dust and desert, we had come into a lush, lovely,
smiling, yellow-green-red valley. I woke up Mar-
cheta. I said, "Look."
She looked, and then she threw both arms around
me tightly and her head on my shoulders, and she
again fell asleep. Half-strangled,
I stared around
me, and I could have sung with joy.
We detoured to Sacramento because there was a
flood; we: ate breakfast there and then walked up
and down L Street and saw hundreds of unemployed
men leaning in doorways or standing hopelessly in
the street; we drove on towards San Francisco, got
to the ferry, crossed on it. I was giddy with fatigue.
We arrived at the terminal, got out of the bus. I
went to a hotel, Marcheta behind me; I got in the
elevator, she was also there. I entered the room, I
pulled down the shades and I fell on the bed.
III
I woke up drunk with twenty hours of sleep, and
I was in an empty room. There was a strange suit-
case open on the dresse.r, and a woman's clothes all
over the place. A nightgown lay at the foot of the
bed. I could smell some sort of toilet water.
I lit a cigarette and I lay back. I called the tele-
graph company and no money had come. I ordered
coffee. Then Marcheta came in.
I asked, "Where have you been?"
"Out looking for a job," she said.
"Did you sleep here last night?"
"Oh, yes."
"Well, how did you sleep?"
"Just dandy," she said.
She removed her coat and her hat, and looked in
my bag and took my shirts and examined the but-
tons. She found some buttons missing; it took her a
long time to get the thread into the eye of the
needle; and then she began sewing. She said, "I was
down to the telegraph company, but my money hasn't
come."
I stared at her. I asked her, "'\That are we-
married ?"
She didn't say anything, but when she got through
sewing, she went into the bathroom and drew a
bath for me. I said to myself, "Oh, well," and I
went into the bathroom.
We walked on Mission Street and looked into the
shop windows, and she showed me the dresses that
she liked. She didn't act like a hick in a big city. She
wasn't afraid of traffic, she didn't look up at the tall
buildings. We walked toward Chinatown, and in the
narrow, balcony-lined streets, I was much more in-
terested in the strange sights than she was.
We went to a dime picture show, and then back
to the hotel, and we ordered sandwiches sent up.
And in the morning still no money had come. And
the telegraph company would not accept a message
sent collect asking for money. And now there was
only change in my pockets.
18
Marcheta said, "We're going to get out of this
hotel. You've got a watch, haven't you?"
I said, "Yes."
"I've got a watch, too."
We went to a pawn shop, and we got twenty dol·
lars. Then we started room-hunting on Sixth and
Seventh Street. We saw signs,
Housekeeping Rooms
For Rent,
and climbed stairs and talked to land-
ladies and looked at rooms. In one place the tenant
had not yet been thrown out, and she hid in a closet
while the landlady showed us through the room and
told us how comfortable it was; while we stared at
the empty milk bottle and the empty box of crackers,
and the landlady warned us that there was only one
thing she was strict about, rent. And if no rent was
coming, out you go, and I could see the woman in
the wrapper through the half-opened closet door.
We saw rooms in which there was absolutely no
light; an electric bulb had to be kept burning, illu-
minating the broken bed and the food-stained, un-
painted table, and the one-burner gas plate. In each
place we came to there was a different smell, but al-
ways rotten-sweet, and the landladies were sweaty-
looking, fat, or seemed as if they had just gotten
out of bed, and even their hair was uncombed and
wild.
Finally in one house where the landlady was out,
the maid showed us a room that could possibly be
lived in. We took it, left a deposit, went back to
our hotel, checked out and came back with our
clothes. The landlady met us, told us we could not
have that room. I didn't look as if I had a job and
could afford to pay five dollars a week; so she was
really doing us a kindness by giving us a smaller place
at two-fifty a week. She led us to this room with a
three-legged bed-the fourth leg was a box-with
a torn, oil-cloth laid table, with the spilled-over and
burnt gas plate, and the coffee pot that had a hole
in it. I couldn't argue. I said we'd take the room.
Marcheta didn't seem to mind. She asked me to
pull open the dresser, and she laid her clothes in it.
She went downstairs and came back, her arms filled
with groceries, and behind her came the grocer's boy
with a filled box. She bought enough food to last us
for weeks. She was not an experienced cook.
And I might have considered all this an adven-
ture, if she would also have thought it a lark. But
she didn't. She took it for granted. She hadn't liked
the hotel we had been in. But she liked this room. It
was her home. And she washed dishes in it, and she
washed my shirts-I hadn't asked her to wash my
shirts-and she borrowed an iron from a neighbor
and pressed the shirts. And she hummed. All the
time she hummed the song
M archeta.
It was the worst house I was ever in. All night
long people talked through the walls. There were
fights. Downtairs there was a terrible knocking on
the door, and the landlady opened the' door and
screamed, "I'm going to call a cop."
MARCH,
1936
