She was hurrying along, trying to avoid the splatterings, and worried over Cassie, who walked with less and less eagerness, when a boy in a white belt stepped in front of her with his arms outspread. “Watch out, lady.”
She stepped back, seeing for the first time, railroad tracks running right across the street, then saw, not twenty feet away, a train grinding toward her. The trucks and cars had been making so much noise she hadn’t heard either the signal bells or the train.
The cars, loaded mostly with rusty scrap iron, moved ever more slowly past. Cassie began to whimper and shiver with the cold. Gertie’s nose and cheeks began to sting, and in spite of the boots her feet were cold. It came to her that instead of stomping around in angry silence last Saturday when Clovis came home with her money spent and the car half full of new clothing she ought to have thanked him. The children had to have the strange heavy clothes, if on their way to school they had to stand still like this in what must be way below-zero cold. The train stopped, and Gertie wished the thing were human and she could hit it. The children were piling up like leaves against a cedar tree, and the cars and trucks were stretching out as far as a body could see, but the train stood there puffing like some great iron beast with no skin to hurt in the cold.
The children stood without complaining, accepting the train and the cold and the smoke and the smell of the cars as if they were a natural part of God’s world, all but Cassie, who stood with trembling chin and brimming eyes. Gertie realized there was something the child wanted to say, and bent her head to hear the tremulous whisper, “Please, Mom, let’s git home out a all this racket. I cain’t learn to read nohow, an I’m freezen cold.”
Gertie turned her away from the train. “Listen, honey, we’ll git goen agin pretty soon, an then you’ll see this big fine school. Law, it is th prettiest, finest place. They’ll be a gymnasium where you all can learn to do tricks an Reuben can show em how good he can play basketball, an a big fine lunch room, an a room with nothen but books, pretty books like you ain’t never seen, an a place fer Clytie to learn cooken an sewen …” She realized that both the train and the traffic were still, and that around her the children, too, were still—and listening.
She pressed Cassie’s face close against her coat, laid her hands on her scarf-wrapped ears, all the while conscious of the watching, listening children. Her glance happened on a boy, bigger than Enoch, maybe as old as Reuben, and not one of her own kind of people. There was a strange dark look about him, something sullen and mean in his face, she thought. He would, in a minute, call her hillbilly. The others would laugh as they had laughed in the alley. She stood bent protectively over the face-hidden Cassie, her glance more beseeching than commanding as it went round the half-circle of silent, watching children. She looked longest at the boy, begging him for his silence. But his black eyes stared back into her gray ones, his eyes accusing, condemning, she thought, as if she had committed the unpardonable sin. He continued to stare at her, condemn her, all the while he was taking off one ripped leather glove, then searching through his jacket pockets. He found at last what he hunted, and only now taking his glance from Gertie, he stepped up to Cassie and tapped her on the shoulder.
“Here, little girl, is something nice,” and he pushed two tiny paper-wrapped squares into the hand that clutched Gertie’s coat. He bent and put his face close to Cassie’s pressed down one as he said: “It’s gum, little girl. My mom gimme ut, bubble gum. Chew ut, and don’t be afraid, little girl. Kinnergarden is nice.”
And behind the boy and all around him were little calls like the twittering of birds. “Don’t be scared, little girl. Miss Vashinski, her real nice. Youse don’t do nutten in dere but play allatime. We singed lotsa songs.” And somewhere a voice unknown but familiar: “Don’t be afeared, honey. Good little youngens don’t never git no spankens in kinnergarten.”
Cassie did not lift her face, but one hand let go its grip on Gertie to close over the red wrapped chunky squares, and disappear between Cassie and her mother’s coat.
The boy smiled at Gertie, a triumphant smile that washed all the sullenness away, and now he looked like a tired and sleepy child, maybe no more than nine years old. In a moment he did lift his arms and yawn with a long stretching, but his face was accusing again when he said in a careful whisper, “Butcha oughtn’t to tell her such big lies, lady. S’no way to start um out. I hadda time uth Xavier all on account I lied to um.”
Gertie in spite of her shivers smiled. “You took him to kindergarden, I bet, fer yer mama.”
“Naw, nursery school. Pop’s a waist gunner in u Pacific. Mom works du seven-to-three shift way over at Grigg’s Nummer Ten.” His eyes grew bright with pride. “Her runs one a them big presses, good as a man. Her got in fourteen hours overtime last week.”
The train was moving again, and he took Cassie’s hand. “Rita, her goes to school, first grade, morning shift, but Xavier and Mary, I gotta take to nursery school on account a Mom, her leaves too early. Xavier, he start crying da first morning I took um. ‘Mom, her’ull be back an gitcha right away,’ I tells du kid. Mom hadda work overtime. I hadda go to da store after school. I never got du kids till five o’clock. Next morning when I try to leave, Xavier, he grab my leg, wrap his arms around it and wouldn’t leggo. Nutten shadup his screaming—gum, sour-balls, nutten.”
“Ain’t it awful cold on a little youngen so early in th mornen?” Gertie asked. “Here, th stars ud still be bright as midnight.”
“Stars?” the boy said. “I put plenty clothes on um.”
The train broke apart at last, and the little boy in the white belt waved them forward. Gertie went on, the wide-bottomed split basket riding above the bobbing heads of the children, who flooded out across the tracks and overflowed the walk, with many wading knee-deep in the slush by the road. She searched anxiously over their heads, hunting out her own, but could find no one of the three, and wanted to go faster but could not for the press of children.
She wanted to ask the boy what was the lie she had told, but the hurrying, crowding children gave her little chance to talk, not even when they were stopped again by more boys in white belts, stationed where they were to cross the wide through street. She began shivering again; maybe it was the cold, maybe it was the fear. Crossing the tracks had been easy, but here it looked as if they could never cross. Cars, trucks, gasoline tank trailers, many-wheeled Diesel-powered steel carriers, busses, all had piled up waiting on the other side of the railroad crossing, and were now going again, speeding to make up for the lost time, a roaring, belching, smoking, steaming river on wheels. She looked hopefully about for a signal light or a policeman on a corner, like in the story book, but there was neither.
At last the train-dammed traffic thinned. The little boys crept further and further into the street, and soon the children surged across. They hurried between a mighty truck with wheels higher than their heads pulling two red tank trailers with the word Danger on their sides, and a stubby-nosed thirty-two-wheeled steel carrier loaded with one great round of steel lashed down with ropes big as Gertie’s wrist.
The boy still kept his grip on Cassie and, as they crossed the street and went through the deep slush at the curbs, Gertie realized that he didn’t have high rubber boots like her own and most of the other children. His leather ones were old and cracked. Plainly they would not hold out water, and the laces were not stout rawhide but broken strings. Still, he had money for gum. Shoestrings didn’t cost any more than a package of gum; maybe there wasn’t money for both. She glanced at Cassie clutching the gum as if it had been the little hickory doll. It was of course better to spend money for shoestrings than for gum, but—
The “but” still troubled her when, after walking for what seemed a long while by traffic-crowded streets, they stopped again for another crossing and she looked about her at the children. She saw here and there a child shivering in an old coat or ragged overalls. There were red mittenless hands and unbooted feet in low shoes that were not new. She gave a sl
ow headshake of wonderment. There couldn’t be any poor people, not real poor, in Detroit when they were making men come out of the back hills to work in Detroit’s factories. This boy, now, there ought to be lots of money in his house, money from the army and the factory job too. Maybe it was like she’d heard her mother say when somebody pitied Meg; factory workers, coal miners, and such were a shiftless, spendthrift tribe.
An old man with a bad limp helped the boys stop the traffic here, for with no bumpy railroad tracks to slow them down the wheeled things flew ever faster. Gertie then went down a narrow side street, bordered by low factory buildings on one side, and on the other by a row of little ramshackle paint peeling houses crowded close together, but with the look of homes.
She turned another corner, and all unconscious of the children pressing round her, the boy pulling on Cassie’s hand, Gertie stopped in the snow and stared. High above the river of bobbing heads she saw a flag, clean with a golden tassel, flying straight out in the northern wind like a flag painted on tin. Below the flag she saw a black roof streaked with snow, and under the roof two rows of empty windows set in the dark soot-stained walls of a two-story brick building that rose high and straight out of the dirty, trampled, paper-littered snow. The bit of yard was separated from the street by a high iron fence, like the fences she had heard were about penitentiaries.
Getting closer, she saw that by the big building, so low she had not at first noticed them, were two little flimsy-looking houses. Built of gray painted wood, they made her think of the makeshift railroad workers’ houses she had seen in the Valley. As she walked past them to the main building, she saw a window broken and mended with a board, walls spattered with mud and dirty snow, and under the eaves of one, not much higher than her head, a piece of gutter pipe loose and creaking in the wind. “Dem’s a portables—du kids in shifts goes in um,” the boy explained, and pulled Cassie onward.
Gertie’s eyes jumped back and forth across the strip of trampled snow that made the school yard. There must be a tree. One tree for the children to see come spring, some flowering bushes, like the mock orange they’d set by Deer Lick School when she was a girl, some flowers, something. They went up steps, through a door into a hall tracked with snow water and filled with children and the smell of coal smoke. In front of her were steps going up and steps going down, and she hesitated. Somewhere a bell clanged that made her think of the railroad signal bells, and the boy said, “We’re almost tardy on account a du train.” He pulled his hand from Cassie and looked back at Gertie before plunging into the stream of children. “Yu can’t go no place tilla kids is ina home rooms. One a dem girls,” and he pointed to a tall girl with a band on her arm, “can show where isa kinnergarten.”
The sea swallowed him, and as Gertie stood pressed against the wall a growing uneasiness laid hold of her. Maybe the others had got lost on the way; but that, she told herself, could have happened no more than if they had been logs coming down a swift smooth river. She was glad of the gloves she wore. Cassie, clinging to her still, couldn’t feel the clamminess of her hands as she thought of Enoch in the alley and the word “hillbilly” in the railroad station. If she could go for them all, but especially for Cassie, she … Someone touched her arm, and she saw it was the tall girl to whom the boy had pointed, and she was smiling, friendly-like.
“Yu Mrs. Nevels that want’s to enter u kid in kinnergarden?”
Gertie nodded, and when the stream of children had thinned somewhat she followed the girl across the hall into a large room where she saw many little chairs and tables, a fireplace, and a piano. But mostly she saw children, all kinds and colors and shapes. Seemed like there were more little youngens in this place than in all White Lily voting precinct back home.
Slowly, with the girl making a path for her, and Cassie clinging to her hand, Gertie made her way through the children. She was at last stopped completely by the great swarm about two women by the desk, and she stood throwing quick, searching glances at the women. One, dressed in dark blue, was small and old with gray hair. She had a nice smile and looked to be a good woman. It was hard to say about the other. Her hair was curled and her face painted, and worse, she wore long earrings that Gertie saw when she got closer were shaped into little birds, with blue jewel-like eyes, swinging from a vine. The birds were swinging as the woman bent her head above a little boy, and Gertie realized that the little boy and not the teachers was the center of attention, for all the children crowding round looked at him. The painted teacher was bent above him, saying, “We’re so happy to have you with us, Garcia. Garcia—is that right?”
But the boy, dark-haired, dark-eyed, small, dressed all in clean new clothes, neither smiled nor answered. He only studied the swinging silver birds with bright bird-like eyes, and the faded teacher watching smiled, a kind of sighing smile. “I think we’d better try to get him into a special school. He doesn’t understand a word.”
But the other, younger, shook her head until the birds flew past her cheeks. “His family would never send him. A neighbor brought him. His mother works the day shift. He understands. I know he understands—a little.”
She turned toward Gertie when the tall girl said, calling across the heads of the children, “Miss Vashinski, this is Mrs. Nevels.”
The tall girl went away. The older woman went to the other side of the room, gathering children on the way so that the group thinned enough for Gertie to reach the desk. She swallowed, gripping Cassie’s hand. In a moment she too would have to leave. The painted lips smiled at her briefly. The silver birds jangled as the yellow curls bent above Cassie. “How nice, to have a great big girl like you.”
Cassie was silent, her glance leaping from high-piled yellow curls to silver birds to red fingernails. Miss Vashinski saw the gum twisting in the mittened fingers. “And when you first come, we let you chew your gum. Wouldn’t you like to unwrap it?”
Cassie loosened her grip on Gertie, and took the gum in both hands.
“If you take off your mittens you can do it better,” Miss Vashinski said.
Cassie was lifting the gum to Gertie for holding while she took off her mittens when there came a soft, hesitant, half questioning, half pleading, “Chicle?”
Miss Vashinski turned quickly. The other woman, in the midst of a lip-fingered sh-sh, heard above what seemed to Gertie a thousand children’s voices, for she too turned quickly, smiling, nodding, when Miss Vashinski said, pleased as if she’d found a wad of gold, “Garcia has spoken.”
Garcia, on hearing his name, looked up, but his eyes came back to the gum. He made Gertie think of a diddle, run with the mother hen all summer, knowing only her call, stopping for the first time to study an apron folded up with corn, and consider, making at last the first step to come alone for corn. “Why don’t ye give him one piece, Cassie?” Gertie asked handing back the gum into the now bare hands.
Cassie hesitated, then unwrapped the gum with her awkward fingers that had never before unwrapped gum. She gave her sudden quick smile, and handed one piece to Garcia, while a dozen or so children who had unburdened themselves of the other teacher’s sh-shushing, drifted back to make a watching circle. “Thank you for the gum, Cassie,” Miss Vashinski said. There came a little chorus of children’s voices, well behaved voices, as if they were doing what they thought they should do, “Thank you for the gum, Cassie,” though in and out through the chorus were cries and comments, “Can he bubble it?” “Mom, her bringed me a whole package frum u shop.”
And one, a little girl with what Gertie thought must be a permanent wave and what she knew was a dirty rayon dress with no petticoat under it, seized Miss Vashinski’s hand. “Yu fingernail polish—it’s like wot Mom’s got.” Another, jealous, cried, “M’mudder’s got u same kind u perm’nent.” A blue-eyed little boy with almost no front teeth tweaked her smock, begging, “Miss Vashinski, please, wear du yellow boid dress.”
“I am your away-from-home mother, children,” Miss Vashinski said. “Now, please go back to your s
eats. Mrs. White is waiting,” and as one hand began a gentle but determined pushing of a T-shirt-clad shoulder, the other picked up a pink card. The quick eyes, calculating, Gertie thought, not matching the red lips or the yellow curls, flicked over Garcia chewing his gum with an expert rolling motion not devoid of sound, then Cassie, chewing experimentally, slowly, as if constantly reminding her tongue not to swallow. The child’s shoulder moved away from the hand. The hand went into the big pocket of the bright smock, came out with a fountain pen. The eyes flicked Gertie while the head flipped toward Cassie, “Name?”
Gertie hesitated. “Keziah Marie—but generally we call her Cassie. … She don’t give much promise a liven up to her namesake.”
“Namesake?”
“Yes—you know, that other Keziah was among th fairest in th land.”
“Oh,” Miss Vashinski hurried down the list of questions while Gertie put on her desk Cassie’s birth certificate and the little papers showing she had had her shots from County Health.
“Good,” Miss Vashinski said. “It’s nice you had your doctor do all that. Now Cassie won’t have to start in a strange school with a sore arm.”
She talked rapidly, and her voice was filled with the hard sharp sounds Gertie had heard since coming to Detroit. School seemed broken into two hard pieces, “skoo-oal,” and doctor seemed almost “doct-tork,” but not quite. It was all so strange, that Gertie was silent, first getting what the woman had said into her head, then straightening her own answer in her mind—that all a body had to do in Kentucky was send their youngens to school the day the County Health people came. Then she happened to look toward Cassie and Garcia, and forgot everything she had meant to say.