by Tillie Olsen
“You need a muzzle, kid,” said Jim, spreading his hand gently over Ben’s face to hold it still. “For why’n and for why, huh. How’m I supposed to know? Yeah, get eddicated, you get a little respect; know better than to ask fool questions that get lies or nothin for answers … Like I always done.” Rising: “What’s it all for, anyhow? … A buck a month. Ferget it, Anna.” Sharply: “You goin to leave this kid out all night in this damp?” taking up Bess and her basket. “Let’s eat. Now.”
In the square of lemon light from the kitchen window, Anna picked up the laundry basket. The moistness and dimness were all around now. Mazie, slipping out to fetch Anna and Ben, stood transfixed in wonder and fear. Her mother was walking dreamlike round and round the yard, laundry basket on her head, disappearing in and out of the clutching mists; emerging, disappearing; an enchanted Ben following her. Her voice came dreamy and disembodied.
“Yes that’s how they carries clothes there, Benjy, basket on their heads, hands on their hips like I cant do. Walking like queens, hoop earrings big as bracelets in their ears. Parrot birds that talk, and flowers bigger than washtubs, all colors and smells.” “Where is it, Momma, where is that place?”
“I dont rightly know. I aint ever been, Benjy. I only saw it in a picture book.” She put the basket down, bent to him fiercely: “You read books, you’ll know all that. That’s what books is: places your body aint ever been, cant ever get to go. Inside people’s heads you wouldn’t ever know. There’s a place here, a library where I’ve been fixin for us to go, where Else gets her reading. They let you borrow books, picture ones if you cant read yet.”
“I want to go see the earrings, talk to the parrot birds that talk. Will the streetcar take us?”
“It’s a far place, Benjy. You have to be rich to go, take trains and boats. Or when you grow up you can go, like your Uncle Ralphie, the one you never did see, the one that ships. Boys get to do that,”her voice was wistful, “not girls. Ralph’s been everyplace. Wonders of the world.”
She picked up the basket, set it back on her head, moved back into the dimness. “Wonders of the world.” Her voice was dreamy again. “Everything’s gone. You cant see ’ary a light. Yes one, so weak and pitiful. You cant see where is our house, where does the bluff end. A body could end right in the river, not knowin; drift; not fall. As if the world ending right here, we all closed in; just me and the basket and you, Benjy. No, we’re not going to fall over the edge, silly … Dont it breathe good … fresh? Let’s not go in. I declare I feel like a gypsy, wanderin and campin, everything outdoors, rolling up in the night too, sleepin out, never goin in.”
“Lets go in, Momma,” pulling at her in sudden fright. “We got to go in. Its suppertime. Mommas always goes in.”
Rent week—little in the house to eat besides potatoes and flour—Anna left the baby with Mrs. Kryckszi and wandered the streets with Mazie and Ben and Jimmie, looking for empty lots where dandelions grew. (The Wheel of Nutrition: One Serving: Green Leafy Vegetable Daily.) “I hanker for greens,” she told them. “We been without a far time now.”
She showed Mazie how to look for plants with fresh yellow flowers or just-opening buds, how to select only young, juicy leaves, telling them by their glossy green and tender feel. But the lots were mostly weed, the dandelion heads seedy white, their leaves woody. Though Ben helped too, their paper bags held scarcely a layer.
They wandered on and on. It was a gentle morning; light and warmth flowed in ripples. “I dont remember since when I been out just walkin like this,” Anna said. Her lips were parted, her face uplifted to the blue seamless air. Mazie felt the strangeness rising in her mother, not like the sickness strange, something else.
One lot Anna gathered a handful of the seedy puffs and, without warning, in one great breath, filled the air with white fluff. “You blew a hundred wishes,” crowed Ben, impressed. “You blew a hundred wishes. What did you wished, Momma?”
“You know if I tell, it cant come true.” She bent to her paper bag, blew it full, with a sudden sharp blow popped it; laughed. Jimmie, startled, began to cry. “I’m sorry, Jimmie, I didnt think. We got more paper bags than greens,” she explained. “That was to even it up. I guess. You want Momma to carry you awhile? No, dont you dare bust that bag, Ben. Give it here. We’re goin to need it, you’ll see. Three bags full.”
Another lot, she fell to braiding the stems, while Mazie stood disdainful. “We’ll make a chain a block long. Clover’s better, but where’s any clover?” Ben and even Jimmie ran to get chain makings, carefully running their fingers down the flower stems to the bottom like she showed them to get the longest stems. “Is it a block long yet? Is it a block long yet?” But, abruptly, she stopped, threw the unfinished chain at Mazie, who threw it back, wrapped Jimmie round and round with it.
They were in a different kind of street now. Lawns, flower beds and borders, children on bikes. Jimmie kept having to be chased after by Mazie and dragged away from other children or things that fascinated him. “This would be a good neighborhood to ask for launderin work,” Anna said. A vague shame, a weedy sense of not belonging, of something being wrong about them, stirred uneasy through Mazie. “Momma, I have to pee,” Ben said. Anna walked on carelessly, dreamily, ignoring Ben, who gripped tight her skirt with his free hand, his other clutching himself, ignoring Jimmie, who was now petulantly complaining that he was tired tired tired and Mazie was bad and he didn’t want to walk any more.
Two girls walking toward them stared and snickered, turned their heads to look after them. “Ben, get your hand away from yourself,” Mazie hissed, and savagely to Jimmie, “If you’ll just shut up I’ll carry you.” For some reason it came out in a hushed whisper.
“Piggyback?”
“If you’ll just shut up. Ma, this isn’t the way.”
“Why dont I have a tricycle?” Ben asked. “Will I get one ever?”and he slowed to stare longingly after an empty one on a lawn, still clinging to Anna’s skirt so that, walking on obliviously, her thigh came bared. A woman putting on white gloves came out of a house and smiled at the four of them. Quickly Mazie moved between her and Anna, as if to protect her mother against something.
“Just you keep your face to yourself, lady,” Mazie muttered furiously in her head. “Old crummy Nicey Nice. Ben!” she ordered in her mother’s voice, “dont drag on Momma, walk straight. Ma, this isn’t the way.”
“That’s a fine horse you’ve got there,” the lady said to Jimmie. “Pretty big load, though, aren’t you? Are you lost?” she asked Anna.
“Giddyap, Horsie,” yelled Jimmie. Mazie galloped ahead, round the corner, out of sight. She shifted Jimmie into her arms, glared at him, said in the earlier savage whisper: “You’re a big boy. Big boys walk.”
“No, JimJim tired,” patting her face lovingly, luxuriously abandoning his body against her. “Swing and sway some more, Madie, swing and sway. Good horsie.”
At the end of a cobbly street that had no houses, only high wire fences, they came to a stretch along the river bluff, yellow and green and white with flowers and grass and dandelion glory. A strange heavy fragrance drenched the air. “There’s millions here,” exulted Ben after he and Jimmie had relieved themselves. Mazie was already gathering at the river bluff edge, as far away from them as she could get. “This was somebody’s good yard,” Anna said, bending and inspecting. She put Ben to picking nasturtium leaves—“only the little ones, Ben, no bigger’n a penny”—then set to work herself in a swift, practiced rhythm, bending, loosening, gathering. Bees drowsed there; they had to be careful. White trumpet-shaped flowers were scattered in the green.
“Catalpa,” Anna said suddenly, scooping up a handful of the blooms, “that best smell.” She stood up, pointing to the great tree above. “Mazie, come over. See you suck honey syrup out of the little end. Taste, Benjy. Taste, Mazie. Look inside. There’s black and gold and blue markings, beautiful. And the tiny glass threads standing up as if they was flowers themselves. Yes, Benjy, they feel velvet ins
ide. Rub it on your cheek.”
She bent to gather again, went on talking. “One year when I was high as you, Mazie, we lived a place where was a tree like that. The leaves aren’t rightly out yet, but when they are, they get the biggest leaves ever you saw, heart-shaped, and then that tree gets cigars. We’ll come back fall time, you’ll see.
” Her rhythm had slowed. In between gathering she sucked the blooms, and Mazie saw that each time before, she drew her breath in deep to smell, deep as if she had to blow off dandelion heads or pop a paper bag. A remote, shining look was on her face, as if she had forgotten them, as if she had become someone else, was not their mother any more. “Ma, come back,” Mazie felt like yelling, in rancor, in fear; jumping up, snapping her fingers into that dreaming face to bring attention, consciousness of them back, make it the old known face again. Snap my fingers. But her fingers were moving deftly, happily; cool slim mindless tracing down the notched leaves to the roots, the responsive tug, the tiny spurt of juice spilling its spicy smell.
A peace and content began to drowse through her. Bees sounden, she whispered. Sweet smellin. Lady bugs. Butterflies like your dizzy. Unbidden: If you dont look no place, just down, if you dont listen, pretend the trucks and freight noise is ’quipment, it’s the farm. Stupid, she chastised herself grievingly, stupid. Who cares about the farm? Who wants to pick stupid weeds? Snap my fingers in her face. Loudly: “Ma, dont we have enough yet? Ma!”
“Three bags full,” said Ben, inspecting. “I can ’cite that,” Jimmie said. “Baa, baa, black ship, three bags full. Watch how I jump,” jumping over and over from a wide step of what had been a house, burned down how long ago.
“Dont we have enough yet?” Mazie repeated. “You know greens boil down to just nothin,” her mother answered. “Yes, I guess that’s enough. We’ll set awhile. My head is balloony, balloony. Balloony.” She staggered, put her arms around Mazie, sang:
“O Shenandoah, I love thy daughter,
I’ll bring her safe through stormy water”
smiled so radiantly, Mazie’s heart leapt. Arm and arm, they sat down under the catalpa. That look was on her mother’s face again, her eyes so shining and remote. She began stroking Mazie’s hair in a kind of languor, a swoon. Gently and absently she stroked.
“Around the springs of gray my wild root weaves, Traveler repose and dream among my leaves”
her mother sang. A fragile old remembered comfort streamed from the stroking fingers into Mazie, gathered to some shy bliss that shone despairingly over suppurating hurt and want and fear and shamings—the harm of years. River wind shimmered and burnished the bright grasses, her mother’s hand stroked, stroked. Young catalpa leaves overhead quivered and glistened. Bright reflected light flowed over, ’lumined their faces. A bee rested on Mazie’s leg—magic!—flew away, and a butterfly wavered near, settled, folded its wings, flew again.
“Fair, fair, with golden hair,”
her mother sang.
“Under the willow she’s weeping.”
Mazie felt the strange happiness in her mother’s body, happiness that had nought to do with them, with her; happiness and farness and selfness.
“Fair, fair, with golden hair,
under the willow she’s sleeping.”
The fingers stroked, spun a web, cocooned Mazie into happiness and intactness and selfness. Soft wove the bliss round hurt and fear and want and shame—the old worn fragile bliss, a new frail selfness bliss, healing, transforming. Up from the grasses, from the earth, from the broad tree trunk at their back, latent life streamed and seeded. The air and self shone boundless. Absently, her mother stroked; stroked unfolding, wingedness, boundlessness.
“I’m hungry,”Ben said.
“Watch me jump,” Jimmie called imperiously. “Momma, Mazie, watch. You’re not watching!”
The wind shifted, blew packing house. Something whirred, severed, sank. A tremble of complicity ran through Mazie’s body; with both hands she tethered her mother’s hand, to keep it, stroking, stroking. Too late. Between a breath, between a heartbeat, the weight settled, the bounds reclaimed.
“I’m watching,” Anna called. The mother look was back on her face, the mother alertness, attunement, in her bounded body.
“I didn’t think to bring a bite for us, Ben. Wherever is my head these late days? Balloony. Catalpa.” She laughed. “Holy Meroly,” using an expression they had never heard before, “there’s nary a shadow. Noontime. And I promised Mis’ Kryckszi we’d be back.”
Never again, but once, did Mazie see that look—the other look—on her mother’s face.
EIGHT
Easeful and huge, the hot July goes through the barefoot weather, the idleness weather. The cramp the clamp of school released enough, the children of packingtown turn from June wildnesses to deeper, more ancient play.
On the dump, territory is established, shifted, abandoned, fought over, combined. Peerers, combers and excavators go treasure hunting. (They compete with old men and women looking for covering, furnishings, sustenance—anything usable, transformable, barterable, salable.) Children—already stratified as dummies in school, condemned as unfit for the worlds of learning, art, imagination, invention—plan, measure, figure, design, invent, construct, costume themselves, stage dramas; endlessly—between tasks, errands, smaller children to be looked after, jobs, dailinesses—live in passionate absorbed activity, in rapt make-believe.
On the inexhaustible dump strange structures rise: lookout towers, sets, ships, tents, forts, lean-tos, clubhouses, cities and stores and train tracks, cabooses, pretend palaces—singularly fitted with once furnishings, never furnishings, or nothing at all.
On the streets, strange vehicles move: a barrel in which one rolls; cars of apple boxes on wobbling wheels, steered by broomsticks; axles triumphantly balanced on between bare tires; Pet milk cans strung, rafted together, used as rollers on which one bellyflops and with swimming motions pushes along; and favorite mover of all—ridden dreamily or madly to who knows what fabled destination by the commander at its steering wheel—sunken rusted Ford front end that never moves at all.
In the long dusk evenings, the hiding games, the whirling games begin. Round the lampposts, thick like the winged things above, children circle and flitter. On the dump, watch fires burn. And on porches and stoops, secrets are whispered, songs sung, stories told, make-believe selves expanded, and dreams float in the dim enchanted light like iridescent bubbles in the sifting sad sweet peace.
July—surcease, release, month.
He stands in the doorway and, smiling faintly, says, “I’m on, Anna. Feeder and utility man; when the run starts—splitter. Forty-five cents an hour.”
“Pritcher up maybe,” corrects Kryckszi behind him. “Long way to splitter.”
“No wood-burnin stove for you this summer. We’re gettin the gas connected. No launderin someone else’s duds, either. Didn’t I tell you we’d manage? Good times comin, honey, good times.”
“Drunk with the job,” says Kryckszi, smiling with his eyes. “Few pennies more pay an hour. You see how little it takes to make a man happy.”
The fireworks go up from their yard too, that Fourth of July. Mid-afternoon Jim and Will tramp into the kitchen, their arms bulging triumphantly with packages.
“Bangers and fireworks, rockets and bangers,” exults Will.
“Jim, you didn’t!” says Anna, paling. “And when Alec said he’d bring some…. That’s like burning money, money we aint got. The rent money?”
“Now, honey, I’m earnin, aint I? Independence Day, isn’t it, honey? Grand and glorious. We got to celebrate, dont we?”
“What independence we got to celebrate?”
“Independent of property, aint we? Got me a woman too independent to kiss her old man, aint I?”
“Will says I’m not getting any firecrackers,” burst in Mazie, Annamae trailing behind. “I want my firecrackers. Where’s my bangers?”
“Girls don’t get firecrackers, do they, Poppa,”
said Will smugly, rummaging through the packages. “They burn theyselves. Girls and little kids get sparklers.”
“Sparklers comin out of your ears tonight, Big-eyes,” says Jim expansively, grabbing her as she starts by. “Roman candles, fountains, pinwheels. We’re celebratin tonight. Give Poppa a kiss.”
“But thats tonight. Poppa, they been scarin the little kids all morning. We got to get them back, dont we, Annamae? Antsie popped a cracker right on Ben’s ear, and Annamae’s leg is burned. Let me go, Poppa. Will’s taking them all, dont you take them all, Poppa, he took them all.”
“He’s just havin fun. Celebration. Hold still, squirmy. You’re not going noplace. Not till daddy gets his kiss. Holiday day.”
“Will!”
“If I hear another scream like that outen you, Mazie,” said Anna, “you’ll have something to scream about. Isn’t there enough noise round here already? Get Ben out from under that table and make yourself useful. I could stand a little helpin. Else and Alec are due any minute. There ought to be a law against them bangers anyway.”
A strange sweat of tension is on Anna, her lips moving, trying to remind herself of what is next to do for the holiday dinner. She does not notice Ben huddling back under the kitchen table, holding his ears, rocking and rocking. Up on the roof, Mazie and Annamae throw ineffectual lit matches down when the boys hove into sight, Jimmie shadowing Will and Smoky and Antsie in delighted terror. Out in the back yard, where Jim and Kryckszi and Alec pitch horseshoes, Else soothes Bess, who starts at every bang.
Now at last, in the warm darkness, plumes of light arise. Children run with sparklers, Jimmie darting after, cupping his hands to catch the spray. Alex and Jim and Will in glory select, set up, light fireworks. Puffs and bursts and sprays.
“Look, we makin stars,” Ben greets each fountain, skyrocket, roman candle, “we makin stars. What’s next, Poppa?” Jeff makes a chant of it, moving his body in time. “Look, look! We makin stars. Dance till you out, stars, dance till you out.”