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We stayed down there till it was getting dark, and we passed by a lunchroom—an old one-armed joint with one-armed chairs and people sitting on stools and eating at the counter. We read all the signs to see what they had to eat and how much it cost, and I guess nothing on the menu was more than fifteen cents, but it couldn’t have looked grander to us if it had been Delmonico’s. So we stood there with our noses pressed against the window, looking in. Two skinny little kids, both of us scared half to death, getting the thrill of a lifetime out of it. You know what I mean? And smelling everything with all our might and thinking how good it all smelled. . . . Then Grover turned to me and whispered: “Come on, Helen. Let’s go in. It says fifteen cents for pork and beans. And I’ve got the money,” Grover said.”I’ve got sixty cents.”

I was so scared I couldn’t speak. I’d never been in a place like that before. But I kept thinking, “Oh Lord, if mama should find out!” I felt as if we were committing some big crime. . . . Don’t you know how it is when you’re a kid? It was the thrill of a lifetime. . . . I couldn’t resist. So we both went in and sat down on those high stools before the counter and ordered pork and beans and a cup of coffee. I suppose we were too frightened at what we’d done really to enjoy anything. We just gobbled it all up in a hurry, and gulped our coffee down. And I don’t know whether it was the excitement—I guess the poor kid was already sick when we came in there and didn’t know it. But I turned and looked at him, and he was white as death. . . . And when I asked him what was the matter, he wouldn’t tell me. He was too proud. He said he was all right, but I could see that he was sick as a dog. . . . So he paid the bill. It came to forty cents—I’ll never forget that as long as I live. . . . And sure enough, we no more than got out the door—he hardly had time to reach the curb—before it all came up.

And the poor kid was so scared and so ashamed. And what scared him so was not that he had gotten sick, but that he had spent all that money and it had come to nothing. And mama would find out. . . . Poor kid, he just stood there looking at me and he whispered: “Oh Helen, don’t tell mama. She’ll be mad if she finds out.” Then we hurried home, and he was still white as a sheet when we got there.

Mama was waiting for us. She looked at us—you know how “Miss Eliza” looks at you when she thinks you’ve been doing something that you shouldn’t. Mama said, “Why, where on earth have you two children been?” I guess she was all set to lay us out. Then she took one look at Grover’s face. That was enough for her. She said, “Why, child, what in the world!” She was white as a sheet herself. . . . And all that Grover said was—”Mama, I feel sick.”

He was sick as a dog. He fell over on the bed, and we undressed him and mama put her hand upon his forehead and came out in the hall—she was so white you could have made a black mark on her face with chalk—and whispered to me, “Go get the doctor quick, he’s burning up.”

And I went chasing up the street, my pigtails flying, to Dr. Packer’s house. I brought him back with me. When he came out of Grover’s room he told mama what to do but I don’t know if she even heard him.

Her face was white as a sheet. She looked at me and looked right through me. She never saw me. And oh, my Lord, I’ll never forget the way she looked, the way my heart stopped and came up in my throat. I was only a skinny little kid of fourteen. But she looked as if she was dying right before my eyes. And I knew that if anything happened to him, she’d never get over it if she lived to be a hundred.