by Maxine Clair
“Yes,” Aunt Frances said. “We thought David would like the little bubbles.”
Nothing else to say.
But David said it. He patty-caked his hands and giggled, pointing to the lit tree, and squealed out what was meant to be “tree.” Then “Da-da,” and Gene came to him “Treeee,” David said, with Gene pulling on his little leg. October looked startled. Vergie tried to think of something to say.
“How was the train ride?” she asked, jiggling David-with-finger-in-mouth-looking-at-October-again.
“It was nice,” October said. “I had forgotten how long it can be, but it was all right.”
Nothing else.
“I’m glad you came home,” Aunt Maude said.
That seemed to break the spell. October looked relieved. Aunt Frances said, “We’ve been cooking up a storm, and I know you haven’t had nothing decent to eat since yesterday, so get ready. It’s Christmas Eve.”
The fruits on the vine rose and moved to the dining room, where Vergie had set the table earlier, and where she had suggested they let October sit in the guest place.
“Gene should be sitting here,” October said, now in green satin blouse and green wool skirt that looked like she painted it on herself, hair pulled back nice and smooth in a bun.
Vergie wore her brown shirtwaist and it sure beat skintight. Her dress looked just fine.
Before Aunt Frances started loading down the table, Vergie needed to get David down for the night. And something else.
Gene pulled out the chair for October. October plopped down.
“Here,” Vergie said, and plopped David down in October’s lap. “Say good night before I put him to bed.” She stepped back a little, remembering how awkward October had always been when it came to holding David. Now October perched David on her knees and, with both hands, held on to his trunk just like Vergie would have done. He stuck his finger in his mouth again and stared at her. October stared back like he was a window on a crystal ball, and she had this one chance to see inside.
Then October hugged him. From what Vergie saw on October’s face, she knew it was time to take David upstairs.
“Beddie-bye,” she said, and took him up in her arms. “You-all go ahead. I’ll be down in a minute.”
Upstairs, she sat in the rocking chair and rocked, sang softly to him. “’Bye a baby bunting,/Daddy’s gone a-hunting,/To get a little rabbit skin,/To wrap the baby bunting in,/’Bye a baby bunting, ’bye.”
It was a song she had always known, but she didn’t know when she learned it. Probably one of those things tucked away in a memory from the years in the other life she had once had, which seemed now like a dream. Probably from Carrie. Until she got David, she couldn’t remember ever singing it.
She buried her face in his sweet hair; he dozed on her chest until she could feel him dreaming.
Back downstairs, Mrs. Hopp from next door had come in. “I done got too old to eat at night,” she said, but she made her way to the table and pulled up a chair.
“So are you back or just passing through?” she asked October. October began to talk about her trip and her job in Missouri, and Vergie settled down. This was going to be all right. She looked across the table at Gene burying his face in his plate, looked long enough for him to feel her, and when he looked up to see what she wanted, she smiled and he smiled back.
Christmas morning Vergie made it her business to be the first one up. David’s first real Christmas couldn’t get started soon enough—she could hardly wait to see his face when he discovered he could beat out music on his toy xylophone, see him watch the windmill spin. But he did have to have his breakfast. She sponged him off upstairs and told Gene to wait upstairs until everyone was up. “Nobody wants to miss anything.” Then she went down to make David’s oatmeal.
Whisking a sleepy baby David past the living room treasury, she thought she heard crying. Stopped. Waited for the sound from Aunt Maude’s room. Crying. October was crying. Vergie crept nearer the door and listened.
“Hush now,” Aunt Maude was saying, “it’ll be all right.”
And October muttering something about the baby.
Aunt Maude said clearly, “I prayed you would see the light before now, then prayed you wouldn’t. Sometimes when we can’t hear God tryin to tell us something he turns up the volume.”
Silence again, then weeping.
Aunt Maude: “Be thankful you got your health at least,” and something else about God fixing things.
Trouble.
Vergie was spooning the last of the oatmeal into David’s mouth when Aunt Maude came into the kitchen, humming her nervous hum.
“It’s Christmas,” she said. Like Vergie didn’t know it. “Jesus’ birthday, you know.”
Vergie said yes, she knew that.
Moments later October came into the kitchen, face swollen like she’d been through the mill and cried all the way. Vergie didn’t want to ignore it, didn’t want to know what she already knew. Better not to let October’s eyes catch hers.
October made it easy. Not once did she raise her head high enough for anyone to see her face. Talked to the floor the whole morning.
By the time Gene and Aunt Frances joined them, David was squirming and grunting to get out of his high chair. Aunt Frances must have decided against noticing October in return, because she never said a word about her swollen face. Vergie undid the tray to David’s high chair and took him in to Christmas.
Later in the day, after October had quietly handed Aunt Frances and Aunt Maude their twin sets of cologne and powder, quietly laid Vergie’s manicure set with five colors beside her on the chair, and pushed David’s toy truck toward Vergie’s feet, she said she was tired and could they just excuse her for a while. Aunt Frances said take some headache powders because they wouldn’t eat without her.
Because it was a banquet of surprise after surprise, dinner passed for enjoyable. And after dinner, without the pretense of a reason, October announced that she would leave the next morning.
All night upstairs, Vergie whispered to Gene that this was bound to happen. A person can’t just up and leave home and not feel anything when they come back. October was high strung or low strung one or the other. She made a to-do over everything. Always did. A person can’t have something bad happen to them and just forget it. Probably Chillicothe had brought it all back. But she would get over it. Next time, she would be all right.
Early the next morning at the front door, Vergie put David down and hugged October.
“I’m sorry you’re feeling so bad,” she whispered. She meant it.
October didn’t say anything, just nodded her head.
Vergie picked up David again. “Say bye-bye to your auntie,” she said. But David was too absorbed with the hammer of his xylophone to say ’bye.
chapter 11
Never was a long time. As soon as the weather broke that spring, October wrote a note to Vergie. She was sorry for being so strange at Christmas. She slipped in I am sorry for so many things. Seeing David was a shock. Said that she hadn’t expected to feel this way, though she didn’t explain what she meant. Wrote, There is just one thing I would ask. The next time Auntie takes pictures, I would like so much to have one of David.
And she got busy trying to find ways to live with herself. First of all, to live meant that she had to have a bed to sleep in and a closet to hang up her clothes. She had to stop borrowing carfare and begging rides from Cora and get away from Ed and his little digs about how many people it takes to make a crowd. Cora would never put her out, though she was very good at dropping hints.
Applying for a permanent position with the school board required that October walk on sharp tacks and pretend that she didn’t feel them. Aside from the written application, she sat across the desk from a woman with bluish-gray hair who studied her for a long
time, then fired bald questions at her—Who was your cadet leader? What subjects did you teach in third grade? What is your idea of lesson plans? Why did the boy say you struck him? Why did you leave Wyandotte? Where have you been? What have you been doing? Why do you want a permanent position? Why should we hire you?—and watched October pick her way among the prickles, wrote God-knew-what about October on her confidential form. Then told October she would have to wait. For however long it took.
Once school was out and subbing dried up, a make-do summer job at Kresge’s didn’t seem like a bad idea. Downtown Main Street came alive around lunchtime, and in October’s one outing each day she walked the five blocks from Kresge’s to the public park, where she could sit on a bench and eat the sandwich she had packed for lunch. From her first day at Kresge’s in June, when she had seen the blue-uniformed brigade of her fellow employees lined up along the “colored” counter at the rear of the store, eating their hot dogs and French fries, she decided she would rather get out and walk.
After the first few hours that first day, she had recognized that what they wanted her to do she could do in half a day, and she figured out how to stretch it. In the kingdom of “Sewing Needs” she wiped mirrors and dusted lint until the cows came home. She filed patterns in numerical order and checked the catalogues to mark which ones they had in stock. She sorted bolts by price, rewound them, repinned them, and removed them from the cutting table when the two clerks finished with them. Neither seemed to know fabrics by feel, and they both had to read the bolt tabs. October saw them mismatching thread with fabric, too, ignoring texture and thinking color was all. When October restocked spools, she made a point of asking, “Do you-all want the cotton thread in with the synthetics, or not?” At least there was the pastime of looking at pattern books.
It worked out that if she hurried, and if she brought the newspaper with her, she could read it in the shade and cool off a little before she hurried back. That way she fit in, too, with the white people who sat reading on the other benches.
Pigeons flitted and begged around her feet, and the softness of grass made her want to slip off her shoes.
Times like these, when she thought she might sit idle, her stomach rose to her throat in a wave of shame. Panic. She didn’t dare go near it, or all the details would make her sick.
She unfolded her newspaper to a picture of General Eisenhower in military regalia. “If Not Truman, Who?” said the headline, and below the fold a picture of just-crowned Princess Elizabeth. “Long Live the Queen,” the caption said. Queen or no, the girl’s father had died. October looked closer to see if a princess could feel sadness behind those dark eyes.
That day on the noontime bench she finished her sandwich and folded her newspaper, and just as she stood up to go, she saw the possibility of trouble coming her way—a familiar-looking brown face. October sat down again and opened her newspaper.
The high-heeled shoes hesitated as they passed her bench but kept going. Once the woman was well past, October looked to see if, indeed, it had been one of the room mothers from Stowe School.
Just seeing somebody who knew-her-when nearly brought up her lunch. In Missouri she had counted on being a relative stranger, stayed behind the doors of Cora’s place, where her business was her business. The minute she stepped outside of school and outside Cora’s into other parts of the world, her business could turn into a piece of cloth flapping in the wind, tearing every which way.
She had to guess that the money earned and saved would be worth whatever she had to face. The wages of sin. Knowing that she deserved ashes, for the first time since James Wilson finally tore his pants and showed her his truly awful behind, she got down on her knees beside the sofa that night. Knowing that a wrathful God would not be vaguely interested in her plight she folded her hands and tried to find the right words. She prayed If you can, please forgive me.
Short of a miracle, there was no way that she could see forgiveness coming to her. You just don’t bring a baby into the world and give him away. And married men? If they ran around they were dogs, period. Aunt Frances had preached against lying down with dogs too many times for October not to know she had gotten up with the kind of fleas that would be around forever.
When, one July day, she got the contract for a permanent position at R. T. Coles Elementary, she clutched the paper to her breast and bowed, thanking a wrathful God for his pity.
Her first days at Coles transported her back to Stowe, even down to the inkwells fitted with metal caps. At Stowe, she had taken Cora’s advice and gone in like gangbusters. Set the pace on the first day. Show them you’re in charge. Dare them to cross you. At Stowe once, she had even thrown a book across the room and hit the wall. That had definitely set the tone for no foolishness. There was the possibility that that strategy had backfired, though, and laid the foundation for the charge later made against her.
At Coles, she couldn’t find the energy to push the tough approach anymore. Plain old reasoning would have to do.
Way ahead of time, she reviewed her lesson plans and arranged the textbooks in each desk. So that when the bell sounded and thirty-five little busy bodies rushed in exploding in noise and punching each other to attention, she sat behind her desk, folded her hands, and waited. When they didn’t get quiet she went to the window and turned her back on them. After a few minutes, they settled down and she turned around and bade them good morning.
The Lord’s Prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance, O Beautiful—good start. She read them the Twenty-third Psalm and told them to bring a Bible verse every day. And then inspection. Fingernails, polished shoes, no safety pins showing. Only one or two girls weren’t wearing ribbons that first day, and October made a note to bring some in. Shoelaces too. Especially for Walter Jean Campbell, with the curious name for a girl and the tie-up shoes with no laces.
Sometime during those first few weeks, October bought black and brown laces and good satin ribbons from Kresge’s and passed them out. Now everyone looked bright and shiny, except for Walter Jean’s shoes. At least they were laced. For at least a while. Until one afternoon October dismissed the class for the day and found Walter Jean still in her seat.
“Come up here,” October told her, pulling up a chair beside her desk for the girl. Walter Jean was a sandy little girl with coarse reddish-brown hair, lightly toasted skin, and light brown eyes. And meek. Never raised her hand, never said a word unless October called on her. And then, though she spoke in the voice of a five-year-old, she usually had a good answer.
“What’s the trouble?” October asked her.
She didn’t answer, just bowed her head and let the tears run.
October gave her a Kleenex.
“What is it Walter Jean?” October asked. “I can’t help you if you won’t tell me.”
The girl reached into her dress pocket and brought out a folded pink ribbon and a wad of worn shoelaces.
“My mother said I have to give these back,” she said.
“Did she say why?”
Walter Jean shook her head.
October took the ribbon and was tempted to reserve it in her drawer, just for Walter Jean.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I passed them out just in case girls who don’t usually wear ribbons wanted to try one. Nobody has to wear them.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Walter Jean said, wiping her face with the back of her hand.
Parents were funny about some things. Offending a parent was the last thing she wanted to do.
For a few days Walter Jean came to school with new shoelaces and unadorned hair. But children are clever. Walter Jean had figured out how to fold a pastel-colored Kleenex into fanlike folds, cinch it in the middle with a rubber band, and peel back the folds so that it looked like a flower. Every morning, with a hairpin, she attached her “flower” and stood proudly for inspection.
A little girl like t
hat needed to know that she, too, was clever. Not only did October find it easy to praise her, she found many small ways for Walter Jean to shine. Take the time and any good student can do better. Walter Jean’s reading and spelling sent her right to the first seat in the first row. To be called teacher’s pet was nothing to a little girl who obviously rubbed Vaseline on her shoes and kept a small stack of pale blue Kleenex in her desk.
Five days teaching, Thursday nights and Saturdays at Kresge’s, spare-time looking and finding and moving her things to a one-bedroom at the Woodlands kept October’s mind full, feet moving, nose to the grindstone. Usually the rest of her floated, untethered to any future or past. Except that every other Sunday night she was on the telephone with the whole other life in Chillicothe. The one she had ruined.
Her place at the Woodlands had come furnished, which meant stick-furniture tables, hard shabby sofa and chair. Narrow bed, unfinished chest. Top lights in all the ceilings. Bare, spare. She bought a cotton tablecloth for a sofa throw, scatter rugs for the dull wood floors. She had dressed her dress form in her own old gingham dress and sewn artificial flowers on the old straw hat that sat on the dress form’s wire head. Once she added a tiny Formica table and two chairs along the wall of the long front room, the dress form served as room divider.
One of her first purchases had been a new fold-down Singer with a hundred clever attachments. The old Singer, then—with its immutable black iron body, its crooked foot that could clamp any thickness of cloth, its easy wheel and wrought-iron treadle all held together with oaken planes—became a found treasure in front of the small picture window. Scarlet-tipped coleus and philodendron climbed over its body, maidenhair fern hung down its side, and succulent fingers of jade plant reached up from the treadle.
Someday she would replace the stained window shades and buy herself a full-size bed. But for the time being she was satisfied to call it home.
The photograph of David arrived that fall, too. Had Aunt Frances snapped the picture at the wrong time, or was this the way it would be? Gene and Vergie sat on the front-room sofa. David sat on Vergie’s lap, head buried in Vergie’s breasts, so that only his profile showed. No eyes, no little white teeth. On the back, Vergie had written, “The gang.” October had found a brass frame and placed the photograph next to the cheap brass lamp on the end table. Every time she sat on the sofa, David shied away from her.
