“Now, my dear, this doesn’t sound like you at all. None of it.” She shook her head helplessly: “I know.”
“What is the matter?”
She said, looking at the toes of her shoes, her lips moving with effort:
“I guess I’m no good, Uncle Ellsworth.” She raised her eyes to him. “I’m so terribly unhappy.”
He looked at her silently, his face earnest, his eyes gentle. She whispered:
“You understand?” He nodded. “You’re not angry at me? You don’t despise me?”
“My dear, how could I?”
“I didn’t want to say it. Not even to myself. It’s not just tonight, it’s for a long time back. Just let me say everything, don’t be shocked, I’ve got to tell it. It’s like going to confession as I used to–oh, don’t think I’m returning to that, I know religion is only a…a device of class exploitation, don’t think I’d let you down after you explained it all so well. I don’t miss going to church. But it’s just–it’s just that I’ve got to have somebody listen.”
“Katie, darling, first of all, why are you so frightened? You mustn’t be. Certainly not of speaking to me. Just relax, be yourself and tell me what happened.”
She looked at him gratefully. “You’re…so sensitive, Uncle Ellsworth. That’s one thing I didn’t want to say, but you guessed. I am frightened. Because–well, you see, you just said, be yourself. And what I’m afraid of most is of being myself. Because I’m vicious.”
He laughed, not offensively, but warmly, the sound destroying her statement. But she did not smile.
“No, Uncle Ellsworth, it’s true. I’ll try to explain. You see, always, since I was a child, I wanted to do right. I used to think everybody did, but now I don’t think so. Some people try their best, even if they do make mistakes, and others just don’t care. I’ve always cared. I took it very seriously. Of course I knew that I’m not a brilliant person and that it’s a very big subject, good and evil. But I felt that whatever is the good–as much as it would be possible for me to know–I would do my honest best to live up to it. Which is all anybody can try, isn’t it? This probably sounds terribly childish to you.”
“No, Katie, it doesn’t. Go on, my dear.”
“Well, to begin with, I knew that it was evil to be selfish. That much I was sure of. So I tried never to demand anything for myself. When Peter would disappear for months…No, I don’t think you approve of that.”
“Of what, my dear?”
“Of Peter and me. So I won’t talk about that. It’s not important anyway. Well, you can see why I was so happy when I came to live with you. You’re as close to the ideal of unselfishness as anyone can be. I tried to follow you the best I could. That’s how I chose the work I’m doing. You never actually said that I should choose it, but I came to feel that you thought so. Don’t ask me how I came to feel it–it was nothing tangible, just little things you said. I felt very confident when I started. I knew that unhappiness comes from selfishness, and that one can find true happiness only in dedicating oneself to others. You said that. So many people have said that. Why, all the greatest men in history have been saying that for centuries.”
“And?”
“Well, look at me.”
His face remained motionless for a moment, then he smiled gaily and said:
“What’s wrong with you, pet? Apart from the fact that your stockings don’t match and that you could be more careful about your make-up?”
“Don’t laugh, Uncle Ellsworth. Please don’t laugh. I know you say we must be able to laugh at everything, particularly at ourselves. Only–I can’t.”
“I won’t laugh, Katie. But what is the matter?”
“I’m unhappy. I’m unhappy in such a horrible, nasty, undignified way. In a way that seems…unclean. And dishonest. I go for days, afraid to think, to look at myself. And that’s wrong. It’s…becoming a hypocrite. I always wanted to be honest with myself. But I’m not, I’m not, I’m not!”
“Hold on, my dear. Don’t shout. The neighbors will hear you.”
She brushed the back of her hand against her forehead. She shook her head. She whispered:
“I’m sorry….I’ll be all right….”
“Just why are you unhappy, my dear?”
“I don’t know. I can’t understand it. For instance, it was I who arranged to have the classes in prenatal care down at the Clifford House–it was my idea–I raised the money–I found the teacher. The classes are doing very well. I tell myself that I should be happy about it. But I’m not. It doesn’t seem to make any difference to me. I sit down and I tell myself: It was you who arranged to have Marie Gonzales’ baby adopted into a nice family–now, be happy. But I’m not. I feel nothing. When I’m honest with myself, I know that the only emotion I’ve felt for years is being tired. Not physically tired. Just tired. It’s as if…as if there were nobody there to feel any more.”
She took off her glasses, as if the double barrier of her glasses and his prevented her from reaching him. She spoke, her voice lower, the words coming with greater effort:
“But that’s not all. There’s something much worse. It’s doing something horrible to me. I’m beginning to hate people, Uncle Ellsworth. I’m beginning to be cruel and mean and petty in a way I’ve never been before. I expect people to be grateful to me. I…I demand gratitude. I find myself pleased when slum people bow and scrape and fawn over me. I find myself liking only those who are servile. Once…once I told a woman that she didn’t appreciate what people like us did for trash like her. I cried for hours afterward, I was so ashamed. I begin to resent it when people argue with me. I feel that they have no right to minds of their own, that I know best, that I’m the final authority for them. There was a girl we were worried about, because she was running around with a very handsome boy who had a bad reputation, I tortured her for weeks about it, telling her how he’d get her in trouble and that she should drop him. Well, they got married and they’re the happiest couple in the district. Do you think I’m glad? No, I’m furious and I’m barely civil to the girl when I meet her. Then there was a girl who needed a job desperately–it was really a ghastly situation in her home, and I promised that I’d get her one. Before I could find it, she got a good job all by herself. I wasn’t pleased. I was sore as hell that somebody got out of a bad hole without my help. Yesterday, I was speaking to a boy who wanted to go to college and I was discouraging him, telling him to get a good job, instead. I was quite angry, too. And suddenly I realized that it was because I had wanted so much to go to college–you remember, you wouldn’t let me–and so I wasn’t going to let that kid do it either….Uncle Ellsworth, don’t you see? I’m becoming selfish. I’m becoming selfish in a way that’s much more horrible than if I were some petty chiseler pinching pennies off these people’s wages in a sweatshop!”
He asked quietly:
“Is that all?”
She closed her eyes, and then she said, looking down at her hands:
“Yes…except that I’m not the only one who’s like that. A lot of them are, most of the women I work with….I don’t know how they got that way….I don’t know how it happened to me….I used to feel happy when I helped somebody. I remember once–I had lunch with Peter that day–and on my way back I saw an old organ-grinder and I gave him five dollars I had in my bag. It was all the money I had; I’d saved it to buy a bottle of ‘Christmas Night,’ I wanted ‘Christmas Night’ very badly, but afterward every time I thought of that organ-grinder I was happy….I saw Peter often in those days….I’d come home after seeing him and I’d want to kiss every ragged kid on our block….I think I hate the poor now….I think all the other women do, too….But the poor don’t hate us, as they should. They only despise us….You know, it’s funny: it’s the masters who despise the slaves, and the slaves who hate the masters. I don’t know who is which. Maybe it doesn’t fit here. Maybe it does. I don’t know…”
She raised her head with a last spurt of rebellion.
“Don’t you see what it is that I must understand? Why is it that I set out honestly to do what I thought was right and it’s making me rotten? I think it’s probably because I’m vicious by nature and incapable of leading a good life. That seems to be the only explanation. But…but sometimes I think it doesn’t make sense that a human being is completely sincere in good will and yet the good is not for him to achieve. I can’t be as rotten as that. But…but I’ve given up everything, I have no selfish desire left, I have nothing of my own–and I’m miserable. And so are the other women like me. And I don’t know a single selfless person in the world who’s happy–except you.”