Cheaper by the Dozen (21 page)

"I want all of you to promise me one thing," he choked. "No matter what happens to me, I want you to take care of your mother."

After we promised, Dad felt better. But the movie remained on his mind for months.

"I can see myself twenty years from now," he'd grumble when we asked him for advances on our allowances. "I can see myself, old, penniless, unwanted, trudging up that hill. I wonder what kind of food they have at the poor house and whether they let you sleep late in the mornings?"

Even more than the movies, Dad liked the shows that we staged once or twice a year in the parlor, for his and Mother's benefit. The skits, written originally by Anne and Ernestine, never varied much, so we could give them without rehearsal. The skits that Dad liked best were the imitations of him and Mother.

Frank, with a couple of sofa pillows under his belt and a straw hat on the back of his head, played the part of Dad leading us through a factory for which he was a consultant. Ernestine, with stuffed bosom and flowered hat, played Mother. Anne took the part of a superintendent at the factory and the younger children played themselves.

"Is everybody here?" Frank asked Ernestine. She took out a notebook and called the roll. "Is everybody dry? Do you all have your notebooks? All right, then. Follow me."

We paraded around the room a couple of times in lockstep, like a chain gang, with Frank first, Ernestine next, and the children following by ages. Then we pretended to walk up a flight of stairs, to indicate that we had entered the factory. Anne, the superintendent, came forward and shook hands with Dad.

"Christmas," she said. "Look what followed you in. Are those your children, or is it a picnic?"

"They're my children," Ernestine said indignantly. "And it was no picnic."

"How do you like my little Mongolians?" Frank leered. "Mongolians come cheaper by the dozen, you know. Do you think I should keep them all?"

"I think you should keep them all home," Anne said. "Tell them to stop climbing over my machinery."

"They won't get hurt," Frank assured her. "They're all trained engineers. I trained them myself."

Anne shrieked. "Look at that little Mongolian squatting over my buzz saw." She covered her eyes. "I can't watch him. Don't let him squat any lower. Tell him to stop squatting."

"The little rascal thinks it's a bicycle," Frank said. "Leave him alone. Children have to learn by doing."

Someone off stage gave a dying scream.

"I lose more children in factories," Ernestine complained. "Now, the rest of you keep away from that buzz saw, you hear me?"

"Someone make a note of that so we can tell how many places to set for supper," Frank said. He turned to Fred. "Freddy boy, I want you to take your fingers out of your mouth, and then explain to the superintendent what's inefficient about this drill press here."

"That thing a drill press?" Fred said with an exaggerated lisp. "Haw."

"Precisely," said Frank. "Explain it to him, in simple language."

"The position of the hand lever is such that there is waste motion both after transport loaded and transport empty," Fred lisped. "The work plane of the operator is at a fatiguing level and..."

Sometimes we made believe we were on an auditorium platform at an engineering meeting, at which Dad was to speak. Anne played the chairman who was introducing him.

"Our next speaker," she said, "is Frank Bunker Gilbreth. Wait a minute, now. Please keep your seats. Don't be frightened. He's promised, this time, to limit himself to two hours, and not to mention the 'One Best Way to Do Work' more than twice in the same sentence."

Frank, with pillows in front again, walked to the edge of the platform, adjusted a pince-nez which hung from a black ribbon around his neck, smirked, reached under his coat, and pulled out a manuscript seven inches thick.

"For the purpose of convenience," he began pompously, "I have divided my talk tonight into thirty main headings and one hundred and seventeen subheadings. I will commence with the first main heading...."

At this point, the other children, who were seated as if they were the engineers in Dad's audience, nudged each other, arose, and tiptoed out of the room. Frank droned on, speaking to an empty hall.

When Frank finally sat down, the audience returned, and the chairman introduced Mother, played again by Ernestine.

"Our next guest is Dr. Lillian Moller Gilbreth. She's not going to make a speech, but she will be glad to answer any questions."

Ernestine swept forward in a wide-brimmed hat and floor-length skirt. She was carrying a suitcase-sized pocketbook, from which protruded a pair of knitting needles, some mending, crochet hook, baby's bottle, and copy of the
Scientific American.

She smiled for a full minute, nodding to friends in the audience. "Hello, Grace, I like your new hat. Why, Jennie, you've bobbed your hair. Hello, Charlotte, so glad you could be here."

Dressed in a collection of Mother's best hats, Martha, Frank, Bill, and Lill started jumping up with questions.

"Tell us, Mrs. Gilbreth, did you really want such a large family, and if so why?"

"Any other questions?" asked Ernestine.

"Who really wears the pants in your household, Mrs. Gilbreth? You or your husband?"

"Any other questions?" asked Ernestine.

"One thing more, Mrs. Gilbreth. Do Bolivians really come cheaper by the dozen?"

After the skits, Dad sometimes would put on a one-man minstrel show for us, in which he played the parts of both the Messrs. Jones and Bones. We knew the routine by heart, but we always enjoyed it, and so did Dad.

With his lower lip protruding and his hands hanging down to his knees, he shuffled up and down the parlor floor.

"Does you know how you gets de water in de watermelon?"

"I don't know, how does you get the water in the watermelon?"

"Why, you plants dem in de spring." Dad slapped his knee, folded his arms in front of his face, and rolled his head to the left and right in spasms of mirth. "Yak.Yak."

"And does you know Isabelle?"

"Isabelle?"

"Yeah, Isabelle necessary on a bicycle."

"And does you know the difference between a pretty girl and an apple? Well, one you squeeze to git cider, and the odder you git 'sider to squeeze.Yak.Yak."

When the show was over, Dad looked at his watch.

"It's way past your bedtime," he complained. "Doesn't anybody pay any attention to the rules I make? You older children should have been in bed an hour ago, and you little fellows three hours ago."

He took Mother by the arm.

"My throat is as hoarse as a frog's from all that reciting," he said. "The only thing that will soothe it is a nice, sweet, cool, chocolate ice cream soda. With whipped cream. Ummm." He rubbed his stomach. "Go to bed, children. Come on, Boss. I'll go get the car and you and I will go down to the drug store. I couldn't sleep a wink with this hoarse throat."

"Take us, Daddy?" we shouted. "You wouldn't go without us? Our throats are hoarse as frogs', too. We wouldn't sleep a wink, either."

"See?" Dad asked. "When it comes to sodas, you're right on the job, up and ready to go. But when it comes to going to bed, you're slow as molasses!"

He turned to Mother. "What do you say, Boss?"

Mother protruded her lower lip, sagged her shoulders, and let her hands hang down to her knees.

"Did you say mo' 'lasses, Mr. Bones?" she squeaked in a querulous falsetto. "Mo' 'lasses? Why, Honey, I ain't had no 'lasses. Git yo' coats on, chillen.Yak.Yak."

"Thirteen sodas at fifteen cents apiece," Dad muttered. "I can see the handwriting on the wall. Over the Hill to the Poor House."

By the time Anne was a senior in high school, Dad was convinced that the current generation of girls was riding, with rouged lips and rolled stockings, straight for a jazzy and probably illicit rendezvous with the greasy-haired devil.

Flaming youth had just caught fire. It was the day of the flapper and the sheik, of petting and necking, of flat chests and dimpled knees. It was yellow slickers with writing on the back, college pennants, and plus fours. Girls were beginning to bob their hair and boys to lubricate theirs. The college boy was a national hero, and "collegiate" was the most complimentary adjective in the American vocabulary. The ukulele was a social asset second only to the traps and saxophone. It was "Me and the Boy Friend," "Clap Hands Here Comes Charlie," and "Jadda, Jadda, Jing, Jing, Jing."The accepted mode of transportation was the stripped-down Model T Ford, preferably inscribed with such witticisms as "Chicken, Here's Your Roost," "Four Wheels, No Brakes," and "The Mayflower—Many a Little Puritan Has Come Across In It."

It was the era of unfastened galoshes and the shifters club. It was the start of the Jazz Age.

If people the world over wanted to go crazy, that was their affair, however lamentable. But Dad had no intention of letting his daughters go with them. At least, not without a fight.

"What's the matter with girls today?" Dad kept asking. "Don't they know what those greasy-haired boys are after? Don't they know what's going to happen to them if they go around showing their legs through silk stockings, and with bare knees, and with skirts so short that the slightest wind doesn't leave anything to the imagination?"

"Well, that's the way everybody dresses today," Anne insisted. "Everybody but Ernestine and me; we're school freaks. Boys don't notice things like that when everybody dresses that way."

"Don't try to tell me about boys," Dad said in disgust. "I know all about what boys notice and what they're after. I can see right through all this collegiate stuff. This petting and necking and jazzing are just other words for something that's been going on for a long, long time, only nice people didn't used to discuss it or indulge in it. I hate to tell you what would have happened in my day if girls had come to school dressed like some girls dress today."

"What?" Anne asked eagerly.

"Never you mind. All I know is that even self-respecting streetwalkers wouldn't have dressed—"

"Frank!" Mother interrupted him. "I don't like that Eskimo word."

The girls turned to Mother for support, but she agreed with Dad.

"After all, men don't want to marry girls who wear makeup and high heels," Mother said. "That's the kind they run around with before they're married. But when it comes to picking out a wife, they want someone they can respect."

"They certainly respect me," Anne moaned. "I'm the most respected girl in the whole high school. The boys respect me so much they hardly look at me. I wish they'd respect me a little less and go out with me a little more. How can you expect me to be popular?"

"Popular!" Dad roared. "Popular. That's all I hear. That's the magic word, isn't it? That's what's the matter with this generation. Nobody thinks about being smart, or clever, or sweet or even attractive. No, sir. They want to be skinny and flat-chested and popular. They'd sell their soul and body to be popular, and if you ask me a lot of them do."

"We're the only girls in the whole high school who aren't allowed to wear silk stockings," Ernestine complained. "It just isn't fair. If we could just wear silk stockings it wouldn't be so bad about the long skirts, the sensible shoes, and the cootie garages."

"No, by jingo." Dad pounded the table. "I'll put you both in a convent first. I will, by jingo. Silk stockings indeed! I don't want to hear another word out of either of you, or into the convent you go. Do you understand?"

The convent had become one of Dad's most frequently used threats. He had even gone so far as to write away for literature on convents, and he kept several catalogues on the tea table in the dining room where he could thumb through them and wave them during his arguments with the older girls.

"There seems to be a nice convent near Albany," he'd tell Mother after making sure that Anne and Ernestine were listening. "The catalogue says the wall around it is twelve feet high, and the sisters see to it that the girls are in bed by nine o'clock. I think that's better than the one at Boston. The wall of the Boston one is only ten feet high."

The so-called cootie garages, which Anne and Ernestine now detested, had been the style several years before, and still were worn by girls who hadn't bobbed their hair. The long hair was pulled forward and tied into two droopy pugs which protruded three or four inches from each ear. If a girl didn't have enough hair to do the trick, she used rags, rats, or switches to fill up the insides of the ear muffs.

Anne decided that she could never get Dad's permission to dress like the other girls in her class, and that it was up to her to take matters into her own hands. She felt a certain amount of responsibility to Ernestine and the younger girls, since she knew they would never be emancipated until she paved the way. She had a haunting mental picture of Jane, fifteen years hence, still wearing pugs over her ears, long winter drawers, and heavy ribbed stockings.

"Convent, here I come," she told Ern. "I mean the Albany convent with the twelve-foot wall."

She disappeared into the girls' bathroom with a pair of scissors. When she emerged, her hair was bobbed and shingled up the back. It wasn't a very good-looking job, but it was good and short. She tiptoed, unnoticed, into Ernestine's room.

"How do I look?" she asked. "Do you think I did a goodjob?"

"Good Lord," Ernestine screamed. "Get out of here. It might be catching."

"I'll catch it when Dad gets ahold of me, I know that. But how does it look?"

"I didn't know any human head of hair could look like that," Ernestine said. "I like bobbed hair, but yours looks like you backed into a lawn-mower. My advice is to start all over again, and this time let the barber do it."

"You're not much help," Anne complained. "After all, I did it as much for you as for me."

"Well, don't do anything like that for me again. I'm not worth it. It's too big a sacrifice to expect you to go around like that until the end of your days, which I suspect are numbered."

"You're going to back me up, aren't you, when Dad sees it? After all, you want to bob your hair, don't you?"