Folly (22 page)

24.

Lenore was in her room, jalousies open all the way round, cool breeze blowing across her,
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
in her lap. She felt victorious over having this book to read. Betsy had written her that one of the women in Alaska had read Carson McCullers' biography and she was a lesbian, a southern lesbian. Not that she'd disclosed this in her books, according to Betsy's report. Lenore had gone to the library just in case, and sure enough found this one, which undoubtedly meant that whoever else knew, the Victory librarian did not. She turned her chair around to face the window and propped her feet on the sill. She was deeply involved in the story when she suddenly realized someone had driven up and stopped by the curb right outside her room.

The driver got out and hesitated while the passenger came around the car; then the two women headed up Lenore's walk. The passenger was her mother; she felt dumb with taking so long to recognize that. She didn't know the other woman, but there was no question that Evelyn was Evelyn. Putting the book aside, she roused herself from the chair. She heard Sabrina's words: “Let things be a while, you'll see, pretty soon she'll come round. It's not just you needing her, it works both ways.” She felt the kernel of anger which usually knotted up hard against the wall of her stomach circling around in her, like a goldfish swimming in a bowl, no place to light. It made her feel slightly off balance. Having been clued to her mother's need by Sabrina was what kept her composed enough to answer the door.

“This the right place?” Evelyn asked.

“Hi. Come on in.”

“Lenore, this is Suzy Malone. She and I went to school together, back when.”

“Hi.”

“Way back when,” she continued.

“You can say that,” Suzy agreed.

Evelyn looked around at the place. Lenore went to the kitchen. “How about some coffee?”

“Sure, I'll have some.”

“Me, too,” Suzy added.

“Look around . . . and make yourself at home.” Lenore was glad the place was picked up, but then, it always was. That was the way she had chosen to live since she'd moved away from home.

“Nice place.” Suzy said.

“Where do you live?”

“Out the other side of town, near your mother.”

“Oh.”

“Suzy goes to meetin's with me.” Lenore started to open her mouth, but before she knew what she was going to say, Evelyn added, “None of your business what meetin's.” Lenore closed her mouth. “So long as we were right here in town and it was Sunday afternoon and all, I said, ‘Hey, why don't we drive on by and see can we find her at home.'”

“Good. I wasn't doing much of anything, just sitting here, and I saw that car drive up and I thought, who can that be, not someone for me.”

“Surprised to see your old ma, eh?”

“I'm still in shock.”

“Stay that way, it makes you sweeter.”

Lenore started to bristle but before she could fully react, Suzy said, “You'd better be good to this girl, Evelyn. I haven't even had my coffee yet. Besides, I think she's done right well for herself.” Lenore looked at this woman, whom she had thought dull and ordinary, and began to see her whole and to feel warmly toward her. At the same time, she was embarrassed for being made fuss over. She had felt the huff go out of her back. It made her think that if there had been someone at home to take her side, maybe she would have been able to cool out, but Angie had almost always needed to side with her mother, and Perry had been too young.

Evelyn, turning away from Suzy's defense of Lenore, went to inspect the plants over by the bed. Lenore poured the coffee at the counter and put out some cookies on a plate. “I like the way you've fixed
the place up,” her mother said. “I reckon you've got everything you need to be comfortable here.”

“I'm pretty comfortable,” Lenore said, her voice calm, not betraying the excitement she felt at showing off her home, her self sufficiency. She realized she was talking to her ma in a place where she couldn't be thrown out.

Evelyn sat at the counter. “Perry's told me about your place; she's got it memorized, so I feel like I been here before.”

“How is she?”

“She's fine. She's in the summer school play—one of the lead roles. She likes doing that, you know. Pretending she's someone else.”

“Yeah.”

“I think she's real good at it.”

“Remember when we used to do that?” Lenore asked. “When you and me and Angie used to go down to the Thrift Shop and get us some stuff to dress up in, and then we used to take turns play-acting?”

Evelyn laughed. “Yeah,” she said, “just barely. We used to carry on somethin' awful. You shoulda seen this one, Suzy. She used to imitate her teachers 'til I like to have died from laughing. I'd just about forgot all about that, Lenore.”

Lenore smiled. “The ones I remember best was some of your customers.”

“I swear,” Evelyn said, “sometimes it's only making fun of people that can save you so you can go on facing another day.”

“Ain't that the truth,” Suzy said.

Much as it felt good to be laughing with her mother, it saddened Lenore to be reminded that this was the source of their humor.

They didn't stay much longer. They were out the door already, on the sidewalk, saying good-bye, her mother saying, “Be good”; Suzy saying, “Nice to meet you”; her mother saying, “Don't forget where we live now, come by sometime,” when Mary Lou, walking with her head down, ran smack into Evelyn.

“Sorry,” she said. “Excuse me. I didn't see you.” Then, seeing Lenore outside, “Hi.”

Mary Lou regretted not having taken a second look when she found out a few minutes later that the woman she'd run into was Lenore's mother. “I didn't recognize her because I thought she don't come here. I thought she refused.”

“She did. Only I guess she's turned around and changed her mind, because she came. That was her, the only mother I got.” Lenore did
a series of front flips on the grass. She had a second of panic the first time over, thinking she might have forgotten how to land, but her body knew, her body did just fine on its own. She remembered the day-after-day of landing wrong learning, the noiseless thuds in her legs, the bruises, the drag of disappointment. What had made her persist had been her imagination, her idea that when she got everything down right, she would feel joy, there would be a sense of her own flexibility, and at the same time, of her control. The recoil of her landing would be the spring of her takeoff, and she would move from one flip into the next with grace rather than effort, as she did now, holding onto the exhilaration she felt that finally her mother had come.

“How'd you learn to do that?” Mary Lou asked, impressed.

“Taught myself.”

“I tried in gym, but I couldn't get it.”

“Takes a long time,” Lenore said. “I did it and did it and did it, and one day, when I was about to give up, I got it. Same with my mother. I was just about resigned to the fact she'd never come and see me, it would mean too much giving in to her, and here I look up, and who's coming down the walk?” She did one more flip and landed on the concrete. “C'mon in.”

Mary Lou apologized for the way she'd acted the day before and thanked Lenore for coming to see her.

“No matter,” Lenore said. “I knew you were upset. I don't really know what it's like to go through that. I've been lucky, I guess. Never had to go to a funeral yet. Never lost anyone real close. Only my father. But he's not dead, just disappeared so he don't have to pay my ma nothing. I suppose he could be dead and we wouldn't know it.”

“Mine, too,” Mary Lou said. She quietly collected herself from passing the word
lost.
It still jarred her. It wasn't so much the emptiness of missing Daisy as it was the sense of who she was without her. A child who made up words with no one to hear them. She felt so tender, like a wound freshly healed that needed protection not to break open again.

Lenore tried to subdue herself to meet Mary Lou's mood, but her exuberance was hard to contain. She washed and dried the cups while Mary Lou sat on the stool and fussed with the sugar bowl. The small efficiency apartment seemed close and confined to her now, though it had seemed grand when Evelyn and Suzy had been looking around. “How about we take a ride out in the country?” she asked Mary Lou.

“Fine,” Mary Lou answered. “Good idea.” She pictured herself leaning back in the seat, talking with her eyes looking straight ahead or
out the window, not directly on Lenore. She'd tell her about her mother and Martha, then. She'd give her the book back later, tell her she was glad she'd read it even if it hadn't answered her questions about herself.

Out past the mill, they turned up a secondary road that headed north. The countryside was hilly and the road wound in curves around the hills. Not interested in speed, but in the lushness of late summer, Lenore drove easy. She rested her eyes on the blooming flowers and the denseness of green along the tree lines bordering the pastures. The pastures were parched, burned out by the sun. They passed farms where people were harvesting vegetables from their gardens. She'd like to have a garden of her own, she thought. Maybe Mrs. Henry would let her cut up a section of lawn, a corner; she could share what she grew with her. She'd stop eating meat. She liked it less and less since she'd become a butcher. The sun was good and hot but the humidity was gone. It was a fine day, the kind that exuberance waits for, one that made Lenore feel she could do anything she wanted. Her left arm rested on the window and the air blew up her sleeve and onto her back, cool enough to feel like a friend. She glanced over at Mary Lou and saw that she was far away in her own thoughts.

Driving through a small town, Lenore waved, first at a couple of teenage girls, Black, then at an old white man. The man waved back; the girls didn't. This started her thinking how it would be if Sabrina and Eli were riding with her, and she wondered if it was something they'd like to do sometime. The Black girls probably would have waved, the white man not. But she would be the same person. Or would she? What if some redneck boys passed them and decided they didn't like what they saw and came after them? Only a few weeks before, she'd read in the paper about a white guy who'd been shot for nothing more or less than walking down the street with a Black guy, by some other white guys who'd decided to show him his place. She realized this fear was always with her, occupying territory close to her heart, something to be reckoned with first in the imagination. She rarely admitted fear, didn't want any part of her life controlled by it. But she had to know this fear, to know it had long lain dormant in her, disguised as part of her armor, if she wanted to know Sabrina better. She would
not
be the same person if she were riding with Sabrina and Eli right now.

Mary Lou broke into her thoughts. “Hey, it's real nice out here. Thanks for havin' such a good idea.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

“Remember what I told you about my mother?”

Lenore nodded. Mary Lou realized this was a stupid way to introduce it, but she half expected Lenore to pretend the conversation had never occurred. “Well, she told me about them last night, her and Martha, just like I thought.” Once Mary Lou got started, she could hardly stop talking. She went on and on, while Lenore listened and drove. She liked Mary Lou, so young but so deeply exploring. She'd never thought things through about her own lesbianism the way Mary Lou was trying to do now. Betsy had just been there, a friend, everything to her, and then, a lover, too. Well, maybe that wasn't so, maybe she was skipping something. She could vaguely recall going through the imaginings of being with Betsy before the experience of the real thing. A step, like realizing she feared the boys riding out after her, trapping her somewhere and punishing her for being friends with Sabrina. It was a step she was glad she had taken.

Mary Lou's voice broke another spell of quiet with excitement. “Guess what. I'm probably going to be learning to drive soon.”

“Why probably?”

“My ma has to see if Martha will let me learn on her car.”

“Teach you on mine if she won't teach you on hers,” Lenore said.

“No kidding.” Mary Lou was smiling. It seemed like nothing but options opening up in front of her.

25.

Folly and Martha ended up huddled in the bathroom, smoking and fuming the way they had the night they'd led the walkout. The sun was coming up outside. Fartblossom had called Martha in, into the room where he officially performed his duties as personnel officer, even though he'd returned to being night floor supervisor.

“He's had it out for us, we knew that,” Martha said.

“You can say that again.”

“I shouldn't a given him the chance, though. I shoulda just taken those two nights.”

Fartblossom had told Martha to sit down but had gone on standing himself, pussyfooting around his office, his belly out in front, bobbing with pleasure at his telling her he knew her mother had died. “I'm sorry to hear it,” he'd said with a smirk. “Abuse of the new sick leave policy . . . strictly meant for illness of the worker . . . not for death in the family . . . not for illness of a close relative . . . sure you can see why this must be enforced, someone would consider their second-cousin-once-removed a close relative . . . no choice, I have no choice . . . I did not set the policy . . . it was set by the union contract . . .
your
union contract.” Smear your nose in that union contract, he must have been saying to himself. “Contract negotiated by your friends . . . endorsed by your co-workers. I'm docking you two days . . . giving official warning . . . course we don't let no one go unless they've had three warnings . . . you're a good worker, Martha, I'm sure you'll behave.”

“Come off it, sir,” Martha had said, still in some shock. “You know I been here for years, same as you, and I bet I haven't taken five days in the last five years, and I ain't got no second cousins for y'all to be worrying about.”

Fartblossom had stopped still, heavy in his shoes, and stared at her, communicating the message—you shouldn't be talking back. But she had gone on anyway, “And I don't know nothin' about these here warnings. I never had one in my life.”

“Well, now we got the union, we got to keep track of things, you see. We ain't no down home mill no more.”

She had relayed this all to Folly, who had looked as if she were holding her breath, then gone into a tirade. “They were laying in wait for us, any of us, but especially you and me and Mabel and anyone else they knew was working on the organizing. That Fartblossom must have had himself some time this weekend waiting to bust the news open to you, he musta been shittin' in his britches, his goddamned poly pants. You're right. We shouldn't of given him a chance. We weren't thinking. I guess we don't get no rest. I thought after all them weeks of walking, then going back in after the election, all them weeks of talking, sitting and staring at them in their meetings, Mabel and me nodding, having worked all night, saying ‘pinch us, Jesse, if you see us go to sleep,' but always right there when those boys tried to pull something off. Right there until the end when Jesse said, ‘Let's see what I can get for you. Let's cooperate with them. It's gone on too long, I don't think they've got anything up their sleeve.'” This part still bugged Folly, drowned out her confidence in the victory. She doused her cigarette under the faucet, threw it in the trash can, went on pacing the tiles of the restroom. “Mabel knew if you really want to be sure of something, the best thing to do is stay around and watch it. Where do you suppose that Jesse is now?”

“Sitting in some office somewhere.”

“You betcha.”

“Nothing to be done,” Martha said, despair and grief on her face.

“I wonder what good that grievance will ever be?”

“Won't do me no good if I get three warnings in one day. We better get on out there, Folly. I wouldn't want to have to lose my job to test it.”

Martha felt closed in by her anger. Folly was the opposite, she practically gave off steam. Hers worked in her like an engine, pushing her toward action. “You're right. We gotta get on back. I got a few extra tickets I saved last week we can turn in if we ain't meeting production.”

Martha was just about to swing open the bathroom door when Folly grabbed her hand, swung her around and hugged her tight. “I love you,” she whispered in her ear.

“How many warnings you think this'd be worth?” Martha asked, her voice husky and pained.

“Enough to set us thinking.”

Folly spent the whole night thinking. Thinking up one zipper and down the next, thinking just because she was mad she'd better not lean too much over the machine, she'd get a backache, better let her muscles go, think with her brains and not her muscles. Sit broad in the chair, not bony, keep her body out of this, keep it loose for lying out flat in the bed beside Martha. She thought of Daisy lying in the grave, peaceful, nothing more to put up with. But she wanted to live and not the way Fartblossom thought she should—never with any security. The liver lily. Hitting Martha with that right on top of her loss of her mother. Somebody put out all these rules—she wasn't sure who the hell it was, where the hell they started—but she'd learned them way back. A decent way to fight: don't hit below the belt; pick someone with the same weapons; keep within bounds; don't attack from behind. These cheats. They put out these rules, sure, but look what they followed themselves: attack a walker with a car; jail a woman because her baby died and you didn't let her off work; dock a woman for losing her mother.

Were they any better off than before they'd walked out? She tried to run through the whole thing from beginning to end, to answer that question for herself. “Count your wins,” she kept hearing Mabel say, and it was true they'd gotten the seven percent, the sick days if anyone dared to take them now, the grievance procedure which might not be worth the piece of paper it was written on. Personally, she was better off because of the way it had brought her closer to the other women. And she had experienced a couple of weeks of feeling secure, as if the contract gave them form to feel their power as workers. But her defenses had gotten soft in this short time of false security. This power was exactly the thing Fartblossom was going after by docking Martha, and the loss of it was what left Folly feeling depleted. They were going to have to go after it again. Get smart; be alert, guarded, dogged about their next move. Pull all their energy in for the fight. And where would they come out?

She called for the fixer. Her machine was jammed. Martha looked over; her steady eyes met Folly's for a moment. Job would be fine
without the management, Folly thought. She smiled at Wilbur, who put his itty bitty screw driver in his breast pocket and said, “Try it now. Should be fine.”

This idea had come into her mind before, but where? She couldn't remember. Yes, at the picnic. The women sewing in their own factory. What would it take? How did someone start a mill? Even if she didn't know barely the first thing about creating things, she could at least try to think it through. What she did know to start from was that they were the basic units, the women on the line. The women and the machines for them to work on, a fixer—no bossman, no production. You'd need a seller to go out and get contracts for the things you were making. You'd need a place, you'd need to take an old building, an old mill or something and fix it into what you wanted, you'd need a maintenance man or woman.

How would a woman get paid? Each could work at her own speed. If a woman was slow and needed more, she could work more hours, as long as they had the pieces sold. When something happened like Martha's mother dying, they would have a fund for paying the person who had to take off. What if people took advantage? So what, Folly thought. Wouldn't happen very often, and she'd rather risk that chance than go around believing people didn't know how to share responsibility when to do so would work to their advantage. What if they were all owners? Nobody would be goofing off then. As soon as she hit on that idea, it seemed right, but she felt lost, too, wondering how it could be done, how could it be the answer and no examples of it anywhere to see? Co-op, co-op, it seemed as if her machine was speaking the word each time she pressed the pedal. She sewed up a storm, trying to think further. Remembered as a child, going with her mother down to the feedstore to fetch a bag of feed for the chickens. The co-op feedstore. No sign on the building, you had to know it was there. Had her ma been part owner just for that piddling little bit of feed? She hadn't been back in years, wondered if old Mrs. Butler was still waddling her enormous weight up and down behind the counter and writing up the receipts. She wondered who paid Mrs. Butler?

Wondered if Jesse could help her think past this, could he see what a place would be like without bosses. When he'd left, he'd given her a warm handshake, looked her in the eye and failed to see his betrayal reflected there. Or had she dropped it before he looked? She didn't like to think of herself as someone who held a grudge. “Call me if you need me,” he'd said. “Just any question, give a call.” He had not
worried, as had she, of what the toll call might come to and of where in her budget there was surplus that she could cut into when the bill came. She would not call. Besides, she realized the union was dependent on having the management to fight. If they were going to have a co-op, they'd have to be on their own.

She tried to let go of the idea. Foolishness, Folly, she told herself. What you trying to do—prove your name? No sense dreaming. Here we are right here with this Fartblossom lording around us in his personnel office and trying to find a way to bust our tail. First order of business is to warn Mabel. Warn all these women the fight's not over, not at all. Here we're supposed to be convincing those who didn't vote favorably that this damn union is doing us some good, Folly thought, and now we gotta put the word out that a warning system has been started to intimidate us. And watch your moves because we don't want to have to test that goddamned grievance procedure.

She felt the arteries pulse in her temples. Mabel probably knew already, probably never did let down her guard. Just like she knew when Jesse was going to sell out. Must've learned that lesson early as a Black child in a white man's world. She remembered that first meeting. Jesse shaking hands all the way round, pumping the white flesh of their opponents. Her sitting down next to Mabel, raising her eyebrows, looking about and feeling the circle close around the two of them—aliens. Realizing now why it had been so surprising to her then. Part of her had still thought herself more one of them than being in union with Mabel. No more. She was clear on that. She wondered what Mabel would think about the idea of a co-op and set up an imaginary conversation with her.

“Here we are, Mabel. We have us a place all fixed up and we have someone to sell our stuff. We have all our workers—us, experienced seamstresses—and we're the owners, too, and ready to go to town. No bossman anywhere in sight . . . .”

“Hold on, Folly. Hold up, you movin' on woman. You all the way down to steps six, seven, eight; left out one, two, three. How you gonna buy without the dough?”

She couldn't answer. How you gonna buy without the dough? Her sewing machine had picked up the question, was asking it over and over—how-you-gon-na-buy-with-out-the-dough—everytime she hit it. Almost like a song but it wasn't a song, it was the problem. Still singing in her zipper foot when the shift bell rang, caught her unprepared so she and Martha were nearly the last ones out. First ones out were those
who had made an art of it. You could see how they had their pocket-books lined up by their heels, chairs turned out just so, perched but trying not to look it. They had their muscles set every bit as finely as the Olympic runner whose toes played for advantage at the starting line.

She checked with Martha but neither of them needed the extra tickets to meet production; they were both over. Take it easy tomorrow night, she thought. She told Martha she'd meet her in the car, went to find Mabel in the line coming in and walked along with her a minute. She told her about Fartblossom setting up Martha. “Y'all watch yourselves. They're out for us.”

“Hey,” Mabel said, “we knew that would be the next move, didn't we? We watchin'.” Folly felt calmed by being in reach of Mabel, grabbed her hand and squeezed it as they got to the sewing room door. She wouldn't tell Mabel her idea until she got the one, two, three.

Driving home, Folly and Martha were careful with their gestures. There was always someone from the mill in the car ahead who might be looking in the rear view mirror, someone else in the car behind. But Martha took Folly's hand on the seat between them. Folly hadn't spoken a word. “Where are you?” she asked. “Off dreaming?”

“Some pretty furious dream,” Folly said. “I'm still thinking about what a rotten bunch we work for, and how can we ever get away from that Fartblossom.”

“Would it help if we could get the house?”

“I don't know.”

“I'm serious,” Martha said. “I'm going down later and see about that policy. I been thinking about what all we got. I mean if I was fixin' to move in the house with y'all, I could sell the trailer, and y'all could sell your trailer, too.”

“How much you think they're worth?”

“I don't know, they're both old, but they're not ready for the junk heap.”

“Mine's just about ready,” Folly said. “It's a wonder that one wall in the boys' room hasn't fallen through.”

Folly leaned back, closed her eyes, and tried to see the house she'd so often visualized. She took deep breaths of the cool, morning air into her lungs, her purifying ritual, and tried to place herself far from sewing machines, from the hum, the song, how-you-gon-na-buy-with-out-the-dough? Martha's hand was the same size as hers and strong. They could live in a house together with the children, take care of each other, curl
up curve to curve in the night and be restored. She was tired. She could use that kind of care. What kind of a house would it be? She tried hard to see it. But what she saw was an old factory, a line of women sewing, a sign out front: WOMEN OF VICTORY CO-OP MILL.