Tallgrass

by Sandra Dallas

  Mom had been tired a lot, since before the camp opened, but she’d never had a spell like that. Suddenly, I wondered if she was sick, really sick, and she and Dad had been hiding it from me. I loved Mom more than anything in the world. She had always been our family’s strength. We wouldn’t have made it through the Depression without her. She’d scrimped so that we could pay the bills that kept the farm going, and she’d built up Dad’s spirits when he was ready to quit. What if something happens to her? I thought. How could Dad and I could go on without her?

  I looked at Granny, but she was licking her spoon, not paying attention. So I stared at the bedroom doorway, stared so hard that my eyes hurt. I clenched my hands and let my fingernails dig into my palms. Finally, Dad came back to the kitchen and sat down at the table, his head in his hands. He ran his fingers back through his hair, which had streaks of gray in it. I hadn’t noticed them before. Without looking up, he said, “Your mother didn’t want to tell you, Rennie, but you’re old enough to know what’s going on. She’s got heart trouble, had it for a while. She visited with a doctor last fall when she went to Denver to see Marthalice, and he wanted her to take to her bed right away. But you know your mother. She wouldn’t hear of it. She was afraid you and Granny would have to do all her work.” Dad looked up at me with sad eyes, eyes too old for him. His face was strained and wrinkled.

  Emory got up and poured coffee into Dad’s cup, and I thought it was a measure of how much the boys had become part of our family that Dad would talk about Mom’s health in front of them.

  “She doesn’t have to cook for us. We can start bringing our lunch,” Harry offered, and the other two nodded.

  “Mrs. Stroud wouldn’t like for you fellows to have to eat a cold dinner,” Dad said. He picked up his coffee cup, looked into it, and set it down without drinking. He told us he’d been thinking of hiring a neighbor lady to come in, maybe one of the Jolly Stitchers. “Rut who’s got time to spare during beet season?”

  We sat there thinking, when suddenly Granny jumped up and said, “Oh, I forgot all about my cake.” She rushed to the stove and opened the door, but the oven was cold, and there was no sign of a cake. “Somebody ate it.” She began crying.

  “It’s all right, Granny. Mary put it in the cupboard,” Dad said. But Mom hadn’t put it into the cupboard, because there hadn’t been any cake.

  “There’s Granny to think about, too.” Dad sighed. “It seems like her mind wanders out of her head more and more now. I don’t know what we’ll do.”

  I did, and I knew what I had to say. But I was silent for a long time, trying to get up the courage. There was no other solution. So in a rush, before I could change my mind, I blurted out, “I’ll stay out of school to help. I’ll go back when Mom’s better.” That was the hardest thing I’d ever had to say in my life. I knew if I quit school, I wouldn’t go back. Girls never did. I’d seen so many of them leave high school and sometimes even grade school to raise younger brothers and sisters or take the places of mothers who were sick or who’d died. Sometimes girls married when they weren’t much older than I was, just to get away from that drudgery. Still, nobody had to tell me that we were more important as a family than we were as individuals. Farm kids knew the farm mattered more than they did. If Mom and Dad needed me, school came second. I felt tears forming and squeezed the backs of my eyes so that I wouldn’t cry. I didn’t want Dad to know how awful I felt.

  He sighed and looked at me a long time before he spoke. “Not on your life,” he said at last. “Your mother would shoot me. She’s got plans for you.” Looking toward the bedroom, he reached over and squeezed my hand. “But you’re a good girl to offer, Rennie, an awful good girl.”

  I tried not to let him show how relieved I was. “Maybe Marthalice could move home for a little while,” I suggested.

  “No,” Dad said quickly. “No, that wouldn’t do.”

  The boys had finished their coffee, and Carl took their cups to the sink, washed them, and put them into the dish drainer.

  “I’ll think on this. It’s time to get to work,” Dad said, standing up and reaching for his plaid wool jacket on a hook beside the door.

  Before Dad could put on his coat, however, Carl said, “Mr. Stroud.”

  Dad looked over at him.

  “My sister could help out.”

  “Your sister?” Dad frowned. Carl had never mentioned his sister. I hadn’t thought much about the boys having families. I guess I felt their lives centered around us.

  “She’s got a job in the laundry at the camp, but I know she’d rather work for Mrs. Stroud. Daisy works hard. She used to clean houses on Saturdays. She can cook, too.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Dad said.

  Carl added quickly, “Not just Japanese food. Ham and eggs, meat loaf, sardines and crackers, stuff you people eat.” Carl walked close to the living room door and said in a loud voice, in case Mom was listening, “She sews real good.”

  “Maybe she can join the Jolly Stitchers,” Dad said, and looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

  Carl looked confused, because he’d seen the Jolly Stitchers the day they met at our house. “I don’t think so, Mr. Stroud. Daisy’s eighteen. She’s not an old lady.”

  “Don’t say that too loud, son,” Dad told him.

  SO DAISY CAME TO work for us. Mom and Dad fussed about it for a week before Mom agreed to give Daisy a try. She wasn’t keen on the idea. It was one thing having the boys working in the fields, even coming into the kitchen of a morning. But what would her friends think if she had a girl from the camp right in the house? “Henrietta Kruger will say we’ve been invaded by the Japanese,” Mom said.

  “Why don’t you tell her the Japanese are all right but that you have doubts about the Germans?” I suggested, and Dad snorted. He was sprawled in an easy chair he’d dragged into the bedroom so that he could sit beside the bed where Mom was resting. If we sat with her every few minutes, she was less liable to get up.

  Then Mom said she didn’t like the idea of another woman in her kitchen, but Dad scoffed. “You’ll get used to her just like you did the boys. I never heard you say you were crazy about washing dishes anyway.”

  “The money—” Mom said, but Dad interrupted.

  “I pay the boys nineteen dollars a month. Daisy’ll get fifteen. But if that’s too much, I reckon we could always keep Rennie out of school.”

  “Over my dead body,” Mom said. I looked at her, startled, and Mom laughed and said, “That’s a joke, Rennie.” Mom had assured us that she wasn’t going to die, that she only needed rest, but we still worried about her.

  “Daisy’ll be here only until you’re feeling better, which, bless God, won’t be too long,” Dad said.

  “I didn’t know you were acquainted with the Lord.”

  “How can you be a farmer and not believe in something? Besides, I’ve got to have somebody to blame for not sending rain.”

  Doc Enyeart said hiring Daisy was a good idea. “I guess you don’t have to rest if you don’t want to get well, Mary,” he told her one afternoon. “But if you’re planning on living awhile longer, you’d best find a hired girl.” He’d come to see Mom after going to Betty Joyce’s place, and Mom asked how Mr. Snow was doing. Betty Joyce was still missing school to help in the store.

  “Sometimes the cure is worse than the affliction.”

  “What are you saying, Doc?”

  “I’m not saying a thing. Illness is hard on the best of men.”

  “I know that, and Gus Snow isn’t the best of men,” Mom said. “Illness is hard on women, too.”

  “Women bear up better, in my experience.”

  “They haven’t got a choice. If you ask me, Tessie Snow has the worst of it, running that hardware store with next to no help. She’s all in.”

  “Gus helps when he can. They live behind the store, you know. He sits in the back room and tells her what to do.”

  “I’d consider that less than no help.”

  Wh
en the Jolly Stitchers found out Mom was ailing, they brought their casseroles and cakes, their cabbage rolls and carrot puddings. Mom drew strength from the women, even those she didn’t like so much, because their calling on her showed they cared. I learned a great deal about women during that time, about how in tough times, they pulled together, looked out for one another. They brought their first daffodils to Mom and sewed on their quilt squares while they gossiped and assured her she’d be all right. As the women took turns sitting in the easy chair next to the bed, Mom told them she was going to hire a girl from the camp. If they heard about Daisy from her, she thought, they might not be as critical. Mom was wrong about that.

  “Mary Stroud! Have you forgotten poor Susan Reddick?” Bird Smith asked. “It’s a day that should always be remembered.” Mrs. Smith was a stocky woman who wore a black wool coat and anklets with her high-heeled oxfords. Her clothes were too small for her. She told the Jolly Stitchers once that she always ordered them from the Montgomery Ward catalog, and that she’d been the same size since Woodrow Wilson was elected—the first term.

  “Do you mean the same size as Woodrow Wilson?” Mrs. Gardner had asked. Mrs. Smith had sent her a stern look, but the other Stitchers had giggled.

  “Of course I haven’t forgotten about Susan Reddick,” Mom replied, scratching at the tail of a piece of floss that had come loose on her embroidered pillow. Mom was propped up against a design of windmills and Dutch girls. “I don’t see what my hiring a Japanese girl has to do with Susan getting killed.” Mom looked directly at her, and I wondered if Mrs. Smith knew her husband had been one of the men at Tallgrass. If she did, she didn’t mention it. But then, nobody ever talked about that night.

  “It was a Jap that done it. Everybody knows that.”

  “It certainly wasn’t a Japanese girl.”

  “It could have been a Jap girl that left that door unlocked.” Mrs. Smith’s mouth was a thin, straight line, and she clutched her pocketbook against her coat. I hadn’t offered to take her coat because I knew that Mom didn’t want her staying long. If Mrs. Smith settled in and took out her stitching, she’d be there till the second hoeing.

  “The Reddicks didn’t employ any Japanese.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Smith said. “I think that’s beside the point. But it’s your fudge. I guess I’ll let you cook it.”

  Mom lay back against the pillows and sent me a pleading look. So I went to her side and said, “The doctor’s going to get mad again if you don’t rest up.”

  Mrs. Smith stood up. “I just came to cheer you, Mary. That’s all.”

  “And you have, Bird, you and your liver pudding. How can I ever thank you?”

  When I walked her to the door, Mrs. Smith told me, “That pudding’s for your mother, little girl. You’re not to eat it.”

  “Oh, no, ma’am. I wouldn’t eat it in a million years.”

  Mrs. Reddick came after that. When I told her that Mom was asleep, she asked, “Will you let me just sit by her side? It gets so I can’t stand to be at home sometimes.” So Mrs. Reddick sat in the easy chair, her little spotted hands folded in her lap while she stared at the roses on the wallpaper; then she lifted her eyes to the ceiling, which was papered in a brown-and-white feather design. After a while, she began piecing a Sunbonnet Sue block, just like those in the bloodied quilt I’d found in Susan’s room. I couldn’t imagine why she’d make another quilt in that design, but she must have had her reasons.

  “Rennie should have woke me,” Mom said when she opened her eyes.

  “I told her not to. There’s nothing that heals like sleep,” Mrs. Reddick said.

  “Do you sleep, Opal?”

  Mrs. Reddick shook her head, then said brightly, “I brought you an apple brown Betty.”

  “In the midst of tribulation, you are thinking of others.” Mom patted Mrs. Reddick’s hand and studied her a moment before saying that a girl from the camp was coming to work for us.

  I thought Mrs. Reddick wouldn’t approve of that, but she said, “Why, that’s fine, Mary. Elmo hired me the little Jack girl, the one who’s so slow. He told her he couldn’t pay her much, and she said that was okay, since she didn’t work much.”

  “And was she right?”

  “Oh, yes,” Mrs. Reddick said. “I don’t mind. I like having someone there. It just gets so lonely.” Her lip trembled, and she bit down on it. Then she took Mom’s hand and said, “I wish I had one of my girls.”

  “Elmo won’t let Helen come home?”

  “He won’t let me even mention Helen. He says she’s not worth it, that she shamed us by marrying Bobby Archuleta, who’s no good. He’s right, of course. Bobby scared me a little, and maybe he scared Helen, too. Just a year ago, I had two daughters. Now I’ve got none.” She stood and squeezed Mom’s hand. “It’s turkey one day, feathers the next. But when I’m in town, I sneak into the drugstore to see Helen. She works there. She has a little girl now, named for Susan.”

  I was getting to feel like a regular stationmaster by the time Mrs. Larsoo called. She was as big as a silo and old, and she carried a handkerchief because her nose ran for no reason. She touched the wrinkled square of cotton to her face and asked Mom how she was feeling, but before Mom could reply, Mrs. Larsoo said, “That Jap girl isn’t to sew with the Jolly Stitchers. She might stitch some secret message into the quilt.”

  Mom, who was resting on the sofa with an afghan over her, chuckled and asked, “Now what could a girl from the camp know that she could relay to anybody?”

  Mrs. Larsoo sniffed. “You can’t be too careful.” She, too, took out a quilt square, a V for Victory design done in browns and blacks, and began embroidering around the Vs with heavy black floss in a chicken-scratch design.

  “We’re not making quilts for Tojo, Iris. The next one, that Lady in the White House quilt, goes to the minister at the church.”

  “There you are. The girl’s probably a Buddha or something. She’ll stitch a message from the Antichrist into it.”

  “Daisy’s family is Methodist,” Mom told her.

  “You are making a mistake, Mary. I am wiser than you. I am seventy-six years of age.” She looped the floss around her needle and made a big black knot like a squashed fly.

  Mom sighed. “Why tell me, Iris? I don’t have anything to do with your age.”

  THE DAY BEFORE DAISY went to work for us, I came out of the A&P and found Beancr Jack sitting on the bench near the door, cleaning his fingernails with his pocketknife. “I hear you got a Jap sister now,” he said. I was sorry he knew about Daisy. Why does everybody seem to know about our business? I wondered.

  “She’s going to be the hired girl.”

  “You think she can see the dirt with those slanty eyes?” asked Danny Spano, who was hunched over beside Beaner, his forearms on his thighs.

  “Careful the yellow don’t rub off on your dishes,” Beaner said, and they both cracked up.

  “Good one, Beaner.” Edna Elliot came out of the store just then and stood so close to me that I had to move aside.

  Beaner looked up at Edna. “Well, I’m damned. Did you say something, fatso?”

  Edna’s face fell, and her lower lip trembled. She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye, but I decided lightning would strike her dead before I’d defend her again. Then Danny said, “Ah, can it, Beaner. She’s okay.”

  “You want her, you take her.” Beaner pinched Danny’s arm so hard that Danny flinched. “So long, boy.”

  Danny got up and stood a little ways apart.

  I started for home down the Tallgrass Road, and after a few minutes I had a feeling that someone was behind me. I turned quickly, thinking it was one of the Japanese from the camp. Instead, it was Danny, and he yelled, “Hey.” I kept on going, hoping he’d turn back. “Wait up,” he called. He reached me and took hold of my arm. “When’s your sister coming home?” Marthalice had gone to the pictures and to school dances with Danny, and sometimes she’d flirted with him at the drugstore. But Mom and Dad never like
d her dating Danny, because they said he was wild, and they were glad when she started going out with Hank Gantz.

  I shrugged.

  “What’s her address in Denver? Maybe I’ll look her up the next time I’m there.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Don’t remember, or won’t tell me?”

  With my foot, I nudged a rock out of the road and kicked it into the ditch.

  “You’re just as stuck-up as your sister.” Danny tightened his grip on my arm until I looked him in the face. His eyes weren’t mean, but they were dark, blacker even than Carl’s eyes, and he scared me. “Aw, you can both go to hell.”

  I SUPPOSE THAT WE expected Daisy to have tiny bones and long, straight hair, to move about silently, talk in whispers, and treat us deferentially. I thought she’d dress simply, maybe wear a kimono. Or that she might even turn out to be the girl with the saddle shoes. Whoever we had expected, she was not the Daisy who showed up with Carl.

  She was taller than her brother. Her hair was cut in a pageboy, and it was as dark as midnight. Daisy wore rouge and red fingernail polish. She had on a plaid pleated skirt and a cashmere sweater set with rhinestone scatter pins across the left shoulder.

  Daisy wiped the bottoms of her shoes on the boot scraper beside the back door, then came inside “hell-bent for election,” as Dad said. She pushed her glasses up on her nose as she grinned. Before Carl could introduce her, she put her hands on her hips and announced, “Hi ya, I’m Daisy. Everybody here doing good?”

  Dad leaned back in his chair and smiled at Mom, who was sitting at the kitchen table in her housecoat. She gaped at Daisy as Dad said, “Yes, ma’am. And how about yourself?”

  “A-okay.” Daisy pinched her thumb and dog finger together before she turned to me. “You’ve got to be Rennie. How’s the world been treating you, Rennie? Okeydokey?”

  “Okeydokey,” I repeated.

  “That’s good. You going to help me with the breakfast dishes, or do you have to go to school?”