LIFE OF AUGIE MARCH
1085
knee, taking
knee
or arm in both hands and putting his underlip
forward, chaste, lummoxly, caressing, gentle and diligent when he bent
his narrow back, blouse bagging all over it, whitish hair pointy and
close as a burr or sun flower when the seeds have been picked out of
it. The old lady let him embrace her and spoke to him in the following
way: "Hey, you, boy, clever
junge,
you like the old Grandma, my
minister, my cavalier? That's a boy. You know who's good to you,
who gives you gizzards and necks? Who? Who makes noodles for you?
Yes. Noodles are slippery, hard to pick up with a fork and hard to
pick up with the fingers. You see how the little bird pulls the worm?
The little worm wants to stay in the ground. The little worm doesn't
want to come out. Enough, you're making my dress wet." And she'd
sharply push his forehead off with her old prim hand, having fired
off for Simon and me, mindful always of her duty to wise us up, one
more animadversion on the trustful, loving and simple surrounded by
the cunning-hearted and tough, a fighting nature of birds and worms,
and a desperate mankind without feelings. Illustrated by Georgie. But
the principal illustration was not Georgie but Mama, in her love–
originated servitude, simple-minded, abandoned with three children.
That was what old lady Lausch was driving at, now, in the later
wisdom of her life, that she had a second family to lead.
And what must Mama have thought when in any necessary con–
nection my father was brought into the conversation? She sat docile.
I conceive that she thought of some detail about him-a dish he
liked, perhaps meat and potatoes, perhaps cabbage or cranberry sauce;
perhaps that he disliked a starched collar, or a soft collar; that he
brought home the Evening American or the Journal. She thought
this because her thoughts were always simple; but she felt abandon–
ment, and greater pains than conscious mental ones put a dark streak
to her simplicity. I don't know how she made out before, when we
were alone after the desertion, but Grandma came and put a regulat–
ing hand on the family life. Mama surrendered powers to her that
maybe she had never known she had and took
h~r
punishment in
drudgery; occupied a place, I suppose, among women conquered
by a superior force of love, like those women Zeus got the better of
in animal form who next had to take cover from his furious wife. Not
that I can see my big, gentle, dilapidated, scrubbing and lugging
mother as a fugitive of immense beauty from such classy wrath, or
