First Papers (24 page)

“One of the women at the relief station took him home. There’s a new committee being formed now, to search out any families who could take in a striker’s child, perhaps two, as long as it goes on.”

“Anybody with a shred of humanity—” Alexandra said.

“It’s not just humanity; it also is sound strike-strategy.” Almost as if the girls weren’t in the room, he added, “I don’t know if I could stand firm and not surrender to the owners by now, if I knew my little girls were so hungry.”

He spoke gruffly and Fee stared at him in surprise. Would he really choke up about her and Franny and lose a strike because of them? Even if all his own ideas were mixed up in it? It was a new idea, a new possibility, exciting in a new way. She almost wished she could get right on a bread line or into a soup kitchen, and turn her coat inside out, just to put Papa to the test.

When it came right down to it, she decided, her spirit sinking, he probably would stand firm day after day. Even if she turned into a skeleton right in front of him, he would never let the owners win and let the workers lose.

Principles came first. No matter what, if you had a principle, it came ahead of everything and everybody.

“If this new plan to board out the children does go through,” he said to Alexandra, “we’ll take a child in with us, won’t we?”

“Here? So far from home for them? Oh my goodness, of course!” She sat up straight, her entire bearing expectant and active. “Why, I thought you meant only in Lawrence, in the neighbors’ houses there.”

“It started that way, but it’s no longer enough. Nearly everybody is hit by now, and some families who did take in a child are forced to send him back.”

“Why are they all hit, Papa?” Fee asked. “Is everybody a striker?”

He shook his head, not in negative reply to her question but at his own difficulty. How to explain enough and not too much? How discourse to children on wages and hours and exploitation?

“At the start only the workers in three mills went on strike,” he said. “Eleven thousand spinners and weavers. But on the very first day there were riots and violence—”

“What kind of violence?” Fran wanted to know. “Who did it?”

“At first, the workers, I’m afraid. They were so furious—they had hoped for so long to escape a strike, and when it came they hurled their bobbins and shuttles around, they cut pulleys and opened sprinklers, they smashed windows and gates—”

“And the company police,” Alexandra put in bitterly, “instantly began smashing heads with nightsticks and pistols. A fair exchange.”

“Did they?” Fee and Fran asked together.

Ivarin nodded. “That was at American Woolen, a big company. Then strikes or lockouts started at smaller places, the Pacific Cotton Mills and the Everett and Arlington Cotton Mills. Not only spinners and weavers, but carders and teasers and twisters and blenders and rovers and felters and strippers and winders—every kind of worker everywhere, in a dozen different towns.”

“What they are striking for is a living wage!” Alexandra said. “When you’re older, you’ll realize what it is to work yourself to death and yet not earn the barest living wage.”

The girls hardly heard her; they both concentrated on Stefan, as if they had never known him to speak before.

“So you see why the neighbors are hit too,” he said, also ignoring Alexandra’s interpolation. “Every grocer used to sell to the workers; now he can’t sell anything. Nor can the butcher, or coal dealer, or kerosene dealer, the milkman, the bakery store—it’s hard times for all of them.”

“Do they get on the bread lines too?” Fee asked.

“Will it stop soon?” Fran wanted to know.

Stefan shook his head, this time meaning “no” for each question. He looked angry, and he sounded angry when he spoke. “Whenever the papers say a blizzard is coming, or a new cold snap, the bosses of the mills stiffen up on the smallest demand we’re making.”

“Brutes,” Mama said. “Every one of them must have a heart of steel and iron.”

“Is every boss a brute, Mama?” Fee asked.

“Not every one, no,” her mother said, going to the window and looking anxiously out at the starless February sky, begging it not to send more blizzards, more gales, more zero nights.

“Isn’t there one
good
one anywhere?” Fee persisted.

“Yes, darling, I suppose there must be.”

“Are all workers good? And all strikers?”

“Of course not. There are bad people and good people everywhere.”

“Is any capitalist good?” Fee asked. “A real capitalist?”

“Stiva,” her mother said. “Why shouldn’t we take in more than one child?”

“Don’t run away with it, Alexandra. I beg of you.”

The plan might fall through, Stefan cautioned; out-of-state transfer of children might not prove feasible; the Board of Education in Massachusetts would surely object, unless temporary schooling could be arranged during a child’s absence.

“Schooling?” Fran suddenly asked. “Go to school even if you’re living in somebody else’s house?”

“Of course, school,” Stefan said. “A child can’t be a truant from school in
any
state.”

All at once Fran looked cautious. “If we did have one of them live here, what school would he go to, I wonder?”

“It depends on how old he is.”

“How old are they, mostly?”

“Such a thing to worry about, Franny,” Alexandra said.

Stefan Ivarin looked at his older daughter carefully. The sweetness had fled from her face; now she was thinking only of herself again and her precious friendships. She would be so relieved, he thought, if I told her that no children of high-school age could be involved in this plan, that it was the young ones only, none that she would have to take along with her to that academic paradise of hers.

“They’ll be too young for high school,” Stefan assured Fran. “Those your age work in the mills too, most of them, so now they’re on strike themselves. You have nothing to fear.”

Fran flashed a look of inquiry at him, bracing herself, but he had snapped open his watch and was selecting a small key from the bunch he always carried on the same chain. It was for his big portmanteau, still in the hall.

Alexandra jumped up from the table to unpack it for him.

“I hope the committee does arrange it,” she said. “We have so much room in this big house. We are so fortunate.”

Fran looked at the unpainted plaster walls about them, but Fee with sudden authority said “S-s-s-sh,” and the word “fortunate” hung like a lamp in the air as their parents left them alone and went upstairs.

“If it goes through,” Alexandra said on Friday afternoon, “the Paiges want to take two children, too. Isn’t it marvelous?”

Fee had come home from school first, and her mother was waiting for her to tell her this great news.

“Does Mr. Paige know about his trip yet, Mama?” Fee asked. The one thing the name Paige made her think of was California, and how much longer that law case was going to drag on and keep him off the train. She didn’t know how he could stand it this long, though his case must be pretty important, because even the
World
had a piece about it and said it was setting a precedent for freedom of assembly, whatever that was.

“His trip, his trip,” Alexandra said. “You didn’t even hear what I told you. Does Miss Roberts let you ignore everything she says in class?”

“I just asked.”

“I told you that when Papa gets to Lawrence tonight, if the plan did go through, he’ll say he has found homes for four children, not just two.”

“The Paiges and us?”

“You did hear, then. Isn’t it marvelous, Firuschka? When I phoned Alida about it, she instantly said, ‘It’s a lovely, lovely thing to do’—you know the sweet way she sounds—and then asked if they might do the very same thing.”

Fee wondered if taking in two children at the Paiges’ house could turn into one more reason for putting off the California trip. On Monday afternoon, she worried about the trip again. Somebody in a union telephoned Mama to say the children were all arranged and on trains that very minute, two with Papa on one train, and two others, the ones for the Paiges, on a different train, coming from some other town, not Lawrence. Those two were traveling with a representative of the Danbury Hatters’ Union who had been up there, and he was taking them downtown to Mr. Paige’s law office, so they wouldn’t get lost.

It would be queer to have two strange new children right in the house, and the last hour of waiting for them to get there became prickly too. Fee kept looking out of the window for the first glimpse, but it was too dark to see down the hill.

At last the front door opened and there they were. Fee didn’t look right at them at first. She saw the icicles hanging down from the porch roof behind her father as he came in with them, leading them in, and she knew they were both girls. But she kept looking past them and around them, until with a kind of yank she made her eyes look straight over at them. They were homely and skinny, and they weren’t looking at her either. They weren’t looking at anybody; they both stared down at the floor.

Papa said, “Well, this is Damosina and this is Josephine Jablonowski. Here’s Francesca, my older daughter, and here is Fira.”

He didn’t have to explain Mama. She went up to them and said “Hello, children,” and took the big paper bag Damosina held strangled in both of her hands, and then she helped them both to take off their funny coats and stocking hats and thick blue sweaters. They had no rubbers and their black shoes were icy-wet all the way up their ankles as far as the laces went.

“You both must be frozen,” Mama said to them. “Come warm up in the kitchen. And I’ll get everybody something to eat, too.”

They didn’t move. Damosina was an inch taller than her sister. They both looked as if they were going to cry. They let Mama take their coats and the paper bag, but they still wouldn’t look at her or anybody else, not even around at the room.

“Damsie is eight,” Papa said after a moment, “and Josie will be seven next month. They like my suitcase.”

The girls nodded at that. They still stood just where they were, but now they stared at his bag instead of the floor.

Fee hated the portmanteau her father always took on his trips. It was of thick brown leather with knobby warts sticking up all over it, and it looked high-shouldered and queer and foreign.

“Should I open it, Josie?” he said.

Josie shook her head but Damsie took a step forward and said, “Open it, mister. Sure, open it.”

“Let me do it, Pa,” Fee said, and was proud at the immediate way he handed over all his keys and put her in charge.

“Why, Stiva,” Alexandra said with approval. “You’re like Madame Montessori today—the one familiar thing to them.”

Fee was fitting the tiny key into the brass lock. Alexandra took several surreptitious looks at Damsie and Josie, fleeting ones, so they would not feel they were being inspected.

They were so thin, it was impossible to know if they were pretty or ugly. Their stringy hair was an unnatural yellow, as if it were dyed hair on vain old women who refused to be grey.

The lock stuck and Fran spoke for the first time. “Push down while you turn it, Fee,” she said, and then turning to Damsie and Josie, she added, “Here’s a wonderful new record.” She wound up the Victrola for “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” and hummed along with its jumpy little tune. Damsie leaned down closer to the suitcase.

Josie stood exactly where she was when she had come in. The heat of the house had made her nose sting, and now it began to drip, but she did nothing about it. Alexandra again went to her, offering her own handkerchief, but Josie reached instead for the hem of her dress and wiped her nose with it.

“That’s fine,” Alexandra said, putting her handkerchief away and smiling at Josie as if in praise of her superior method.

On the floor the lock of the bag clicked open. Damsie said, “Do it?” and Fee said, “She wants to lock it, Pa.”

“Let her lock it then.” To Alexandra he said, “Some hot tea would be nice,” and he left them and went upstairs. Josie said, “I want to go home,” and began to cry.

“You’ll go home after a while,” Alexandra said. “Come eat something, and tell me about your train ride to New York.”

“No,” Josie said. Her crying grew more intense.

The Victrola boomed on and Josie ran across the room and kicked it. The music kept coming out of it, and she leaned close and spat full at it.

“Franny,” Alexandra said, raising her voice, “I’ll get something good to eat. You stay here with little Josie, dear. Tell her about school. I’ll hurry.”

In the kitchen, she cut two slices of bread, buttered them and spread brown sugar thickly on top. She took them back to the parlor. Damsie and Fee still hung over the suitcase, Josie was crying less frantically, and Fran was turning off the Victrola, careful not to touch the place where it was wet.

“Here, Josie,” Alexandra said. “This one is for you.” She lifted Josie’s hand, opened it flat, palm upward like a tiny tray, and set one piece of bread on it. The brown sugar had begun to run molasses-dark into the butter.

“Can I make one too?” Fran asked. “It looks peachy.”

“Make one for me,” Fee said, the sixth sense of special occasion telling her that Fran would do any favor she asked just now.

Josie bit into the sugary slice, and her crying petered out. Damsie abandoned the suitcase and with a swift snatch took her slice from Alexandra’s offering hand.

“I have to give the key back,” Fee announced. “My father will be sore if I forget.” Jangling the keys, she ran upstairs, calling out, “Here they are, Papa. We’re all through now.”

She felt busy and older, as if she had just had a birthday. It was lucky Josie and Damsie were only seven and eight, and though she’d die rather than admit it, she was glad their father was on strike.

“The truancy laws will just have to wait,” Alexandra announced next morning. “Alida and I just decided we couldn’t send either their two children or our two off to school without a hurry-up shopping trip first.”

Fran said, “To buy what?”

“Some rubbers and mittens, and perhaps a few other things they really must have.”

Damsie and Josie showed no interest in the promise of shopping, but Fee said, “Gee, things to wear.” The news made her cheerful; no lugging them to school today anyway.