oodless
and dirty, and all little boys were filthy and had black purple marks
where their fathers had tried to gouge out their eyes. She thought all
women were like the matron who came with a visitor up to the bare room,
where we played without toys--the new, dirty, newly-bruised ones of us,
and the old, clean, healing ones of us--and said, 'Here, chicks, is a
lady who's come to see you. Tell her how happy you are here.' Then
Mag's freckled little face, her finger in her mouth, looked up like
this. She was always afraid it might be her mother come for her. And
the crippled boy jerked himself this way--I used to mimic him, and he'd
laugh with the rest of them--over the bare floor. He always hoped for
a penny. Sometimes he even got it.

"And the boy with the gouged eye--he would hold his pants up like this.
He had just come in, and there was nothing to fit him. And he'd put his
other hand over his bad eye and blink up at her like this. And the
littlest boy--oh, ha! ha! ha!--you ought have seen that littlest boy.
He was in skirts, an old dress they'd given me to wear the first day I
came; there were no pants small enough for him. He'd back up into the
corner and hide his face--like this--and peep over his shoulder; he had
a squint that way, that made his face so funny. See, it makes you
laugh yourself. But his body--my God!--it was blue with welts! And
me--I'd put the baby down that'd been left on the door-steps of the
Cruelty, and I'd waltz up to the lady, the nice, patronizing, rich
lady, with her handkerchief to her nose and her lorgnette to her
eyes--see, like this. I knew just what graft would work her. I knew
what she wanted there. I'd learned. So I'd make her a curtsy like
this, and in the piousest sing-song I'd--"

There was a heavy step out in the hall--it was the policeman! I'd
forgot while I was talking. I was back--back in the empty garret, at
the top of the Cruelty. I could smell the smell of the poor, the
dirty, weak, sick poor. I could taste the porridge in the thick little
bowls, like those in the bear story Molly tells her kid. I could hear
the stifled sobs that wise, poor children give--quiet ones, so they'll
not be beaten again. I could feel the night, when strange, deserted,
tortured babies lie for the first time, each in his small white cot,
the new ones waking the old with their cries in a nightmare of what had
happened before they got to the Cruelty. I could see the world barr