5 CISSY FROM THE ONION MARSHES
"Well, I should think you'd be glad to get clear of this," criedtheir visitor. "Florida camps ain't all so bad."
"We've no money to move, ma'am," Grandpa said bluntly. "It tooknear all we'd earned to get here, and now no job!"
"This Italian next door says they're advertising for, cottonpickers in Texas," Daddy said, cradling Sally in one arm while heheld her little clawlike hand in his, feeling its fever.
"We haven't got wings, to fly there," Grandma objected.
Mrs. King looked thoughtfully around the wretched shelter. A fewclothes hung from corner posts; a few tin dishes were piled in abox cupboard. The children were clean as children could be insuch a place. But the visitor's glance lingered longest on theclock.
"Your clock and mine are like as two peas," she observed. "Fortyyears ago I got mine, on my wedding day."
"Mine was a wedding present, too. And my feather beds that I hadto let go at fifty cents apiece. . . ." Grandma quavered.
"These are queer times." Mrs. King shook her head. "I do wish Ihad the means to lend a hand like a real neighbor. There's this,though--my mister took in a big old auto on a debt, and he'llleave you have it for what the debt was--fifteen dollars, seemslike."
"You reckon he will?" Grandpa demanded.
"He better!" said Mrs. King.
"Even fifteen dollars won't leave us scarcely enough to eat on,"Grandpa muttered.
"But we've got to get to a place where there's work," Daddyreminded him.
They went to see the car, and found it a big, strong old Reo,with fairly good tires. So they bought it.
Grandma had one piece of jewelry left, besides her wide goldwedding ring--a cameo brooch. She traded it for a nanny goat.On the ever useful dump the men found a wrecked trailer and theymended it so that it would hold the goat, which the childrennamed Carrie. Later, Grandma thought, they might get some layinghens, too.
Two days after the Big Storm, they set out for the Texascottonfields. Mrs. King stuck a big box of lunch into the car,and an old tent which she said she couldn't use.
"I hope I'll be forgiven for never paying heed to fruittramps--fruit workers--before," she said soberly. "From now on Iaim to. Though I shan't find none like you-all, with a SethThomas clock and suchlike."
Off to the cotton fields]
After the truck ride from Jersey even a fifteen-dollar automobilewas luxury, with its roomy seats and two folding seats that letdown between.
Grandma joked, in her tart way, "I never looked to be touring thecountry in my own auto!"
Rose-Ellen jiggled in the back seat. "Peekaneeka, Gramma!" shesaid.
When it rained, the children scurried to fasten the side curtainsand then huddled together to keep warm while they playedtick-tack-toe or guessing games. For meals they stopped wherethey could milk Carrie and build a small fire. At night they putup the tent, unless a farmer or a policeman ordered them to moveon.
At first it seemed more of a peekaneeka than any of theiradventures thus far. They met and passed many old cars liketheir own, and the children counted the strange things that weretied on car or trailer tops while Grandma counted licenseplates-when Sally was not too fussy. There was always somethingnew to see, especially when they were passing through Louisiana.Daddy said Louisiana was the one state in the country that hadparishes instead of counties, and that that was because it hadbeen French in the early days. Almost everything else about itseemed as strange to the children--the Spanish moss hanging inlong streamers from the live oak trees; the bayous, or arms ofthe river, clogged with water hyacinths; the fields of sugarcane; and the Negro cabins, with their glassless windows andtheir big black kettles boiling in the back yards.
"But the funniest thing I saw," Rose-Ellen said later, "was a cowlying in the bayou, with purple water hyacinths draped all overher, as if it was on purpose."
After a few days, though, even this peekaneeka grew wearisome tothe children; while Daddy and Grandpa grew more and more anxiousabout an angry spat-spat-spat from the Reo. So they were allglad to reach the cotton fields they had been steering toward.
But there they did not find what they had hoped for. There weretoo many workers ahead of them and too little left to do.Tractors, it seemed, were taking the place of many men, onemachine driving out two to five families.
Though the camp was a fairly comfortable one, it proved lonesomefor the children for there was no Center, and it did not seemworth while for them to start to school for so short a time. Itwas doubtful, anyway, whether the school had room for them.
Grandma was too lame to work in the cotton. When she bent over,she could hardly straighten up again; so she stayed home withJimmie and the baby, and Dick and Rose-Ellen picked. Rose-Ellenfelt superior, because there were children her age picking intosmall sacks, like pillow-slips, and she used one of the regularlong bags, fastened to her belt and trailing on the groundbehind.
At first cotton-picking was interesting, the fluffy bolls lookinglike artificial roses and the stray blossoms strangely shaped anddelicately pink. Sometimes a group of Negro pickers would chantin rich voices as they picked. "Da cotton want a-pickin' soba-ad!" But it was astonishing to the Beechams to find how manyaches they had and how few pounds of cotton when the day'spicking was weighed.
Tired and achy as they were at night, though, they were glad tofind children in the next shack.
"Queer ones," Grandma called them.
"It's their talk I can't get the hang of," Grandpa added. "Itmay be English, but I have to listen sharp to make it out."
Daddy trotted Sally on his foot and laughed. "It's English allright--English of Shakespeare's time, likely, that they've usedfor generations. They're Kentucky mountaineers, and as thefather says, 'a fur piece from home'."
It was through the eldest girl that the children becameacquainted: the girl and her toothbrush.
Rose-Ellen was brushing her teeth at the door, and Dick wassaying, "I ain't going to. Nobody brushes their teeth down here,"when suddenly the girl appeared, a toothbrush and jelly glass inher hand, and a younger brother and sister following her.
"This is the way we brush our teeth," sang the girl and while hertoe tapped the time, two brushes popped into two mouths andscrubbed up and down, up and down--"brush our teeth, brush ourteeth!"
She spied Rose-Ellen. "Did you-uns larn at the Center, too?" sheasked eagerly. "First off, we-uns allowed they was queer littlehair-brushes; but them teachers! Them teachers could make 'emfly fast as a sewing machine. We reckoned if them teachers wasso smart with such comical contraptions, like enough they knowedother queer doings. And they sure did."
Thus began the friendship between the Beecham children and Cissy,Tom and Mary--with toddling Georgie and the baby thrown in.Cissy was beautiful, like Grandma's old cameo done in color, withheavy, loose curls of gold-brown hair. Long evening, visits sheand Rose-Ellen had, when they were not too tired from cotton-picking.Little by little Rose-Ellen learned the story of Cissy's past fewyears. Always she would remember it, spiced with the queer wordsCissy used.
They had lived on a branch--a brook--in the Kentucky hills.Their house was log, said Cissy, with a fireplace where Maw hadher kettles and where the whole lot of them could sit when winternights were cold, and Paw could whittle and Maw weave a coverlet.
"Nary one of us could read," Cissy said dreamily, sitting on thepacking-box doorstep with elbows on knees and chin on palms."But Paw could tell purty tales and Maw could sing song-balladsthat would make you weep. But they wasn't no good huntin' nomore, and the kittles was empty. So we come down to the coalmines, and when the mines shut down, we went on into the onions."
These were great marshes, drained like cranberry bogs and plantedin onions. Whole families could work there, planting, weeding,pulling, packing.
("I've learned a lot!" thought Rose-Ellen. "I used to ask thegrocer for a nickel's worth of dry onions, and I never did guesshow they came to be there.")
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nbsp; The first year was dreary. Maw took the baby (Mary, then) andlaid her on a blanket at the end of the row she was working, withTom to watch her. Cissy worked along with the grown folks, orsome days stayed home and did the washing and minded Tom andMary.
"I shore didn't know how to wash good as I do now." She pattedher faded dress, pretty clean, though not like the clothes ofGrandma's washing.
There was one thing about it, Cissy said; after a day in onions,with the sun shining hot on her sunbonnet and not much to eat,she didn't care if there wasn't any play or fun at night; she wasglad enough to drop down on the floor and go to sleep as soon asshe'd had corn pone and coffee. Sometimes she was sick from thesun beating down on her head and she had to crawl into the shadeof a crate and lie there.
The second year was different. Next summer, early, when thecherries had set their green beads and the laylocks had quitblooming, there came two young ladies. They came of an evening,and talked to Paw and Maw as they sat on the doorsill with theirshoes kicked off and their bare toes resting themselves.
First Paw and Maw wouldn't talk to them because why would thesepretty young ladies come mixing around with strangers? Paw andMaw allowed they had something up their sleeves. But the ladiespatted Georgie, the baby then, and held him; and Cissy creptcloser and closer, because they smelled so nice. And then theyasked Maw if they couldn't take Cissy in their car and pay her asmuch as she earned picking. She was to help them invite thechildren to a place where they could be safe and happy whiletheir grown folks worked.
Cissy couldn't hardly sense it; but Maw let her go, because shewas puny. The teachers got an old schoolhouse to use; and churchfolks came to paint the walls; and P.W.A. workers made chairs andtables; and the church ladies made curtains. The teachers goticebox, stove, and piano from a second-hand store.
Yet, at first, it was hard to get people to send their childreneven to this beautiful place. They'd rather risk locking them inat home, or keeping them at the end of the onion row. That firstmorning, the teachers gathered up only nine children. Those ninetold what it was like, and next day there were fifteen, and bythe end of the summer "upwards of forty-five."
Cissy told about the Center as she might tell about fairyland.Across one wall were nails, with kits sent by children from thedifferent churches. The kits held tooth brushes, washcloths,combs. Above each nail was a picture by which the child couldknow his own toilet equipment.
Cissy and Tommy at the Center]
"Mine was the purtiest little gal with shiny hair. But it wasn'tcolored," she added, regretfully. "Tommie's was a yallerautomobile."
"Why'd you have pictures?" asked Jimmie.
"I were going on eleven, but I couldn't read," Cissy confessed.
Rose-Ellen patted Jimmie stealthily and didn't tell Cissy that hewas going on ten and couldn't read either.
Cissy went on with her tale of the Center. There was toothbrushand wash-up drill. There were clean play-suits that churches hadsent from far cities. Every morning there was worship. Thechildren had helped make an altar--a box with a silk scarf acrossand a picture of Jesus above and a Bible and two candles. Theyall sang hymns and heard Bible stories and prayed. Oh, yes,Cissy said, back in the mountains they went to meetin'--whenthere was meetin'--but God wasn't the same in Kentucky, some way.The teachers' God loved them so good that it hurt him to havethem steal or lie or be any way dirty or mean. He had to lovethem a heap to send the Center people to help them the way hedid.
After worship came play and study, outdoors and in, with theclean babies comfortably asleep in the clothesbaskets, theirstomachs full of milk from shiny bottles. The older ones sat downto the table and prayed, and drank milk through stems, and atecarrots and greens and "samwidges." And after the table wascleared, they lay down on the floor and Teacher maybe played softmusic and they went to sleep.
Once they had a real party. They were invited to a near-bychurch by some of the children of that church. The tables weretrimmed with flowers and frilled paper and there were cakes andJello. The children played games together at the end of theparty.
The big girls, when rain kept them from working, learned to cookand sew and take care of babies; and even the little girlslearned a heap and made pretties they could keep, besides. Fromthe bottom of their clothes-box, Cissy brought a paper-wrappedscrapbook of Bible pictures she had cut and pasted. Tom had madea table out of a crate, but there wasn't room to fetch it.
"I got so fat and strong," boasted Cissy, punching her thin chestwith a bony fist. "For breakfast, Maw didn't have no time togive us young-uns nothing but maybe some Koolade to drink, and aslice of store bread; but at the Center us skinny ones got a hullbottle of milk to drink through a stem after worship."
"Are you going back there?" Rose-Ellen asked.
Cissy nodded, her hands folded tight between her knees. "Andmaybe stay all winter, and me and Tommie go to school. BecausePaw and Maw feel like the teachers was kinfolk, since whathappened to Georgie."
"What happened to Georgie?"
Six children huddled on the doorstep now, shivering in the chillydark. "One Sunday night," Cissy said, "Georgie took to yelling,and went all stiff and purple, and we couldn't make out whatailed him. Only that his throat hurt too bad to swallow; so Mawtied up his topknot so tight it near pulled it out: that was tolift his palate, because dropped palates make sore throats.
"Georgie didn't get any better. When the teachers come Mondaymorning to tote us to the Center, they begged to take Georgie tothe doctor. Maw was might' nigh crazy by then, and she got intothe Ford without her head combed, Georgie in her lap. Maw saidshe never had ridden so fast. She thought her last-day was come,with the fences streaking past her lickety-split. And when theycome to the doctor he looked Georgie over and said, 'Could thischild have got hold of any lye?' And Maw said, real scairt,well, she did have a bottle of lye water, and somebody might haveset it on the floor.
"So every day the rest of the summer them teachers toted Georgieto the Center and the doctor cured Georgie up till now he can eatpurty good. So that's how come we're shore going back to theonions next summer."
Across the Fruited Plain Page 6