Mrs. Anderson smiled. “You’re just jealous. Don’t you know, Max, that every woman, that is, every American woman, dreams of the day when she’ll own—”
“Yu mean have in her kitchen,” Max said, lighting a cigarette. “Nobody in this alley owns nothen. When they get most a th payments made on something, it breaks down an they hafta trade it in on some more crap.”
“Now, Max,” Mrs. Anderson said, still smiling a strange Whit-like smile, “you’re un-American—or else you don’t listen to the radio. Every woman dreams of a ten-cubic-foot Icy Heart in her kitchen—Icy Heart power—Icy Heart. We must hurry up and win the war so we can all go out and buy Icy Hearts.” She had stopped, trying to remember. “Last summer I knew it by heart; Mrs. Bommarita had the Icy Heart program on every day.”
“I hope she’s not listening to th news today,” Max interrupted. “It’s awful. A couple a them generals must have went on a drunk in Paris an left th war to run itself. Her man, he’s a waist gunner.”
“It’s the infantry that’s so hard hit,” Mrs. Anderson said. “Sophronie has a brother somewhere over there in the infantry. I hope she isn’t listening.”
“She ain’t got time,” Max said. “I hope Whit got her what she wanted. She’d set her heart on a housecoat she seen ina window at American Credit.”
“With flounces and lots of gold?” Mrs. Anderson asked.
Max nodded, glad. “He must a got it. Full-skirted, swishy?”
“You mean,” Mrs. Anderson asked, “she actually wants the kind of housecoat he gives her? But what in the world does a woman in her—in her station—”
Max dropped her arms from a long child-like yawn, smiled at Mrs. Anderson. “You’ve got me, kid, but she wears it, not me. Why did Jesus change water into wine? Water is a lot more healthful. Besides, you can wash your face in it, and it’s cheaper, my pop used to say when Mom would quarrel a little because he’d brought home wine in th middle a th week steda just on Saturday night.”
“Was your father a minister?” Mrs. Anderson asked.
“I don’t remember that he ever called himself that but once or twice. I remember once somewhere down in North Carolina—it was spring and he wanted to stop awhile on the way north so he turned off on a gravel road. And somehow he said something to a farmer made the man think Pop could castrate pigs. The farmer begged and begged him. He thought Pop wouldn’t do it on account he didn’t have no money. So Pop castrated. He’d never done it, and Mom fussed and said he oughtn’t to do it, for after he’d done the first pigs a lot a other farmers come. They paid us in hams, the best hams, an eggs an dried apples, and fresh-caught trout. Did you ever eat fresh-caught, fresh-fried trout with real young tender …”
“But, Max, what did your father say or do?” Mrs. Anderson cried in an agony of curiosity.
“Why, he said, ‘Thank you,’ I guess.”
“I mean about being a minister or something.”
“Oh. When Mom complained because he castrated pigs when he’d hardly ever been close to a pig, he said, ‘Good lady, I minister to th wants and needs of all mankind.’ Yu want it for Homer?”
Mrs. Anderson shook her head, and was suddenly interested in the whereabouts of Georgie, while Gertie asked. “Did his pigs do all right?”
Max nodded, and Mrs. Anderson sighed heavily. “But Max, was he a preacher, like in a church?”
“I don’t remember but once or twice, when we was real hard up. Once in West Virginia, by a mining town—th mines was running, but Pop couldn’t mine—we’d even run outa gas, so he preached onu rich man going to heaven through that needle’s eye. It made them pore miners feel good, I recken. Th money come rollen in, but he didn’t like to take it; he said …”
Her words were drowned by Mrs. Daly’s calling from Gertie’s doorway. “It works—he fixed a motor. Can yu imagine?”
Clytie behind her, all in a jiggle of excitement, was begging: “Come an see it, Mom. It’s worken. Can I do a washen?”
Enoch, who had been pushing the wagon with Amos in it, heard and ran back to the house screaming, “Lemme see! Lemme see!”
Wheateye, who had overturned her doll buggy in the snow while fleeing from snowballs, took up the cry of, “Lemme see, lemme see,” and came running, as did the other children, who had by now marched down the other alley, around, and home again. Gertie got as far as the second step, but got stopped by the crowding children, and when Sophronie’s Gilbert came running, his skate blade striking her shoe, she came down again and stood with Max and Mrs. Anderson. The three women by the house wall made an island of stillness among the eddying children, running now from distant alleys, drawn by the cries of, “Lemme see.” “What is ut?” “Somethen for free?” Still others heard Mrs. Daly call across the alley to Mrs. Bommarita, “Come and seedu Icy Heart.”
“Don’t let it freeze the eggs an frostbite th lettuce,” Max said with a shiver. “They’re powerful things, them Icy Hearts.”
“Maybe I’m jealous,” Mrs. Anderson said, “but I don’t like stuff so cold. Casimir does wake the baby and track in dirt, but an icebox was all we had in Muncie,” and her voice grew warm, warmer than when she spoke of her children. “It stays on the back porch. I guess it is inconvenient, but we have the nicest back porch. There’s a big maple—we have a big old frame house on the edge of town—right by the porch, too close, Homer thinks; he plans to have it pruned when we go back. But in summer the porch is always cool and shady, and in the fall, when you go out for the milk, the red and yellow leaves are all plastered on the floor, and it smells a little like the woods.”
“Mornens last fall when I’d go to th spring, th poplar leaves they’d be plastered thick,” Gertie said in a low voice.
“We seen th poplars yellow once up in th West Virginia hills,” Max said. “But once in October, in Ohio someplace—I know Cleveland wasn’t so far away—oh, them maples then. I remember Pop got us right in under one. Th leaves fell all over th roof—an he set ina door drinking coffee an watched um fall half th morning.”
“Max,” Mrs. Anderson asked, after a polite pause to make certain the girl was finished, “I was wondering the other day, where is—or was—your home and people?”
Max dropped her cigarette, clasped her gloved hands in front of her, and, like a child relating a thing learned so well there can never be a forgetting, said: “From Earth, Lord, I come. That’s one of the smaller planets; you would know it as a sister of Venus.” She choked and turned toward her door, remembered, whirled back, and looked at Gertie as she asked, her voice hoarse: “A dream? I gotta have a dream; that’s what I came out for.”
“Cedar,” Gertie said, realizing that through all the hubbub she’d heard a small child’s troubled weeping. She found it on the other side of her stoop step, apparently lost. She picked it up and held it on her hip. It at once left off crying and began licking a purple sucker that had been stuck to the red plastic fish it carried.
Max was repeating, questioning the word, “Cedar?”
Gertie explained. “A little peaked cedar like grows by th creek on a limestone ledge. You know how they look fore sunrise on a summer mornen, with mebbe a little spider web er two, all white with dew.”
Max’s gum was still between her front teeth while she considered. “Yeah? Kinda. I’ll take it. Seems like it was cedars we saw so much in Arkansas—but I don’t remember any dew. Cedar’s enough, though. I’ve gotta scram. Victor might wake ’fore I’m gone. I gotta be at work by two o’clock, an I want Christmas dinner first.”
Mrs. Anderson clucked in sympathy. “What a shame they make you work on Christmas day—and not get to eat at home.”
Max was hoarse again as she turned away. “It wouldn’t seem like home, dinner at home on Christmas day. Victor’s mom’s gonna have a fit when I don’t show up. But I couldn’t take it—all them Poles together, knowen one another, talken u same lingo. I would be lonesome then.” She looked back, her eyes lingering on Gertie like one lonesome now. “I found a girl that
wanted to be off—claims she’s got kids. But I figger she wants to give her boy friend—her man’s inu marines—a real good Christmas—present. Cedar, cedar,” and she went running up her steps.
Gertie looked about for someone who knew the child, though on her hip it seemed contented enough. There were plenty of children. Some satisfied with seeing, ran down the steps, bumping into others running up. There was a deal of shoving, joggling, and good-humored pitching of soft snowballs, while others pounded drums or blew horns. Most were also eating—candy, bananas, cookies, apples, oranges, and raw carrots. Wheateye, holding a bottle of pop in one hand, a horn in the other, the horn hand cradling her doll and one long spear of celery, divided her attention between blowing, taking little bites of celery and offering the doll the strings, and drinking, then handing the doll dainty nips from the bottle. At times she would wave the bottle and the horn and cry, “Da biggest icebox ya ever seed—thirteen cubic feet an it costed a thousand dollars.”
The tide was thinning, the cries of “Lemme see,” and “What’s cooken?” were giving place to comments, many admiring, some belittling. “We’ve got a bigger one dan dat.” “Who’d want a old secondhand junk heap?” “We’re gonna buy a brand-new one soon’s the war’s over.” And a jeering voice from a strange alley, “Dem hillbillies, dey come up here an get all da money in Detroit.”
Mrs. Anderson, listening, nodded as over a page in a book. “That interests Homer a lot. He’s working on his Ph.D. thesis in sociology, you know: The Patterns of Racial and Religious Prejudice and Persecution in Industrial Detroit.” Gertie blinked, and Mrs. Anderson went on more rapidly. “That,” and she nodded toward Mrs. Daly coming out the door, “interests him a lot. Almost nothing has been written about the hatred of the foreigner for many of our native-born Americans whose religion and social customs are different from his own. He’s always finding evidence of it; it’s interesting.”
“Bein th evidence ain’t so interesten,” Gertie said, smoothing back the child’s hair. She had such pretty hair, black and curly, soft, curly as Callie Lou’s. She looked up as Max’s door opened and Max hurried away, calling over her shoulder, “Come out good; no sevens.”
Mrs. Daly heard and asked, “Does she still pick her numbers from da dream book?”
Timmy Daly looked up, wonderingly. “Where’d her getta slip? Casimir ain’t sellen ice today.”
And Mrs. Anderson, with the puzzled look of a woman stepping into a fog at noon of a bright sunny day, asked her sharp, breathless questions: “Why did she want a number? Oh, dear, I wasn’t listening. Why did she want a dream? And what does Casimir …”
“Such a fine icebox, Mrs. Nevels. I hope to be getting a bigger one soon. But it’s like I tell Maggie, if I don’t never save a down payment maybe du old can do till u war’s over and dey’ll take it fudu down payment. And Maggie, when she’s married, will have a fine new one with a freezer chest all u way acrost u top like one I seen in u magazine.” She caught the mouth-open, wanting to ask questions glance of Mrs. Anderson, and hurried on: “Oh, how come I could forget it. I wanta tell youse about Maggie’s Christmas present—two towels, pure linen, hand-monogrammed for her hope chest.” She picked up the baby’s sucker, fallen onto the snow, and put it back into its mouth, saying, “Du snow was clean.” She turned again to Mrs. Anderson, emphasizing her words with nods: “Nobody, but nobody, can never say to my Maggie, ‘Yu had no dowry; yu’ve brought not one stitch u linen tuyu marriage.’ She’ll have it. Linen, all pure linen, Christmas, birthdays since she was born—always one piece, two this Christmas, u linen, pure linen. Such …”
Georgie screamed from somewhere down the alley. Mrs. Anderson had to hurry away, but Mrs. Daly lingered a moment, looking after her. “Books and schooling, nutten all her life but books an schooling—no wonder she don’t know nutten. Does she think Casimir makes his liven out u ice?”
Mrs. Daly, afraid her baby would get chilled, hurried home. Gertie started down the alley to hunt the owner of the child, a dark eyed little girl about two years old. She knew that she had never until now seen the child, yet she seemed strangely familiar. She was standing hesitant near the end of the alley, when Cassie came running, laughing, one hand outstretched. But instead of the witch child’s hand she held an envelope smudged with licorice candy. “Lookee, Mom, what that nice bubble-gum boy gimme, a Christmas card all for me.” She opened the envelope to show the wonders of a fat red-cheeked Santa Claus with big-eyed reindeer that looked like horned calves.
Gertie admired the card, held it up for the little child to see. She made a sound and held out her hand for it. Cassie, really looking at her for the first time, asked, “Mom, how come you’ve got Mable?”
“Mable?”
“Uhuh, her’s th bubble-gum boy’s kid sister. His mom hadda work today. He’s hunten her now. Lemme take her home. She walks good.”
Mable wanted down, and went away with Cassie while Cassie talked to her of Santa Claus and reindeer. Gertie stood a moment, smiling as she watched them go. At last she turned slowly back to her own door. She saw, at the foot of her sidewalk, the red wagon, no good for playing in the snow, and so deserted by her boys. She tried not to think of the twelve dollars the flimsy thing had cost as she walked past it. On the stoop she lingered a moment, hand on the storm-door knob. The alley was deserted for the moment, even by the sparrows. Still, her searching glance went over it; maybe behind some other door she might find the things not found behind her own.
Standing so, she heard the whirrity glug of the washing machine, Bing Nolan gargling away on “Silent Night” on the radio, and then, more loudly, Clytie’s outraged quarreling. Gertie hurried into the kitchen when she heard enough to learn that whatever it was it had been done by “that mean, mean Cassie.” She saw then the bit of shiny blue rayon in Clytie’s hands as she held it up for her father to see. “Look, Pop, what that mean youngen’s went an done. She’s cut up th dress off’n that fine new Christmas doll and stuck it on a little ole makeshift doll Mom whittled fer her ’fore we left home.”
Gertie saw that the fine blue cloth was draped about the little hickory doll, the “golden child” she had whittled by the Tipton Spring. She stood a moment looking, her eyes warm as if a sparrow had pecked a crumb from her hand. Both Clytie and Clovis, she realized, were looking at her with disapproval. Tightening her apron about her, she turned resolutely toward the Icy Heart to begin the last part of the Christmas dinner preparations.
While Clovis quarreled about the ravished doll, her own thoughts of Cassie demanding scissors helped her through the dinner getting. She felt sorry for Clovis. He looked so bleary-eyed and tired. He’d been getting less overtime since going on the midnight shift. But he was slow about learning to sleep in the daytime, and he’d spent a lot of his sleep time pushing his way through the hot, overcrowded, smelly department-store basements hunting Christmas for them all.
She kept her silence, but lost the warm-eyed look when, during the dinner that had cost so much, Clovis upbraided her ignorance of turkey cookery. Hemmed as it had been in the too small oven, the turkey had burned on the outside, scorching the breast meat, but they all came near gagging when Clovis cut into a thigh joint and blood ran out.
The real butter, that was to have been a Christmas treat with hot biscuit, had got so hard and cold from its stay in the Icy Heart that it refused to melt even on the hottest of biscuit, and butter and biscuit were chilled together. Clytie had the lettuce in the wrong place, and it was frozen. Reuben complained the milk was so cold it hurt his teeth. Clytie blamed it on Enoch, who’d turned down the cold controls; Enoch was angry; and Clovis turned sorrowful because the Icy Heart, like Cassie’s new doll and the other things he’d bought, was unappreciated.
NINETEEN
SOMEHOW THE DINNER WAS finished, the dishes done, and one by one Clovis and the children either went to sleep during the afternoon or settled into quietness by the radio. Gertie had, some time ago, promised herself a Christmas gift. She would, she
had decided, pleasure herself on Christmas afternoon with working again on the block of wood. But with all the children home there was so little room, and anyway she would feel guilty now, she thought, if she wasted time on the man in the wood when she could be making money by whittling out a Christ on a cross for Victor.
In order to escape somewhat from the radio and the heat, for she had put the turkey back for a further cooking, she stood by the storm door with the inner door open behind her. The pane broken by the Dalys let in a stream of cold air, and brought in but little noise, for the alley seemed deserted now of children.
There were only the Meanwell boys and a few of the Dalys, and even these were strangely quiet as they played a friendly game of forts and snowballs.
Gertie was yawning over the dull work of shaping the cross, absentmindedly listening to the boys, when she heard Gilbert Meanwell cry: “Please, Miz Bommarita, we won’t hitcha house an steps no more. They won’t break nothen nohow. We ain’t usen no hard balls.”
There was so much apprehension and piteous begging in Gilbert’s usually untroubled voice that Gertie, troubled for the child, stuck her head around the door and looked into the alley. She saw Mrs. Bommarita cross the alley and start up the Meanwell steps. Gilbert sprang in front of her, and stood on the stoop. “They ain’t no use to knock. They ain’t nobody home. We won’t throw no more. Honest.” And the boy, cringing against the door, looked up at the large and angry woman as if he were afraid.