The Family Nobody Wanted

by Helen Doss

  Carl met our train at Sacramento, and drove the tiring travelers home. By the time we came over the mountains to Santa Rosa, and along the winding valleys to Boonville, it was dark. Carl carried the baby and my luggage into the house. The two new nine-year-olds followed with lagging steps, dragging their own suitcases and looking around with apprehension at the strange surroundings. Donny bounced all over, greeting everyone with his usual volubility and unrestrained exuberance.

  Carl kissed the whole family around, dumped the baby into my lap, and excused himself to take the baby sitter home. When the door shut behind him, complete pandemonium broke loose in our small living room. The eight younger children jumped up and down, yelling a welcoming “Mama, Mama!” They tried to swarm over my lap, shouting simultaneously about everything that had happened in my absence. Gregory, hungry and wet, frightened by the noise, started howling like the Duchess’s baby in Alice in Wonderland.

  Laura screamed in my ear, “Mama, hey Mama listen, will you curl our hair tonight, will you?”

  Donny was leaping all over the house, flourishing his choice possessions to impress his new brother and sister; but Richard and Dorothy, so self-possessed and excursion-happy on the train, were suddenly overwhelmed with loneliness in the midst of the confusion.

  “That big new boy is out crying in the hall,” Rita shouted, over the din.

  “That big new girl is out by the steps, crying,” Diane reported three times, at the top of her lungs.

  I groaned. Gregory had soaked through to my lap; Timmy, holding his nose, said frankly, “That new baby doesn’t smell good.”

  “He needs clean diapers,” I said. My back ached as if I had been freshly stabbed. “He’s also hungry.”

  “So are we,” Timmy said. “We haven’t eat yet.”

  At that moment I would have traded the whole howling mob for a deserted island in the Pacific. I pulled up the corners of my face into a reasonable facsimile of a calm smile.

  “Let’s be more quiet, now, shall we? If you will give Mama a chance to take care of the new children first, then there’ll be time to sit down quietly for talks, one at a time, later.”

  Nobody heard me, of course.

  I gave Gregory a quick bath, put him into fresh diapers and a nightgown, and fixed him some formula. Carl arrived then, and gave the baby his bottle, while I turned my attention to the weeping Richard and Dorothy. After cuddling them both, I racked my brains to think of a diversion for their sudden loneliness.

  “It’s past suppertime,” I said. “Would you two like to be my helpers?” With brighter faces under the tear streaks, they followed me into the kitchen. I found some carrots for Dorothy to scrub, some oranges for Richard to peel and slice.

  The rest of the children crowded into our Pullman-sized kitchen, demanding to know why they couldn’t help, too. Many of them dragged out chairs to stand on, so they could reach the counters. I couldn’t turn around without bumping into a chair or treading on small toes. Keyed up by the homecoming tension and excitement, the children pushed each other and quarreled, whining and fussing about everything. Suddenly I felt like the old woman who lived in a shoe and had so many children she didn’t know what to do. I knew exactly how she felt when she gave them some broth without any bread, and spanked them all soundly and sent them to bed.

  That night, after the twelve were finally fed and tucked into their cribs and cots and bunks, I tumbled into my own bed like a broken sack of wheat. I had pulled my happy little world down around my ears, and I felt as low and cheerless as a dungeon.

  The next day I discovered that my troubles were just beginning.

  Laura kept glaring at her own straight hair in the mirror, then went about telling everyone that Dorothy didn’t deserve to have curly hair. “I wish Mama would send that girl back to the orphanage,” she muttered in jealous spite.

  Donny tried to boss Richard around in the high-handed way he sometimes bossed the younger children; Richard, after three patient warnings, finally took Donny down and pummeled him good. Donny came sobbing to complain about a microscopic bruise and a cut lip, proclaiming loud and long that he didn’t want his new brother any more.

  Even roly-poly, good-natured Gregory added to the troubles. It was on his medical record that he had suffered a cold that spring, with ear complications, but the nurse at the orphanage thought that the infection had cleared up. On the second night home, I had to walk the floor with him when he awoke screaming with earache, both ears discharging pus. The next morning our family doctor found Gregory’s ears perforated and severely infected; the baby was put on around-the-clock doses of an antibiotic.

  This was not the last link in our chain of trouble. On the following morning when the children came thundering into the dining room for breakfast, I noticed that several looked flushed. A closer inspection revealed rashes on the necks and chests of three children.

  “Oh, no,” I groaned. “Not measles, not now!”

  It wasn’t technically measles, but a kind of virus which attacks the glands and causes a skin rash. It was sweeping through the schools in the valley, and the children called it the “speckles.” Most children would not suffer after-effects, the doctor told us, as long as they had sufficient rest; but babies, and occasional adults, might come down with very severe cases. We concentrated on protecting little Gregory, who needed all his resistance to fight the remaining infection in his ears.

  Now I came to the full realization of the staggering number of children I had proposed to care for. As fast as two or three recuperated from the speckles, several more came down sick. I thought the siege would drag on into forever, would never be over. Night after night I went from one bed to another, holding wet cloths on feverish foreheads, soothing restless ones back to sleep.

  The last straw was the stream of visitors.

  The publicity from the Life magazine and the NBC “Welcome Travelers” show was beginning to bear some unpalatable fruit. People motoring through northern California would detour to our isolated, mountain-rimmed valley and knock on our door at all hours, just to have something to tell the folks back home.

  One morning three strange ladies stood on the front step. “We read in the newspaper that the International Family had three new children,” one gushed, “so we thought we’d drive up and look them over.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said wearily, “but some of them have the measles now.”

  “That don’t bother me,” the spokesman said, as she pushed into our front room. “I’ve had everything.”

  Walking around the children, patting them on their heads, one said, “This one is kind of cute. Is he part Jap, or what?”

  While we were eating lunch, two more strangers rang the bell. They were a middle-aged couple, the man with yellow false teeth that clicked, and the lady with a very large and slightly soiled bosom.

  “We heard your family over the radio,” the lady twittered, “and I vowed that if our vacation took us to California, we’d certainly look you up, so here we are!”

  They strode on through to the dining room, stared at the toys on the floor, the piles of laundry waiting to be folded on the window seat, the rolls of dust in the corners on the floor, and at the children, who had stopped eating to watch.

  The man started counting with his forefinger. “Let’s see, is it nine you have?”

  “Twelve now, some are sick. It’s contagious,” I added hopefully.

  They weren’t listening, but the children were. They were all ears.

  “What a wonderful thing you and the Reverend are doing,” the soiled bosom gushed, “to take in all these poor, neglected little orphans that nobody wanted, and give them food and shelter. The good Lord will certainly reward you with stars in your crown. Now I want you to tell me all their names, and what they are. . . .”

  Emily Dickinson’s lines went through my head:

  How dreary to be somebody!

  How public, like a frog

  To tell your name the livelong day


  To an admiring bog!

  I tried to cut short my visitors’ thoughtless prattle, and head them back toward the door, when the husband spoke up.

  “Photography is my hobby.”

  I noticed for the first time the camera slung around his neck.

  “Mind if I take a few souvenir snapshots of the kids? Thought you might sort of help me line ’em all up, outside.”

  “They’re eating, now,” I said through my teeth.

  “No rush at all,” he said with a generous wave of his hand. “Me and the missus will sort of mosey around outside while we’re waiting, and maybe get a few shots of the yard and the church. Take your time, we don’t want to interfere with your privacy.”

  When the door was shut, I went back to the dining room. “Finish your lunch,” I said. My head was whirring. “I want you all to hop in bed immediately, and take naps.”

  The older ones put up a wail.

  “Remember what the doctor said about the speckles,” I said. “It leaves you weak and cross for a while, and the naps build back your strength.”

  “But that man said—”

  “The man came to see me, not you,” I told them. “You get off to bed, and I’ll talk to the man.”

  When our visitors bustled up to the door again, I managed a wan smile.

  “I am honestly sorry that I have to disappoint you,” I said, “but I’d be even more sorry if I let our children be spoiled by too much public attention. I’m afraid I can’t let you take any pictures of them.”

  “But—but you said,” the man sputtered, “at least I gathered—”

  “It is a rather new rule,” I admitted, “but, from now on, we can make no exceptions.”

  That evening, as I was slogging around the kitchen cooking supper, the vent plugged up in my pressure cooker and the emergency pressure valve blew out. Thick potato chowder was plastered over walls, counters, and stove, and dripped down from the ceiling to add to the soupy puddle on the floor. By the time I had the mess cleaned up and the children fed, my ears were ringing and my head was going around. I was helping the children into their pajamas when there were knocks on the front door again.

  A couple stood there beaming.

  “We made a long detour, just to swing around through your town and see your precious kiddies,” the lady gushed. “My, what a wonderful thing, taking these poor little orph ”

  “Yes, I do feel sorry for them,” I interrupted. “They’ve got the measles.”

  It didn’t stop them. The strangers shoved right in, and the children crowded around, in various stages of undress.

  “This is a real sight,” the man confided. “We never got to see the Dionne quints when we went to Canada, so we thought that this would make up for it.”

  “Won’t you excuse me?” I said, swaying. “It really is past their bedtime.” I herded the children off, while Carl chatted politely with the strangers, and sent them on their way.

  When the children were in bed, I collapsed in Carl’s arms. “I can’t take any more,” I wailed. “I’m going to blow up, just like the pressure cooker. The kids are driving me crazy. And the last straw is all the nutty sightseers who keep sticking their noses into our private lives. As if—as if we were running a circus sideshow—”

  Carl patted my shoulder. “Don’t let them get under your skin, honey. People may seem nosy, but they mean well. You’ve had a tough day.”

  The tears were running down my cheeks. “It’s not just today. It’s every day. Look at the dishes piled in the sink! The laundry tub is full of wet diapers, the dirty-clothes baskets are overflowing, and the school children haven’t any clean clothes left to wear. The ironing’s piled up and all my cooking pots are too small for f-fourteen p-p-people—”

  “There, there, it’s nothing that can’t be worked out with a little organization, now that the children are getting well, I’ll see if I can arrange my time so I can help you some.”

  “No,” I wept. “We can’t fix it that easy. You were right all along, when you said that nine were enough to take care of. I’m a blind, headstrong, know-it-all fool.”

  Carl hugged me. “That’s what I like about you. You’ll rush in where angels fear to tread.”

  “Carl, I’m serious. I’ve made a terrible mess of our lives. How can I put us back the way we were, so—so peaceful, before I brought all the extra children home? And what’s to happen to Richard and Dorothy and Gregory, after we take them back?”

  “Take them back? How could we take them back?”

  “B-but how can we manage if we don’t?” I sobbed. “I feel like I’m at the end of my rope—”

  Carl took his handkerchief to wipe the tears from my face, then pulled me toward the light. “Oh, boy! No wonder.”

  “No wonder what?”

  “That you’re so feverish and down in the mouth.” He turned me toward a mirror. I looked and saw the rash climbing up my neck, spreading over my cheeks.

  “You’ve got the speckles,” Carl said.

  . . .

  After three days the rash went down, but the gland infection had left me so weak I could hardly lift my arms. I felt as if I had gone through the washing-machine wringer.

  “You just rest and get well,” Carl said. “At the end of the month, go down to the University of Redlands for summer school. What you need is a vacation.”

  “But Carl,” I wheezed, “I can’t go off and leave you.”

  “Don’t worry about me, because it will be good for me to spend my vacation with the kids. That way, I can still preach on Sundays, too, and we won’t have to close the church down. You and the children made it possible for me to go to college. Do you mind, now, if we all send you?”

  “But honey,” I groaned. “It’s much different now. We’ve got twelve children.”

  Carl laughed at me. “As you have often said, the more the merrier!”

  CHAPTER 17

  Daddy Sends Mother to College

  AT the University of Redlands, the dean of women assigned me to a room in one of the dormitories. I strolled about the campus, registered for classes, bought textbooks. I was a college student again, carefree, with nothing to do but study, eat, and sleep.

  I enjoyed my courses. One was in sociology, on the races of man and their origin. Tying in closely with this was a workshop on intercultural education. Both could help me understand the backgrounds and problems of my own family.

  Equally stimulating was a course in the writing and production of plays. In my homework for this class, I had to write an original one-act play. What should I write about? I began and discarded a wastebasket full of false starts. Finally I remembered an old writing dictum, iterated and reiterated to beginners: Write about what you know best. So I invented a young minister and his wife who had just gone to live in their first parsonage, and evolved a comedy about the problems which might be typical of any spirited girl in a rural parish. The first birth pangs were over, and my play began to be born.

  School kept me so busy, at first, I didn’t have time to worry about how Carl was making out at home. When I did steal time to think about it, I was petrified. Had I taken leave of my senses, to leave an unexperienced man to cope with a hectic household of twelve child-size bombshells?

  Carl’s first letters weren’t too reassuring.

  “We now have several sets of pink sheets,” he wrote. “Why didn’t you warn me that Alex’s red overalls would fade?”

  And, “I seem to have lost the formula for Gregory’s bottle. Isn’t it time he started drinking out of a cup, anyway?”

  After the first Sunday night he wrote, “I was proud of our twelve today. Got them up, Richard helped me fix hot oatmeal and oranges for breakfast, and all were in Sunday school by ten. During church, they sat like angels in the front pew, where I could keep my parental eye on them, and Dorothy held the littlest angel on her lap.

  “When lunch was over, we all took naps. Took one myself, since I’d been up late the night before, finishing my sermo
n in the peaceful quiet. Later, we hiked down to the river, Alex riding astride my shoulders and Gregory in my arms. After a supper of milk and jelly sandwiches, we dressed for the evening services at Philo. At the very last minute, when we were all ready to go, I noticed that Alex’s hair was slicked down, shiny as patent leather. You know how Alex’s short ‘butch’ usually stands up straight like a brush—well, I thought maybe he had just imitated the big boys, by slicking his hair down with water. Then I saw the red jelly on his clean collar. I soon discovered that he had used the same for pomade; the jelly jar, left on the table, was cleaned out. What didn’t go on his hair, I suspect he ate. Was he one sweet mess!”

  It bothered me, those sandwiches the children were eating. When I had been sick in bed, the stand-by for every meal had been sandwiches, often supplemented with canned beans. This might pass for an occasional meal, but I pictured the children bowlegged with rickets and malnutrition after half a summer on such a diet. I felt especially conscience-stricken because I was enjoying such bountiful meals at the university cafeteria. My place was back at home with my family, cleaning house, caring for my children, cooking them balanced meals.

  I began to worry, and my worry slipped into my letters. Carl attempted to put my mind at ease.

  “Don’t judge by the emergency meals you’ve seen me throw together,” he wrote. “Didn’t I tell you about how when I was fourteen, I spent a whole summer on a building job where Dad was foreman? We had to camp out, because it was up in the mountains back of San Diego. I was a carpenter’s helper, and the crew also elected me to be the cook. I’m a cook from away back.”

  A few doubts still lingered, even after Carl began to include some of his menus in his letters. “I use your chart from the Department of Agriculture, and every day, in fact nearly every meal, we have something from each of the ‘Basic Seven’ food groups. Tonight we had pork liver smothered with onions; potatoes, steamed in their jackets; green beans and yellow squash from our garden. For dessert and salad combined, I shredded two heads of cabbage, added some raisins, and topped it with chopped walnuts from our own tree. I tossed it with a fruit-juice dressing I’d made, and this dish was such a hit with the children that they cleaned it up and yelled for more.”