The Dollmaker

by Harriette Simpson Arnow

  Claude Jean, the younger one, sprang from behind the trash can, a snowball dropping from his hand. “They ain’t nobody home. Git away an quitcha knocken.” A Daly ball splattered his pale hair, but he never noticed as he moved closer to Mrs. Bommarita, his voice filled with a troubled beseeching. “Please, lady, quitcha knocken. Everybody’s—everbody’s gone, I tell yu. Please.”

  Mrs. Bommarita hesitated, then went on up the Meanwell steps, asking in her low, always seeming sullen voice, “An why for because don’tcha want me to knock?”

  Gilbert pressed his back more firmly against the storm door, his arms wide spread across it, and begged again, almost crying now: “G’wan back. They ain’t nobody home. Pop’s gone tu th bowlen alley—an Mom, too.”

  “Yu don’t wantcha mom to know yu’ve been dirtying mu steps again. Liars,” and reaching above Gilbert’s outstretched arms, she knocked on the storm door with her fist.

  There was a moment’s silence after the loud and ringing knock. Gilbert twisted his head about and looked through an empty square where glass had been, his body tense. Claude Jean, who had been worriedly watching the door, cried, relief in his voice, “See, they ain’t nobody home.”

  The Daly boys, too, were watching, not taking advantage of the unprotected positions of the Meanwells. Christopher, the biggest Daly, turned at last to Mrs. Bommarita, and there was in his voice an echo of the Meanwell boys’ troubled concern, as he said: “Dey ain’t nobuddy home. Honest. Look, if yu gotta tell tales, go tell mu sister, Maggie. She’s—”

  Mrs. Bommarita knocked again, and Gilbert, still with his arms across the door, looked up at her, crying, an abject begging in his cry: “Please, g’wan. I never knowed I was hitten yer—” He turned quickly and looked behind him when the inner door began a slow and careful opening. He jerked open the storm door and snatched at the knob, but his hand dropped when Wheateye squeezed through the narrow opening, then immediately pulled the door shut behind her. Wheateye stopped between the doors and stood on tiptoe, her small face pushed through the frame of a broken pane. Gertie, who watched, and wondered, troubled for the children, saw that the child had been crying.

  She did not look at her face again for staring at her hair. Wheateye’s hair instead of being its usual pale, almost silvery color was—Gertie couldn’t name the color; more purple than red in some spots, more red in others. All unknowing Gertie moved down another step to get a better sight of the hair. Mrs. Bommarita stepped back, her voice loud in scolding. “Yu kids. Youse oughta be ashamed. Yu mom works hard to give yu a good Christmas, and look whatcha done. You’ve ruined yu new dress. Look, it’s all run over.” She pointed to streaks and blobs of purplish red on Wheateye’s pink rayon dress, and quarreled on: “Yu mom could git in bad trouble. She oughta know it’s againsa law to leave kids by theirselves thisaway. Somebody might calla cops.”

  “We’ll be good,” Gilbert said, glancing uneasily at Wheateye’s hair. “We’re gonna—” He sprang toward the door, opening again.

  Wheateye whirled about and tugged on the doorknob. Her toes pushed hard against the door sill; her small body bent like a bow as she flung all her weight on her hands as they tried to keep the inner door shut. Gilbert caught the knob, but too late. The inner door began a slow opening. Mrs. Bommarita leaned above the pulling children and pushed, scolding: “Yu mean kids. Telling me lies so’s yu mama won’t know th meanness yu’ve been in.”

  But when the door was only part way open, Mrs. Bommarita’s hands suddenly dropped away. She stood a second staring, then whirled and ran down the steps. She did not look back when Sophronie called: “Come in, Mish Bommarita. Didja see Wheateye’s hair? Don’tcha think it’s pretty? Git out a my way, Gilbert.” Sophronie, with the strength that always seemed out of place in her puny body, gave the storm door a hard swift push that knocked Wheateye down the steps and Gilbert back enough so that she could get onto the stoop. She stopped, and stood swaying a little, but able to ask: “Whatsa matter, Mish Bommarita? Runnen off?”

  Mrs. Bommarita only ran faster as she called over her shoulder, “I gotta see about mu baby.”

  “Baby?” Sophronie said. “Baby shick?” Her wavering hands found the porch rail and clung to it as she came unsteadily down the steps.

  Gilbert, near sobbing now, begged, “Git back in, Mom. Please.”

  Sophronie paid him no heed. She was apparently unaware that, save for her toeless slippers, her only piece of clothing was a black and flimsy nightgown with narrow straps for a top and a long and constantly lengthening tear up the front. Wheateye gave her mother one shame and terror mingled look, then scrambled to her feet and darted back into the house. But Gilbert sprang in front of Sophronie, begging, his voice loud, as if he feared she could not understand: “Mom, yu fergotcha housecoat. You’ll freeze.” He caught her arm and tried to turn her about. “Please, Mom, git back in—” She gave him a hard slapping blow with the heel of her palm. He staggered, but clung to her arm; and unable to get her back up the steps, he walked backward in front of her, trying to shield her nakedness as he begged, “Please, Mom, please—”

  Sophronie seemed suddenly to realize that Gilbert was in front of her, blocking the way. She caught him by the shoulders and flung him hard to the ground. She then stood swaying, flinging her arms about in her efforts to regain her balance. Gertie thought hopefully that she was going to fall, and started toward her. If she fell and lay quiet, she could pick her up and carry her back into the house. However, Sophronie straightened at last, and stood holding herself stiffly erect while she looked about the alley in a fuddled sort of way. Mrs. Bommarita’s door slammed shut, and the sound apparently brought back her memory.

  She called, “Wait, Mish Bommarita. I’ll look at yer baby,” and staggered on across the alley. Her tangled permanent-wave-crisped hair stood up like a wiry halo about her head. One strap of the nightgown slipped even further down her arm, and as she walked the tear in front continued to lengthen. The fallen strap entangled her arm, the lengthening pieces of the split skirt worried her feet. When she reached the Bommarita trash can, she stopped, said, “Damn,” and then, seeming blind to Christopher Daly on the other side of the can, she stood on the nightgown tail and wriggled her body slowly, wearily, like a moth emerging from a cocoon. She went on up the walk, wearing nothing now but the red slippers.

  Gilbert darted to pick up the nightgown, then called over his shoulder, “Hurry, Claude, with the housecoat.” He ran after his mother, who was now pounding on the Bommarita door, calling in her thick, muffled voice:

  “Yu want aspirin fer th baby?”

  No one came to Sophronie’s knocking. Gilbert waited a moment, then tapped on the door quickly, crying, “Please let my mom in. She don’t know what she’s doen.” He began all at once to cry wholeheartedly, like a very young child, and stood slinging the tears away with his fist.

  The smaller Dalys, who had been flinging swift curious glances at Sophronie, looked carefully away when Gilbert began to cry, and when Christopher called to them, “Yu better scram, kids,” they turned toward the Daly door. Christopher, however, continued to stand and stare at a melting snowball as if there were nothing else of interest in the alley. He did not look around when the Bommarita door was opened enough to make a narrow crack and Mrs. Bommarita said: “If youse hillbillies don’t git away I’ll calla cops. I’ll go to da pay station not a block away. G’wan, scram.” She hooked the storm door, then banged shut the inner door.

  Sophronie blew a cloud of smoke. “Who wants in a damned wop’s house nohow?” She turned about, cursing again as she bumped into Gilbert. He stood as close to her as he could get, his tearful glance jumping from house to house as if measuring what help might come from each. He snatched eagerly at the housecoat when Claude Jean came running with it, but his mother shook it away when he tried to put it around her shoulders. He persisted, she grabbed it and flung it into the snow. “I don’t need a housecoat this time a day,” she said.

  Gertie glanced toward h
er own door. Clovis was dozing in their bedroom. The children were mostly sleeping too. She started toward Sophronie, but in the moment of her looking away Sophronie had darted to the next stoop—the Andersons’. Gertie looked up in time to see one red slipper disappearing as Gilbert, picking up the housecoat, cried: “Mom, don’t go in there. Mr. Anderson’s home.”

  Gertie stopped at the foot of her walk. She was relieved that Sophronie was behind a closed door, then worried, moving toward the sound, when from behind the door there came a short sharp scream—Mrs. Anderson’s. Gilbert ran to the door calling; “Please leave my mama stay. She won’t hurtcha none. She jist don’t know what she’s doen.” No answer came, but he continued to stand by the door, trying to make the new Christmas housecoat, mudstained and dye-spotted now, small in his hands.

  Christopher saw Gertie, and after a moment’s hesitation came to her. “Mom’s gone,” he said in a low voice. “She could a managed this—but Maggie couldn’t.”

  “It’s no business fer Maggie,” Gertie said. “You’d better go home. I’ll …” She stood pondering. What could a body do? She had never until now seen a woman drunk or human nakedness, save that of Clovis and her children.

  “Please, Mrs. Nevels, oh, please.” It was Mrs. Anderson, brushing past Gilbert and rushing down her steps.

  “If a body could git her to sleep. She was dozen off good when Miz Bommarita come,” Gilbert said, without leaving his place by the door.

  “We’ll manage your mother. Go on home now,” Mrs. Anderson said, her voice sharp. Her cheeks were too pink, and her eyes too bright and glassy-like—like a body about to puke and cry at the same time. She motioned frantically for Gertie to come, then certain that Gertie was following she rushed back up her walk, again commanding Gilbert to go home.

  Gilbert hesitated, but at last handed her the bathrobe, and with many backward glances started home. Mrs. Anderson cautiously opened her storm door, and looked through the glass of the other door, her head tilted, listening. Gertie, behind her, heard in a moment Sophronie’s question, insistent, as if many times repeated, “Didn’tcha think it was pretty?”

  A throat clearing, then the halting answer, “Yes—yes, indeed—very nice.”

  Mrs. Anderson turned to Gertie. “It’s so horrible,” she whispered, “so horrible. Homer was working—filing his thesis material—with his back to the kitchen door. I was on the floor helping Georgie build a block house. I heard the door and looked up. There she was in the kitchen, naked, smiling that fuddled smile. What’ll we do? She won’t put on a stitch. I offered her a bathrobe. Homer’s so upset. I’ve never seen him upset. He’s so calm—always. When Georgie was being born, he left the hospital to look up something in the library.

  “Georgie’s in there grinning at her,” she went on, as Gertie continued silent. “I’ve brought him up to have no horror of nakedness. Homer has learned so much about all the frustrations people get because they were taught false modesty. But Homer,” she added, getting more and more angry, “with all the psychology he’s had, he ought to be able to manage. But all he can do is sit there red as a beet and sweat.”

  “You all are a doen enough jist keepen her in th house,” Gertie said.

  “But we’ve got to go out. One of Homer’s bosses took pity on us and invited us to dinner, or rather, as I understand it, one of the bigger bosses, a Mr. MacSomething, too big to be bothered, suggested that this lesser boss invite us to dinner. Even the lesser one lives in Grosse Pointe,” she added, motioning toward her carefully done hair and the long-tailed dress. “I’m sure he thinks,” she went on, “he’s doing us a great favor. You know, just like Christ—that is, if Christ had been so fortunate as to have a home in Grosse Pointe. Mr. Turbi, our host, is very close to Christ—Mr. Flint knows him by sight.”

  “Give Mom another little drink er two an she’ll doze off.” It was Gilbert, who, not trusting them, had gone no further than behind the trash can.

  Claude Jean and Christopher watched and listened with him. Claude Jean only nodded, but Christopher said: “Youse’ull have to get anudder baby sitter. Maggie her—can’t come.”

  Mrs. Anderson, already angry, upset still more by her realization that the boys had heard all that she had said, bit her lip with exasperation at this last piece of news and looked ready to weep. “Why didn’t Maggie tell me sooner? I asked her days ago, and she promised.”

  Christopher flushed and looked at Gilbert. Gilbert looked at Mrs. Anderson. “His maw—she’s hadda go—out,” Gilbert said at last.

  Mrs. Anderson only looked puzzled as well as angry until Christopher explained in a low voice, “Mu fadder.” Then angry at being forced to tell, he exclaimed, “Hell. It’s Christmas ain’t it?”

  “Oh—no,” Mrs. Anderson cried, understanding at last. “Oh, this alley—and all for Homer’s thesis,” she said under her breath to Gertie, then more loudly to Christopher, “But Maggie, so young; she’d be better here than—”

  “That’s th trouble,” Gilbert interrupted, looking after Christopher, who was hurrying away, his ears red. “His old man ain’t home. His mom’s gotta find him. He was carryen th rent money.”

  “And I used to think it was funny,” Mrs. Anderson said. “That song, ‘Father, dear father, come home with me now.’ Once we had a hired man, but we were never allowed to see him. My mother would pretend to us he was sick … when—”

  “Has you uns seen Wheateye? Ole Homer, he’s gotta see her.” It was Sophronie with her head stuck around the door.

  Mrs. Anderson whirled and stood in the opening, “Oh—no—yes. Gilbert’s gone to get her.”

  “Thanks,” Sophronie said, pushing her head past Mrs. Anderson to smile at Gertie.

  Gertie looked into the pale blue eyes and tried to return the smile, but nobody was home in the eyes. The talking, though, was like Sophronie’s as she said: “I meant to give my youngens a real fine Christmas. Seems like I ain’t hardly ever got time fer foolen with my youngens no more.” She smiled triumphantly. “But today I fixed Wheateye’s hair, shampooed an tinted it an give it a lemon rinsh, real good. Where’s Wheateye?” She caught the storm door, and such was her darting speed that she was halfway through and had given one shrill call for Wheateye before Mrs. Anderson and Gertie could get in and jerk shut the door.

  “Wheateye’s all right,” Mrs. Anderson said in a breathless, jerky voice.

  “But I wantcha tu see her hair. Oh, Wheateye,” and she screamed shrilly again, putting her face close to the glass, as if unable to see that Mrs. Anderson’s storm door, unlike her own, had all its panes.

  “I’ll go hunt Wheateye,” Mr. Anderson said from the living room in a strange meek voice.

  “No, no, dear, I’ll go,” Mrs. Anderson said, reaching for the doorknob.

  Gertie felt a rush of cold air. “I’m gone, dear.”

  “Not through the front door. There isn’t even a path cleared. You haven’t even taken time to put on your boots. You’ll have to walk all the way around.” Mrs. Anderson’s voice dropped to an angry hiss. “He would go away and leave me.”

  Georgie, grinning with delight at all the strange goings on, caught even his mother’s whisper and cried: “Poppa leave mama.” He made a song of it and circled around the tiny kitchen, pausing every few steps to look at Sophronie.

  Sophronie had been groping over the kitchen table, apparently hunting cigarettes, for her last one, half burned, lay smoking on the floor. She saw the cigarette, bent to reach it, staggered, caught first a chair, and then the table. She leaned on it with both hands, smiling, “It’s like that merry-go-round,” she said.

  Georgie studied her. His glance went from her red-nailed toes on up her body that looked like some gray, wrinkling sack filled with bones and muscles and joints. He considered her belly briefly, but it was only a row of wrinkles sagging between jutting hip bones, and above it her dry puckered breasts stood little higher than the ridges of her ribs. It was Sophronie’s face that gave Georgie most satisfaction. Her lips
tick wavered widely on one side of her mouth, and thinned suddenly on the other, so that when she smiled it was like half her face didn’t move. Her eyebrow pencil was high and heavy, crooking down into the bright red spots of rouge smeared unevenly over her cheeks. All the colors, the pink, the red, the black, stood out boldly against the brick red of her neck and forehead, and the red flush, stopping abruptly as it did just above the hollows of her collarbone, looked painted on above the gray-white body.

  “You’re a Indian,” Georgie said at last, his glance on her upstanding hair.

  Sophronie giggled. “I’m a Indian on th merry-go-round—yippee.” Her voice rose into a wild screaming whoop that caused Mrs. Anderson to press against the hooked storm door. She snatched once at Georgie as he dashed past, screaming with laughter. Sophronie looked toward her and smiled, her soft and blurry smile. “I’m a Indian, all right—a Indian on a merry-go-round,” and began an unsteady stepping around the table.

  “Merry-go-round, merry-go-round,” Georgie cried. “I’m on a red horse with a gold bridle an you’re on a blue horse with silver. I’m finer’n you an faster. I’m getting ahead, see,” and he pranced still faster.

  “Wait,” Sophronie said, straightening, taking her hand from the table, but holding something in the air, as Cassie held to Callie Lou. “On a merry-go-round they ain’t no fallen back—no gitten ahead. You go jist as fast as it goes. See?” She was not looking at Georgie, but straight ahead, her soft but disobedient glance fighting to find something, somebody who could understand this thing. “See,” she repeated, “it’s like thish—” and her eyes wandered so, groping like the hands of one newly blinded, that Gertie took upon her soul the sin of looking at a naked woman. She stepped in front of Sophronie and looked at her, trying to pull the wandering glance to herself. Anyway, the Bible, she thought, hadn’t been thinking about nakedness like Sophronie’s. Solomon would never sing of such.