Counting on Grace (6 page)

When I see her stuffing the waste in the pocket of her smock I start up my little chant. Right for waste, left for lint. I need to keep that straight.

“Doff number one,” Mamère yells. We run. Mamère lowers the ring rails with her foot pedal and throws the shipper handle on the top so the whole frame shuts down. Delia scoops up four empty bobbins from the cart pressed against her hip.

I can barely follow the movements as she lifts the full bobbin off with her left hand, drops it in the box on the top of the dolly and lowers the empty bobbin over the spindle with her right hand. Her eye seems to guide her to the tip of each spindle. Her hands move as quick and regular as the machines. Step to the left, bump the bobbin dolly, lift, drop, lift, drop, lift, drop, three more done. And all the time Mamère is watching her other frames, but you can feel her waiting to start this one up again.

I take three empty bobbins from the box to practice holding them in one hand, but they slip away from me. Two hit the floor. I wipe them off with the bottom edge of my smock.

“Your hands aren't big enough yet, Grace,” Delia calls to me without shifting her eyes off the frame. “Start with
one bobbin at a time. It takes practice. Hold the empty one with your right hand because we're moving to the left. Doff with your left, replace with your right. You don't want your hands crossing one over the other. It will slow you up too much.”

I try doing what she says, but my right hand feels lumpy and useless. I always do everything with my left hand. Mamère says that left-handed people are touched by the lucky stick. But I don't feel lucky right now when I've got to learn this big bumbling right hand to hold the empty bobbins.

At the end of the frame, Delia dumps her waste. Then we turn the corner and come back down the other side, another one hundred and thirty-six bobbins.

“Ready?” Mamère calls. Her voice sounds peevish. She has already reset the builder, that green metal wheel in the corner of the frame. She has to crouch down to do it, which is why the hem of her skirt is always black with the oil from the floor.

“Almost,” Delia calls back, and she speeds up so her hands are flying through the air like birds. Last bobbin slides down over its spindle. She nods to my mother, who throws the shipper handle to start the frame up again.

“All the ends are slack now,” Delia says into my ear. “Watch while she jogs the rail.” Mamère taps the foot pedal once, two times, three. “That gets the snarls out. Now pray all the ends are up.” The frame starts its whirring, spinning work again and I start breathing too even though I didn't know I'd stopped.

On our way down the row, Delia pulls up suddenly to twist together two broken ends. I run smack bang into the back of her so hard I almost knock us both over. She spits out my name as if it's a bad taste and I scrabble away to give her room.

From down the row Mamère calls, “Doff number two,” and Delia's hands start flying again and I'm watching so hard that my eyes could burn holes in the thread.

By midday break my entire body is vibrating from trying to learn everything at once. The women gather in one corner of the spinning room to eat with us doffers passing in and out of their circle.

It feels like I've got to clear the lint out of my throat before my dinner can make its way down so I stand to the side, hawking and spitting into the handkerchief. Soon my mouth burns raw from working so hard.

“Don't bother,” Dougie's older sister Bridget tells me. “Your food will taste like the cotton no matter what you do.”

I settle myself near Arthur. I can't tell which is shaking harder, my body or the floor we're sitting on. In the weave room above our heads, the seven hundred looms with their slapping shuttles march along in regular time just like an army on the move. Up there, they take their break in shifts so the looms never shut down.

“You reading the book about the soldier boy?” I ask Arthur.

Bridget shoves him with her elbow. “Girl spoke to you,” she teases.

“Best not talk to her,” Arthur says in a loud voice so everybody can hear. “That Grace is a tattler. She's dangerous to have around.”

“I am not,” I say, but he don't speak again. He's got his book in one hand and his cold sausage in the other. When I lean way over to see the name of the book, he buries it deep in his lap.

I get up and move away.

Bet it is the one about the soldier boy. Bet Miss Lesley didn't make him give it back. I wonder what book Thomas and Norma and Rose and the rest are reading in school today. It must take them a whole day to get through a page with the two best readers gone.

Suddenly I miss the feeling of all of us in that room together with the little kids droning away in the front rows and the sun sliding in the open windows and the cough and grumble of the river running over the rocks down at the bottom of the hill. Here with the dirty streaked windows shut tight, it seems like the school and French Hill and Pépé and Henry all disappeared. It gives me a queer lost feeling.

I jump up. “Let's play a game,” I say. The others are waiting for me to start something so I hop over to a long skinny pipe lying in the corner.

“Follow the leader,” I call, and with my hands out for balance, I walk the length of it, my bare feet curling around the cool metal.

Nobody moves. “Come on,” I shout, and do it again, quicker this time. Two of the boys follow and then Bridget tries and slips off twice.

“Take off your shoes, it's easier,” I tell her.

By the time she's got it right, I've gathered up a pile of waste and packed it into a greasy lint ball. I toss it Arthur's way, but he just pulls to the left so it floats by. Hubert, a bobbin boy, picks it up and tosses it back at me. Now all the kids are scavenging for the biggest lint balls and rolling them in the grease. We're having a great cotton ball fight when Mamère hoists herself up on the high windowsill and calls, “Grace, enough nonsense,” and we have to stop.

Sitting up there, Mamère looks like the queen of the spinning room. She tells Mrs. Senay what to do about her ailing baby and asks Mrs. Cordeau when Norma will be coming in. You can tell from the way she says it that she thinks Norma should have started in the mill a long time ago. Big girl like that.

“Grace is going to be a quick learner just like my Delia,” she says to nobody in particular. I keep my head down. I'm practicing picking up and dropping a bobbin with my right hand. I might as well be trying to lift it with my teeth. What is wrong with that hand?

“Sing us a song, Adeline,” calls Mrs. Trottier. I'm surprised to hear her speak out. She's normally so quiet and frightened-looking. But I know she loves music. On Sundays, she plays the little organ the Congregational church passed on to us Francos when they got the money to buy a new one. Imagine having a brand-new organ. Or a
church that ain't just a room above a store, but a real church with a bell that rings as loud as the mill bell.

Père Alain says Mamère has a voice like an angel. He always puts her right up front at church to lead us in the singing of the Kyrie and the Agnus Dei.

“Give us
‘he Grain de Mil,’
“ calls Mrs. Senay.

“Yes, Mamère,” I cry. It's my favorite ‘cause the beat is so strong it gets everybody's feet to dancing.

“Par derriere chez mon père, ily a un pommier doux,”
she starts. Behind my father's house there is a sweet apple tree. Her clear cool voice rises up to the rafters like a bird let loose.

Mrs. Trottier starts the clapping and Delia clacks two empty bobbins together to help her keep time. Soon enough everybody joins in the singing, following Mamère's lead. I grab Bridget and we turn in a circle, our arms linked. You can't hear the beat coming from my bare feet, but Bridget's stamping her shoes in time to Mamère's voice. The faster she sings, the faster we dance. I'm so happy all of a sudden. Here I am in the mill with my mother and sister and I'm part of the grown-up life they been living every day without me.

I'm so lost in my dancing that I don't hear the commotion until Bridget yanks my arm and I finally go still.

The trouble is coming from Arthur's corner. Boy must be deaf. He ain't moved the whole time Mamère was singing.

“Give it to me, boy,” says Mr. Wilson. “You know the rules about reading in the mill. John,” he shouts. His voice flies around the room. “Get over here.”

Arthur is holding on to his book as if it's his own arm and Mr. Wilson is trying to snatch it away from him. French Johnny comes striding down the aisle between two frames.

Uh-oh, here's trouble. French Johnny made a deal with Arthur that he could read long as he didn't let the overseer catch him.

“This boy is reading,” roars Mr. Wilson at French Johnny, as if he thinks Arthur just murdered someone. “It's against the rules. If you can't keep order in the spinning room, we'll have to find somebody else to take your place.”

Mamère is watching with a smirk playing round her mouth. We all know Mr. Wilson don't have nobody else for second hand, but he throws this up in French Johnny's face often as he can.

“Take that book away from the boy,” he demands.

“Donnez-le-moi,”
French Johnny says in a low voice. He only uses our language when he really needs us to go along with him. It's a kind of signal. If Arthur gives the book up easily, there's a chance he might get it back again. But if he makes French Johnny look silly in front of the overseer, then he'll never see that book again. Or no other for that matter. And he won't be able to sit down on his backside no time soon either.

Arthur hands the book over.

“The boy needs to learn to speak English,” says Mr. Wilson.

“He can read it well enough,” says French Johnny, holding up the book. I jump up to see.
The Red Badge of Courage.
I was right. Delia pulls me down again. You don't want the overseer picking you out of the crowd.

Mr. Wilson ain't sure what to say to that so he stomps off without another word. French Johnny gives us all a look and his eyes come to rest on my mother. They seem to talk to each other through the air without speaking out loud.

“Cleaning time,” says Mamère, pushing herself off the windowsill, and we get back to work.

This is the day we get to quit two hours early, but first we shut the frames down for cleaning. All week long the lint floating around in the air comes to rest on the cotton roving and they stick together. Then the roving gets stubborn and won't feed properly onto the bobbins. That means by Saturday the ends are breaking on every machine. If you don't catch that first break and piece up by twisting the threads back together, sure thing there'll be another. It's a miracle only two ends broke after we doffed our first frame. On the second one, Mamère and Delia pieced up twelve between them. Every frame we doffed, it seemed more ends broke.

Mamère has a hook she uses to clean between the rollers. Up and down and round the spindle pins, that hook pokes and pulls out the balls of cotton that have gotten themselves messed up with the oil dripping down the gears. She throws the black squishy cotton balls on the floor for
the sweeper boys to push away with their long-handled brooms. Delia is over cleaning the two frames she'll be starting up on Monday.

I don't have a hook so I poke my fingers in and around the secret little hiding places where it's too dangerous for them to go when the frame is running. In and out and in between I go, left hand and right, hunting for junk, snaking it out, flicking it away.

It's a dirty job, but for once it's quiet in the spinning room and you're not chasing bobbins. With nothing buzzing between you, you can talk to people easy-like when you spy their face on the other side of the frame.

Suddenly something snatches my smock and yanks it down. I jump back with a scream.

It's Arthur who reached under the frame. Stupid trick. Kids do it to tease each other all the time. We all know the machine can rip your clothes right off if you're not paying mind.

“I was just fooling you,” he says. “The frame's not even running.” He's standing up now. I see one half of his face between the mess of spindles and gears, then the other.

“Why don't you go clean your own frames?”

He shrugs. “It's more fun tormenting you,” he says. He don't have too many friends, so I think this is his dumb way of getting back with me. “I like this part,” he says. “So many places to fit my fingers.” And I can see them poking through from his side. Arthur has thick fingers, better for cleaning than doffing.

“Papa will make me a hook next week,” I say. “Want one?”

He shrugs. “Maybe.”

“Let's try and touch,” I say.

It's hard to find the exact right place where we will connect. First his fingers are too high and then mine are too far off to the side. It's like poking a needle through the back side of a shirt, searching for the hole in a button. In the end, it don't work anyway ‘cause our fingers are too short. They just wave at each other in the dark space between the sides.

“Hello,” I call.

“No talking, Grace,” Mamère says from down the frame. “Work to be done.”

I pull out a handful of gunked-up cotton balls so she can see I am working.