Her Mother's Daughter (57 page)

They had been in the house only two months when the letter came. The kindhearted builder, who had lowered the price of the house so they could manage the down payment, was now demanding the mortgage be paid up completely. They would have to get an ordinary mortgage from a bank. That would mean they would have to amortize the loan in addition to paying interest. They could not do that. They would lose the house.

A new darkness descended on the household. Joy felt helpless in the face of her mother's depression, and simply restored her habit of staying out as much as possible. But Anastasia was old enough to be told what the problem was. She too was aghast, not because she loved the house so much or the neighborhood or the school, but because she knew what losing the house would mean to her mother. She offered to do what she could: she took a job at the five-and-ten afternoons and Saturdays, and she told her friends she was available for baby-sitting in the evenings. She began to work steadily, but she knew her working was little help to her mother, for all Belle had been able to give her before was seventy-five cents a week allowance. Still, she could buy Christmas presents for everyone, and maybe some clothes for herself, and she would not have to beg fifty-cent pieces from her mother for the Saturday-night movie. Belle did not seem to notice Anastasia's efforts; nor did she remember her birthday that year. Not until it was Thanksgiving did she realize that Anastasia's fifteenth birthday had come and gone. She couldn't worry about that; she had too much else to worry about.

They obtained a mortgage from Eric's insurance company, but making the payments was impossible. Belle juggled bills, paying only small sums on the telephone, electric, and oil bills. Dunning notices arrived almost every day from one company or another. Belle was forced to serve paltry meals, which the family ate in a deeper silence even than usual.

Every morning, as she raised the shade in the dining room, and glanced at the house next door, Belle saw a heap of white things through the window. She saw the heaps increase and diminish, disappear and reappear. With her background, she had some idea what they were.

She had met the woman who lived next door, a lovely woman, Ann Gwyn. She and her husband and their twin sons had also moved in recently, and their house was almost identical to the Stevenses', having been built by the same man. Belle kept an eye out for Mrs. Gwyn, and the next time they were both outside hanging clothes on the line—in this neighborhood, one did not have pulley lines; one had an umbrella-shaped dryer, on which the clothes did not dry as quickly, but which looked neater—she called hello, and walked over, showing herself ready for a chat.

Ann Gwyn was a tall, gaunt, patient-faced woman of great dignity. She had a grave manner, but a deep sweet smile. The two women struck sympathetic chords in each other, recognizing without being told the other's pride and suffering. Over coffee and a bakery yeast cake, they spoke decorously, softly, intelligently, sympathetically to each other.

After a time, Belle ventured, “Ann…sometimes I've noticed white…are they caps?…in your porch. Do you make them?”

Ann blushed. Her husband was an accountant, and made a good salary, but he was close with money. She did not say this. She said her husband's father owned a million-dollar business selling medical supplies—nurse's outfits, doctor's coats, wheelchairs, that sort of thing. And she was permitted to share his wealth. She sewed nurse's caps and he paid her 10 cents for each one. Of course, he sold them for $1.25. But they didn't take too long to make. She could earn a few extra dollars every week, and sit at home.

“It gives me a little money of my own,” she explained. “I can buy a few things for the boys. Charles,” she laughed a little, “you know how men are. He doesn't understand how important the right sweater or a little spending money is to boys their age. High school is such a hard time for children, don't you think?”

“Of course,” Belle said sympathetically. Then, nervously, “Could I see them?”

“Certainly!” Ann gleamed with pleasure. She had been anxious that Belle might look down on her for this work, for not having money. But then, she had never seen the inside of the Stevenses' house. She led the way to her porch, through a living room very much like Belle's. There were four stacks of twenty-five caps each: high puffed organdy with a ruching border. A sewing machine was open, and there were big brown boxes filled with ruching standing on the floor.

“How do you make them?”

Ann was happy to show her. “Well, Dad brings me bolts of organdy and tells me the size he needs. I cut out circles of fabric, using this cardboard as a guide.” She pointed to a stack of cardboard circles labeled with sizes. “Then I cut the ruching to fit the cap, and I sew it, by machine, to the edge of the cap. Then I flute the organdy. You have to do that by hand, it's a little hard on the fingers because organdy is so stiff. It helps to have long nails, but mine are so soft they break.” She held out her hand. The pad and thumb of her right hand were covered with tiny cuts. “The organdy has sizing in it, and that irritates my fingers. I've ruined some caps by getting blood on them. Now I put Band-Aids on my fingers when I do it. That helps. It's really not hard,” she finished cheerily.

Belle examined a cap, and laid it down slowly. Ann looked at her carefully. “Would you like to do some?” she asked softly.

“Oh, I'd
love
to!”

“I'm sure Dad would be glad to have you do it. He sells hundreds of these caps every week, and is always looking for women to make them.”

Belle went home elated. She began to plan. She could surely do twenty a day; that was $2. Maybe she could do thirty, or even forty. If she worked every day, that would be $14–$28 a week. She'd been earning only $18 a week at Gertz, and had had expenses—carfare, stockings—a real problem during the war—and she'd had to buy two good black dresses. Doing this, she'd have no expenses at all.

A few days later, old Mr. Gwyn drove up in his Cadillac and rang her bell. He carried two large boxes, one of organdy, the other of ruching. He accepted Belle's offer of a cup of coffee and some bakery cakes. He was a man in his seventies, portly but manicured, with fine white hair and a satisfied face. He was on his third wife, and lived in a great house on the water in Long Beach. He liked Mrs. Stevens, and was sure she would do good work. Some of the women he'd hired had not. There was a Polack, for instance, who'd lived in Freeport, who had ruined an entire bolt of organdy by cutting it sloppily. Mrs. Stevens was an intelligent lady, he could see that, and would do fine.

Belle did not want her work to be apparent. Anastasia and Joy often brought their friends home, and she did not want them to be embarrassed. So she moved the sewing machine up to her bedroom, and set up shop there. She cut the organdy on the carpeted floor, being very careful not to allow it to get dusty. She would cut a hundred caps at a time. Then she would sew the ruching on. These two steps took her several days. Then she did the fluting. That was the most time-consuming task.

She would get up at seven to drive Ed to the station, return and have coffee and toast and call the girls, who no longer ate breakfast. She would finish her housework by ten, except on washdays. She had the small radio in the bedroom and every morning except Monday, she would go up there and sit and work. It was a light bright room, and she could see out to the street, noticing when Mrs. Brand went out in her car, which was almost as old as Ed's; noticing that Mrs. O'Neill's sister was visiting her; and watching Ann Gwyn drive slowly past on her way to market, almost as nervous behind the wheel as Belle herself.

Joy came home for lunch every day, and at quarter of twelve Belle went downstairs to prepare a little meal for her. She would have a scrambled egg and some toast while Joy ate, and listen to the child jabber happily about her little schoolmates. Such a gay little kid she was, so unconscious of Belle's problems, so happy in her own world. It refreshed Belle to listen to her for twenty minutes. Then she went off again and Belle washed the dishes and returned to her bedroom, her workroom. Once in a while, every couple of weeks, she would call Ann Gwyn and ask her to come over for a cup of coffee or Ann would call her. They'd sit for an hour in the afternoon talking, always decorous, always polite. Belle thought Ann was a very intelligent woman. And in the spring, she came to know her neighbor on the other side, a little. Mildred Bradshaw was much older than Belle, and had been a principal of a school in the Bronx. She had married after her retirement, a man older than she, and lived very comfortably. Mildred too was very intelligent. Belle felt honored by the friendship of these two women.

Still, her life was an unceasing round of labor. Ed's was too, but at least he worked among other men, had coffee in company, listened to gossip and griping. She had to keep pushing herself to make two hundred caps a week, along with taking care of the house, marketing, cooking, washing, ironing, all of which had to be done over and over, every day, every week. She noticed Ed grumbling about dust on the piano—but he grumbled at the girls. Of course, they were supposed to do it, but she didn't like to keep after them. They were young and wanted to be with their friends. She didn't want them to have a childhood like hers, who had to cook and take care of a young child before she was ten years old. Let them be free for a while. It would all happen to them soon enough.

The twenty dollars a week she earned helped to pay the bills. She tried, too, each week, to slip one or two dollars into an envelope she kept beneath the small side glove drawer of the low chest, an envelope she had labeled “College, Anastasia.” But last week, when she went to add a dollar bill to her cache, her heart stopped. There had been sixty dollars in it. There were thirty now. Ed had taken it. He had not even asked her. He hadn't even mentioned it afterward. But she understood. She would not humiliate him by saying anything. She knew he'd needed it, because he paid the bills now, not she. She felt a rush of sorrow for the shame he must have felt, taking it that way.

Belle did not think about buying furniture. She did not even think about buying one of those new washing machines you did not have to fill and drain with a hose. Even Anastasia's college seemed a luxury now. All she concentrated on was keeping the house. They
would
keep the house.

D
AY AFTER DAY SHE
sits there. I pass her on my way up-and downstairs after school. The five-and-ten laid all of us off after Christmas. She's been worse lately. She's a dark shadow against the bleak grey light of February, already darkening at four. She's bent over the work in her hands, a small lamp illuminating it, shadowing her. Around her rise mounds and mounds of billowy white caps.

On the vanity beside her is a small pad and a pencil, and the other day I glanced at it and saw columns of figures written on it in a hasty scrawl. I knew instantly how she occupies herself over this solitary slave-labor of hers: she plans and plots and daydreams. She pays bills, she buys a washing machine, she sends me to college. She buys herself a nice outfit and sends herself out into the world where people turn and look at her—what a lovely-looking woman! Is there a man in her daydreams? close, or distant? Does she dream of affairs, or only admiration?

Sorrow at her life rose in my throat like a peach pit, hard and painful, I couldn't swallow. She did not know she was sorrowful though, she remembers only gratitude at finding a way to keep the house. So I felt her sorrow for her. And for me too, because what else did I do with my life but daydream, like her? All night, until dawn rose, I lay in my solitary bed daydreaming. Boys adored me, girls loved me, I was popular and accomplished, editor of the school paper, star of the school play, I was pretty and well-dressed and girls came up to me to ask where I bought my skirts. In my daydreams. A wave of nausea followed the lump, and I went into my room and sat on the window seat. I lit the cigarette I had filched from Mother's pack in the kitchen. I stared out at February dusk, the empty street, the bare trees, a landscape of vacancy. I wanted, I yearned, to do something in life besides daydream, but how? When no satisfactions were to be had, when I was not popular or accomplished, when my clothes were shabby, the same three skirts, day in, day out….

No prospects. For me, for her, for any of us. Just survival, when the world beyond this house, beyond this street, seemed lighted up, carpeted with happy things happening behind the storm-windowed panes. I imagined scenes as I walked the long mile and a half home from school, I pictured the dimly lit houses brilliant with light, parties, mouths behind the glass uttering witty speeches, laughter, gay banter from which I was shut out. I never saw anything like that, but it must happen, perhaps late at night, when I am home in my room, lying on the bed reading one huge book after another, then closing them, lying back, closing my eyes daydreaming….

Like her. She's been worse lately. If you can chart her ups and downs. It's hard. She's always down. But sometimes, she's further down. She's suffering terribly, you can see it. As if she will not die but cannot live and exists suspended in a state outside desire, outside self even.
Why is she like this?

Why wonder? Look at her life.

Still, why does she have to take it this way? These days, she hardly even gets dressed, she walks around in an old cotton wrapper and slippers all day long until it's time to pick him up at the station, and even then she just puts on shoes and a coat. And most nights, he works late, and she doesn't pick him up at all. She's afraid to drive at night, in the dark. He takes the bus from the station and walks the long dark cold blocks from the bus stop. No other men do that in this neighborhood. Only kids and domestics take the bus here. No man walks home from the bus stop. He doesn't seem to mind. He probably doesn't realize he's the only one, maybe he wouldn't care if he did. Doesn't notice things, doesn't notice anything: what saves him. Blindness.