Sophie Hartley, On Strike

by Stephanie Greene

  She’d noticed that her mother had stopped opening Thad’s door since she came up with the list. And that when she went into John’s room and found his Legos scattered everywhere, she left them there because John told her, “I’m working on something.”

  Fine, Sophie thought defiantly. Then I’m thinking about wearing those again, she decided, looking at the shorts balled up on her chair. And I can’t close the book that’s lying face-down on the floor because I’m still thinking about reading it.

  “If you don’t want to think clean, then don’t,” she told her half of the room as she sat down on her bed. “And I like the dust on my bureau,” she went on in a loud voice. “It keeps the WOOD WARM!”

  “If anyone is losing their marbles around here, it should be me.” Nora staggered into their room and flopped face-down on her bed with a groan. “With the cleaning fumes I’ve been breathing, it’s a miracle I’m still alive.”

  “Nora, your spread!”

  Nora rolled over sluggishly and stared up at the ceiling. “Oh, I know,” she said, moving her legs to one side so that her feet hung out over the edge of the bed. “I’m getting tired of worrying about things being clean, that’s all.”

  Sophie could hardly believe her ears.

  “Have you noticed that all we ever talk about at dinner anymore is cleaning?” Nora went on in a dazed voice. “And I like cleaning.”

  As if Nora were an exotic bird that would fly off at the slightest movement, Sophie leaned toward her cautiously and said, “John and Thad have it much easier.”

  “That’s because Thad’s a lazy slob and John’s not much more than a baby,” said Nora.

  “He has his own special list of easy things, like picking up sticks in the yard and bringing in the mail,” agreed Sophie. “Maura could practically bring in the mail.”

  Nora rolled her head to one side to look at Sophie for a minute, and then rolled it back and stared up at the ceiling.

  “Okay,” Sophie said quickly. “But I still think it’s no fair. Girls end up doing more than boys.”

  “It’s called inequality,” said Nora, “and it’s because we’re saps.”

  “I’m not a sap,” Sophie protested.

  “Thad got out of doing his jobs last weekend, but you missed another play date because we had to do the floor, remember?”

  This wasn’t the time to get annoyed with Nora for calling it a play date. Sophie looked at her in silence.

  “You’re a sap,” confirmed Nora, closing her eyes.

  “Well, I’m not going to be one from now on,” Sophie said. “You know what I think?”

  “What?”

  Sophie was so shocked that Nora actually wanted to know what she thought, she almost forgot her idea entirely. Luckily, it had been growing in her mind for so long and been lovingly watered with such generous doses of indignation that it had firmly taken root.

  Sophie was able to pick it now and hand it to her sister like the inspired gift she believed it was.

  “I think we should go on strike.”

  Chapter Five

  “On strike?” Mrs. Hartley repeated after dinner on Thursday.

  Sophie glanced quickly at Nora, who raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “It was your idea,” the eyebrows said. “Good luck,” said the shoulders.

  Sophie tried not to panic. The strike had been going on for two days, but so far no one had noticed. And now wasn’t the best time for the subject to come up.

  Their father had arrived home tired and grouchy from his trip. What little he had said at dinner was about the woman in the family he had just moved. She had stood over him and his crew, insisting that they wrap everything in three sheets of paper before they put it in a box.

  Every single thing, he grumbled, down to a vegetable peeler and a three-quarters-empty plastic bottle of cooking oil. The packing bill was “astronomical.”

  “Money must grow on trees in some neighborhoods, “ said Mrs. Hartley.

  “People are lazy.” Mr. Hartley took a bite of his hamburger.

  “Everything?” Sophie asked him. “Even toilet paper?”

  “Right off the rollers in the bathrooms.”

  “Did you get any good jewelry?” said Nora, who had recently taken to wearing rings on all five fingers and bracelets on both wrists.

  “Nora’s going to be a jewel thief when she grows up,” reported John. “I’m going to blow up the safes.”

  They went on trying to name things that their father couldn’t possibly have had to wrap until Sophie finally said, “What about air?”

  When her father admitted he hadn’t packed air, Thad showed off his high school status by saying, “What about a single proton? Or the nucleus of an atom? You couldn’t pack that.”

  John finally got over-excited and named the most daring thing he could think of. “Even underwear?” he shouted, almost falling off his chair. “Even dirty underwear?”

  “John,” said Mrs. Hartley. “Eat your dinner.” To the rest of the table she said, “Could we move on, please? You all have homework,” so the conversation petered out.

  After dinner, Thad went up to his room and Mrs. Hartley took John up to get his bath started while she put Maura to bed. Sophie and Nora were in the family room watching television when their father came in from cleaning the cab of his truck. He flopped into his recliner with a groan.

  There was a loud crackling noise. Mr. Hartley jumped up again and lifted the cushion.

  “Nice,” he said. He held up a crumpled plastic container and a fork in the air. “Very nice. Whose job is it to clean the family room this week?”

  Sophie’s heart had started pounding the second she heard the noise. “Mine,” she said meekly.

  “For heaven’s sake, Sophie.” Her mother came briskly into the room and, in her typical way, figured out the situation at a glance. “Take those to the kitchen this minute.” Her father held them out, clearly expecting her to leap up and do it.

  Sophie didn’t think she could even if she wanted. She seemed to be paralyzed.

  So, of course, she had to tell her parents what was going on.

  “Who’s ‘we’?” asked her mother in the stony silence that followed.

  “Nora and me.”

  Mr. Hartley gave a snort that meant he didn’t want to have anything more to do with the conversation, and put the crumpled plastic container and fork on the coffee table. He sat down and noisily unfolded the newspaper, holding it up around his face like a fence.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Mrs. Hartley. She sat down, too, and picked up the TV remote. The way she clicked it, to make it perfectly clear that as far as she was concerned the conversation was over, made Sophie become unparalyzed.

  “It’s not ridiculous,” she said. “Nora and me are on strike.”

  It was hard work, keeping her eyes on her mother’s during the silent stare that followed. Sophie had to remind herself about the book she’d read on dog training (in case her parents ever broke down and let her get a dog) to stop herself from looking away.

  The important thing to remember, the book said, is that a dog is a pack animal. The leader of the pack is the dog that doesn’t look away in a fight. If your dog did something bad, you had to stare it in the eye until it looked down. The dog that won the staring contest was the boss.

  Mrs. Hartley could have taught the most stubborn bulldog a lesson or two. Just when Sophie’s eyeballs felt as if they were about to pop out of her head and she was beginning to accept the fact that her mother would always be the leader of the pack, Mrs. Hartley flicked her eyes at Nora and then back to Sophie and said, “And what are you on strike for?”

  Sophie felt a rush of triumph.

  “Because Thad and John aren’t doing as much work as we are,” she said. “Thad does a horrible job with all the things on his list, and all John has to do are things he likes. They don’t have to work as hard as Nora and me because they don’t care how dirty the house is and we do.”

  “You d
o?”

  “Nora does,” Sophie replied staunchly. “It’s not fair. We aren’t going to do any of our jobs until the boys help more. Dad went on strike when he thought something was wrong, and so can we.”

  Behind his newspaper, Mr. Hartley snorted, and then coughed.

  Their mother looked at Nora. “Do you have anything to add?”

  “Not really,” said Nora, “other than the fact that I’m glad Sophie’s finally becoming aware of a situation that’s been going on for a long time.”

  She sounded so injured and dignified, it made Sophie feel bold.

  “Boys are male pigs,” she said to her mother. “You said so yourself.”

  “Nice.” Mr. Hartley lowered his newspaper to look at his wife. “So that’s the kind of language that goes on when I’m not here.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Sophie!” said Mrs. Hartley. “If you’re going to quote me, get it right! I didn’t say they were male pigs! I said Nora was making me sound like a male chauvinist pig!”

  “What’s the difference?” asked Sophie.

  Her mother opened her mouth to answer, and then shut it. Opened it again, and shut it, sighing a noisy sigh of defeat.

  Mr. Hartley chuckled. “Kind of backed you into a corner there, didn’t she?” he said to her sympathetically. Then he looked at Sophie and his face was stern. “Going on strike isn’t fun, you know,” he said. “It’s hard work. People put their beliefs on the line. They don’t do it on the spur of the moment and then change their minds when the going gets tough. You have to be sure of what it is you’re striking for and not back down until you get it.”

  “I know,” said Sophie. She hadn’t really thought about it that way and was a bit worried by how serious he made it sound. What did he mean, “when the going gets tough”?

  “There’ll be repercussions,” her father said. “You realize that.”

  Sophie hadn’t realized that. She didn’t even know what it meant.

  “What kind?” she asked cautiously.

  “I don’t know.” Her dad’s voice was pleasant as he lifted up his paper again. “We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?”

  “What’s a repercussion?” Sophie whispered as she followed Nora up the stairs.

  “How should I know? I’m not a dictionary,” Nora said. “But it doesn’t sound good, does it?”

  “They’ll probably just happen to Thad.” Sophie spoke with more confidence than she felt. She was a bit worried that Nora was right, but she didn’t want Nora to know that. Nora was already making noises about quitting.

  When Sophie had first suggested it, Nora said it would never work. Sophie had been forced to launch into a lengthy description of the clumps of scum-coated hair that constantly clogged the bathtub drain, the piles of damp towels nobody ever hung up, and all of the times their mother had favored Thad, using point-by-point examples.

  When in a desperate, last-ditch effort she finally compared Nora to Cinderella, she thought she might have gone too far. By that time, though, it was clear Nora felt like Cinderella. She’d reluctantly agreed to go along with Sophie’s idea.

  “What’d you think was going to happen?” Nora said now, opening the top drawer of her dresser and pulling out her nightgown. “That Mom was immediately going to side with us and make Thad work harder? That the strike would be over, just like that?”

  Since that was pretty much what Sophie had hoped was going to happen, she was momentarily discouraged to realize she’d been wrong. Then she remembered what her father had said, and took heart. When Nora left to go to the bathroom, Sophie stood in front of the mirror to give herself courage.

  You’re the Leader-of-the-Pack, she told herself, making a face. No, not that way. A little more frown, maybe. Maybe bare her teeth a bit . . . ? There. That was more like it.

  “What’s wrong with your teeth?” Nora said as she breezed back into the room.

  “Nothing.” Sophie turned to her. “Good things are going to happen,” she said firmly. “We’re putting our beliefs on the line, like Dad said.”

  “Let’s just hope no one steps on them,” said Nora.

  Sophie told Alice and Jenna about it the next day.

  “Nothing exciting like that ever happens at my house,” Alice said enviously.

  “What do you think your parents are going to do?” Jenna’s eyes were huge.

  “I don’t know, but we’re not backing down.”

  “Alice and me can come over and strike with you tomorrow,” Jenna offered eagerly. “It’s still your Saturday, anyway.”

  Sophie briefly considered the idea of using Jenna and Alice to form a picket line and marching back and forth outside the Hartleys’ back door, holding placards and chanting. But then she imagined her mother’s face and stopped.

  “I’d better put off my Saturday until next week,” she said.

  “Again?” chorused Jenna and Alice.

  “There are going to be repercussions around my house any minute,” Sophie said ominously. She had repeated the word in her head enough times that she could say it with authority. “You don’t want to be around when those happen.”

  “Cool.” Jenna sounded so envious that Sophie immediately forgave her for having been so annoying over the past few weeks.

  “Are repercussions bad?” asked Alice.

  “Very bad,” said Sophie.

  “I’m an expert at repercussions because of my brothers,” Jenna volunteered. “There’s usually lots of yelling and door-slamming.”

  “Poor you, Sophie,” said Alice.

  “What do you mean?” said Jenna. “I wish I was on strike.”

  It was really very gratifying.

  In truth, the effects of the strike on the Hartley household so far had been a disappointment. Sophie would have welcomed repercussions with open arms compared to the complete lack of interest anyone was showing.

  True, small things started to happen, almost at once, but no one seemed to mind them very much. The jobs she and Nora had that week were the kind no one noticed hadn’t been done. Or if they noticed, they didn’t care.

  When Mr. Hartley discovered the words “LAST DUSTED, 1789” written in the dust on the coffee table (it was Sophie’s week to dust; she was sure Thad wrote it), all he did was laugh. And John was thrilled when he found a centipede crawling in the dirt on the mudroom floor while looking for his shoes. (It was Nora’s week to sweep.) He promptly put it in a glass jar with waxed paper over the top and took it to school.

  It was Sophie’s job to carry up Mrs. Hartley’s piles. After several days, they reached almost to the top of the stairs; she was sure someone was going to object. But when Thad tripped over one as they were hurrying down to dinner one night, all he did was yell, “So that’s where my soccer shirt is!” and pull it out from the bottom of the pile.

  The next day, Sophie found John sitting on a pile halfway up the stairs. He was playing with his dinosaurs.

  “Don’t you think these piles are dangerous?” she said.

  “I like them dangerous.” John bashed the T-Rex against the Stegosaurus a few times and yelled with satisfaction as the T-Rex tumbled down head over heels and landed at the bottom.

  “Maybe you should tell Mom,” Sophie said encouragingly.

  “What do you think I am?” said John. “A girl?”

  Sophie tried to make her stories as exciting as possible when she reported back to Alice and Jenna, but she was getting discouraged. What was the point of going on strike if nobody noticed? What if their house just got dirtier and dirtier and no one cared except Nora?

  Nora was going to quit. Sophie was sure of it. She was already showing signs of weakening. Sophie had caught her wearing flip-flops into the bathroom so her feet wouldn’t have to touch the floor. She’d had to start spying to make sure Nora didn’t clean and ruin everything. She was on her knees in the hall one night, peering through the keyhole while Nora brushed her teeth, when Nora suddenly opened the bathroom door and caught her.

 
; “You don’t want to be a strikebreaker, do you?” said Sophie, following Nora back to their room. “I was trying to protect you.”

  It wasn’t until Tuesday night, after Mrs. Hartley put John and Maura to bed and came back down to join the rest of them watching TV, that Sophie thought something was finally going to happen.

  Just as she was about to sit down, her mother discovered an open bag of potato chips wedged between two cushions, and crumbs scattered all over the couch. She looked so annoyed, Sophie felt a glimmer of hope. Her mother wouldn’t be able to ignore the strike now, she was sure of it. She heard her mother draw in a sharp breath, and waited for the explosion.

  There wasn’t one. Sophie’s face fell as Mrs. Hartley curved her mouth into her fake smile. With a dramatic gesture like a movie actress, she grandly swept the crumbs onto the rug and sat down.

  “Chips, anyone?” she cried with her horrible false cheerfulness. “Tom? A chip?” she said, holding the bag out to Mr. Hartley.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” he said. He took a whole handful. “Sure beats having to go into the kitchen and open a cupboard to find them.”

  Sophie wasn’t the only one who thought her parents sounded crazy.

  “What’s going on?” said Thad, looking from their mother to their father with a puzzled look on his face. “You two feeling okay?”

  “Never better,” said Mrs. Hartley. She beamed first at him, and then at Sophie and Nora, in turn. “Whose clever idea was it to leave the bag here so conveniently?”

  “John was eating them before dinner,” Nora told her in a frosty voice. “For heaven’s sake, Mom, calm down.”

  “Chips before dinner!” their mother cried. “What a wonderful idea!”

  Nora wouldn’t even look at Sophie when they went up and got ready for bed, and when Sophie said she thought their mother was finally “cracking,” Nora made a rude noise through her nose and snapped off the light.

  Sophie lay awake in the dark, staring up at the ceiling. It was very hard, being the organizer of a strike. Her father said that all the workers in his strike had banded together. The way it looked now, Sophie worried she was about to become a band of one.