Star-Dust | Page 5

attitude in among the small tables that littered the room. There were four. A long table seating ten and punctuated by two sets of cruets, two plates of bread, and two white-china water pitchers; Mr. Hazzard's tiny square of individual table, a perpetual bottle of brown medicine beside his place. The Kembles also enjoyed segregation from the mother table, the family invariably straggling in one by one. For the Beckers was reserved the slight bulge of bay window that looked out upon the Suburban street-car tracks and a battalion of unpainted woodsheds. A red geranium, potted and wrapped around in green crêpe tissue paper, sprouted center table, a small bottle of jam and two condiments lending further distinction. A napkin with self-invented fasteners dangled from Mr. Becker's chair, and beside Lilly's place a sterling silver and privately owned knife and fork, monogrammed.
To Mr. Becker, the negro race was largely and genetically christened Gawge, to be addressed solely in native patois.
"Evenin', Gawge."
"Evenin', Mistah Beckah."
"George, are you going to take good care of my husband to-night? That piece of steak you served him yesterday wasn't fit to eat."
"Law now, Mis' Beckah, kin I help it if de best de kitchen has ain't none too good?"
"Don't tell me! I saw the piece you brought Mr. Kemble."
"Now, Carrie ..."
"What have we to-night, George?"
"Fried steak, lamb, or corn'-beef hash."
"Bring us steak, and if it isn't tender, tell Mrs. Schum for me that right back downstairs it goes! A little piece of lamb on the side in case Miss Lilly don't like the steak, and bring up a dish of those sweet pickles. You know, under the tray the way you always do. There's a pair of Mr. Becker's old shoes, good as new, waiting to be given away."
"Carrie!"
"Miss Lilly loves pickles. George, do as I say."
"Carrie!"
"Law! Mistah Beckah, I knows Mis' Beckah and her ways. Law! I doan take no offense."
"I wish if you want extras, Carrie, you would buy them. It is a darn shame to make yourself so small before the other boarders."
"I haven't as much money as you have, Ben Becker. I'm not ashamed to ask for my money's worth. Lilly, haven't I told you not to talk on your fingers at meals?"
This form of digital communication between the children of the boarding house seemed to break out in its most virulent form at dinner. In spite of a sharp consensus of parental disapproval, there was a continual flashing of code between Lilly, the Kemble twins, and Lester Eli at the larger table.
"Ben, will you speak to Lilly? She won't mind me."
"Lilly!"
"Yes, sir," immediately subsiding to a contemplation of the geranium.
Poker played for penny stakes was a favorite after-dinner pastime. A group including Mrs. Eli, the Kembles, and Mr. Hazzard would gather in the Becker back parlor, Mrs. Becker, relieved of corsets and in a dark-blue foulard teagown shotted all over with tiny pink rosebuds, presiding over a folding table with a glass bowl of the "baby pretzels" in its center.
The children meanwhile would forgather on the front hall stairs, the peaked flare of an olive of gaslight that burned through a red glass globe with warts blown into it, bathing the little group in a sort of greasy fluid. Roy and Flora Kemble, Snow Horton, Lester Eli, and Stanley Beinenstock, racked with bronchitis and lending an odor of creosote, Lilly, and even Harry in his poor outlandish blouse.
"Snow, tell us a story; you're the oldest."
Snow was full of lore; would invoke inspiration with a very wide and very blue gaze up to the ceiling, her thin hands clasping her thin neck.
"Once upon a time--once upon a time there was the most beautiful girl in all the world and her name was--"
"Aw, give us one about boys."
LILLY: "You shut up, Roy Kemble. I guess Snow can tell a girl story if she wants to. Go on, Snow, 'once upon a time there was the most beautiful girl in all the world' and she had honey-colored curls and--"
"I didn't say she had honey-colored curls. Honey! Who ever heard of a girl having honey curls?"
"Well, she had."
"Didn't."
"Did."
"--and her name was--was--Gladys."
"Oh no, Snow, call her--"
"I think Gladys is just a beautiful name for a girl," ventured Flora Kemble on this occasion. "I like Elsie, too. I think Elsie Dinsmore is my favorite name."
"Elsie Dinsmore!" flared Lilly. "Girls aren't pokey like her any more."
Thus diverted, there ensued a quick confetti of flung opinions.
"Minn is a pretty name."
"That's because you're stuck on Minnie Duganne in your class. Oh-oh, Roy is stuck on Minnie Duganne!"
"Arabella--I just love that name. Don't you, Lilly?"
"If I was a girl, I would be named Mamma-Annie."
"Shut up, Harry; and, say, you better take back that can opener. You stole it off Mr. Hazzard's dresser."
"What is your favorite name, Lilly?"
Her eyes on the warts