Hannah, Divided

by Adele Griffin

  “Mrs. Sweet has invited a heap of people,” said Beverly. “I’m sure they’ll gum it up all night.” She stifled a yawn. “And tomorrow the house’ll need a tips-to-tails cleaning, with cigar ash and wine spills everywhere! There goes my morning practice!”

  As guests trickled into the dining room, Hannah heard Mrs. Sweet’s bellow as she rearranged place settings. Millicent and Roseanne, two sisters who were friends of Beverly’s from the Academy, had been hired for the evening. They stepped quickly back and forth from kitchen to dining room, carrying out the heavy serving plates. Voices became more boisterous as the night wore on.

  “I haven’t much experience with crowds,” Hannah said. She took a last bite of roast beef and moved clockwise to her sweet potato, swallowing hard past the fear that stuck in her throat.

  “There’s nothing to experience here except hungry academics and boring chumps who come for the filet.” Joe slurped his milk and banged down the empty glass. “Most people with their heads stuck on straight think Teddy Sweet is the dopiest dame in a dope pack.”

  Beverly grinned. “That’s not true. Maybe we’re the dopes.”

  “Naw. Tonight, Bev, we’re the organ grinder’s monkeys,” said Joe. “I ought to have dressed as a clown or a doorman.”

  Millicent and Roseanne, slouched in tipped-back chairs by the stove, were using their between-courses break to smoke cigarettes and drink Pepsi-Cola mixed with a splash of kitchen sherry “Give us a jingle, Joe,” prompted Millicent. “If you’re in a mood to entertain.”

  Immediately and in a creaky voice Joe jumped up and sang, “‘Leprosy! You’ve got leprosy! Was that your eyeball that fell into my highball?’” Even Hannah joined in the laughter as Joe scratched his head and sides and hopped around the kitchen. The sound of the buzzer stopped him. “You’re up to bat, milkmaid,” he announced. “I’ll go out with you.”

  The dining room was layered blue with smoke and was thick with the scent of steak as Hannah entered, Joe at her side. She blinked. There were the Baltzells, the Austins, and the Klines, all friends of Mrs. Sweet’s whom Hannah had met before, as well as a few people she’d never seen. One guest struck her eye immediately. He was a young colored man, smooth-cheeked as a girl, with toffee-colored eyes so wide-set it seemed that he could look around and at her at the same time.

  “This is my little math ward, Dr. Claytor,” said Mrs. Sweet, addressing the man. She was enthroned at the head of the table, wearing enough diamonds, Hannah figured, to start her own pawnshop. To Hannah, she said, “Dr. Claytor has just earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania. He is publishing his thesis on … oh, darling, help me! I can’t even pronounce half the words!”

  Dr. Claytor smiled. ‘“Topological Immersion of Peanian Continua in a Spherical Surface,’” he answered.

  There was some laughter. “Twenty-six years old, and a future as bright as the sun,” remarked gruff Mr. Kline. “Nothing to stop you, William.”

  Dr. Claytor inclined his head in acceptance of the remark. “Perhaps nothing, Donald,” he countered, “and then again, perhaps our good friend, Dr. Robert Lee Moore.”

  “Now, but we mustn’t ruin our party with talk of such hostile things!” retorted Mrs. Sweet. She clapped her hands together. “Not when Hannah has this wondrous trick. Now, dear, count some letters in the first five pages of Light in August. It’s on the butler’s table. Awful novel, I thought. Vulgar Southerner! Dolores, you pick the letter, so you know it’s not been fixed beforehand.”

  “The bs,” said Mrs. Kline.

  Guests turned their attention to Hannah. Alarm swept her in a wave from head to toe. She did not feel confident under the attention. She wished she could be more like Roy, who had given such swagger to Benjamin Franklin. Quickly, she tapped the book’s hardcover corners. Then flipped the first five pages and scanned the bs. “Ninety-seven.”

  “No, no! Impossible!” Mrs. Kline held out her hand for the book. “How could you see them all so fast?”

  While Mrs. Kline took the book and recounted, Hannah answered some simple word problems that Mr. Kline made up about apples and grasshoppers.

  Then Mrs. Kline held up the book and exclaimed, “Ninety-seven, exactly!”

  There was some scattershot clapping, and Hannah Was finished. She stepped back from the table. When no one was looking, she crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue at Joe. Ha—let’s see you top ninety-seven bs, she thought.

  Mrs. Sweet called on Joe to recite. “Anything! As long as it’s an important person!”

  “Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’?” asked Joe. “There’s two important people. I’ll skip the beginning and cut straight to my favorite part.”

  Mrs. Sweet nodded and swooped a conductor’s finger for him to start.

  “‘I cannot rest from travel,’” Joe began. His voice was clear and calm. “‘I will drink life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those that loved me, and alone.’” Without pause or falter, Joe stepped into the role, becoming the old hero, Ulysses. No mugging, no hamming, as Joe made Ulysses’ troubles come alive, transporting Hannah to a world even more vivid than Miss Cascade had ever brought to her schoolroom.

  After he finished, the table sat silent, spellbound, until Mrs. Sweet broke the mood with a ping of her spoon on her wineglass.

  “Thank you, Hannah and Joe,” she said. “You may go now.”

  “Hold up, Joe. Do you know any Eliot?” asked Mr. Baltzell. “‘Prufrock’, perhaps?”

  “Sure do,” Joe answered, holding out his palm. “You got a penny for it? I am a professional, after all. Need to earn my keep.”

  Now that, Hannah thought, was most certainly rude. Her fingers began to tap the cover of Light in August as the room went silent. Mrs. Sweet’s eyes widened, and her jaw dropped. She looked to Hannah rather like a lace-wrapped trout. Mrs. Kline touched a nervous hand to her tarnished-silver curls. Then Dr. Claytor threw back his head and roared. His laughter was followed by Mrs. Baltzell’s, and it wasn’t long before everyone at the table was convulsed in mirth. Joe was laughing hardest of all.

  Mr. Baltzell pulled out a chair and offered him the platter of cheese, which pleased Joe—although, Hannah noticed, it annoyed Mrs. Sweet.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Sweet, her smile set as carefully as her centerpiece. “Both you children, sit. And when we’re ready to move to the parlor, I’ll get Beverly to come play a teensy sonata for us. What sharp kiddos!”

  “Here, here,” cried Mrs. Baltzell, raising her glass.

  19. BLOWN BACK

  AS THE DINNER PARTY began to break up, Beverly, Joe, and Hannah helped the guests with their coats. Hannah made sure she got hold of Dr. Claytor’s. She held his hat and gloves for him as he buttoned his overcoat.

  “Why are you looking at me that way, my friend?” he asked.

  “I wanted to know, sir, who is Dr. Robert Lee Moore?”

  “Ah, Robert Lee Moore.” Without changing expression, Dr. Claytor’s features seemed to harden as if glazed by an invisible frost. “The good professor is favored to become the president of the American Mathematical Society next year, and last I heard, women were discouraged from attending his lectures, and coloreds were prevented.” He fell silent, giving the words their space. Then he winked at Hannah and his expression turned to flesh and blood again. “You will learn in time that while some doors are open, others are stuck and need pushing. A good strong push from one is a push for us all.”

  He set his hat on his head, raised it to Hannah, and replaced it. “Good night.”

  “Good night,” she answered.

  She watched as Dr. Claytor departed, leaving her to her thoughts.

  While Pa and Ma had expressed a few doubts, Granddad McNaughton hardly ever mentioned the limitations of becoming a woman mathematician. Certainly at Ottley Friends, Miss Jordan and Mr. Cole did not treat Hannah as if doors were closed to her.

  But of course some doors would be, Hannah contemplate
d. In spite of her best efforts. Dr. Curie probably had had to push against a lot of doors. She had likely seen her share of knuckle-heads such as Robert Moore. If she could do it, then so can I, Hannah decided. That’s what Granddad would say. Real learning was harder work than pushing against homesickness, or pretending not to care about a Halloween invitation snub or a cruel cartoon drawing.

  Now Hannah envisioned Dr. Moore as another, fiercer caricature, like a storybook painting of the North Wind. Eyebrows like lightning bolts and cheeks rounded, blowing her and Dr. Claytor like seeds in the opposite direction of wherever the fields of math might lie.

  It made her shiver, as if some of that wind already had puffed through her. She went to the front hall window and pulled aside the velvet drapes and watched Dr. Claytor as he strode alone down the street, past the last lamppost and into the darkness.

  When she rounded the stairs to her bedroom, Hannah found Joe waiting for her, sitting at her desk as if it were his own.

  “Counting letters.” He snapped his fingers. “Not a bad trick!”

  “Knock it off!” she said, surprising herself because this was not an expression she used. It was Mae West’s, she realized. “My math teacher, Mr. Cole, says it’s better than a trick,” she bragged shyly. “He says some people read numbers naturally in sequences. I’m not bad at breaking codes, either.”

  “Christmas, a human cipher!” Joe exclaimed in a voice of genuine envy. “I’da counted you for a lost cause, but you might grab a scholarship out of my hands after all.” His voice dropped, as if he were letting Hannah in on a secret. “There’s fancy boarding schools that admit Wexler-funded kids, you know. That’s where I aim to go. Breathe clean air again, up in New Hampshire or Rhode Island.” He used his palms to launch a full swivel before facing Hannah again. “Would you head north? If you took my scholarship money that is?” His face turned serious.

  “Joe, I’m not fixing to take your scholarship.”

  “But if you did.”

  “I can’t imagine going anywhere except close to home,” Hannah confessed. “I miss home.” In a blurt, she added, “I’ve got no friends here, see. Not that I care,” she ended weakly.

  “Well, who’d be your friend, bunny?” Joe’s frown disappeared. “You’re nobody’s idea of fun. You’ve got no spirit. You’re a wet-blankety, sulky, boring girl.”

  “I am not!”

  “Plus, you’re a snob.” Joe’s smile crinkled the corners of his eyes.

  “A snob? I’m a snob?” Hannah blinked. “I’m not a snob!”

  “Shows what you know.” Now Joe seemed to relax. He propped his boots on the desktop, leaned back, crossed his eyes, and stuck out his tongue at her. “Not a real, born-and-bred Ottley snob. But in your own right, you’re as bad as Sweet. Wearing her clothes, eating her hash, spending her lettuce.”

  “I’m only trying to make the best of things.” Hannah opened her door wider and stomped her foot to make Joe leave. “Shows what you know.”

  Joe didn’t move, except to point a finger at her. “The best of things! Huh. Name one best thing you’ve done since you got to this city, milkmaid, or one thing that interests you. Besides playing the odd prank on me.”

  One best thing. The challenge stopped her. She thought of movies she’d seen and candies she’d eaten. She thought of the small steps she’d taken in her reading. She thought of her morning chats with Mr. Barnaby. She thought of the new music program, Fifteen Minutes with Bing Crosby, that she and Beverly tuned into on nights when Mrs. Sweet was out. She thought of riding on the subway, the weight of the city above her head and the shake of the tracks beneath her feet.

  Yet she knew that none of these things would be best enough for Joe Elway.

  “What have you done so swell yourself, Mister Elway? Have you been to see the Liberty Bell? Have you drunk tea at the Bellevue-Stratford?”

  “I’d say not.” Joe looked indignant. “The bell’s broke, and there’s no fun in a bunch of tea-drinking dames. I get to places where a fella can breathe and stretch. If you don’t do it regular, you go flabby. Tell you what. I don’t know how you’ve been wasting your time—napping at the cinema and gnawing bonbons, probably. But if you’re around tomorrow, I’ll show you the town. You got to promise not to be a snob or a bug, though. ’Cause this’d be a favor from me to you, milkmaid. From the goodness of one guy’s heart.” He thumped his chest, slid up from her chair, and, whistling, walked past her. “‘Night, then.”

  She said good night and shut the door, puzzled. Was Joe serious?

  And was she really all of those things Joe said—sulky, snobby, boring? Could it be that some of her difficulties did not lie inside this house or school, or even in Philadelphia, but inside herself?

  The thoughts chased through her mind as she prepared for bed, only to find that Joe had short-sheeted it.

  20. ALUMINUM CITY

  THE NEXT MORNING, HANNAH had finished breakfast and was staring out the bay window. Waiting for Joe, though she might have denied it if asked.

  Suddenly, she spied him outside walking toward Eighteenth Street. His cap was pulled low and his hands dipped deep in his coat pockets. He must have seen her and decided to sneak out the back door! Well, he wouldn’t get off that easy.

  “Wait up!” Hannah called, rapping on the window. She dashed for her coat on the way out the door and caught up, breathless, at the end of Delancey. “Where are you going? You said you’d show me the town today! I want to stretch my legs!”

  “Aw, quit yawping.” Joe looked her up and down. “If you’re serious, you better know my day runs different from yours, milkmaid. From stem to stern.”

  “That’s fine. I still want to come along.” She shadowed Joe he strode around the back alley. From behind a horse trough, he kicked forward a skato.

  “My escape vehicle,” he told her.

  Hannah had not known Joe owned a skato, though she had seen lots of boys riding them since she’d arrived in Philadelphia. Even back in Chadds Ford they were the fashion. Roy had built a skato for himself, using a pair of wheels pried off his outgrown roller skates, a piece of board, and an orange crate. But it hadn’t worked on the dirt roads, and had collapsed into pieces when Roy tried to jump it off a homemade ramp he’d built from a stack of stripped truck tires.

  Joe’s skato looked nicer than Roy’s, Hannah had to admit. It was sleek and narrow instead of box-sided, and was painted blue, with rubber-padded T-shaped handlebars.

  “I built it with scrap-yard parts and added an extra set of wheels,” Joe said proudly. “That’s why it’s strong enough to carry extra junk. Or an extra person.” He straightened the wheels and stepped on. “Hold me around the side and push off with your right foot when I say go.”

  Hannah faltered. “You want me to ride with you on that?”

  “Look, like I was saying, you better not be a snob or a bug about—”

  “I won’t!” She stepped onto the skato and held Joe’s waist firmly. “I’m ready.”

  On Joe’s “One-two-three—go!” and a strong push, they shot down the alley.

  “Lean into my turns and keep your eyes up, not down watching your toes grow,” Joe said. “I’ve seen the way you walk, milkmaid. We’re hooking a left on Sansom.”

  Hannah squinted, enjoying the sun and the numbing breeze on her face. Buildings slipped past at a clip as the paving bumped beneath her shoes.

  “‘Scuse me! Coming through!” called Joe.

  A car honked for them to move to the side. “Gee, buddy, there’s room for us all!” Joe scowled, raised and shook his fist. “Curse it, but automobiles think they own these roads!”

  “Where are we going?”

  “On a mission.”

  “For what?”

  “For aluminum.”

  “Aluminum?” Hannah laughed. “Why?”

  “’Cause once we get enough, we’ll sell it to Mr. Lee, the rag and junk man. He buys everyone’s old scrap iron and aluminum, even newspapers. Twelve cents a pound i
s what he’ll pay for metal. You can sweep in an easy couple of dimes, good clean money, if you know how to look.”

  Hannah leaned with Joe as they made a right onto Sansom Street. Almost immediately, and with a triumphant “Aha!” Joe braked. He hopped off the skato, nearly upsetting it, ran halfway down the street, then leaned over and picked something off the road. He jogged back holding a twist of aluminum between his fingers, which he crushed into a ball and tossed for Hannah’s catch. “Keep the goods in your coat pocket. I got a sack for when we start hauling. Just you watch how this adds up.”

  She dug her fingers into Joe’s overcoat pockets as they continued up Sansom, Joe whistling passersby out of their path. A glint caught Hannah’s eye.

  “Stop! I see something!” she cried. Once Joe set his foot on the pavement, she jumped off the skato and ran to where an empty box of cigarettes was lying inches from the gutter. She bent to retrieve it, then unpeeled the sheet of foil from the thin paper and held it high for him to see.

  Joe pointed. “And there’s two more packs in that trash can there. Get ’em.”

  It only took a moment’s deliberation before Hannah nodded, rucked up the sleeve of her wool coat, leaned over, and dug through the garbage bin until she had grasped hold of both empty cigarette packs. She unstuck the aluminum foil and mashed it with the other pieces into a silver ball the size of a plum. They would need to find lots more aluminum to weigh in a pound, she figured.

  The adventure was what counted, though, and Philadelphia seemed almost friendly with Joe in it. He talked Hannah through its sights just as he had that first rainy afternoon. Which didn’t seem quite so terrifying today, perhaps because not only did Joe know places, he knew people. Tony the ice man. Mrs. Oppenheimer, who made and sold boxed Japanese gardens on the corner of Sansom and Fourth. The skato gang: Si and Marshal and Francis, who were lingering in the doorway of the butcher shop, hoping for pocket money by delivering meat to houses and restaurants.

  “Hullo, Joe!” said Francis, steering his yellow-striped skato in a slow circle around them. “Whaddaya know? Gonna introduce us to your sweetheart?”