Onoto Watanna

I BORROWED a dollar from Evans, the student who was a friend of Jimmy’s. I bought the morning papers, and scanned the columns of advertisements. I was determined to look for some other kind of work, yet I realized that I was a “Jack of all trades and master of none,” unless it be that of the model. I found one advertisement that seemed to be pretty good:

“WANTED: A smart, pretty young lady for light, easy work. Experience not necessary.”

I started down town to answer that advertisement at once. The address was in the old building Washington Street, and there seemed to be all kinds of business carried on there. On the door of the place I was to apply was some name, and the word “Massage.” I had a dim idea what massage meant. I associated it in some way in my mind with illness. I pushed the bell, and the door was quickly opened. A stout, matronly woman stood smiling at me.

“Come in, dearie,” she said, as though she were expecting me.

I found myself in a room that looked like the average boarding-house parlor. It was stuffy and dark. The woman set herself down in a rocker, and she was still smiling at me.

“I came in answer to the advertisement. What do you require me to do?”

Patting me on the arm, she said:

“Easy, easy, dear. Don’t talk so loud. It is massage work, dearie.”

“I can’t do it,” I said, “but I might be able to learn.”

She kept on grinning and winking at me, and I don’t know why, I suddenly felt terribly afraid of her. I said tremulously:

“Will I have to wear aprons?”

She got out of the rocking chair and poked me in the side.

“Now, dearie, if you are really a good girl, I don’t want you to come at all. I rather have a young married lady. I had a sweet little married lady before, but her husband got on to us and—”

I had begun to back toward the door, and with my hand behind me, I found the knob. I ran out into the hall, and down those stairs as quickly as I could get. Oh, how good the air did seem, when I found myself at last on the street.

When I got back to my room, I found a note on my table. It was from Miss Darling, and was as follows:

There was a letter, too, from Reggie. I opened it with my hatpin, and, oh! I think if I could have pierced Reggie instead of that letter just then I would have liked to do it.

Somehow I blamed Reggie for all I had suffered and as I stared out at the darkening night descending upon the streets, I muttered to myself:

“Now it is your fault that I am compelled to pose nude.”

It had come to this at last. There was nothing else for me to do, and Miss Darling must be paid. She had been so good to me.

As I went out I knocked at Miss Darling’s door. She put out her head and I said:

“Dear Miss Darling, it’s all right. I’m going to pay you in a few days.”

She said: “All right, dear, I know you will keep your word.”

Yes, I would keep my word! I was on my way to Miss St. Denis to tell her what I was now willing to do. I found her in, but she was not feeling well. She had been posing at a class the previous night, she told me, and also three hours in the afternoon.

“See my feet,” she said, thrusting them out, “Mon dieu! they are so sick. All ze night I have put me some vaseline and it is no good. They are all grown so beeg again.”

Her poor, bare feet were badly swollen. I begged her to let me bathe them in hot water. Mama always bathed our feet in hot water when we had colds or our feet hurt.

“Bien!” she said. “Do so, enfant, if you wish, but it is so hard to get hot water in dese boarding-houses. Ah! very soon I will have dat little house of all my own, and den, you will see, enfant, what it is to be trÈs happy!”

She sighed, as if she were inexpressibly tired, and lay there with her dark eyes closed, and her beautiful soft, dark hair all about her lovely oval face, and I thought to myself again: “She looks like a picture of the Virgin,” and I felt sure that although she was just a poor model, she was pure and good like the Virgin. She opened her eyes after a moment and smiled at me, and she said:

“When I have my little house, enfant, then always ze water will be hot. There will be ze gas on ze stove, and it will give beeg flame. I will have plenty for heat my water. Here, me, I stand and hold for eternity ze little pot to make some water hot on ze little gas jet. It is all stuff up full!” and she closed her eyes again.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I’ll go and ask your landlady for hot water.”

I found my way down to the basement, and very politely I said to the landlady:

“Miss St. Denis has a very bad foot. Will you be so kind to let me have a pitcher of hot water?”

She snapped back at me:

“I guess I give my roomers more hot water than they pay for. Does she think she is paying hotel prices?”

In a begrudging manner, she poured me out half a pitcherful from the kettle on the range. Thanking her, I started to carry it up, but a loose piece of carpet at the foot of the stairs caught my feet. I slipped, and all my precious hot water was lost. The landlady had picked up the pitcher, which fortunately was not broken, and when she saw me crying, she began to laugh uproariously, and seemed to be suddenly good-natured, for she refilled the pitcher.

I bathed Rose St. Denis’ feet, and made her comfortable, and she thanked me very sweetly and seemed to be grateful. I sat beside her bed for a while, smoothing her forehead. She was not really ill, just tired out. Presently I said:

“Now the time has come for me to pose nude, too, or as you say, starve or go to the devil.”

She opened her eyes with a start, and she said:

“Dieu! But you say things so suddenly, enfant. You are funniest girl. You say sometime ze ting I would not dare to speak, for if I did I would have to confess to my priest; and den you are so afraid to do some tings dat is nuttings wrong, and you mek one beeg fuss for dat.”

She sat up in the bed, with her knees drawn up, and regarded me with the benignant tolerant glance of a wise young mother. She could understand my viewpoint in regard to posing nude, but she believed I was simply wrong and my stubbornness in the matter had always puzzled her. She did not waste any time on pitying me now. On the contrary she urged me to do the work.

“Now you have come,” she said, “at a very good time, for me. I am not able to go to dat night class, and I have made engagement for all of dis week. You will take my place, voilÀ! First you will go to ze master of ze school, and you will tell him you have pose bi-fore, dat you have ze belle figure—yes, you must say dat. If necessaire you will show him.” As I shook my head, she nodded at me and said: “Yes, yes, you will do dat, if necessaire. Mebbe he will not require. You must not tell him dat you have not pose bi-fore in dat altogedder. He will tink you ‘greenhorn,’ as you say, den. Tell him you are one professional model, and dat you are frien’ to Rose St. Denis, and dat you will tek my place. I tink he will be satisfy. You look liddle bit like me—like you are liddle sister to me. Yes, dat is so.”

She patted my hand, smiling comfortingly at me. Then she went on with her instructions. It was only Tuesday, and I would have five evenings’ work and earn seven dollars and fifty cents. I would probably also be engaged for the following

week, and for the day classes of the summer school. A model as much in demand as was Rose St. Denis sometimes got steady work of nine hours a day. Three in the morning, three in the afternoon, and three at night. She assured me that I would be soon as much in demand as she was, perhaps more so, since I was younger than she.

The seven dollars and fifty cents I felt would be a godsend at this time. I would be able to pay the boarding-house woman. She had stopped me on the street only that morning and said:

“If you don’t pay me, Miss Ascough, you will have no good luck.”

Then there was Miss Darling. I must keep my word to her. Moreover, Ada had been writing me urgent letters insisting that I should send something home, for Wallace, Ellen’s husband, was very ill, and, of course, no help was coming from them now. As I looked at Miss St. Denis, I thought to myself that after all it could not be such dreadful work, or she would not do it. She seemed to me the embodiment of sweetness and refinement, and I could not imagine her doing anything that was gross or impure. I remembered that even the time I saw her posing nude before the class, I had not felt revolted in the way I had that time when Lil Markey had skipped about the Count’s studio. The amateur model, Lil, had been simply brazen. The professional one was seriously doing her honest duty. There were many other girls in Boston I had met who were doing the same work, and most of them were good girls. Mr. Sands had said that modesty and virtue did not always go hand in hand, and that it was his experience that some of the most immoral women appeared to be the most modest and shy.

Miss St. Denis was lying back again among her pillows, with her white hands—the hands Mr. Sands had said were the most beautiful in America—clasped at the back of her head. She was watching me, and I suppose she knew I was turning the matter over in my mind, and I do not doubt but what she realized somewhat of the struggle that was wrestling in my heart. After a while she said:

“Enfant, pass me dat bottle on ze dresser.”

I did so, and she pressed it back into my hand.

“See,” she said, “it is ze spirit dat will give you courage. I will give it to you. The moment dat you all undress yourself, tek one good long drink, and den, enfant, you will forget dat you have no clothes on your body, and dat tout le monde, he is look at you—your feet, your legs, your stomach, and every piece of you dat you do not like them to see. It will be joost like little dream. Dat firs’ time, also, I am feel ze shame—but soon it pass—and it is all forget. Courage, enfant!”

“No, no, Miss St. Denis. Oh, I can’t do it! I can’t!” I began to cry, and then she seized hold of my hands fiercely and pulled herself up in bed.

“Ah, you are ze coward—renegade! You will not help me.”

“Oh, Miss St. Denis, I might just as well go to the devil completely. Oh, I can never, never do it! Oh, if my people found out, I would be eternally disgraced and Reggie—he would never speak to me again. Then, surely, he would never, never marry me, and there would go my last hope.”

“You are hystÉrique,” she said gently. “I t’ink you have not eat so much—yes?”

I told her I had had my dinner, which was not true, and after a while, when I had dried my tears and was feeling more composed, she resumed, just as if I had not said I would not do it.

“It is not so hard as you t’ink. You will yourself undress behind ze screen dat they provide, wiz one chair for you to rest upon. Nobody look at you when you take off dose clothes. Dere also is one wrapper for you to cover over your body, and when ze monitor he call: ‘Pose!’ you will walk wiz ze wrapper on top you to ze model stage, and only den you will drop ze wrapper. Listen, enfant! If you have take dat dreenk I am tell you ’bout, you will forget dat it is your body, and dat you have on no clothes. You will say to yourself: ’Dis is not me. Dis is jus’ some statue—so many lines for dem to draw and paint, to make some peecture. Ze real me, I am lef’ in my clothes dat are behind dat screen. VoilÀ, enfant?”

I was beginning to get her spirit, and I said:

“Why, yes, I do see. It’s like acting, isn’t it? I will forget it is I.” I tried to laugh and added: “I will say: ‘O Lord, have mercy on me, this is none of me!’ That’s an old Mother Goose rhyme, Miss St. Denis.” Because I could see she had fatigued herself on my account, and it was my turn now to comfort and reassure her, I put my arms about her and hugged and kissed her. Tears came into my eyes, and she murmured:

“Pauvre petite enfant! You look like ma petite soeur!”