Calvary Alley
Copyright© 2024 by Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice
Chapter 5: On Probation
For a brief period Nance Molloy walked the paths of righteousness. The fear of being “took up” proved a salutary influence, but permanent converts are seldom made through fear of punishment alone. She was trying by imitation and suggestion to grope her way upward, but the light she climbed by was a borrowed light which swung far above her head and threw strange, misleading shadows across her path. The law that allowed a man to sell her fire-crackers and then punished her for firing them off, that allowed any passer-by to kick her stone off the hop-scotch square and punished her for hurling; the stone after him, was a baffling and difficult thing to understand.
At school it was no better. The truant officer said she must go every day, yet when she got there, there was no room for her. She had to sit in the seat with two other little girls who bitterly resented the intrusion.
“You oughtn’t to be in this grade anyhow!” declared one of them. “A girl ought to be in the primer that turns her letters the wrong way.”
“Well, my letters spell the words right,” said Nance hotly, “an’ that’s more’n yours do, Pie-Face!”
Whereupon the girl stuck out her tongue, and Nance promptly shoved her off the end of the seat, with the result that her presence was requested in the office at the first recess.
“If you would learn to make your letters right, the girls would not tease you,” said the principal, kindly. “Why do you persist in turning them the wrong way?”
Now Nance had learned to write by copying the inscriptions from the reverse side of the cathedral windows, and she still believed the cathedral was right. But she liked the principal and she wanted very much to get a good report, so she gave in.
“All right,” she said good-naturedly, “I’ll do ‘em your way. An’ ef you ketch me fightin’ agin, I hope you’ll lick hell outen me!”
The principal, while decrying its forcible expression, applauded her good intention, and from that time on took special interest in her.
Nance’s greatest drawback these days was Mrs. Snawdor. That worthy lady, having her chief domestic prop removed and finding the household duties resting too heavily upon her own shoulders, conceived an overwhelming hatred for the school, the unknown school-teacher, and the truant officer, for whom she had hitherto harbored a slightly romantic interest.
“I ain’t got a mite of use for the whole lay-out,” she announced in a sweeping condemnation one morning when Nance was reminding her for the fourth time that she had to have a spelling book. “They’ re forever wantin’ somethin’. It ain’t no use beginnin’ to humor ‘em. Wasn’t they after me to put specs on Fidy last week? I know their tricks, standin’ in with eye-doctors an’ dentists! An’ here I been fer goin’ on ten years, tryin’ to save up to have my own eye-teeth drawed an’ decent ones put in. Snawdor promised when we got married that would be his first present to me. Well, if I ever get ‘em, they will be his first present.”
“Teacher says you oughtn’t to leave the milk settin’ uncovered like that; it gits germans in it,” said Nance.
“I’d like to know whose milk-can this is?” demanded Mrs. Snawdor indignantly. “You tell her when she pays fer my milk, it ‘ll be time enough fer her to tell me what to do with it. You needn’t be scurryin’ so to git off. I’m fixin’ to go to market. You’ll have to stay an’ ‘tend to the children ‘til I git back.”
“But I’m tryin’ to git a good report,” urged Nance. “I don’t want to be late.”
“I’ll send a excuse by Fidy, an’ say you ‘re sick in bed. Then you kin stay home all day an’ git the house cleaned up.”
“Naw, I won’t,” said Nance rebelliously, “I ain’t goin’ to miss ag’in.”
“You’re goin’ to shut up this minute, you sass-box, or I’ll take you back to that there juvenile court. Git me a piece o’ paper an’ a pencil.”
With great effort she wrote her note while Nance stood sullenly by, looking over her shoulder.
“You spelled teacher’s name with a little letter,” Nance muttered.
“I done it a-purpose,” said Mrs. Snawdor vindictively, “I ain’t goin’ to spell her with a capital; she ain’t worth it.”
Nance would undoubtedly have put up a more spirited fight for her rights, had she not been anxious to preserve peace until the afternoon. It was the day appointed by the court for her and Dan Lewis to make their first report to Mrs. Purdy, whose name and address had been given them on a card. She had washed her one gingham apron for the occasion, and had sewed up the biggest rent in her stockings. The going forth alone with Dan on an errand of any nature was an occasion of importance. It somehow justified those coupled initials, enclosed in a gigantic heart, that she had surreptitiously drawn on the fence.
After her first disappointment in being kept at home, she set about her task of cleaning the Snawdor flat with the ardor of a young Hercules attacking the Augean stables. First she established the twins in the hall with a string and a bent pin and the beguiling belief that if they fished long enough over the banister they would catch something. Next she anchored the screaming baby to a bedpost and reduced him to subjection by dipping his fingers in sorghum, then giving him a feather. The absorbing occupation of plucking the feather from one sticky hand to the other rendered him passive for an hour.
These preliminaries being arranged, Nance turned her attention to the work in hand. Her method consisted in starting at the kitchen, which was in front, and driving the debris back, through the dark, little, middle room, until she landed it all in a formidable mass in Mrs. Snawdor’s bedroom at the rear. This plan, pursued day after day, with the general understanding that Mrs. Snawdor was going to take a day off soon and clean up, had resulted in a condition of indescribable chaos. As Mr. Snawdor and the three younger children slept in the rear room at night, and Mrs. Snawdor slept in it the better part of the day, the hour for cleaning seldom arrived.
To-day as Nance stood in the doorway of this stronghold of dirt and disorder, she paused, broom in hand. The floor, as usual, was littered with papers and strings, the beds were unmade, the wash-stand and dresser were piled high with a miscellaneous collection, and the drawers of each stood open, disgorging their contents. On the walls hung three enlarged crayons of bridal couples, in which the grooms were different, but the bride the same. On the dusty window sill were bottles and empty spools, broken glass chimneys, and the clock that ran ten minutes slow. The debris not only filled the room, but spilled out into the fire-escape and down the rickety iron ladders and flowed about the garbage barrels in the passage below.
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