Mary Emma & Company

by Ralph Moody

  “Yes, ma’am,” I told her, “on the streetcar. We’ve come the wrong way and it’s nearly two miles from here to the laundry.”

  “Hmmmm, well,” Mother said, “and it would cost us twenty cents each way. I think maybe we’d better walk. If we don’t try to hurry, and take turns in carrying Elizabeth, two miles won’t seem very far. The exercise and fresh air might do us all good.”

  As soon as we’d started along again she went right on talking to Grace, just as though she’d never interrupted herself. “Until you are all grown and ready to have homes of your own, I will not be separated from you children for a moment longer than is absolutely necessary. That means that we must find some way of making our living in our own home. There is sewing, knitting, and embroidery that one may take home to do for factories, but if we were all to work at it as hard as we could go, we would make only a bare existence. On the other hand, I find that there are a good many well-to-do families in Medford; people who have expensive garments and who are glad to pay a generous price to have them beautifully laundered. I shall work in the best hand laundry I can find, at whatever wages they are willing to pay me, until I know that I can do the finest work to be found anywhere.”

  When Mother had her mind made up to something there wasn’t much use in our trying to change it, and that was one time when I knew Grace didn’t want to. She didn’t say anything, but when she looked back at me she was nodding her head just the least little bit.

  That two miles was about the longest two I ever walked, and Elizabeth seemed to grow heavier every time it was my turn to carry her. As the afternoon grew later a hard, dull sort of cold settled down, and before we reached the laundry Hal was stamping his feet and crying, so I had to carry him piggy-back with his feet in my coat pockets. The laundry certainly wasn’t worth coming that far to see. It was an old, old one-story brick building, and I couldn’t see how clean clothes could come out of any place with such dirty windows, but Mother said, “Well, one can never judge a book by its cover; it can be soiled, tattered and torn on the outside, but you may find it fascinating once you get into it.”

  I thought I knew Mother pretty well, but Grace knew her better than I did. While she was telling us that we must hurry right along so as to get back to Uncle Frank’s before dark, Grace put her mouth close to my ear and whispered, “Do you remember how Mother used to sing on the ranch if she had to go out doors at night when the coyotes were howling? She’s scared of going to work in this dirty old laundry, and the business about the book is her singing.”

  If Mother was scared, nobody but Grace could ever have found it out. The shortest way back to Uncle Frank’s was right through the middle of the toughest neighborhood anywhere around, and, cold as it was, there were gangs of noisy young hoodlums on half a dozen of the corners we had to pass. Quite a few of them whistled at us, and a couple called Grace “Cutey,” but Mother paid no more attention to them than she would have paid to so many barbers’ poles. When we had passed one of the freshest gangs, Grace said to her, “If you should get a job in that particular laundry, and I hope you don’t, you’d have to go the long way around and ride on the streetcar. It would be as much as your life is worth to walk through here alone and after dark.”

  “Oh, I shall be perfectly safe,” Mother answered. “Men or boys who gather in gangs are generally cowards, and an honest woman has little to fear from them.”

  By the time we reached the house we were all so cold, hungry, and tired that we went to bed right after supper—even Grace.

  5

  Molasses on the Loose

  MOTHER must have talked to Uncle Frank till long after we went to sleep that Sunday night, and she must have told him the same things she told Grace about making our living in our own home. Anyway, we three had breakfast together at six o’clock the next morning, and while we were eating he said, without leading up to it at all, “You may be right, Mary Emma, but I’m still afraid you’re trying to bite off a bigger chunk than you can chew. Laundries are sweat shops, the women who work in them are the rough, coarse ones who can’t find jobs anywhere else, and the bosses treat them as if they were slaves. Even if you could stand the work, the conditions would drive you out of your mind. It might be different if you were still a young girl, or if you were used to the rougher side of life, but you’re not. Isn’t there some other way you can learn this trade, some school or training place where you could go?”

  “If there is, I’ve never heard of it,” Mother said, “and I have no time to search for it now. Both our families need a home that is all their own, and as quickly as it can be managed. I’m not afraid of hard work, or the sort of people I may have to associate with. My life hasn’t been exactly a sheltered one.”

  “I know, Mary Emma,” Uncle Frank said, as if he were a bit irritated at her, “but . . .”

  Mother didn’t let him go any further, but laid a hand over on his arm. “Frank,” she said, “I know you may find this hard to understand, but I think I am being led by divine guidance. This whole idea came to me suddenly when I was sitting in church yesterday, and I felt at once that a great burden had been lifted from me. I must try my level best to go through with it.”

  For as much as a full minute Uncle Frank sat looking down at Mother’s hand, as if he were studying it. Then he laid his hand over it, looked up into her face, and said slowly, “God bless you, Mary Emma.” He didn’t say another word, but pushed his chair back quickly and left the table without finishing his breakfast.

  It was still dark when Mother and I left the house. At the sidewalk she told me to be a good boy and not to get into any quarrels at school, then she walked away up Lawrence Street, toward the tough section of Malden. I wanted to say the same thing to her that Uncle Frank had said, but it wouldn’t have sounded right, coming from me, so I just called, “Good luck, Mother,” and hurried down the other way toward the store.

  That Monday afternoon and evening there wasn’t much business at the store, and Mr. Durant had delivered most of the coal orders before I got out of school. I suppose I could have eaten a piece of candy or two, and talked with Mr. Haushalter between customers, but I didn’t want to do that. I still felt pretty good about his having paid me for the week I’d said could be a trial one, and I didn’t want him to think I was slacking up just as soon as he’d told me my job would be steady. So, as soon as I’d delivered my last order, I filled a big bucket about half full of water, whittled in some yellow soap, and set it on top of the stove to heat. While I did it Mr. Haushalter was leaning on the counter, playing with Matilda, and he didn’t seem to notice that I was even in the store. He was chuckling and tickling the calico cat, and she was rolling on her back and boxing at his fingers with her paws.

  After I had the water on to heat, I brought the stepladder from the back room, and set it up at the far end of the store. I’d put a plank up with one end on top of the stepladder and the other on the Ivory Soap shelf, and was feeling to see if the bucket of water was getting warm when Mr. Haushalter laughed out loud. “Durned if you ain’t got me beat, son,” he called out. “Most generally I can keep my hair down and outwait what’s goin’ on, but you’ve got my curiosity het up to boilin’. What in Sam Hill you up to, anyways?”

  I looked up at the ceiling above the stove and said, “Well, I wanted to get some of this black off, but if I just washed here above the stove it would look kind of like a white cloud in a gray sky, so I thought I’d better start washing at the back of the store. I’m not very heavy, and I think the Ivory Soap shelf is strong enough to hold me.”

  “Well, well, well,” he said slowly. “Bless my soul if you ain’t got ’em all beat. Endurin’ the past thirty years John and me must have had sixty boys around here, more or less, and you’re the first one to tackle an extry job without bein’ told—and man-fashion to boot.”

  Mr. Haushalter squinted one eye and peeped over the top of his glasses at the ceiling above the stove. “’tis a mite black, ain’t it? Must have been buildin�
�� up for. . . . Curious, ain’t it, how a little thing like that will take a man’s mind back. Let . . . me . . . think. . . . Was it the fall of ’79 or the spring of ’80 that we bought out old man Tibbets? Well, no matter, but I recollect that ceilin’ was just turnin’ a trifle yellowish. The old man was pretty spry that year before; painted the whole store from clue to hearin’, back room and all. Even varnished the shelves. Done it all by himself, whilst John and me took care of the trade. Must have had a notion he’d hold out for another ten years. Fine old man, Amos Tibbets. Wouldn’t doubt me that paintin’ spree of his had a lot to do with his passin’ heart sort of petered out on him after that.”

  Mr. Haushalter had gone back to playing with Matilda as he talked, but he straightened up and looked along the shelves and all around the store, with a sort of happy, far-off smile on his face. And for a little while he seemed to be talking to himself more than to me. “Ain’t changed much at all,” he said. “Tried to keep it just about like the old man had it; good merchant, Amos Tibbets. ’Course the brand names has changed some, and crackers comes in tin boxes ’stead o’ barrels, and kerosene is up to fourteen cents a gallon, but by and all things don’t change much—that is, if a man don’t get took off his feet by every new notion that comes along.”

  My bucket of water had begun to steam, so I stood on my tiptoes, reached up over the rim, and stirred it with my finger to find out if the soap had all melted. That seemed to bring Mr. Haushalter back a little bit, and he said, “By gorry, that’s the selfsame pot-bellied stove Mr. Tibbets had in the selfsame . . . No. No. He had a Franklin Burner.” Then he chuckled so hard that his stomach jiggled. “Got busted up the first winter after John and me commenced business. Curious, ain’t it, how a boy’ll go to growin’ soon’s ever he gets a job in a grocery store? Growin’ tall and growin’ awkward. Me, I growed mostly sideways.”

  He chuckled again, squirted a little thin stream of tobacco juice into Matilda’s sand box, and patted his stomach. “Oh, we was talkin’ about stoves, wa’n’t we? Well, this boy . . . first one we had . . . let me think . . . what was that boy’s name? Well, no matter . . . hear he come to be a big lawyer over to New York . . . mother lives over on Myrtle Street . . . John would know his name . . . father passed away four-five years back. Well, well, no matter anyways. This boy, he growed to six foot tall that year he worked for us, and awkwarder’n an ox in a strawb’rry patch. By gorry, that just about done it. Ox? Ox? There was an ox somewheres about his name. Maddox, that was it: old Henry Maddox’s boy.”

  Right then a woman came in for fifteen cents’ worth of cheese and a pound of common crackers, so, while Mr. Haushalter was waiting on her, I took my bucket of hot water back and began washing the ceiling at one corner. It was awfully dirty, but if I got the sponge much wetter than damp the water ran down my arm, so I had to be real careful, and I forgot all about Mr. Haushalter until, from right below me, he said, “Here, this’ll put an arm on you, and you’ll need it for that job. By gorry, the old ceilin’ was gettin’ a mite dirty, wa’n’t it?”

  When I looked down Mr. Haushalter was holding up a slice of cheese about the size of my hand, and four common crackers. “A boy’s got to eat if he’s doin’ a man’s job,” he told me. “Sit down a jiffy and get it into you whilst I tell you ’bout that Maddox boy. Don’t recollect what his first name was, but that don’t matter. Like I was tellin’ you, he was big, and he was awkward, and he was one of the few that wa’n’t lazy. Well, sir, that winter John and me got an awful good price on a hogshead of Jamaica molasses . . . used to fetch a lot of it in whenst they was distillin’ Medford Rum up to the Square. It come out on a freight train from Boston—there was three or four a day in them times—and they sot it off about halfway down the platform towards the depot. As I recollect, it was an afternoon about the likes of this one; cold, with ice on the sidewalk where the eaves had dripped some along about noontime. Soon as school was out this Maddox boy, he come to work when Cop Watson and two-three others was . . .”

  I had my mouth full of cheese and crackers, and I knew better than to interrupt people, but before I thought I’d asked, “The same Cop Watson that has this beat now?”

  “Yep. Yep. Same one, and his feet was just as big and just as flat then as they be now, but his mustache was coal black. Well, as I was sayin’, Cop Watson and two-three others was in here, standin’ by the old Franklin Burner, warmin’ their hands and talkin’, when the Maddox boy come in. Well, just to josh him, I says, ‘’Fore you get started on somethin’ else you might fetch in the hogshead o’ molasses that come out on the noon train; it’s on the depot platform yonder.’ Then I got to listenin’ to the talk and forgot all about the boy. Never had a notion he could budge that hogshead; must have weighed a good four hundred pounds. Well, sir, he did; heaved it over on its side and rolled it clean up there to the front door—there was two steps then, just like there is now, but they was different ones. How in the world he got it there without none of us seein’ him I don’t know, but he done it.”

  “First thing we seen. . . . No. No. First thing we heard was a holler out of the Maddox boy. Then Old Ned broke loose! The door come flyin’ off its hinges and that hogshead o’ molasses come tearin’ acrost the floor towards us like it was the Portland Express. You never seen men scatter so quick in all your born days! Cop Watson, he leapt clean over the cracker barrel, I went atop the counter, and Matilda—not this one, but her great-great-great-grandmother—skun up on the top shelf yonder where we keep the lamp chimbleys.”

  As Mr. Haushalter had been telling the last part of the story he’d been coming closer and closer to laughing; then, when he told about the cat, he sort of exploded. He laughed so hard that his face turned scarlet. He lifted both hands above his head, and slapped them down on his thighs. “Bless my soul,” he wheezed as soon as he could catch his breath, “you never seen such a goin’s-on as we had here for a couple o’ minutes: Franklin Burner all smashed to smithereens, stovepipe lashin’ about like a caught eel, and scatterin’ soot from Dan to Beersheba; apples and pickles bouncin’ around like they was rubber balls, and a tableful of tinwear risin’ up like a flock o’ scairt ducks off’n a pond. That hogshead of molasses never slowed a mite till it fetched up amongst the flour barrels—stove one of ’em in, too.”

  “What happened to the Maddox boy?” I asked.

  Before Mr. Haushalter could answer me he had another spell of laughing and slapping his thighs. “Oh, nothin’ much,” he told me between gasps. “When things had settled down a mite, I looked around, and there he sot amongst a pile o’ kindlin’ wood that had been the steps, both legs straight out on the floor in front of him. When he seen me look around, he says, ‘I’m sorry, Gus. I slipped on the ice outside the door. You can take it out of my pay.’ Lord love him, I don’t recollect what we was payin’ him for wages, but in them days it wouldn’t a’been more’n a dollar a week—and what he could pick up around the store to eat.” Mr. Haushalter stood there for a minute, chuckling to himself, then he said, “Curious, ain’t it; I ain’t thought of that in twenty-five years. Well, bless my soul, how time flies! Here’s John a’ready with his late afternoon orders. You go on with your housecleanin’, and I’ll go see what luck he had.”

  Mr. Durant hadn’t had very good luck with his late orders, and said he’d deliver them himself on his way home, so I kept on with the ceiling until half-past-six. Then, when I went to get a fresh bucket of water, Mr. Haushalter told me to knock off for the day.

  When I reached Uncle Frank’s house Mother hadn’t come back, and we were all worried about her, so I started for the laundry at as fast a trot as I thought I could keep up all the way. I’d gone as far as the tough neighborhood when, under a street light half a block away, I saw her coming. She was walking slowly, and, for one of the few times I ever saw, with her head down. I was sure she had been hurt, or that one of the corner gangs had given her some trouble, so I ran toward her as fast as I could, shouting, “Mother, what’s the matter?”<
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  She couldn’t have seen me, because I was in the middle of the block where it was dark, but before the first word was hardly out of my mouth she lifted her head and came on briskly, like a good horse that’s been touched with the spurs. If I hadn’t seen her before she knew I was nearby, I would never have guessed how tired she was when I reached her. The light was behind her by that time, so I couldn’t see her face, but her voice sounded all full of smiles. “Why, there’s nothing in the world the matter, Son,” she told me. “Just the opposite, and I think your ‘Good luck’ this morning helped me more than anything else. I was fortunate in getting just the job I wanted, and though I’m desperately slow at it, I think they’re going to keep me on. I had a nice talk with the foreman before coming away. Now tell me how things went for you at school and in the store today.”

  The rest of the way to Uncle Frank’s house I told her about the hogshead of molasses that got away from the boy at the store, but I don’t think I told her the boy’s name.

  6

  “Pop Goes the Weasel”

  I THINK my idea about washing the ceiling at the store was one of the best I ever had. We had a heavy, wet snow the day after I started it, then a cold snap, and there was hardly an hour for the rest of the week when the temperature went above zero.

  Whenever there was a cold snap like that we always had lots of coal orders at the store, and that week we were flooded with them. With the streets and sidewalks in frozen ridges I couldn’t push the cart, and when I tried to deliver coal on a sled it tipped over so often that I spent most of my time reloading it. Besides that, my hands got so cold I couldn’t hold onto the bags, and I thought my feet would freeze right off me. I didn’t say anything about it at the store, but I guess Mr. Durant noticed how cold I was when I came back from my second delivery, that first morning after the freeze-up. He never talked very much, and the most he’d ever said to me was where to deliver orders, but he came over when I was trying to get my mittens off, and said, “You’d better stay here in the store with Gus, and you might work on that ceiling some more when you get a chance; it’s needed it for a long time and you’re doing a good job on it. Till we get a thaw, the deliveries will have to be a shoulder job, and I’ll take care of it.”