by John Crowley
tance; their eyes were lifted toward the horizon or the sky, and their
hair was rolled in fat curls like Connie’s. A wide red band ran across
the middle of the picture as though someone had rushed up and slapped
it on. It said american women—they can do it!
Connie had seen this poster and other posters like it before, in the
movies and in the papers, the newsreel stories about women trooping
off to work in their overalls and bandannas, moving huge machines
and handling tools with big smiles on their faces and then touching up
their makeup after work with a different kind of smile. But just then on
that Saturday the picture struck her as somehow about her in a way
the others before had not. The man in the bow tie looked at her, smil-
ing in an appraising sort of way, but she felt no constraint at his look,
his hands were clasped harmlessly behind him like a minister or a
floorwalker, someone ready to do you good.
216 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
“Hello,” she said. She let Adolph slip from her and settle to the
ground, where with great care he crept under the tentlike sandwich
board and sat, hands on his knees.
“Cute little fella,” the man said. “His dad in the service?”
Connie raised her eyes to him but said nothing, not evasive though,
feeling her face to be like the faces of the women in the poster, frank
and farsighted and at the same time containing a secret about them-
selves.
“Best thing you could do for him is go down to city hall and fill out
an application for work,” he said then, raising a definite forefinger.
“Everybody can help.”
“I couldn’t, because of,” Connie said, and reached a hand toward
Adolph.
“Lot of girls think that,” the man said. “They find a way.” He
picked up one each of the papers in piles on the table and gave them to
her. “You go on down. You’ll see. Everybody can do something. City
hall. There’s a poster just outside, tells you what to do next. You just
go on from there.”
In the apartment again Connie turned on all the lights to banish the
growing dark. They seemed pale and ineffectual for a long time until
the dark came fully down and they grew strong and yellow and warm.
Bunce hated to have more than just the one bulb burning you needed to
see what you were doing at the moment; when he was with her she
hadn’t minded the little pools of light and the dark rooms around, but
now she did.
“Okay, honey?” she said to Adolph, who sat on the little painted
potty chair in the bathroom, pants down and waiting, hands clasped
together before him like a little old man or a schoolmarm. “Can you
push?” She grunted for him, give him the idea, and he watched her with
interest but wouldn’t imitate. Sometimes she wondered if he was all
there, Adolph. So mild and good and quiet. His eyes now searching her
face, untroubled and interested. “Okay, you sit a while and see. Okay?”
She went out into the kitchen, stepping backward so that he could see
she was still there, still smiling. Then she sat at the table with her book
of stamps and the announcements that had been given out with it.
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 217
G, H and J blue stamps, worth a total of forty-eight points a
person, become valid tomorrow, January 24, and are good
throughout the month of February. D, E and F blue stamps, in
use since December 25, expire January 31. Thus there will be an
overlap period of one week in which all six stamps will be valid.
These stamps cover canned, bottled and frozen fruits and vege-
tables and their juices, dry beans, peas, lentils, etc., and processed
foods such as soups, baby foods, baked beans, catsup and chili
sauce.
A bottle of ketchup cost a whopping fifteen points and Bunce
couldn’t live without it. Connie got more points than she could use,
now that it was just her and Adolph. Dolph. Adi. Addo. There just
wasn’t a nickname. Her father-in-law was called Buster by everyone
and always had been.
She had plenty of stamps but not a lot of money. Her purse, soft and
with a crossbones catch like a miniature carpetbag, hung inside her
handbag, attached by a ribbon—meant to keep it from getting lost, she
guessed, unless the whole bag was. She emptied it on the table, the
coins clinking and rolling away merrily on the oilcloth till she caught
them. There weren’t many bills, and only a couple of tens in the tin
candy box on the top shelf.
When Bunce got into the union her father had solemnly taken his
shoulder and Connie’s and said that he was glad, glad to know now
they would never be in want. Want: never to want for anything. Free-
dom from Want was one of the Four Freedoms the President had said
everyone should have, the whole world. The pale ghost children in
newsreels, refugees, eating their bowls of soup but still alert and afraid.
She turned back to the bathroom. If Adolph inclined his head he could
see her in the kitchen, and she could see his little blond head around
the door’s corner.
“Okay? Anything coming?”
He smiled as though at a joke.
There just wasn’t a way to be sure enough money would be coming
in, no way to guarantee it. Every week there might be or there might
not. And every week that there wasn’t would press you further down
till you had gone too far to come back. Of course they weren’t going to
218 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
starve, her parents and Bunce’s wouldn’t let that happen, but that
didn’t make her feel safe. She thought that now maybe she wouldn’t
ever feel safe again in the way that she once had, and that this moment
of understanding had lain deep within the whole life she had led, at
home and in school and in church, in the movie theater, with the Sodal-
ity girls, in the Plymouth and the big lumpy bed with Bunce. She had
never been safe at all, and she hadn’t known it, and now she did.
“Ine done, Mommy.”
“Okay, sweet. That was a good try.” He pulled up his pants as he
walked, a cute trick he wouldn’t be able to do so well forever, like a
guy hurrying out of a girl’s room before he was caught with her.
City hall, that’s where the man had said to go. Where she’d got her
marriage license, never having been in it before, the tall corridors lined
with gold-numbered wooden doors. A poster outside, to tell you what
to do.
Freedom from Fear. That was another of the four.
On Tuesday (it took a couple of days to make a decision, and she made
it only on the grounds that going downtown and inquiring committed
her to nothing) Connie lined up in the corridor outside the doors of the
United States Employment Agency with a crowd mostly female and of
all ages, far too many to fit into the little waiting room (Connie could
glimpse into it, crowded with people, when the secretary opened the
door to let someone out or call someone in). She’d taken a long time to
dress, not knowing what would look right for someone applying t
o
work in a factory, where she imagined the jobs would mostly be, and
then—annoyed at herself for trying to make people think she was who
they wanted, when she didn’t know if she even wanted them to think
so—she put on a tartan skirt, a sweater, flats but with a pair of Bunce’s
stockings, her old cloth coat, and a beret. She thought she looked like
anybody.
“Just don’t tell them you can type,” said an older woman behind
her to a friend, a pale and ill-looking blonde. “If they know you can
type you’ll be typing till Tojo’s dead.”
The blonde said nothing. Connie thought the girl was planning to
say that she typed, and Connie wished she could too. She’d taken
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 219
Modern Homemaking instead of typing. In a magazine story she’d
recently looked at, jobs in factories were compared to housework. Run-
ning a drill press, it said, was no different from operating a mangle.
Washing engine parts in chemicals was like washing dishes—gray-
haired women were shown doing it, rubber gloves on their hands, smil-
ing, unafraid.
A crowd of people, hands full of forms, were let out from the
employment office. Connie was in the next group called in. In the office
she got into one of the lines before the counter. All around in every seat
and leaning against the wall women and some men too filled out the
same forms. The room smelled of unemptied ashtrays and overheated
people. The woman at the counter, astonishingly placid amid all this,
with two pencils stuck in her bun, gave Connie a form, even while she
answered what even Connie could tell were stupid questions from
applicants and form fillers. It seemed to Connie that women like this,
with gray buns and patient smiles, were really conducting the life of
the nation while the generals and the statesmen busied themselves with
their important things.
The form was easy to fill out. All the answers were No. Typing?
Shorthand? Experience with Hollerith card sorter? PBX? Chauffeur’s
license? She assumed that if she didn’t understand a question she could
answer No or None. Physical handicap? Color-blind? Hard of hearing?
College degree? Own car? Married? She almost checked No for that
too, going rapidly down the row of boxes.
The lady with the gray bun seemed delighted with her application.
“Unskilled,” she said, as though it were to Connie’s credit. And then,
oblivious of the mob beating against her counter like waves on a rock
face, she engaged Connie in a conversation about where she could
work, what sort of work it would be (“dirty work, sometimes really
dirty,” and she brushed imaginary or symbolic dirt from her own
hands). They talked about Adolph, about what shift Connie might be
able to take, part-time, full-time. Connie could see, through the Vene-
tian blinds, the men on telephones in the back office, checking long
banners of paper; as soon as they hung up one phone they picked up
another. “There,” the woman said, writing words on a card. “Right
near by you. You g’down there tomorrow, eight a.m., and they’ll do the
intake.”
220 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
Her kindly attention had already slipped away from Connie. Connie
took the card, thinking that she didn’t know exactly when she’d agreed
to do this, and was elbowed gently out of the way by the typist and her
friend. Not until she was back out in the day did she realize where
she’d been sent: to the same factory that was building Bull fighter
planes, where Bunce had worked before he left.
Wednesday was colder. Connie’s mother had come the day before, a
little doubtful, speaking in the small voice that Connie knew meant
she didn’t approve—or rather didn’t know whether to approve or not,
but thought not. Like the annuity her husband had invested his money
in, or Eleanor Roosevelt’s gadding, or Connie’s first pair of saddle
shoes. Anyway she was glad to see her grandson, and Adolph gave her
the wholehearted face of wondering joy—how could you resist it?
Connie already had her coat on and was tying her kerchief under her
chin. She wore a pair of slacks (the working women in the newsreels all
wore them, Connie didn’t have to explain) and those same saddle
shoes, their white parts scuffed and dingy.
“There’s a can of tomato soup,” she said to her mother. For a
moment she couldn’t find the card given to her the day before, no here
it was in the coat’s inside pocket. “And some Velveeta cheese you can
put in it.” Her mother said nothing, and would do as she saw fit, but
Connie needed to show her that she’d thought about this and was pre-
pared. She hugged Adolph with a strange sudden passion, as though it
might be a long time till she returned, and went out and down the
steep steps into the unwelcoming day. She turned left not right at the
sidewalk. In this direction there had never been anything of much use
to her. The sidewalk tilted downward, its squares cracked and buckled,
and in a few blocks Connie passed under the black railroad viaduct
that crossed all that industrial bottom. A train was chugging toward
the crossing over her head—she’d heard its approaching wail as she left
her house—and just as Connie walked under, it did cross, thudding
and still screaming. The damp sky turned away the ashy yellow smoke,
the hollow of earth drew it down and it covered Connie like a dropped
curtain, bitter and stinging; for a moment she couldn’t see anything at
all, but then she parted the curtain and came out on the other side; the
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 221
train had passed. Farther on was the green wooden shelter where the
bus stopped.
Why should she feel ashamed, when no one knew or could guess
she was here not because she wanted to help and be a good person but
because she was afraid—more afraid of not having enough than she
was afraid to go farther on, on this side where she had not before
belonged? The shelter, and the bus when it came, was full of women
and men talking and complaining and kidding one another, and some
others like her seemingly here for the first time and looking around
themselves boldly or uncertainly, peach-faced teenagers too skinny to
be soldiers, women her mother’s age, one in a fox fur piece. Together.
Connie clung to the enameled pole, rocked with all of them.
At a farther stop a problem of some kind arose—Connie in the
dense middle of the bus couldn’t see it directly, only hear the exchange
between the driver and someone having trouble getting on. Listen
mister I am under no obligation. Reserve the right I mean. Other voices
entered in, either taking the driver’s side that whoever it was couldn’t
be accommodated, or arguing with the driver and the others to let the
guy on, give him a hand for Chrissake, what’s it to ya, let’s get this
wagon rolling. One of the voices must have been the fellow trying to
get on, but Connie couldn’t tell which. Then she could see a couple of
people ha
d joined in to help him despite the driver and the others, and
a long crutch was handed up and then another, and after them a lanky
body, a man in a fedora and a houndstooth jacket. He was lifted up
into the bus like someone pulled from a well, looking startled and wary
and maybe grateful, while the complainers still went on about moving
along, voices from Connie’s back of the bus calling out impatiently
now also. The gears of the bus ground horribly. Everybody seemed to
have an opinion about the matter, but nobody spoke to the young man
himself as far as she could tell; she could see his hat bobbing a little
between some of their heads.
At the various plant and shop gates the workers got off—Connie
could see, out the rear window, another bus just behind hers, carrying
more—until the Bull plant was reached. Once, Connie had brought
Bunce his lunch pail here when he’d forgot it, and he’d told her never to
come again. There was an aluminum model of the Bull fighter plane in
front, looking unlikely or imaginary, but the buildings of the plant
222 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
behind were just factory buildings, three big brick buildings that had
once made something else and were now combined. 1. 2. 3. Connie got
out the rear door with some others; she glanced back once at the crip-
pled man now seated and holding his crutches by the middle hand-bar,
like a man holding a trombone. She could see his back was severely
swayed.
“If that was me I’d kill myself,” a man walking beside her said. He
was hatless and wore a badge like Bunce’s pinned to his jacket. Connie
said nothing; she shrank from people who offered opinions like that
out loud in public to no one. The man had a black dead look, as though
he might just kill himself anyway. They all walked toward the gates of
Number 3, just then sliding open on their tracks.
She did no work that day, but still she was there the whole of the shift.
With the other new employees she was set on a broad yellow stripe
painted on the concrete floor and already flaking away, and told to
follow it to the different places she needed to go. Far off the huge
nameless noises of the plant could be heard. She hadn’t thought she’d
just arrive and take her place in line and begin doing one of the things
shown in the magazines, but she hadn’t had a different picture of what
