The Other New Girl

by LB Gschwandtner

  Soon we came to a different neighborhood of small, compact houses, clapboard with wooden shutters painted in colonial colors, with front yards and little gardens. I looked out the window past China—I didn’t want to look out Dieter’s side—and then we were winding our way from traffic light to traffic light until we came to a sign that said Rittenhouse Square. Lovely, large mansions surrounding a park with stately old trees. People were walking dogs, sitting on benches reading, a police station at one corner, and a fancy hotel at another. We drove around the park until we turned off at a side street, turned again, drove for a few blocks then stopped. I think it was Pine Street where we pulled up in front of a brick house that looked old but had obviously been restored, like the others on down the street. It was the kind of block that, except for the cars, could have looked the same a hundred years in the past. Preserved like a dried flower, picked at its peak and locked away like a bug in amber. The front garden was incredibly tidy with not a leaf on the ground or a stem out of place. This would be our home for the next four nights. It looked crisp, inviting, if unadorned.

  We unloaded the car while Mrs. Brownell rapped the doorknocker up and down. After a few minutes an old lady opened the door and put one foot outside on the stoop, peering at Mrs. Brownell. It took a few seconds for recognition to flood her face.

  “Oh, Elizabeth,” she flung her arms around Mrs. Brownell. “Thee have arrived. I’ve been waiting and waiting. Just ask Virgy. And where’s that boy of mine?”

  “Right here, mother,” Mr. Brownell took the steps up to her two at a time. They embraced as if they hadn’t seen each other in years.

  “But it’s chilly out here. November has arrived, I can tell thee. Virgy set the fire going in the living room so it would be toasty warm for all of thee.” She looked beyond Mr. Brownell to the rest of us standing on the sidewalk by the suitcases.

  “Come in, children,” she motioned with a wave of her hand for us to come up the stairs. “Thee are all welcome.”

  “Mother,” Mr. Brownell stopped at the door, “Elizabeth is not staying. Remember I told thee she’s visiting her Aunt Martha for the weekend? Her aunt took sick and she’s so wanted to see Elizabeth.”

  “Oh yes, dear, I do remember that. Virgy,” she called out. “Bring my daughter-in-law those car keys I left on the hook, please.”

  I could have sworn I was watching an episode of Leave it To Beaver, the way they talked to each other. But then Virgy arrived with the keys while we were all standing there on the steps waiting to get into the house. Virgy must have been about a hundred, stooped over, with wiry gray hair and gnarled finger joints. She walked bent to one side and her dress hung loosely as if she had at one time been a much larger woman. Her skin was medium beige and one eye was cloudy gray.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Ladling at the Soup Kitchen

  WE GOT UP BEFORE DAWN, STUMBLED AROUND IN THE DARK in unfamiliar rooms, me and Faith in one room, China and Arlene in another with a shared bathroom between, Donald Wingart and Dieter up under the roof eaves in bunk beds. Our floor had a toilet, sink, and small shower in one corner. We were told to wear jeans and sneakers, shirts and sweaters because it would be cold most of the time, not to carry any money and not to wear any jewelry. We were not to wear any gloves or hats or anything that we would have to take off during the day because there would be nowhere to store it safely and the mission would not be responsible for anything lost or stolen.

  Until that morning, fumbling around in the dark, I hadn’t really thought about what to expect. I’d been so focused on avoiding going to my uncle’s that the reality of here and now had escaped me. But pulling up a pair of old jeans and grabbing a sweatshirt, that I mistakenly put on backwards and then had to slide my arms back out of to turn it around right, it occurred to me that the situation at a shelter on Thanksgiving week might not be a whole lot of fun.

  That was when I began to worry about the people who would be there for free food. Icky people. Dirty people. Sick people. Thugs, thieves, or worse.

  “Faith?” I called into the dark. She had pulled open a shade so I sensed where she was over by the one window. I didn’t remember where the light switch was in our room or that there was a small lamp between the twin beds.

  “What?”

  “You’ve done these mission things before, right?”

  “Not really. All I’ve done is work camps and sit-ins.”

  “You mean like lunch counter sit-ins?”

  “Right.”

  “Where?”

  “In Philadelphia. Last year.”

  This was news. It would be three more months before the term sit-in became a common part of our language, a full three years before the images of fire hoses and German shepherds turned on demonstrators in Birmingham erupted on the one black-and-white TV in the rec room of Foxhall school.

  “What happened?”

  “A group of Quakers from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting organized an interracial group and we went to the Woolworth’s counter downtown. It was very orderly.”

  “But I don’t understand. There’s no segregation here.”

  “No but there’s something called de facto segregation and that’s an integral part of racism in this country.”

  Although this was my first introduction to the term, de facto segregation was an accepted part of life. It was like the kitchen staff at Foxhall or the series of black women who’d lived, one after the other, in the room behind our kitchen in the house where I grew up. From them I learned how to cook and sew, how to take care of my personal needs, what it was like to feel safe with another person. All things I should have learned from my mother.

  A soft vapor of daylight, the slightest whisper as if filtered through cheesecloth, now outlined vague shapes as it crept into our room, defining that momentary patch between night and day. We finished dressing, brushed our teeth, and headed downstairs. The others joined us and Mr. Brownell’s mother met us at the front door.

  “I wanted to give thee a good breakfast before thee leave but my son insists that everyone eat at the mission. Thee will be fine.” She smiled at us, a cheerful and patient smile. Wisps of white hair surrounded her face, giving her the look of one of those medieval angels. She reminded me a little of my grandmom, Bess, who’d read me Heidi in weekly installments when I was nine, the year my mother was in the hospital for thirteen months. The one time I saw my mother that year, she had a blank expression on her face as if someone had conked her on the head and left her in a daze. I think I felt like Heidi, stuck up on that mountain with the old man, secluded from everything but goats and cows and wildflowers and snowcapped peaks. But my isolation was not of the physical sort.

  “I’ll be here when thee get back.”

  She waved us out the door and we stepped into the cold morning and the waiting van with Mr. Brownell at the wheel. It didn’t take long to get there. None of us said a word on the way. I wanted to ask if anyone else was nervous, but I didn’t dare and told myself to stop sniveling and just get through it. As we parked, we could already see the line that had formed outside the old stone building. I imagined greasy sausages and stale bread, powdered eggs like the kind I’d once had at a summer camp and retched up before swim practice. My stomach was already in revolt at the thought of sharing what these people were about to gobble down for free and I imagined taking a cab over to the fancy hotel my parents had booked us into the weekend they’d brought me to Foxhall for my interview. I tried to remember the name of it in case I could make a break for it but then remembered we had not taken any money along. So I was trapped here. I decided to keep my head down, do what I was told, and not really look at anybody.

  They came in shifts. The first would be the breakfast shift. Lydia was the organizer of this Thanksgiving soup kitchen, a small, thick-waisted woman wearing overalls and big, brown, tie-up shoes that looked like they’d seen more time in a garden than a soup kitchen—which, as it turned out, was a misnomer since no soup was served the whole time. The do
ors for breakfast opened at seven and closed at ten. Then would be the cleanup and cooking for the afternoon shift, which began at three and ended at nine.

  The hall, as Lydia called it, was the hulled out remains of a rather broken down old stone church—Baptist we were told—that had moved to classier quarters and taken the gift of the old church as a charitable tax deduction, which I didn’t understand since churches were already tax exempt.

  Lydia gave each of us a task. She spoke abruptly, not with any ill will, but as one who has a lot to do and not much time to do it in.

  “You,” she pointed to Dieter with a stubby index finger, “carry plates and bowls and stack them here.” Again she pointed, this time to the nearest end of a long serving table.

  “And you,” she pointed to China, “stack the cups over there and you,” she pointed to Arlene, “lay out the silverware and napkins.”

  She motioned for little Donald Wingart to follow her. The next time we saw him he was struggling to control a huge steaming vat of something that I could smell but not place as anything I had previously eaten. I almost laughed to see him behind this metal tub; almost as large as the tuba he sported back at school. I thought we must all be destined for something and poor old Donald was to be always half hidden by some huge metal object. I could have no idea that one day, not too long after we had all left Foxhall behind, he would be hidden from view behind an eight-inch self-propelled howitzer somewhere in Vietnam. But on this morning, it looked like he was about to give in to the weight of his burden. I saw his legs buckle a little at the knees so I grabbed a couple of dishtowels and rushed over.

  “Donald,” I breathed, “here, let me help you.”

  I clamped my hands, bound in the towels to avoid burning my fingers from the hot vat, under the handles to support Donald’s grip and together we kind of waddled the huge thing over to one of the long serving tables. After we set it down, Donald seemed unable to extricate himself from the handles sticking out at the sides of the vat.

  “Hey,” I said. “You can let go now.”

  “I . . . can’t.”

  Poor guy had gripped the handles so hard he couldn’t let go. So I gingerly took each finger and loosened it from the big potholders. Some of the stew—I finally got a look inside the vat and determined it was some kind of meat, potatoes, vegetable thing in a thick broth—had slopped over and stuck his pot holders to the handles.

  “Are your hands burned?” I continued peeling his fingers away one by one.

  “I don’t think so. Maybe a little. Maybe just my thumb.”

  He held it up. It looked red but there was no break in the skin and no blistering.

  “Maybe you should ask for some first aid,” I suggested.

  “No. I don’t want to be a bother. I’ll put it in cold water for a minute.”

  He turned to go to the kitchen, I assumed to run his hand under a faucet, but then he turned back to me.

  “Thank you,” he said, looking at the ground like he was embarrassed.

  “That’s okay,” I said. I thought about Moll. They would be a perfect pair, it seemed to me. They’d never look at each other. Maybe they’d be able to hold hands in the dark. Or maybe they’d both love music. The thought made me bold.

  “Hey, Donald,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “Hey you know you should come to a dance at school sometime.”

  He looked up then and his gaze met mine. He looked stunned as if I’d seriously suggested he fly to the moon on a broomstick.

  “Why?” was all he said.

  “Well, you might meet someone, you know, a girl, and get to talking and find out you have a lot in common. And maybe you’d get to like each other.” I shrugged. “It’s just a thought.”

  He did turn then and disappeared into the kitchen.

  “When the doors open,” Lydia told us by way of warning, “you’ll have to move fast to keep up the line. We don’t want any traffic jams here.”

  She and Mr. Brownell brought in more vats of food and Donald went back again and again carrying trays of bread, jams, honey, sugar, large pitchers of milk and juice. Mr. Brownell brought in and placed on the serving table what I figured to be the world’s largest coffee urn and ran a cord back somewhere to a plug.

  There was no bacon or sausage as I had expected. One vat was filled with chipped beef, which I had never seen before. Another with slabs of ham. There was French toast, piles and piles of it. Grapefruits cut up, and a huge griddle with dozens of eggs frying and getting flipped by Mr. Brownell himself.

  Once it was all in place, a bell rang. Not like the bells at Foxhall, more like an alarm clock, which is what it turned out to be, stuck back in what passed for a kitchen behind us, where huge industrial ovens had been installed along with a gigantic gas range with twelve burners. I had never seen anything like it nor have I since. It must have been army surplus from World War II because where else would such a contraption ever be needed? When the bell sounded, Lydia slid a long bar through two iron rings on the front doors, pulled them back, and placed a large stone against each one. The people who’d been waiting outside the door crowded into the church in a long line that funneled through the big hall set up with row after row of long tables and benches.

  “Take your time,” Lydia called out. “No need to push or rush. Plenty for everyone. All are welcome.” She repeated this song over and over.

  The people surged forward in an orderly way although it occurred to me, seeing how many there were, that if anything set them off we could all be trampled like the running of the bulls in Pamplona.

  Then there was the sound of it all. Shuffling feet, scraping chairs, the bumping of plates onto tables, clinking of silverware, slurping, chewing, raising forks and spoons to mouths and then dipping down for more and repeat, repeat, repeat. Even the pulling apart of bread, with so many hands attending to this task, had a sound, like a muffled pillow fight through the other side of a wall.

  Faith and I were assigned to dishing out food onto plates held out to us by shaky hands, dirty hands, hands in gloves with tattered fingers, men’s hands, women’s hands and then, what I had never expected and finally what made me look into the eyes of these diners, children’s hands, small, neat, needing both hands to hold a heaping plate.

  The first gaze I met, reluctantly, but I could not stop myself from looking up from the big spoon in my hand. Those first eyes, full of pain and longing and fear, and yes, friendship and trust; those eyes gazing into mine, no barrier between us; those eyes, dark circles floating in white, surrounded by silken chocolate skin, wide cheeks and below the eyes a little mouth almost curled in a shy smile, which, when I spooned on a slab of ham beside the fried egg—over easy—murmured the words, almost so low I could not hear them, “Thank you, ma’am,” so disturbed the mistrust I had brought with me that I answered, without thinking, “You’re welcome, honey. Enjoy it.”

  Of all the things I could have said that day, why I said that remains a mystery but it must have been simply the conditioned response of someone who’s been taught manners. As was hers.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Talk of Politics

  BY THE TIME WE FINISHED DOLING OUT THE LAST THANKS-giving meal of turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberries, green beans, and pumpkin pie to the last of the thousands of people who had marched in what seemed like an endless line of hands holding out plates, and we had piled into the school van for the trip back to Mrs. Brownell’s upstairs bedrooms, we were all depleted and at the same time, in a way that I never expected, uplifted. On that last morning, old Mrs. Brownell was allowed to make us all breakfast. Elizabeth Brownell had returned and she helped in the kitchen. We ate like we’d been starved although we’d done nothing but look at, dish out, cook up, and clean up food for three days. It was one thing to be doing the serving and another to be served.

  “Well,” Mr. Brownell said as he pulled his chair up to the table, “a moment of silence is in order.”

  We held hands around
the table and lowered our heads. It lasted less than ten seconds, I would say, this moment of silence, until we let go of each other’s hands. I was seated between Faith and Elizabeth Brownell. I didn’t mind them touching me and was glad I didn’t have to hold hands with Dieter at all. It was in these moments of silence, when according to the tenets of Quakerism, I was supposed to be allowing the spirit to move from within and give me—what? —guidance, hope, charity, peace, fulfillment, a sense of my place in the world? Or all of these together perhaps. And in those moments, I invariably found myself thinking about what was wrong in my world, what was wrong with me, who had insulted or injured me, who I would like nothing better than to get back at, who was annoying me at the moment. Or a song would get stuck in my head and repeat itself until I just wanted to scream.

  Yet on this day, after serving food to so many strangers whose needs were absolutely basic, that little girl’s eyes came to me and I thought: I will try to do better, to be better, to think of others more than myself. This thought glanced by me so quickly I barely recognized it and then with not a space between it and the next, I thought: Wes, what are you doing right now?

  With the kind of smile that crinkles the eyes, Mr. Brownell raised his round head and we let go of each other’s hands. There was a general shuffling, not nearly so pronounced as in that big hall with all the tables, but like a miniature version, as we took up our forks and spoons and reached for hot rolls and passed each other plates of waffles and eggs and cut-up fruit.

  “I read some rather disturbing projections in the paper last week,” old Mrs. Brownell said out of nowhere.

  “What were those, Mother?” Mr. Brownell spooned some mixed fruit into a small bowl for himself.