Yonnondio: From the Thirties (6 page)

After a long while she felt a drenching mist. Rain, she thought without thinking.
A shadow of rain. Back in the henhouse, she heard it descend upon the earth, gentle
and grieving. Perhaps after a while she slept. A half sleep into which voices came.
“Now. Push hard now, Anna. Did you boil the spoon? I have to use it. Hard, Anna.”

Then a cry, ecstatic, profound, shattered the night, and a thin wail wove it under.
It was dawn. Her father’s arms were carrying her into the house
through the gray and lonely light, his voice saying, “looked … so long … you tired?
Big-eyes … I had to leave you in the rain…

The sleep still lay on her eyes, or was it sleeplessness? Yellow light flowered before
her eyes in the warmth of the kitchen. “Her breasts cracked, so it’ll be no fun feedin
the youngun,” someone was saying, and “Where’d you find her, Jim?”

Bess cradled her. “You really set on leaving, Jim?”

“You know it’s no use to stay.”

“But what if you cant get on at the slaughter-house?”

“I’m goin anyhow. Soon as Anna’s fit to. We cant stay here.”

“Things wont be better, Jim. They cant be … You go to sleep now, Mazie. Everything’s
all right.”

“They cant be worse. Anyway, I’ve got to try.”

“Life,” heavily from Ellen Burgum. “Life’s no bottle of perfume. I’m tired enough
to die.”

Two figures moving with pain in the dawn darkness, in the vapor mist. Two voices lashed
by a dry and savage wind, bringing strangely the scent of lilac.

“Almost time now, Anna. We’d better go.”

“Yes, it’s so quiet now, Jim.”

“Mr. Burgum’s waiting.”

“You’d think you could hear somebody’s rooster.
Doesnt seem like other mornin’s we woke up to work in.”

“No. C’mon, Anna. Let’s go. Now.”

“Funny how Will cried all last night, and Mazie wouldn’t sleep but in the hay. You’d
think children wouldn’t care.”

“Anna—they’re waiting.”

“This hay smells good. I’d like to breathe it in so’s not ever to forget.”

“Right away now, or we’ll miss the train.”

“Right away now Jim…. What’s the matter, life never lets anything be? Just a year
ago … I tried for us to have a good life.”

One word, austere. “Anna.”

The two figures blur into one, gnarled and lonely. Very low he says: “You’re shivering.
Cold?”

“Awful cold. Lets go. Now.”

“But you cant take it lyin down—like a dawg. You cant, Anna.”

FIVE

Myriad and drumming, the feet of sound move always through these crooked streets,
trembling the shoddy houses, jerking the skeleton children who scream and laugh so
senselessly to uneven rhythms they themselves know not of. Monster trucks shake by,
streetcars plunge, machinery rasps and shrieks. Far underneath thinly quiver the human
noises—weeping and scolding and tired words that slip out in monosyllables and are
as if never spoken; sighs of lust, and guttural, the sigh of weariness; laughter sometimes,
but this sound can scarcely be called human, not even in the mouths of children. A
fog of stink smothers down over it all—so solid, so impenetrable, no other smell lives
beside it. Human smells, crotch and underarm sweat, the smell of cooking or of burning,
all are drowned under, merged into the vast unmoving stench.

That stench is a reminder—a proclamation
—I rule here
. It speaks for the packing houses, heart of all that moves in these streets; gigantic
heart—pumping over the artery of viaducts the men and women who are the streets’ lifeblood,
nourishing the taverns and brothels and rheumy-eyed stores, bulging out the soiled
and exhausted houses, and multiplying into these children playing so mirthlessly in
their street yards where flower only lampposts. (They say this heart pumps lifeblood
far and far—thin and blue the vein—to nourish a rare and cherished few in purest air
where scents flower under glass and in hundred-dollar perfume bottles.)

A man’s face, heavy and sullen (strange and bright the blue of his eyes), moves here
awhile and is gone
Jim;
a woman’s face, thinning, skin tightening over the broad cheekbones, the great dark
eyes down a terrace of sunken flesh, fading until the eyelids shut over forever
Anna
. A child’s thin face looks up a moment, wondering dazed eyes
Mazie;
a boy’s face, scowl over the mouth, eyes hurt with the hurt of not understanding,
then insane with
anger Will
. On this face, half baby’s, half child’s, the breath of fever glows, closing the
sober eyes; a tiny boy running along croons a song that is silenced; a tiny girl’s
fists beat the air, stiffening, stiffened
Ben, Jimmie, Baby Bess
.

Yes, it is here Jim and Anna Holbrook have come to live. (Old and familiar the streets
to them, the scenery of their childhood, rearranged.) Over the cobbled streets, past
the two blocks of dump and straggling grass, past the human dump heap where the nameless
FrankLloydWrights of the proletariat have wrought their wondrous futuristic structures
out of flat battered tin cans, fruit boxes and gunny sacks, cardboard and mother earth.
In this ancient battered house that leans over the river. What matter the second story,
windowless and roofless, the paper-thin boards, the dirt which has eaten into and
become a part of the walls? It has a space that might be called a yard, and when the
wind blows hard to the west, you can smell river and dump instead of packing house.

(And beauty? Until the mammoth stone beauty of the city has carved itself into their
blood, the children can lie on their bellies near the edge of the cliff and watch
the trains and freights, the glittering railroad tracks, the broken bottles dumped
below, the rubbish moving on the littered belly of the river.)

“See, Anna,” says Jim. “It’s got a yard for the kids. They wont be runnin out in the
streets to play, anyhow. And just think, runnin water with a faucet and a toilet inside
the house. We never had that before.”

“No” (trying not to see or smell).

“And electric lights. Hey, over there, kids—you ever see electric lights in the house?
And electric lights if we want.”

“If we want?”

“You know what I mean, if we can fork over. We’ll have ’em too, quickern a hen could
lay an egg.”

“Yes. Lets go inside, Jim.” (Holding Baby Bess to her nostrils, holding Bess against
the corrosive eating into her heart.)

“Sure—and four rooms. Say, what’s the matter with you? Lookin as if you’re seein a
corpse. I know this aint no palace, but you ought to see what other folks are livin
in for what we’re payin.”

“Sure, Jim, I know it’s a real find. Guess I’m tired, that’s all.”

“Ma,” said Ben, running up, “what smells so awful funny? It makes me sick to my tummy,
Ma. It smell like this all the time?”

When Anna made Will and Mazie ready for school that first morning, she stood them
up against the wall and said fiercely, “You two got a chance to really learn something
now; you’re goin to a good school, not a country one. I catch you not doin good and
I’ll knock the livin daylights out of you, you hear?”

But Mazie hated it. The first day: “Mazie and Will Holbrook have come from the country
where they grow the
corn and wheat and all our milk comes from say hello to Mazie and Will children.”
Her palm held in Will’s moist with fear. A big room, biggern the whole country school,
squirming with faces, staring. (Whatcha shiverin for, you scairt? Me? Scared?) Faces
mad and tired and scared and hungry and dead and their eyes like they want to eat
you up. No, dont look at the faces, look out the window—but it is greasy, like drippings
was smeared all over, and stink comes in from the top, comes in and fills the room.
All the faces (if her heart wouldn’t beat so fast) … Dont look, read the funny words
on the blackboard—Na-tion-al-it-ies American Armenian Bohemian Chinese Croatian (Croatian—that
was what ol’ man Kvaternick was, ol’ man Kvaternick in the mine and he was dead now,
dead. Worms … no, dont think of ol’ man Kvaternick) Irish French Italian Jewish Lith
… A face was black, black like when the men come up from the mine, blacker; lots of
faces were black. Maybe the mine was here too, maybe kids had to live in the mine
here like they had to live in gunnysack houses, maybe the whistle would be again,
but the whistle was all the time now. Mexican Negro Polish Portuguese. If her heart
beat any faster she would have to scream and all the faces would turn and look, …
One face was honey color—honey like on the farm. The farm. It is just a dream, a bad
dream, and
it really is the farm, really the farm, in a minute now you will get awake, and it
will be the farm again.

At recess, her heart quieting, telling two girls, Annamae and Ellie, about riding
a horse, somebody hissed: “So ya come from the country where our milk comes from;
ya learn about bulls?” and smack, a head butted her in the stomach. Bewildered, gasping
for breath, swaying, she heard Annamae laugh, “Oh, Smoky, didja put that one over,”
and in a darkness of rage and hatred she lunged at him, but already he was across
the playground, his too big shirt flapping in the wind, his angular face jeering.
And then she turned to Ellie and shoved her down, and turned to Annamae to shove her
down, but the teacher was holding her shoulder, steering her inside the school. “Perhaps
you indulged in rough play of this nature where you came from, but we do not permit
it here, nor does it go unpunished.” Mazie could still see Smoky’s jeering face. “Lemme
alone,” she cried and, making her body a hard ball of force, wrenched herself free.
Then, paralyzed at what she had done, she stood in front of them all and began to
cry. Hearing Will savagely whisper to someone next to him, “That aint my sister, that
aint my sister,” she cried louder and louder, uncontrollably.

That night they went to the Bedners, old friends Jim and Anna hadn’t seen for seven
years. Alex was
doing well—he was a tool and die maker now. They lived in a five-room house with a
piano and a stained-glass window, and it didn’t smell around there, except when the
wind blew strong from the south. They went on a streetcar, the kids’ first ride, but
only Will seemed jubilant. Jimmie and Bess slept, Ben was sick all the way, and Mazie
kept looking out the window with her eyes shut tight. Anna, kept smoothing her hair
and passing her hand over the lines in her face.

Else let out a cry of pain when she saw her: “Why, Anna, honey, you’ve changed so,
I wouldn’t hardly’ve known you.”

“But a lot happens in seven years,” Anna reminded her.

“So it does, so it does,” Else agreed and began to cry. She was fat and smelled too
sweet and had on a tight yellow dress. “So you’re Anna’s little man,” she said to
Will, tears still on her face. “Give an old friend a kiss.” But Will wouldn’t. He
ran over to the piano and banged it, and Jim had to slap him before he would kiss
her.

Everything was strained and shaken. Jimmie and Will ran into the other rooms to watch
the electric lights on the ceiling and turn them on and off. Alex cleared his throat,
then Jim cleared his, and then they smoked cigars in silence. In a low voice Else
was
saying to Anna, “So stuck up around here … So lonesome I could die … such a brood
… and we cant even manage to get one … been to all the doctors … just breaks my heart
…”

On a little table there were a lot of magazines.
Screen Star
and
True Confession
. Mazie turned the pages—there were pictures in them of men and la-dies smiling, or
kissing. Alex, his thumb in his lapel, his voice suddenly loud and important, said,
“Now if you still cant get on by the end of the week at the yards, you go on down
and see Mulcahey; he’s the biggest contractor in town for road and sewer work—and
he dont hire niggers or furriners when there’s white men begging.”

“O.K.,” said Jim, but he looked awfully funny.

“Well, believe me,” Alex said, noting that look, “a man cant pick and choose nowadays.”

“He cant pick and choose,” said Jim, “but he can sure pick and shovel.”

Nobody laughed but Else, who laughed and laughed for a long time. “You grow up with
your papa’s sense of humor,” she said to Ben, curled up in her lap, “and you’ll have
them in the aisles. My, but he’s a cute tyke, Annie. Who woulda thought Mazie would
grow up to be so homely? She was such a cunning baby. But they do say a homely kid
makes a pretty girl.”

Mazie pretended not to hear. “Who plays the piano?” she asked as loud as she could.

“Me, honey, if you can stand plunking. Your ma used to play real good by ear. Why
dont you play something for us now, honey?”

Mazie thought her mother was going to have another sinking spell, she looked so awful.
But her voice sounded all right. “I haven’t touched the piano since I don’t know when,”
she said.
“You
play, Else.”

Else sat down on the piano bench. As she played she swayed her body. Underneath her
dress you could see her flesh ripple. But when she began to sing, Jimmie came from
the other room and put his head up against her lap, and Will came in too and stood
listening. Alex began to sing, and then Jim and Anna. One after another they sang
old songs, some Jim or sometimes Anna had sung in old times of happiness; some the
children had never heard before. “Red River Valley,” “Sweet Genevieve,” “When It’s
Lamplighting Time,” “In the Gloaming,” “When You and I Were Young, Maggie,” “The Wreck
of the Old ’91,” “Down in the Valley,” “Roamin’ So Far,” “Shenandoah,” “Nelly Gray,”
Foster songs, “I Saw a Ship A-Sailing.”

From the opened window, the sweet intoxicating smell of spring floated in; the lamplight
made soft lakes of light, shadows bending over, gentle. They
sang and sang, and a longing, a want undefined, for something lost, for something
never known, troubled them all. The separate voices chorded into one great full one,
their faces into beauty. Oh, singin is like … Mazie, broken, searched for the word,
feeling tears stand behind her eyelids. Singin is like … But no right words would
come. Bess, quietly sleeping, wore an eternal dream look. Singing Anna’s favorite
song:

a fifth voice, pure, ethereal, veiled over the rest. Mazie saw it was Jimmie, crouched
at the pedals of the piano. “Ma,” she said after the song was done, “it’s Jimmie,
JimJim was singin too.” Incredulous, they made him sing it over with them and over
and over. His words were a blur, a shadow of the real words, but the melody came true
and clear.

And then it was over. Else, the same chirp, the dearie and honey, the perspiration
rings under her arm, Alex laughing too loud, and Jim trying too hard to laugh, and
Anna sitting shrunken and ill, her arm tenderly around Jimmie.

The weariness. The ghastly nausea in her belly (in all their bellies) from the stench.
Ben feverish in bed
with it. And her banner of defiance—up the first day—the clean cheesecloth curtains,
yellowing, browning. All that scrubbing to make a whiteness inside—and the stubborn
walls and floors only a deeper smoke color. Even the cardboard tacked for a carpet
in the front room so Jimmie crawling around would cease to be a graveyard for splinters—even
that was damp and soggy and would have to be ripped up again. How the house resisted
her.

Anna sat in the armless chair, Bess tugging at her breast and pulling away and tugging
again and giving out small frantic cries. “Guzzle, kitten, guzzle, dont make such
a fuss.” All that scrubbing and she was always so tired nowadays. So awfully tired.
“C’mon, Bessie, hold still and eat.” Well, she’d try washing soda in the scrubbing
water next time. Maybe that might do the trick.

A fine joke on Jim to be back in the earth again, sewering. He should’ve known the
stockyards job couldn’t pan out in spring when they were laying off. How they’d manage
on what he was getting with the rent high as it was and the children needin this and
that. Awful to be sendin them to school looking like they did. And Will wouldn’t mind
anymore, as if he knew …

A familiar faintness dizzied her. With Bess still crying and tugging she sank to the
bed, thinking: I oughta see what Jimmie’s doin and set him down on
the hopper. But she was wandering through old childhood streets. Bess lay in the scrub
pail, under water. And Jim was fleeing, shrinking to a tiny dot on the lurid sky.
A speck of dust floated from where he had gone, growing larger. And now the gaunt
haggard house towered above. Where were the children? MazieWillBen she cried, but
a smell was filling her mouth so no words could come. “It’ll fall,” she tried desperately
to warn, beating it away with her broom. Right in front of her, right to the house,
Will danced. “It’ll crash,” she screamed. It crashed. “Momma, Momma,” someone was
calling. “Yes, Ben,” she managed to answer, “I’m coming.” She had to steady herself
against the wall, her body drenched with sweat and fear. The dizziness was still there.
Funny how Bess was sleeping, still sucking away as if she had the nipple in her mouth.