s stuck by you through thick and thin gets no c-c-credit at all.” He glanced meaningly at Helen. “It’s a d-d-damn shame.”
“Forget about it,” she said wearily.
“Well,” said Eliza thoughtfully, holding the letter in her folded hands and gazing away, “perhaps he’s going to turn over a new leaf now. You never know.” Lost in pleased revery she looked into vacancy, pursing her lips.
“I hope so!” said Helen wearily. “You’ve got to show me.”
Privately: “You see how it is, don’t you?” she said to Luke, mounting to hysteria. “Do I get any credit? Do I? I can work my fingers to the bone for them, but do I get so much as Go to Hell for my trouble? Do I?”
In these years Helen went off into the South with Pearl Hines, the saddlemaker’s daughter. They sang together at moving-picture theatres in country towns. They were booked from a theatrical office in Atlanta.
Pearl Hines was a heavily built girl with a meaty face and negroid lips. She was jolly and vital. She sang ragtime and nigger songs with a natural passion, swinging her hips and shaking her breasts erotically.
"Here comes my da-dad-dy now O pop, O pop, O-o pop."
They earned as much as $100 a week sometimes. They played in towns like Waycross, Georgia; Greenville, South Carolina; Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
They brought with them the great armor of innocency. They were eager and decent girls. Occasionally the village men made cautious explorative insults, relying on the superstition that lives in small towns concerning “show girls.” But generally they were well treated.
For them, these ventures into new lands were eager with promise. The vacant idiot laughter, the ribald enthusiasm with which South Carolina or Georgia countrymen, filling a theatre with the strong smell of clay and sweat, greeted Pearl’s songs, left them unwounded, pleased, eager. They were excited to know that
