The Dollmaker

by Harriette Simpson Arnow

  Clovis yawned. “They’s millions an millions a crosses with a feller on em they call Christ; all out a sawed lumber with th Christ straight agin em, glued on, an now you want to change em. That’s one a yer big troubles, Gert,” he went on when she had continued silent, “you won’t give in to bein like other people. But it’s somethen millions an millions a people has got to do, an th sooner a person learns it, th better.”

  He then launched into his perpetual quarrel with Cassie. “She run right by me, a holden out her hand a jabberen away. They was a youngen a yellen, ‘Cuckoo, cuckoo, talks to herself,’ but Cassie didn’t pay her no mind. An she didn’t watch where she was goen neither; recollect them glasses she’s wearen ull break easy, an they cost eighteen dollars. You’ve got to make her quit them foolish runnen an talken-to-herself fits. Th other youngens’ull git to thinken she’s quair, an you’ll have another Reuben. An she cain’t run back home. An th more you play act with her an carry on about how you hate th place, th harder it’ll be fer her.”

  Gertie turned away, her lips pushed tightly together. Last night, when she had finished the second of the dolls ordered by Mr. Anderson, she had promised herself the pleasure of working on the chickadee for Maggie, making it to give away and as the knife willed. Then, she had thought, her mind forever winging away from the hateful doll, she would start again on the block of wood. The man waiting for her there could heal a little of the hurt and this hunger in her heart for Reuben.

  However, tonight, as soon as she had finished the after-supper kitchen work, she took a chunk of the hard maple scrap and began on the ten-dollar Christ. Clovis lingered a time in the kitchen, and studied the way of her knife on the Christ. “Gert,” he said at last, his face all smiley with his plans, “I’ll bet in this town a body could sell a million a them things if they was cheap enough. I do believe—that tool-an-die man, he’d help—that I can rig up some kind a jig saw, cheap, that ud do th work in a tenth a th time, everthing on th crosses, and they’d be smoother, an prettier, too. An with a saw like that you could do a heap a th work on th Christ. That other Christ took too long, an he was ugly anyhow.”

  “Victor liked him,” she said.

  “Victor’s quair. He’d ruther set an listen to music than go to th movies.”

  “But I don’t figger Christ er enybody in th Bible was pretty. They seen too much trouble,” she said, trying to make the knife go faster.

  Clovis turned away in disgust. “You’re allus wanten to change th wrong things! You’d better be a worryen over changen Cassie’s crazy ways than quarrelen about how Christ ought to look.”

  Gertie worked on even after Clovis had gone to work. She roughly shaped the figure, and began on the crown of thorns. She remembered too late she’d promised the woman only a few. A feeling of guilt came over her, the same feeling she had used to have when in her girlhood she had waited by the spring until her bucket overflowed, and she let it flow on, lost in some whittling foolishness or just savoring the peace of the hillside. Now it was money she wasted when she whittled a thorn, a strand of hair, or a fold in the loincloth that didn’t have to be there.

  She remembered the thorns on that particular Christ for a long time. It was over a wasted thorn that she made up her mind to do away with Callie Lou. Clovis was right. Happiness in the alley with the other children was better for Cassie than fun with Callie Lou. If she couldn’t have the witch child with the other children, she must be made to leave the witch child. But now in the wintry weather, when Cassie couldn’t play much in the alleys anyway, it wouldn’t hurt if Callie Lou lived for just a little while longer.

  Reuben? Reuben was now. She stared a long time at the floor, the knife and work across her knees. She got up at last and put the ten-dollar Christ away. It was near morning before she got to bed, working as she had been at gathering up Reuben’s things. Piece by piece she laid them on the kitchen table: the notebooks and crayons Clytie had brought from school when she told Mrs. Whittle that Reuben Nevels was gone, his clothing, a ball—his only Christmas present—some marbles, and a length of rawhide string he had brought from home. Everything he owned, except the hound he’d made for Mr. Skyros, and that she put away in her mother’s round-topped trunk.

  The next night she thrust the bundle that seemed surprising small when it was wrapped and tied, into Clovis’s hands as he was leaving for work. “When you git a chanct, mail it,” she said, choking, turning quickly away. She sat a long time that night working on the Christ, realizing later that she had put more work on the crossed feet than the feet of such a cheap Christ should have.

  She made the cross and never argued further for logs instead of planks. She was silent now when Clovis talked about the millions, and complained of nothing, not even of the Icy Heart when it froze the milk and made the oleo hard as iron. Though Clovis at times complained of Cassie, he blamed her no more for Reuben. Still, she knew that most of the trouble with Reuben was herself—her never kept promises, her slowness to hide her hatred of Detroit.

  She moved Amos and Enoch into the room on the alley that she and Clovis had shared, and put herself and Clovis into the boys’ room next to Victor. Though smaller, Clovis liked it better, for it was quieter than the other room. The children accepted the goneness of Reuben with no questions and little comment. Now and again she heard Enoch declaring in the alley that Mr. Daly’s lies had made his big brother run away. Other times she’d hear him brag that his big brother wouldn’t take no sass off nobody; he’d run away before he’d go to see the principal.

  Gertie spent long hours over the ironing and the tedious housework, trying to think up words for a letter—a letter that would make him understand she loved him. Then, unable to put the words together, she would think past a perfect letter, written. Suppose he knew she loved him; as Enoch would have said, “So what?” Her love had ever been a burden, laying on him false hopes that, dead, weighed down still more the burden of his misery.

  She missed him, but could never tell him how she missed him most. She hated herself when she lied, trying to make herself believe she missed him the way a mother ought to miss a child. In the old song ballads mothers cried, looking at tables with empty plates and rooms with empty beds. But how could a body weep over a table where, even with one gone, there was yet hardly room for those remaining. The gas pipes were still overcrowded with drying clothes; and eight quarts of milk instead of ten in the Icy Heart meant only less crowding, not vacant space. Two pounds of hamburger cost less than two and a half, and—She would hate herself for thinking of the money saved, and try never to think that living was easier with no child sleeping in the little living room.

  She caught herself wondering one day in early March how it would have been with cross Reuben home after the cold soot-laden rains set in, when day after day, except for time at school, the children, even Enoch, were shut within doors; and the place seemed even smaller, smellier, more filled with steam and leaking gas and radio and quarreling children than at any time since their coming.

  The hard-packed ice and snow changed soon into black water that, held up by the deeply frozen ground beneath, lay in a sheet, sometimes inches deep, over all of Merry Hill. There floated on it, mercifully hidden until now by the layers of ice and snow, all the debris of the winter—newspapers, paper wrappings, orange rinds, and other garbage, lost and broken toys, and the frozen feces of the many wandering dogs and cats. There was even one dead dog around which a bevy of mud-splattered children congregated, but it, like everything else after the long burial in the sooty snow, was sooty gray.

  Slushy water lay boot-top deep along the curbs where the children had to cross with the safety patrols, and twice Cassie, like many of the smaller ones, had “gone under.” And Gertie, washing the mud out of Cassie’s boots, pondered on the powers that called men out of the hills and put them and their children into Detroit’s swamps. But Victor, coming out for a load of coal, was comforting. It would all dry up by summertime, he said, and then there’d be dust instead
of water. He waved his hand over the black lake of the alley. “Dey hadda put u factory workers somewhere. Dis place it was too wet futu grow potatoes, mu Pop allatime says. He knows. Dey tried u subdivide but u sidewalks went under, an inu depression everting went under.”

  Gertie, however, in spite of the ugly weather, gradually grew to look forward to that part of the day when Amos sailed ships in the washbasin, Clovis slept, and Enoch was in school. She could then be easy in her mind, knowing he was not fighting in the alleys or listening to what seemed worse than fights on the radio. Such times were islands of quietness, holding a little of the lost goodness of back home; for often she and Cassie played lady-come-to-see, and drank “coffee” and discussed Miss Huffacre. Even the forever sassing, giggling Callie Lou, staying now in the living room because Clovis didn’t like the block of wood in his bedroom, sat listening in respectful silence to the merits of Miss Huffacre, “the best teacher that ever lived, an yu ain’t kidden,” Cassie always said.

  Callie Lou seemed less respectful when Cassie quoted Miss Huffacre, “‘Of course you’re going to learn to read, but no child learns all at once. It takes hard work, you know.’” It was then usually necessary for Cassie to speak sharply to the block of wood. “Recollect you ain’t so smart, an ye needn’t be a laughen yer fool self sick. When you’re outside I hafta watch ye like a hawk er you’d git run over.”

  Gertie would listen, smiling but feeling guilty in remembering what she had promised Clovis—and herself. The alley jeers of, “Cuckoo, cuckoo, talks to herself,” had to go. Cassie had to—the new word—adjust. Her mind would jump past the trouble. Maybe by the time weather good for playing in the alleys came the war would be over and they would be home, a family whole again with Reuben, and only the trees and Gyp to hear the talk with Callie Lou.

  Then, as if a piece of spring had somehow fallen into winter, the west wind shifted south and came more steadily, and at last the sun shone. The sheets of water dwindled into smaller and smaller pools, all set about with black, glue-like mud in which the children never tired of playing. The mud lay so deep in many of the alleys that even the patrolling police cars never tried to come through. On one glorious windy afternoon, just as school let out, a coalhouse only two alleys away caught fire, and the fire truck that came clanging stuck fast and stood helplessly roaring, smothered in children, while two women in housecoats put out the fire with water from their mop pails.

  Cassie called the big middle alley the Street-of-the-Flying-Kites because children stood there, unconscious of the mud halfway to their boot tops, their faces lifted to the yellow, green, and gold kites tugging against their hands as they fought to go higher into the wind-washed sky. There in the mud was no danger that while your face was lifted toward the sky a car could come and send you there.

  It was on such a raw and windy afternoon that Enoch came clamoring through the door: “Gimme a nickel, Mom. Th popsicle man, he’s come.”

  Gertie wondered and stuck her head around the door. She frowned when she saw the cart with the ringing bell that drew children like the music of that Pied Piper in the old seventh reader. She frowned still more and shook her head firmly against Enoch’s pleas when she saw what the children brought away; their nickels gone for nothing but little chunks of frozen, sweetened, brightly colored water. The stuff was so cold it smoked, and so hard it sounded like hickory nut hulls when some, like Claude Jean, cracked it between their teeth instead of sucking. The popsicle man, as if he knew her mind, lingered at the foot of her walk and rang his bell while Enoch, helped now by Amos and even Clytie and Cassie, begged: “It’s jist a nickel, Mom. We ain’t never had none. Jist a nickel. Gimme ut.” And then the whine that always hurt, “We’re th onliest ones ain’t got none.”

  Enoch jumped with joy when his mother shook her head in the weary gesture that he had come to know. Later, when the nickels were spent, Gertie lingered on the stoop, puzzled by some strangeness. The alley was filled with children, but among them all there was no fighting, quarreling, name calling, dirt throwing, or even screaming. She was puzzled still when Mrs. Schultz, who lived on the other side of Sophronie with five on a fireman’s salary, called in rueful laughter: “I never can make up my mind. Is it worth it?”

  “Them popsicle things?” Gertie asked.

  “Oh, no. If I had my way they’d have to pay me to let my children eat the stuff.” She waved toward the alley, filled only with the blissful sucking, crunching, cracking, lip smacking, “No, the peace. Five minutes for five cents. I think though,” she went on, turning toward her door, “I’ll freeze my own this summer. That twenty-five cents a day mounts up so.”

  “An yu kids’ull allatime wanta buy like du other kids. I tried freezing mu own,” Mrs. Daly said, the hint of a sigh in her voice.

  Gertie turned back into her kitchen. The hateful work of doing Homer’s shirts would just about keep her children in popsicles.

  The popsicle man, the children said, was the first sign of spring; and it was true that next day the sun shone more warmly and the wind came less raw and chill. The good weather held even into Easter vacation, early that year. During this vacation the children brought in from the alleys more talk of things that Gertie did not understand. She could not answer their questions of what was Lent and Holy Thursday, and why did Maggie’s mother let her starve herself for Lent until twice she fainted at early-morning mass.

  Maggie, Gertie thought, had come to no great harm. She seemed chipper as ever when she came selling Easter cards. Not like poor Max, who had forgotten and used all her ration points for steak for Victor on a Wednesday night. He had roared out at the waste of meat and money and declared she’d done it on purpose to make him sin. Max had cried again that night behind the wall, and next day there was an urgency in her voice as she came, red-eyed, asking for a dream.

  The quick lengthening of the days brought sunshine early to the alleys, and with it came the children, even the very little ones who crawled more than they toddled, but big enough to play in the mud and water as they built dams, sailed boats, or just dug in the black dirt, using spoons, nail files, butcher knives, anything except the flimsy little shovels made for children’s digging.

  The older ones played wild running games of kick-the-can or cops-and-robbers, or tired of these, they rode—roller skates, tricycles, bicycles, wagons, and scooters. Then, suddenly weary of everything, they would run away to some forbidden land, usually the swamp across the railroad tracks, from which they brought home boughs of the slightly swollen pussy-willow buds. Many with factory-working mothers could not leave the sunshine long enough for proper eating, but ate as they played, always chewing peanuts or popcorn or candy or popsicles or some sturdier thing like a stalk of celery or a raw carrot, favorite foods of Wheateye.

  Even the least ones wandered freely in the safe world between the through street and the railroad fence, but were always losing themselves or their possessions. Mothers and older children and even fathers would come hunting: a little girl in a green babushka on one roller skate, a little boy with a squirrel on the back of his jacket; or, “He hadda blue tricycle an red boots on.” “Her eyes is black but her hair’s kinda like platinum inu movies.” Others hunted clothing: “Almost brand-new, fourteen dollars fuda snowsuit anu kid loses u jacket.” Toys, usually toys on wheels, but sometimes other things also were hunted: a black teddy bear, big with blue eyes, and a bed-wetting doll. Still others hunted owners: “Dis yu kid’s shoe? Yu’ve got one about this size ain’tcha?” and a strange woman held up a small brown shoe, mud-crusted, but almost new. Mrs. Daly, hunting children and toys, paused long enough to advise: “Stick ut ona clothesline pole. Somebody’ull see an claim ut.”

  Mufflers, mittens, scarfs, and even snowpants were shed all over the alley when the March sun came warmly down at noon. Little girls were little girls again, with skirts billowing above thin legs, white from long imprisonment in snowpants. Long hair, hidden through the winter under snowsuit hoods, flew now like the billowing skirts
above roller skates, jumping ropes, or bouncing balls while voices chanted: “A leansy, a clapsy, a whirl around to bapsy. I touch my knee, I touch my toe, and round and round, I go.”

  Gertie often looked at the little girls and wished Cassie were among them. But in the pretty weather, when all the others were outside, Cassie preferred to be indoors with Callie Lou. Clovis, forever restless in his daytime sleeping, would hear her at times, and angrily command her to go outside and play. She would go, meekly obedient, but almost never did she play with the others in the running and jumping games. Mostly, Gertie thought, because Clovis and Clytie, and even Enoch, had warned her so much about breaking the glasses, which, they never tired of reminding her, had cost eighteen dollars. Cassie also missed the bubble-gum boy. She had gone twice to his unit. Once, nobody was there. The second time she found strangers who had never heard of him.

  Gertie, however, learned one day that Callie Lou visited often with the boy and his sister Mable; and listened to a long story of how well the children fared. She had spoken her part of the conversation in whispers, guiltily conscious of Clovis in his bedroom. The real spring with grass and flowers and budding trees would come and Callie Lou would have to go away, but let her live now in this short false spring.

  The alley mothers knew the fine dry windy weather was a fleeting thing, and took advantage of it. Day after day they were busy washing windows, scrubbing the winter’s grime from stoops and coalhouses, while some, more optimistic than the others, took down their storm windows and stored them in their usual places of storage, under the beds. Clotheslines blossomed with rugs, bedspreads, curtains, and all the things unhandy for drying in the kitchens through the winter.

  Mrs. Daly washed every stitch of Maggie’s hope chest, and though twenty women must have stopped to exclaim over the beauty and the wonder of the pure white linens Mrs. Daly could always point out some as yet unnoticed cause for admiration such as the remarkable beauty of the rosebuds woven into a tablecloth.