First Papers (25 page)

Not that she was nervous about taking them. She had asked herself straight out during the night whether it made her nervous and the answer was no. But putting it off a day was dandy, because she hadn’t had a minute to think what to say to Trudy or any of the others, or even to Miss Roberts. Being crazy about Miss Roberts made it important to say the right thing, and now she’d have until tomorrow to decide just what the right thing would be.

“Can we run over to the Paiges’ for a minute?” she asked. “I’m dying to see what their kids are like.”

“You and Franny go,” Alexandra said. “We’re not ready yet, are we, girls?” Neither Damsie nor Josie answered, but she gave them an encouraging smile and a second helping of Scotch pinhead oats, irrationally vexed at the cereal for not instantly yielding a year’s worth of minerals and proteins to these poor bony mites.

Fee and Fran ran all the way to Channing Street, and both decided the Paiges’ children were much better-looking than theirs. They were Federico and Maria Callavini, with bright dark eyes and curly black hair. They were ten and eleven, but like Damsie and Josie they were much smaller than anybody in Barnett of the same age. Their clothes were full of mended places and different from kids’ clothes at school, but there wasn’t anything woebegone or scared about them and they chattered and laughed, acting as if this was a great adventure they wouldn’t have missed for anything.

“The lady says you have a big dog,” Rico said. “Why’nt you bring him?” He sounded bossy and fresh, the way most boys did, and Fee promised to produce Shag at the first possible minute.

She liked Federico. It was he who was eleven, only six months younger than she, yet nearly a head shorter. She envied him for that. Nowadays she was jealous of any boy or girl who stayed small because she was growing so fast that Fran predicted more often than ever she’d be a hefty old Amazon by sixteen.

She thought about Rico in class during the day, wondering if her shoulders were wider than his. For the past few months, she had taken to measuring her shoulders once a week, and so far they were all right, the same as Trudy Loheim’s, but sixteen was so far off.

By coincidence that afternoon when she got home, Mama was thinking and talking about people’s sizes too. The shopping trip with Mrs. Paige had revealed that all four children took one or two sizes smaller than they were supposed to for their ages. To Mama and Mrs. Paige, smallness was a calamity, especially for a boy, and they both agreed it was the capitalist system that was to blame.

“It’s because Rico’s father never could make a living wage,” Alexandra explained. “Not in Italy, and not even in America. Rico never got enough milk. Under socialism, every baby would get enough milk.”

“At least he’s good-looking,” Fran grumbled. “And so’s Maria. The Paiges have all the luck.”

“S-s-sh,” Fee said fiercely, “they’ve got
ears.”

Damsie and Josie were playing in the cellar, where Alexandra had just shown them the ironing board and the two white tubs for the laundry. It was warm down there, and they had never seen anything like the big furnace with pipes branching out of its top in all directions, nor the slippery, sliding mountain of coal, nor laundry tubs that were shiny white enamel instead of slimy old wood.

“Even now in America,” Alexandra went on, “I’m sure Rico and Maria eat nothing but macaroni and spaghetti made of denatured flour. Damsie and Josie may get brown kasha once in a while, or whatever they call kasha in Polish. I must ask Papa; he would know.”

Fran would not be deflected from her pronouncements on comparative beauty. “Just the same, Damsie and Josie are the homeliest kids in the world. And the dopiest. Whew.”

“They’re
not
dopey,” Fee said. “They’re a million years younger than Rico and Maria, that’s all.”

“They’ll open up like flowers,” Alexandra promised, “after I can feed them up a bit. Their cheeks will be pink instead of like lard, and their hair won’t be like yellow strings—you’ll see. Why, last night when I bathed them their ribs stuck out like washboards.”

The shopping trip had been successful indeed, and after adding flannel middies to the necessities, Alexandra had become enamored of a bolt of bright red plaid that she was sure she could make into pleated skirts “in less than an hour each.”

She had been at it ever since, leaving the sewing room only for trips to the pantry to fetch milk and cookies and fruit to tempt Damsie and Josie into the usually frowned-upon delight of nibbling between meals.

“I also washed their heads, and doused them with larkspur,” Alexandra added, “Just in case.”

Both girls looked knowing and said, “Well?”

“They didn’t have any,” their mother said. “A blessing, I must say.”

From the cellar Damsie’s voice rose in a shrill laugh. Fee said, “Could I show them Shag
now?”

Alexandra hesitated, looking out to the back yard where Shag had been banished all day, so as not to risk his frightening the girls.

“But, Mama,” Fee said urgently. “He’ll just freeze if we never let him in until they go home to Massachusetts.”

“I suppose we have to, sooner or later.”

“I’ll go too,” Fran offered. “I wish we had his new collar, to hold him by.”

Fee indicated her opinion of anybody who could distrust Shag and without bothering to get her coat, darted out to him. Fran followed, and they made for the cellar door in the yard, imperfectly cleared of its slope of new snow.

“Now you behave,” Fee admonished Shag, clutching a fistful of his fur as she led him sedately down the stone steps and into the cellar. “We’re coming with our dog now,” she shouted by way of preparation. “Don’t be scared—he’s nice to everybody.”

“Wait, Fee,” Fran ordered. “I’ll go first, in case he gets stupid and jumps all over them.” Inside the dim cellar she couldn’t see the girls anywhere at first, but when she did make them out, she laughed and said, “That’s
cute
—stay inside them.”

Damsie and Josie were kneeling in the white porcelain washtubs, one in each tub, and at Fran’s approval they squealed and shouted and looked happy for the first time since their arrival.

“Shag, that’s Damsie,” Fee said, pulling his big head to the left, “and this one is Josie. Remember what I said, now, and behave yourself.”

Shag barked resoundingly several times and then collapsed on his haunches. His tail thwacked the concrete cellar floor and Fee hugged him because she could tell he liked the little girls in the tubs.

“Lean down and pat him, Damsie,” she said, pulling Shag closer to the tub and guiding Damsie’s hand under hers to help her stroke his great head. Damsie said, “I’m not afraid,” and kept on patting Shag after Fee dropped her own hand.

“Let me too,” Josie shouted, “Dog, come here.”

Fran performed the patting honors with Josie, until Josie also’ ventured it alone. “He’s the most conceited dog in the whole world,” Fran said a moment later, “look at him.”

Shag was clearly wallowing in self-importance, and when Fran and Fee lifted the children out of the tubs, he sat immobilized, his eyes expectant and the top of his head slightly twitching, as if at the homage about to be showered upon him.

From above, Alexandra called, “Is everything all right, dears?” and Fee shouted excitedly, “He just
loves
them, Mama.”

The whir of the sewing machine began again, and for no reason Fee skipped around in a big circle. “We can all come down here every single day, if we want,” she announced, addressing herself equally to Damsie, Josie, Fran and Shag.

By suppertime, Damsie and Josie seemed done with any sense of strangeness. As Alexandra served them juicy meatballs and gravy, a baked potato, string beans, a tall glass of milk, two slices of thick dark bread and big pats of pale-yellow butter, they both fell to and ate with head-lowered intensity, free of constraint. Fee and Fran watched them for a moment, but Alexandra felt that neither was being critical or unkind. Above the lowered heads of the strangers, she smiled at her own girls, begging them wordlessly not to be lofty and unmoved at the sight of these who had been too long deprived.

Then Alexandra started to eat, and in a moment Fran and Fee began too. For most of the meal there was hardly a word spoken. Then suddenly Josie let her clumsily-held fork drop to her plate, and nodded in a swoop of drowsiness.

“She’s sleepy,” Damsie explained, herself overcome a second later by fullness and warmth and the need to sleep.

Alexandra said, “That’s nice,” and signaled to Fee and Franny, who half-carried, half-pushed the children up the stairs to help them undress and have their bath.

At the table, Alexandra sat on, ignoring the spread of dishes to be done. She could hear Josie’s protests about another bath, and Fran explaining it was like brushing your teeth every single day, then switching to a big propaganda about the fun of being so little you could get into the tub with your sister and splash water at her when she wasn’t watching.

Fran was being unexpectedly sweet with them, Alexandra thought. For all her disparaging comparisons with Rico and Maria, she was kind and patient with them. And Fee actually enjoyed them!

If only school would not be another ordeal, when Fee took them with her tomorrow morning.

Never had Fee mentioned the black bunting of a year ago, not once. But it was not something a child would go through and then forget, surely not. Did she think of it in secret, in silence? Did she think of it now, when she looked at Damsie and Josie and knew she would be taking them with her when she left for school in the morning?

Alexandra left the table in sudden determination to finish the two plaid skirts. She hoped Stiva wouldn’t ask about costs when he got home. Two pairs of rubbers, heavy mittens, long drawers, black stockings—then the middies and the nice red plaid. She had gone at it with a rich woman’s recklessness, but Alida was getting as much for Maria, and even more for Rico, since he had to have a jacket.

She glanced at the clock on the sideboard in the dining room; between the grooved gold columns ranged along its polished green marble body, its bland face said it was nearly eight o’clock. An hour had passed since supper.

“Franny,” she called, tilting her head back and addressing the plaster ceiling of the little room. “Fira … what’s taking so long up there?”

“We’re coming,” Fran answered. But as usual the words meant nothing. Alexandra whipped her foot up and down on the treadle in a burst of impatience to end her task. It sounded so simple, “I’ll make little plaid skirts for them to wear on their first day at school,” but as always, the crackle and rustle of the paper pattern was the signal for a dozen pesky delays. Every time she made a dress for Fran or Fee, it started out as “something simple and quick” and ended at two in the morning, with her eyes stabbing and her back breaking, while the girls slept in the untroubled ignorance of the young—and in their serene sureness that all her labor would end up in something Dutchy and awful. When they did love what she made, they were so surprised it infuriated her almost as much as when they hated it.

They came down at last, both looking at her with serious eyes.

“Josie cried herself to sleep the way she did last night,” Fran reported. “I sat on her bed until she stopped.”

“Damsie didn’t,” Fee said. “She played jacks on the floor. I gave her my old ones and told her she could keep them.”

Alexandra smiled. “You’ve both been very sweet with those poor little creatures,” she said, “and I’m proud of you.” She seemed to be searching for something better to say. “You’re turning into real Ivarins, both of you—it’s simply wonderful.”

“Oh, Mama,” Fran said. But this wasn’t her usual “Oh, Mama”; now the two words were surprised and shy, as if a boy had just called her beautiful.

Fee liked it too. Compliments from parents were silly, mostly, but this was different. Everything about Damsie and Josie being there was different. Different from what, she didn’t know; it just started being different when they arrived and it still was different.

“I’ll tell Papa all about the way you’ve been,” Alexandra went on. “He’ll be proud of his two girls too, I can tell you.”

“He won’t forget to write the note I have to give to Miss Mainley tomorrow, will he?” Fee asked.

“He won’t forget it, dear. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried a bit.”

She meant it, and she reminded herself that she did while she was getting ready for bed, and again in the morning when she woke up. Here it was, the morning when she was going to have to cart Damsie and Josie along to school with her, and she wasn’t nervous or worried at all.

She
was
sore at Fran for not having to take one of them to Barnett High with her, instead of sliding out of the whole thing, but that wasn’t the same as a hard knob in your stomach about what was going to happen.

At the corner where Fran had to turn off and leave her alone with them, her heart did thump a bit, and when she finally pushed Damsie and Josie through the big front door of P.S. 6, into the hall with the usual mob of kids, it thumped and banged a lot.

She had them by their hands now, and she was glad they had new clothes to wear. Their hair still was that funny yellow and their skin all pasty, but she made them take off their coats and hats right inside the door, and they did look nice in their new middies and skirts.

At the principal’s office, Fee tapped twice and at Miss Mainley’s “Yes?” she led the girls in and straight up to her, handing over Papa’s letter, and explaining who was Damsie and who Josie and that you had to say Jablonowski as if it ended uffski not owski.

“JablonUFFski,” Miss Mainley said without ado. She read Papa’s letter in a flash and shook their hands and asked what grades they were in back home in Lawrence, though she acted as if she knew herself that it was 2-B and 1-B.

Then she said, “Come along, everybody, and we’ll see where you belong.” She marched ahead out of her office, and then down the hall with Fee right at her side, and Josie and Damsie running in spurts to get caught up when they fell behind. And as they went, boys and girls in the hall had to fall back and make way for the principal and everybody with the principal, as the school rules made them do. It was delicious.