by Clark Howard
The hefty woman went into the kitchen. Amazed, Richie stared after her. Then he ground his mind into gear and made for the front door. The old bat was practically inviting him to cut out. And cut out he would!
Hurrying across the dirt front yard, he glanced back several times to convince himself that she was not coming after him. Reaching the sidwalk, he shook his head in astonishment. This was too good to be true! Well, the joke’s on her, he thought elatedly as he walked briskly down Loomis Street. She’d never see him again!
Before noon he was back. Hungry, he had remembered how good the stew was. And he had reflected on other things too: the five boys talking at the table, the apparent absence of the kind of precise regimen such as that imposed by the Hubbards, and the fact that Mrs. Raley had given him the freedom to leave the house that morning. Going back for the stew, Richie rationalized that he was not actually conceding his freedom because, the way it looked like the Raley house was run, he could take off any time he wanted. His decision to come back was justified by the first bite of the leftover stew; it was even better than it had been the night before—and he was moved to say so. Mrs. Raley accepted the compliment with a grunt, replying sullenly, almost to herself, “Stew’s always better the next day. That’s ’cause the flavor’s had time to settle.”
After Richie ate, Mrs. Raley took him to a rear bedroom crowded with three double-decker bunk beds. “That one right there’s yours.” She indicated one of the bottom bunks with the stump of her arm. Richie began to feel buoyant; this place might be all right. There were even a few comic books lying about.
After school, he met the other five boys. Artie, the oldest and biggest, was naturally the unofficial leader. The youngest and smallest was called Midge, short for midget. Between them were three boys of varying size named Harold, Ray, and Donny. When they had all arrived home, Artie closed the bedroom door and explained how life was at Mrs. Raley’s.
“The food ain’t fancy, but it’s good and there’s plenty of it. We gotta do our own laundry and we take turns doing the heavy chores around the place, like lugging the garbage can out an’ shoveling the sidewalk when it snows—shit like that. She won’t put up with a lot of real loud noise around the house, no horseplay or nothing, but she lets us listen to the radio when she does; we just ain’t allowed to turn it on ourselves. She won’t put up with getting in no trouble in the neighborhood or at school; she don’t like teachers and she don’t like the neighbors, so don’t never do nothing that makes nobody come to the door to complain. And the main thing”—Artie judo-chopped the air with both hands for emphasis—“is don’t run away. ‘Least, don’t get caught if you do. That closet is worse than you think it is; I done eight days in it, so I know.”
“I done four myself,” piped up Midge, the smallest.
“We all been problems,” said Harold. “Tha’s why we’re here. Ray used to set fires. Donny was always pulling up girls’ dresses; he has to go talk to a doctor once a week about it.”
“Besides the closet for runaways,” Artie went on, “the only punishment she dishes out is with her razor strap. There’s no going to bed without supper, or standing in the corner, or sissy shit like that; all’s she does is whip the hell out of you with that strap.”
“And don’t never, whatever you do,” Midge stressed gravely, “ever get caught looking at her stump.” There was a chorus of affirmations from the others about that.
For the rest of the day, Richie accrued more bits and pieces of information both by observation and inquiry. At supper that night, he and the other wards were given large hamburger steaks made from ground beef, while Mrs. Raley contentedly munched away at a real steak, tenderloin and rare. She also sipped occasionally from a water glass enclosed in a knitted glass-holder that concealed its contents.
“It’s whiskey,’ Artie whispered to Richie after the meal. “An’ she’s able to have steak for herself ’cause she gets ration books for all of us.”
Back in their room that night, Richie asked about the comic books he had seen earlier. “We chip in for ’em,’ he was told. “See, we each get a dime a week for milk in the school lunchroom, only we don’t use it for that, we spend it on other things. Mrs. Raley don’t care, an’ we get plenty of milk at breakfast and supper. So sometimes we all put in two cents and buy a comic book.” Artie paused to scratch his head. “Now that you’re here, I don’t know how we’ll work it. Six don’t go into ten.”
Oldest and biggest, Richie thought, but not the smartest.
He began mulling over improving his lot in life—without running away again.
The wards at Mrs. Raley’s attended Jackson Elementary, a tough lower-class neighborhood school no different from any of the other eight schools Richie had gone to in the past five years. Sixty percent white, thirty percent black, the rest anything from Egyptian to Filipino, it comprised the usual strata of an elementary school community. A handful of bullies ruled the schoolyard, usually with an entourage of semi-toughs and sycophants. They intimidated and terrorized at will, but—as Richie had learned was typical—they avoided challenging anyone who might have group support of some kind. For this reason, kids with several brothers in the school were let alone; the Jewish kids, who had to go for religious lessons after school, and who would stick together and fight, were let alone; and Mrs. Raley’s wards were let alone. Artie and Harold were both adequate fighters and with the assurance of assistance from four others, even of inferior skills—eight arms and feet, even untrained, are bound to do some damage—they were able to bluff a status for the wards that was, in Richie’s estimation, the most desirable on the schoolyard: neutrality.
It was easy for everyone in the school to differentiate wards of the county, whether Mrs. Raley’s or anyone else’s. As Richie had learned while in the Hubbard household, the welfare department periodically distributed to each ward a box of clothing of a particular size: small, medium, or large. Each box contained identical items: same knickers, same shirt, same sweater, same everything; it was the welfare department “uniform” and it marked its wearer as a charity case. Most of the clothes were drab and colorless grays, browns, or mixed blends made from surplus material that had been spun together without concern for the appearance of its final product. Richie hated the welfare clothes; he felt that wearing them was like wearing a sign. Even on the Jackson Elementary schoolyard, when the “uniform” afforded him the protective umbrella of the ward group, he still resented the infringement on his individuality.
Going to Jackson Elementary, and living on Loomis Avenue, had put Richie back within reasonable walking distance of the Damen Avenue branch library, and in the absence of any severe restrictions on his time by Mrs. Raley, he resumed using his library card. Miss Cashman, still there, seemed genuinely pleased to see him again. “Well, Richie, hello!” she said, smiling with her beautiful lips. “Where have you been for so long?”
“My dad got a job in a defense plant on the South Side,” Richie said. “We’ve been living over there.”
“Have you changed the address on your library card?” she asked.
“No, ma’am, but I don’t have to now,” he quickly lied. “We’re back living at the same place as before, when I first got my card.” Richie did not enjoy lying to the librarian, but trying to explain where he was living, and why, was too complicated. The library, like most everyplace else, had too many rules; it was easier to break them than to obey them.
Resorting again to the ploy of patronizing the contemptible juvenile section, Richie once more began to avail himself of books reserved for grownups. Ranging for the first time beyond the theater arts collection, he discovered a rich new vein of reading: adult fiction. As it happened, he came upon this treasure in the stack marked “Dos-Ell.” The first book on the top shelf was The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos. Thumbing through its pages, Richie was certain he had found a volume of short stories. Segments of writing seemed to be separated from each other by large letters printed like newspaper headlines; her
e and there, it even seemed to read like a play. Without further consideration, Richie slipped it under his sweater, thankful that the welfare “Small” was too small for him, and the “Medium,” which he had on, big enough to be roomy, so that the book, the thickest he had ever taken, could be concealed. From the juvenile section, he then took a book at random, something about Jimmy’s first train trip or some such bullshit, and checked it out at the counter as he smiled and waved at Miss Cashman.
After supper at Mrs. Raley’s, the wards cleared off the table, washed the dishes, and cleaned up the kitchen; Mrs. Raley poured herself another drink and settled into an ancient club chair in her dingy little living room to listen to the radio. One night after Richie had definitely decided not to run away, he went to where she was sitting.
“Can I get a paper route?” he asked. The old woman shook her head.
“Welfare department don’t allow foster parents to put wards to work outside the home.”
“But what if I want to work?” Richie asked. Mrs. Raley looked balefully at him.
“Are you deaf? I said the welfare department don’t allow it. And,’ she added as an afterthought, turning back to her drink, “they ain’t interested in what you want.”
Richie sighed the best wistful sigh he could generate. “I sure would like to make some spending money. When I lived with my mother, I was making over a dollar a day delivering papers. I gave her half of it.”
Mrs. Raley looked back at him. Each time she moved her head, her cheeks slapped like water on the side of a tub. She studied Richie speculatively. “Half of it, huh?”
“Yeah. Half of it. ‘Bout fifty cents a day.” That was three and a half dollars a week, which, Richie imagined, would buy at least one bottle of whatever Mrs. Raley was sipping.
“Tell me about it,” she said.
“I need to get up at five o’clock so I can be at the carrier place to fold papers by five-thirty,” he said. “Then I work my route. I’d get back here in time for breakfast.”
“How do you know you can get the job?”
“I already asked. There’s a morning route open down on Aberdeen Street.” He had tried to get an afternoon route, which he would have been able to work without Mrs. Raley knowing about it, but none were available. It nettled him to have to share his earnings with Mrs. Raley; after all, she was not his mother. But half of something was better than all of nothing.
“It wouldn’t look good for me if that welfare dame was to find out,” Mrs. Raley said pointedly, sipping.
“No way she can find out,” Richie assured. “Nobody’ll know but you and me. I can stop at the bakery on the way home every morning and pick up the bread for you, an’ you can just tell the others that you’re getting me up early every morning to do that.” A sudden thought occurred to him. “You could even let me off cleaning up the kitchen at night because I do a morning errand.”
A perceptive little smile played briefly on Mrs. Raley’s lips. “Pretty clever, ain’t you, kiddo,” she said. It was a statement of fact, not a question, as she assessed him and his proposition with the same leery eye with which she reviewed mankind in general and those within earshot in particular. She finally consented—but with a warning. “You ever blab to the welfare dame and I’ll fix you for it, kiddo.” Her eyes took on a hateful glint. “There’s worse things than the strap and the closet. Lots worse. Remember that, kiddo.”
“I will,” Richie promised. The menacing look she gave him made his mouth go dry and his stomach churn. But as he left the room he also felt exhilaration stirring in him. He had pulled it off! In one shot at the old woman, he had put himself in position to earn five times as much a day as the other wards received in a week—and managed to duck out of the kitchen cleanup to boot.
Things, for a change, seemed to be looking up.
It felt good to get back on a paper route again. Richie liked going out in the quiet, still, early-morning city; somehow it seemed safer as a new day began, as if all the corrupt people who made the city so loathsome at times were not yet awake to practice their misdeeds. It was a fresher, cleaner place too, at that hour before daylight, when the waste of the tenements had not yet begun to reek.
Part of his route, two blocks of it, took him along the edge of Skinner Park, into a well-kept middle-class neighborhood that had not yet relinquished itself to the creeping slums. The greystone buildings facing the park were twelve-flats, with an entry foyer in front and small, individual back porches in the rear. It was on the back porches that Richie tossed the papers. That early—half of his route was worked before daylight—most of the apartments were still dark; only an occasional window was lighted, giving Richie a glimpse now and then of people getting out of bed, moving sleepily about, fumbling around in a kitchen; people in their pajamas or underwear, scratching themselves, stretching, getting ready: ready for breakfast, ready for work, ready for the day, ready for life walking upright with their eyes open and their identities in place. This part of it, Richie thought, the part he saw through the windows, was the secret part of their lives, the guarded part.
Once, just at first light, when he had paused to watch curiously through a bedroom window as a woman of at least sixty took off her nightgown and began to put on a pair of long bloomers, Richie was startled by someone speaking to him from the adjoining porch. “She’s a little old for you, isn’t she?” an amused voice asked.
Richie whirled around, feeling his face turn red, and seized the first lie that came to his surprised mind. “I thought the lady said something to me through the window.”
He was talking to a woman of about, he thought, his mother’s age, not as pretty as his mother but healthier looking. Wearing a chenille robe and felt house slippers, she had very square but not broad shoulders, and high, angular cheekbones under a head of darkish-light hair that was usually called “dishwater” blonde. Richie knew at once that she was not angry or offended; her eyes were as amused as her voice had been.
“Doesn’t sound to me like she’s saying anything through the window,” the woman observed, tilting her head an inch. Richie had the mortifying notion that she was going to laugh at him. But she only stooped to pick up her own paper and get a bottle of milk off the window ledge.
“Guess I was wrong,’ Richie muttered, and hurried on his way.
Back around front, out of curiosity, he checked his route cards for the woman’s name. It was Rozinski. The first name on the card was Walter.
As he pushed his cart away from the building, he shook his head in irritation at himself. Dumb goddamn fuckhead, he silently called himself. Getting caught spying on some old dame older than Mrs. Raley. Real smart, asshole.
It was full daylight when he got to the end of the block. For some reason, just before he turned the corner, he looked back at the building where the Rozinski woman lived.
She was watching him from a second-floor window.
31
Miss Menefee found Richie sitting in a corner of the back porch, knees up, an open book in front of him.
“Hi, Richie,” she said, setting her briefcase down. “What are you reading?”
“Library book,” he replied. As casually as he could, he closed the book, stood, and put it under his arm, hoping she would not ask to see it and discover that it was from the adult section.
“I didn’t know you liked to read,” the caseworker said.
“I read all the time,” Richie told her, as he might have said he ate, slept, and spoke. Reading had become second nature to him, a natural thing.
“I’ve got something special for you to read,” Miss Menefee said, taking an envelope from her purse and handing it to him.
“Thanks.” It was a letter from his mother—more accurately, a note. One page from a dime store lined tablet. Dear Richie: How are you? I am fine. How is school? I hope you are getting good grades. Be a good boy and write to me when you have time. Love, Mother.
The letters he wrote back to her were pretty much the same. It was awkward: m
other and son in the same city, probably only a few miles apart, but not allowed to see each other or even talk on the telephone, only allowed to exchange hand-carried letters.
“Here,” Miss Menefee said, handing him a stick of Juicy Fruit gum when he had finished reading the note and put it into a pocket. Grace Menefee was always giving him something: chewing gum, a dime, a new handkerchief. “A man should always carry a clean handkerchief,” she told him once. It was obvious that she had a special feeling for Richie; she was forever touching him, brushing back his usually uncombed hair, wiping a spot of dirt from his face, straightening his collar, tucking the end of his belt back through a loop. Delighted that he had settled in at Mrs. Raley’s, she constantly praised him for making her proud of him by not running away again.
“I want to come and get you Saturday afternoon and take you someplace special,” she told him. “I think you’ll like it.”
“Okay,” he said, shrugging as if it were fine with him. Actually, his devious mind was racing; there was an afternoon paper route opening up and it had been promised to him. If he got it before Saturday, he probably would not be home when Miss Menefee came for him. He would have to tell her he forgot, or something; he could not miss the chance for an afternoon route: it would mean sixty cents more a day—and he didn’t have to cut Mrs. Raley in for half, because she wouldn’t know about it.
When Grace Menefee left that day, Mrs. Raley came out on the porch and eyed Richie suspiciously. “What was all the talk between you and that welfare dame?”
“She was just telling me about my mother.”
“Your old lady’s the one who’s knocked up, ain’t she?”
“Yeah.” Richie sat back down, opening his book again.
“Just you be careful what you say to that welfare dame,” Mrs. Raley warned. “She ain’t to be trusted.”
“Okay.”
You either, he thought, as he scanned the page of the book to find where he had left off.