The Dollmaker

by Harriette Simpson Arnow

  She closed the book and laid it on a chair, and stared at it, her hands twisting across her aproned lap. Amos, and the old preacher—she’d comforted the children with him for Henley—and Solomon, and Jesus, and John the Baptist, and Jonah pitying the gourd vine, and Jethro’s daughter bewailing her fate in the mountains; but all—all of them could not change Job’s words.

  She couldn’t either. Her head drooped, and even the wood was wood only. A train came, jerking her to the window to watch, to listen, to live it over again. She fled tiptoeing from the sound into the kitchen. She snapped on the light, and the bottle of pink medicine above the sink caught her eye. She grabbed it, jerked out the stopper, turned toward the one drawer in the place for a spoon; she didn’t need a spoon, half the bottle, all the bottle, anything to get her through the night, bring her, if not sleep, a little forgetting. She stopped, the bottle halfway to her mouth; Callie Lou, seemed like, had just flitted through the door, past the corners of her eyes.

  Seemed like? Wavering a little with weakness, she set the bottle on the sink rim; if she took enough of the medicine Callie Lou would be there; she’d go running, flitting, always a corner, an alley-turning away. She rubbed her hand hard across her eyes. Did she remember, or was it like Callie Lou—only something seeming—a hand bigger and stronger than her own, pulling her. She had struggled against it, angry because Callie Lou was past the next turning, hidden in the dark, laughing at her, the soundless-seeming laughter; but the voice that commanded had been troubled. “Yu gotta git in; yu gotta git some sleep an I’ve gotta sleep; I can’t be allatime watching yu. Nobody yu need tu hunt in u alley; yu kids is home sleeping.”

  “Not all,” seemed like she had said. She remembered nothing more, only the man’s voice kept running through the soundless laughter; it had held pity for her, and kindness—she, Gertie Nevels, had never needed pity—and what was kindness? She looked at the little bottle, full of lights and gleams under the light; if she drank it Callie Lou would come alive, and she herself would sleep and dream to waken at times and work on the block of wood. The block of wood? She might ruin it. Gertie Nevels must whittle it, not some weak and weeping smoothed-out creature; she couldn’t flop down and cry like some; she had to make money; a cross waited to be whittled, and—a train came, and for refuge she went to a hand of the block of wood.

  The crimson light grayed up for dawn, and in the shaving-littered room she slept, but wakened soon, half dreaming still of earth and trees and hills and running water. Dreams, she told herself, and got up and dressed, and then remembered. Not all of it was dreaming; she had the earth. The earth at the bottom of Enoch’s post hole, how had it looked?

  Still, it was late morning and she was caring for the little Andersons in the alley before she had a chance to look at it; dark and rich it was, with more sand than that on top, and smelling even more like the clean earth back home. She would liked to have touched it, but she had Judy on her other arm; her weak knees trembled with the weight of the child when she bent above the scattered earth.

  She set Judy on the coalhouse roof and leaned against it resting. Mrs. Bommarita was hanging out clothes, Sophronie was taking down storm windows, and past her the Schultz baby carriage poked through the storm door. Then Mrs. Schultz, neat and starched as always, and with her hair in curlers, came behind, guiding the carriage down the steps. She called gaily to all the women, including Gertie, then left the carriage on the walk, and from her coalhouse dragged out a large trough-like box. “Ain’tcha starten farmen kinda early this year?” Sophronie called, on seeing the box.

  “Why, it’s spring,” Mrs. Schultz answered. “Joe’s been selling pansies; and if they weren’t so dirty I could pick a ton of dandelion greens. Do you think nasturtiums would grow in a window box? I love to smell them so, but they do take up a lot of room. Perhaps I’d just better stick to pansies and petunias. You’ll have a fence,” she was calling now to Gertie. “You grow some nasturtiums and I’ll come smell them.”

  Gertie smiled, but shook her head over Enoch’s beginnings of a fence. It was in truth what Clytie had said it was, a mess: piles of little kindling-wood slabs that Enoch meant for pickets, and a great line of junky, oddly shaped posts stretching between her place and Sophronie’s, across her narrow strip of yard and two sides of Victor’s place on the end, enclosing in all a good-sized piece of earth.

  Worse even than the posts were the would-be stringers, heavy, crooked, nail-scarred old oak planks. Enoch must have bought cheaply at the scrap-wood place, for they were unfit for either kindling or lumber. Mrs. Bommarita looked at the mess with a headshake of displeasure. “Yu’ll never keep th kids out—last summer they ruined my gladiolus; they’d started out real pretty.”

  Mrs. Schultz, rolling the baby carriage and with two little ones tagging after, reminded Mrs. Bommarita that the children had always left her window box alone, and that some of Sophronie’s marigolds, even without a fence, had bloomed. But Mrs. Bommarita remembered how the Dalys had made mud pies out of a pot of just-getting-started-good delphiniums Mrs. Anderson had put to sun on her stoop step, planning to set them on the other side of her house where the children played less often.

  Sophronie reminded the dour woman that no child had ever bothered her sweet-potato vine; and she’d forgotten it once already and left it sunning on the coalshed roof when she left for work. There followed an animated discussion of Sophronie’s wonderful way with a sweet potato, but Gertie was silent, feeling ashamed; seemed like she was the only woman in the alley who had no growing thing—even Max had some ivy in a little glass dish. She wondered about Max. Why hadn’t she come for a dream, either yesterday or today?

  Mrs. Bommarita was complaining now that the Dalys threw banana skins in her yard, and Gertie wondered aloud on the color of hair the new little Daly had. “Oh, that’s right, you ain’t seen her!” Sophronie cried. “She’s th cutest thing.”

  Gertie looked longingly toward the Daly door, and Mrs. Schultz, careful not to let her eyes linger on the scarred face or bandaged neck, looked at Gertie. “I saw her only three days ago, but the stingy thing still wouldn’t let me see her eyes—and I hate to be always running in. Yu know, yu don’t feel too good when a baby’s not two weeks old. But couldn’t we all go at once? Be better than somebody always running in—and nobody’s got a cold.”

  They all turned toward the Daly door, but Mrs. Schultz gave a last lingering glance at the fence, her blue eyes slightly narrowed, pondering. “Yu know, I think perhaps we’ll have a fence. I never know what to do: save every cent for a down payment on a house or spend it all as you go along—a long spell of sickness could take all you’ve saved—but kids, they’d always remember a yard with flowers.”

  “I tried th saven onct,” Sophronie said, then added slowly, “but mebbe th war’ull be over pretty soon, an with a lot a people outa work things’ull git cheaper an—well, you don’t have to worry none—firemen they don’t hafta go on strike er git laid off …” Sophronie’s voice had grown more and more halting, more troubled; plain it was she did not like to think of that time—for herself.

  Mrs. Schultz frowned, uncertain. “But what if they take off OPA?”

  They reached the Daly door, all its lights broken now but one. Just as they had got up the steps, Mrs. Daly flung it open and stood smiling on them all, especially Gertie. “Come in an see du baby, but please don’t look an mu house,” she went on somewhat wistfully as Mrs. Schultz, the best housekeeper in the alley, stepped through the door.

  “Ugh, you ought to see my place,” Mrs. Schultz said. “I can’t bear to look at it myself,” and she, no more than the other women, appeared to see the crowded, cluttered kitchen, nor did they let their glances stray into the still more rumpled living room that served as living room and nursery by day and bedroom for four little Dalys by night. Mrs. Daly, young and happy looking in a new cotton housecoat, had eyes only for the bundle which Maggie, as if to be finished quickly with the visitors, was hurriedly bringing into the kitche
n.

  Mrs. Daly took it with an eager smile, and sat down somewhat carefully on a chair with a broken seat while the women crowded round her, their eyes expectant, smiling. She pulled the blanket from the reddish, puckered face, and at once the place was filled with soft “Oh’s” and “Ah’s,” and uncounted cries of: “Oh, that hair. I do believe she’s got jist one dimple.” “One dimple; ain’t that somethen?” “Ain’t she big? Lookut, she already knows th way to her mouth. Ain’t she strong, though?”

  There was a moment’s silence while the five pairs of eyes watched the baby’s eyes; for, as Mrs. Schultz had complained, she held them stingily squinched, sucking one fist, waving the other, frowning, uncertain of whether or not to cry. “She’s kind a little to look around much,” Gertie said.

  “But she’s been—” disappointed Mrs. Daly was beginning when the baby, like a good child, opened her eyes wide and smiled. The women fell into a chorus of wondering exclamations over the beauty of her wide, dark blue eyes, as if until now they had never taken that first look into any baby’s eyes.

  Sophronie’s exclamations were almost at once swallowed in giggles as Mrs. Daly, the better to display the wonders of the feet and body, unwrapped the baby. “Lordy, I didn’t think you’d put it on her,” Sophronie cried, picking a speck of lint from the green crocheted jacket the baby wore.

  “Put it on her!” Mrs. Daly exclaimed, for an instant able to take her eyes from the baby’s face. “Lookut what Sophronie gimme. She knowed it ut be a redheaded girl. Canyu imagine?”

  Sophronie flushed at such praise. “Back when I was gitten Easter clothes fer th kids down at Union Credit, I seen this green baby sweater—I’d never seen no green baby clothes before, but I thinks to myself, “That little Daly she won’t look good in pink.’ I was afeared the green ud made Miz Daly mad, but it was so cute I bought it.”

  “Mad,” Mrs. Daly said, looking at the baby. “You had more sense’n me. Till I seen her, I had my heart set on another girl like Maggie—but there was this green, ready waiting. Maggie,” she said, glancing toward her oldest but beaming as on the baby, “is th only one has got hair an eyes like her fadder.”

  “She’ll always be th prettiest one, I bet,” Mrs. Schultz said, smiling at Maggie, who through all the goings on over the baby had stood silent in the passway as if she would hide the mess behind her that too plainly showed the family’s torn sheets and tattered blankets. Her eyes were unsmiling when she glanced briefly at the baby, though when Mrs. Schultz complimented her she did smile, that is, her lips went away from her teeth, the dimples leaped into her cheeks, and she tossed her head enough to ripple her dark curls.

  “An no matter how pretty she gits, she cain’t never be no better than Maggie,” Mrs. Daly said, smiling on first one daughter and then the other. “Wudju believe it? Not one little cross word for having to miss school—and even, one day, mass.”

  “She’ll give yu black-headed, blue-eyed grandchildren,” Mrs. Bommarita said, studying Maggie. “A dozen—could be fourteen.”

  Mrs. Daly, at the thought of fourteen grandchildren, all black-headed, bounced with delight until the baby jiggled on her knees; then she was hoping she could get a few more pieces for Maggie’s hope chest first and, it would be nice for Maggie to finish high school, then let her marry, “an raise as many babies as th Blessed Virgin sends her, like any Christian woman ought.” She smiled at Maggie again, but Maggie had turned her back on her mother, and gave no sign that she had heard.

  There was a banging on the kitchen door, and a chorus of children’s voices, Amos among them, all crying, “Georgie’s gotta buggy widu kid in ut.”

  It was Mrs. Schultz’s baby, left for an instant by the Daly door. No harm had come to it on the wild bouncing ride down the main alley before fleet-footed Sophronie rescued it. But even she, the silent one, joined in the chorus of condemnation and gazed wistfully upon Georgie. “Law, wouldn’t it be fine to spank him, jist onct!”

  “Summer, summer,” Mrs. Schultz said, sighing, putting the baby carriage by her stoop, hunting with her eyes through the alley until she found the two-year-old and the four-year-old. She was, however, soon in her usual good humor again, and called to Gertie as she walked slowly past with Judy, hunting Georgie: “Yu know, I think I’ll crochet a cap and bootees to match that green sweater—it costs so much to give all the new babies around something, but since it’s a girl and she’s so proud and all, I’d like to give it something.”

  Gertie nodded. “I figgered I couldn’t spend no money, so’s last night I started it a little whittled foolishness.”

  “I wish I could carve,” Mrs. Schultz said, turning back to her spading, but had lifted only one shovelful of earth into the window box before she was calling, like a child, “Lookee, lookee.”

  Gertie went closer, but at first could see only a little mound of broken pebble-strewn cement; then between the rock and the house wall she saw the violet leaves, still blue and rolled against the cold; but living leaves. “I never thought they’d pull through,” Mrs. Schultz was exclaiming. “I put that rock around them to keep the children from squashing them to death, after they’d brought them to me from that vacant land on the other side of the railroad tracks. And now they’ve pulled through,” she repeated, her voice triumphant.

  Amos came calling to tell his mother that Georgie had run away toward the steel-mill fence, and Gertie followed. Today, with the warmer weather, there were many people in the alleys: women doing much the same things the women in her own alley did, and quite often men also were rolling carriages, washing windows, changing storms for screens, or even hanging out the wash; for most three-to-twelve-shift workers were by now astir. A man polishing his car smiled at her, and up near the steel-mill fence a youngish man, with a bad limp, who was putting up a little square of fence on one side of his stoop hurried away before she had hardly finished her question of had he seen a little boy dragging a red wagon upside down. The man was back in a moment, pulling Georgie in his wagon.

  While Georgie was in sight, Gertie rested a moment on a covered garbage can, but soon he disappeared at the next turning, and she followed. People smiled at her; some praised the warm spring weather, others remarked that Judy was a pretty baby, but none noticed the bandages on her neck or the scars on her face. A small child with black eyes and white hair on a red tricycle fell in behind her, while back and forth and round her went a large and long-haired dog who now and then wagged his tail and licked the face of some passing child; and Gertie surmised that he, like the gray cat she fed sometimes, belonged to the alley.

  She found Georgie again near the corner of the project where the railroad fence and the steel-mill fence came together. Nearby was a unit with a child-dug, toy-strewn bit of earth that had no beginnings of grass or fence or flowers, but on the stoop a dark dumpling of a woman with broken teeth and a mustache bent lovingly over a crepe-paper-swathed pot in which a dusty gray and prickly cactus stood. The woman lifted her head and smiled at Gertie. “A whole new leaf it gives, since Christmas,” she said.

  Gertie’s knees were weak, and the ground seemed all awhirl; she stopped to rest on the woman’s steps, and though there was some trouble—one hardly able to understand the other—some talking passed between them; the weather, and flowers, and children mostly. The woman, Gertie thought, had four, but she wasn’t certain; maybe it was four and the baby trying to crawl through the door.

  Georgie came, but only to tell her that now Amos was missing, though Georgie thought he had gone home. Gertie hurried down the alley by the railroad fence, trying not to look at the place where the hole had been, mended now with a whole new board, unpainted yet and too plainly showing among the dull sooty green of the other boards. Seemed like she couldn’t get past the place; it was like she stood still, sweating, shivering, going closer and closer, but never able to get it behind her. What would there be now on the other side of the crack?

  There came a soft calling, half crying, half laughing; and Max came runnin
g through her seldom used front door, then looked over her shoulder as if afraid of being seen. “Amos is onu other side with Victor,” she said in a calling whisper, and came running on, one hand pushed down into her housecoat pocket.

  “It come up—see—th number yu gimme,” she whispered when she was close to Gertie. “Just like always, I got th page number it was on in Mom’s old dream book, added th number on th third check I give out at work, and give it to Casimir next morning—an it come up—it come up.” She was half laughing, half crying, all bouncy on her toes, as if by bouncing she might hurry out the whispered words. “I couldn’t sleep all night for thinking on how I’ll scram. Butcha gotta keep it till I go—I ain’t taking no chances on going soft and showing it to Victor. I played um big. Yu got a pocket handy?” And after glancing swiftly around her, her hand came up out of her housecoat and shoved the thickish roll of what looked to be twenty-dollar bills down into Gertie’s apron pocket, “About 830, I think, in all. I put in some tips I’d saved.”

  She was hurrying back to her door, her housecoat billowing about her, her hair blown over her face as it had been when she first came asking for a dream in the snow, “Don’t tell nobody—he might hear ut.”

  Gertie took a swift step toward her. “Honey, you’d ought to give him this money. Don’t go; he’s a good steady—”

  Max, her hand on the doorknob, whirled toward her in exasperation. “He’s in u yard trying to nail fence. He’ll hear us. I gotta go. He’s allatime been after me to go to mass. I said I would—now.”

  “Now?”

  “Sure.” Max was still, with her hand on the door handle, her face turned skyward as she waited for an airplane to come lower and smother the sound of the closing door. “I can be kinda nice to him now. See? I ain’t afraid no more. When my number come up, I knowed what I hadda do. See? But—well—if I wanta make him feel kinda nice s’okay now, on account I know he can’t soften me up none. But it’ll hafta be quick. I gotta scram pretty soon on account a we’re—he’s gonna move soon’s the war’s over, see?” The airplane circled down for a landing, and under cover of the sound Max slipped through the door.