by Ann Tatlock
Charlotte had just handed the razor back to me when Mrs. Besac appeared in the bathroom doorway. She looked frumpish, with bags under her eyes and her hair all flattened against one side of her head, as though she had just awakened from a nap. I hadn't even thought of her until the moment she appeared. A cigarette was pressed between her lips, and she lit the end of it with a slender silver lighter. She snapped shut the lighter, inhaled deeply, blew the smoke out one side of her mouth, and picked a tobacco seed from the tip of her tongue, all without taking her eyes off of us. Charlotte and I stood motionless as she stared, each concocting in our own minds an explanation for what we were doing.
Fortunately, we were spared an explanation. The world-weary Mrs. Besac, patron of speakeasies and acquainted with all manner of oddities, simply shook her head and said, "I'm not even going to ask."
We heard her footsteps echo along the hardwood floor of the hall, then descend the stairs. When we decided she was out of earshot, we looked at each other and burst out laughing. Charlotte laughed so hard she had to sit on the edge of the bear-claw tub until she got her breath back. I shut the bathroom door and leaned up against it, trembling with mirth. When we both calmed down, we had only to glance at the other's half-lathered face to break out again into howls of amusement. This went on for several minutes until Charlotte, slapping her thigh, said even as she wailed, "We've got to stop! This is important! This is serious! We've got to come up with a blurb!"
We allowed ourselves another full minute of laughter, then returned, red-faced and panting, to the task at hand.
We finished shaving, then lathered up and shaved again. We lathered up so many times over the next couple of hours that Mr. Besac's cake of soap was reduced to half its original size. "Doesn't matter," Charlotte said when I pointed out how much the soap had shrunk. "We'll win enough money to buy Pop ten boxes of shaving cream."
After three or four mock shaves, I asked, "Which brand of shaving cream are we trying to write a blurb for?"
"Doesn't matter," Charlotte said. "Either one."
"Have you got any ideas yet?"
Charlotte thought a moment. "How about this? `If it's good enough for Bugs Moran, it's good enough for every man. Use Colgate's shaving cream.' "
I frowned. "How do you know Bugs Moran uses Colgate's?"
"I don't."
"Then you can't say he does."
"Yes, I can. This is advertising. It doesn't matter what you say."
"Even so, I'm not sure most men want to be like Bugs Moran."
"Rich and powerful? Of course they do."
"But he's a gangster, Charlotte."
"So?"
"I don't think that makes for good advertising. Besides, I thought you decided athletes were more exciting than gangsters."
"Oh yeah." After a moment, she added, "Okay, how about, `If it's good enough for Eddie Tolan,' "--she was referring to the runner who had just taken the gold in both the 100-meter and the 200-meter dash during the Olympic games in Los Angeles--" `If it's good enough for Eddie Tolan, it's good enough for--' "
"Think of something else," I suggested. "That's not going to work."
"Well, you come up with one, then," Charlotte demanded huffily. I think she was stung by my offhand rejection of her blurb, but there was a lot of money at stake, and I had to be honest.
"All right," I said. "How about something simple but catchy like `Use Colgate, it's doubly bubbly.' "
Charlotte repeated the phrase, then turned up her nose and shook her head. Even if she liked it, of course she wasn't going to admit it. She was going to make me work for her approval.
I shrugged my shoulders and tentatively offered another: " `For skin smooth as an olive, try Palmolive'?"
"Hmm, we'll keep that one in mind. But maybe we should try to come up with something a little more romantic."
"Like what?" I couldn't imagine anything romantic about a shaving cream ad.
Charlotte thought a moment as she absently lathered her right cheek again. Suddenly she exclaimed, "I've got it. `For an irresistible kisser, get rid of every whisker with Colgate'!"
I scratched my soapy chin with the tips of my fingers. "Not bad," I said. "I like it but the judges might think it's too racy. Besides, men don't like romantic stuff; only we women do. Better think of something else." Remembering what Charlotte said about her father swearing when he cut his face, I suggested, " `Instead of a scream, let shaving be a dream. Try Palmolive.' "
Charlotte suggested that we think again.
We thought and we lathered and we shaved and we volleyed our ideas back and forth across the bathroom sink, and finally by some act of divine inspiration (or so we thought), Charlotte began, "Pamper the skin--" and I added, "On your cheeks and your chin," and Charlotte concluded, "Use Palmolive." We looked at each other with raised brows, our faces still streaked with drying soap, then said again slowly, this time in unison, "To pamper the skin on your cheeks and your chin, use Palmolive."
"Hey!" Charlotte shouted.
"That's it!" I cried.
We repeated the words again and again, picking up speed each time and snapping along, then tapping along, until finally we moved out of the bathroom and down the hall, chanting our slogan with wild enthusiasm while dancing a kind of improvised rumba. Hands in the air, fingers snapping, hips swaying as we moved up and down the hardwood floor. Whenever we came to "Pal-mo-" we stood in place and gyrated our hips, and then on the final "-live!" we thrust out our backsides in the questionable manner of salon dancers. This went on for several minutes until we noticed Mrs. Besac at the head of the stairs, once again staring at us as she slowly moved her head from side to side. Her footsteps had been drowned out by our own voices, and we hadn't heard her come up the stairs. Suddenly she was just there, holding a half-empty glass of iced tea. Charlotte and I came to an immediate standstill and, at a loss as to what else to do, returned her stare. Bad enough that she had already caught us shaving--but now to find us dancing like a couple of bootleggers' wives? As the color crept into my soap-streaked face, I could only imagine what my own mother would say if she came upon such despicable behavior. After receiving a thorough dressing down, I'd be reciting Thomas Campion poems for the rest of my life. But Mrs. Besac, so unlike my own mother, simply gazed at us with the eyes of a hound dog, looking as if she had just seen the saddest thing in the world. Then quietly, almost under her breath, she violated the third commandment, shook her head once again, and said, "I'll be glad when school starts up again. You kids are going crazy with boredom." She turned and disappeared down the stairs, returning to the comfort of her iced tea and cigarettes on the front porch swing.
Charlotte and I ran into her bedroom and flung ourselves across the four-poster bed, once again exploding into laughter. We buried our faces in the pillows and laughed until we were exhausted. (Charlotte later told me that all that night she kept catching whiffs of her father's shaving cream, and she dreamed that she really did have a beard that she was trying frantically to shave off.) Finally, when we able to look at each other without breaking up, she said, "Come on. Let's get our blurb ready to mail."
Using her father's ancient Remington, Charlotte typed up the blurb on a plain piece of paper and signed her father's name to it. Then she typed the Chicago address of the contest on an envelope, and we each put up a penny toward the postage. I crossed my fingers while Charlotte kissed the envelope and said, "Make us rich!"
When I walked home that afternoon, the skin on my face felt tight from the soap and irritated from the repeated scraping with the razor, but I ignored my discomfort and thought only of the look on Mother's face when I handed her my winnings and the look on Danny Dysinger's face as I pranced about school in my shiny new black patent leather shoes.
Chapter Eighteen
Just after lunch the next day, Simon and I sat side by side on the piano bench practicing a duet. Miss Cole, during a momentary lapse of judgment the previous week, had given us this rather awkward assignment. My brother an
d I had never before attempted to play together, and Simon's superior skills became even more evident as I fumbled about trying to keep up with him. Time and again we had to stop and start over, and he grew increasingly frustrated until he actually resorted to kicking my shin beneath the piano bench.
"Hey, what's the idea!" I yelled, shoving him hard with both hands.
He managed to catch himself before falling off the bench and took a swing at me with his right fist, hitting me squarely on the upper arm. "A monkey could play better than you!" he cried.
"Could not!" I screamed, though I knew it was true. In retaliation for the swat, I grabbed a fistful of his curly hair and pulled, refusing to let go. He yanked at my bobbed hair, and we sat there locked in a clash of wills, each with a hand to the opposite head, our faces reddening as our anger grew hotter.
"Could so!" he countered. "A deaf monkey who was blindfolded could play better than you!"
"And just who do you think you are?" I screamed. "Ludwig van Beethoven himself?"
"Compared to you I am!"
From the corner of my eye I saw someone step into the parlor, and for a second I thought it must be Mother coming to referee. I immediately dropped my grip on Simon's hair, only to discover that it wasn't Mother but Rufus, wandering in nonchalantly with his hands in the pockets of his overalls. As usual, because of the heat, he wore no shirt beneath the bib. He sauntered over to the piano, pulled a frayed toothpick out of his mouth and pointed it at us. "Hey, Luke and I are going out. You two monkeys wanna come?"
In my sudden excitement, I let the monkey comment slide. This was the first time Rufus invited me to do anything with him since he had moved into our house. Simon had developed a camaraderie with our cousins, but I, who was only a girl, had been largely ignored by the boys.
"Where ya going?" I asked, jumping up from the piano bench.
Rufus leaned toward us and whispered conspiratorially, "Down to the picket line. We want to see for ourselves what's going on down there."
For a moment I was stunned. My eyes widened in fear and wonder. I thought he might suggest swimming in the river or going downtown to see whether a fire hydrant had been opened. But the picket line? "Rufus, you know we're not allowed--"
"Who's to know?" my cousin interrupted, straightening up and chomping on the toothpick again. "We can say we're going to the drugstore for a soda."
"But--"
"If you don't wanna come--"
"I'm coming!" cried Simon.
Not wanting to let the opportunity get away from me, I echoed timidly, "I'm coming, too."
"Good," Rufus said. "Ginny, you tell Aunt Lil we'll be back in a while. Luke and Simon and me'll be waiting for you out on the porch." Aunt Sally hadn't yet returned from her duties at the commissary, though we expected her home at any time, and my cousins were most likely anxious to leave before she arrived.
I found Mother upstairs putting fresh sheets on the girls' bed. Crossing my fingers behind my back, I told her the boys and I wanted to go out for a soda. Fortunately, Simon and I had been at the piano for nearly half an hour, so Mother was satisfied and gave us permission to go.
Feeling giddy, I ran out to catch up with the boys, who had already started down the sidewalk.
"What'd she say?" Rufus asked when I reached them.
"She said all right."
"Good."
The four of us walked along in silence for a moment, spurred on by a certain unspoken determination to reach the picket line as quickly as possible. But the day was another scorcher and the glare of the sun stung our eyes. It wasn't long before we all began to drag.
"Gonna be a long hot walk," Luke said, shuffling along the sidewalk. Like Rufus, he wore denim overalls without a shirt. I thought the overalls must be hot and wondered why my cousins didn't wear cotton shorts like Simon did. It never occurred to me that they might not have any.
Rufus tossed the toothpick onto somebody's front yard. "Yeah, and we're gonna feel a lot hotter before we get there--unless anyone's got money for the trolley."
I reached into the pocket of my dress and felt my weekly allowance resting there against the seam. Just that morning Mother had given me my usual quarter. I was saving it for Saturday when Charlotte and I planned to see Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in Love Is a Racket. But I didn't think twice about pulling it out and impressing my cousin Rufus. If I had thought twice, I might have realized why he had invited me along. After all, he knew I had the quarter because he'd seen Mother give it to me.
But I held up the gleaming coin and, feeling like a heroine, cried, "I've got money!"
There was just enough for the four of us to catch the trolley to the warehouse district, a block away from the grain mill, with a nickel left over. Where I was going to come up with enough money to go to the matinee with Charlotte, I didn't know. But I decided not to fret about it just then. An outing with my cousin Rufus--and an illicit one at that--was too exciting to pass up.
We caught the trolley on the next block and found seats at the back. Simon and I sat together in one, Luke and Rufus in another behind us. None of us said a word as we passed through the city streets. We sat as though mesmerized by the soothing air blowing in through the open windows. Whenever the trolley stopped, the heat stung our skin as sure as the biting winds of winter, but we were only uncomfortable until the car jerked into motion again and the wind of locomotion whistled across our faces.
When we reached our stop, Rufus tapped Simon and me on the shoulder, and we followed him out of the trolley.
"Where's the picket line?" Luke asked.
"Follow me," Rufus replied, motioning us on with a sweep of his arm.
We hurriedly trod the sidewalk in single file like a string of sleuths hunting down clues. Rufus was point man, while I brought up the rear. In another moment, we heard the picket line before we saw it. What came to us through the streets of the warehouse district wasn't shouts or grumbling or yelling, but singing--the hum of two hundred male voices hewing out a rough tune. We rounded a corner and there they were, a swarming assemblage of dark-clad men, spilling out over the sidewalk and onto the street, most holding signs, a few wearing sandwich boards, almost all sporting caps in spite of the heat. Their whiskered faces spoke of fatigue and discouragement, and yet they sang, and the shock of coming upon this vast bedraggled choir in the street brought us to a standstill, able only to gape and to listen. I can hear it yet, the sound of their unskilled voices rising together to the tune of "Battle Hymn of the Republic."
When the Union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run,
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun,
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,
But the Union makes us strong.
Solidarity Forever!
Solidarity Forever!
Solidarity Forever!
For the Union makes us strong.
"Wow!" cried Simon quietly, almost reverently.
"You see Pa?" Luke asked.
"Not yet," answered Rufus. "But don't let him see us. Come on, over here."
Rufus led us to a narrow alley between two buildings across the street from the mill entrance, a position from which we could watch the picket line without being noticed. We crouched against the brick walls of either building, Simon and I on one side, our cousins a few feet away on the other. Though the alley was shaded by the buildings that formed it, the air in there was heavy with heat and difficult to breathe, and the bricks, yielding a pungent odor of cement and dirt, burned hot against our bare arms and legs. It was something like being inside a brick oven, but our discomfort was overridden by our curiosity.
The chorus of picketers sang and marched in measured steps while their reluctant audience, the police and the sheriff's deputies, milled about looking natty and domineering in their starched uniforms and their sidearms of batons and guns and rifles. The lawmen exhibited little expression, but every one of them made me think of a night watchman whistling in
the dark, uneasy at the thought of what he may come upon around the next corner. Occasional furtive and menacing glances passed between the strikers and the lawmen. Both sides seemed posed to jump at the slightest provocation.
Adding to the tension were the newspaper photographers and reporters who had come to capture the story, identifiable by their white shirts and loosened ties and the fedoras that sat far forward over their brows to shade their eyes from the glare of the sun. The reporters had small notebooks cupped in their hands on which they scribbled with pencil stubs. The photographers fiddled with their cameras and walked to and fro, seeking out vantage points for their picture taking. Even a newsreel truck was there to record the strike in moving pictures. The cameraman had climbed to the roof of the truck to set up his tripod. He too was getting ready, and the preparation of the journalists defined the climate of the scene: Anticipation. Something was about to happen. Something was about to happen as though it had all been staged and the players in the wings were nervously awaiting the rise of the curtain, the start of the show. A line of patrol wagons sat parked down the street, hinting at the outcome of the final act.
"Is there going to be a fight?" Luke whispered loudly to Rufus.
"I don't know," Rufus said, shaking his head. "Will be, I think, if they try to bring in scabs."
"They gonna try to bring in scabs?"
"How should I know? Just shut up and watch."
"Look, there's Pa!"
Luke stretched out one sun-darkened arm and pointed toward the center of the crowd near the mill gate. There indeed was Uncle Jim, carrying a sign that read "Give us a voice! Recognize the Union!" He was speaking to the striker next to him and nodding his head.