Ceremony of the Innocent (3 page)

“Loving and trusting,” said May Watson. “That’s the story of your mother’s life, Ellen. But she was always a fool. Nobody could tell her anything different. Dreaming. Everything wonderful for the future. She never learned that wasn’t no future for people like us. Only work.”

“I don’t mind work,” said Ellen. The meat was a luxury, a joy, in her mouth, and the cabbage and potatoes were delicious. She looked longingly at another of the spareribs, but refrained. They were for supper tomorrow.

“Well, that’s an improvement—over your mother,” said May Watson. She hesitated. “You can have another potato, if you want it.”

“I’m filled up,” said Ellen, and turned her eyes away from the enticing bowl. “It was so good, Auntie May.”

A pang in the chest struck May Watson. She spooned the potato onto Ellen’s plate. “I got two more I can boil up,” she said. Somewhere in her arid and horizonless mind there was the somber conviction that somehow, someway, “things were not right” for her kind. Something was awry in the world she knew. She would swallow down this rebellion with warnings that she was not thinking sensibly, that things were the way they were and there was no sense in questioning. Questioning and arguing only brought about the sort of punishment that had overtaken Mary, her sister. When May Watson prayed, which was rarely, she prayed that Ellen would understand that in this life the poor kept their heads down, their voices meek, and worked diligently and asked for nothing but the right to live—which was not often granted them. Mary had died of the “consumption.” She had reached beyond herself, and so probably her fate was “just.”

“You can have another piece of cabbage, too,” said May Watson, but Ellen, smiling, her blue eyes shining with what could only be tears, shook her head. “I’m filled up,” she repeated. Her mouth was still watering. “Auntie, the clock says half past one. It’s a long walk. You’d better go, and I’ll clean up.”

Were those really tears in Ellen’s eyes? thought May Watson. Why should she cry? She had just eaten a good meal, first meat in three weeks, and the bread had been only three days old. Ellen was a fanciful girl, though, like her mother. She, May Watson, had never known why Mary had wept or laughed or had sung. “I’m going,” said May Watson with abruptness. “While you are at it, Ellen, you can wash out the kitchen safe, too.”

She stood up and folded her apron carefully, for she would wear it in the Mayor’s house. She suddenly paused and looked at her niece with mingled pity and warning. “This here is a wicked world, Ellen,” she said, and did not know why she said it. “You got to make your peace with it, and expect nothing.”

“Yes, Auntie.”

May Watson sighed. “You don’t understand a thing I say,” she said.

Perhaps it is because I don’t believe it, thought Ellen, and once more the darkness of nameless guilt overflowed her. Her schoolteacher always told her class that one should be respectful of “superiors” and adults and those in authority, and she, Ellen, was always inwardly protesting. Hence her guilt. She stood up and kissed her aunt’s cheek. “Don’t work too hard,” she said, with shyness, for affection between them was almost never expressed.

“What else is there?” May Watson said, and went to the bedroom for her battered hat and the gloves she kept for “respectability.” It wasn’t very clever to go to work looking like a drab with no self-respect. People paid you less then. The hat, black and bent and ten years old, was pinned to her thin hair. But the gloves were white and clean and she carried her purse haughtily. She would ask for an extra fifty cents today. The Mayor’s wife was notoriously “stingy.” Suddenly May Watson was uplifted and defiant. An extra fifty cents would buy almost a week’s supply of turnips and potatoes and perhaps a little meat for next Sunday, not to mention a pint of milk and a loaf of bread, and a bar of Ivory soap and maybe a towel. The three towels in the house were falling apart, frayed and tattered. It ain’t right, thought May Watson, but she did not know why she had come to this conclusion. It wasn’t “respectable.” She marched out of the little house, however, as at the call of a trumpet, her head high, her thin bleached face defiant. Fifty cents. She deserved it, for hours of work, besides the dollar she would be paid. She would also manage to conceal a tidbit for Ellen, too. The poor had to do something if they were not to starve, sin or no sin. God was awful hard on the poor. It looked like He hated them. I guess I’m no Christian, thought May Watson, moving rapidly along the street. Well, then, maybe that’s good, too. We got to look out for ourselves; no one else would. “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,” said the parsons. They forgot His anger. Maybe they was scared of His anger. Nothing’s right in this world, thought May Watson, and she was dismayed and confused. She thought of her sister, Mary, who had laughingly defied the world and had gone her way, to her death. My thinking’s not right today, she thought. She remembered the tears in Ellen’s eyes, those huge blue eyes so like—She sighed again. Better just to work, and accept. No use asking for things that weren’t “proper” and deserved. The Lord had it all worked out—the rich were rich and the poor were poor, and it was ordained. “Where’s your red-haired hussy?” a man shouted to her from the broken steps where he sprawled, and May Watson shuddered. Maybe God was right, hating the poor. Sometimes they deserved it. Guess most people get what they deserved, anyway, and she smiled wryly. I was born without much brains, she thought, and so’s my life what it is, and Ellen was born homely and that’s why she’ll have to work hard all the life that’s coming to her.

May Watson reached the Porter house, the handsomest one on the long street, and walked down a path of flagstones bordered by shining laurel leaves. Shadows danced on the hot stones but it was cooler here and beyond the house she could see the many-colored gardens sloping down to a gazebo and green spruces. She passed windows heavy with intricate lace, the glass reflecting her weary features. She heard laughter on the veranda at the rear and the tinkle of lemonade and ice in crystal pitchers and she sighed. Maybe Mrs. Jardin, the cook, was in a good humor today and would save her, May, a glass to refresh herself. Not likely, though. Mrs. Jardin was very like her mistress and even surpassed her at times. May knocked on the kitchen door and then entered. The kitchen walls and floor were made of red brick, polished with wax so that they glimmered in the sunlight pouring through opened windows, and the sink was of “china” and had running water in it, both hot and cold, fit for a king’s kitchen. The wood stove exuded odors of burning fruitwood, and the fragrance from large iron pots was more than inciting. But the room sweltered with heat and for a moment May could not get her breath.

Mrs. Jardin was a plump short woman with a jovial face and small black eyes like bits of coal, and her black hair was wound tightly in a knot on the top of her head. Her cheeks were crimson and wet; she wore a flowered dress which May had made for her, and a starched white apron which came down to her arches. She was always smiling, usually gay, and so she had the reputation of being a jolly woman. But behind the comfortable facade, as May knew, lived a soul of ice and granite, obsequious to “betters” and malicious and cruel to inferiors, and totally without mercy. She was also a gossip and invariably believed the worst of everybody and she was always dissatisfied with May Watson, who never had any luscious morsels to impart to her concerning the village. She looked at May now with her lively eyes. “Suppose you couldn’t have come before this,” she said. She had a voice like a very young girl, piping and immature, which she considered beguiling, especially to the male sex. She had had two husbands, who had thankfully died not long after they had married Florrie Jardin, and whom she called “them no-goods.” A widow and childless, she was not without prosperity. There were gold earrings in her thick pink ears.

May said, taking off her hat and gloves and putting on her apron, “Isn’t two o’clock yet. I’m early.” She sent a furtive eye about the wooden counters which lined the brick walls, seeking a slice of pie or cake she could purloin for Ellen, or even the small end of a ham.

Mrs. Jardin perceived that eye. “If you wasn’t so late you could’ve had a cherry tart from yesterday. Kept it for you. Then thought maybe you wasn’t coming, so I ate it myself.”

May shrugged, rubbed her dry scoured hands together. “Just ate,” she said. “Not hungry. Well, what should I do first?”

The hot wind rattled the twigs of a tree against the window and the leaves were gilded with light. But it was dusky in the large kitchen and the stove fumed. The red bricks appeared to steam. “You can husk them strawberries in that bowl over there,” said Mrs. Jardin. “Then you can peel them potatoes and wash the lettuce and shell the peas.” The girlish voice became somewhat shrill. “All this work to do, and nobody to help!”

May Watson had a thought. “Well,” she said with an air of uninterest, “there’s my niece, Ellen. She could come in to help out, during the summer. Maybe a dollar a week, for six days.”

Mrs. Jardin’s eyes widened incredulously, and snapped. “A dollar a week for maybe only a few hours a day! Alice didn’t get but that for a whole month’s work, for twelve hours a day, seven days a week! Think we are millionaires in this house? I been here for fifteen years and just got another dollar a month, first raise in all that time. That makes nine dollars a month, a whole month, and I’m down here in the kitchen at half past five in the morning and never leave until eight at night! Besides, ain’t that girl of yours still in school?”

“I want her to be educated,” said May. “Leastways, to finish her last grade. Only right. She writes a fine hand, too, and can keep house. She’d be a help to you, Mrs. Jardin. Always friendly; no sulks. And very willing. Nothing too hard for her to do.”

Mrs. Jardin’s little eyes narrowed so much that they almost disappeared behind her fat red cheeks. She smirked. “How old’s she? Heard she was fifteen. Too old for school.”

May hesitated. Then she said, though she winced inwardly, “Ellen’s only fourteen. Not fifteen.”

“Last I heard from you, May, was that she was just thirteen.”

“She had a birthday last week, making her fourteen,” said May, wincing inwardly again at the falsehood.

“And you letting her go to school again in September? Foolishness. All right. I’ll speak to Mrs. Porter about Ellen helping out this summer. Seventy-five cents a week, and her supper, and that’s pretty grand, too, May.”

It could be worse, thought May. At least seventy-five cents a week would be of considerable assistance, and then Ellen would have a meal here, and that would be a saving. She shrugged. “Anyway, think about it and ask Mrs. Porter, though I’m saying it’s slave wages.” She drew a slow long breath. “And before I get to the work I can tell you now: I want an extra fifty cents for today, and that’s for sure.”

“You’re crazy,” Mrs. Jardin said, and giggled and shook her head. “Better hurry with them strawberries. They got to soak in sugar seeing they are the first of the season and still a mite sour.”

May, in spite of her usual brusqueness, was secretly yielding. But all at once she felt a sharp thrust of despair. Her moving hands slowed, stopped. She seldom felt despair, but now it was like a grief in her, sickening, drying her mouth. She said, “I got to have that extra fifty cents. You do the marketing around here. You know how expensive things are these days, prices always going up and up. Four cents, now, for a three-cent loaf of bread, and even that’s smaller.”

“You want a dollar and a half for not even a full day’s work?” shrieked Mrs. Jardin, aghast. “You really mean that? You ain’t just crazy?”

“No. I’m not crazy. I won’t get out of here until maybe eleven tonight, and that’s nine hours’ work, and on my feet every minute, and serving and cleaning and washing the dishes, while you go upstairs to bed at eight, nine. I’m human, too, Mrs. Jardin.”

Mrs. Jardin’s florid face became cunning and was no longer jocular. That’s what you think—being human, she thought. You and that girl of yours! You ain’t got any decency, either of you. Human! She shook a ladle at May. “A dollar’s a dollar, and that’s what you agreed, and it’s a lot of money. Men work twelve hours a day for that, in the sawmills down at the river, and on the barges. A dollar’s a dollar.”

May did not often feel courageous, but the despair in her had heightened as she thought of Ellen. She lifted her hands from the bowl of strawberries and deliberately wiped her hands on the apron. “All right, then. I’ll go home now—unless you go out there to Mrs. Porter and tell her I want the extra fifty cents. Then what’ll you do? They got company and all, and you can’t do it all yourself. Or maybe Mrs. Porter’ll come in and help you out. She’s big and fat enough.”

“Mind your tongue, May Watson! You got a bad tongue on you, impudent and such! Talking like that about a lady like Mrs. Porter. No respect for your betters!” But Mrs. Jardin was full of consternation at the thought of sending May away and being left to do all the work herself, and the folks from Scranton being so hoity-toity and wanting everything done right, and Mrs. Porter with her eyes that saw everything.

“Fifty cents extra,” said May Watson, and she could smell the drunken scent of approaching victory. “Well, why you standing there?”

Mrs. Jardin was seized with a savage desire to beat May on the head with the ladle she held in her hand. “Outrage!” she cried. “Well, I’ll ask Mrs. Porter, and you better think of putting on that hat of yours and those damned gloves you walk around in!”

May reached for her hat and held it in her hand and looked inflexibly at her old enemy. “I’m waiting,” she said.

Mrs. Jardin threw the ladle into the sink and stamped furiously out of the kitchen. May had begun to tremble. Perhaps she had gone too far. A dollar for nine hours’ work was generous. Her tired eyes wandered, helplessly. She saw that a pie had been cut and a large wedge taken from it. She moved as fast as a cockroach, cut a thin new piece and dropped it into the pocket of her apron. Her trembling increased, but so did her despair. Ellen had only one pair of shoes, and they broken and mended too many times, and getting smaller. May shut her eyes and squeezed the lids together tightly, and felt ill and undone. If Mrs. Porter refused, she would have to submit.