Yonnondio: From the Thirties (11 page)

“Just you keep your face to yourself, lady,” Mazie muttered furiously in her head.
“Old crummy Nicey Nice. Ben!” she ordered in her mother’s voice, “dont drag on Momma,
walk straight.
Ma, this isn’t the way
.”

“That’s a fine horse you’ve got there,” the lady said to Jimmie. “Pretty big load,
though, aren’t you? Are you lost?” she asked Anna.

“Giddyap, Horsie,” yelled Jimmie. Mazie galloped ahead, round the corner, out of sight.
She shifted Jimmie into her arms, glared at him, said in the earlier savage whisper:
“You’re a big boy. Big boys walk.”

“No, JimJim tired,” patting her face lovingly, luxuriously abandoning his body against
her. “Swing and sway some more, Madie, swing and sway. Good horsie.”

At the end of a cobbly street that had no houses, only high wire fences, they came
to a stretch along the river bluff, yellow and green and white with flowers and grass
and dandelion glory. A strange heavy fragrance drenched the air. “There’s millions
here,”
exulted Ben after he and Jimmie had relieved themselves. Mazie was already gathering
at the river bluff edge, as far away from them as she could get. “This was somebody’s
good yard,” Anna said, bending and inspecting. She put Ben to picking nasturtium leaves—“only
the little ones, Ben, no bigger’n a penny”—then set to work herself in a swift, practiced
rhythm, bending, loosening, gathering. Bees drowsed there; they had to be careful.
White trumpet-shaped flowers were scattered in the green.

“Catalpa,” Anna said suddenly, scooping up a handful of the blooms, “that best smell.”
She stood up, pointing to the great tree above. “Mazie, come over. See you suck honey
syrup out of the little end. Taste, Benjy. Taste, Mazie. Look inside. There’s black
and gold and blue markings, beautiful. And the tiny glass threads standing up as if
they was flowers themselves. Yes, Benjy, they feel velvet inside. Rub it on your cheek.”

She bent to gather again, went on talking. “One year when I was high as you, Mazie,
we lived a place where was a tree like that. The leaves aren’t rightly out yet, but
when they are, they get the biggest leaves ever you saw, heart-shaped, and then that
tree gets cigars. We’ll come back fall time, you’ll see.

” Her rhythm had slowed. In between gathering she sucked the blooms, and Mazie saw
that each time
before, she drew her breath in deep to smell, deep as if she had to blow off dandelion
heads or pop a paper bag. A remote, shining look was on her face, as if she had forgotten
them, as if she had become someone else, was not their mother any more. “Ma, come
back,” Mazie felt like yelling, in rancor, in fear; jumping up, snapping her fingers
into that dreaming face to bring attention, consciousness of them back, make it the
old known face again.
Snap my fingers
. But her fingers were moving deftly, happily; cool slim mindless tracing down the
notched leaves to the roots, the responsive tug, the tiny spurt of juice spilling
its spicy smell.

A peace and content began to drowse through her. Bees sounden, she whispered. Sweet
smellin. Lady bugs. Butterflies like your dizzy. Unbidden: If you dont look no place,
just down, if you dont listen, pretend the trucks and freight noise is ’quipment,
it’s the farm. Stupid, she chastised herself grievingly, stupid. Who cares about the
farm? Who wants to pick stupid weeds?
Snap my fingers in her face
. Loudly: “Ma, dont we have enough yet?
Ma!
”

“Three bags full,” said Ben, inspecting. “I can ’cite that,” Jimmie said. “Baa, baa,
black ship, three bags full. Watch how I jump,” jumping over and over from a wide
step of what had been a house, burned down how long ago.

“Dont we have enough yet?” Mazie repeated. “You know greens boil down to just nothin,”
her mother answered. “Yes, I guess that’s enough. We’ll set awhile. My head is balloony,
balloony. Balloony.” She staggered, put her arms around Mazie, sang:

“O Shenandoah, I love thy daughter,

I’ll bring her safe through stormy water”

smiled so radiantly, Mazie’s heart leapt. Arm and arm, they sat down under the catalpa.
That look was on her mother’s face again, her eyes so shining and remote. She began
stroking Mazie’s hair in a kind of languor, a swoon. Gently and absently she stroked.

“Around the springs of gray my wild root weaves, Traveler repose and dream among my
leaves”

her mother sang. A fragile old remembered comfort streamed from the stroking fingers
into Mazie, gathered to some shy bliss that shone despairingly over suppurating hurt
and want and fear and shamings—the harm of years. River wind shimmered and burnished
the bright grasses, her mother’s hand stroked, stroked. Young catalpa leaves overhead
quivered and glistened. Bright reflected light flowed over, ’lumined their faces.
A bee rested on Mazie’s leg—
magic!—flew away, and a butterfly wavered near, settled, folded its wings, flew again.

her mother sang.

Mazie felt the strange happiness in her mother’s body, happiness that had nought to
do with them, with her; happiness and farness and selfness.

The fingers stroked, spun a web, cocooned Mazie into happiness and intactness and
selfness. Soft wove the bliss round hurt and fear and want and shame—the old worn
fragile bliss, a new frail selfness bliss, healing, transforming. Up from the grasses,
from the earth, from the broad tree trunk at their back, latent life streamed and
seeded. The air and self shone boundless. Absently, her mother stroked; stroked unfolding,
wingedness, boundlessness.

“I’m hungry,”Ben said.

“Watch me jump,” Jimmie called imperiously. “Momma, Mazie, watch. You’re not watching!”

The wind shifted, blew packing house. Something whirred, severed, sank. A tremble
of complicity ran through Mazie’s body; with both hands she tethered her mother’s
hand, to keep it, stroking, stroking. Too late.
Between a breath, between a heartbeat, the weight settled, the bounds reclaimed
.

“I’m watching,” Anna called. The mother look was back on her face, the mother alertness,
attunement, in her bounded body.

“I didn’t think to bring a bite for us, Ben. Wherever is my head these late days?
Balloony. Catalpa.” She laughed. “Holy Meroly,” using an expression they had never
heard before, “there’s nary a shadow. Noontime. And I promised Mis’ Kryckszi we’d
be back.”

Never again, but once, did Mazie see that look—the other look—on her mother’s face.

EIGHT

Easeful and huge, the hot July goes through the barefoot weather, the idleness weather.
The cramp the clamp of school released enough, the children of packingtown turn from
June wildnesses to deeper, more ancient play.

On the dump, territory is established, shifted, abandoned, fought over, combined.
Peerers, combers and excavators go treasure hunting. (They compete with old men and
women looking for covering, furnishings, sustenance—anything usable, transformable,
barterable, salable.) Children—already stratified as dummies in school, condemned
as unfit for the worlds of learning, art, imagination, invention—plan, measure, figure,
design, invent, construct, costume themselves, stage dramas; endlessly—between tasks,
errands, smaller children to be looked after, jobs, dailinesses—live in passionate
absorbed activity, in rapt make-believe.

On the inexhaustible dump strange structures rise: lookout towers, sets, ships, tents,
forts, lean-tos, clubhouses, cities and stores and train tracks, cabooses, pretend
palaces—singularly fitted with once furnishings, never furnishings, or nothing at
all.

On the streets, strange vehicles move: a barrel in which one rolls; cars of apple
boxes on wobbling wheels, steered by broomsticks; axles triumphantly balanced on between
bare tires; Pet milk cans strung, rafted together, used as rollers on which one bellyflops
and with swimming motions pushes along; and favorite mover of all—ridden dreamily
or madly to who knows what fabled destination by the commander at its steering wheel—sunken
rusted Ford front end that never moves at all.

In the long dusk evenings, the hiding games, the whirling games begin. Round the lampposts,
thick like the winged things above, children circle and flitter. On the dump, watch
fires burn. And on porches and stoops, secrets are whispered, songs sung, stories
told, make-believe selves expanded, and dreams float in the dim enchanted light like
iridescent bubbles in the sifting sad sweet peace.

July—surcease, release, month.

He stands in the doorway and, smiling faintly, says, “I’m on, Anna. Feeder and utility
man; when the run starts—splitter. Forty-five cents an hour.”

“Pritcher up maybe,” corrects Kryckszi behind him. “Long way to splitter.”

“No wood-burnin stove for you
this
summer. We’re gettin the gas connected. No launderin someone else’s duds, either.
Didn’t I tell you we’d manage? Good times comin, honey, good times.”

“Drunk with the job,” says Kryckszi, smiling with his eyes. “Few pennies more pay
an hour. You see how little it takes to make a man happy.”

The fireworks go up from their yard too, that Fourth of July. Mid-afternoon Jim and
Will tramp into the kitchen, their arms bulging triumphantly with packages.

“Bangers and fireworks, rockets and bangers,” exults Will.

“Jim, you didn’t!” says Anna, paling. “And when Alec said he’d bring some…. That’s
like burning money, money we aint got. The rent money?”

“Now, honey, I’m earnin, aint I? Independence Day, isn’t it, honey? Grand and glorious.
We got to celebrate, dont we?”

“What independence
we
got to celebrate?”

“Independent of property, aint we? Got me a woman too independent to kiss her old
man, aint I?”

“Will says I’m not getting any firecrackers,” burst in Mazie, Annamae trailing behind.
“I want my firecrackers. Where’s my bangers?”

“Girls don’t get firecrackers, do they, Poppa,” said
Will smugly, rummaging through the packages. “They burn theyselves. Girls and little
kids get sparklers.”

“Sparklers comin out of your ears tonight, Big-eyes,” says Jim expansively, grabbing
her as she starts by. “Roman candles, fountains, pinwheels. We’re celebratin tonight.
Give Poppa a kiss.”

“But thats tonight. Poppa, they been scarin the little kids all morning. We got to
get them back, dont we, Annamae? Antsie popped a cracker right on Ben’s ear, and Annamae’s
leg is burned.
Let me go, Poppa
. Will’s taking them all, dont you take them all, Poppa, he took them all.”

“He’s just havin fun. Celebration. Hold still, squirmy. You’re not going noplace.
Not till daddy gets his kiss. Holiday day.”

“
Will!
”

“If I hear another scream like that outen you, Mazie,” said Anna, “you’ll have something
to scream about. Isn’t there enough noise round here already? Get Ben out from under
that table and make yourself useful. I could stand a little helpin. Else and Alec
are due any minute. There ought to be a law against them bangers anyway.”

A strange sweat of tension is on Anna, her lips moving, trying to remind herself of
what is next to do for the holiday dinner. She does not notice Ben huddling
back under the kitchen table, holding his ears, rocking and rocking. Up on the roof,
Mazie and Annamae throw ineffectual lit matches down when the boys hove into sight,
Jimmie shadowing Will and Smoky and Antsie in delighted terror. Out in the back yard,
where Jim and Kryckszi and Alec pitch horseshoes, Else soothes Bess, who starts at
every bang.

Now at last, in the warm darkness, plumes of light arise. Children run with sparklers,
Jimmie darting after, cupping his hands to catch the spray. Alex and Jim and Will
in glory select, set up, light fireworks. Puffs and bursts and sprays.

“Look, we makin stars,” Ben greets each fountain, skyrocket, roman candle, “we makin
stars. What’s next, Poppa?” Jeff makes a chant of it, moving his body in time. “Look,
look! We makin stars. Dance till you out, stars, dance till you out.”

“Fallin and dancing,” Ben chants back, “Fallin and dancing. Poppa, what’s next? Dance
till you out.” Annamae and Jimmie chorus along: “Stars. Stars. Fallin and dancin.
Dance till you out. You out. You out. You out.”

All over the sky, echoings, flowerings. Sizzles. Stems of flame, tendrils coiling,
climbing. Anna—gratefully off her feet for the first time in that long day—sitting
and watching, forgets the grudging rankle
at the needed money thrown away, folds herself into the beauty and singing and everyone’s
happiness. But her heart yearns over Mazie, sullenly apart on the roof, refusing to
touch the fireworks, to be part of the celebration.

(Only it excites Mazie so, the stems and jettings of light, the momentary lit faces,
the chanting. And now the great pure ball of light rising over the dark shoulders
of bluff.)

“Stars. Stars. Dance till you out.”

Kryckszi takes his violin and in the moon dappled darkness makes a tune of it. Else
and Jim, Alex and Mis’ Kryckszi dance.

“Fallin and dancin. Dance till you out.” The headlight of a train weaves and flickers
through the dark bluffs across the silvered river, is lost in distance with its high
forlorn flickering whistle.

“Stars. Stars.”

Oh it’s us again, thinks Mazie, it’s us. Then in clenching fear: Now something bad’s
going to have to happen. Again.

But it is easier for a while. The old Anna back in command, reclaimed, wholly given
over; the house once more orderly. Secretly the first insurance payments are made;
secretly Jim looks for a secondhand sewing machine for Anna. The garden spews forth
puny and pale, gains confidence, begins to garnish the table. Expeditions are for
berry picking now as well as for greens, one lot where the brambles grow.

One afternoon Anna cleans up the kids and brings them to her Temple of Learning. A
squat dirty converted storefront (good enough for packingtown, they said) shelved
with opiates and trash and marvels (from which most of the children are already turned
in outraged self-respect, for is it not through books, the printed word, or so it
seemed, that they had been judged poor learners, dumb dumb dumb? Told: what is in
us has nothing to do with you).

But marvels to Anna
(places your body aint ever been, cant ever get to go; inside people’s heads; things
you wouldn’t never know);
keys, too, in that door to a better life on which opportunity would knock some day.
She took out a library card for each. Only Ben pored over his (picture) books. Mazie’s
and Will’s lay untouched. For how onceuponatime and theylivedveryhappyeverafter fairy
tales which the librarian had selected for Mazie? How adventure and magic books she
had picked for Will, when there was the adventure and fairy ground of dump and city;
the conjurer magic of a shining screen in darkness Saturdays.

(Already the conjurer is working spells on Anna’s children. Subtly into waking and
dreaming, into
imagination and everyday doings and play, shaping, altering them. Even outwardly:
Will’s eyes are narrowed now, his mouth drawn up at the corner, his walk—when he remembers—loose;
for the rest of his life he will grin crooked:
Bill Hart.)

Sometimes Will or Mazie bring home finds from the dump. A rusted waffle iron, clothespins,
blackened forks and spoons, coils from a crystal radio set, a solderable pot. Once
a fought-over chair—rung and leg gone. On the high window sill in the kitchen, along
with a fragment of prism, is an indigo-blue ink bottle soaked and scrubbed a dozen
times to get the glass clear—beautiful to Anna for the light shining through. A saucer—its
cracks adding a ghost mysteriousness to its landscape—snowy mountain, fir trees, clouds,
tiny burdened Japanese figures toiling across a red curved bridge—is kept in the center
of the kitchen table for all to marvel at.

Stealthily Mazie and Will stalk the ice trucks and wagons for falling slivers to trickle
down their throats; for handfuls that can be scooped up while the iceman delivers
his ice. Lithe and graceful, they learn to hitch onto the moving trucks, shove over
chips, sometimes a whole ice block onto waiting hands. (But Mazie is not long among
them. Once a chant starts up:

and after that shame and self consciousness make her body awkward. Twice she misses,
almost goes under the wheels. No more for her that lithe joy, that sense of power.)

On the dump there is Ginella’s tent, Ginella’s mansion, Ginella’s roadhouse, Ginella’s
pagan island, Ginella’s palace, whatever Ginella wills it to be that day. Flattened
tin cans, the labels torn off to show the flashing silver, are strung between beads
and buttons to make the shimmering, showy entrance curtains. Here sometimes, in humble
capacity, Mazie is admitted
—if
she brings something for the gunny sack. The gunny sack into which the curtains and
tent themselves go when Ginella must go and which is stuffed with “properties” : blond
wood-shaving curls, moldering hats, raggy teddies, torn lace curtains (for trains
and wedding dresses), fringes, tassels, stubs of lipstick, wrecks of high-heeled shoes
and boots, lavish jewelry Tiffany would never recognize: greening curtain rings, feathers,
fish lures, dress headings, glass bits, shiny coils and machinery parts. Anything
that dangles, jangles, bangles, spangles.

Twelve-year-old Ginella’s text: the movies, selected. Ones Mazie, the late-come country
novice, has never seen.
Sheik of Araby. Broken Blossoms. Slave of Love. She Stopped at Nothing. The Fast Life.
The Easiest Way
.

Luxuriously on her rug, pretend silk slinking and slithering on her body, turbanned,
puffing her long pretend cigarette: Say vamp me, vamp me. I’m Nazimova. Take me to
the roadhouse, I want to make whoopee. Hotcha. Never never never. O my gigolo, my
gigolo. A moment of ecstasy, a lifetime of regret.

And once alone, smelling sweet of Blue Waltz and moist flesh, her arms tight around
Mazie, passionately: Whisper to me: Jeannine my queen of lilac time. Jeannine, I dream
of lilac time. Whisper it. Kiss me. Forever, forever never to part, my pagan love.

On the stoop, evenings Ben imparts his terrible texts to Jimmie:

Plaintively, as if he understands its meaning:

And desolately:

Mazie, slackly sitting, suddenly
listens
, shudders and gathers them both to her, saying firmly: We’re going to sing “Hoopde
Dooden Do Barney Google with the Googlygoogly Eyes, I’m Dreamin Now of Hally;” Pop,
tell Ben and Jimmie when you were little. But the day at Cudahy’s has thieved Pop’s
text—his mouth open, he sleeps the sleep of exhaustion. And when Anna comes out, her
apron front still wet from doing dishes, it is already too late for texts—the children’s
eyes droop.

In the dim enchanted light, in the sifting sad sweet peace of summer evening.

And now the dog days are here, the white fierce heat throbbing, when breathing is
the drawing in of a scorching flame and the pavement on the bare feet of the children
is a sear; when the very young and the very old sicken and die, and the stench cooking
down into the pavements and the oven houses throbs like a great wave of vomit on the
air.

There in the packing houses the men and women somehow toil through. Standing there,
the one motion all day, their clothes salty with sweat, or walking in and out of the
cooler till the cold is a fever and the heat a chill, and the stink bellying up from
the blood house and casings forces the beginning of a vomit, even on those who boasted
they hadn’t a smeller any more.

Oh yes, the heavy air clamps down like a coffin lid over the throbbing streets, on
the thin cries of babies and the querulous voices of the old, and a sound of breathing
hoarse and strained, of breathing feeble and labored goes up; and from beneath the
glisten of sweat on a thousand brows, a mocking bitterness in old old words: Is it
hot enough for you? In a dozen dialects, is it hot enough, hot enough, hot enough
for you?