The springtime was full on, and I found much pleasure in mixing with the tenement boys and girls, after school hours. While the schools were in session, however, I had a lonely time of it. But it was on those steps that I began to form a conception of what it means to be an American. It meant to me, then, the ability to speak slang, to be impertinent to adults, calling one’s father, “Old Man,” one’s mother, “My Old Woman,” and one’s friend, “that guy.” The whole conception rounded out, however, in the hope of some day becoming the President of The United States, and I was considerably chagrined, and my coming to America seemed a fruitless task, when I learned, from Minnie Helphin, a German girl, that “You got for to be borned into the United States, for to be like us ’Mericans, to be Preser-dent. My brudder, Hermann, him for to be Preser-dent, sometimes.”
I grew tired of being alone while the others went to school, so that one day, in spite of the warning that the “truant officer” might get hold of me, I went to one of the school yards, and, through the iron fence, watched all my friends at play, and immediately I said to myself, “You ought to go, too!” That night I said to my aunt, at the supper table, “I want to go to an American school.” She looked at me with a frown.
“School, is it? Who said so, the government?”
“No,” I answered, trembling in fear of her, “it wasn’t the government. I get lonely while they are at school. That’s why I want to go.”
She laughed, “Oh, we’ll soon find something for you to do more profitable than going to school. Go to school! What are you bothering me about school for? Education’s only for them that are learning to be gentlemen. You’re a poor lad, and must be thinking more about getting to work. Here we are, head and ears in debt! Up to our neck in it, right away! We owe for the furniture. That chair you’re sitting on isn’t ours. That stove isn’t paid for. Nothing’s ours, hardly the clothes on our backs. How we are to pay for it all, gets me. You’ve got to knuckle down with a will, young man, and help us out of the hole we’re in!”
“But the lad’s got to have schooling, Millie!” protested my uncle. She turned upon him with flashing eyes, and, half-crying with sudden anger, shouted at the top of her voice, “Listen to that! I’d like to know what you have to strike in this for. It’s you and your drinking’s brought us to this pitch. There you can sit, while we are head and ears in debt, nothing to call our own, and propose that this Impudent go to school. He’s got to go out on the street with the McNulty lads and get wood and coal. That will be something towards helping out. Never mind about school till the government makes him go. That will be plenty of time for SCHOOL!”
“Picking wood and coal?” I asked, with interest in this new scheme to keep me busy.
“Yes,” she explained. “I was in McNulty’s this afternoon, and Mrs. McNulty was telling me that she’s entirely kept in coal and wood by her two lads, Pat and Tim. Seems to me that you might make yourself useful like that, too, instead of bothering your little brain about getting learning.”
“I don’t like to have him out on the street,” protested Uncle, somewhat feebly.
“It’s not a case of like or dislike, this time,” said Aunt Millie, “it’s a case of got to. You don’t bring in enough to pay up everything, so you shut up! You and your fifteen dollars won’t make creation, not a bit! Get off out of this. Go to the toy store, and get a cart or something for Al to get wood in, instead of sitting there telling me what is right and what is wrong. Go on; I’m going to send him out in the morning.”