But in a little while the guffaws, the jostling, the proximity of dirty coats, the odour of stale tobacco must have disturbed us, because gradually we edged a little away, and stood on the edge of the crowd, against an iron rail outside a billiard room. The band ceased, and went up into the hall. We had a distinct impulse to do the next thing. What was there to do next? What was it that the boys did when they went down town evenings? What else did they do while we were tidying our play-houses for the night? For here we were, longing for play, if only we could think what to do.
I felt a hand beneath my chin, lifting my face. There, in the press, stood my Father. Over his arm he carried my black jacket with the Bedford cord.
“Mother thought you might be cold,” he said.
I put on the jacket, and he took Mary Elizabeth and me by the hand, and we walked slowly back down Wisconsin Street.
“We will see Mary Elizabeth safely home first,” my Father said, and we accompanied her to the New Family’s door.
Once in our house, it was I who proposed going to bed, and the suggestion met with no opposition. Upstairs, I slipped the screen from my window and leaned out in the dusk. The night, warm, fragrant, significant, was inviting me to belong to it, was asking me, even as bright day had asked me, what it had in common with the stuffiness and dulness of forever watching others do things. Something hard touched my hand. It was my birthday dollar. It had not occurred to me to spend it.
I saw my Father stroll back down the street, lighting a cigar. Below stairs I could hear my Mother helping to put away the supper dishes. A dozen boys raced through the alley, just on their way down town. So long as they came home at a stated hour at night, and turned up at table with their hands clean, who asked them where they had been? “Where have you been?” they said to me, the moment I entered the house—and to Delia and Calista and Margaret Amelia and Betty. We had often talked about it. And none of us had even ridden on a load of hay. We had a vague expectation that it would be different when we grew up. A sickening thought came to me: Would it be different, or was this to be forever?
I ran blindly down the stairs where my Mother was helping to put away the supper dishes—in the magic of the night, helping to put away the supper dishes.
“Mother!” I cried, “Mother! Who made it so much harder to be a girl?”
She turned and looked at me, her face startled, and touched me—I remember how gently she touched me.