had owned the house, had spoken with a certain controlled pride of their ‘‘neighbourhood." Now, they Tented an apartment in that same house and the neighbourhood was not as it had been. Ellen sighed a little, remembering her childhood. But things had turned out all right, after all. She had been able to go through training after high school, had been ablo to do and do well the work she had always wanted to do, among the people with whom she had grown up. Nancy was happy enough in her own work. She wished Nancy needn't work on the nightstaff. But it was better so; better that one of the girls be always within call, within reach of the frail elderly woman around whom their lives were centered; Ellen at night; Nancy by day. It couldn’t have been done any other way. If Coral hadn't gone away. Ellen shrugged her slim shoulders in the dark and amended it to . . • • if Coral would come back. No use thinking of Coral, lost to them for nearly a decade. But somehow Ellen always remembered her, in the spring. She swung around a corner and hurried on to Joe's. Joe was in a basement. There he sat at his window and watched the feet of the world pass by. Watched the shoes, new shoes, old shoes, shoes run over at the heels, shoes smart and shoes dejected. Sooner or later they all came to him, the shoes. Ellen produced a package. “Hello, Joe—resole these for me!" she asked.

Joe stood up, a short squat man in a leather apron and took the shoes in hands more like leather than leather itself. “Sure, I feex 'em, he told her heartily. He regarded the sturdy, scuffed shoes she had given him, with their heavy soles and low rubber heels. “You sure walka a lot, he chuckled. * ‘That’s my job," said Ellen. After sho had left him he put the shoes away. Niza girl. Beal lady. Nancy gooda keed, too. But Ellen. Joe was sentimental about Ellen. Had she not come and helped the time the last bambino was born. Sure, fine girl. Lookit her shoes now, worn out running around helping people. Not like the other sister, the one who had run away, how many years ago, six years, eight years? Joe had forgotten her name, but he remembered her dark hair with the red lights in it, and her impatience. “Aren't my shoes ready yet, Joe, for heavens sake, what do vou do with your

time?" He'd mended so many of her shoes, stilt-heels, flimsy shoes batterod with dancing in strange company, their heedless way through life. Ellen made her way through the increasing crowds toward the sub station of the Visiting Nurse Association where she would presently make her reports and get her calls for the morning. On the corner she saw Herman, the small round son of the man known to the neighbourhood as Accordian Al. Herman was trotting along at his fatner's side, suiting his schoolboy pace to the stiff halting gait of his companion's wooden leg. On the corner, up against Mrs Lippinskv ’s' stationery store newsstand. Accordian Al would unfold his camp stool and sit down to play and sing through the long hours, unmolested. He'd been quite affluent once when he’d had the ferry boat concession. Not now. Ellon stopped to speak to the pair and as she went on she heard Al’s husky, fairly true voico lifted in that song he was always singing. Whero had he gotten it, she wondered . . . it had a charming, rather melancholy melody and was a simple lyric. Some day she must ask him. She hummed it now under her breath, hurrying toward the sup station. How did it go? “Life is like a city street Where the tides of traffic beat, Tears and laughter, shade and sun, Long day ending, new begun. . . . Kiss and quarrel, dream and die. Life's a street of passersby You and I—you and I." “Hello," said Jim at tho corner of the sub station, lounging against it, broad shoulders a little slouched, hands in pockets. “Hello yourself," replied Ellen, smiling at him, “how come you're up so early?" “Big deal," said Jim solemnly. They laughed together standing there in the bright, warm sunlight. Jim was taller than Ellen and very dark. His eyes were brown, heritago from a mother who had left her South European homo to comp to a far country and fall in love with a gay, hard living young Irishman who had, not much later, deserted her. Mrs O'Conner was dead now. Jim lived with his father’s devout maiden sister, a block or two from Ellen. They had grown up together, they had attended the same school, several classes apart. Ellen couldn't remember the time when, in the eyes ofthe neighbourhood, she hadn't been “Jim’s girl." Jim's small real estate and insurance office wasn't far from the sub station. He rented flats and lofts, he had a finger in the various neighborhood pies. A few years older than herself, part of her life, part of her background. ‘ ‘How about a movie to-night?" he was asking. Ellen shoot her head. “Nancy's going out," she told him. “I’d rather stay home. Mother doesn't like us both to be out—and I’d rather “Sure, I know. How's Aunt Elizabeth anyway?" He was almost one of the family. Hadn’t Mrs Adams, in those younger, healthier, more prosperous days, gone to Mrs O'Conner tho bitter winter night Jim was born, the night that the senior O'Conner couldn’t be found until Adams himsolf, at his wife's urgency, had a struggled into a great coat and gone tho rounds of the saloons? “Sho's all right," Ellen told him. “Only since that last attack she’s not been so strong, you know. Wo have to look out for her. There’s a lot of flu in the district and her resistenco is nothing to brag about." Jim’s dark face was concerned. “I know, it’s a rotten break," he said, and touched her hand. “Suppose I look in on her to-day? I'm going by that way anyway. Got a tenant for th. 6 upstairs back, next door." “You have! Mrs Lenz will be out of her mind with joy," Ellen told him. “The flat's been vacant for ages." “This isn't business, it's friendship,” grinned Jim. He hesitated, looking away. “It’s Dot Mather; remember her?" Ellen nodded gravely. She remembered earlier days when her mother had said, “Ellen, I don't want you to play with Dot." “She's married," said Jim finally, waiting for the question which didn't come; "Some lad from New Haven. Trouble shooter now with the telephone company. She wrote me to find her a place. I thought of Mrs Lenz. ’' “But," asked Ellen, “will Mr 3 Lenz? " “Why not?" countered Jim instantly. “Dot's married now, isn't she? And nowadays people can't be too choosy. Too many flats going begging, you know." Ellen knew. Dot. She remembered how pretty she was, redheaded, wild as a hare. She shook her head, frowning a little. Her mother would —be annoyed. Not that it mattered. She was suddenly aware of the spring sunlight, and of Jim, lounging beside her, close, intent. Suddenly glad for little Dot Mather. Crazy Dot, they had called her. Married . . . and happy. “I've got to go in," she said to Jim, and looked at her wrist watch. Eight thirty.'' * ‘Wait a minute ... can I come up to the house to-nighty then?" he wanted to know. “Of course. Why not?" She smiled at him, and the door closed behind her. Jim O’Conner walked off down the street. Went into his office whistling, thinking of Ellen. No one like her. He inserted his key in the lock of the door. A very big, very young man standing in the shadow of the house next door slipped in after him, agile, silent. Jim turned and the whistle died on his lips. “Damnit, Esposito, haven't I told you never to come here?" he asked, irritated. The Association sub station consisted of a ground floor office with a tailor shop and a loft above it. Ellen went in and found herself the last arrival. She nodded to Jenny, the little stenographer, already rattling the keys of her machine, and spoke to Miss Renwick, the tall, grey haired supervisor. The other nurses seven in all, were busy getting out their reports and Ellen sat down to write up hers. The telephone rang incessantly, a fire engine clanged past, children shouted and ran. Ellen, writing her last report, laid down her pen and ran her slim fingers through her curling hair. The calls were coming in, from central headquarters, from various doctors.

from families direct, from a great life insurance company which called on the visiting nurse service to attend their policy holders. “Nice quiet little dump," remarked Harriet Peters, a girl whose delicate and vivacious beauty could not be subdued by the Oxford gray of her uniform or the unbecoming hat. She was a recent recruit from private nursing and had taken her special training for the new Work. She had come to the district sub station full of enthusiasm but was finding life under the “L" very different from hospital and private home adventures. She pulled her hat down over her eyes and made a face at Ellen who sat near her. “It's a far cry," said Harriot, “from a Eugenie bonnet! " ‘ ‘Florentine tarns are the latest," remarked Carolyn Mathews in a abstracted and indifferent tone and went to get her calls. Ellen got hers for the morning and started out. Her first call was some six or seven blocks away in a liouso to which she had not been before. It was up threo flights and back. Tho house was frankly tenement. The spring sunshine had no power there. Dim gas jets flickered on the dirty landings casting eerie shadows, She went on upstairs, feeling her way, not touching the filthy bannisters. Presently, she knocked.

Two rooms; littered with dogs, with cats, with stale food, with children. In the back room her patient, a flue case. A three-year-old child playing on thv? littered floor, a year-old baby lying sucking at an indescrible rag of a pacifier on the bed. Relatives all around. The doctor had been and gone, and had telephoned the call into the sub station direct.

Ellen had never seen this family before. Sho spoke to Mrs Zina quietly, took off her coat, produced her white apron from her bag and set to work. The first thing indicated was to get the windows up and tho babies out; harder than it would scorn; especially tho windows. Sho was assured by a half grown daughter that air, especially fresh air, would kill the nmdre-la povera!

Much later she left tho house, left Mrs Zina sleeping comfortably, relatively speaking, left the rooms as clean and fresh as was humanly possible, and had actually succeeded in persuading the half grown daughter who at sixteen turned out to bo the mother of the year-old child, that little Oamillo would be a lot better off without the pacifier. She had made some notes. Zina out of work, the girl's husband out of work, too. Something would have to be done about that, thought Ellen. The morning wore on. Another call, a long one. A third which was in the nature of prenatal care, advice and instruction. It would shortly be time to go back to report and to get her afternoon calls and to have some lunch. The last place she had left was a basement, a den. That human beings lived there she had had complete evidence but somehow now out in the open air, tainted as it was, it seemed almost incredible. She thought . . . there's so iuficli more to this than nursing, so much more. She thought further that it was not astonishing that so many women connected with work of this type turned almost fiercely radical seeing what they must see, realizing how little they could do, important though their work “Miss Adams!" The girl spoke twice before Ellen heard. Then Ellen turned aud smiled into a small and radiant face. Gilda Esposito, who lived not far from her and whom Ellen, from her not very great seniority, had watch grow up. “Going back to the office?" Gilda wanted to know. “Yes . . walk along with me. How's Mike?" Mike was Gilda's brother. “Mike's fine," said GiSda. Gilda had a mouth like an opening rose and great black eyes. She wore a little spring suit, fourteen dollars somewhat, but she wore it as if it were a hundred and fifty somewhat else. A tailored suit, blue. The hat with the cavalier feather was not suitable to the suit but it was suitable to Gilda and her eyes aud her white teeth. “And your mother?" “She's all right. She talks about you, wants to know why you don't come to see us.'' Gilda's accent was all of the city; uot a lingering trace of South European in it. Had she not been born here, in this very district. He was an American. Ellen had known the Esposito family for years. And shortly after her affiliation with VNA she had called at the house, whero Mrs Esposito had been one ot her first patients. “B-ut I thought you were working,” Ellen said to the other girl. "I was. I got a better job now," Gilda explained, “but I don't start til! tomorrow.'' Stenographic work, sho explained further, in an uptown office. “Gosh, what a break!" triumphed Gilda. Presently they parted and Ellen went on her way. A small boy hailed her from the curb; a fantastically dirty little boy with red hair and freckles, broken braces and patched pants. A little touseled headed devil with a wide grin and three missing tetth. The perfect Saturday Evening Post cover, thought Ellen. “Hi, Mis’ Nois," was Bill's elegant greeting. “Hi, yourself," replied Ellen. “Bill, why aren't you in school." Bill was hugging a ragged pup, with eyes something like his own in expression. Tho pup wriggled furiously. “This is me dawg, see," announced Bill, changing the subject with tact. “Found him down the alley. Me old man says I kin keep him. Say, Miss Nois', do I gottar have one of them things—you know . . . li—li." He looked up

in suddenly mute appeal, all eyes and outstanding cars and freckles. “License? I'm afraid you do, if you don't want him taken up." "Jees!" said Bill, simply. “Well, we'll seo." He looked at the dog with a preternaturally old affection. “We're pals," said Bill “me an' Old Timer." “Bill, why aren't you in school?" Ellen persisted. But her eyes laughed. She could be sympathetic with a small boy, in springtime; she could understand perfectly why the droning voices of school teachers and the hard desks and the harder seats made no appeal. “Aw, gee, Mis' Nois' a " said Bill

plaintively, “me old man come home soused agin last night, seo, and I gottcr run errands for Ma."

He gestured with a grimy hand. Old Timer, with a yelp, slipped from his master's arms and took a wild turn on the sidewalk. Exhilarated by the sense of freedom, the noise and brightness and general excitement he cavorted, stubby tail pointed skyward, out to the street. Bill swore, without apology, called and whistled. Ellen stepped forward quickly as a car turned a corner, a fast car, a small open car. Another yelp —the squeal of brakes —Ellen’s exclamation of fear and pity.

Bill was out in the street. There was in the moment a crowd, come from nowhere.

“Hey, yousc! " and Bill was shrieking curses at tho top of his small leather lungs, “you lousy "

Ellen was beside him, one hand on his shoulder. The pup was now in Bill's arms, whining, snuggling a bruised noise in Bill’s shoulder* "Jees," remarked an older Bill, “he ain’t dead." And with that consolation spat in the gutter and strode away, disgusted. Ellen turned the little dog over as it lay in Bill’s frantic clutch. “He's all right, Bill," she said, soothingly, “just shaken up, that's all," and drew boy and dog back to sidewalk safety again. But Bill was not recorwiled.

“An' who tho hell do youse t'ink youse are, anyway?" he acidly inquired of the driver of the car who, his vehicle now drawn up to the curb, was standing beside him, “tearin’ t'ough the streets like dat and knockin' a guy’s dawg fer a loop?" The driver spoke for tho first time. “Take it easy, old boy," he said. I'm sorry. Here, let me see the pup." And before Bill could speak or demur his slightly mangy burden had been transferred to other arms. “Looks as if I’d knocked him out for a bit," diagnosed the driver ruefully. “I'm darned sorry, old man." "Don't old man me," said Bill. Here, gimme my dog, an' scram," he grow’led, adding another emphatic oath. “Bill!" expostulated Ellen, trying very hard not to laugh. “That's all right with me," said the culprit. “Look here," and he turned to Ellen in something resembling real dismay, “can’t I square myself, somehow?" “Well," she hesitated . . “there's a veterinary over on the avenue," she suggested. This was a very personable young man. A tall young man in a top coat, hatless, the sun shining on brown hair with a tendency to curl. Very fine hazel eyes smiling into her own. A square chin, stubborn. A nice mouth. (To be continued.)