A Daughter of the Morning

by Zona Gale

"No," I says, "not with nothin' but you to watch it." And then I walked on fast, and felt sick, sick at myself. Not one of them tended ladies in the automobiles would have spoke like that. And Mr. Ember would have hated me if he'd heard me say it. How did folks ever get over being smart and quick, and be just regular?

After a while, I come past a big church, and I went in. I never liked church, because the minister had always kept at me to join and I didn't think I was good enough. But I knew nobody would ever ask me to join here. There was one reason, though, why I liked it, even home—everybody acted nice, and like there was company. Once I said that, home, to the table, when everybody was jawing, "Let's act like we was in church," I said. But it made Father mad, and he couldn't understand that I hadn't meant the being good part at all. I only meant the acting nice part.

In the church it was like that, just as if everybody had company and was on their good behavior. They set me in the gallery, and I could see the whole crowd. The hats was grand. But the nicest was the colors in the dresses and the windows and the flowers. It was funny, but something in them made me hurt. And when the music burst out sudden, it hurt me so that I dropped my bag of rolls so's to get down and pick them up, and get my mind off my throat. I was thinking about it afterward, and it was the first music I'd ever heard except our reed organ in church, and Lena Curtsy's piano, and the movies, and the circus band. And even the circus band had hurt my throat, too.

I never knew a word the man said, I mean the minister. He didn't talk anyhow—he just kept on about something, as if he was trying to make somebody mean something they didn't mean. But I liked being there. Everybody seemed like they ought to seem. I wondered if they was. I couldn't seem to see through, like I could with the folks in the street-car. It didn't seem possible that those folks down there ever yipped out about anything to each other, and, anyway, what could they have to yip out about? They were all clean and tended, too. Afterward I stood in the door and watched them pour out, talking fast, and drive off. I liked to see them close to, and hear the way they said their words. It made a real nice morning, but I never heard a word about God.

I et my rolls in the park, and I stayed there a good while. The sun or the green or something made me feel good. I tried to look at the animals, but I hated it in the smelly places, with the poor live things in cages. When they tore around and couldn't sit still in any one place, I thought it was just like Mother and Father and the boys and Mis' Bingy, they all had to stay in a little place they didn't like, doing what they didn't want to do. I didn't blame any of them for being ugly. The more I looked at the animals, the better I understood. Then I thought about Keddie Bingy—and he didn't have only that little place to stay, with the bed in the kitchen, and he hated being a stone mason, I'd heard him tell Father that. I didn't know but I could understand why he got drunk. Then there was Joe, that had the Dew Drop Inn, and he had to stay there in that place, and he couldn't get out; and, anyway, the United States let him; and I begun to see how it was that Joe got Keddie drunk all the time. So I was glad I went to see the animals, even if I couldn't stay on account of it making me sick.

Outside the park was the big hotels. I wondered if I could walk inside and look at them, but when I got to the steps, I was afraid. Then I see a big red house behind more iron fence, with an American flag overhead, and I asked a little boy with some papers if that was where the mayor lived.

"Naw," says he. "Private party. I t'ought youse was their chum, the way youse was rubberin'."

I give him a penny for a paper and didn't say anything. And then I felt better about the way I'd answered the policeman. It ain't so hard to act nice if you can only think in time.

I walked all the way home. I went in every church I come to, because it was some place to go in. If I'd been shot out of a gun I couldn't have told 'em apart, and I wondered how they could tell themselves. And everywhere I went, there wasn't a soul to speak to. I tried to imagine what if Mis' Bingy and the baby wasn't back there in the room, and there was nobody to speak to when I got back. It felt funny, like once when I got too far from shore in the pond, home. I couldn't help thinking about Mr. Carney saying: "You must let me help you to keep from being too lonesome." And if he'd come along just then with his shiny car, I don't know but I'd have got in.