U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [417]
When she got wel enough to sit up she wouldn't go to the clinic the way Tony was going. She wouldn't speak to him or to the old women. She pretended not to under-stand what they said. La mamá would look into her face in a spiteful way she had and shake her head and say,
"Loca." That meant crazy.
Margo wrote desperate letters to Agnes: for God's sake she must sel something and send her fifty dol ars so that she could get home. Just to get to Florida would be enough. She'd get a job. She didn't care what she did if she could only get back to God's Country. She just said that Tony was a bum and that she didn't like it in Havana. She never said a word about the baby or being sick. Then one day she got an idea; she was an American citizen, wasn't she? She'd go to the consul and see if they wouldn't send her home. It was weeks before she could get out without one of the old women. The first time she got down to the consulate al dressed up in her one good dress only to find it closed. The next time she went in the morning when the old women were out marketing and got to see a clerk who was a towheaded American col egeboy. My, she felt good talking American again.
-249-She could see he thought she was a knockout. She liked him too but she didn't let him see it. She told him she was sick and had to go back to the States and that she'd been gotten down there on false pretenses on the promise of an engagement at the Alhambra. "The Alhambra," said the clerk. "Gosh, you don't look like that kind of a girl."
"I'm not," she said.
His name was George. He said that if she'd married a Cuban there was nothing he could do as you lost your citizenship if you married a foreigner. She said suppose they weren't real y married. He said he thought she'd said she wasn't that kind of a girl. She began to blubber and said she didn't care what kind of a girl she was, she had to get home. He said to come back next day and he'd see what the consulate could do, anyway wouldn't she have tea with him at the Miami that afternoon.
She said it was a date and hurried back to the house feel-ing better than she had for a long time. The minute she was by herself in the alcove she took the marriagelicense out of her bag and tore it up into little tiny bits and dropped it into the filthy yel ow bowl of the old water-closet in the back of the court. For once the chain worked and every last bit of forgetmenotspotted paper went down into the sewer.
That afternoon she got a letter from Agnes with a fifty-dol ar draft on the National City Bank in it. She was so excited her heart almost stopped beating. Tony was out gal ivanting around somewhere with the sugarbroker. She wrote him a note saying it was no use looking for her, she'd gone home, and pinned it on the underpart of the pil ow on the bed. Then she waited until the old women had drowsed off for their siesta, and ran out.
She wasn't coming back. She just had the clothes she had on, and a few little pieces of cheap jewelry Tony had given her when they were first married, in her handbag. She went to the Miami and ordered an icecreamsoda in Eng--250-lish so that everybody would know she was an American girl, and waited for George.
She was so scared every minute she thought she'd keel over. Suppose George didn't come. But he did come and he certainly was tickled when he saw the draft, because he said the consulate didn't have any funds for a case like hers. He said he'd get the draft cashed in the morning and help her buy her ticket and everything. She said he was a dandy and then suddenly leaned over and put her hand in its white kid glove on his arm and looked right into his eyes that were blue like hers were and whispered, "George, you've got to help me some more. You've got to help me hide. . . . I'm so scared of that Cuban. You know they are terrible when they're jealous."
George turned red and began to hem and haw a little, but Margo told him the story of what had happened on her street just the other day, how a man, an armyofficer, had come home and found, wel , his sweetheart, with an-other man, wel , she might as wel tel the story the way it happened, she guessed George wasn't easily shocked anyway, they were in bed together and the armyofficer emptied al the chambers of his revolver into the other man and then chased the woman up the street with a