Her chatter ceased. She sat quietly, elbows on the table, her face covered with her hands, strong-looking, large, capable hands, but white and shapely. I smoked and wondered about her. What a partner she would make for me if she were not a girl! She pushed her chair back, rested her hands in her lap, and looked up at her bedraggled straw hat on a hook. I thought she was ready to go, and got up to get it.
“Don’t touch it, I despise it,” she burst out. “I hate these shoes.” She put her foot up. “And this dress and every stitch of clothes on my back. Do you know why? Because every one of them means a different man. Do you want me to tell you about it; what a tough time I’ve had? But you wouldn’t understand it. You’re only a kid, like I was a couple of years ago.”
“Tell me, anyway, Julia.”
Her story, new to me then, was as old as man’s duplicity and woman’s inherent desire to be loved and protected. Betrayed and deserted, fearing to face her family, she stole enough of her father’s money to take her to the city and into a hospital where her baby was born. “And,” she continued, “I was glad when it died, it was a girl. When I was well enough to leave the hospital they couldn’t find my clothes. Cheap as they were, somebody had taken them. A man can go out into the street without a hat and coat, kid, but just let a woman try it, even if she has the nerve, and watch what happens to her. I had no money. The doctor gave me this dress; that is, he sold it to me and I paid for it the first time he got drunk. One of the internes traded me these shoes. He was just a dirty little beast and didn’t wait to get drunk. Then the hospital cook got me that hat and some cheap stockings and underclothes. He happened to be a white man,” she said bitterly. “I suppose I would have taken them just the same if he had been a negro or a Chinaman. After the drunken doctor I thought of nothing but suicide, anyway. But I had to have enough clothes to get through the street and down to the bridge where I could jump into the river.
“The cook told me he would get me a job in a restaurant downtown and that stopped me from going to the river. He gave me money for a couple of night’s lodging, and something to eat, and told me where to go for a room. He came that night to my room. When he left in the morning his last words were: ‘I’ll go right out now and get you the job.’
“I waited all day but he never came back. He was a liar; I never saw him again. When the third night came my money was gone. I was starving, and the rent was due. I wanted to go down to the river then, but was so hungry I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”
She had talked furiously, with a storm of bitter words. Now she stopped and smiled. “Yes, this appetite of mine saved my life. I’ll never die hungry if I can help it.
“Anyway,” she resumed, “this is the long and the short of it. About nine o’clock that night the woman of the place came up and wanted the rent. I told her I was broke, and asked her to stand me off for a few days till I could get a job or give me something to do so I could earn the rent.
“What do you think she did, kid—the big, man-eater! She took me by the arm, dragged me out into the hall and pushed me downstairs. She went back and got my hat, that straw hat hanging up there, and threw it out on the sidewalk after me.
“A policeman was standing there and saw her do it. He came up and asked me what the trouble was about. Here is where I may get help, I thought, so I told him I had just left the hospital, that my money was all spent, and that I had been put out of my room. He asked how old I was. I told him I was eighteen—that’s two years ago, I’m twenty now. He asked if I lived here in the city. I told him I lived in the country, but was going to stay in the city and work. He wrote something on a card and gave it to me, saying: ‘I’ll get a hack driver to take you to a hotel. When you get there give that card to the landlady.’