We must always listen to the bells. Bell one was for getting up. Bell two, for getting babies’ bottles. Bell three, for coming to breakfast. Bell four, for bathing the babies. If we come later, after the ring from the bell, then we’ll not get what we need. If the bottle bell rings and we don’t come right away for the bottle, then the baby don’t get no bottle. If the breakfast bell rings, and we don’t come right away down to the breakfast, then there won’t be no breakfast for us.
When she got through with reading the rules, I was wondering which side of the house I was to walk on. At every step was some rule what said don’t move here, and don’t go there, don’t stand there, and don’t sit there. If I tried to remember the endless rules, it would only make me dizzy in the head. I was thinking for why, with so many rules, didn’t they also have already another rule, about how much air in our lungs to breathe.
On every few days there came to the house swell ladies in automobiles. It was for them that the front from the house had to be always perfect. For them was all the beautiful smelling flowers. For them the front porch, the front sitting-room, and the easy stairs with the carpet on it.
Always when the rich ladies came the fat lady, what was the boss from the vacation house, showed off to them the front. Then she took them over to the back to look on us, where we was sitting together, on long wooden benches, like prisoners. I was always feeling cheap like dirt, and mad that I had to be there, when they smiled down on us.
“How nice for these poor creatures to have a restful place like this,” I heard one lady say.
The next day I already felt like going back. The children what had to stay by the nurse in the play-room didn’t like it neither.
“Mamma,” says Mendel to me, “I wisht I was home and out in the street. They don’t let us do nothing here. It’s worser than school.”
“Ain’t it a play-room?” asks I. “Don’t they let you play?”
“Gee wiss! play-room, they call it! The nurse hollers on us all the time. She don’t let us do nothing.”
The reason why I stayed out the whole two weeks is this: I think to myself, so much shame in the face I suffered to come here, let me at least make the best from it already. Let me at least save up for two weeks what I got to spend out for grocery and butcher for my back bills to pay out. And then also think I to myself, if I go back on Monday, I got to do the big washing; on Tuesday waits for me the ironing; on Wednesday, the scrubbing and cleaning, and so goes it on. How bad it is already in this place, it’s a change from the very same sameness of what I’m having day in and day out at home. And so I stayed out this vacation to the bitter end.