Yonnondio: From the Thirties (14 page)

On her way home—where she will be beaten for having been gone, for having been born,
for having been born crippled and epileptic, for being one more
mouth to feed and because out of sheer nervousness and exhaustion there is a need
for someone to beat—Erina no longer feels heat or thirst or the gnawing in her belly.
On a tin-can roof of one of the shacks someone has set a pan of shining water where
cat and dog cannot reach it, and a bird is bathing itself, fluttering its wings in
delight. In its tiny spray that the sun rainbows, Erina stands motionless, feeling
in herself the shining, the fluttering happiness. The thigh-high weeds are powdered
white with dust. When the bird is done, she climbs to drink of the water in which
feathers float, takes and holds one to dry in the furnace air, turns and smoothes
it over and over against her bruised cheek. The vast winds of fit may blow any minute;
the shameful trembling and great darkness begin, but she walks now in the fluttering
shining and the peace.

In her secret place, the shelter under the porch stoop, Ginella hides and is ill.
“Too hot,” she whispers, “too hot,” turning her head from side to side as if that
would fan coolness. How rosy she is from the heat, how creamy. Droplets of sweat glow
like moonstones on her flawless skin.

“Gertrude,” her mother calls, “Gertrude. I seen you come.” Ugly, the Polish, the foreigner
sound of her mother’s voice. Ugly what waits upstairs. Spiders of heat waver through
the splintered steps onto her
red knuckled hands with their broken fingernails. Spasmodically Ginella folds their
shame into her skirt. Ugly. Slender white fingers with talon fingernails float unattainable
in the dust mote air. Ugly, I’m ugly.

“Gertrude,” her mother calls again, “work waiting. You do before you have to go Mirkas
or you get whipping. You be late Mirkas, you get whipping. Gertrude!” In an hour she
must go to her aunt’s diner, be among thick crowded, guttural-voiced, sweating working
men; plunge her hands into scalding reddening water, be the slavey, scrub greasy pots
and dishes and counter tops. “Hot, it’s so hot,” fanning her head from side to side.
“I’m sick, Ma. I cant do nothin.” Sick with the feverish heat; sick with an older
feverish longing, unutterable, to be other than she is; to be otherwhere than she
is—places spacious and elegant, idle and served and cool.
Slave of Desire. Forbidden Paradise
. Not shamed and shameful, not judged and condemned. “Classy, I want to be classy,”
she whispers.

“Gertrude,” her mother yells, “Gertrude Skolnick.
Wstawach!
Now!”
Human Wreckage
. She starts up the stairs.

In the humid kitchen, Anna works on alone. Mazie lies swathed in sweated sleep in
the baking bedroom.
Jimmie and Jeff sleep under the kitchen table, their exhausted bodies, their hair
damp and clinging to their perspiring heads, giving them the look of drowned children.
Ben lies in sleep or in a sleep of swoon, his poor heaving chest laboring on at its
breathing. Bess has subsided in her basket on a chair where, if she frets, Anna can
sprinkle her with water or try to ease the heat rash by sponging. The last batch of
jelly is on the stove. Between stirring and skimming, and changing the wet packs on
Ben, Anna peels and cuts the canning peaches—two more lugs to go. If only all will
sleep awhile. She begins to sing softly—
I saw a ship a-sailing, a-sailing on the sea
—it clears her head. The drone of fruit flies and Ben’s rusty breathing are very loud
in the unmoving, heavy air. Bess begins to fuss again.
There, there, Bessie, there, there
, stopping to sponge down the oozing sores on the tiny body.
There
. Skim, stir; sprinkle Bess; pit, peel and cut; sponge; skim, stir. Any second the
jelly will be right and must not wait. Shall she wake up Jimmie and ask him to blow
a feather to keep Bess quiet? No, he’ll wake cranky, he’s just a baby hisself, let
him sleep. Skim, stir; sprinkle; change the wet packs on Ben; pit, peel and cut; sponge.
This time it does not soothe—Bess stiffens her body, flails her fists, begins to scream
in misery. Just then the jelly begins to boil. There is nothing for
it but to take Bess up, jounce her on a hip
(there, there)
and with her one free hand frantically skim and ladle.
There, there
. The batch is poured and capped and sealed, all one-handed, jiggling-hipped. There,
there, it is done.

Anna’s knees begin to tremble. No, she dare not sit.
You know if you set down you ’11 never make yourself get up again
. One of the jelly glasses has burst; the amber drips onto the floor, has to be mopped;
and Bess still to be hushed.
Hush you, hush, you’ll wake every sleeping one, there, there
, transferring her to the other hip and one-handed sponging her again and her own
sweating face as well.
There, there, poor baby
. The tenderness mixes with a compulsion of exhaustion to have done, to put Bess outside
in the yard where she can scream and scream outside of hearing and Anna can be free
to splash herself with running water, forget the canning and the kids and sink into
a chair, lay her forehead on the table and do nothing.
There, there, Bessie, there, there, we’ll go out a spell, see what’s outside
, fixing a sun shade for the baby out of a soaked dish towel.

The stink, the stink. What glares so? The air is feverish; it lies in a stagnant swill
of heat haze over the river and tracks below. Anna gags, turns to go back in from
the stench and swelter, but Bess has quieted, is reaching her arms to the air. Giant
cracks
have opened in the earth. At her feet she sees her garden is dying; each plant in
its own manner, each plant known and dear to her, blackening or curling or shriveling
or blotching. “I aint had time, I’m sorry,” she whispered. “The water’s savin for
sundown waterin time. And maybe nothin coulda helped.
There, there, Bessie
. I cant stand here and be shade for you neither,” thinking with bowed head of the
dying crops—corn and wheat and tomatoes and beans—and farmers’ families drooping in
the miles and miles of baking prairie. “Burning all over, Bessie,” she said, “Kansas
and Dakota and Ioway too,” and went to fetch the saved water. The first pail ran off
as if off clay, the earth refusing to absorb. The second pail she sloshed slowly,
still one-handed
(there, there, Bessie)
, breaking the flow over her grateful feet, red and swollen from the all-day standing.
The water sinking into the dried earth seemed to sink into something parched and drought-eaten
in her as well. “We have to go in, baby,” she said, “we’ll scorch,” but stood there
in the mud-feet coolness and the blister air, making the slenderest shade over the
tomato plants. Stinging dust, spitting up suddenly from a quick hot wind, took her
by surprise. She covered Bess’s face, saw that great columns of dust-wraiths were
swirling across the river and down the street.
There, there;
Bess’s body relaxed into sleep.
The furnace wind was gone as suddenly as it came, though dust still moved through
the again stagnant air. Washing her feet in the kitchen, she saw in astonishment a
thick dust frosting on the caked mud; dust pitted in every visible pore of her legs
and arms. All had settled outside; inside her sleepers slept. She started back on
the peaches.

Five o’clock. Still 107°.

Mazie half wakes from her sweated sleep; her mother is sponging her, calling her name
urgently over and over. “You been sleepin so long I got worried; everytime I looked
in on you, you was sleepin. Are you all right? I cant tell is it fever or this heat?
Tell me, where is it hurts?…”

Still the need to slither along the floor; douse, rid herself of her vast billowing
head.

Somehow on the couch in the kitchen beside Ben, head to his feet, feet to his head.
The sun is slanting its long last rays through the window. An iridescence floats on
her hand, rainbows the wall, shifts in scales of hue here and there in the room. What
is it, what is it? The hanging prism? One of the rays, touching it, has cracked open;
burst; unfolded the radiance. The others still slant unbroken—straight shafts of light,
clear threads of glass. Are the rainbows, the floating pools, the radiance folded
into each one of them too? Where kept? How hidden? The wonder
dazes her head and she turns her hand to hold the stammering light, unlock its magic,
but she grasps shadows, and the iridescence glides onto Ben’s unconscious face.

Not knowing an every-hued radiance floats on her hair, her mother stands at the sink;
her knife seems flying. Fruit flies rise and settle and rise.

“Momma.”

“It’s the last batch,”she answers. “Are you all right?” Smiling with the happiness
of the worst not having happened. “Benjy’s better too. Wait, I’ll sponge you … Can
you drink something or try a little sugar bread?”

Jim does not stagger nor waddle coming in; it is more a hitching, straight for the
sink—turns the water on full force, gulping great draughts, submerging his face, dousing
himself. Red, boiled; under the faucet blowing his walrusy spray. Grabbing the watering
bucket and splashing it over himself, filling and refilling it, pouring it over his
body. Running for a towel to wipe him, a pitcher she can fill and a glass to drink
from, some relief she can give him. “Jimmie run to Kryckszis quick and ask ice for
poppa.” Anna thinks: The water, the water; hating herself for thinking: The money,
the waiting garden, the mess to be cleaned, will it be one more, Jim bad-sick too?
and begs: “What happened, Jim? What’s the matter?”

But Jim lies as if he were drunk, out by the stoop
in the evening shadow, sousing himself with sponge and the pail water, and will not
speak.

Seven o’clock. Heat lightning. 106°.

Jim still lies on his water-soaked pallet below the stoop, but he sleeps now, snoring,
twitching his hands.

Ben shifts around to lie in Mazie’s arms—not too close, for it is so hot. “’Splain
to me about bad dreams,” he whispers into her ear, “tell me about boogie mans and
scaredies and ghosts and hell.”

Flies bumble and fry in the lamp; peach and amber jars of jelly and fruit cover every
surface. Anna sits at last, holding Bess at the kitchen table, singing with heat-cracked
lips “I Saw a Ship a-Sailing,” waiting for Will to come home so that the lights can
go out and the trying-to-sleep time can begin again.
I Saw a Ship
… It is all heat delirium and near suffocation now.

Bang!

Bess has been fingering a fruit-jar lid—absently, heedlessly dropped it—aimlessly
groping across the table, reclaimed it again. Lightning in her brain. She releases,
grabs, releases, grabs. I can do. Bang! I can do. I! A Neanderthal look of concentration
is on her face. That noise! In triumphant, astounded joy she clashes the lid down.
Bang, slam, whack. Release, grab, slam, bang, bang. Centuries of human drive
work in her; human ecstasy of achievment, satisfaction deep and fundamental as sex:
I achieve, I use my powers; I! I!
Wilder, madder, happier the bangs. The fetid fevered air rings with Anna’s, Mazie’s,
Ben’s laughter; Bess’s toothless, triumphant crow. Heat misery, rash misery transcended.

And Will comes in to the laughter with coils and boxes and a long, long wire. One
by one, on the Metzes borrowed crystal set, they hear for the first time the radio
sound. From where, from where, thinks Mazie, floating on her pain; like the spectrum
in the ray, the magic concealed; and hears in her ear the veering transparent meshes
of sound, far sound, human and stellar, pulsing, pulsing….

Dust blows up and, stinging, flings itself against the house. Anna imagines the great
dust wraiths swirling again, goes to wake Jim and urge him in. Trees move in the furnace
wind, in the lightning quiver. She yearns to be out into it.

“Jim, wake up. Come in, come in; this dust…. Bess … Mazie … The cannin’ … The crystal
set.”

He is too dazed to listen.

“Here, I’ll help you. The air’s changin, Jim. I see for it to end tomorrow, at least
get tolerable. Come in and get freshened up.”

Reader, it was not to have ended here, but it is nearly forty years since this book
had to be set aside, never to come to completion.

These pages you have read are all that is deemed publishable of it. Only fragments,
rough drafts, outlines, scraps remain—telling what might have been.

Yonnondio! Yonnondio!—unlimn’d they disappear.

A Note About This Book

This book, conceived primarily as a novel of the 1930’s, was begun in 1932 in Faribault,
Minnesota, when the author was nineteen, and worked on intermittently into 1936 or
perhaps 1937 in Omaha, Stockton, Venice (Calif.), Los Angeles and San Francisco. Unfinished,
it yet bespeaks the consciousness and roots of that decade, if not its events.

Thought long since lost or destroyed, some of its pages were found intermixed with
other old papers last winter, during the process of searching for another manuscript.
A later, more thorough, search turned up additional makings: odd tattered pages, lines
in yellowed notebooks, scraps. Other parts, evidently once in existence, seem irrevocably
lost.

The first four chapters, in final or near-final form when fitted together, presented
only minor problems. The succeeding pages were increasingly difficult
to reclaim. There were usually two to fourteen versions to work from: 38 to 41 year
old penciled-over scrawls and fragments to decipher and piece together. Judgment had
to be exercised as to which version, revision or draft to choose or combine; decisions
made whether to include or omit certain first drafts and notes; and guessing had to
be done as to where several scenes belonged. In this sense—the choices and omissions,
the combinings and reconstruction—the book ceased to be solely the work of that long
ago young writer and, in arduous partnership, became this older one’s as well. But
it is all the old manuscripts—no rewriting, no new writing.

I wish to thank the MacDowell Colony for the solitude and protection which enabled
me to work on this during five months of 1972 and into 1973.

T
ILLIE
O
LSEN

San Francisco, February 1973