Fran would not be deflected from her pronouncements on comparative beauty. “Just the same, Damsie and Josie are the homeliest kids in the world. And the dopiest. Whew.”
“They’re not dopey,” Fee said. “They’re a million years younger than Rico and Maria, that’s all.”
“They’ll open up like flowers,” Alexandra promised, “after I can feed them up a bit. Their cheeks will be pink instead of like lard, and their hair won’t be like yellow strings—you’ll see. Why, last night when I bathed them their ribs stuck out like washboards.”
The shopping trip had been successful indeed, and after adding flannel middies to the necessities, Alexandra had become enamored of a bolt of bright red plaid that she was sure she could make into pleated skirts “in less than an hour each.”
She had been at it ever since, leaving the sewing room only for trips to the pantry to fetch milk and cookies and fruit to tempt Damsie and Josie into the usually frowned-upon delight of nibbling between meals.
“I also washed their heads, and doused them with larkspur,” Alexandra added, “Just in case.”
Both girls looked knowing and said, “Well?”
“They didn’t have any,” their mother said. “A blessing, I must say.”
From the cellar Damsie’s voice rose in a shrill laugh. Fee said, “Could I show them Shag now?”
Alexandra hesitated, looking out to the back yard where Shag had been banished all day, so as not to risk his frightening the girls.
“But, Mama,” Fee said urgently. “He’ll just freeze if we never let him in until they go home to Massachusetts.”
“I suppose we have to, sooner or later.”
“I’ll go too,” Fran offered. “I wish we had his new collar, to hold him by.”
Fee indicated her opinion of anybody who could distrust Shag and without bothering to get her coat, darted out to him. Fran followed, and they made for the cellar door in the yard, imperfectly cleared of its slope of new snow.
“Now you behave,” Fee admonished Shag, clutching a fistful of his fur as she led him sedately down the stone steps and into the cellar. “We’re coming with our dog now,” she shouted by way of preparation. “Don’t be scared—he’s nice to everybody.”
“Wait, Fee,” Fran ordered. “I’ll go first, in case he gets stupid and jumps all over them.” Inside the dim cellar she couldn’t see the girls anywhere at first, but when she did make them out, she laughed and said, “That’s cute—stay inside them.”
Damsie and Josie were kneeling in the white porcelain washtubs, one in each tub, and at Fran’s approval they squealed and shouted and looked happy for the first time since their arrival.
“Shag, that’s Damsie,” Fee said, pulling his big head to the left, “and this one is Josie. Remember what I said, now, and behave yourself.”
Shag barked resoundingly several times and then collapsed on his haunches. His tail thwacked the concrete cellar floor and Fee hugged him because she could tell he liked the little girls in the tubs.
“Lean down and pat him, Damsie,” she said, pulling Shag closer to the tub and guiding Damsie’s hand under hers to help her stroke his great head. Damsie said, “I’m not afraid,” and kept on patting Shag after Fee dropped her own hand.
“Let me too,” Josie shouted, “Dog, come here.”
Fran performed the patting honors with Josie, until Josie also’ ventured it alone. “He’s the most conceited dog in the whole world,” Fran said a moment later, “look at him.”
Shag was clearly wallowing in self-importance, and when Fran and Fee lifted the children out of the tubs, he sat immobilized, his eyes expectant and the top of his head slightly twitching, as if at the homage about to be showered upon him.
From above, Alexandra called, “Is everything all right, dears?” and Fee shouted excitedly, “He just loves them, Mama.”
The whir of the sewing machine began again, and for no reason Fee skipped around in a big circle. “We can all come down here every single day, if we want,” she announced, addressing herself equally to Damsie, Josie, Fran and Shag.
By suppertime, Damsie and Josie seemed done with any sense of strangeness. As Alexandra served them juicy meatballs and gravy, a baked potato, string beans, a tall glass of milk, two slices of thick dark bread and big pats of pale-yellow butter, they both fell to and ate with head-lowered intensity, free of constraint. Fee and Fran watched them for a moment, but Alexandra felt that neither was being critical or unkind. Above the lowered heads of the strangers, she smiled at her own girls, begging them wordlessly not to be lofty and unmoved at the sight of these who had been too long deprived.
Then Alexandra started to eat, and in a moment Fran and Fee began too. For most of the meal there was hardly a word spoken. Then suddenly Josie let her clumsily-held fork drop to her plate, and nodded in a swoop of drowsiness.
“She’s sleepy,” Damsie explained, herself overcome a second later by fullness and warmth and the need to sleep.
Alexandra said, “That’s nice,” and signaled to Fee and Franny, who half-carried, half-pushed the children up the stairs to help them undress and have their bath.
At the table, Alexandra sat on, ignoring the spread of dishes to be done. She could hear Josie’s protests about another bath, and Fran explaining it was like brushing your teeth every single day, then switching to a big propaganda about the fun of being so little you could get into the tub with your sister and splash water at her when she wasn’t watching.
Fran was being unexpectedly sweet with them, Alexandra thought. For all her disparaging comparisons with Rico and Maria, she was kind and patient with them. And Fee actually enjoyed them!
If only school would not be another ordeal, when Fee took them with her tomorrow morning.
Never had Fee mentioned the black bunting of a year ago, not once. But it was not something a child would go through and then forget, surely not. Did she think of it in secret, in silence? Did she think of it now, when she looked at Damsie and Josie and knew she would be taking them with her when she left for school in the morning?
Alexandra left the table in sudden determination to finish the two plaid skirts. She hoped Stiva wouldn’t ask about costs when he got home. Two pairs of rubbers, heavy mittens, long drawers, black stockings—then the middies and the nice red plaid. She had gone at it with a rich woman’s recklessness, but Alida was getting as much for Maria, and even more for Rico, since he had to have a jacket.
She glanced at the clock on the sideboard in the dining room; between the grooved gold columns ranged along its polished green marble body, its bland face said it was nearly eight o’clock. An hour had passed since supper.
“Franny,” she called, tilting her head back and addressing the plaster ceiling of the little room. “Fira … what’s taking so long up there?”
“We’re coming,” Fran answered. But as usual the words meant nothing. Alexandra whipped her foot up and down on the treadle in a burst of impatience to end her task. It sounded so simple, “I’ll make little plaid skirts for them to wear on their first day at school,” but as always, the crackle and rustle of the paper pattern was the signal for a dozen pesky delays. Every time she made a dress for Fran or Fee, it started out as “something simple and quick” and ended at two in the morning, with her eyes stabbing and her back breaking, while the girls slept in the untroubled ignorance of the young—and in their serene sureness that all her labor would end up in something Dutchy and awful. When they did love what she made, they were so surprised it infuriated her almost as much as when they hated it.
They came down at last, both looking at her with serious eyes.
“Josie cried herself to sleep the way she did last night,” Fran reported. “I sat on her bed until she stopped.”
“Damsie didn’t,” Fee said. “She played jacks on the floor. I gave her my old ones and told her she could keep them.”
Alexandra smiled. “You’ve both been very sweet with those poor little creatures,” she said,
“and I’m proud of you.” She seemed to be searching for something better to say. “You’re turning into real Ivarins, both of you—it’s simply wonderful.”
“Oh, Mama,” Fran said. But this wasn’t her usual “Oh, Mama”; now the two words were surprised and shy, as if a boy had just called her beautiful.
Fee liked it too. Compliments from parents were silly, mostly, but this was different. Everything about Damsie and Josie being there was different. Different from what, she didn’t know; it just started being different when they arrived and it still was different.
“I’ll tell Papa all about the way you’ve been,” Alexandra went on. “He’ll be proud of his two girls too, I can tell you.”
“He won’t forget to write the note I have to give to Miss Mainley tomorrow, will he?” Fee asked.
“He won’t forget it, dear. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried a bit.”
She meant it, and she reminded herself that she did while she was getting ready for bed, and again in the morning when she woke up. Here it was, the morning when she was going to have to cart Damsie and Josie along to school with her, and she wasn’t nervous or worried at all.
She was sore at Fran for not having to take one of them to Barnett High with her, instead of sliding out of the whole thing, but that wasn’t the same as a hard knob in your stomach about what was going to happen.
At the corner where Fran had to turn off and leave her alone with them, her heart did thump a bit, and when she finally pushed Damsie and Josie through the big front door of P.S. 6, into the hall with the usual mob of kids, it thumped and banged a lot.
She had them by their hands now, and she was glad they had new clothes to wear. Their hair still was that funny yellow and their skin all pasty, but she made them take off their coats and hats right inside the door, and they did look nice in their new middies and skirts.
At the principal’s office, Fee tapped twice and at Miss Mainley’s “Yes?” she led the girls in and straight up to her, handing over Papa’s letter, and explaining who was Damsie and who Josie and that you had to say Jablonowski as if it ended uffski not owski.
“JablonUFFski,” Miss Mainley said without ado. She read Papa’s letter in a flash and shook their hands and asked what grades they were in back home in Lawrence, though she acted as if she knew herself that it was 2-B and 1-B.
Then she said, “Come along, everybody, and we’ll see where you belong.” She marched ahead out of her office, and then down the hall with Fee right at her side, and Josie and Damsie running in spurts to get caught up when they fell behind. And as they went, boys and girls in the hall had to fall back and make way for the principal and everybody with the principal, as the school rules made them do. It was delicious.
“Mrs. Paige got here ten minutes ahead of you,” Miss Mainley told Fee in a sort of side-voice without turning to look at her. “I went along with her and the Callavini children also, to establish them in their proper classes. No visitors are going to skip a grade in this school the very day they get here!”
Fee thought it one of the funniest remarks she had ever heard, especially for a principal, and especially in that side-voice and with the sideways smile Miss Mainley gave her as she said it. It was enough to make you brag, dashing along while everybody in the halls could see Miss Mainley smiling and talking at you a mile a minute.
“Here’s Two-B,” Miss Mainley said. “I’ll take you in, Damsie.”
Through the open door, Fee could see Miss Mainley explain to the teacher and introduce Damsie. Damsie took to 2-B right away, and there wasn’t any fuss about leaving her there.
But when they reached 1-B, Josie wouldn’t go in. She hung on to Fee’s hand, and reached for her bookstrap and hung on to that too.
“Come in with us, Fira,” Miss Mainley said, “Josie is younger, you know—”
But when Josie was introduced all round and led to her desk, she collapsed into it, looked up at Fee without speaking and began to cry. It wasn’t loud and embarrassing, just soft and miserable.
“School is fun, Josie,” Fee whispered, but she glanced up at Miss Mainley in appeal. Josie looked so tiny, sitting there, huddled inside her middy as if she wanted to squinch her bones together and disappear.
“It will be fun later, Josie,” Miss Mainley said. “Here’s a present for you, and I’ll be back soon to see if it was fun. Now come along, Fira.”
Miss Mainley departed briskly, and Fee followed. The present was a bright-yellow pencil, new and sharp as a needle. In the corridor, Miss Mainley said, “She’ll quiet down,” and then waved Fee off, saying, “Skedaddle, or you’ll miss the last bell.”
It was so unexpected that Fee waved right back, as if she were a principal too. Then she ran off, in a panic that she had been fresh, and she reached her own class just as the bell clanged.
Miss Roberts said good morning in her special way and seemed interested in watching Fee arrange her books and pencil-box. Then she said, “Are they your cousins or friends of your family, Fee, the little girls you brought to school today?”
The old stupid whisper shot out of Tommy Gording to Jack Dryer across the aisle, and his cackle of a laugh too, but when Fee stood up to answer, it came out in her everyday reciting voice.
“No, ma’am, they’re not cousins or anything,” she said. “They’re from the Lawrence strike, and Mr. and Mrs. Paige took two strike kids to live with them too.”
“Why, how nice, Fee,” Miss Roberts said.
There was a whole hiss of whispering then, but Miss Roberts put up her “Attention” hand and it stopped. She looked at Fee as if she were waiting for the rest of her answer, and her “Attention” hand made the” whole class wait with her.
“Lawrence is in Massachusetts,” Fee added politely. “And everybody up there is cold and starving.”
“I remember now,” Miss Roberts said. “The newspapers haven’t had much about the textile strikes for quite a time.” Once again the whispers boiled up but Miss Roberts said, “Silence, please,” in her strict tone and they stopped at once. She gave Fee her “Be seated” nod, and kept looking past her over the whole room, taking her time, as if she wanted to look at everybody there, first one row and then the next row. Nobody moved.
Then Miss Roberts said softly, “Perhaps you have forgotten your manners, Class. But Fira Ivarin’s family have not. Helping people in trouble is the highest kind of manners.”
Fira felt wonderful.
By lunchtime the whole school knew about the Paiges’ Rico and Maria and about her Damsie and Josie. It was comfortable, having it all happen together. And it was different.
Tommy Gording and Jack Dryer and the rest of them could whisper and cackle as much as they pleased, and the minute Miss Roberts’ back was turned they’d start right in again, as sure as sure could be.
But the Paiges weren’t crazy foreigners and they were doing exactly the same thing her family was doing.
Let Tommy Gording and Jack Dryer put that in their pipes and smoke it.
And if it came to that, Miss King could put it in her pipe and smoke it too.
TWELVE
When you suddenly stopped being the youngest it was wonderful, Fee thought, and the way people started behaving as if you’d become lots older overnight was marvelous.
By the end of the first week, Fran stopped paying much attention to Damsie and Josie, maybe because it wasn’t her school that they went to. Then Mrs. Paige telephoned and asked to talk to Fee. She wondered if Fee could take Rico and Maria along with her and Damsie and Josie. “Just for a few days,” Mrs. Paige said, as if she were coaxing. “They’re older, and pretty soon they’ll go and come themselves.”
And when the bell rang that afternoon, there they were, waiting out front in the schoolyard by the big stone statue where her own kids were already waiting. They are mine, she thought. Fran hasn’t one thing to do with the school part of them, and Mama and Papa haven’t either, except the one letter to Miss Mainley. At home, every
body had to ask her what had happened during the day, because when they asked Josie or Damsie, the answers were mostly little shrugs.
“Is your teacher nice, Damsie?”
“All right.”
“And yours, Josie? Is she nice too?”
“Kinda.”
Fee liked it when Fran or Mama took her aside and asked about Damsie and Josie and school. She liked to hurry out to the statue; it was important not to be late. One day she was five minutes late, and it was awful.
By then, Rico and Maria were going home by themselves, so Fee knew Damsie and Josie would be waiting all alone. There was nothing she could do; when the bell rang, Miss Roberts was at the blackboard, explaining something, and nobody was ever allowed to leave a class if a teacher was still talking.
It took Miss Roberts forever and when Fee dashed out, they were waiting in the empty yard, standing tight together as if they had been pasted to each other along their sides. They shrieked, “Here’s Fee, here’s Fee,” and ran to her as if she were the Queen of Sheba or Ethel Barrymore.
One afternoon, without saying a word to anybody first, she took Damsie and Josie off with her to Gray’s. They had never had a soda or a frappe, either one, and she even had to order for them, because they didn’t know what to say. “Three chocolate frappes with vanilla ice cream, and grated nuts and whipped cream,” she said and laid three nickels down on the counter. She had never spent so much of her allowance on a treat before. They both lapped up the last dribble, and it made her feel wonderful in a brand-new way.
Not everything was wonderful, but even the bad things didn’t last long. Once, leaving class, Trudy Loheim said, “Some people certainly are fickle, aren’t they?” and informed Fee it was the saddest thing in the world if your best friend turned into a traitor. Fee said, “I’ve asked you over about a million times since they came,” but Trudy dismissed it. “It’s no fun if we can’t be alone,” she said, turning it into a second accusation.
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