Folly (7 page)

Finally there was a lull, no new questions, and then a buzz started up—the women talking to each other. Jesse let it rise for a minute, then held up one hand to call for their attention again. “This is a lot to take in. I know you need to talk it over amongst yourselves and come to your own decisions. I'll be available the next couple of weeks whenever you want to ask anything of me. No matter what your decision, I know you're not looking at a picnic, you're looking at a struggle, and I want you to know I have great respect for the courage you displayed in your walk-out.” He nodded and moved off the stage. The applause echoed and Folly found herself blinking to clear her eyes of tears. He was right to respect that courage.

The hum filled the space rapidly again. Effie was arguing across the room with two other women about whether you'd have to belong to the union even if you didn't vote for it. “Of course you wouldn't,” she said loudly. “Can't make anybody join unless it's of her own mind.” Someone posed the question to Jesse and he explained the right to work law, which they had in North Carolina, and which made it illegal for anyone to be forced to join a union in order to secure or retain their job.

“Told you,” Effie said, elbowing the woman next to her.

Jesse declared that these laws were anti-union, that the states which had them had kept labor organizing to a minimum in the South. “If we didn't have a right to work law in this state,” he said, “and enough of you signed union cards to warrant an election, you could vote on whether or not you wanted a union shop, which would mean everybody had to belong and pay dues.”

“But ain't it better anyway to have everybody join of her own choosing and not to
make
anybody join?” Shirley asked.

“It might
seem
better, but realistically, it's almost impossible. Besides, when you have an open shop, which is what you'd have, you have to spend a lot of energy watching over the management so whenever they hire new folks, they don't get away with checking out how they feel about the union and only putting them on if they're against it. Otherwise, you start out in a majority and next thing you know you're in a minority and they're calling for another election.” Jesse gestured with a shrug and empty hands, the powerlessness of the minority.

“You sayin' that if we do go union, we gonna have to worry about this?” Mabel asked.

Jesse nodded. “Nothing in this state is designed to make it easy for you. The best thing you got going is yourselves and the way you've
already started out by acting together. If you can speak to them with one voice, all of these voices,” he spread his arms out to encompass the women on both sides of him, “then they have to listen to you.”

“What about that injunction?” Emily asked.

“For the time being I think you have to obey it. If you decide to start signing up cards for the union, then
we'll
go after trying to get it overturned. Otherwise, you'll have to get some legal help of your own to fight it.”

Then he left, and the fear that had not been voiced, came out rushing to fill the space he had vacated. Birdlike, Patsy Pinder fluttered her hands in the air, her fingernails dark red talons that might land anywhere. “We're in trouble.” She spoke with a tremor in her voice. “What're we gonna do? That Fartblossom and that Sam, they must be burning up so furious with us. I wouldn't be surprised if they wouldn't even
let
us come back.”

Most of the women stepped away from her, moving back to take their seats again. “We got Cora out,” Effie said. “That was the main thing. Maybe we ought to just go back now and say we'll work. We've showed 'em we wouldn't let them lock Cora up.”

Mabel was standing in the back again. “What about Cora's baby?” she asked them. “What about next time your kid is sick and you have to go off to work?”

Folly looked around to make sure that Mabel was finished. She took Mabel into her view, fully, realizing this was the first time she had ever done so, though surely they had passed at the clock millions of times when the shift changed. Her chest full of emotion, Folly broke the silence. “We've already gone past behaving ourselves the way they want. I say we might as well go all the way. Union or no union, I think we have to make up a list of what we're willing to settle for, print it on our placards and march it up and down out in front of that mill from now 'til the day they invite us to sit down and talk.”

“And what if that day never comes?” Emily asked slowly.

“I don't know. I'm for being too damn stubborn to think about that.”

“What about the injunction?” Gilda asked.

“We'll have to picket in two's until we can find out more.”

“With a car full of us sitting by the side of the road to keep an eye on the two,” Martha added, “just in case anyone tries to get smart.” She scanned the faces, asking for others to say how they felt.

“I'm with Folly,” Gilda said. “I don't see the generosity likely to come just pouring out of Big Sam. I don't expect we'll ever get anything we don't put up a damn hard fight for.”

“I felt good marching on the picket line,” Sandy said. “I felt strong, and oh . . . another thing. I sure did like the way you had Fartblossom walking the line with us, Folly.”

They laughed, remembering. Someone clapped, someone hooted. Then they all started standing up, clapping and hooting and smiling at each other. For that moment they stomped out fear. They signed up their hours on the picket line and their times for sitting guard. They formed a committee for drawing up the demands. Folly and Mabel were on it, as well as others. Folly felt lightened by their readiness, their solidarity, their pride.

9.

Mary Lou and Lenore had gone to supper together at the diner, then back to work until nine. When they met at the time clock on the way out, Lenore invited Mary Lou to stop by her place for a beer or a cup of coffee, and Mary Lou said yes right away. Since she'd started working, she had been searching for ways to assert the feelings of being grown up that came with laboring for someone other than her mother, and Lenore was the best example she had of what a woman of independence could be. She remembered her mother's set conviction that Lenore was too old for her and felt the energy of rebellion as she slid in the passenger side of the car. A 1968 Oldsmobile, it was ten years old but looked new. Lenore had waxed the two tone exterior shiny, and the interior was spotless. The few times Lenore had picked Mary Lou up at school, Mary Lou had felt convinced that anyone watching couldn't help but notice she was getting into one of the best cared for cars in town. She couldn't wait to get her license. Not that it would take her far. She couldn't imagine when she'd ever be able to get a car unless she went to work full time. Even if she did, and her mother would never permit it before she finished high school, the family would need her earnings, especially as long as the strike was on. She could dream. That was about all.

“What'll you have?” Lenore asked.

“What are you having?”

“I think I'll make a pot of coffee.”

“I'm not too big on coffee.”

“How 'bout a beer? Or grape soda?”

Mary Lou took a long time deciding because she really wanted to have the same thing as Lenore, but she couldn't stand coffee. Learning
to drink it was one of the measures of adulthood that she didn't savor any more than having a splinter removed. She thought she'd like to have a beer, but she'd have to try to get some chewing gum before she went home so her ma wouldn't smell it on her. Also, she didn't like the idea of drinking beer alone. As if she were a mind reader, Lenore said, “Maybe I'll have a beer, too, if that's what you'd like.”

“Split one with you,” Mary Lou volunteered.

“Make yourself comfortable while I get it.”

Mary Lou, hands in her jeans pockets, wandered automatically over to the bookcase. The thing that had stuck most in her mind since her first visit to Lenore's was the fact of that bookcase with its three long rows of books. Everyone knew Lenore as the butcher at the A & P, and Mary Lou was sure most of them figured her for anything but a brain. She was a good butcher. That was as far as Victory could think. But Lenore had read as many books as anybody Mary Lou had known in her life, and Mary Lou found herself amazed by that.

Mary Lou's hand went to the last book on the shelf, pulled it out, and looked at the cover.
Sappho Was A Right-On Woman: A Liberated View of Lesbianism:
two authors—Sidney Abbot and Barbara Love, one male and one female, Mary Lou thought. She stuck it back on the shelf as fast as she could without being conspicuous. Her hand felt as if she had just touched something red hot. She put it back in her pocket. Wow, she thought, be cool. Her eyes went to the framed photograph of Betsy that sat on top of the bookcase—Betsy in her work shirt and overalls ready to go to work welding. She had known about Lenore before, hadn't she? She just hadn't thought about it directly. Wow. Wow . . . kept popping into her head. So what else is new, she said to herself. Act normal.

She slumped down into the big arm chair with her beer while Lenore sat on the floor facing her, her back up against the bookcase. Mary Lou couldn't get herself to be as cool as she wanted to be, but tested her voice. “It must be neat to have a place of your own.”

“Yeah, I like it. You can keep things the way you like them.”

“No little brothers bugging you to death.”

“I wish I could have my little sister here,” Lenore said.

“Where is she?”

“Out at the house with my mother.”

Mary Lou had never really known why Lenore had left home but assumed she'd done it out of sheer desire for her independence as that was the reason Mary Lou was thinking along these lines for herself. Lenore told her about her fights with her mother. She searched the
backs of her own hands as she talked, keeping her eyes away from Mary Lou. Then she told her about her mother scabbing. “It's weird telling you this,” she said, “your ma being one of the main organizers for the strike and all. I tried to talk her out of it, but getting her to listen to me, that's just about hopeless. I feel bad about her doing it.”

Mary Lou's first reaction was to be shocked. She didn't expect to know any of the scabs. She had pictured them much like the word—crusty, degenerate, not quite human people. True, she didn't
know
Lenore's mother, but she knew
her.
She avoided thinking further about who Lenore's mother might be, and gathered herself by remembering her mother talking about the scabs. “Ma says the scabs make things harder for them, but it's really the owner their fight is against. So I don't think you should feel so bad. Besides, you got me a job, and that's a help to my ma.”

Lenore looked straight at Mary Lou then. “I suppose.” Her eyes were a deep green but full of light. She had a gold cap on one of her front teeth, otherwise her face was soft and even. “Anyway, I'd like you to meet Perry some day. She's a neat kid.”

“I did,” Mary Lou said. “That one Saturday I was here.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot.”

Lenore went back to the refrigerator for another beer, leaving Mary Lou with her feelings about Perry. She remembered her round, sweet face, her eyes eager for Lenore's attention, her dimples which deepened with her smile. Mary Lou yearned to be cared for the way she could see Lenore cared for Perry. And Betsy. Though with Betsy maybe Lenore's caring was something different. This was confusing and distressing because she wanted to be able to talk easy with Lenore, and if she were a lesbian, how could she then sit in that chair and talk casually away to her? She wouldn't let her know she had seen the book. If Lenore didn't know that she knew, if she could keep cool, then nothing would be different.

Lenore refilled both of their glasses, and Mary Lou took a long swig. She realized she was beginning to feel giddy. Lenore got back down on the floor, only this time she stretched out flat on her back and closed her eyes, let her arms fall to her sides, took a deep breath, then let the air out in a sigh. Mary Lou watched her make this effort at relaxation, while trying to picture her elsewhere—inside a secret life—a dark bar. She imagined Lenore standing up against a wall, dragging hard on a cigarette, her eyes darting about, trying to make out the contours of others in this wicked, beer-smelling place, her body defined and tensed against the probable intrusion of strange touch. Her mother was a scab.
Only trouble was none of this fit with the Lenore who got her the job at the A & P. She felt as if she were doing a puzzle and was down to the last space with only one piece left, and she had to turn it around and around and upside down, and still it wouldn't seem to fall into place.

Lenore sat back up and found Mary Lou's eyes on her. “Pardon the desertion,” she said. “Just tryin' to get that store out of my bones.”

Mary Lou felt caught. Lenore always seemed to know what she was doing. She was orderly, and straightforward in her thinking. Perhaps Betsy would go to a dark bar but not Lenore. “What do you hear from Betsy?” she asked.

“She's fine. Working hard and stashing away her wad, and I reckon she'll be up there another year or so.”

Mary Lou hadn't really known Betsy other than to recognize her. In fact, she hadn't known Lenore either until after Betsy had left for Alaska. There wasn't anybody in Victory that didn't at least know
of
Betsy since she'd gone off, displaying such rare courage as to wake up the memory of the gold rush.

“Must be cold up there,” Mary Lou said.

“That is for sure.”

Maybe they were just good friends, she thought. Maybe that was one way of being lesbian—having no use for men and pairing up with your best friend and helping each other out. “You must miss her,” she said.

“Sure do. We been like this,” Lenore closed two fingers tight together, “ever since we were little girls.”

Maybe Lenore wasn't a lesbian with Betsy, maybe it was with someone else. They couldn't have been lesbians when they were little girls. Mary Lou finished off her beer and went home.

The following Saturday night found Mary Lou at the drive-in movies with Roland, fighting him off the whole time. When he had asked her that morning, she realized she had given him extra attention all week, putting on a smile whenever he passed her in the store. Whatever was known as flirting, a phenomenon she had never associated with herself, was probably what she was guilty of. It had felt awkward and uncomfortable—the sensation of underpants on backwards. In fact, Mary Lou had rarely had a date and didn't know why. Boys most often didn't ask her out. The ones she liked she felt shy with, and her shyness seemed to erase her from their vision. The only ones who ever asked her out were the ones classified by the other girls as leftovers. Usually she said no,
but thinking so much about Lenore being a lesbian, she had decided she ought to try to date more.

The movies hadn't been going ten minutes when Roland started with his wet kisses. Mary Lou had expected they might talk and get to know each other a little, but she hadn't been able to think of what to say before he had moved in. She had struggled with him, feeling as if they were engaged in a territorial battle, the territory under siege—her body. His hands had fought for possession everywhere she didn't want them; she had arrested them here, there, moved them away, only to find him coming on again, stronger, more insistent, almost hostile. She realized she didn't know him at all. She was sexually excited, but she didn't want to be. She felt pinned. She remembered her daddy when she was small, flexing the muscles of his arm until they bulged and holding it out to her, saying, “Hit me . . . hit me harder . . . I can't even feel it . . . you sure you're hitting me?” She remembered the feeling of futility as she hurt her own small, tough fists, packing them into him with her full power.

They ended with Roland giving up on everything else and locking her hand up against his penis and riding it. She figured what the hell. She figured if he didn't mind getting off to an instrument, her hand could afford to be the instrument. For now. She could feel his zipper, and she thought about her mother at her machine, sewing zipper after zipper, handling the empty crotches of zillions of pairs of pants. She thought of Skeeter and Tiny running around after a bath with their noodles and balls dangling, extra parts, vulnerable with their lack of muscle. She worried about how easily they could be pinched. About Roland's, she didn't worry. She waited and wished he would hurry up. She felt humiliated by her own participation, and she wanted to be home, safe and free and able to think.

When he left her off in front of her trailer, he cooed, “Sweet girl, I want to go out with you again real soon,” holding her chin firmly in his hand so she couldn't look away.

“Yeah, Roland. I'll see you at work. I gotta go in now.” He gave her one last, sloppy kiss before releasing her.

All the next week, Mary Lou built up her nerve to ask Lenore if she could come over after work Saturday night. She had hoped Lenore would suggest it herself, but she hadn't. Roland hadn't asked her out either, but she worried that he would. The nights she'd worked, he'd come up behind her and bumped her with his skinny rear end, as if
accidentally. She had been cool in her responses, but that seemed to be the way he preferred it. Friday afternoon he stood at the meat counter where he could see down the soup aisle while she stacked the new shipment of Campbell's, and she saw him staring at her and licking his lips. She couldn't wait until he got off and Lenore came on, and as soon as she saw Lenore, she asked her, “You doing anything after work tomorrow?”

When Lenore said no, she asked if she could come over and talk, and it was settled that she would. And Roland came, sure enough, walking jaunty down the aisle, asking her to the movies again.

“Sorry, I've got other plans,” she said.

“What you doing?”

“Visiting Lenore.”

“Oh, oh, oh,” he said. “You watch out, baby.” He made his voice extra deep. “Roland knows. You ain't her type.”

“You're obnoxious,” Mary Lou said. She could feel blood flushing in her face. She wanted to know what he meant, but she knew better than to ask him.

“I try,” he said. He ran his hand across the back of her jeans, possessively, as he walked away.

Lenore bought a six-pack as they were leaving the store. Mary Lou offered to split the cost with her when her paycheck came, but Lenore said it was on her. “I hope I'm not contributing to the delinquency of a minor,” she said.

“I guess not. My ma lets me drink beer at home with her sometimes.”

Lenore's apartment was exactly the way Mary Lou had remembered it—contained and clean, nothing out of place, nothing strewn around. The books were in their same places, including the one she had taken out to look at. She pictured her own apartment being just like this—a home for every object, every piece of furniture. In the trailer they were forever moving things around, chairs from the dining room over to the front of the T.V., dishes from the table in to the sink so homework could be done on the table, dishes back to the table or the counter or the drainer because they didn't all fit in the cupboards or the sink. Something was always lost. Someone was always on a search. Mary Lou imagined herself living in a place like this, and once a week she would have her mother and Skeeter and Tiny over for dinner. When they were gone, she would put away the dishes and not take out more than one of anything again for the next week.