TONIGHT IS PART OF THE STRUGGLE
Meridel Le Sueur
T
HAT AFTERNOON SHE THOUGHT
of the bright half-spring
sunshine and people coming from the relief walking slow in the
half cold half heat of March. In the afternoon so many men
without jobs and the dirty snow on the ground. She had walked
slowly alo\lg with the men and women, carrying Dave wrapped
in a pink blanket and sometimes a woman stopped and lifted
down the blanket and looked at the tiny head and said what is
his name? She lowered her lids over her thin cheeks, I better not
act proud because this is the depression, I haven't a right to have
a baby that's what they say, so she would try to look like an old
stick, try to seem dry and brittle like old women, try to cover
up her thin gold hair and make out like the baby bundle was a
sack, some kind of old clothes maybe she had just gotten from
the welfare and wrapped it up. But when she turned the corner
and the sun blazed down as if lifting her, gee whiz, Jesus Christ
it's a baby and she felt the curve of new legs, the weak head
falling against her, the pushing mouth ... but we can't give milk
or cream or wheat you better nurse him as long as you can it's
the cheapest food anyway, its a law now anyway you have to
nurse your baby but with worry the milk goes and you have to
be thinking at two o'clock, I've got to have milk, at six o'clock
I've got to have milk, at six in the morning, at ten at two at six
again I've got to have milk. Drink a lot of water, drink hot
tea, that is good, Mrs. Ellgerty says, that is excellent.
If
they only had somewhere to go at night, to get out of
that awful room with the baby sleeping in a cracker box on the
table and no place to go to get away from Jock and nowhere for
him to go but out to get drunk if he could.
She had to go through an alley, through an old carriage
arch that wasn't ever used now since the old mansion had become
a boarding and rooming house and all the occupants on relief.
She went up the dirty black alley and into the back door which
led directly into their room. It must have been the kitchen of
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