Lives of Girls and Women Read Online Free PDF Page B

sat stiffly as in an unfamiliar place where he would not expect or even wish for a welcome. Finally my mother spoke to him, in tones of forced triviality and cheerfulness.
    “Well. Is it a house they are living in, or an apartment?”
    “I don’t know,” said Uncle Benny forbiddingly. After some time he added, “I never found it.”
    “You never found where they are living?”
    He shook his head.
    “Then you never saw them?”
    “No I didn’.”
    “Did you lose the address?”
    “No I didn’. I got it down on this piece of paper. I got it here.” He took his wallet out of his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper and showed us, then read it. “1249 Ridlet Street.” He folded it and put it back. All his movements seemed slowed down, ceremonious and regretful.
    “I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t find the place.”
    “But did you get a city map? Remember we said, go to a gas station, ask for a map of the city of Toronto.”
    “I did that,” said Uncle Benny with a kind of mournful triumph. “You bet. I went to a gas station and I asked them and they said they didn’t have no maps. They had maps but only of the province.”
    “You already had a map of the province.”
    “I told them I did. I said I wanted a map of the city of Toronto. They said they didn’ have none.”
    “Did you try another gas station?”
    “If one place didn’ have none I figured none of them would.”
    “You could have bought one in a store.”
    “I didn’ know what kind of a store.”
    “A stationery store! A department store! You could have asked at the gas station where you could buy one.”
    “I figured instead of runnin’ all over the place tryin’ to find a map I would be better off just askin’ people to direct me how to get there, seein’ I already had the address.
    “It’s very risky, asking people .”
    “You’re tellin’ me,” said Uncle Benny.
    When he got the heart to, he began his story.
    “First I asked the one fellow, he directed me to go across this bridge, and I done that and I come to a red light and was supposed to turn left, he told me to, but when I got there I didn’ know how it was. I couldn’ figure out do you turn left on a red light ahead of you or do you turn left on a green light ahead of you.”
    “You turn left on a green light,” cried my mother despairingly. “If you turned left on a red light you’d turn across the traffic that’s going across in front of you.”
    “Ye-uh, I know you would, but if you turned left on a green light you gotta turn across the traffic that’s comin’ at you.”
    “You wait until they give you an opening.”
    “You could wait all day then, they’re not going to give you no opening. So I didn’ know, I didn’ know which was right to do, and I sat there trying to figure it out and they all starts up honkin’ behind me so I thought, well, I’ll turn right, I can do that without no trouble, and then I’ll get turned around and headed back the way I come. Then I ought to be going in the right direction. But I couldn’ see any place to turn round so I just kept goin’ and goin’. Then I turned off up a street that went crossways and kept on driving until I thought, well, I’ve gone and lost track completely of what the first fellow told me, so I may’s well ask somebody else. So I stopped and asked this lady was walking with a dog on a leash but she said she never heard of Ridlet Street. She never heard of it. She said she lived in Toronto twenty-two years. She called over a boy on his bicycle then and he heard of it, he told me it was way the other side of town and I was headed out of town, the way I was goin’. But I figured it might be easier to go round the city than go through it, even if it took longer, and I kept on the way I was goin’, sort of circling it was the way it seemed to me, and by this time I could see it was getting dark and I thought, well, I sure’s hell better get a move on, I want to find where this place is