Under one of them
lies somebody whose image still lives in her heart.
She will kneel in the wet grass and her pasty little face will blink its
dull eyes over a grave. Like a little clown in her curling cotton suit,
her lumpy shoes, her idiotic hat, she will offer her tears to the pitiless
silence of trees, wind, rain and white stones.
"Do you like them there?" She asks. She points to a cluster of fancy
headstones.
"Do you?" I ask.
She smiles.
"Oh yes," she says. And she stops. She is admiring the tombstones. We walk
on.
It is incredible. This blousy one, this dull-eyed one has come to the
cemetery on her day off--to admire the tombstones. Ah, here is drama of a
poignant kind. Let us pray God there is nothing pathologic here and that
this is an idyl of despair, that the lumpish little slavey sits on the
rain-washed bench dreaming of fine tombstones as a flapper might dream of
fine dresses.
Yes, at last we are on the track. We talk. These are very pretty, she
says. Life is dull. The days are drab. The place where she works is like
an oven. There is nothing pretty to look at--even in mirrors there is
nothing cool and pretty. Clothes grow lumpy when she puts them on. Boys
giggle and call names when she goes out.
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