by Tillie Olsen
“Fallin and dancing,” Ben chants back, “Fallin and dancing. Poppa, what’s next? Dance till you out.” Annamae and Jimmie chorus along: “Stars. Stars. Fallin and dancin. Dance till you out. You out. You out. You out.”
All over the sky, echoings, flowerings. Sizzles. Stems of flame, tendrils coiling, climbing. Anna—gratefully off her feet for the first time in that long day—sitting and watching, forgets the grudging rankle at the needed money thrown away, folds herself into the beauty and singing and everyone’s happiness. But her heart yearns over Mazie, sullenly apart on the roof, refusing to touch the fireworks, to be part of the celebration.
(Only it excites Mazie so, the stems and jettings of light, the momentary lit faces, the chanting. And now the great pure ball of light rising over the dark shoulders of bluff.)
“Stars. Stars. Dance till you out.”
Kryckszi takes his violin and in the moon dappled darkness makes a tune of it. Else and Jim, Alex and Mis’ Kryckszi dance.
“Fallin and dancin. Dance till you out.” The headlight of a train weaves and flickers through the dark bluffs across the silvered river, is lost in distance with its high forlorn flickering whistle.
“Stars. Stars.”
Oh it’s us again, thinks Mazie, it’s us. Then in clenching fear: Now something bad’s going to have to happen. Again.
But it is easier for a while. The old Anna back in command, reclaimed, wholly given over; the house once more orderly. Secretly the first insurance payments are made; secretly Jim looks for a secondhand sewing machine for Anna. The garden spews forth puny and pale, gains confidence, begins to garnish the table. Expeditions are for berry picking now as well as for greens, one lot where the brambles grow.
One afternoon Anna cleans up the kids and brings them to her Temple of Learning. A squat dirty converted storefront (good enough for packingtown, they said) shelved with opiates and trash and marvels (from which most of the children are already turned in outraged self-respect, for is it not through books, the printed word, or so it seemed, that they had been judged poor learners, dumb dumb dumb? Told: what is in us has nothing to do with you).
But marvels to Anna (places your body aint ever been, cant ever get to go; inside people’s heads; things you wouldn’t never know); keys, too, in that door to a better life on which opportunity would knock some day. She took out a library card for each. Only Ben pored over his (picture) books. Mazie’s and Will’s lay untouched. For how onceuponatime and theylivedveryhappyeverafter fairy tales which the librarian had selected for Mazie? How adventure and magic books she had picked for Will, when there was the adventure and fairy ground of dump and city; the conjurer magic of a shining screen in darkness Saturdays.
(Already the conjurer is working spells on Anna’s children. Subtly into waking and dreaming, into imagination and everyday doings and play, shaping, altering them. Even outwardly: Will’s eyes are narrowed now, his mouth drawn up at the corner, his walk—when he remembers—loose; for the rest of his life he will grin crooked: Bill Hart.)
Sometimes Will or Mazie bring home finds from the dump. A rusted waffle iron, clothespins, blackened forks and spoons, coils from a crystal radio set, a solderable pot. Once a fought-over chair—rung and leg gone. On the high window sill in the kitchen, along with a fragment of prism, is an indigo-blue ink bottle soaked and scrubbed a dozen times to get the glass clear—beautiful to Anna for the light shining through. A saucer—its cracks adding a ghost mysteriousness to its landscape—snowy mountain, fir trees, clouds, tiny burdened Japanese figures toiling across a red curved bridge—is kept in the center of the kitchen table for all to marvel at.
Stealthily Mazie and Will stalk the ice trucks and wagons for falling slivers to trickle down their throats; for handfuls that can be scooped up while the iceman delivers his ice. Lithe and graceful, they learn to hitch onto the moving trucks, shove over chips, sometimes a whole ice block onto waiting hands. (But Mazie is not long among them. Once a chant starts up:
Girl go to London, go to France
Evrybody sees your pants.
Girl shimmy shimmy shimmyhigh
Evrybody sees your pie.
and after that shame and self consciousness make her body awkward. Twice she misses, almost goes under the wheels. No more for her that lithe joy, that sense of power.)
On the dump there is Ginella’s tent, Ginella’s mansion, Ginella’s roadhouse, Ginella’s pagan island, Ginella’s palace, whatever Ginella wills it to be that day. Flattened tin cans, the labels torn off to show the flashing silver, are strung between beads and buttons to make the shimmering, showy entrance curtains. Here sometimes, in humble capacity, Mazie is admitted—if she brings something for the gunny sack. The gunny sack into which the curtains and tent themselves go when Ginella must go and which is stuffed with “properties” : blond wood-shaving curls, moldering hats, raggy teddies, torn lace curtains (for trains and wedding dresses), fringes, tassels, stubs of lipstick, wrecks of high-heeled shoes and boots, lavish jewelry Tiffany would never recognize: greening curtain rings, feathers, fish lures, dress headings, glass bits, shiny coils and machinery parts. Anything that dangles, jangles, bangles, spangles.
Twelve-year-old Ginella’s text: the movies, selected. Ones Mazie, the late-come country novice, has never seen. Sheik of Araby. Broken Blossoms. Slave of Love. She Stopped at Nothing. The Fast Life. The Easiest Way.
Luxuriously on her rug, pretend silk slinking and slithering on her body, turbanned, puffing her long pretend cigarette: Say vamp me, vamp me. I’m Nazimova. Take me to the roadhouse, I want to make whoopee. Hotcha. Never never never. O my gigolo, my gigolo. A moment of ecstasy, a lifetime of regret.
And once alone, smelling sweet of Blue Waltz and moist flesh, her arms tight around Mazie, passionately: Whisper to me: Jeannine my queen of lilac time. Jeannine, I dream of lilac time. Whisper it. Kiss me. Forever, forever never to part, my pagan love.
On the stoop, evenings Ben imparts his terrible texts to Jimmie:
Skinny, skinny, run for your life,
Here comes fatty with a butcher knife.
Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home,
Your house is on fire, your children all gone.
You’re it and got a fit,
Never, never get over it.
Never know how to get over it.
Plaintively, as if he understands its meaning:
Ol’ clothes to sell, ol’ clothes to sell,
If I had as much money as I could tell
I never would cry ol’ clothes to sell.
And desolately:
Mother, Mother, I am sick.
Call the doctor quick, quick, quick.
Doctor, Doctor, will I die?
Yes. You will. And so shall I.
Mazie, slackly sitting, suddenly listens, shudders and gathers them both to her, saying firmly: We’re going to sing “Hoopde Dooden Do Barney Google with the Googlygoogly Eyes, I’m Dreamin Now of Hally;” Pop, tell Ben and Jimmie when you were little. But the day at Cudahy’s has thieved Pop’s text—his mouth open, he sleeps the sleep of exhaustion. And when Anna comes out, her apron front still wet from doing dishes, it is already too late for texts—the children’s eyes droop.
In the dim enchanted light, in the sifting sad sweet peace of summer evening.
And now the dog days are here, the white fierce heat throbbing, when breathing is the drawing in of a scorching flame and the pavement on the bare feet of the children is a sear; when the very young and the very old sicken and die, and the stench cooking down into the pavements and the oven houses throbs like a great wave of vomit on the air.
There in the packing houses the men and women somehow toil through. Standing there, the one motion all day, their clothes salty with sweat, or walking in and out of the cooler till the cold is a fever and the heat a chill, and the stink bellying up from the blood house and casings forces the beginning of a vomit, even on those who boasted they hadn’t a smeller any more.
Oh yes, the heavy
air clamps down like a coffin lid over the throbbing streets, on the thin cries of babies and the querulous voices of the old, and a sound of breathing hoarse and strained, of breathing feeble and labored goes up; and from beneath the glisten of sweat on a thousand brows, a mocking bitterness in old old words: Is it hot enough for you? In a dozen dialects, is it hot enough, hot enough, hot enough for you?
Nights, sleepless nights. Sad rustle of trees in the unmoving trees and the creak of bedsprings as the sleepless ones toss.
“How much longer can it last, Jim?” asks Anna. “Six days not down to a hundred once. The kids cant stand it.”
“Just the kids? … Whew, if I could get just one cool breath. You’d think we’d get a little wind out the window.”
“Momma, why cant I sleep?”
Will is sleeping. Will is lying out on his mattress in the yard, under the bleared stars and the unmoving trees, dreaming of movies, of the shining screen in the darkness and the gallop, gallop of cowboy horses. Waking to a whining mosquito sting, he stares into the sky and tries to breathe and feels as if a lasso is looped tight around his chest a hundred times. Only the trees so high and the cool far stars make him remember his horde of findings he will sell to Curly tomorrow who will sell it to the junkman, and the worms he and Smoky will dig by the river to sell; and his hand curves to the imaginary ball he will buy with his money, and he smiles, tosses restlessly awhile and sleeps.
“Momma, why cant I sleep?”
In the little room the heat is entombed deathly still and unmoving, sweat almost breaks out on the walls, and the slit of window is like a hungry mouth that stifled, opens to suck in the air. Jimmie is moaning, scratching his mosquito bites, doing a dance on the mattress with his body, waking and sleeping again, waking and sleeping; and Mazie wakes from terrible lands of dream to feel the heavy heat still there.
Outside it is better, dragging her quilt out besides Will, but the dark mysterious night scares her and the mosquitos bite worse and worse and lying there awake she is thinking of the smoke and fires curling up around the lady in that movie tied there to the stake, she can hear in her ears the crackling, hot hot, and she is thinking of Erina, Erina of the twisted jerking body and the fits who dragged away Mazie’s findings from the dump and moaned Suffer little children the Bible says Children suffer suffer. She was in Erina’s body, she became Erina, stump arm ending with a little knob, the spasm walk, the drool. Slapping at a mosquito, missing, then it splotching squishy under her hand, a lot of blood, she could see it in the vague light, blood; dragging her quilt back in again.
“Momma, why cant I sleep?”
Ben is sick, Ben cant sleep, Ben is saying, Momma, why cant I sleep, Momma, only he can’t remember whether he is saying it or not and the air chokes thick in his nostrils, sits humping up and down on his chest. Fast fast fast goes his heart, where is it going, it will run out of him, run away. There is a big fire somewhere, that is what is making it hot, somebody making a fire or it was a fire and he is in the stove, black all around like something burned.
“Momma, why cant I sleep?”
Down the street they are all lying together, Jeff and Buford and B.G. and Ellis on one great tick, and they sleep with delicate sharp breaths; and farther down old lady Dykstra is breathing hoarse and strained, her mouth open, her heart flaying and jumping, and faint and far are babies crying, well babies, sick babies.
The ice is melting in the iceboxes faster and faster, the melting that is the women’s despair. Cattle trucks are rattling on the spoke roads to the slaughter houses, thick-packed lambs and calves and hogs snuffling and swaying and stamping, cattle lowing plaintively. Far off the freight trains make a sleepy sound; then faster louder faster.
Gurgle gurgle, the river quiet and secret, the weak soiled vapor shawl, a few men standing and fishing. And for miles and miles the corn in white gold stillness stiff and parched in black baked earth in the black baked night.
“Momma, why cant I sleep?”
Thoughts of death, in this still heat Mazie waking again and thinking thoughts of death, doctor doctor will I die yes you will and so shall I, the sad rustle of the leaves in the trees with drier sound of coming fall.
“Momma.” Crying. And momma is coming and wrings out a towel; Ben, Benjy; will she have to take him to the clinic? Thank God Bessie is a baby and sleeps, Bessie is all right. There, Ben, momma has helped the rash, if I hold and fan you and we set outside, will it help you catch your breath? “Momma, I wish it was mornin.”
The fire is coming into the sky, the still still fire, and suddenly it has blazed up, the fetid sun, the red red sun. And the dew which is the tears the sweat of the night is vanished.
Jim and Anna are up, then Jimmie and Bess. Ben is sleeping now and Mazie is sleeping, no need to wake them, and Will is up, secretly shuffling things under his bed.
“Will you get it for me today, my ’monica?” begs Jimmie as he trundles down the street with his father. “Tonight will you bring it, tonight?”
“You going to have a harp, make music for us all maybe?” asks Mr. Kryckszi, joining Jim. “Stay out of the sun today now, little Jim.” Looking at its festering orange straight ahead. “Not good. A hundred and ten in kill room, more in casings today, you see. Oven. Maybe already. Afraid for Marsalek, for Mary. I talk to Misho, to Huff, to Slim. We have to slow it, I tell them, get break too. Misho talk for us to Wild Man Ed.” Shaking his head: “No good.”
“That prick Ed,” says Jim. “How else’d he make straw boss?”
“Wild Man Ed say Bull Young tell him is no sweat. Bunch lazies.”
“Lazies! That pusher. Beedo* hisself, in person.” They are over the viaduct now.
“You see, a hundred and ten—maybe hotter.”
“Be hell,” says Jim, looking down at the plant. “Be hell.”
Hell.
Choreographed by Beedo, the B system, speed-up stopwatch, convey. Music by rasp crash screech knock steamhiss thud machinedrum. Abandon self, all ye who enter here. Become component part, geared, meshed, timed, controlled.
Hell. Half-seen figures through hissing cloud vapor, the live steam from great scalding vats. Hogs dangling, dancing along the convey, 300, 350 an hour; Mary running running along the rickety platform to keep up, stamping, stamping the hides. To the shuddering drum of the skull crush machine, in the spectral vapor clouds, everyone the same motion all the hours through: Kryckszi lifting his cleaver, the one powerful stroke; long continuous arm swirl of the rippers, gut pullers; Marsalek pulling leaf lard, already faint in the sweated heat, breathing with open mouth.
Breathing with open mouth, the young girls and women in casings, where men will not work. Year-round breathing with open mouth, learning to pant shallow to endure the excrement reek of offal, the smothering stench from the blood house below. Win-dowless: bleared dank light. Clawing dinning jutting gnashing noises, so overweening that only at scream pitch can the human voice be heard. Heat of hell year round, for low on their heads from the lowering ceiling, the plants’ steam machinery. Incessant slobber down of its oil and scalding water onto their rubber caps, into their rubber galoshes. Oh feet always doubly in water—inside boots, outside boots. Running water overflow from casings wash. Spurting steam geysers. Slippery uncertain footing on the slimy platform. Treacherous sudden torrents swirling (the strong hose trying to wash down the blood, the oil, the offal, the slime). And over and over, the one constant motion—ruffle fat pullers, pluck separators, bladder, kidney, bung, small and middle gut cutters, cleaners, trimmers, slimers, flooders, inflators—meshed, geared.
Geared, meshed: the kill room: knockers, shacklers, pritcher-uppers, stickers, headers, rippers, leg breakers, breast and aitch sawyers, caul pullers, fell cutters, rumpers, splitters, vat dippers, skinners, gutters, pluckers.
Ice hell. Coolers; freezers. Pork trim: bone chill damp even in sweaters and overshoes; hands always in icy water, slippery knives, the beedo piece work speed—safety signs a mockery.
—All thro
ugh the jumble of buildings old and buildings new; of pens, walkways, slippery stairs, overhead chutes, conveys, steam pipes; of death, dismemberment and vanishing entire for harmless creatures meek and mild, frisky, wild—Hell.
Today—the fifth day of hell-heat added—104° outside, 112° in casings. Seven o’clock.
Ooh it’s so hot, Mazie waking up feeling charred and smoldering, and going into the kitchen, her legs scabby and blood-splotched with open mosquito sores scratched too much, and Bess cooing at her, Ben up and in a chair, his eyes looking too big and too sick.
Not hungry. Her head hurting and hurting. Having to help pit and peel the canning apples and peaches.
“Havent I done enough, Ma? Cant I go out and play? It’s too hot in here.”
“If you get back ’fore noon,” Anna says, thinking: Better now before the sun’s really up. “This cannin’s got to get done today.”
But it was even hotter outside. The sun burned on her back, but her head didnt hurt so much, only the light seemed fire.
Annamae ran out when she saw her. “What we gonna do today?” Mazie asked listlessly.
“The findins! There was new things dumped yes-tidday. Maybe we’ll pass a ice truck or wagon.”
No trucks; the streets glittered empty like in a dream. And there was nothing really new on the dump. It smelled sewer, smelled garbage, smelled crap ’cept right at the river-bluff edge. Grubbing, Mazie found a torn magazine with funny words—a furrin language, painting pictures, different colors and patterns. “Wallpaper for our dollhouse, it’ll make wallpaper.” But out of one of the pages, a little girl’s eyes stared at her, big eyes, black, almost holes, from her face lots and lots of lines going all kinds of ways, so much lines you couldn’t look at them all but you had to try while your head got dizzier and dizzier. And scareder. It was something like you, like something…
Mazie tore the little girl and the scary lines into teeny kite bits but didn’t have any breath to blow them; lay down on her belly looking down over the bluff and fluttered them away instead. No cool wind came up. The tracks and trains flashed hot; the river flashed too though a dirty haze lay on it as if it were too lazy to move.