The Doctor’s Wife

The neighbors called her die Schiesterka—the shoemaker’s wife.
She was squat, her speech coarse as their own.
People are always moving in and out of tenements;
the newcomers learnt the name and passed it on to others
who moved in afterwards. and all liked to use it.

She and the children were going to the country.
She had on a new waist, starched white and stiff,
and kept rubbing her red, sweating face with a handkerchief.
The doctor waved his hand from the stoop, and turned back
       to the office, now still and empty.

The conductor raised a hullabaloo about Minnie,
and she and Minnie raised such a hullabaloo back
that when full fare for Minnie was paid,
the conductor was too tired to argue about the others.
The ride became tiresome, babies cried, the windows had to be
       closed to keep out the cinders—
and opened because it became hot.
They reached their station at last. The boarding-house keeper had a buggy waiting.
“Drink the fresh air, children,” she shouted,
“drink, drink, ach gut! If only Papa was here!”