Yonnondio: From the Thirties

by Tillie Olsen

  “My momma don’t let me go down by the river,”she told Annamae. “Will your momma? She says bad people’s there that hurts girls.” She grubbed with one hand for what turned out to be an old doorknob to throw down to where she couldn’t go. It landed right on the open gondola of a sluggish freight train. All the way to California, she thought.

  There was Will, going down the road with Smoky. “Where you going?” she hailed, scrambling after though getting up so fast made her head pound and be dizzier.

  “No place.”

  “Then I’m going too.”

  “Oh no you aint. We dont want no tattletale girls.”

  “I am too goin.”

  “Oh no you aint. Run, Smoke, run,” scooping a handful of pebbles and dirt to fling at her.

  She chased them a block, but then fell and skinned her knee and they were out of sight. Where the pebbles hit, it stung and prickled like the mosquito bites. She scratched them all open again, sucked at one on her arm, for she was so thirsty, so thirsty.

  The sun seemed to have a big tongue that was licking her back and her head hurted worse and worse and the lines going in all directions round and round. Everything looked glassy and wavy in the heat.

  Ginella was in her tent. Mazie stood outside the glittering curtains. Katie and Char were fanning her; Ginella was Queen Tut or Nazimova, lying on her rug, pretend smoking. “Googly,” she said languidly, seeing Mazie. “Gwan and melt. We dont want any Miss Uglys around … Unless you got ice.” Yesterday she had passed their house when Mazie was holding Ben. “Fishface,” she had said coolly, cruelly to Ben, “Whyn’t you close your mouth, Fishface?”

  Miss Ugly!

  Annamae was still scrabbling in the pile for stuff. Ellie was there, eating a huge peach. “My grandma gave it so I wouldnt make noise. She’s sick, maybe she’ll die.” Proffering a bite.

  “My little brother’s real sick too,” said Mazie, wishing she could add self-importantly: he may get dead too. (I dont mean it, Benjy.) “Let’s go look for a ice truck.”

  “No, it’s lucky here,” objected Annamae. Her face was flushed. “See?” Holding up a tiny round mirror.

  “That’s mine,” lied Mazie, thinking of Ginella. “I put it there and now you took it. Give it back.”

  “It’s not either yours. I took it out of a compact, didnt I, Ellie? It was all moldy and greeny, ughy ughy, and I had to clean it, didn’t I?”

  “Give it to me,” swiping for Annamae’s hand. “All right, dont. I dont want to play anyway.”

  Erina was coming. Wavering in the heat waves, dragging along, jerking funny; skinny with her bones sticking out like great knobs and the tiny arm stub that hung down and ended in a knob. Coming closer, coming right to them. Flickering out her faded tongue and the spit slobbering down. “Pennies,” she said. “Little girls, do you have any pennies? For ice cream. It hurts. Pennies.”

  “I dont have none,” faltered Mazie, backing toward Ellie and Annamae, who shook their heads mutely to signify that they didn’t have any either, unable to look away from the running sores on her legs and her pitiful arm.

  “What you think you’re staring at?” advancing ferociously as they kept backing. “Pfeh,” she spit.

  Ellie surrendered what was left of the peach to Erina. There was no place but the river-cliff edge behind.

  “I’ll go home and ask a penny,” said Annamae.

  “Me too,” said Ellie.

  “Payday my papa buys us Eskimo pies,” said Mazie faintly. “I’ll give you mine, Erina.”

  “Now,” said Erina. “I’m burnin. God is looking at you. That is his burning eye up there.”

  She will push me over the cliff, thought Mazie. I have to run quick like Annamae, like Ellie. But it was a bad dream where you couldn’t move. The lines going dizzy.

  “The devil is roasting us today; the devil is frying us, like in hell. For our sins.” Erina’s breath was in Mazie’s face; Mazie saw how the pus oozed from her eyes, stuck on her eyelashes; weed stickers—maybe lice—in her hair. Go away, Erina; it’s so hot and you are wavy like everything else. Last night I was your body, I was you. Go away. “Maybe my momma will give a penny.”

  “It hurts inside,” Erina said, crying and slobbering. “Hold me so it dont hurt.” She put her one arm around Mazie, who shuddered violently. “I’m ugly,” Erina sobbed. “God made me like this.” Crouching down at Mazie’s feet.

  (Miss Ugly) Mazie sank resistless down on the cracked earth beside her; its heat came up in waves too, like the glassy wave she could see in the air. “Shall I go look for a ice truck and steal you some ice, Erina?”

  “Shall we pray?” asked Erina. “I pray but God dont make me better and Pa and Tammy sue socks me ’cause it means I was sinnin too bad to get forgiven. Do you sin, little girl?”

  “I’m big,” said Mazie. “I’m going to be nine, almost as old as you, Erina,” and began to grub in the hot stiff soil at the half-decayed rags in it.

  “Watch for my bird,” said Erina, “Watch for its little bones. It was deaded and I put it in the ground there and blessed it, but when I got back it was on top half et with worms and crawly things and stinky and I had to cover it back. Bones now. When you die your soul goes to hell or heaven but your body gets et and stinks.” Swallowing thirstily and slobbering.

  “That’s a song,” said Mazie, a sick-happy feeling to be with Erina, to listen to Erina, rising in her. “The worms go in and the worms go out and they eat up all of your chin and mouth.”

  “Watch for the little ants,” said Erina. “Dont hurt their houses. They have to hurry and work so hard and carry heavy things and I sees them carry each other sometime.”

  Erina looked really sick; her eyes were like that little girl’s in the painting-picture, black holes. What Mazie had thought was dirt on her cheek was bad bruises. Was she going to get a fit? “Erina,” she said gently, “Ginella has lemon cream soda in her tent. I’ll ask will she give some.”

  “Ginella!” said Erina. She smoothed and gentled her little stub arm and it tried to rise up as if to gentle her back. “When she sees me she says here comes freak show, stink show, Miss Sewer from shantylice-town.” Her face quivered. “Suffer little children the Bible says.”

  “Rest, Erina. I’ll get you some ice quick, or ice cream or another peach or lemon cream.”

  Ginella and Katie and Char were gone; the tent and the clinky glittery curtains and the dress-up bag, gone. Erina was gone too, weaving toward the viaduct under where shantytown was. Mazie wanted to fall and push herself along on her belly after her. Flat like a caterpillar, not wavy like a worm or jumpy like a grasshopper. Crawl flat on her belly. Not have to walk. Her head throbbed biggern the whole world and like all her blood was boiling up into it, percing up into it. She walked slow as she could, but fell. It was the sole of her shoe come loose and flapping made her stumble. I told you Ididnt want to have to wear shoes today, Ma, taking them off. But the ground frizzled and she put her shoes back on.

  She wanted to cry but she did not know what about. She wanted to hear Erina talk—but not have to look at her. She felt sick and mean and screamy, and sad and mad and bad. Her throat swallowed and swallowed with nothing in it to swallow, so dry, sticking together, hurting. Last night she dreamed she swung the Big Dipper round and round and drank the night with the ice stars in it. She could have told Erina that, Erina would have listened. Stars are fire, not ice—stars are suns, she reminded herself scornfully. Old Man Caldwell. Tied to the stake, flames curling round her feet and up toward her belly, everybody laughing, Miss Ugly. Yes, she was. She sat down on the curb and looked at her burning feet. She wanted to go to the catalpa place and sit under that tree; or down to the river where she had never been and Will got to go; it would be cool with ice like night in God’s Dipper.

  A lady in a car stopping at the corner held a handkerchief to her nose, real delicate. Mazie picked up a corncob from the gutter and threw it hard at the car.

  Right by the house, in the s
hade, Jimmie and Jeff and Ben were playing. Jeff held a strange stringed instrument his brothers had made for him, a cigarbox body with a long slab of wood jutting out; strung on it a dozen kinds of strings and wires. With it he made a jangling and sang in an unearthly voice. Jimmie sang too, rocking a half of a Quaker Oats round cereal box cut the long way; in it was a stick wrapped round with rags in the semblance of a doll. Ben, for all the heat swathed in a blanket, sat gravely watching and rocking himself in time.

  “Fishface,” she heard herself saying in Ginella’s inflections, “why don’t you close your mouth, Fishface? My cradle,” swooping down, “my own cradle I made.”

  “It’s to rock baby,” pleaded Jimmy. “We’re rocking baby to sleep.”

  “… playing … house,” Ben explained, breathing loud between each word.

  “You never asked could you have it. And there goes your baby,” swinging it out far as she could into the yard.

  “You … hurted … her,” Ben said accusingly, his eyes, bigger than ever with their illness, filling with tears.

  But she was in the kitchen, tears and meanness fighting in her, banging the door after her right into wailing Jimmie’s face.

  “Now what’s the matter?” Anna asked, her head bobbing over the steaming kettles. “Oh its you. Now what trouble you been up to?”

  “She tooked it away, she threw it away,” wailed Jimmie louder and louder.

  “Hush, you, hush. Don’t you know Bess is finally sleepin and you mustnt make noise?” Opening the door to let him in. “What did she take away?”

  “My cradle,” defended Mazie, “the one I made.”

  “She took our baby too. She tooked it and threw it far away.”

  “By … the cliff.” Ben toiled in. Reproachfully: “You’re bad, Sistie.”

  “Did you go hunt for it, Ben?” Anna splashed her spoon in the kettle she was stirring, “when you knew you arent to move at all, and I just let you out if you’d set still?” To Mazie: “Miserable child! Look what you’ve done. He wasnt to move.”

  “I didnt know he would go lookin for it,”Mazie said. “And it was my cradle, wasnt it, my very own I made?”

  “Wash your hands—it wouldnt hurt your face none either—and get a apron on,” Anna commanded, wringing a cloth for Ben’s head, taking him on her lap and fanning him. “You knowed we have to get this cannin done, and I’m gettin no place fast between watchin Jimmie and tendin Ben and baby. We got to get lunch too.”

  “Why is it always me that has to help? How come Will gets to play?”

  “Will’s a boy.”

  “Why couldn’t I get borned a boy?”

  “You get to play enough,” Anna said shortly. (Just seems the devil’s got into her.) “Don’t you move now,” settling Ben on the couch; shaving the paraffin into a pan to melt; and going back to stirring the bubbling mass of jelly. If this heat keeps up, I’ll just melt, she thought, drop and melt all over. They wont know which is paraffin and which is me…. If only Benjy dont get so bad I have to fetch him to the clinic.

  Mazie was yanking her skirt, her face white, in her hand an empty bottle. “Somebody spillded it,”she shrieked, “somebody spillded my perfume I made. My very own perfume.”

  “Shhhhh. It was me. How should I a-known it was supposed to be perfume you wanted to save? It was dirty-smelly stuff stuck in the cupboard where it didn’t belong.”

  “It was perfume. I made it out of flower leaves. You put them in a bottle and cork it and leave it. It was for Ginella and I never get a nickel to buy her Blue Waltz and now I haven’t any perfume.”

  “Well there’s more makings where that came from. And next time dont keep it where it dont belong.”

  Shrieking again: “I don’t have no place. If I’d kept it in the bedroom Jimmie woulda been into it, or maybe Will.” Violently: “Why dont I have no place?”

  “Hush, I said. That’s enough outen you. You wake baby and see what you’ll get. Start to stirrin now … Maybe I can make a place for you on a shelf somewhere soon as I get some time. Dont see why not.”

  But Mazie was gone.

  “Come back,” yelled Anna out the screen door, “come back right this minute or you’ll get a whop-pin.” Now who’s wakin baby? she asked herself. Uncomfortably: She oughtn’t to be out in that sun without a hat … And she doesn’t have a place.

  “Ben!” She hears the loud rattling of his breath, turns. He points at the opening door. Mazie crawls in, puts her arms around her mother’s legs and howls.

  “What’s the matter, sweetheart?” Helping her upright.

  “I dont know. My head, Momma. I dont know.”

  Falling. Fainting.

  “Sistie! Maaaaaaa!” begs Ben, baaing like a sheep. He runs with his fan and water.

  Overhead the inflamed sun glares in an inflamed sky. Twelve o’clock noon. 106°.

  “Slow it,” Kryckszi sends the message to Misho, to Huff, to Ella. “We got to slow it.”

  The fifteen-minute lunch break goes like nothing. Those who (against the rules) had crowded into the cooler or the chill damp of pork trim to eat their lunch find their names up on the bulletin board with fines posted against them. (Who ratted?) Those who had sluiced themselves down with the hoses in the yards for momentary relief (also against the rules) suffer other punishment. Their clothes will not dry; cling; tighten; become portable sweat baths as they work. Aitch-sawyer Crowley, the venerable, faints. Prostration. By word or gesture or look of the eye, the message goes out in each department: spell Marsalek; spell Lena; spell Laurett; spell Salvatore: however possible, spell, protect those known near their limit of endurance.

  In casings it is 110°. A steam kettle, thinks Ella, who has a need to put things into words, a steam kettle, and in a litany: steamed, boiled, broiled, fried, cooked; steamed, boiled, broiled, fried, cooked. Tony, Smoky’s older brother, lugging his hand truck from fire to chill to fire (casings to cooler to casings), fans the cooler door open for the women as long as he dares. Each time (the hands never ceasing their motions) even those too far away for relief turn their heads in unison toward the second’s different air, flare their nostrils, gulp with open mouths. The stench is vomit-making as never before. The fat and plucks, the bladders and kidneys and bungs and guts, gone soft and spongy in the heat, perversely resist being trimmed, separated, deslimed; demand closer concentration than ever, extra speed. A hysterical, helpless laughter starts up. Indeed they are in hell; indeed they are the damned. Steamed boiled broiled fried cooked. Geared, meshed.

  In the hog room, 108°. Kerchiefs, bound around foreheads to keep the salt sweat from running down into eyes and blinding, become saturated; each works in a rain of stinging sweat. Almost the steam from the vats seems cloud-cool, pure, by contrast. Marsalek falls. A heart attack. (Is carried away, docked, charged for the company ambulance.) Other hearts pound near to bursting. Relentless, the convey paces on.

  Slow it, we got to slow it.

  Is it a dream, is it delirium? Arms lifted to their motion (geared, meshed) have nothing to move for. The hog has been split, has been stamped—yet still dangles; the leaf lard, the guts, have been pulled, yet no new carcass is instantly in place to be worked on. Has life suspended, are they dead? The skull-crush machine still stomping down, sprays out its bone bits in answer. “Fined, fined for carelessness,” yells Bull Young. “What jammed the convey?”—turning instinctively toward Kryckszi.

  At that moment in casings, as if to demonstrate that there is a mightier heat, a higher superior heat, the main steam pipe breaks open, and hissing live steam in a magnificent plume, in a great boiling roll, takes over. Peg and Andra and Philomena and Cleola directly underneath fall and writhe in their crinkling skins, their sudden juices. Lena, pregnant, faints. Laurett, trying to run, slips on the slimy platform. Others tangle over her, try to rise, to help each other up. Ella, already at the work of calming, of rescue, thinks through her own pain: steamed boiled broiled cooked scalded, I forgot scalded.

  When the door to
the hog room, always kept closed against the casings stench, the casings heat, is flung open, the steam boils in so triumphantly, weds with the hog-vat vapors to create such vast clouds, such condensation, the running scalded figures of horror (human? women?) seem disembodied flickering shadows gesturing mutely back to whence they have fled. “Stay where you are,” yells Bull. “Carelessness. Nobody’s gettin away with nothin. You’ll be docked for every second you aint workin. And fined for carelessness.”

  Already some are in casings, helping. Carrying Lena out of the scalding fog, Jim sees plastered onto her swollen belly the safety sign torn from the wall by the first steam gust.

  Three o’clock. 107°.

  Old Mrs. Dykstra cries out once into the heavy air, gasps and breathes no more. Overhead, blown eggshell doves she has made old-country style with wings and tail of white pleated paper, bob three times—and still.

  Will and Smoky turn from the river for the steep climb toward home, their dream of pockets of jingle money from juicy fishing worms, defeated by the impermeable armor of the sun-hardened shore. Outside the Palace, they stare at movie, stills. “A crook picture,” Will says longingly. But nowhere, nowhere that nickel.

  On her way home—where she will be beaten for having been gone, for having been born, for having been born crippled and epileptic, for being one more mouth to feed and because out of sheer nervousness and exhaustion there is a need for someone to beat—Erina no longer feels heat or thirst or the gnawing in her belly. On a tin-can roof of one of the shacks someone has set a pan of shining water where cat and dog cannot reach it, and a bird is bathing itself, fluttering its wings in delight. In its tiny spray that the sun rainbows, Erina stands motionless, feeling in herself the shining, the fluttering happiness. The thigh-high weeds are powdered white with dust. When the bird is done, she climbs to drink of the water in which feathers float, takes and holds one to dry in the furnace air, turns and smoothes it over and over against her bruised cheek. The vast winds of fit may blow any minute; the shameful trembling and great darkness begin, but she walks now in the fluttering shining and the peace.