Still groggy, I stood leaning against the cool meat case while Mama, relieving me of the shopping list and coin purse, did business with Mr. Esterly.
“My sister, Mrs. Weller, is down in bed, so I’m looking after things for a few days,” she confided. “Do you deliver?”
“If you can wait till we close, I do deliver, some. That’d be after six o’clock, you understand.”
“That’s fine. I’ll take what we need right now, and you can deliver the rest.” She recalled my dazed presence. “My little girl, Lark—you’ve met her, I think—will be coming in for mail and odds and ends. Do the Wellers have an account here?”
There was a pause, the quality of which caused me to prick up my ears, like a dog listening to a sound too high for people to hear.
“Uh, no, no they don’t.” Mr. Esterly wiped his hands on his apron, adjusted the pencil behind his ear, and looked out the front window as if there were something of interest in the street, which of course there wasn’t. Nothing and no one was in the street.
So Uncle Stan didn’t pay his bills. At least not his grocery bills. And if you didn’t pay your grocery bills, you probably didn’t pay others. A swirling, churning, sick feeling came over me. Poverty made me feel weak, as if I were coming down with an awful, debilitating, communicable disease—the disease of being without money. Instead of going to the hospital, you went to the poor farm. The difference was, you never got well at the poor farm.
The pennilessness of the hoboes in the hobo jungle didn’t have quite the same effect on me. I felt very sorry for them, but they didn’t seem to require much: a meal, a pair of cast-off trousers, a dime. But people in houses had bills. Mama had explained all this to me when I asked why we couldn’t charge a new tricycle and a bride doll and a doll house. I hadn’t understood that you had to pay for things you charged.
How did Aunt Betty and Uncle Stan live if they couldn’t pay their bills? I turned, laying my temple against the meat case. The news of Uncle Stan and Aunt Betty’s poverty filled me with unnamed fears, which I would now begin to identify. This would not rob them of their power, but it would lend some order to them.
First, how were they going to feed the baby if Mr. Esterly wouldn’t let them charge? Had they been paying their rent? Since we paid no rent in the depot, I was always curious about other people. “How much would you pay for that size house, Mama?” I would ask, estimating whether we might get ourselves into a house in this way. Mama had told me that Uncle Stan and Aunt Betty paid fifteen dollars a month. That was a lot of money, but an amount I thought maybe we could manage. But Papa had a steady paycheck. Uncle Stan worked on commission.
When Mama had considered going to work for the Spenser Corset Company, she’d explained that commission was the money you got from the Spenser Company when you actually sold a corset or girdle or brassiere. The Spenser Corset Company wasn’t going to pay you anything if you weren’t making them any money. This didn’t seem altogether fair, since you probably worked just as hard when the customer didn’t buy a corset as when they did, but Mama said the Spenser people would go broke if they paid salesladies for not selling corsets.
If Uncle Stan wasn’t making any commission, there was the baby to worry about, and the rent. And what about Uncle Stan’s car, which he drove all over southern Minnesota? Was that paid for? It was so old, surely it must be paid up. Our Oldsmobile wasn’t paid up, but that was almost brand new.
“Yes,” Mama answered, as many thoughts or more raced through her mind as were racing through mine, “that’s all right. I’ll be paying cash.” She smoothed the wadded list I’d held in my hand. “Can you read this, Mr. Esterly? It’s smudged.”
The balding, round-faced grocer bent over the piece of paper lying on the counter. “Milk. Eggs. Chicken,” he began reading. “Yes, I can read this,” he murmured, relieved to be finished talking about Aunt Betty and Uncle Stan’s canceled credit.
Before we left the store, Mama said to Mr. Esterly, “I wonder if I could find out how much the Wellers owe you?”
“Oh, dear,” he said, at a loss. “Well, it’s just… the accounts receivable are … confidential.”
“Of course they are,” Mama concurred. “I just thought maybe I could talk to Mrs. Weller’s family. We’re sisters, you know. Our mama and papa might be able to help.”
Mr. Esterly was torn. At length he reached for a five-by-seven card file on the counter beside the cash register. From the W’s he pulled a card labeled “Weller.” He said nothing, but held it for Mama to read the total.
“Thank you,” Mama said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
The grocer hurried to the door, holding it for Mama and me as we left. “I’ll bring the other groceries on my way home,” he assured Mama deferentially. “I’ll be closing soon now. Six. I close at six.”
“It’s not his fault,” Mama observed as we stepped along Main Street, past Boomer’s Tavern, where the same couple sat, over the same beers perhaps. “Mr. Esterly has to pay his bills, too.”
But Mama was worried, so worried she forgot to bring up the matter of my falling asleep on Main Street and her leaving Aunt Betty alone to come find me. How much did Aunt Betty and Uncle Stan owe the grocer? And how could Grandma and Grandpa Browning possibly pay the bill when they themselves were just scraping by? There were so many things to worry about! I was going to have to make a list and number them.
18
BUT WHEN MAMA TUCKED me in on the living room couch where I was to sleep, instead of reviewing my list of worries and sorting them out, I lay gazing out the window at the pinkish sky over the German Woman’s roof and listening to the low voices of Mama and Aunt Betty, beyond the curtained bedroom doorway. There they sat in the half-light, by turns upsetting and reassuring each other, as sisters do.
“Why didn’t you tell me Stan wasn’t making anything?” Mama asked in a kindly voice.
“He doesn’t want anyone to know,” Aunt Betty replied. “He’s going crazy trying to find money.”
“How does he pay for his room when he’s traveling?”
“He stays with relations. If there’s no one, he sleeps in the car.”
“Umph,” Mama grunted, moved by this information. “He’s never stayed with us.”
“He’s afraid you’ll think he’s a bum.”
“That hurts me.”
“He’s afraid of you,” Aunt Betty admitted, and giggled.
Uncle Stan afraid of Mama? That was one of the most interesting ideas I’d ever heard. Why would he be afraid? She’d never hit him with a ketchup bottle, or even raised her voice to him that I was aware.
“Meantime, you’re laying here starving,” Mama said.
“Don’t be silly,” Aunt Betty responded impatiently. “I haven’t been able to keep anything down. You know that.”
Later Mama said, “I’m teaching myself to type.”
“Why?”
Now it was Mama’s turn to be impatient. “So I’ll be able to get a job.”
“A job? Where would you get a job?”
“I don’t know yet, but I’m going to be ready. When I can type fast enough, I’m going to take the civil service test.”
“But are there any civil service jobs in Harvester?”
“Only at the post office.”
“Aren’t those jobs taken?”
“You never know what’s going to happen.”
It unsettled me when Mama talked that way. Our future was settled. We were going to build #127—The Cape Ann. Papa was going to become the depot agent when Art Bigelow retired. And Mama was going to have a wonderful garden with a strawberry patch and raspberry bushes and flowers all the way around.
The plush of the couch was stiff and prickly. There had been no clean sheet to put under me. But, despite the minor discomfort, I fell asleep about eight o’clock.
In my dreams that night, I was riding the train again, and Angela Roosevelt was seated kitty-corner down the aisle from me. Staring out the window at the passi
ng farms, she wept for them. Quietly and intensely, but without seeming aware of the tears, she sat straight against the tall seat and wept.
I wanted to go to her and comfort her. I wanted to tell her that Earl Samson remembered her and still loved her, for I was certain in my dream that she did know Earl and that some shyness and deep regard for his privacy had been at the bottom of her denial.
At last she rose and moved away up the aisle, her back to me. I thought she was going to get a paper cup of water, but she passed the fountain and reached the heavy door. Bracing herself, she pulled it open and stepped out of the car.
Released from my paralyzing bashfulness, I jumped up and ran after her. Tugging open the difficult door, I discovered beyond it the blank face of a boxcar. Angela was gone, disappeared into thin air.
Waking in the dark, shivering, I searched for the old, velveteen crazy quilt Mama had tossed over me. In the warm early evening, I had thrown it off. Now I was chilly.
Arranging it over me, I decided that someday I would look up Angela Roosevelt in Chicago. I hoped to find her married to Earl Samson. Was there any way I could help bring that about? Could I put a sign down in the jungle, telling everyone who came there that I needed help finding Earl Samson? Would Mama let me do that?
When I found Earl Samson, I would tell him that his love had moved to Chicago and was on the radio there. It shouldn’t be too difficult for him to find her. Everyone in Chicago must listen to her program.
A dim light shone from the kitchen door, beyond the little dining room: Mama had left the bathroom light burning so I could find my way. I needed to go, but I lay there for a long time, putting it off, not wanting to cross the dark living room and dining room. When I could hold it no longer, and knowing Mama would spank me if I wet Aunt Betty’s couch, I threw off the cover and scurried as fast as I could, looking neither left nor right, but heading straight for the light.
In the bathroom, I hooked the door and clambered up onto the toilet. Cold against my thighs, the seat momentarily froze the contents of my bladder. After a minute, it thawed, and I relieved myself and sprinted back to the couch, noting from the corner of my eye that the door to the tiny bedroom off the kitchen was closed. No light shone beneath it. Mama was asleep on the cot. It must be very late.
Back on the prickly couch, under the crazy quilt, I hugged myself and studied the night sky outside. If Papa was still awake, he could see the same stars I saw. Wasn’t that unbelievable after a hundred-mile trip? But it was true.
I’m looking real hard at the big star just above the chimney of the German Woman’s house. Are you looking at that same star, Papa?
Then I noticed that lights were glowing behind the drawn shades in a back room in the German Woman’s house. She must be reading, or maybe she was braiding rugs. Her windows were open. The nearest lighted one was maybe thirty-five feet from where I lay. The night was utterly silent. I heard the German Woman cough behind her shade. I fell asleep.
When I woke at dawn, her shades were already up. She was a go-getter like Mama. In the kitchen and back hall, I heard Mama’s feet on the linoleum: tap, tap, tap to the kitchen sink to run water into kettles, which pinged as they struck the lip of the sink; tap, tap, tap to the stove to set the kettles to heating; tap, tap to the back hall, where she was scrubbing and rinsing laundry in a pair of galvanized tubs.
At home we had no place to do wash, so Mr. Borman came once a week and picked it up and brought it back later, except for items like my dresses, which Mama didn’t trust to Mrs. Borman. Those Mama did by hand in a basin. “I can’t wait till we have a place of our own, with a basement where I can do my own laundry. Think of it, Lark. We’ll have a Maytag like Grandma Browning’s, and lots of lines so we can hang the laundry in the basement in bad weather.”
Because she was always putting up indigent cousins from Sioux City or Fargo or Helena, and sometimes taking paid boarders as well, Grandma Browning had insisted on a Maytag. She spoke of it as her one extravagance. In addition to the Maytag, she had two rinse tubs, the first filled with hot water, the second with cold.
Aunt Betty didn’t have a Maytag. She had two galvanized tubs on a base that rolled around so she could bring the whole business into the kitchen in the winter. One tub was the washtub, and in this was standing a rippling washboard, on which Mama was scrubbing sheets. The other tub was the rinse tub, which must continually be emptied and refilled as the water grew soapy.
A hand-cranked wringer was attached first to the washtub, so most of the soapy water might be wrung from the laundry before it went into the rinse, and then to the rinse rub, so the clothes weren’t dripping wet when they dropped into the laundry basket.
Wrapping myself in the crazy quilt like an Indian chief, I hobbled in short steps to the kitchen, arranging myself on a chair at the table by the window. I saw Mama in the backyard, wiping the wire clotheslines with a rag dipped in gasoline, removing any grime or rust that might have collected on them. When she had cleaned them all, she tossed the rag in the old oil-drum incinerator out by the alley.
Garbed in one of her fancier housedresses, a red one with white marguerite daisies sprinkled on it, Mama began hanging sheets on the line. A bag of clothespins swung ahead of her as she worked. She filled her pocket with pins, and when she’d used them all, she refilled it from the bag. In the heavily dewed grass, her high-heeled pumps were getting wet. Smoothing the last sheet, pulling wrinkles from it, she returned to the house, tap-tap-tapping across the back hall.
“You look pretty, Mama. How come you’re wearing high heels to do the wash?”
“I want the neighbors to understand that the Browning sisters are not Okies or down-and-outers. We’re from good family.” She flounced across the kitchen, removed a kettle from the stove, carried it to the back hall, and dumped its contents into the washtub. Pausing in the doorway, she asked, “Did you know, Lark, that my great-great-grandmother—your great-great-great-grandmother—was a lady-in-waiting in the English Court?”
“What’s a lady-in-waiting?”
“I’m not sure, but it’s important.”
“What’s an English Court?”
“It’s where the king and queen live.”
“How do you know she was?”
“My grandmother told me. Granny was very fine herself, although they’d lost their money. You never knew her. She died before you were born. She had beautiful manners.”
What had brought all this on? I wondered. Aunt Betty and Uncle Stan must be in very dire straits, indeed. Setting the empty kettle down beside the sink, Mama began preparing a big, gray enamel coffee pot for the stove. Soon it was percolating, filling the little house with its perfume. Sunlight streamed across the faded linoleum, and Mama made me hot milk toast with a dash of cinnamon and sugar on top.
Waiting for lines full of wash to dry, Mama dusted, swept, and ran the carpet sweeper. Then, as the laundry reached damp-dry, she hauled it in by the basketload and set up the old, wooden ironing board in the kitchen by the stove. Now the house smelled of clean laundry and ironing.
When I wasn’t carrying trays to Aunt Betty or straightening up the kitchen drawers, Mama had me drawing water from the cistern beside the house and watering the scraggly, dry plantings around the front porch.
“And when you’ve given them all a good watering, you can pull out those weeds around the flowers.”
As I worked, I kept an eye on the German Woman’s house, hoping she wouldn’t appear. I wasn’t eager to cross paths with her. About one-thirty she emerged from the inner door, looked to see what I was at, said nothing, and settled herself in her rocker on the screened porch. Knitting needles commenced to click, but I could feel her eyes on me. I worked hard, afraid she might criticize if I left a crabgrass root in the ground.
Before Mama came to fetch me for my nap, the German Woman called to me, “Ven you haf finished der, you can come ofer here unt do mine.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. Did she mean what she
said? Did she want me to come over and work in her yard? I didn’t want to find myself on the other side of the raspberry bushes encircling her backyard. Not ever. I pretended I hadn’t heard.
On my previous visits to Aunt Betty’s, there’d been no German Woman next door. A very old, bent-over woman with an ear trumpet had lived there. What had become of her? I wondered. She had skated around on ancient leather carpet slippers, but she hadn’t been rude or scary. She didn’t remind me of the witch in “Hansel and Gretel.”
After my nap, I was dispatched, protesting, to the German Woman’s, my arms loaded with meticulously ironed bed linens and, on top of these, wrapped neatly in waxed paper, a large slice of Mama’s famous spice cake with penuche frosting, which she had baked while I weeded.
“Tell her thank you very much,” Mama instructed me tersely.
I would rather have weeded for three days than return the sheets and pillow slips to the German Woman. But Mama was convinced that these compulsory social experiences were building my character and breaking down my shyness.
Now, here I was, smelling of Swan soap, dressed in my favorite sunsuit—a green-and-white-striped seersucker—and wearing fresh white anklets and my shoes that Sheila Grubb’s dog had gotten his sharp little teeth into, trudging down the street to the house next door. I would never have dreamed of walking on the German Woman’s grass, and there was no sidewalk running between the two houses.
There was a sidewalk leading from Aunt Betty’s porch to the street and another from the street to the German Woman’s door, where I found myself all too quickly. She was not seated in her rocker as earlier. I couldn’t let go of the linens to knock, so I called, putting my face to the screen, “Hello. I’ve brought your sheets. Hello. Are you home?”
The Cape Ann Page 17