Hannah, Divided

by Adele Griffin

  Hannah flinched. Experiment was the wrong word to use. The last experiment of Pa’s had been to trade his best Holstein, Ruby, for two scrawny, deer-faced Jerseys, though Ruby gave more milk than the pair of them, and had a better temper besides. The last experiment of Ma’s had been to repair the worn places in the kitchen tablecloth by patching it over in a cartwheel quilt pattern, but she hadn’t had enough lemon-checked gingham to complete the design, and the tea-dyed woolsy she’d finished with gave the cloth a stained appearance.

  “Roy, Hannah, go to your rooms,” said Ma. “We’ll move to the front room. This is grown-up talk now.”

  “I was going anyhow,” said Roy in a low monotone as they both stood and shuffled from the kitchen. “Most boring conversation of my life.”

  Yet he looked upset, and he pushed past Hannah when he overtook her on the second-floor landing. “If you get to see the Liberty Bell before me, you’re toasted and roasted,” he said. “It’s not fair, I’m almost fifteen, I read great—I was even Benjamin Franklin!—and I never saw Philadelphia. Not one blamed time. All I saw is New York City the way it looked in King Kong, which hardly counts a bean.”

  He slammed himself into his room, opened his door, and slammed it again.

  There was no reasoning with Roy when he flared up that way.

  Hannah crept to her own bedroom and looked out her window into the night. Treetops floated in a bath of fog, but the sky above was star-studded and clear. She breathed on the glass and drew circles with her finger. She spun her favorite number, thirty-two, through its cat’s cradle of tricks. Thirty-two, the fifth power of two. Thirty-two pieces stood on a chessboard, and thirty-two were the numbers of teeth in a mouth—if none had been pulled.

  Thirty-two would not stop Hannah’s heart from pounding, though. She had to know what was being said below. At the very least, she should be allowed to hear enough to form her own opinion! She was owed that much, wasn’t she?

  After a few more minutes, she could not bear the suspense. On silent feet, she tiptoed back down the stairs. Mrs. Sweet was voicing her good-byes in the front hall. Too late! Before she could quite think it through, Hannah slipped around the corner, through the pantry, and out the kitchen door.

  Mrs. Sweet had already swung through the gate to her Packard, which was parked at the edge of the lawn, looking as out of place as a sleeping yellow lion.

  “Mrs. Sweet, ma’am?”

  Mrs. Sweet turned. Hannah dropped to a walk, then stopped and held her ground, shifting her weight as she scratched a nagging itch of spider bite on her elbow. Now that she had Mrs. Sweet’s attention, she was not sure what she wanted to say.

  “Ah, Hannah.” Mrs. Sweet shook her head. “Seems your parents are more country hardheads than I’d have figured. I’m sorry to fail you, but I’d easier talk a pair of parrots into reason.”

  Hannah frowned but stepped closer, resting each hand on a round-end picket post. “They’re not hardheads, they’re cautious, is all. And Ma’s always said that counting numbers is no more than an odd trick.”

  “But you can do better than count, can’t you, Hannah?” Mrs. Sweet leaned over the gate to speak in a hushed voice. She smelled like Pepsodent and sweet lilacs, as well as the more costly things of a world Hannah could not place.

  “Nine times seven,” prompted Mrs. Sweet. “I’m no fool! When I asked you what nine times seven was this afternoon, you divided it first, didn’t you? Nine divided by seven is …”

  Divided it? Hannah had not realized. “One point two … eight five seven one … one four—”

  “That’s not counting, see,” interrupted Mrs. Sweet. “That’s calculating.”

  “Calculating,” Hannah echoed. It seemed too strong a word for what she’d done, slipping seven through the sieve of nine and sifting out the leftovers. “My granddad McNaughton …” she began, but her voice lost its way. Speak up! she commanded herself silently. She cleared her throat. “I was curious, ma’am. What’s to d-do in Philadelphia?” she stammered.

  “What’s to do?” Mrs. Sweet looked indignant. “Why, everything’s to do! On a given Saturday, ladies and gentlemen attend the matinee and then stroll to the Bellevue-Stratford hotel for tea. There are ice sculptures and fountains there, and a woman in the tearoom who plays the harp like an angel. You can’t find that here, can you?”

  “My granddad McNaughton …” Hannah coughed again. She was floundering and she could see that Mrs. Sweet was losing patience with her. “Has been to Philadelphia,” she finished.

  “Lovely. And perhaps you’ll see it one day, too. Or perhaps not. Look me up if you do,” said Mrs. Sweet. Her voice was quick, false, done with talking. “Au revoir, Hannah. You’re too young and ignorant to know the shame of this chance slipping you by, but remember one thing. It was Theodora Sweet who first spoke up for your math.”

  “That’s not true!” Hannah exclaimed. “My granddad McNaughton has been speaking up for my math since I was little! He even sent away for a pamphlet about a special math school up in Boston, Massachusetts. He was thinking to take me to visit it this summer, but he hasn’t been feeling himself lately. But it’s Granddad who has the last word, see. Our farm is part McNaughton property.” She stopped, horrified at what she had let slip out of her mouth. She clamped her hands together to stop from scratching her spider bite raw.

  Silence held the air for a long moment before Mrs. Sweet spoke again. “Is that so?” she asked, her voice turned to honey, a coppery hook of eyebrow lifted. “Would it be helpful, then, Hannah, if I paid your grandfather a visit? McNaughton, is that his name?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Hannah was glad the dark hid the flush in her face. Oh, she was in for it! Ma and Pa would fume with her for telling! But what was she supposed to do? She stepped back. “See him if you like, he lives just up the road—good night!”

  “And good night to you, Hannah,” said Mrs. Sweet as she wrenched open the car door. “Perhaps not all is lost.”

  Hannah allowed herself to scratch as soon as Mrs. Sweet ducked into her car and bumped down the road. Watched and scratched, until there was nothing to see but the smear of headlights aimed at the night ahead. The weight in her chest had become difficult to breathe through.

  She consoled herself knowing that Granddad would have been furious with her if she hadn’t spoken up. No gossip ever escaped Granddad’s ears, and eventually he would have learned all about Mrs. Sweet. Hannah had grown used to the narrow seesaw she walked between pleasing Granddad and pleasing Ma and Pa. To suit her folks always meant putting Granddad’s nose out of joint, and vice versa.

  “I had to do it,” Hannah said out loud, to reassure herself that it was so.

  6. COFFEE OR TOBACCO

  THE NEXT MORNING, HANNAH woke earlier than usual. She bathed and dressed in her milking clothes—sweater, slacks, apron, boots—then crept downstairs to the kitchen to throw a pinecone and a few sticks of dry birch in the stove’s hungry underbelly, stirring up the embers for breakfast.

  Outdoors was chilly, the darkness like cool black silk thrown over the morning. She lit the gooseneck and collected her pail, placing both lamp and pail in the wheelbarrow, along with a first haul of glass bottles Ma had sterilized the afternoon before. The others would bring the rest. As she set off for the barn, lamplight cut out her shadow as it glided on the ground.

  Ben, up and about first no matter how early anyone else rose, already had led a group of cows to the milk house, where Mouser was mewing for a first taste of the day. Hannah pulled up her stool in front of Dosey, then squirted the cat’s face to appease and shoo him. Ben sat opposite.

  “Bags washed, or do I need to?” she asked.

  “Done,” Ben replied.

  Hannah made a loose loop in Dosey’s tail and hung it on a tack so she wouldn’t twitch—tail-twitching was Dosey’s specialty—then got to work. The sound of milk, its swish and beat sure as a drum, was a morning rhythm as familiar as the hot breakfast that would follow. Mouser watched from the windowsi
ll, licking his paws.

  Soon, Pa and Roy stomped in. Roy began to lead the milked cows back to the barn and to collect another lowing, udder-heavy group to be relieved. Pa milked the Jerseys himself. Hannah knew her father well enough to hear impatience in the puff of his breath. He was still regretful about trading good old Ruby. But No talking was an unspoken rule of morning chores. Better to get the jobs finished and everyone’s stomach filled—both animal and human—as soon as possible.

  After the milking, Ben washed down the floor while Pa fed the cows. Roy and Hannah took care of the new supply; Roy pouring the translucent milk from the large cans into delivery quarts, which Hannah then fastened with cardboard lids and collars and hoisted into the wheelbarrow for Pa to cart to the truck. The air was cold enough that the cream was already separating to the top. On a winter morning, the milk would push the cream up over the cardboard, but temperatures would not drop to frost for another month at least.

  “Your ma and I was up late,” Pa said, slowing his gait to let Ben and Roy step ahead a pace as they all walked up to the house. “Talked about you, some.”

  “Me and Philadelphia?”

  Pa’s chin cut a quick yes and he cleared his throat. “We’re set against it, Hannah. You’ve always been clever with your sums, nobody’s arguing it, but there’s too many cautions for us to rest easy. You’ve never traveled off the farm alone, and you’re too young to be planked down in the middle of a big city. Neither your ma nor me reckon on Mrs. Sweet being careful guardian to you, either.”

  Hannah could feel her mouth thin into a stubborn line. “Granddad McNaughton always wanted me to advance in math,” she reminded. “He even sent away for information about that special school in Boston, remember.”

  Pa stopped and turned to look at her. “On account of Granddad McNaughton’s health,” he said, his words falling as if driven by a mallet, “he’ll not be consulted by us about any of this business.”

  Hannah said nothing, but her scalp prickled in dread anticipation, remembering what she had told Mrs. Sweet.

  They reached the gate just as the sun broke, and Homer tossed his crooked comb and preened his feathers and crowed the new day. Oh, it was all so far-fetched, anyway, she thought. The farm was all she knew. Math was a joy, but nothing to leave home for.

  Inside the kitchen was filled with sweet warmth.

  “Doughnuts!” exclaimed Hannah.

  Ma smiled. “Thank Miss Crocker. It was yesterday’s recipe. I made them with part wild clover honey and part Karo. Thought we all could use a treat this morning.”

  She did not want to mention Philadelphia. Ma tended to close the door on topics that unsettled her.

  They sat for grace and a breakfast of boiled ham and doughnuts.

  On the outside, thought Hannah as she looked around the kitchen, this morning was the same as every morning. There was bleary-eyed Roy—likely he’d been up late, reading Krazy Kat funny papers by moonlight—and Ma moving from table to stove, stiff on her arches that troubled her during cold snaps. There was Pa and Ben sipping from their mugs of nicotine tea, home brewed from hot water and crumbled tobacco, with fresh spearmint added for taste. Coffee was scarce this year. Last year it had been opposite—enough coffee, no tobacco.

  “You can never get your hands on one without bemoaning the loss of the other,” Pa had said. “What you get is what you get.”

  But sometimes isn’t there a choice? Hannah wondered uneasily.

  She’d pay a visit to Granddad McNaughton, she decided, after afternoon milking. Granddad would tell her the things that she needed to hear.

  7. JUMPING, JUMPING

  “WHY, YOU CAN HARDLY bumble through the Stepping Stone primer, Hannah. How will you get by at a city school? Scholarship!” Betsy flicked the jump rope for emphasis. “What do your folks say?”

  “They say no.”

  “‘Course they do! I’ve been to see Philadelphia, remember,” said Betsy. “Trust me, you won’t fit in. And what kind of people is Mrs. Sweet, anyhow? At first, she reminded me of Mrs. Roosevelt, but then I decided no—it was only her clothes that did. I bet in person, Mrs. Roosevelt is far gentler.”

  Tru, who was turning the opposite end, pounced to Hannah’s innermost fear. “Besides, you’d be terrible with homesickness. Wouldn’t you, Hannah?”

  Just then, Margaret tangled in the rope. “Oh, please, let me try …” she began, but was overruled in a shriek of nos to the end of the line.

  “My turn!” Hannah shouted. She jumped into the rope and began to sing.

  How many mules from here to Mile-a-bry?

  Threescore and ten!

  Can I get there by candlelight?

  Yes, if your legs are long, you might.

  Watch out! Mighty bad witches on the road tonight!

  Count one, count two, count three, count four …

  Usually, Hannah loved this rhyme, but today it seemed to shout a warning. A warning that echoed what Pa had said. She had never traveled off the farm alone. Only occasional trips into town for back-to-school supplies at Nutley’s and a few times to the movies, once to see Babes in Toyland with Laurel and Hardy, once to see Little Women with gorgeous Katharine Hepburn starring as Jo March. And last month—after begging her folks, who gave in only because it was Melinda Snow’s thirteenth birthday and because everyone else was going and because the Snows were Methodist, after all—to watch The Gay Divorcee with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.

  Movies were Hannah’s favorite entertainment in the entire world. She speculated how far city folk lived from the cinemas. Walking distance, hadn’t Mrs. Sweet mentioned? Her own curiosity surprised her, like swallowing snow, a mild slip-sliding shock. She shut her eyes and let the counting take over. “Thirty-two, thirty-two, thirty-two!” She always counted thirty-two a few extra skips, for luck.

  “Boy, oh, boy, I’d give my eyeteeth to spend a month in Philadelphia with all those swells and bon tons,” said Tru.

  “My folks’d never let me,” snapped Betsy. “It’s fine and all to visit—like I did—but cities is full of none but thieves and thieving!”

  Then other girls in the line chimed in, each voice lifting to deliver its story.

  “You’ll have to be on watch for falling bodies. One bad day in the stock market, and businessmen start jumping out of windows—”

  “I heard society ladies wear dresses made out of thousand-dollar bills and dance on top of—”

  “My pa says crooks park their yachts near South Street seaport and sell black-market meat to anyone who—”

  “Forty-four, forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven!” Hannah listened only to the rope. She jumped and counted and her heart pumped its blood-beat, faster and faster in her chest.

  “Hannah, you can’t leave Chadds Ford!” Betsy cried finally. “No place is better than here. Besides, you and Tru and me already planned to be June brides and live down the road from one another. In white houses with wisteria and morning glory climbing up the lattice. My house will have green shutters and Tru’s will have red shutters and yours will have blue shutters! Like we planned, Hannah!”

  “She’s not listening,” said Tru. “She’ll make it be her turn forever. Show-off!”

  Hannah kept jumping. Perhaps she was a show-off, but jumping was delightful, like running and counting, and she felt as though she could stay in motion forever. Even after the other girls got tired and raised the rope and sped the rope and complained that their wrists ached, even then Hannah bet she could keep up with it, and outlast them all.

  8. CHEESE, SARDINES, AND GRANDDAD MCNAUGHTON

  HANNAH SPIED GRANDDAD OUTSIDE on his front-porch rocker, chewing a plug of tobacco while he watched the last gold of sun slip off the fields. His hair was combed to cottony floss, and he was impeccably dressed in green twill pants, a waistcoat over his starched white shirt and a shine on his boots. Buttoned and pressed as usual, though the new tremble in his fingers made knotting knots and looping loops a time-eating hindrance.

&nb
sp; But that was typical of Granddad McNaughton. He was set in his ways. Stingy with his affection, too. Certainly there was precious little of it for Ma, Pa, Hepp, or Roy, which made Granddad’s fondness for Hannah seem as indulgent and quirky as a plumed hat on a monk’s head.

  “He loves you best because you’re just like him,” Roy groused to her once. “For Granddad, seeing you is the same as looking in a pond, like old Narcissus.”

  When Granddad spied her, he leaned down to the split of watermelon at his feet, scooped up a chunk, and winged it for Hannah’s catch.

  “You missed her by minutes, that dratted Mrs. Sweet,” he said. “She wants to take you away in her monstrous car. Didn’t like the look of her, no indeed, and so I didn’t offer her one twist of my chew.”

  Hannah scrutinized her grandfather as she bit into the sweet end-of-season fruit. Delicious. She sat on the porch step. “Then you think I ought to stay here, Granddad? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Stay here? Not on my will! Why, you’re as natural to math as sparks fly upward, Hannah Bennett. I’ve been shouting it for years.” Granddad’s smile turned to a cackle, and then to the rasping cough that had plagued him all summer. Hannah waited for it to subside. “How can you ask me such a foolish question?”

  “Because Ma and Pa want me home. They worry for my reading problem. And for my safety in a city.”

  Granddad’s thistly brows knit. “That so? And do they worry for your life wasted, boiling and baking and milking and pickling away all your days here simply because you can’t comprehend the sports page?”

  Hannah laughed. “You make it sound too simple, Granddad. But you know we can’t afford to lose one more body off the farm, not with Hepp gone. Hiring Ben’s been an expense enough.” She cast an eye on her grandfather, who kept his own face expressionless. “I know an opportunity like this has been a dream of yours. But I can’t figure out if it’s a dream of mine.”