The Dollmaker

  The woman opened the cupboard door and gave a slight backward nod as if to indicate that she had heard. Gertie watched as she lifted carefully off a paper-wrapped hanger a long dark green coat. She held the coat for an instant at arm’s length, turning it slowly, inspecting it. She found something on a sleeve which she lifted off with the fingertips of one pale bright-nailed hand. She then put one arm into the coat, crooked the arm, and studied the coat over it for possible specks. The hand of the coated arm took the purse while she went through the same careful procedure with the other sleeve, then tied and buttoned the coat.

  Gertie moved a step nearer and stood by the desk. The woman was now taking a dark green felt hat from a shelf and did not look around when Gertie said, “I come to talk to you about my youngen—boy.”

  Mrs. Whittle, with a crinkling hiss of paper, was removing the hat from a green paper sack. “You’ll have to hurry,” she said, her voice somehow matching the paper. “It’s late and I’ve been reaching and talking to mothers all afternoon.”

  “Th slip my youngens brung home said th teachers ud talk to atter school,” Gertie said, speaking with difficulty, chocked up at being forced to speak to the woman’s back.

  Mrs. Whittle put the hat an instant on her head while she folded the bag and laid it upon the shelf. She then took the hat carefully between the tips of her fingers, and bending so as to get her face exactly in the center of a mirror affixed to the door, eased the hat gently onto the bright hair so that no one of the close-coiled ringlets was disturbed. The business required her utmost concentration, and she could not speak again until the hat was on and she was opening her purse, looking into it. “The child’s name?” she asked, bringing out her lipstick, turning again to the mirror.

  “Reuben—Reuben Nevels.”

  Mrs. Whittle gave no sign that she had heard. The lipstick needed even more time and concentration than the hat. Gertie came round to the end of the desk, tried to see the woman’s eyes in the mirror, but saw only their lids drooping over the eyes fastened onto the mirrored slowly shaping mouth. The precise red bow was finished at last. Mrs. Whittle turned, looked briefly at Gertie, then spoke as she opened the desk drawer, and took out gloves, “Well, what is the matter? Did your child fail to pass? A percentage do, you know.”

  “No, he passed,” Gertie said, fighting to keep her voice smooth. “But—but you’re his …” She had forgotten the name, the kind of teacher. “You’ve got him more’n th other teachers, an you’ll keep on a haven him an …”

  “Are you trying to say that I’m his home-room teacher?” Mrs. Whittle asked, drawing on a glove.

  Gertie nodded.

  “Well, what is the matter?” She was smoothing the drawn-on gloves finger by finger now.

  “He—he don’t seem to be a doen so good—not in his home room. He ain’t happy; he don’t like school, an I thought mebbe …”

  Her words, though halting and stumbling as they were, caused Mrs. Whittle to glance up from the second glove, and for the first time the two women looked at each other. Mrs. Whittle smiled, the red mouth widening below the old woman’s angry glaring eyes. “And of course it’s his teacher’s fault your child is unhappy. Now just what do you expect me to do to make him happy?”

  “That’s what I come to ask you,” Gertie said. “He kinda likes his other classes, an back home he was …”

  “Back home,” Mrs. Whittle said, as if she hated the words, her voice low, hissing, like a thin whip coming hard through the air, but not making much noise. “You hill—southerners who come here, don’t you realize before you come that it will be a great change for your children? For the better, of course, but still a change. You bring them up here in time of war to an overcrowded part of the city and it makes for an overcrowded school. Don’t you realize,” she went on, looking again at Gertie, looking at her as if she alone were responsible for it all, “that until they built this wartime housing—I presume you live there—I never had more than thirty-two children in my section—and only one section.” She opened her purse. “Now I have two sections—two home rooms, one in the morning with forty-three children, one in the afternoon with forty-two—many badly adjusted like your own—yet you expect me to make your child happy in spite of …” Words seemed inadequate, and she was silent while she reached into her purse.

  “But I’ve got three more in school, an they git along an—”

  “What did you say your name was?”

  “Nevels. My boy’s name is Reuben. Maybe you don’t recollect him, but—”

  “I don’t what?” And she frowned as she might have at a child giving the wrong answer.

  “‘Recollect,’ I said,” Gertie answered.

  “Does that mean ‘remember’?”

  When Gertie continued to stand in choked silence staring down at her, she went on, after taking a bunch of keys from her purse and closing it. “I do remember now—too well. Your children came up for discussion in faculty meeting the other day.” She stopped to select a key, a small steel-colored one. “The others have, I understand, adjusted quite well, especially the younger boy and the older girl, but Reuben—I remember him,” and she looked up from locking a desk drawer, toward a back seat in the row farthest from her desk and the windows. She looked down, choosing another key, then bent to the other drawer. “He has not adjusted. His writing is terrible—he’s messy; quite good in math but his spelling is terrible. I’m giving him a U in conduct because he just won’t get along with other children.”

  “He warn’t bad to fight,” Gertie said to the woman’s back, for she had turned now to lock the cupboard doors.

  “I have had one mother complain most bitterly. Her son had a toy gun. He was talking to Reuben, teasing him a little perhaps. You know how children tease—learning to take it is a part of their adjustment to life.” She took out a ring holding car keys. “Reuben lost his temper—he’s forever sullen with a chip on his shoulder—and bragged to the other boy that he wouldn’t have a toy gun.” She shook one drawer to make certain it was locked, shook the other, but looked at Gertie the better to emphasize her revelations. “He bragged he had a real gun all his own, and that he’d taken it off in the woods and hunted alone and that once he’d seen a bear. He never tried to kill it, just shot at it and it ran away, the boy said Reuben said. The boy, of course, called him a liar, and Reuben—are you certain he is only twelve years old?—slapped him down. The mother came to me. I told her to go to the principal.” She turned toward the door, jingling the car keys impatiently.

  Gertie’s face was pale. Her wide mouth was a straight line above her square, outthrust chin, her big hands gripped into fists until the knuckle bones showed white, her voice husky, gasping with the effort to keep down all that rose within her. “Reuben warn’t lyen. He’s had a rifle since he was ten years old. They’re bear an deer clost to our place back home. We’re right nigh the edge of a gover’ment game preserve. One year the deer eat up my late corn.”

  She drew a long shivering breath. “I don’t want any a my youngens ever a playen with a toy gun, a pointen it at one another, an a usen em fer walken canes er enything. Some day when they’ve got a real gun they’ll fergit—an use it like a toy.”

  Mrs. Whittle smiled. “Your psychology, and your story, too, are—well—interesting and revealing, but …” She stepped into the hall. “I see no point in carrying this discussion further. He will have to adjust.”

  “Adjust?” Gertie strode ahead, turned and looked at the woman.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Whittle said, walking past her. “That is the most important thing, to learn to live with others, to get along, to adapt one’s self to one’s surroundings.”

  “You teach them that here?” Gertie asked in a low voice, looking about the dark, ugly hall.

  “Of course. It is for children—especially children like yours—the most important thing—to learn to adjust.”

  “You mean,” Gertie asked—she was pulling her knuckle joints now—“that you’re a teac
hen my youngens so’s that, no matter what comes, they—they can live with it.”

  Mrs. Whittle nodded. “Of course.”

  Gertie cracked a knuckle joint. “You mean that when they’re through here, they could—if they went to Germany—start gitten along with Hitler, er if they went to—Russia, they’d git along there, they’d act like th Russians an be”—Mr. Daly’s word was slow in coming—“communists—an if they went to Rome they’d start worshipen th pope?”

  “How dare you?” Mrs. Whittle was shrill. “How dare you twist my words so, and refer to a religion on the same plane as communism? How dare you?”

  “I was jist asken about adjustments,” Gertie said, the words coming more easily, “an what it means.”

  “You know perfectly well I mean no such thing.” Mrs. Whittle bit her freshly lipsticked lips. “The trouble is,” she went on, “you don’t want to adjust—and Reuben doesn’t either.”

  “That’s part way right,” Gertie said, moving past her to the stairs. “But he cain’t hep th way he’s made. It’s a lot more trouble to roll out steel—an make it like you want it—than it is biscuit dough.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  SATURDAY, REUBEN HAD HELPED Gilbert and several of the bigger boys build a snow fort and had seemed to enjoy himself, as he did later in the afternoon when he went with them to a movie and saw a Western with much riding, shooting, and screaming of women, Gertie gathered from Enoch’s description. He came home from the bus trip to Sunday school almost talkative. There was a gymnasium in the basement of the church, and his teacher was organizing another basketball squad, and it looked as if he would get to play center. His good humor lasted through Monday noon, for he had his special classes such as art, music and social studies of mornings now. But Monday afternoon brought silence and the slamming of the door.

  Tuesday was even worse, his sullenness never lifting from breakfast on. Gertie, seeing the hurt under his still anger, tried to think of things to say, but could think of nothing. Wednesday he was home strangely soon, a good five minutes before the others, red-faced, unable to speak, hurrying like a chased wild animal to his room, then slamming the door. Clytie, coming next, was hardly through the kitchen door before she jumped into a long breathless account of what Reuben had done. He’d cut through the swampy vacant land by the railroad tracks instead of sticking to the patrol route, crossed streets where he wasn’t supposed to cross, and walked by the tracks and that was against all rules; now he’d get reported and maybe have to go to the principal’s office.

  Gertie was silent, trying hard to iron and not show by her face she couldn’t blame the boy. Her own feet cried for a path, earth instead of dirty ice-covered cement. Enoch came soon after, his story much like Clytie’s. He had seen Reuben turn off the sidewalk into the forbidden path through the vacant lot, had heard him sass the patrol boy who called to him to get back onto the sidewalk; and now he’d get a licking from the principal, a real good one, all the kids said; and Enoch’s eyes sparkled in anticipation of the story he could tell of how the principal licked his big brother.

  Gertie said only, “Be quiet, now; you’ll be a waken your pop.”

  However, Clovis was already calling sleepily to know what was the trouble. Before Gertie could stop him, Enoch had rushed in to tell of Reuben’s sins. She followed, declaring that after all walking off a proper road was not exactly breaking one of the Ten Commandments, but doubted if Clovis ever heard her, Enoch was chattering so, with Clytie throwing in more words.

  Clovis lighted a cigarette and, sitting on the edge of the bed, listened in silence. He seemed more irritated by the world in general, as he always was when he hadn’t had his fill of sleep, than angered by Reuben’s wrongdoing. His voice was peaceful enough when he called Reuben to him, but his face hardened as he waited while Reuben took his time about coming. When Reuben finally did come, he looked surly and guilty, Gertie thought, as the other Reuben must have looked facing Jacob without Joseph—and her Reuben had done no wrong.

  “What’s th matter? You know you’ve got to walk where they tell you to walk. It’s fer yer own safety,” Clovis began, kindly enough.

  But Reuben, with a mean quick glance at Enoch, flared up as if Clovis had hit him. “Frum th way you’re all a carryen on,” he said, “a body ud think—ud think I’d killed a man. All I done was walk a path.”

  “You’ve got to walk where they tell you to walk,” Clovis repeated, beginning to flare up. “What’s th matter, anyhow? You’re allus in trouble.”

  “It ain’t my fault,” Reuben cried, choking up. “Th youngens don’t like me. Miz Whittle hates me.” He turned to Gertie, all his disappointment for the lost farm, all the hatred for Mrs. Whittle, Mr. Daly, the hillbilly crying children turned on her. “Now she hates me worse’n ever since you come a bawlen her out because I wasn’t happy. She said it right ’fore all th youngens—an some a them laughed their fool selves sick. Fer once she let em laugh. Things was bad enough ’fore you come sticken your big nose in—”

  His next words were lost in the slap Clovis gave him, squarely on the mouth.

  “Don’t, Clovis—please; he don’t know,” Gertie’s voice rose like a crying.

  “He knows enough not to sass his parents,” Clovis said, standing now, towering above Reuben, who stood bright-eyed and red-faced, not cringing or turning away or ashamed of the sassy words, too filled with the hurt inside him to notice the pain of the slap that had brought a dribble of blood to his mouth.

  Clovis, as always on the rare times when he slapped a child, was sorry for what he had done, but afraid he would show his sorrow, spoke only the more roughly, and gave Reuben a little shove, “Git back in that room an stay there till you can tell yer mom you’re sorry. Whatever she said, she didn’t mean to make the teacher mad.”

  “Th rest a you youngens clear out—git on now—ever last one a you. I wanta go back to sleep.” He stopped as if to think, meanwhile looking at Gertie with more anger in his face than it had held for Reuben, “Clytie, turn on th radio good an loud, it won’t bother me none. It’ll give Reuben in his room somethen to listen to.”

  Gertie turned to follow, and opened her mouth to protest when the radio screamed, demanding that she go at once and buy one package of General Kapitan’s cigarettes. But Clovis said, his voice low and mean, “Wait a minute,” as if she were a mule to be ordered around.

  Slowly her hand dropped from the doorknob, and she turned back to Clovis. It wasn’t the way it had used to be back home when she had done her share, maybe more than her share of feeding and fending for the family. Then, with egg money, chicken money, a calf sold here, a pig sold there, she’d bought almost every bite of food they didn’t raise. Here everything, even to the kindling wood, came from Clovis.

  She understood in one second of time so many things—the trapped look in Mrs. Anderson’s eyes, why Max’s radio played so loudly sometimes when she had an evening off and Victor was home. The rich had wide lawns and thick walls; the poor had radios. Now, under the sound of their radio, Clovis wanted to know why had she been such a fool as to go up to the school and raise a racket with a teacher. Didn’t she know that Detroit had the finest schools of almost any city in the country? His voice rose, drove in the knife, and turned it round and round. “You know you never was no good at talken. You allus look like you wanta fight. That’s part a his trouble. He’s big an tough-looken, an you’ve set him agin Detroit so he wouldn’t like it now if you put him in a mansion in Grosse Pointe. You’ve got to git it into yer head that it’s you that’s as much wrong with Reuben as anything.”

  She listened, stony-faced and silent, helpless in the face of his words as in the face of her mother’s. When it seemed he had finished, she mumbled something about supper and hurried from the room.

  Reuben wouldn’t come when she called him to supper. She didn’t try to make him. If he felt all choked up in his insides the way she did, he couldn’t eat anyway.

  Clovis, too, she thought, was troubled about
Reuben, and sorry for the slap but unwilling to show it. That night he left for work with Whit earlier than common. As soon as he had gone, she went to listen by the boys’ bed. She heard only Enoch’s breathing, noisy as he snored up for a cold. The mound of covers over Reuben continued suspiciously still as she bent above it whispering, “Reuben.”

  The covers remained rigidly still, but she begged again, “Reuben.”

  “Go away,” he whispered.

  She put her hand on his head. He shook it off. “Git away. You’ll be a waken Enoch.”

  “Lots a your teachers at school likes you, an you liked Sunday school.”

  He made her no answer, but after a moment of standing above him, she sat on the edge of the bed and tried to smooth his hair. When he had buried his head under the bed covering, she dropped her hands into her lap, but continued to sit by him. A steel pour was beginning; the red-tinged light through the drawn blind quivered, brightened, whitened, and made of her hunched body a grotesque shadow on the wall behind her. The thing trembled as if it shook with laughter. She turned away from Reuben and watched her shadow as she fought for words. She gave up her own. They were never any good. She hunted through the memory verses in her head, the Ten Commandments; the blessings—blessed, blessed—Reuben had ever been meek and poor and pure in heart.

  Blessed—blessed—he was reviled and persecuted, but not for Jesus. His sin was that he was Reuben. Amos cried to the rich about their treatment of the poor. Reuben had no need of Amos. He was the poor. Ecclesiastes: it would pass—all of it—“the rivers to the sea.” But Reuben’s life was not a river to the sea to go on and on forever. His life would pass like her shadow, laughing less and less now, dimming. She watched herself melt. One moment there was a thin shivering shadow, then nothing but paleness faintly tinged with red. She held out her hand, moved her arm; nothing moved on the wall. It was like that, all living, Reuben’s life. “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hope.” Reuben was living like that, for she had taken his hope away. A body couldn’t live without hope of something.