Belles on Their Toes (2 page)

Tom liked children and animals, and all of us were immensely fond of him. Before Mother left, she had decided it would be necessary to discharge either the cook or Tom, as an economy move. It never occurred to any of us, or to Tom, that he should be the one to go.

“Why Tom,” Martha had said, putting into words what all of us were thinking, “would be willing to cut off his right arm for us.”

He would have, too. There was no guarantee, though, that in his eagerness to oblige he wouldn’t have got rattled and cut off his left arm by mistake.

So the cook had departed and Tom had moved permanently into the kitchen. He now wore a butcher’s apron and a chef’s cap, and boasted that he never had followed a recipe in his life. This last was all too obvious.

The discharging of the cook was the only economy measure Mother had had time to effect. She hadn’t said anything about our cutting other expenses. But Mother made it a policy never to tell us to do the things she thought we were old enough to do without prompting.

When Mother said good-by, for instance, there was no last minute outpouring about being good, and going to bed early, and brushing our teeth and doing what Anne told us.

We knew Mother wanted those things done, so there was no need for her to repeat them. She may have worried—of course she worried—about whether we’d do them or not. But she didn’t intend to show any lack of confidence unless we gave her reason.

There was no doubt that the immediate problem was saving money. For the time being, perhaps indefinitely, there would be little or no money coming in. When there are eleven children in a family, there is always money going out.

We talked economy in the dining room before lunch, an hour or so after Mother’s departure. From an odor not unlike that of burning leaves, we gathered that Tom was having trouble with the cooking again. Part of the economy drive would have to be aimed in that direction.

Anne had been left $600 to run the family during Mother’s five-week absence. That included the cost of our tickets to Nantucket, Massachusetts, because we intended to spend the summer at our cottage there, as usual. Mother had made the boat reservations to Nantucket, an island off Cape Cod, and Anne was to pay for them when we picked them up.

We thought it would be a good idea to spend only $300, and to turn the rest back to Mother, as a surprise, when she joined us at Nantucket.

“In the first place,” Anne told us, “there is the milk bill. Thirteen quarts a day. More than three gallons.”

Anne was sitting at Mother’s place, at the head of the oval dining room table. As the oldest one at home, the senior officer present, she was automatically in command. Ten feet away, in Dad’s place, sat Frank. The rest of us, including Bob and Jane, who were still in high chairs, sat around the perimeter.

Anne had Dad’s check stubs, some bills, and the family budget book spread out before her.

“The milk bill alone amounts to more than $50 a month,” she said. “I don’t see how Daddy paid for all these things. Cheaper by the dozen, nothing!”

We decided we could get along with only nine quarts, without anyone dying of malnutrition.

“Each of us is going to have to sacrifice a little,” Anne continued, thumbing through the check stubs.

She called out the amounts on the stubs and what they were for. Food and clothes. We were going to have to cut down on them. Doctors’ bills. We didn’t intend to have any. Dentists’ bills. Everybody’s teeth that needed straightening had been straightened. Tobacco. Certainly not. Gasoline. We had already sold Dad’s car. Dancing school …

“Frank and I,” Bill suggested, “could do our part by cutting out dancing school.” Bill was eleven, and it was a fight every Monday afternoon to get him into his Buster Brown collar and patent-leather pumps.

“We
couldn’t
ask you to do that,” Martha smirked.

“We’re willing to sacrifice a little,” Bill said.

Dancing school went into the discard, and Bill ran a relieved finger around his soft and unbuttoned collar. Also abandoned were music lessons, which everybody sacrificed without too much reluctance. We drew the line at cutting allowances, since all of us thought Dad kept them trimmed pretty close to the bone. But we did institute a series of fines that would reduce our take-home pay. Leaving on an electric light or the cold water would cost the offender two cents; hot water, four cents; failure to do any of the things on the process charts, five cents.

Dad had the household organized on an efficiency basis, just as he organized a factory. He believed that what worked in a household would work in a factory, and what worked in a factory would work in a household—especially if the household happened to have eleven children.

The process charts, first developed for industry, were an example. They told each of us what we were supposed to do, and when we were supposed to do it.

The charts were in the boys’ and girls’ bathrooms, upstairs. They listed duties such as washing the dishes, making the beds, combing hair, brushing teeth, weighing ourselves, listening for fifteen minutes a day to French and German language records on the phonograph, sweeping, and dusting.

Dad had things broken down to such a fine point that Lillian, who wasn’t tall enough to reach table tops and high shelves, dusted the legs and the lower shelves. Ernestine did the tops and the high shelves.

We decided we could eat much more cheaply if we cut out roasts and steaks, except perhaps on Sundays. Ernestine was a good shopper, so she would plan the meals, stressing such items as frankfurters and baked beans, and she would do most of the buying. We already got our canned goods from wholesalers, so we couldn’t save there.

Ernestine would also try to teach Tom the necessity for putting such ingredients as baking powder into the corn muffins, and of adding water to fresh vegetables before placing them on the stove.

Martha, who was the most efficient of all of us and could keep her money the longest, was put in charge of the budget. She also would supervise the packing of clothes for Nantucket.

We talked about the matter of college. Anne had just completed her sophomore year at Smith. Dad wasn’t a college man himself, but had believed that two colleges were better than one. At Dad’s suggestion, Anne had made plans to transfer that fall to The University of Michigan.

Ernestine had graduated from high school the night before Dad died. She was registered at Smith and was to start taking her college board examinations in a couple of days.

We knew Mother wouldn’t allow either of the girls to change plans. She insisted that somehow or other she was going to send all of us through college. Dad had wanted that.

As for our getting odd jobs to contribute to the income, maybe that would come later. For the time being, at least for the summer, all the older ones would be needed at home.

“I don’t have to tell you,” Anne said, looking significantly at the bigger children, “that a lot depends on how things go this summer.”

“I wouldn’t want anyone to adopt me, would you, Dan?” Fred asked. Fred was seven and he and Dan, who was one year younger, were inseparable.

“Heck, no,” said Dan. “I wouldn’t
let
anyone adopt me, would you, Fred?”

“Where did you ever get an idea like that?” Anne asked. “Nobody’s going to be adopted, especially if everything goes smoothly while Mother’s gone.”

By the time that Tom announced lunch was ready, all of the duties had been allocated and the new economy budget was in balance.

It was Ernestine’s turn to bring in the food. She eyed askance a leg of lamb that she carried in from the kitchen. It was burned almost black and was festooned with charred tomato halves, which looked as if they had become a part of the lamb—a part that needed lancing and bandages.

Ernestine was the only member of the family who didn’t get along well with Tom. They had had a running feud that had started years before, when she had proudly presented him a picture of herself and he had announced that he intended to hang it in the pantry as a rat repellent.

Now, without saying anything, but with the face of a martyr who intended to cooperate if it meant poisoning all of us, Ernestine placed the platter in front of Anne.

Anne was caught off guard. “What,” she shouted in genuine alarm, “is that? Get it out of here quickly, you hear me? And tell Tom no one is in the mood for his jokes.”

“It is supposed to be a leg of lamb,” Ernestine said through pursed lips.

“How do you know?” Anne challenged distrustfully.

“I asked him and that’s what he said. Leg of lamb.”

Anne turned the platter around, studying the contents from all angles. “Any lamb with a leg like that,” she said, “had better see a veterinarian.”

“I’m beginning to think we should have kept the cook and got rid of that man,” Ernestine announced.

“Hush!” Anne warned. “He’ll hear you.”

“I don’t care if he does.”

Tom appeared red faced and furious at the butler’s pantry door.

“You don’t, eh,” he shouted, reaching behind him to untie his apron. “All right, just for that I quit.”

Tom sometimes quit as often as three times in a single day, so the dramatic announcement didn’t have too much effect.

“I don’t have to work here, you know,” he continued. “I ain’t no slave.” He took off the apron and waved it in Ernestine’s face.

“No one wants you to quit,” Anne told him. “We all know we couldn’t get along without Tom, don’t we, Ernestine?”

Ernestine caught Anne’s threatening glance and finally nodded reluctantly. “I suppose so,” she said.

“There,” Anne smiled sweetly. “You see?”

“What’s the matter with the lamb?” Tom asked, somewhat mollified.

“Nothing,” Anne replied, “except that it seems just a mite well done. We like our lamb just a little rarer.”

“It’s lamb rangoon,” said Tom, as if that clinched the argument. “And lamb rangoon has to be well done.”

“Well why didn’t you say so?” Anne asked. “That explains everything.”

“Nobody never gives me a chance to explain nothing around here, that’s why,” Tom mumbled, as he disappeared into the kitchen, tying his apron back on. “You work and slave to make them a special dish like lamb rangoon and then they try to fire you. After seventeen years with the family, too.”

“It still looks like something that had better not be touched until the coroner arrives,” Ernestine whispered.

“Lamb rangoon,” Anne muttered. “I’ve seen rubber boots that looked more appetizing.” Then, realizing that as the oldest she was setting a bad example, she started carving, and added: “I’ll bet it’s good, though.”

“Yummy,” said Martha sarcastically.

“We’ll try to get the cooking straightened out before Mother comes back,” Anne promised. “Come on, now. Get the rest of the food, Ernestine. And bring in some cold cereal, will you, for those who don’t want lamb.”

BILL DEVELOPED
a high fever and broke out with spots that afternoon. By the time the doctor arrived, Ernestine and Martha were feverish and pimply. Ernestine wanted to cover herself with cold cream and powder, and still take her examinations, but the doctor put her to bed. By noon the next day, all eleven of us were broken out and bedridden.

3.
Troubled Waters, and Oil

N
O CATASTROPHE EVER BEFELL
any of us but that Tom, sometime in the distant past, had experienced the same trouble, only more so.

If one of our boys stepped on a nail, Tom would allay fears of lockjaw by describing how
he
once had stepped on a
spike
that went all the way through his foot and into his ankle. Not only that, but he’d take off his shoe and show you the scar.

When Bill broke out with spots, Tom was the first to discover them and hurriedly ordered Bill to bed.

“But I don’t feel sick,” Bill protested. “Just scratchy.”

“Don’t tell me nothing,” Tom commanded. “You’re sick as a dog.”

“Just scratchy,” Bill repeated, scratching himself.

“I tole you oncst, and I ain’t going to tell you again,” Tom said. “Get to bed, now. And if you don’t stop scratching yourself you’ll be out of the Club for a hundret years.”

Only members of Tom’s Club were admitted to the kitchen after supper. This was true even before he became cook, because Tom always had presided over the kitchen once the day’s duties were done.

For Club members in good standing, Tom sometimes would play the harmonica, pop corn, distribute candy, and perform card tricks. Those who were out of the Club could come no closer to the activities than the back hall. The door was left open, and they were allowed to watch, but not to eat or otherwise participate.

The older children, while professing scorn for Tom’s Club, frequently were found in the kitchen after supper—if they were fortunate enough to be in his good graces. To the younger ones, banishment from the Club was Siberia’s steppes.

Tom’s minimum excommunication, when meting out expulsion, was for a hundred years. Actually, this meant only about fifteen minutes, because Tom’s heart was soft. The maximum, anathema, was for a thousand years and four days. This might mean an entire evening, although the sentence was often mitigated if one could manage to look repentant enough.

After Bill had climbed into his pajamas, Tom called Anne to break the news.

“Oh, Lord,” Anne groaned. “That’s the last straw! Just when I was beginning to think things might go smoothly.”

“It’s all right, Anne,” Bill assured her. “I don’t feel sick.”

“I hear you scratching under them covers,” Tom warned him. “I ain’t deef, you know, I ain’t blind. I tole you twicst, and I ain’t going to tell you again. Mind now!”

“I better call the doctor,” Anne sighed.

“I could tell you how to dose him,” Tom said, “but…”

“Oh, no you don’t,” Bill shouted. “I know about your doses.”

“Remember what Dad told you about dosing them,” Anne said.

“I remember.” Tom’s tone was injured. “I could cure Bill, but I got my orders. I can take a hint.”

Anne leaned over and studied Bill’s spots. “It looks like a rash or the hives to me,” she said.