The Dress Lodger by Sheri Holman Page A

in the doorway, before she enters the gloom of Whilky’s establishment. Isn’t she pretty? Isn’t her boot neat and her red-gold hair attractively but not showily dressed? There is a certain determination about her green eyes that sits uncomfortably in the softness of her face, but it is a well-formed face, somewhat too apple-cheeked and dimpled for elegance, but pleasing and kind. Though only seventeen, Miss Place for many years has extended her hands to the poor; and to her credit, she is more proud of her magnanimity than her manicure. Once, when she was but twelve, we witnessed her surrender her only umbrella so that a poor woman might not go without one. And the head cold she suffered in consequence, she wore like a badge of honor.
    It takes a moment for Audrey’s eyes to adjust to the untaxed twilight of 9 Mill Street, but slowly the room begins to take shape. Low ceiling, stiflingly hot fire, empty of furnishings save for a table, some stools, and a gigantean Wearmouth Bridge framed like a Rembrandt. She is a little short—sighted and squints down at the little girl who comes only waist-high, dressed in a grown woman’s gown of faded pink gingham. The sleeves are rolled to her elbows and a deep hem has been taken in around the knees. It is still too long and the little girl trips as she backs up to let the lady in.
    “Is your mother or father at home?” asks Audrey Place of the Indigent Sick Society.
    “Dead,” says Pink. “And Out to get a Pint.”
    Audrey looks around and catches sight of an old woman in the corner. She sits beneath an incongruous blue dress that hangs from two pegs on the wall, watching Audrey fixedly. “Is this your grandmother then?” she asks sweetly.
    “Eek!” says Pink. “That’s the Eye.”
    “The Eye?” Audrey wonders. “Then who might you be?” “Pink.”
    “What is your real name?” “Don’t know, I’ve always been called Pink.”
    It never fails to amaze Audrey, no matter how many times she comes down here, that the children of the East End don’t know their own names. They are all called Crank or Tough or Flotsam or Pink from the time they kick their way out of the womb. How can one expect them not to behave like animals if they are all named like dogs? Audrey sets her blankets and stockings down on the table and wanders the room. It has the standard close sweat and fried herring smell of most lodging houses, but is a good deal less filthy. True, its walls and ceiling are a bit fuliginous and like every other house in the East End, this family keeps a sloshing crock of urine in the corner. She has urged others to get rid of it, but they use it to wash their clothes; nothing gets grease out so well, they tell her. They save their ordure, too, in the reeking unemptied middens fouling the lane. Once every eight or ten weeks, farmers come up from the country and buy it for fertilizer. In the meantime it breeds typhus and scarletina and cholera. Or at least that’ s what Henry says. “Would you like coffee?” asks Pink in her talking-to-boarders voice. This lady looks a little like Gustine except that her dress is not nearly so pretty, being gray and without any ribbons on it. She is plumper too than Gustine and her voice is lower like a dog’s where Gustine’s is higher like a ferret’s. The lady nods yes to coffee, so Pink picks up Mike’s cup and refills it from the pot on the hearth. It’s not so hot anymore, which is how she likes it. The lady says thank you.
    “Do you go to school… Pink?” asks Audrey, sipping the ice -cold coffee. “Neeak,” says Pink, shyly. “Do you go to work?” “Neeak,” she piggies.
    “Neak? Does that mean no?”
    “Eeeak.”
    “Let me guess.” Audrey smiles into the spindly girl’s red-rimmed eyes.
    “Are vou a mouse?”
    Oh the shame of it.
    From the woeful expression on the girl’s face, Audrey realizes immediately she’s said the wrong thing. Quickly she switches topics.
    “Pink,” she says, “I am here