PAGE 2
The Etiquette Of Yetta
by
Rosie, though she had never seen Miss Aaronsohn before, recognized her talent instantly, and welcomed her partnership with an ecstatic combination of the Cake Walk and the Highland Fling. Yetta returned the compliment in a few steps of the Barn Dance flavored with a dash of the Irish Jig. Then eye to eye, and hands on one another’s shoulders, they fell to “spieling,” with occasional Polka divertisements.
A passing stranger stopped to watch them and gave the organ-man largesse, so that still he played, and still they danced until called back to duty and reality by the uproar of the baby, now thrice abandoned. For Eva Gonorowsky had gone virtuously home, feeling that her traditions had been outraged, her friendship despised, and that her disciple had disgraced her.
Yetta and Rosie with the heavy-headed baby followed the organ for several blocks. They might have gone on forever like the Pied Piper’s rats, had not the howls of the youngest Rashnowsky anchored and steadied them. When at last they had recovered breath and the proprieties, they sat amicably down upon an alien doorstep, and went back to the early–and in their case neglected–preliminaries of friendship.
They exchanged names, ages, addresses, the numbers of their family, and their own places in the scale. The baby had obligingly gone to sleep, and these amenities were carried out in due form. It seemed that they were bound by many similarities of circumstance and fate: each was the eldest of a family, but whereas Rosie could boast but one baby, Yetta’s mother had three. Both mothers worked at low and ill-paid branches of the tailor’s art. And both children were fatherless to all daily intents and purposes.
“Mine papa,” Yetta told her new little friend, “is pedlar-mans on the country. Me und mine mamma don’t know where he is even. From long we ain’t got no letters off of him, und no money. My mamma, she has awful sads over it.”
“Does she cry?” questioned the sympathetic Rosie, drawing her kimona closely about her in the enjoyment of this new and promising gossip.
Yetta shook her head. “She ain’t got no time she shall cry. So my papa don’t comes, und letters mit money off of him don’t comes. My mamma, she ain’t got time for nothings on’y sewing. She has it pretty hard.”
“My mamma is got it hard too,” cried Rosie, not to be outdone. “She don’t know where my papa is neither. She don’t know is he on the country even. She don’t know nothings over him. Me und my mamma we looks all times on blocks und streets und stores. On’y we couldn’t to find him. Und my mamma, she works all day by factories, und by night she comes on the house und brings more work. She ain’t got time for nothings neither, on’y sewing und looking fer my poor papa.”
“Then your papa ain’t dead?” queried Yetta.
“No, he ain’t dead; on’y he loses him the job.” Rosie’s voice as she made this statement, and Yetta’s manner as she received it, would seem to say that if this were not death, it was very little better.
To Isidore Rashnowsky it had been the “sudden and unprovided death” of which the Prayer Book speaks. It had meant the destruction of the very delicate equilibrium by which he and his wife maintained their tiny but peaceful household. It threw the whole burden of four lives upon Mrs. Rashnowsky’s thin and twisted shoulders. It drove him, after three weeks of unsuccessful quest for work, to cut himself off from all he cared for. Starvation was very close to them. He could contribute nothing, and he determined to take nothing: to increase the niggardly supply by diminishing the hungry demand. Mrs. Rashnowsky’s earnings–even when augmented by the home work which the law forbids but life demands–was scant indeed for the maintenance of the mother and the two children. All these things Isidore explained to her patiently, resignedly, and with what bravery he could muster. And she agreed, nodding wearily over her sewing. But from his conclusion, from his determination to remove himself and his hunger from her charge, she persistently dissented. Rather, she insisted, would she take the babies to the Children’s Court and get them committed to some institution. Then he and she could face the world together. She could find courage for that. But not to live without him. Never for that.