One Basket by Edna Ferber

Author:Edna Ferber [Ferber, Edna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-345-80578-2
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

“My goodness, why doesn’t she open her windows! And look at her lovely bedspread that I took such—why do they always sit on the edge of the bed and never on a chair! And just see this bathroom. I am simply going to tell her that she must bathe oftener than—— Oh, they’re all alike!”

Always capable and energetic in a slapdash, lunging kind of way, Helmi, on this particular Thursday in April, was a tornado. There loomed ahead of her the regular Thursday routine which, on Every Other Thursday, was a rite. The kitchen linoleum must be made spotless. There was some American superstition about the sink faucets being left shining on Thursdays out. On the other hand, it was understood that lunch—if any—was to be most sketchy on Every Other Thursday; that Mrs. Mawson would go out for this meal, if possible. Zhoolie never lunched at home on weekdays. Helmi was free to go when her work was finished.

These things had come to be taken for granted, tacitly. There was little conversation between mistress and maid. Helmi practiced the verbal economy of her race. She spoke rarely, and then in monosyllables: “Yeh, iss.… I bake a cake wiss nuts.… What you want for eat?…” The iceman, the butcher boy, the grocer, the janitor, the service-elevator boy, in person or at the telephone, got short shrift from Helmi in any case. On Thursdays she was curt to the point of insult. Strangely enough—or perhaps not so strangely—this indifference to their advances gave Helmi a certain desirability in their eyes. When occasion presented itself they attempted to woo her in the patois of their kind.

“Say, you’re a sketch. You hate the men, don’t you? I bet the guy gets you’ll have a right to wear a umpire’s mask, all right. Listen, baby, don’t you never go nowheres? How about a movie? Don’t you dance or nothing?”

Did she dance? Did she dance! For what else did she live! To what other purpose was Every Other Thursday planned! Ask the girls and boys at the Finnish Progressive Society hall in One Hundred and Twenty-sixth Street. Especially (alas!) the girls, the girls who swarmed there on a Thursday night with their half dollar clutched tight in their big, capable palms. You went to those dances alone. If you were popular you danced with the boys. Otherwise you danced with the girls. By half-past eight the big dance hall on the top floor was comfortably filled. By half-past nine it was crowded. By half-past ten it was packed. The heavy-handed band boomed and pounded out the fox trot, the waltz, the German polka. Did she dance? Did she dance! These American boys were fools.

This Thursday night she would dance in her new blue dress to be purchased on One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. In her new silk stockings and her new kid slippers. And then perhaps Vaino Djerf would dance with her. Helmi danced very well indeed. She knew that. She had been the best dancer in her district in the old country.

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