by Jay, Karla M
He disappears into another room where all of the new products are stored.
“Hi, Walter.” I set the food basket by the door and turn to the young man who sits at his drafting table across the room. He’s the main designer. Walter is fresh out of the University of Florida, although we joke that we don’t hold that against him. William calls Florida the Spanish colonial sauna that’s turning swampland into a Northerner’s folly. I think William’s just angry he’s missed out on the land boom after one of his friends told of making $19,000 on a sale there.
“Hello, Mrs. Dobbs. How are you today?”
“I’m fine. Just stopped by to borrow the car to run my errands.”
“I hope no fence post jumps in your path.” He’s bent over a drawing, but I see the smile at the edge of his mouth.
It’s been a decade since Alice Ramsey showed men that women are competent behind the wheel of an automobile by driving all the way across the United States. Somehow, we ladies still have to hear this. “I’ll try to be careful.”
I step to William’s work area and study his desk. He has stacks of requests for advertisements and has already laid out a few that will go into the local Marietta Daily Journal and three newspapers in Atlanta. Milk seems to be a popular sell. Horlicks Original Malted Milk claims it’s great for infants and invalids, and Borden’s Milk has the slogan, “The more Borden’s Milk you drink the better and wiser you think!” Here’s one I’ve never tried, Jelke Good Luck Margarine. It shows a boy making a fist and showing off his bicep with the script, “The Fine Taste Satisfies. The Low Price Gratifies.”
It looks like William has suggested adding the swastika, a sign for good luck, to the ad. It reminds me I need to call Mary Trowbridge, who’s been in charge of our sewing club. After we finish another ten good luck baby quilts, we have to switch to making the Klan regalia. Mary took the oath the same night I did, and she’ll understand swapping out the darling pink or blue swastika quilts to start making the baby and child robes. We’ll just have to hand over the adoptive babies to the New Hope Charity Home in regular cotton blankets for the time being.
Oliver comes running back holding an object that has the stem of a pipe but is shaped into a bird above the pipe’s bowl. He blows into it and a loud bird sound comes out. “I’m a canary.”
“That’s creative, darling.” I drop a hand on his back. “What a great outside toy.”
“I know you love birds, Ardith.” William smiles and watches Oliver. “It’s the water you put inside it that creates the realistic sound.” He spies the brochure in my hand. “What do you have there?”
I show him, and he looks it over and hands it back. “Maybe one day.” His face is set in a patient mask I’ve seen him wear way too often when I have new ideas. “Right now, we have little ones to raise.”
“We do.” I smile. What a bore sometimes. “And right now, I have appointments to keep.” I reach for Oliver’s hand and scoop the basket up when we reach the door. “Come on, son.”
William follows me out to the car parked along the tree-lined street. It’s a new Ford Model T Sedan with an electric start. I never could hand crank our last vehicle—such a limiting device invented by men.
“Stick to the hardtop roads.” William’s arms are crossed. “And no faster than thirty. If you hit anything, I don’t want it to hurt Oliver or the B-A-B-Y.”
I wave away his comments. “We’re going to be F-I-N-E.” I notice he doesn’t mention my safety.
Oliver climbs into the front passenger side, and then I walk around the car. The Marietta Movie Theatre is across the street and catches my attention. The small building, covered with ivy, is sandwiched between two taller ones and has changed its marquee. It now announces the hottest movie out there, The Birth of a Nation.
“I see Mr. Rutledge decided he needed to get in step with what the mayor was asking.” A national group for Colored people is trying to stop the showing of the movie, but it plays to packed theatres in Atlanta week after week. Local mayors, wanting to show unity, asked their movie house owners to run the film more often. There were consequences for those who rebelled. One movie theatre owner in Cornelia who refused to show it was beaten, tarred, and feathered. He got his picture in the paper, looking less than proud of his disobedience.
“He said he’s going to show it until people stop buying tickets,” William says. “Could run all year the way it’s selling out now.”
“We have the best town.” I slide into the driver’s seat and pull the door closed. I start the car and make a show of slowly pulling out. And thirty miles per hour? William has no idea I handle the car going much faster than that all of the time, especially on the Dixie Highway. And why not enjoy that road? We pay for it with our motor fuel tax. I’m sure it’s what William and the men are talking about when they speak of highway robbery.
Oliver is flying the airship around in front of him, making motor noises. It’s better than the annoying bird pipe but still irritates me.
“Why don’t you get on your knees and watch out the window? The tank will be coming up soon.”
The British Army placed one on a concrete slab below an America flag. A thank you to the United States for their participation in the war. But now it looks like a rusted potato with caterpillar tracks running around it. It’s more than five miles from where we are, but Oliver will watch for it like it’s around every corner.
Oliver tires of making airplane noises. Finally I can use the quiet time to think about Josephine and the next few days. It’s clear she’s about to have that baby whether I’m ready or not. William and I discussed letting her try out the new Colored Hospital at Grady in Atlanta. Actually, that was his suggestion. My thought was to have a midwife deliver the child in Josephine’s room on the side of our house. We finally agreed to that. My obstetrician, Dr. Hugo Grange, covers the foundling and lying-in homes in the area and is adept at delivering at home. He’s not prudish about providing for unwed girls like Josephine and has a good reputation for using the new Twilight Sleep drugs. I got his name from a Klan sister who swears he does what he’s paid for and goes on his way. All of my friends know about Josephine, and they understand our acceptance of her distasteful condition. But she’s a hard worker, is respectful, and there’s the added bonus of having a wet nurse at my fingertips once my baby girl arrives.
“There it is!” Oliver has his face pressed against the door’s window. “See it, Mommy?”
“I do. Now have a seat. I brought you a candy to eat while I make my visits.” I reach into my pocketbook on the floorboards and pull out a banana taffy on a stick.
“Thank you, Mommy.” He removes the yellow wrapper from the three-inch candy. He will be entertained for thirty minutes. I know. I’ve timed him.
I slow the car and turn onto a smaller road, careful of the crushed-stone surface. The crunch of the stones under the tires vibrates all the way to my fingertips. We pass a small clutch of shacks I suppose are houses. They’re raised off the ground, supported by flat rocks or blocks of wood. One says General Store but it doesn’t look any more special than the other shacks, though maybe a bit bigger. A wooden church with a surprisingly tall steeple is off to the side. If it was ever painted, the evidence of it is long gone. Colored children play in the dirt and sand that surround the shacks. The adults are nowhere in sight, probably working their sharecropper fields. Poverty has drained their spirits. The children’s eyes are huge, their faces vacant. I know preachers would have quoted Matthew and said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” but I would bet a quarter of these families would like a little taste of kingdom here on God’s green earth, or in their case, God’s dusty acres.
Frederick Hoffman, a statistician at Prudential Life Insurance Company, once claimed that the excessive mortality rates in the American Negro were not due to their daily conditions of life but was an inherent racial trait. During sl
avery, the Negroes were healthy and disease-free. But since emancipation, their race has been on a downward grade. He predicted their complete extinction by 1930.
My Daisy Ladies’ Society has had the poverty discussion over and over. What to do, how to encourage women to make the needed changes and reduce the social evils of poverty and unwanted babies? Abortionists say they have the solution, but Lord knows that’s an after-the-fact evil. We need to stop the creating before the next baby is made. Eugenics is the simple solution for decreasing births, whether of the feeble-minded or those less intelligent and unfit to parent.
Margaret Sanger, a feminist and nurse said, “More children from the fit, less from the unfit.”
The more they breed, the more they need. I just came up with that. I nod my head and smile. I’ll share it with The Daisy Ladies’ Society. I might finally have a saying they’d want to make a project around. Banners. Buttons. I’m getting good at this.
Fiona Elsmore’s house is another mile down Chicken Branch Road. Our women’s group has fifteen board members, or as we call ourselves in private, Kleagles, just like the men. We’re in charge of looking for new members to join the Women of the Knights of the Klan. We’ve each pledged to find five new women a week who share our ideals and who can afford the membership fee of ten dollars. In trade, we offer charity.
I’m checking back with Fiona. Her husband Roy is not a Klan member, but on my last visit to drop off baby clothes for her new daughter, she said she’d be ready to join in a few weeks. Roy works on the Western and Atlantic Railroad, and according to Fiona, has an on-again, off-again nervous condition left over from fighting in the Great War. He needed a government rest camp, but with no physical malady, they never accepted him. She takes in washing every day to make money for the times he wanders off his latest job in a fog of discouragement.
Her two boys, ages eight and six, are sitting on the breezeway opening, their thin legs swinging back and forth. A wave of sadness washes through me. I was raised in a similar Cracker-style house outside of Hickory Nut Hollow. Built out of cypress wood, the house has wide covered porches. Raised up on rock pilings, the crawl spaces beneath the homes work for ventilation, and the floor cracks throughout the home make sweeping away dirt and crumbs hardly a chore. ’Course I think that’s where it gets the name cracker. Fiona and Roy keep a few chickens under there. The birds get the morsels that fall below and also eat fleas and other bugs.
I park and turn to Oliver. “Play with your toys, and I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Can I go sit with the boys?” Oliver points to the house.
They should be in school. Marietta has a fine public school system. “No. You have on new clothes. Just stay here.” I reach into the passenger footwell, grab the basket, and head to the house. The children are thin and pale. “Hi, little ones. Is your mother inside?”
The older one leans forward trying to see in the basket. “Did you bring food?”
Well that was really rude, but there’s no reason to correct the poor child’s bad manners. A question deserves an answer. “I did.” I reach under the cloth and find a bread roll for each of them. They snatch them away and bite into the food like feral animals.
I sigh. This is the Daisy Ladies’ role—to teach parents how to raise their children. One lesson at a time. I climb the steps to the open breezeway and turn to the left, where the eating area is. “Knock, knock. Fiona? It’s Ardith.”
The door is cracked open, so I push it inward. “Yoo-hoo.”
Fiona is sitting at the small table with room for only two wooden chairs. She’s holding her baby girl wrapped in the blanket I brought to her during my last visit. Her gaze turns my way, but it’s empty. “I need your help,” she says in a quiet voice.
My heart pounds. I hope she’s not asking me to clean because the house is dirty and smells like soiled diapers. Something has happened. I set the basket of food on the table and pull the cloth away, revealing the contents. “Look. I brought bread, a ham, and some winter potatoes.”
Her eyes slowly slide over the food, and she nods. The baby hasn’t made a sound but is sleeping against her shoulder. “Roy is gone for good.”
“What? He’s dead?”
“No, he left us.”
He’s been known to wander off before, mostly at night when he can’t sleep. “He’ll be back. It’s just his nervous condition. Give him some time.”
“The railroad cut his wages again. Said they don’t need so many workers now that people drive automobiles.”
The state does seem to have chain gangs putting in newer roads everywhere. “When did he leave?”
“Three nights ago. Finished his work shift and come home.” She runs a broken fingernail along a crack in the tabletop. “Before bed, he supposed he could try and find a mill job, get away from the railroads, you know. He woke up middle of that night a’screaming and making no sense.” She shifts the limp baby to her other shoulder. “Ran out of the house and hasn’t come back.”
What help does she need? “Do you want my husband’s men’s organization to find him? The Klan can help him get a job. Especially if he isn’t drinking and wants to join a civic-minded group.” They’ve hunted down a dozen men in the county. Abandoning a wife and a family is illegal. Turning them in to the police and having the men spend time in jail helps no one, so the Klan somehow talks them into returning home. I heard the talking may involve a beating and strong threats.
She shakes her head. “Roy told me straight up he was done trying. He’s a broken man from the war and can’t see his way out of it.”
“What is it you want me to help you with?”
“I want you to find a home for Anna.” She hands the two-month-old off to me, and I have no choice but to take the tiny blanketed package since Fiona quickly releases her grip. “She deserves better than this.” Tears fall down her crumpled face that looks closer to fifty than her twenty-five.
The child is warm in my arms, just her nose and closed eyes showing in the swaddling cloth.
Fiona stands and crosses to a tan crockery jar on the shelf, takes off the lid, and brings out a handful of crumpled money. “I was saving this up to join your women’s group, but I recollect you said there are folks that will take in babies for twelve dollars and adopt them out.” She drops the money on the table. “That’s what I need. A right good home for my baby girl.”
How awful she must feel. With my baby almost here, I can’t fathom the pain of giving her away. My past surfaces and I remember another baby, but I push those recollections away. “Fiona. Are you sure? Once they find a home, she can never come back.”
She squeezes her eyes tight and nods. “Please. She’s been sickly off and on, and I can’t keep paying the doctor three dollars every time he comes out.”
“What does she have?” Diseases are running rampant. Some even say the Spanish Flu is circling back for another bite out of the population.
“She had whooping cough, but that’s passed. She’s got a delicate stomach. Can’t keep breast milk down, but she’s fine with goat’s milk.” She points to a wicker basket that’s packed. “I’ve filled several bottles to go with her.”
She already has the child organized to go? “If I hadn’t come along, what were you going to do with Anna?”
She drops her gaze to her hands and picks at the side of her thumb. “I didn’t know what to do, so I wrote back to an advertisement in the newspaper. It was a little bitty notice hidden away in the livestock section. A foundling home said they’ll pay me eight dollars for Anna and adopt her out.” She looks at the baby. “I packed up for when they give me a holler back.”
“What’s the name of the home?” I know most of them around here. Some are downright unscrupulous.
She moves papers around on the table and comes up with a torn-out portion of a newspaper and slides it across so I can see it. “Beck Infantorium.”
WANTED:
No questions asked, no birth certificate needed. White baby girls under four months old. Receive $8 and the comfort of knowing we will find her a good home.
I’m momentarily dizzy with a memory from seven years ago. That was the first and last time I was there. My secret no one need learn. “Um…you don’t want them. They take mostly high-risk babies and infants born in scandalous circumstances.” Magda and Herta Beck, the sisters who own the home, like to say they cover up the county’s dirty secrets. I reach for the money and tuck it in my jacket pocket. “I’ll take her to the New Hope Charity Home. They do a nice job of tending the infants, and if I remember right, they might even have a goat or two.”
“Thank you. Do I need to sign papers?”
“New Hope can keep this a secret if that’s what you want. I assume you don’t have a birth certificate.” The baby wiggles in her blanket and tries to push her tiny hand out.
“We don’t. Um…I don’t.”
I stand. “That’s fine.” I remember her other sons. “Why aren’t your boys in school?”
A tear slips from her face. “They’re too weak to walk. It’s not much more than four miles yonder but they ain’t eaten in two days. This food is a ray of sunshine.”
“The school formed a Parent-Teacher Association. I’ll call them from home after I stop at New Hope. They will make sure the boys are fed and can get to classes.”
The baby is light enough to cradle her in one arm while I lift her wicker basket with the other. “You sure this is what you want? How will you explain it to Roy when he comes home?”
“He ain’t coming home.” She shakes her head. “His daddy’s rifle is missing and he ain’t one for hunting after all he witnessed in the war.” She swallows hard. “One day someone’s gonna come knocking to tell me they found him in the high weeds or out in them woods.”
“I’m so sorry.” I’m not much for hugging strangers, and besides, my arms are full, but I think I would’ve done it if I could have. “You take care of your other children and don’t be afraid to ask for help.”