by Tillie Olsen
Outside, the charred bodies of the chicks lay where Anna had thrown them. That night, the snow covered them. Four days later, the sun rose at last over a vast white world, pure and unmoving.
It was ten days before Jim returned. Where he went or what he did, he never told.
Early in March, Mazie and Will wandered to a high wood where hidden wild violets with tears in their eyes carpeted the ground. Restless, Mazie pressed herself into the earth, but the soft dankness brought a faint remembrance of a face like jelly pushed against hers. Shuddering, she got up again. “Butterflies live behind your eyes, Will, butterflies. Their wings all colored. You dont believe me? Go ahead and try it—push your finger in your eye and you’ll see ’em, butterfly wings.”
Ugly and ugly the earth. Patches of soiled snow oozing away, leaving the ground like great dirty sores between, scabs of old leaves that like a bruise hid the violets underneath. Trees, fat with oily buds, and the swollen breasts of prairie. Ugly. She turned her eyes to the sky for oblivion, but it was bellies, swollen bellies, black and corpse gray, puffing out baggier and baggier, cloud belly on cloud belly till at the zenith they pushed vast and swollen. Her mother. Night, sweating bodies. The blood and pain of birth. Nausea groveled. “Think I’m lyin, just push your finger in your eyes and you’ll see. Butterflies.” She could feel words swollen big within her, words coming out with pain, bloody, all clothed in red. She began to hit Will, hard, ferocious. Then a weakness of tears—“Wouldja live in a room all breath, all winter breath?” He was raining small futile blows on her, blows unfelt. “Oh Will, Oh were I a Lum Ti Turn Turn.” Ugly. Swollen like bellies.
She wakened that night to a nightmare of Jim’s savage hand on her shoulder. “Wake up now. Your mother’s goin to have a baby, and you’ve got to help her. I’m drivin over to Ellis’s and takin Will and Ben. You put on water for me, now, right away.”
The nausea came again. In the kitchen her mother was sitting, on her face a look of not seeing, although the black gates of her eyes opened on something too far to see to.
“Momma,” Mazie cried, frightened, pressing her head in her mother’s knees. “Momma.”
For a moment Anna turned her eyes to her, with a look compassionate and troubled. “It’s all right, Mazie. I’m beginnin to have the baby. It’s my time. I told Jim not to leave you.” Then her face masked into a stranger’s again, and her body stiffened, her hand clutching the chair back. Spacing her words, she said, “Better fire up the stove. Then come in the bedroom and help me fix up the bed.”
The blackened fire leaped under her touch to embers and later to flame. Cheerlessly the water fled into the bucket and teakettle. But there was still the bedroom to be faced. She found her mother quietly kneeling before a drawer, holding a sheet. “Here,” she said in a remote voice, “we’ll put this one on. Then get out those newspapers.”
“Yes, Momma.” A nausea was gathering into her breast, clotting there. “Yes.”
They came at last so that she could flee into the night. But the clatter of their voices came after. Uneven words. She clutched herself and sank into the soft dust. A forlorn wind fingered her hair and went gently over her body. But the nausea contested there, unmoving. Yes, Momma. The face set like a mask, purified, austere. To fix her mind to a time of dancing when laughter rose like froth; but the face curtained over everything. Yes, Momma. Miss Burgum was saying something about a dry birth, the waters broke. She crept into the henhouse, not to hear. Full and quiet in the darkness the house lay and the fields beyond.
Then, strangely, hunger came. Trickles of it in her mouth, battling under the nausea. Food—the smell of it yearned in her nostrils. She found an egg, warm. It slipped down her throat, then it was washing up again, spurting over the ground. Yes, Momma. I’m sick, Momma. Butterflies live behind your eyes. Perhaps there were stars above, known stars. Light, weightless, she walked out to the yard, the earth under her feet like air, and turned her face to the heavens. Pale, half drowned, blurred like through tears, the stars. Where was the belted man Caldwell had told her of, lifting his shield against a horn of stars? Where was the bright one she had run after into the sunset? A strange face, the sky grieved above her, gone suddenly strange like her mother’s.
After a long while she felt a drenching mist. Rain, she thought without thinking. A shadow of rain. Back in the henhouse, she heard it descend upon the earth, gentle and grieving. Perhaps after a while she slept. A half sleep into which voices came. “Now. Push hard now, Anna. Did you boil the spoon? I have to use it. Hard, Anna.”
Then a cry, ecstatic, profound, shattered the night, and a thin wail wove it under. It was dawn. Her father’s arms were carrying her into the house through the gray and lonely light, his voice saying, “looked … so long … you tired? Big-eyes … I had to leave you in the rain…
The sleep still lay on her eyes, or was it sleeplessness? Yellow light flowered before her eyes in the warmth of the kitchen. “Her breasts cracked, so it’ll be no fun feedin the youngun,” someone was saying, and “Where’d you find her, Jim?”
Bess cradled her. “You really set on leaving, Jim?”
“You know it’s no use to stay.”
“But what if you cant get on at the slaughter-house?”
“I’m goin anyhow. Soon as Anna’s fit to. We cant stay here.”
“Things wont be better, Jim. They cant be … You go to sleep now, Mazie. Everything’s all right.”
“They cant be worse. Anyway, I’ve got to try.”
“Life,” heavily from Ellen Burgum. “Life’s no bottle of perfume. I’m tired enough to die.”
Two figures moving with pain in the dawn darkness, in the vapor mist. Two voices lashed by a dry and savage wind, bringing strangely the scent of lilac.
“Almost time now, Anna. We’d better go.”
“Yes, it’s so quiet now, Jim.”
“Mr. Burgum’s waiting.”
“You’d think you could hear somebody’s rooster. Doesnt seem like other mornin’s we woke up to work in.”
“No. C’mon, Anna. Let’s go. Now.”
“Funny how Will cried all last night, and Mazie wouldn’t sleep but in the hay. You’d think children wouldn’t care.”
“Anna—they’re waiting.”
“This hay smells good. I’d like to breathe it in so’s not ever to forget.”
“Right away now, or we’ll miss the train.”
“Right away now Jim…. What’s the matter, life never lets anything be? Just a year ago … I tried for us to have a good life.”
One word, austere. “Anna.”
The two figures blur into one, gnarled and lonely. Very low he says: “You’re shivering. Cold?”
“Awful cold. Lets go. Now.”
“But you cant take it lyin down—like a dawg. You cant, Anna.”
FIVE
Myriad and drumming, the feet of sound move always through these crooked streets, trembling the shoddy houses, jerking the skeleton children who scream and laugh so senselessly to uneven rhythms they themselves know not of. Monster trucks shake by, streetcars plunge, machinery rasps and shrieks. Far underneath thinly quiver the human noises—weeping and scolding and tired words that slip out in monosyllables and are as if never spoken; sighs of lust, and guttural, the sigh of weariness; laughter sometimes, but this sound can scarcely be called human, not even in the mouths of children. A fog of stink smothers down over it all—so solid, so impenetrable, no other smell lives beside it. Human smells, crotch and underarm sweat, the smell of cooking or of burning, all are drowned under, merged into the vast unmoving stench.
That stench is a reminder—a proclamation—I rule here. It speaks for the packing houses, heart of all that moves in these streets; gigantic heart—pumping over the artery of viaducts the men and women who are the streets’ lifeblood, nourishing the taverns and brothels and rheumy-eyed stores, bulging out the soiled and exhausted houses, and multiplying into these children playing so mirthlessly in their street yards where flower only lamppost
s. (They say this heart pumps lifeblood far and far—thin and blue the vein—to nourish a rare and cherished few in purest air where scents flower under glass and in hundred-dollar perfume bottles.)
A man’s face, heavy and sullen (strange and bright the blue of his eyes), moves here awhile and is gone Jim; a woman’s face, thinning, skin tightening over the broad cheekbones, the great dark eyes down a terrace of sunken flesh, fading until the eyelids shut over forever Anna. A child’s thin face looks up a moment, wondering dazed eyes Mazie; a boy’s face, scowl over the mouth, eyes hurt with the hurt of not understanding, then insane with anger Will. On this face, half baby’s, half child’s, the breath of fever glows, closing the sober eyes; a tiny boy running along croons a song that is silenced; a tiny girl’s fists beat the air, stiffening, stiffened Ben, Jimmie, Baby Bess.
Yes, it is here Jim and Anna Holbrook have come to live. (Old and familiar the streets to them, the scenery of their childhood, rearranged.) Over the cobbled streets, past the two blocks of dump and straggling grass, past the human dump heap where the nameless FrankLloydWrights of the proletariat have wrought their wondrous futuristic structures out of flat battered tin cans, fruit boxes and gunny sacks, cardboard and mother earth. In this ancient battered house that leans over the river. What matter the second story, windowless and roofless, the paper-thin boards, the dirt which has eaten into and become a part of the walls? It has a space that might be called a yard, and when the wind blows hard to the west, you can smell river and dump instead of packing house.
(And beauty? Until the mammoth stone beauty of the city has carved itself into their blood, the children can lie on their bellies near the edge of the cliff and watch the trains and freights, the glittering railroad tracks, the broken bottles dumped below, the rubbish moving on the littered belly of the river.)
“See, Anna,” says Jim. “It’s got a yard for the kids. They wont be runnin out in the streets to play, anyhow. And just think, runnin water with a faucet and a toilet inside the house. We never had that before.”
“No” (trying not to see or smell).
“And electric lights. Hey, over there, kids—you ever see electric lights in the house? And electric lights if we want.”
“If we want?”
“You know what I mean, if we can fork over. We’ll have ’em too, quickern a hen could lay an egg.”
“Yes. Lets go inside, Jim.” (Holding Baby Bess to her nostrils, holding Bess against the corrosive eating into her heart.)
“Sure—and four rooms. Say, what’s the matter with you? Lookin as if you’re seein a corpse. I know this aint no palace, but you ought to see what other folks are livin in for what we’re payin.”
“Sure, Jim, I know it’s a real find. Guess I’m tired, that’s all.”
“Ma,” said Ben, running up, “what smells so awful funny? It makes me sick to my tummy, Ma. It smell like this all the time?”
When Anna made Will and Mazie ready for school that first morning, she stood them up against the wall and said fiercely, “You two got a chance to really learn something now; you’re goin to a good school, not a country one. I catch you not doin good and I’ll knock the livin daylights out of you, you hear?”
But Mazie hated it. The first day: “Mazie and Will Holbrook have come from the country where they grow the corn and wheat and all our milk comes from say hello to Mazie and Will children.” Her palm held in Will’s moist with fear. A big room, biggern the whole country school, squirming with faces, staring. (Whatcha shiverin for, you scairt? Me? Scared?) Faces mad and tired and scared and hungry and dead and their eyes like they want to eat you up. No, dont look at the faces, look out the window—but it is greasy, like drippings was smeared all over, and stink comes in from the top, comes in and fills the room. All the faces (if her heart wouldn’t beat so fast) … Dont look, read the funny words on the blackboard—Na-tion-al-it-ies American Armenian Bohemian Chinese Croatian (Croatian—that was what ol’ man Kvaternick was, ol’ man Kvaternick in the mine and he was dead now, dead. Worms … no, dont think of ol’ man Kvaternick) Irish French Italian Jewish Lith … A face was black, black like when the men come up from the mine, blacker; lots of faces were black. Maybe the mine was here too, maybe kids had to live in the mine here like they had to live in gunnysack houses, maybe the whistle would be again, but the whistle was all the time now. Mexican Negro Polish Portuguese. If her heart beat any faster she would have to scream and all the faces would turn and look, … One face was honey color—honey like on the farm. The farm. It is just a dream, a bad dream, and it really is the farm, really the farm, in a minute now you will get awake, and it will be the farm again.
At recess, her heart quieting, telling two girls, Annamae and Ellie, about riding a horse, somebody hissed: “So ya come from the country where our milk comes from; ya learn about bulls?” and smack, a head butted her in the stomach. Bewildered, gasping for breath, swaying, she heard Annamae laugh, “Oh, Smoky, didja put that one over,” and in a darkness of rage and hatred she lunged at him, but already he was across the playground, his too big shirt flapping in the wind, his angular face jeering. And then she turned to Ellie and shoved her down, and turned to Annamae to shove her down, but the teacher was holding her shoulder, steering her inside the school. “Perhaps you indulged in rough play of this nature where you came from, but we do not permit it here, nor does it go unpunished.” Mazie could still see Smoky’s jeering face. “Lemme alone,” she cried and, making her body a hard ball of force, wrenched herself free. Then, paralyzed at what she had done, she stood in front of them all and began to cry. Hearing Will savagely whisper to someone next to him, “That aint my sister, that aint my sister,” she cried louder and louder, uncontrollably.
That night they went to the Bedners, old friends Jim and Anna hadn’t seen for seven years. Alex was doing well—he was a tool and die maker now. They lived in a five-room house with a piano and a stained-glass window, and it didn’t smell around there, except when the wind blew strong from the south. They went on a streetcar, the kids’ first ride, but only Will seemed jubilant. Jimmie and Bess slept, Ben was sick all the way, and Mazie kept looking out the window with her eyes shut tight. Anna, kept smoothing her hair and passing her hand over the lines in her face.
Else let out a cry of pain when she saw her: “Why, Anna, honey, you’ve changed so, I wouldn’t hardly’ve known you.”
“But a lot happens in seven years,” Anna reminded her.
“So it does, so it does,” Else agreed and began to cry. She was fat and smelled too sweet and had on a tight yellow dress. “So you’re Anna’s little man,” she said to Will, tears still on her face. “Give an old friend a kiss.” But Will wouldn’t. He ran over to the piano and banged it, and Jim had to slap him before he would kiss her.
Everything was strained and shaken. Jimmie and Will ran into the other rooms to watch the electric lights on the ceiling and turn them on and off. Alex cleared his throat, then Jim cleared his, and then they smoked cigars in silence. In a low voice Else was saying to Anna, “So stuck up around here … So lonesome I could die … such a brood … and we cant even manage to get one … been to all the doctors … just breaks my heart …”
On a little table there were a lot of magazines. Screen Star and True Confession. Mazie turned the pages—there were pictures in them of men and la-dies smiling, or kissing. Alex, his thumb in his lapel, his voice suddenly loud and important, said, “Now if you still cant get on by the end of the week at the yards, you go on down and see Mulcahey; he’s the biggest contractor in town for road and sewer work—and he dont hire niggers or furriners when there’s white men begging.”
“O.K.,” said Jim, but he looked awfully funny.
“Well, believe me,” Alex said, noting that look, “a man cant pick and choose nowadays.”
“He cant pick and choose,” said Jim, “but he can sure pick and shovel.”
Nobody laughed but Else, who laughed and laughed for a long time. “You grow up with your pap
a’s sense of humor,” she said to Ben, curled up in her lap, “and you’ll have them in the aisles. My, but he’s a cute tyke, Annie. Who woulda thought Mazie would grow up to be so homely? She was such a cunning baby. But they do say a homely kid makes a pretty girl.”
Mazie pretended not to hear. “Who plays the piano?” she asked as loud as she could.
“Me, honey, if you can stand plunking. Your ma used to play real good by ear. Why dont you play something for us now, honey?”
Mazie thought her mother was going to have another sinking spell, she looked so awful. But her voice sounded all right. “I haven’t touched the piano since I don’t know when,” she said. “You play, Else.”
Else sat down on the piano bench. As she played she swayed her body. Underneath her dress you could see her flesh ripple. But when she began to sing, Jimmie came from the other room and put his head up against her lap, and Will came in too and stood listening. Alex began to sing, and then Jim and Anna. One after another they sang old songs, some Jim or sometimes Anna had sung in old times of happiness; some the children had never heard before. “Red River Valley,” “Sweet Genevieve,” “When It’s Lamplighting Time,” “In the Gloaming,” “When You and I Were Young, Maggie,” “The Wreck of the Old ’91,” “Down in the Valley,” “Roamin’ So Far,” “Shenandoah,” “Nelly Gray,” Foster songs, “I Saw a Ship A-Sailing.”
From the opened window, the sweet intoxicating smell of spring floated in; the lamplight made soft lakes of light, shadows bending over, gentle. They sang and sang, and a longing, a want undefined, for something lost, for something never known, troubled them all. The separate voices chorded into one great full one, their faces into beauty. Oh, singin is like … Mazie, broken, searched for the word, feeling tears stand behind her eyelids. Singin is like … But no right words would come. Bess, quietly sleeping, wore an eternal dream look. Singing Anna’s favorite song:
Throw your arms round me, ’fore it’s too late