Mary Emma & Company (4 page)

I don't know whether I made my nose bleed when I finally managed to yank the hat off, or whether Al did it. It could have been either one, because there was only a second from the time I got my hat off until we were fighting. I could punch twice as hard as Al, but he could hit twice as fast, and he could duck quicker than the bobber on a trout line. That was what got me into my first big trouble in Medford: Al ducked, but Mr. Jackman didn't.

He must have come to pull us apart just as I started a haymaker, and he must have been bending over, because my left fist caught him square in the right eye. For what seemed to me like ten minutes he just stood there rubbing his eye, as if he couldn't believe what had happened to him. I told him that I didn't mean to do it and was sorry, but he grabbed me by the shoulders of my coat and shook me until I thought my teeth would rattle loose. After he'd stopped he told me, between pantings, to march right back to my room, and that I'd have no more recesses until I'd learned to be civilized.

I felt real bad about it until recess was over and Al Richardson came back to class. He sat right across the aisle from me, and he had a good big lump on his cheekbone, but he wasn't sore about it. As soon as Miss Bradley turned her back to draw a map on the blackboard, he leaned over and whispered, “You can sock pretty hard, but I'll bet I can lick you. After school, if we get a chance?”

I didn't want to get caught whispering on top of everything else, so I just nodded, but we didn't have any fight after school. Al Richardson and Allie Dion walked all the way to the D & H Grocery with me, and all they wanted to do was to have me tell them about Colorado and cowboys and ranches and riding in roundups, and things like that.

That afternoon I was so busy at the grocery store that I forgot all about having had a fight at school, and I only had spare time enough to eat two pieces of candy and a cookie. Quite a few of the families that lived over near the brickyards and the clay pits were poor, and they bought their coal from grocery stores in twenty-five-pound sacks. With the weather having turned cold there were lots of orders, and they kept me going right up to seven o'clock; filling sacks, weighing them, and delivering them on a pushcart.

Supper was over before I'd finished my job and reached Uncle Frank's house, but Aunt Hilda had saved me a big plateful in the kitchen. I was only halfway through it when the doorbell rang. From the kitchen I could hear only a mumble of voices when Uncle Frank went to the door and showed somebody into the parlor. But what I heard next made me lose my appetite and almost wish I'd never had a Stetson hat. A deep voice asked, “Is this Mrs. Moody what has a boy named Ralph in Franklin School?”

Instead of answering, Mother asked in a real worried voice, “What has he done, Officer?”

“Well now,” the deep voice went on, “'twas not till I was after finishin' my beat that I picked up the report at the station house, so I've had no chance to investigate, but if the complaint to the department is true, 'tis very serious.”

“Has he been fighting at school?” Mother asked.

“Worse than that,” the deep voice boomed, “or I'd not be comin' next nor near to disturb you at this time o' the night. Boys will be boys, and they'll have a tussle now and again, but 'tis the first time in all my forty years on the force that we've had a complaint of a boy attackin' a teacher—leave alone givin' the principal a black eye. If the lad's about, I'd be havin' a word or two to say to him; we'll put up with no bullies here—neither in the schools nor out.”

When I was only nine years old Father had taught me that it was always best to go and meet trouble halfway, so I went into the parlor, and I knew the policeman right away. He was Cop Watson. That afternoon he'd come into the store to buy a plug of chewing tobacco. He knew me, too. He'd just finished speaking to Mother when I came into the parlor, but he turned to me and said, “Hello there, bub. Your brother to home?”

“Yes, sir,” I told him, “but he's gone to bed. It was me that hit Mr. Jackman.”

“You?” he said, with a funny little quirk to his voice. “Was you standin' on a table?”

“No, sir,” I told him, “I was standing on my feet. Al Richardson just happened to duck at the wrong time and I hit Mr. Jackman instead. He must have been bent over. I didn't mean to hit him, and I told him so, but I guess he didn't believe me.”

Cop Watson had a long white mustache, and when I'd finished he stood smoothing both sides of it with his fingers, as if he were thinking, but Mother said quickly, “Then you
did
get yourself into a fight on your very first day in this new school!”

“Yes, ma'am,” I said, “but I couldn't help it. The boys were yanking my hat down over my face and Mr. Jackman was standing right there and he didn't stop them and I had. . . .”

Cop Watson wasn't paying a mite of attention to either Mother or me. I don't think he even heard us, because he broke in and asked, “This Richardson lad. Is he the one lives over on Myrtle Street?”

“I guess so,” I told him. “He walked as far as the store with me after school, and then he went up that way.”

“And you didn't fight again?”

“No, sir.”

Cop Watson smoothed his mustache a stroke or two, then said to Mother and Uncle Frank, “I'll go have a word with the Richardson lad. I know him; he's a good lad. If there's call for any more investigation I'll be back before bedtime.”

When he was almost to the door, he turned, shook a finger at me, and said, “This you'll be havin' to remember: guilty or no, your name's a'ready wrote down on the bad-boy book at the station house and you'll have to be watchin' your step. They keep a sharp eye on the lads what's got their name on the book.”

Mother hadn't spanked me since Father died, but I think she would have that night if Uncle Frank hadn't helped me out.

4

“A Pleasant Little Walk”

A
FTER
that one bad day at school, the rest of our first week in Medford went fine for me. Mr. Haushalter let me wait on some customers, and when Saturday night came he gave me a dollar and a half. He said I had earned every penny of it, and that the job would be mine as long as I tended to business the way I had been doing. Then, besides teaching me how to keep from falling off the bicycle, Uncle Frank taught me to play cribbage. Two nights running, Mother let me sit up till nearly ten o'clock to play with him, and I even beat him once.

Of course, Grace got along all right; she always did. Before the week was out she'd found enough odd jobs, washing dishes and tending babies, that she'd made as much as I did. But Mother didn't have any luck at all. Every day she went to Boston to see if she could find curtains to be laundered and stretched, or furniture that we could afford to buy, but she didn't find either. And I think she looked at every vacant house in the Glenwood end of Medford without finding one that wasn't too much run-down to live in or where the rent wasn't too high.

When I got home from work that Saturday night Mother looked as near discouraged as I'd ever seen her, but Sunday seemed to straighten things out for her. After she'd scrubbed my neck until it felt as if she were using sandpaper, she sent the older four of us to Sunday School. Then, when it was time for church service, she came with Hal and Elizabeth. We waited for them at the door, and though Mother never liked to do it, we had to go way up to the front of the church. The third pew was the only one where there was enough room for all of us to sit together.

Grace and I had always liked Sunday School. Maybe it was because we knew more of the Bible stories than the others and could answer more of the lesson questions. But neither of us liked church very well, and I think it was for about the same reason: ever since I could remember—except when we had company or when she was so tired she couldn't keep awake—Mother had read a few verses from the Bible to us before we went to bed. When she read, whether it was the Bible or any other book, it never sounded like reading. She'd glance down at the page for a second or two, then look up at us and tell the story as if she were just talking naturally. None of the ministers we'd ever had did it that way. Some of them sounded as if they were reciting a piece in a Sunday School play, some of them tried to make it sound too grand, and others just read along in a singsong. Most of them preached their sermons the same way they read the scripture.

Mr. Vander Mark, the minister in our new church, read almost exactly the way Mother did, and he didn't read a whole long chapter—only a few verses, and ones that I think I'd always known by heart. Usually, when the minister was reading scripture that I knew, I just sat with my hands folded in my lap and thought about something else until he had finished, but that morning I found myself listening as if it had been a brand-new story.

I don't think Mr. Vander Mark was much older than Mother, and only a couple of inches taller, but he had gray hair and a voice that seemed too big to come from so short a man. It was neither loud nor rough, but filled the whole church—like the low notes from the organ. The big Bible was open on the stand in front of him, but he didn't look down at it. He just folded his arms on it, leaned a bit forward, and talked to us as if Mother and we children were the only ones in the church. If he had known all about us, and that we were going to be there that Sunday, he couldn't have picked any better verses from the whole book: “Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”

I wish I could remember all that he said after he had finished the reading. I listened to every word of it, but I remember only the meaning instead of the words. He told us that he thought the first verse he had read might be the most misunderstood of all Jesus' teachings, for there was no answer to prayers that were offered in selfishness, or to prayers mumbled into empty space with no real, honest belief that they would be heard and considered by our Heavenly Father. And he told us that ours was a demanding God who expected a full return for every blessing that he gave; that it was a waste of time to pray for help and then sit back with folded hands to wait for it, for help was given only to those who did their very best to help themselves, but that it was never refused to the deserving.

After the sermon was over Mother put Elizabeth into Grace's arms, and whispered to us, “You children might walk back toward Uncle Frank's house very slowly, and I'll catch up to you. I must stop to say a few words to this minister. I want to tell him how much comfort I have found in his sermon.”

Mother must have said a lot more than a few words to Mr. Vander Mark, and he to her. We dawdled all the way back to Uncle Frank's, but she didn't get there for half an hour after we did. But when she came in Grace and I could both see that she wasn't worrying any more. She seemed as happy as she used to when we'd had a real good week in Colorado, and she hummed all the time she was helping Aunt Hilda get dinner ready. Then, when we were at the table, she asked, “Frank, is there a good hand laundry in Medford? When I first worked away from home as a girl I learned to do up all the nice frilly things the ladies used to wear in those days, but I'm afraid I've rather lost the knack of it. I'm sure I could pick it right up again if I could find work in a good hand laundry that specialized in that sort of thing.”

Uncle Frank chuckled and said, “Well, there's Sam Lee, down next to Uebel's drug store. If you could learn to write Chinese and iron collars so they felt like files you might get a job with him.”

“No, seriously,” Mother said.

Then Aunt Hilda told her, “There's one in Malden, Mary Emma, and they do real nice work. I had them do up two shirtwaists for me the last time I went home to Prince Edward Island.”

“How far is Malden from here?” Mother asked.

“About half a mile,” Uncle Frank told her, “but it's a good big mile to the laundry, and through the roughest part of Edgeworth. I don't think you should try it. It would be mighty hard work and mighty small pay. You'd do better to find something in Boston; housekeeping in a hotel, or something like that, where you'd be bossing others instead of doing the hard work yourself.”

“Mmmmm, hmmm, I'll think about it, Frank,” Mother said, “but I couldn't do anything that would keep me away from the children very long.”

“You'd work from eight in the morning till six at night in a laundry,” he told her, “and you wouldn't begin to make a decent living for them; about six dollars a week. Don't be in too big a hurry about finding something to do. We might be a little cramped here, but we'll make out fine until the right thing comes along for you.”

“I know, I know, Frank,” Mother told him. “You and Hilda would run yourselves into the poorhouse for us if we'd let you, but we must stand on our own feet just as quickly as we can.” Then she turned to us and said, “Now clean your plates right up, children. We're going for a nice long walk just as soon as the dishes are done, so that Uncle Frank and Aunt Hilda can have a little rest from our being right under their feet.”

As soon as we were out of sight from Uncle Frank's house, Mother had me ask some boys the way to Malden. They told me which would be the shortest way but it was exactly opposite to the way we should have gone. Mother never mentioned the laundry until we were at the far north end of Malden. Then she said, “Now this has been a pleasant little walk, hasn't it? And I didn't notice anything rough about any of the neighborhoods we came through. Ralph, suppose you ask some of those young men over there at the corner where we might find the hand laundry. Since we are so near we may as well drop by and look at it. I shall want to know right where to find it in the morning.”

While I was gone to ask for directions Grace must have been telling Mother the same things that Uncle Frank had told her at the dinner table. I got back just in time to hear Mother saying, “No, dear, I shall have to use my own best judgment in this matter. I have no intention of spending the rest of my life working in a laundry, but I must do it long enough to learn all I can about the professional manner of starching, ironing, and packing fine laundry. Ralph, did you find out the best way for us to go?”

“Yes, ma'am,” I told her, “on the streetcar. We've come the wrong way and it's nearly two miles from here to the laundry.”

“Hmmmm, well,” Mother said, “and it would cost us twenty cents each way. I think maybe we'd better walk. If we don't try to hurry, and take turns in carrying Elizabeth, two miles won't seem very far. The exercise and fresh air might do us all good.”

As soon as we'd started along again she went right on talking to Grace, just as though she'd never interrupted herself. “Until you are all grown and ready to have homes of your own, I will
not
be separated from you children for a moment longer than is absolutely necessary. That means that we must find some way of making our living in our own home. There is sewing, knitting, and embroidery that one may take home to do for factories, but if we were all to work at it as hard as we could go, we would make only a bare existence. On the other hand, I find that there are a good many well-to-do families in Medford; people who have expensive garments and who are glad to pay a generous price to have them beautifully laundered. I shall work in the best hand laundry I can find, at whatever wages they are willing to pay me, until I
know
that I can do the finest work to be found anywhere.”

When Mother had her mind made up to something there wasn't much use in our trying to change it, and that was one time when I knew Grace didn't want to. She didn't say anything, but when she looked back at me she was nodding her head just the least little bit.

That two miles was about the longest two I ever walked, and Elizabeth seemed to grow heavier every time it was my turn to carry her. As the afternoon grew later a hard, dull sort of cold settled down, and before we reached the laundry Hal was stamping his feet and crying, so I had to carry him piggy-back with his feet in my coat pockets. The laundry certainly wasn't worth coming that far to see. It was an old, old one-story brick building, and I couldn't see how clean clothes could come out of any place with such dirty windows, but Mother said, “Well, one can never judge a book by its cover; it can be soiled, tattered and torn on the outside, but you may find it fascinating once you get into it.”

I thought I knew Mother pretty well, but Grace knew her better than I did. While she was telling us that we must hurry right along so as to get back to Uncle Frank's before dark, Grace put her mouth close to my ear and whispered, “Do you remember how Mother used to sing on the ranch if she had to go out doors at night when the coyotes were howling? She's scared of going to work in this dirty old laundry, and the business about the book is her singing.”

If Mother was scared, nobody but Grace could ever have found it out. The shortest way back to Uncle Frank's was right through the middle of the toughest neighborhood anywhere around, and, cold as it was, there were gangs of noisy young hoodlums on half a dozen of the corners we had to pass. Quite a few of them whistled at us, and a couple called Grace “Cutey,” but Mother paid no more attention to them than she would have paid to so many barbers' poles. When we had passed one of the freshest gangs, Grace said to her, “If you should get a job in that particular laundry, and I hope you don't, you'd have to go the long way around and ride on the streetcar. It would be as much as your life is worth to walk through here alone and after dark.”

“Oh, I shall be perfectly safe,” Mother answered. “Men or boys who gather in gangs are generally cowards, and an honest woman has little to fear from them.”

By the time we reached the house we were all so cold, hungry, and tired that we went to bed right after supper—even Grace.