Folly (11 page)

Mabel and Folly, selected to be the watchdogs, sat directly across from each other at the table where the votes were being counted. The official from the Labor Relations Board sat at the head of the table, Fartblossom on one side of him, Big Sam on the other. Jesse took the seat at the other end. No one had spoken to them except Mr. Halibut, the official, who had explained that their presence was a mere formality to assure that someone from the workers' side could attest to the fact that the ballots had been counted fairly. He had a mustache which he shaped with his fingers as he talked. He took the ballot box, turned it over and opened the bottom with a key. One by one he opened the folded pieces of paper, smoothed them out slowly, marked the vote in column one or column two on the sheet he had before him. Folly kept straining to remember which was one and which was two. More votes under one, then almost even, then more under one again. That was the union. She and Mabel looked at each other and restrained themselves from expression or wild behavior. Fartblossom grunted and shifted his weight in the chair. Some of the ballots were folded over and over again, and as the man straightened them out, Folly and Mabel felt the nerves of the voting women in the folds. When Folly accidentally kicked Mabel's leg under the table and found her rigid, she knew Mabel wasn't breathing anymore than she was. They both avoided looking at Jesse as if the conspiracy among the three of them was unknown.

When the last ballot was on the stack, Mabel and Folly could see quite easily that they had won. Still they strained forward as the man from the Board counted. Fartblossom shoved back from the table. Mr. Halibut twirled his mustache. “One hundred and twenty-three for the union, eighty-nine against.” Folly heard Fartblossom wheeze. His face was red. “Union wins,” the man said. Big Sam got up and walked out as if he had more important things to do, which they all knew was bullshit; there was nothing more important to him than the fact he had just lost the election.

“When y'all expect to bring your troops back in here?” Fartblossom asked without looking up at them.

“We'll throw that out to them this afternoon,” Folly said. “Probably be willing to come back in Monday as long as we have your commitment to start negotiating a contract. We'll get back to you this afternoon, later.”

Jesse escorted them to the parking lot, gesturing like an orchestra conductor for them to keep their responses low. “They'll be watching you out the window,” he said, closing them in the car to take them to the firehouse. But Folly couldn't keep the grin off her face. It had taken over and was making up for the grim hours of pacing up and down that road in front of the parking lot, worrying each time a car approached that it might turn and aim for her.

As soon as they entered the firehouse the women knew on account of the looks on their faces. The noise of them all talking excitedly rose, then fell in a hush when Martha put up her hands for attention.

“Go ahead,” Folly said to Mabel.

“No, you.”

“No, you.”

“What?” Gilda asked in the hush, one of her hands vigorously squeezing the other. “Tell us.”

“We won,” Mabel called.

Folly took Mabel's hand and raised it up in the air with her own and repeated Mr. Halibut's count. “One hundred twenty-three for, eighty-nine against.”

Then the noise of applause was loud in Folly's ears, almost enough to blot out feeling. Martha was right there. She put out her arms and hugged Folly the way she had the day they'd walked out. “Hey, how about that,” she said in her ear. “We did right fine, didn't we.”

Folly had a pain in her throat and couldn't talk. She held onto Martha, waiting for it to pass. “Better than I thought,” she finally got out.

Mabel had gone off across the room. Jesse approached Folly and Martha as they moved away from the washtub filled with ice and beer. He started out to shake hands but ended up hugging them both, his blue eyes dancing with victory. “I was afraid it would be a hell of a lot closer,” he said. “You guys did an incredible job.”

“Wasn't just us, it was those hundred and twenty-three girls who got up the gumption to vote yes,” Martha wanted to say but didn't. She didn't like the way Jesse singled them out a lot of the time. Still, he'd been very good, very helpful to them, and she didn't want to criticize, so she stood bobbing her head up and down, affirming that everything had gone well. Martha felt for Jesse—the isolation of the outside organizer. She had come to like the shine of his bald scalp and the way he left it exposed when he might have covered it. But no matter how much a part of them he might feel at that moment, he wasn't really. He'd stay until the contract was negotiated, then move on. While they were happy
along with him that the union had won, they were doubly happy because they were going back to work. They'd voted this at the last meeting—to work through the negotiations—as they couldn't afford not to unless the union could come up with money for them, which it hadn't.

Jesse stood up on a chair and announced he'd take a voice vote to see if they still agreed to go back without a contract. “We can ask them for a final date to look to for the contract being signed, or we can leave it open-ended and take them on good faith.” There were boos from the back and someone hollered out that it wasn't safe to presume Big Sam had any faith. Jesse sweet talked them into letting him leave it open-ended anyway. He said he thought the management would be willing to negotiate for the sake of settling things back down and making up their losses. He didn't have a rapt audience the way he'd had when he'd started out in this firehouse.

Folly swigged her beer and felt a far distance from this man whom she had come to put a lot of her hope in. It wasn't that she didn't trust him to be on their side, but she had begun to see where the separation came between him and the women. She had realized when they'd sat in the personnel office while the ballots were being counted, that he had been closer to a neutral party than anyone else except the man from the Board. He had watched Fartblossom inquisitively, without the fear that she and Mabel had needed to hold down. He hadn't felt that he didn't belong, as Folly had. He may have come up from being a worker in a factory himself, but he had developed a smooth tongue and an attitude of belonging with the sort of men you found in offices. Also, there was something peculiar to the fact that they were all women workers and that the union didn't have a woman organizer to send out to them. Folly remembered Daisy the first time they had thought about the union, saying, “They won't care about Cora's baby.” No matter what else, Folly thought, she'd watch Jesse on that one. He knew his union wouldn't have gotten this far if it hadn't been for Cora's baby dying. She looked around the room. Cora was one person missing from this victory party.

She heard the women roar a unanimous assent to go back, then more quietly agree to the other proposals he had made, which gave him the freedom to go forth as their representative. Then he stepped down from the chair and the celebration began in earnest. The rest of the afternoon Folly did nothing but bump up against one joyous woman after another. Even the women who had adamantly opposed the union stayed and drank beer and laughed and talked about what a hard time it had been
but still they didn't regret that day they'd all marched out. They'd do it again tomorrow. Folly kept her grin down to a flat line most of the time, until someone would come pouncing in on her, hugging and kissing her, clapping her on the back, and it would erupt as they said remember this, remember that. They told the story over and over of the day they had walked out, told of the long picket line before the injunction had stopped it, of the day Fartblossom had joined it. They told of the men who had tried to run them down, the plans that had never materialized of how they would go in and steal all the thread out of the factory, or take the tension screws out of all the machines, or paint Fartblossom's plexiglass office black.

Someone had brought records and put them on and a few women started to dance, not in couples but in groups. “Come on, y'all, come on,” they said, pulling in the people nearest them. Mabel tapped Martha on the shoulder. “I can't dance,” Martha said.

“Yes you can,” Mabel said. “Today is the day you can. And honey, I agree, if you can't dance today, you'll never be able to.” Mabel danced around Martha with her arms held out, signaling the rhythm to her. Martha gave up resisting and started to dip up and down. Mabel tapped the next woman who wasn't dancing, “Come on, c'mon join in.”

Before Folly started dancing, she had been content to be watching practically the whole room moving to the music, the Black women and the white women dancing together—Fartblossom ought to see them. At the factory they hung out in separate groups and barely knew each other's names. Since the walk-out Folly had learned that the Black women were more to be trusted than she had ever realized—how they were less afraid to go against the man than most of the white women, or if they were afraid, how they had learned to contain their fear. When she was tapped, she joined without protest, and moved readily into the dance. She couldn't remember the last time she had danced, but it was way back sometime when she had still felt young, and she let herself go to feeling light and airy, let the music buoy her body as she moved her feet with the others.

The ice in the beer tub had melted, the remaining cans sunk to the bottom. Effie, drunk, wobbled up to Folly. “Hey, this is some party, don't you think so?”

“Sure is,” Folly agreed.

“I want you to know I voted for. I bet you think I'm a real chicken-shit. I know I was acting like one in the beginning. But when it came right down, I voted for.” She swayed as she spoke.

“I'm glad,” Folly said, not sure what Effie wanted from her.

Effie turned her beer upside down over her head and soaked herself, then walked off to get another. “We got a union,” she giggled, though Folly had thought she was going to start to cry. The beer was out, but it was hard to end the party, even then, when it meant back to work, back to routine, back to your own shift, pay off your debts and try to start saving up again.

When is the next time they would all dance together?

13.

Lenore hesitated at the screen door from where she could see Perry and her mother sitting at the kitchen table. It was strange to come to this place where she'd grown up and not be sure she should enter without knocking first.

“Comin' in?” her ma threw out.

“Guess so. You mind?”

“Long as you got clean feet. Washed the kitchen floor just yesterday.”

Lenore shook her feet to get the sand off her sneakers and went in. Perry jumped up and tackled her, holding tight around Lenore's waist, then hanging her weight on the squeeze. She bent over and kissed the top of Perry's head, then looked back up at her ma.

Evelyn held up her glass as if to toast Lenore. “Kool-Aid. Here's to you, kid. You won. Have some Kool-Aid,” she slurred, imitating herself drunk.

“Won what?”

“The fight.”

“What fight?”

“Come on. You know well as I. You came here to tell me you told me so. Now ain't that right. You did tell me so. And you ain't been back since.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Lenore said. It was true and at the same time, not true. She hadn't set out to go see her mother with any conscious intent of chafing wounds, but now that her mother pointed it out, she realized the reason she'd come out to see them this day rather than some other was because she knew the women were going back in to the mill Monday, and therefore, she knew her ma had been laid off, and she needed to see how she was doing.

She took a tall, skinny, plastic glass from the cupboard, filled it with Kool-Aid and sat down. “I came here to see how you were . . . and to
see Perry.” She put her hand on top of Perry's on the table. Perry covered it with her other hand and waited for Lenore to add another to the mound before she pulled out her bottom hand and stacked it on top of the pile. Lenore let Perry set up the rhythm of the game. Then she escalated it until they were a mass of flying hands. Perry giggled, then squealed with pleasure.

Evelyn ignored them and chewed at the nubbins of her fingernails. “Here I am . . . early retirement. I reckon that's cause for getting drunk.”

Perry pulled back and turned to her mother, her face suddenly solemn. “No, Ma. We been having such a good time, you and me.”

“Speak for yourself, kid.”

Perry looked hurt. Lenore knew the hurt came first inside her mother. Though she didn't understand why it was there, she felt that Evelyn should keep it to herself, and it burned Lenore to see her taking it out on Perry.

“You been stayin' sober?” Lenore asked.

“That's right. You wouldn't know, would you? You ain't been around.”

“I know.”

“Two whole weeks,” Evelyn sighed with a sound of hopelessness. “Let me tell you girls something,” she said, for a moment dropping her anger. “Don't ever let the booze get you. I been shaking for two whole weeks. My body feels like I need a can of oil dripped in here and there. I ache, head to toe, for the fuel. You know how it is when you go over one of those washerboard dirt roads that jounces your insides all around? That's how I feel all the time. And it ain't worth living this way.”

“Stay off longer, Ma. It'll go away,” Lenore implored.

“How would you know?”

“I went to AA.”

“Bullshit.” Evelyn's voice was resentful. “You can't go there unless you're an alcoholic.”

“You can, too. You can go when they have open meetings. I went to one.”

“Rooty-toot-toot. I went to one, too . . . when I was in the hospital with my liver that time.”

“I wish you'd go now, instead of going out and gettin' drunk.” Lenore said this as gently as she could.

“Who needs it.” Evelyn paused to light a cigarette. She tilted her head back and blew the smoke up at the ceiling. “I got enough troubles of my own without going down there and listening to a whole bunch of
sob stories. And boy, let me tell you, some of them have got stories to curl your hair.”

Lenore nodded. “I still wish you'd go.” She remembered the stories she'd heard that night she'd gone with Gerry, one of the cashiers down at the store. She'd expected to end up in some secret room, though she couldn't have guessed where in Victory there could be one, had found herself sitting instead, her limbs pulled in close, on the couch in the waiting room of the county health clinic which was in the next town south of Victory. Gerry had introduced her, carefully specifying she was a guest, not an alcoholic. Lenore was grateful for the distinction, at the same time felt remote because of it. She felt remote from her mother now, even though they were so close, so hot together, hot enough to burn out the ability to feel. Had her mother heard the same kind of stories she'd heard? Stories with a turnaround? She remembered the people whose stories she had heard, “I'm Wanda and I'm an alcoholic . . . .” “I'm Bert and I'm an alcoholic . . . .” They had described going down a long decline, seeming to be at the bottom, then finding still more to lose, going lower. She had gone with them in their stories. Finally, washed almost totally out of sight of themselves, making the turnabout. Going sober. Lenore had gotten chills in her back, hearing, then warmth had spread through her.

The declaration, “I am an alcoholic,” had rung in her ever since that meeting, so much more a definition than “I am a drunk.” She had expected them to swallow the word, but they had left silence behind it, left it ringing in her head. Left her wanting it for her mother. The confusion she'd felt about looking directly at the people after the meeting, she felt with her mother now. She'd been afraid she'd recognize them and that would make them feel exposed, but then she wasn't sure if it was actually her who'd feel exposed. There had been an eye chart at the end of the hall and her eyes had kept landing on the big E of the chart, then studying the four E's beneath it situated with their legs pointing out in all directions.

Now she looked at Evelyn, felt exposed by the idea that this was her mother, looked away.

“Maybe I will go,” Evelyn said. “So far I done right good on my own. Me and Perry. Perry rubs my back a little when I get home from the mill.”

Lenore didn't dare say a thing. She knew her mother must be realizing again that the job was over. Evelyn refilled her Kool-Aid glass. “Don't know why I'd listen to you, anyway. I know where your loyalty lies. Drivin' them women up to vote . . . I saw you.”

“I wasn't trying to hide.”

“You might of stayed away . . . out of respect for your ma.”

“Ma, you knew just how I felt about the strike. I told you when you went to be a scab.”

“Don't use that word, child. I went to work. I sewed. I got paid. I earned every penny.”

“I didn't say you didn't earn your pay.”

The two of them were squared off now, their defenses rising. Beads of sweat came out on Lenore's forehead, and she wished there was a breeze, but she was sitting back to the door. This was the moment when she always wished later she could have gotten up and left, but when it was there, she never could.

She stared at the red, plastic napkin holder in the middle of the table. Why did she and her mother always provoke each other in this way? She wanted them to get along. She reached for the salt shaker and began turning it methodically with both hands. She had, at this moment, new respect for her mother for going the two weeks sober (she had come to think of her as too weak for that accomplishment) but she didn't know how to tell her.

Evelyn was so angry she couldn't keep two thoughts in her head at the same time. She'd suffered these two whole weeks without drinking. Why? She'd thought she'd known why. Now she didn't. She only knew she felt like a royal piece of shit. It was all she could do to rise in the morning, pretend she was alive, and it was getting worse with time, not better. Here she was, back on her ass without a job. She had to believe her life was worth living. Had she? She struggled to remember that she had, but the memory was vague, not something that could hold her together. The factory had lied to her and here sat her daughter who had predicted it. Here sat her other daughter begging with the big look of worry in her eyes.

Lenore thought the moment had passed with the both of them keeping their thoughts to themselves. Evelyn rose and started taking some food out of the refrigerator. Suddenly she whirled around and opened up on Lenore, her face red, her hands on her hips. “You snot. You're always going against me.”

“That's not right, Ma. What I was doing to help them women didn't have a thing to do with you. I was doing it for what I believe in myself.”

“Well, how do you think it made me feel?”

Lenore was silent.

“What do you think those women think of me when they see I can't even control my own daughter?”

“What women?”

“Them you was drivin'.”

“If they knew you were working inside, not a one ever said a word to me about it.”

“Course they didn't, they got tight mouths.”

“They weren't thinking anything, either.”

“How would you know. You got some kind of special radar?”

“I'm guessing, same as you.” Lenore continued turning the salt shaker to keep herself calm.

“Hey, look here. Look at me when you talk to me.”

She met Evelyn's stare but didn't say anything more. She felt confused about who she was looking at. Her ma. She could remember her ma back when she was growing up, letting she and Angie get in her bed on a Sunday morning and stroking their heads. She remembered Evelyn being funny and the kitchen filled with their laughter. The woman at whom she stared had a long nose; her cheeks were hollows and her eyes were pouches. And the fury that was set in her jaw froze Lenore so that she couldn't feel anything but the rage that was in both of them.

Evelyn wanted to grab hold of Lenore. She wanted to shake her silly or slap her face, snarl at her, something, but she didn't have the strength to move. She hated the way the girl had her stubbornness and couldn't ever back down. She felt as if Lenore was waiting for something from her. She couldn't tell what but she was pretty sure she didn't have it to give. She wanted her out of her sight. At the same time, she missed her all the time since she'd moved out. That contradiction fit right in with how her feelings were constantly going up and down, around and around, swinging widely. Numbness was at one end of the swing, being overwhelmed at the other. She tried to stay tuned out most of the time.

Lenore detached her eyes from Evelyn's and looked away. There was an impulse in her to reform, to find the way to be a loyal daughter, to crawl back in that bed and feel the caring hand on her head, but she dismissed it. She had to keep her own strength to herself, to be able to counteract her love for her mother, which forgave everything, even abuse that had been leveled at her or at Perry.

Perry ventured bravely into the silence between them. “What's for dinner, Ma?”

“Leftovers . . . and hotdogs.”

“Can Lenore stay?”

“You asked her yet?” Evelyn responded as if she weren't sitting right there.

“Nope.”

“Well, you might as well ask her first. She's very particular about the company she keeps.”

“Can you?” Perry asked Lenore.

“I better not,” Lenore said. “I got some things to do. Next time.” She stood up and took Perry's hands and swung them with her own. “You still working on that puzzle you started?”

“It's almost all done.”

She backed toward the door with Perry's hands in hers. She was stalling to try to think of a way to tell her mother she was proud of her for staying sober. Evelyn faced the stove, watching for the water to boil. There was no reason she couldn't turn around and acknowledge that Lenore was leaving, but she wouldn't. Her back was up like a cat's, and Lenore knew it wasn't going to go back down until she was out the door.

“See y'all next week,” she said. “You be good, Perry.” All the way home she regretted not saying more, not saying, “I'd do anything in the world to see you back to your old self, Ma.” She tried to picture those words coming out of her mouth as she tried to imagine her mother allowing herself to be embraced, but she couldn't see it. She had a cat's back in her, too, which was forever up in Evelyn's presence. Besides, she was no longer sure who the old self was. Her mother's old self went with her old self, which had a child's view.

Lenore felt the heat of the late afternoon along with her confusion. She thought of going to her room and taking a cold shower, lowering the venetian blinds all the way round and lying back on her bed, no clothes, waiting for the cool of evening to fix some supper for herself. She felt remote as she drove along, remote and lonely. She should write to Betsy. She should let herself remember more the times they had enjoyed together. She realized that she hardly thought of herself as a person with a body a lot of the time, except when her mother flashed that fury, her own body winced.

She found herself pulling into the parking lot of the diner despite the fact that it wasn't a good time of day to find Sabrina idle. As long as her stool was empty it was still second home. The counter was busy but not full and no one had gone for her end. Sabrina brought her a coke. “What's up?” she asked.

“Nothing much.”

Sabrina tossed the coffee grounds from the empty vat into the garbage and mechanically went about preparing for a fresh supply. She filled the pitcher with water to pour over the new grounds, while casing Lenore's face. “You look like nothing much, my foot. You look pale.” She poured the water into the vat, flapped the large, aluminum lid back on as if she were clapping a cymbal and took off for the other end of the counter before Lenore gathered herself to respond. Lenore felt self-conscious, even guilty, that this woman had taken a reading of how she was from her complexion, when she had never thought of seeing Sabrina's color as one with possible variation.