Yonnondio: From the Thirties (10 page)

Jimmie did not seem to have a single whole sock in the drawer. Ben’s hand-me-downs,
no wonder; and only one pair of rompers. She began going through the sock pile for
a pair that could be most easily mended. Bess’s baby socks, Jimmie’s, Ben’s, Will’s,
Mazie’s, they passed through her hands, and with each one inspected, her head ballooned
lighter and lighter. “Barefoot season, I forgot. Socks can just wait.”

The rompers. There was a tear in them, too, right across the seat. She had not noticed.
“Mend,” she said loudly and stopped there and stood in the middle of the bedroom,
holding the rompers.

The strength and fury she had felt an hour ago were all gone now, and she stood there
swaying in the middle of the bedroom with its swayback bed and the mattress on the
floor with its acrid urine smell, and the trickle of light coming in through the thin
high window—and she thought that she would suffocate of the tears strangling in her
throat that would not ascend to her dry eyes.

It was not that the clothes were beyond or almost beyond mending and that there were
none others and no money to buy more; not that four children slept here in this closet
bedroom, three on a mattress on the floor; not that in the corners dust curled in
feathers, dust that was Dirt That Breeds Disease You Make Your Children Sick; not
that one of her children had stood a few minutes ago (ah, which hurt more, the earlier
averted face or this?) looking at her with pain and fear and pity for her in her eyes.

It was not any and it was all of these things that brought her now to swaying in the
middle of the floor, twisting and twisting the rompers in soundless anguish. It was
that she felt so worn, so helpless; that it loomed gigantic beyond her, impossible
ever to achieve, beyond any effort or doing of hers: that task of making a better
life for her children to which her being was bound.

Oh, what was the matter with Momma when Poppa said she had to stay in bed, acting
and looking
so funny, and that ol’ Jimmie having to say (cheerfully), “Madie hurt me, Momma, she
hurt me in the baf.”

“Tattleliar! I didnt hurt him, he’s slippery, Momma. Poppa said you got to stay in
bed, got to. Momma, can I have JimJim’s rompers?” Coming closer, but wanting to run.
“Oh Momma, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing, Mazie.” Kneeling down on the floor alongside to reassure her; smiling a
tormented smile. “I’ve got to…” her throat constricting, “do something.”

“What, Momma?”

“I dont know,” twisting and twisting the rompers, “I … dont … know.”

When Jim came home she was sitting on the back stoop, directing Will to hoe up the
stubbly ground.

“Hey, what are you doin up?” he asked gently, coming up to her. “Forget them take-it-easy,
stay-in-bed orders?”

She clenched her teeth and fists and huddled farther back into the twilight shadow.

“You feelin that much better, honey? Then let’s go in,” hesitantly touching her arm,
“and you can set up and tell us how to fix supper so it tastes better … C’mon, Anna,
the kids’ll be waitin.”

“Maybe they’ll be waiting for supper someday and there’ll be none to give. You ever
think of that? We’re puttin in a garden like you promised and never done, that’s what
I’m doin up. And I’m startin launderin work again if I can get it … Go on in yourself.”

“Don’t get me mad now, Anna.”Beseechingly: “Anna, you been so sick. You know you shouldn’t
be up.”

“And shouldn’t I?” pulling herself erect, “and shouldn’t I? Let the dirt stay, let
the kids run wild and not a decent stitch on ’em, let there be no makin do on the
money, I shouldn’t be up. Don’t touch me! And who’s to cook and clean and look after
the kids if I’m in bed? Who? The servants? The fine servants we keep on the big wages
you’re makin?”

“Stop it, Anna, stop it. You’re makin yourself sick … Oh Anna, honey, dont.”

“Dont sweet Anna me. Who’s to do it if I’m not up? Answer.
Who?
Who’s to… look out for …”Gasping hoarsely. “Who’s to care about ’em if we dont? Who?”

Fighting off his attempt to enfold her, to quiet; his broken: “Anna, dont, please
dont.”

“
Who?
Answer me. Oh Jim.” Giving in, collapsing into his reaching embrace. “The children.”
Over and over, broken, “The children. What’s going to happen
with them? How we going to look out for them in this damn world? Oh Jim, the children.
Seems like we cant do nothing for them.”

Oh Will, hoe in hand chopping viciously the air, running down the block away from
his father’s stricken face, his mother’s convulsed words; oh Ben, clutching first
his mother’s legs and then his father’s legs, trying vainly to still them, curling
up now close to Mazie, heaving his asthma breaths; oh Mazie, stopping up her ears
so as not to hear, yelling out a song to Jimmie and to clinging Ben so they will not
hear—it is all right, it is over now.

It is over. There is reconciliation in the house where your mother lies weeping; not
hearing
I’ll spade up your garden and tomorrow, payday, we’ll get seeds. We’ll work things
out, you’ll see, dont take on so
. Hearing only the attempt at comfort. And now your father lies beside her, stroking
and kissing her hair, silently making old vows again, vows that life will never let
him keep.

SEVEN

Always while Jim worked—
down underground the dripping water diamonds his hair, trickles down his neck, makes
a gay sound on his canvas poncho: no mackinaw and boots, but it means a buck more
a week dont it, it means stuff for the baby, dont it?
—heavy and sore in his breast would lie the torment of the questions Anna had asked,
and such a sad baffled flame of tenderness flicker above.

Work through, with a heart that ran far ahead of his feet, he would hurry, hurry home,
a nameless fear on him, and his hello be almost a sob of joy as he flung open the
door and saw that all seemed as it had been.

A gaunt Anna who could not understand this body of hers that tired so quickly and
quivered like a naked nerve; this stranger self. One minute her old competence and
strength; the next: addled, nervous, brutal, lost. Not managing, having to give under,
to let things go. Any effort wearing her out; everything an effort.

Seeing her so, with the look of exhaustion on him, Jim would ask: “Is there anything
I can do to help?”

Sometimes she did not answer at all, sometimes say: “You look right tired. Go ahead
and set.” But once she blazed: “If you cant see what
needs
doin, just dont trouble to ask, you hear, just dont trouble to ask.” And another
time, in the most chilling of voices: “Why dont you go set like you always do; done.”
Adding: “’Cept that one wintertime on the farm I was carryin Bess. And that didn’t
last long.”

Now, in her slow mending, she began to ask him to chase the kids down, or to chide,
or distract them. “They’re runnin me crazy. I declare I dont know what’s got into
’em, seems like the devil hisself.”

Ben whining or wanting to be babied, afraid to let his mother out of sight, always
underfoot with questions. Go out, she would force him, go out and play. Go on. But
he huddled close to the kitchen door, his only playmate Jeff and sometimes Jimmie.
Jimmie at an age where he was always having to be watched, likely to get into any
manner of mischief. Will defiant; Mazie contrary—too exhausting to force their help
(and the feeling: they’re kids, let them play and feel good while they can).

Troubled, she saw them running, shrilling out
laughter, playing their frantic games wildly, disappearing to come back hours later;
flushed, hostile, excited, secretive. A lust for sensation, for the new was on them,
a lust for the streets, for looking into store windows; for moving over the dump,
the stretches of weed and alley. They clamored for pennies she did not have for licorice,
shoestrings, blackjacks, jawbreakers, Juicy Fruit gum—litany of wonders endless at
the corner store; on Saturdays, for nickels to go to the movie show. No, she had to
say over and over, we dont have it, no—but sometimes if she had it set aside for another
purpose, she gave them what they asked.

She began to neglect the already neglected house to go out and weed and work in the
garden. The washtubs and wringer sat out in the yard now, beside Bess’s basket. She
would have liked to range the stove alongside too, even cook over an open fire. Inside
suffocated her (outside too when there was packing-house stench) but a need was in
her to be out under a boundless sky, in unconfined air, not between walls, under the
roof of a house.

The cumulating vision of overwhelming, hostile forces surrounding which had come to
Anna that week of the clinic, never left her. But she was not strong enough to contend
with it now. Only sporadically could she try to order, do something about their
lives. And a separation, a distance—something broken and new and tremulous—had been
born in her, lying by herself those long unaccustomed hours free of task.

One dusktime, when Jim got home, she and Mazie were still wringing and hanging clothes.
“Get in and see to supper, Mazie, while I finish up out here,” Anna said, seeing him.
Cheerfully: “I got my first launderin job today.”

“I see that.” Sinking down heavily onto the stoop as the light drained. Bitterly:
“You aint well enough to keep us ’uns clean, or get your other work done like you
used to, let alone do for other folks.” “What’s well enough or other work got to do
with—have to?” she asked, and went on hanging up what was left in the basket; took
down blouses, shirts, dresses from another line.

“I said you aint well enough for what you got to do for us ’uns now,” he repeated.
“We never lived in such a mess.”

“It’s a dollar every time.” Dreamily: “That looks nice across the river, dont it?
The mist comin up like way away soft laundry blowin on a line. White.”

“You fixin to get sick on me again? … Ferget that launderin, Anna. We’ll get by. We
ain’t starved yet.”

She looked at him with an expression that, in the
uncertain light, he thought might be anger or bitterness, but her voice came humble:
“I’m helpin, Jim.” She came over, her arms heaped; sagged beside him. “Feels good
to sit, dont it? You look mighty weary.” Carefully she smoothed and rolled the garments,
arranged them in the basket.

“That’s pretty how you do that,” said Ben, rising from the shadows. “Are you making
it a sunflower? Can I try tree and branches?”

“You touch that wash with your dirty hands, and you’ll never touch another thing.
How long since you washed up?”

“Bess was laughin and laughin today, Poppa,” Ben reported. “Lookin cross-eyed at her
hands, so
we
got laughin. When I say, ‘Bessie, Bess, Bonny Bess,’ she turns and looks for me,
dont she, Momma? Do you have a penny for Will? Your hair’s still wet, Poppa.”

“How’s yourself, old tricks?” drawing Ben close. “I got a penny for
you
, all right.”

“Jim, a man came by today and for a quarter a week if we start now, a kid gets three
hundred dollars when he’s sixteen. For a sure edjication.”

Jim jabbed at Ben’s arm, shadow-punched at his face. “Dont you know how to duck yet?”

Holding his father’s hand: “Guess what, Poppa? We blewed soap bubbles today with green
onions. Momma showed us how. All shiny. Mine was the
biggest, then Mazie’s. Where do bubbles go with your breath when they bust, Poppa?
Where’s gone? What does nothing look like, Poppa?”

“I want it for Will, then he can help the others. Finish high school sure. A good
job, Jim.”

“You think I dont want it? Even to be sneakin timekeepers and office people that treats
you like dirt? But you dont know nothing about it. Miss one week pay’n’ and you lose
it all.”

“I asked him. He said the plan allows. He said…”

“It’s a buck a month. A buck a month. Ferget it, Anna. Ferget that launderin, too.”

Voices of children around the corner lamppost. “
Alley, alley ’ats in free
” came shrill and sweet. Mist tendrils curled closer over the river bluff, heavier
fog behind already blotting out the farthest line of clothes.

“Momma, Poppa, why do peoples talk and dogs cant, but last night Shep came back and
talked words, but I couldn’t any more, just in ‘woof, woof.’ What did I say in woof
woof that made Shep mad? He bit me, Poppa, bites all over. Do you see bites on my
neck, Poppa?”

“That was a dream, Benjy.” Anna said. “Dont you remember Momma came in? I held you
and showed you there wasn’t no bites and sang you back to sleep?”

“But I
saw
Shep. Poppa, Momma, for why do mens give dogs nails in meat, laugh and the dog is
bleedin, shakin? A big boy, Antsy down the block, if he sees me he says, ‘Hey, shit,
come here,’ bad words like that. ‘I’m going to have me your birdie.’ I dont like that
big boy, Poppa. For why is he that way? For why is …?”

“You need a muzzle, kid,” said Jim, spreading his hand gently over Ben’s face to hold
it still. “For why’n and for why, huh. How’m
I
supposed to know? Yeah, get eddicated, you get a little respect; know better than
to ask fool questions that get lies or nothin for answers … Like I always done.” Rising:
“What’s it all for, anyhow? … A buck a month. Ferget it, Anna.” Sharply: “You goin
to leave this kid out all night in this damp?” taking up Bess and her basket. “Let’s
eat. Now.”

In the square of lemon light from the kitchen window, Anna picked up the laundry basket.
The moistness and dimness were all around now. Mazie, slipping out to fetch Anna and
Ben, stood transfixed in wonder and fear. Her mother was walking dreamlike round and
round the yard, laundry basket on her head, disappearing in and out of the clutching
mists; emerging, disappearing; an enchanted Ben following her. Her voice came dreamy
and disembodied.

“Yes that’s how they carries clothes there, Benjy, basket on their heads, hands on
their hips like I cant
do. Walking like queens, hoop earrings big as bracelets in their ears. Parrot birds
that talk, and flowers bigger than washtubs, all colors and smells.” “Where is it,
Momma, where is that place?”

“I dont rightly know. I aint ever been, Benjy. I only saw it in a picture book.” She
put the basket down, bent to him fiercely: “You read books, you’ll know all that.
That’s what books is: places your body aint ever been, cant ever get to go. Inside
people’s heads you wouldn’t ever know. There’s a place here, a library where I’ve
been fixin for us to go, where Else gets her reading. They let you borrow books, picture
ones if you cant read yet.”

“I want to go see the earrings, talk to the parrot birds that talk. Will the streetcar
take us?”

“It’s a far place, Benjy. You have to be rich to go, take trains and boats. Or when
you grow up you can go, like your Uncle Ralphie, the one you never did see, the one
that ships. Boys get to do that,”her voice was wistful, “not girls. Ralph’s been everyplace.
Wonders of the world.”

She picked up the basket, set it back on her head, moved back into the dimness. “Wonders
of the world.” Her voice was dreamy again. “Everything’s gone. You cant see ’ary a
light. Yes one, so weak and pitiful. You cant see where is our house, where does the
bluff end. A body could end right in the river, not
knowin; drift; not fall. As if the world ending right here, we all closed in; just
me and the basket and you, Benjy. No, we’re not going to fall over the edge, silly
… Dont it breathe good … fresh? Let’s not go in. I declare I feel like a gypsy, wanderin
and campin, everything outdoors, rolling up in the night too, sleepin out, never goin
in.”

“Lets go in, Momma,” pulling at her in sudden fright. “We got to go in. Its suppertime.
Mommas always goes in.”

Rent week—little in the house to eat besides potatoes and flour—Anna left the baby
with Mrs. Kryckszi and wandered the streets with Mazie and Ben and Jimmie, looking
for empty lots where dandelions grew.
(The Wheel of Nutrition: One Serving: Green Leafy Vegetable Daily.)
“I hanker for greens,” she told them. “We been without a far time now.”

She showed Mazie how to look for plants with fresh yellow flowers or just-opening
buds, how to select only young, juicy leaves, telling them by their glossy green and
tender feel. But the lots were mostly weed, the dandelion heads seedy white, their
leaves woody. Though Ben helped too, their paper bags held scarcely a layer.

They wandered on and on. It was a gentle morning;
light and warmth flowed in ripples. “I dont remember since when I been out just walkin
like this,” Anna said. Her lips were parted, her face uplifted to the blue seamless
air. Mazie felt the strangeness rising in her mother, not like the sickness strange,
something else.

One lot Anna gathered a handful of the seedy puffs and, without warning, in one great
breath, filled the air with white fluff. “You blew a hundred wishes,” crowed Ben,
impressed. “You blew a hundred wishes. What did you wished, Momma?”

“You know if I tell, it cant come true.” She bent to her paper bag, blew it full,
with a sudden sharp blow popped it; laughed. Jimmie, startled, began to cry. “I’m
sorry, Jimmie, I didnt think. We got more paper bags than greens,” she explained.
“That was to even it up. I guess. You want Momma to carry you awhile? No, dont you
dare bust that bag, Ben. Give it here. We’re goin to need it, you’ll see. Three bags
full.”

Another lot, she fell to braiding the stems, while Mazie stood disdainful. “We’ll
make a chain a block long. Clover’s better, but where’s any clover?” Ben and even
Jimmie ran to get chain makings, carefully running their fingers down the flower stems
to the bottom like she showed them to get the longest stems. “Is it a block long yet?
Is it a block long yet?” But, abruptly, she stopped, threw the unfinished
chain at Mazie, who threw it back, wrapped Jimmie round and round with it.

They were in a different kind of street now. Lawns, flower beds and borders, children
on bikes. Jimmie kept having to be chased after by Mazie and dragged away from other
children or things that fascinated him. “This would be a good neighborhood to ask
for launderin work,” Anna said. A vague shame, a weedy sense of not belonging, of
something being wrong about them, stirred uneasy through Mazie. “Momma, I have to
pee,” Ben said. Anna walked on carelessly, dreamily, ignoring Ben, who gripped tight
her skirt with his free hand, his other clutching himself, ignoring Jimmie, who was
now petulantly complaining that he was tired tired tired and Mazie was bad and he
didn’t want to walk any more.

Two girls walking toward them stared and snickered, turned their heads to look after
them. “Ben, get your hand away from yourself,” Mazie hissed, and savagely to Jimmie,
“If you’ll just shut up I’ll carry you.” For some reason it came out in a hushed whisper.

“Piggyback?”

“If you’ll just shut up.
Ma, this isn’t the way
.”

“Why dont I have a tricycle?” Ben asked. “Will I get one ever?”and he slowed to stare
longingly after an empty one on a lawn, still clinging to Anna’s skirt
so that, walking on obliviously, her thigh came bared. A woman putting on white gloves
came out of a house and smiled at the four of them. Quickly Mazie moved between her
and Anna, as if to protect her mother against something.