The family in Lower West consisted of a man, a woman and a child. A week after they moved in, the woman’s sister came to stay with her. She was straight from hospital and brought a new-born infant with her–a puny, frail thing, that the doctor shook his head over.
Immediately the baby’s grandma was sent for, being, they declared, the only person who could possibly pull the baby through. Grandma could not leave her young son and a little adopted girl, so she brought them along.
The flat having but one bedroom, a kitchen and livingroom, the adults slept by shifts. The children slept on sofas, or on the floor, or in a bureau drawer. Gran neither sat nor lay–she never even thought of sleep; she was there to save the baby. The man of the family developed intense devotion to his office, and spent most of his time there after Gran moved in.
We were having one of our bitterest cold snaps. Wind due north, shrieking over stiff land; two feet of snow, all substances glibbed with ice and granite-hard. I, as landlady, had just two jobs–shovelling snow–shovelling coal. Gran’s job was shooing off death–blowing up the spark of life flickering in the baby.
No one seemed to think the baby was alive enough to hear sounds. Maybe Gran thought noise would help to scare death. The cramming of eight souls into a three-room flat produced more than noise–it was bedlam!
The baby was swaddled in cotton-wool saturated with the very loudest-smelling brand of cod-liver oil. The odour of oil permeated the entire house. The child was tucked into his mother’s darning-basket which was placed on the dining table.
The infant’s cry was too small to be heard beyond the edge of the table. We in the rest of the house might have thought him dead had not Gran kept us informed of her wrestling, by trundling the heavy table up and down the polished floor day and night. The castor on each of the table-legs had a different screech, all four together a terrible quartet with the slap, slap of Gran’s carpet slippers marking time. Possibly Gran thought perpetual motion would help to elude death’s grip on the oiled child.
Periodically the aunt of the infant came upstairs to my flat to telephone the doctor. She sat hunched on the stool in front of the ‘phone, tears rolled out of her eyes, sploshed upon her chest.
“Doctor, the baby is dying–his mother cries all the time–when he dies she will die too…. Oh, yes, Gran is here, she never leaves him for a minute; night and day she watches and wheels him on the table.”
The whole house was holding its breath, waiting on the scrap of humanity in the darning basket. Let anybody doze off, Grandma was sure to drop a milk bottle, scrunch a tap, tread on a child! The house had to be kept tropical. Gran was neither clothed nor entirely bare. She took off and took off, her garments hung on the backs of all the chairs. She peeled to the limit of the law, and snatched food standing. Three whole weeks she waged this savage one-man battle to defeat death–she won–the infant’s family were uproarious with joy.
Gran toppled into bed for a long, long sleep. Mother and aunt sat beside the darning basket planning the baby’s life from birth to death at a tremendous age.
Gran woke refreshed–vigorous, clashed the pots and pans, banged doors, trundled the table harder than ever, and sang lullabies in a thin high voice, which stabbed our ears like neuralgia.
The House of All Sorts was glad the child was to live. They had seen the crisis through without a murmur. Now, however, they came in rebellion and demanded peace. The doctor had said the child could go home with safety–my tenants said he must go! I marched past twelve dirty milkbottles on the ledges of the front windows. Gran opened, and led me to the basket to see the infant, red now instead of grey.
I said, “Fine, fine! All the tenants are very glad, and now, when is he going home?”
“Doctor says he could any day. We have decided to keep him here another month.”
“No! A three-room flat cannot with decency house eight souls. I rented my flat to a family of three. This noise and congestion must cease.”
Grandmother, mother, aunt all screeched reproaches. I was a monster, turning a new-born infant out in the snow. They’d have the law.
“The snow is gone. His mother has a home. His grandmother has a home. I rented to a family of three. The other tenants have been kindly and patient. The child has had his chance. Now we want quiet.”
My tenant, the aunt of the baby, said, “I shall go too!”
“Quite agreeable to me.”
A “vacancy” card took the place of the twelve dirty milk bottles in the front window of Lower East.
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