The Dollmaker

  Mrs. Schultz nodded. “I don’t remember—my older sister used to tell me: my mother could speak nothing but German, and in the First World War it was dangerous to speak German on the street—and she had so many cousins on the other side—she used to hide and cry.”

  Mrs. Daly sighed, “Yu gotta realize that it ain’t like them Japs was good white Christians; as Mr. Daly says, them Japs is pretty near as bad as them communist Russians—but,” and she looked about her and spoke softly, guiltily, as if her words were treason, “yu still gotta say, people is people. Why them Japs lives something like this,” and she waved her hand over the flowers, the low houses, the child-flooded alleys, the babies, “all crowded up tuged-der inu towns; little cardboard houses kinda like what we’ve got; and maybe lotsa—you know—kids.”

  Gertie had long since opened her knife and turned toward the flower beds, not now too filled with bloom, for when a passing child begged for a flower or even a bouquet she usually gave it. Following Mrs. Schultz’s suggestion of “not too much white,” she collected the brightest of her zinnias, marigolds, and cosmos; and when it was finished the women all agreed it was the prettiest bouquet that had ever come from her yard.

  Mrs. Daly, after first thinking up words for offering the flowers so that she would not make Mrs. Saito think she had heard her crying, hurried to her neighbor’s door, while the others scattered to their stoops and tried not to act like women watching as Mrs. Daly knocked and with much nodding and smiling gave the flowers. They turned away, satisfied, when, after a weakish headshake, Mrs. Daly disappeared into Mrs. Saito’s kitchen.

  That evening the children played less in the twilight, but stood about and listened to little groups of men and women talk in low, troubled voices. Many, like Clovis and Whit, were worried about layoffs through the changeover, followed by more layoffs for strikes, model changes, inventory, walkouts, and—the worst time of all, as Whit said—“plain hard times when cars don’t sell.”

  Miller, the steel worker, was unworried, for the steel mill would have no changeover, but of them all, only he planned to go back home. “I’m stayen jist till we use up Nancy’s unemployment insurance,” he said. “She’ll git laid off; that little jigger she’s been a spot welden steady fer three years now won’t be needed no more with th war over.”

  “You can mebbe work overtime a heap an save some more while she’s a drawen it,” Whit pointed out. “They’ve gotta have steel fer them new cars everbody’s wanten. You’re lucky, man, a goen back home with all that money saved.”

  Miller nodded. “Ain’t it th truth? Jist about ever cent my wife made, we saved, an some a my overtime pay. But if they hadn’t been no nursery school or she’d a been caught with another kid er I’d had a accident in th steel mill, we’d a been stuck here fer th rest a our lives, mebbe never gitten ahead enough fer a down payment on a house. It took my regular wages an most a th overtime jist fer liven; we did swap in our old car on one a little younger, but that’s all. An all that steel-mill money went,” and he stood, a chunky man with wide brown eyes, as if overcome by surprise, only now realizing the money was gone.

  “Leave it tudu women. They can make a man’s money go,” Mr. Daly, who had been forecasting a clean-out of the reds to Mr. Schultz, said to the group by Gertie’s fence.

  Miller shook his head. “That’s th dickens uv it. I done all th buyen. Nancy couldn’t, an keep her job an do th cooken an th housework.”

  When Mr. Daly had gone, Clovis, speaking hesitantly, like one on uncertain ground, asked, “I wonder if times gits bad will they try tu bust th unions like some’s a sayen?”

  Even Miller, with all his money, was troubled, thinking ahead to a possible depression when the filling station he was buying might make nothing at all. Mr. Schultz, however, was more afraid that there’d be a kind of boom with OPA taken off and everything going sky-high—except a fireman’s wages. The fireman went away, and Whit looked after him a moment, smiling a little, then turned back to Miller and Clovis, and spoke in a low voice: “Aw, quitcha crappen; maybe we uns can all scrape along somehow. Things might boom so’s we could trade in all our secondhand cars an sich fer secondhand stuff a little younger, an taste ham meat a few times fore th next war.”

  “War?” Clovis asked.

  Whit’s voice dropped to a whisper, and he drew still closer to his listeners. “Yeah, th Catholics has gotta have their war; th pope wants to lord it over them Russians.”

  “That’s commie talk—some says,” Clovis said.

  “Oh, yeah?” Miller said, and fell to whispering, a low but bitter hissing that made Enoch stand on tiptoe the better to hear.

  Gertie turned away. Enoch would listen and believe, but he would like herself keep shut when Mr. Daly talked in the alley; there was a poem in one of the old readers—“I was angry with my foe; I told it not, my wrath did grow.” Her mind searched, but could not find any more: something about a poisoned apple.

  She finally got Enoch indoors and under the shower, but he was slow about going to bed. He never mentioned Catholics or future wars, but asked innumerable questions about depressions, sitdowns, and speed-ups, and why did Whit and Sophronie once have nothing to eat? Gertie could find no answers, but Clytie answered everything.

  “Whit didn’t have no job, an no money, silly.” Then Clytie was worried, wondering if baby sitting would be hard to get now when so many women were being laid off; she seemed ready to voice other worries, but fell silent after a slow searching of her mother’s face, and then said, turning away for her nightly shower, “Law, Mom, lotsa men git laid off allatime—an they git by.”

  When the children had gone to bed, Gertie worked awhile at sanding pieces of some jumping-jack dolls Clovis had cut; but the dull work left her mind so free it went swinging back and forth through trouble, and worse than thoughts of trouble were the memories that came unbidden: sights and smells and sounds sharp and clear as her shadow on the kitchen table. The railroad tracks and the smell of grease on her hands mingled with the heat and the closeness of the kitchen and the particles of old paint she sanded off, sticky on her sweaty hands. She nodded, drowsing over a doll’s head, and dreamed she had reached Cassie, for her arms were long, long—then Clovis was saying, “Gert, go tu bed. I figger I’ll have plenty a time to help you with th things. Whit an me, we’re leaven kind a early,” and he was gone.

  She roused, but instead of bed turned to the block of wood; for more than her walks through the alleys among the tumultuous sea of children the man in the wood gave rest and peace from thoughts of the things lost behind her and the things ahead she feared. Tonight, however, seemed like she’d worked on the lifted hand for only a little while before she came wide awake with listening; it seemed the faceless man was whispering, “There’s no money in me.”

  She gave it up, but could not face the dolls again, and so got into bed. The western bedroom was too hot for sleep, a close and muggy place where her body’s sweat, enough to dampen the sheets, brought no coolness; and through the window came the growl and mutter and roar of night-time Detroit; worse than this were the sounds of the people trying to sleep outdoors; babies wailed and whimpered and men cursed and groaned.

  She drowsed at last, and there was the curtain man, smiling, holding out his hand; there was no money for his hand; then Joe was calling through the alleys, and the nephew came, holding out to her the cheapest thing he had—cabbage—Amos was crying for it, but the nephew was taking it away because she reached for it with an empty hand; and Mr. Daly watched and smiled. She got up.

  She was working, sweating, something frantic in her eyes as she tried to rub the dark green paint from a doll’s leg, when Clovis came back. He stood a moment, trying hard to smile. “If we’d a listened we’d a heared over th radio. We seen th sign on the gate. They’ll call us back when they want us—th sign said.” He stood a long moment, droop-shouldered, lax-handed, before he remembered to put the unopened lunch box on the table.

  He noticed at last the work she
did and after reminding her that it was past midnight and she ought to be in bed said: “Don’t worry so; they’s thousands an thousands in th same boat. I’ll go down an sign up fer that unemploymint right away.”

  “But we couldn’t live on about twenty a week an pay rent,” she said.

  “Yu could pay th rent an breathe, an have a little left over fer milk an stale bread—half-price.” It was Whit, who, drinking his beer on his stoop only a few feet away, had heard their troubled talk and come to comfort.

  Whit and Clovis talked again of depressions, wars, and relief. When Whit had gone, Clovis quarreled at her because she wouldn’t leave the dolls and go to bed; but he wasn’t sleepy either, and went rummaging around, looking on shelves until she asked what it was he hunted. “Th pattern,” he said. “I didn’t cut but parts enough fer three—an now I can’t find none a th pattern pieces.”

  Gertie’s hands, still busied with a doll’s leg, dropped into her lap. “You mean, make em all alike—exactly? I throwed that ole pattern in th stove.”

  Clovis began a methodical searching through the trash left in the heating stove against the day when it would be cool enough for burning; she’d filled it because in the summer, when there were no ashes, the trash cans were seldom emptied. “Law, Gert,” he explained as he searched, “look at all th time it ud take to be allus maken new patterns; an you’d all th time hafta be worried about gitten th parts mixed. First thing,” he went on, fishing out a crumpled right leg, “is to make a good strong pattern out a cardboard er plywood.”

  She watched with wide, strained eyes, but did not protest. She even kept silent next day when, after much help from the children, the parts of ten dolls were sanded clean, and she got out her knife to round out thumbs and ears and cut faces. Clovis saw what she was about, and said: “Gert, you cain’t take th time to do no whittlen. Th next thing’s tu paint em. You an Clytie can draw up some faces while I go git some paint an some strings to put em on.”

  When he had gone they all drew faces, even Clytie’s friend Donna Mae, who knew about the secret of the saw. But the day was half gone before there was a face that suited Enoch, whose job it was to haul them through the alleys in the wagon. “You gotta make stuff that’ll sell,” he kept saying. He settled at last on a face that Donna Mae drew; the mouth big and widelipped, the brows short and thick above round, sidewise-rolling eyes. Clytie colored it with crayons left from school; Gertie looked at it and turned away, but Enoch pranced with joy.

  Clovis came home with many little bottles and cans of paint, even gold that, he explained, was for the hair. Gertie shook her head over the ugly, too bright colors; but all through the hot afternoon she painted; slowly, painfully, she followed Clytie’s marked lines, the lines forever the same, though the colors could be different. Some had red hair, some black, and two with gold; the clothes were changed about in color, but in the end it was always the same—ugliness on the pretty, fine-grained maple wood. The work of creating ugliness was worse than the sneezy, stinking job of getting off the old paint; the new paint smelled more strongly than the old, and, try as she would, she could not keep it off her hands; the feel of the sticky stuff, especially the bright, bloody red, nauseated her. She could not work outside because the dust and mosquitoes and flies would ruin the finish; the heat and the smell made her dizzy, and the kitchen door by which she worked was usually blocked by children, noses pushed against the screen as they asked her what she did; and Wheateye lingered, quarreling, declaring that Gertie should first have finished the man in the wood.

  Whit came to watch, unworried now, at least for the moment. Both he and Sophronie could draw the unemployment insurance, and already he’d found a job setting pins of evenings in a nearby bowling alley; and anyway everybody would be called back to work for the times would boom—for a little while.

  Gertie sighed for quietness and coolness, but worked on, straight-mouthed, grim-eyed; her hatred for the ugly dolls fading at times as she enumerated in her head all their needs against the opening of school and winter quickly following.

  It was two or three days later before the dolls were painted and dried and strung, and Enoch, in a fury of impatience to test his salesmanship, loaded them into the little red wagon. Hardly were they loaded before Mrs. Schultz left off hanging up her wash to come and study the dolls. She took one and jumped it, smiling. “Isn’t it cute—kinda different. I’ll bet my Kathy would like it.”

  “Genuine hand-carved maple,” Enoch said. “An a kid cain’t tear um up—an they’s nothen on um tu hurt a baby—genuine enamel—none a yer cheap lead paints; an nothen tu come lose an choke em. An lookee, even a little kid can make um jump.” And he jerked the string and bounced the doll, then set it upright in the wagon.

  “How much?” Mrs. Schultz asked.

  Gertie cleared her throat, remembering the cake with thick white frosting, remembering the family argument only a little while ago about what the price should be; two dollars she’d thought was scandalously high for some little pieces of painted sawed scrap wood, but Clovis had held out for three; in the end they’d compromised on two-fifty; Clovis had thought they might not sell well through the changeover but there was no use to give them away.

  Now, Enoch, as if not trusting his mother, said quickly, “Two-fifty, an it’ll last a lifetime.”

  “But son,” Gertie said, “when that paint comes off it won’t be no doll.”

  “It won’t come off,” Enoch said, plainly angry with his mother, but smiling at Mrs. Schultz. “It ain’t like they was cheap plastic things.”

  Mrs. Schultz continued to linger over the dolls, wistful, yet half apologetic, like one who cannot buy. “So far I’ve made about all th toys my children used when they were babies. Toys—anything good like those wooden educational toys—cost so much; but”—she picked up a doll, shook it, watched it jump—“I guess I better not. I’ve been saving a little toward sheets—and there’ll be plenty of sheets pretty soon, an maybe cheaper.”

  “This doll’ull outlast a sheet, lady,” Enoch said, impatient, pulling the wagon away, followed already by a crowd of admiring children, with Amos walking importantly behind, pretending to push the wagon, smiling, and nodding when Enoch began his cry: “Dolls—genuine hand-carved dolls. Solid maple, safe fer a baby—unbreakable string—safe fer a baby.”

  The Miller door opened and Mrs. Miller, who between factory and housework had seldom been seen in the alley, called to him; and after jumping several and a bit of considering, she chose one. She paid the exact change, and as she turned back into her kitchen held the doll toward Sophronie on her stoop, explaining, “Lookee, I figgered it’s th last thing I’ll be buyen in Deetroit.”

  “I thought you’d stay long enough to draw your unemployment,” Mrs. Schultz, hanging out clothes again, said.

  Mrs. Miller shook her head. “That steel mill ain’t a stoppen. Andy’s worken overtime—big money. I figger if we wait too long we might git out a th notion a goen back an lose th chanct he’s got to buy into this garage—s’good place—if he don’t change his mind,” and as if the thought frightened her, she hurried swiftly through her door.

  Sophronie glanced after her with wistful eyes, and Mrs. Schultz wondered why they didn’t stay. “They’ve got way more’n enough for a down payment,” she said.

  “She’s been awful jumpy ever since that last pitman got burned up alive,” Sophronie said.

  “I wonder what she’d do if she was a fireman’s wife,” Mrs. Schultz said.

  The women were silent, but Gertie continued to stand a moment longer listening, “Genuine hand-made dolls—genuine …” An airplane blotted out the sound.

  She went into the house and stood by the block of wood and stared at it for a long time in what she thought was silence before she realized she was saying, “But they’s not any real whittlen on th things.” Then the unfinished empty hand, turned palm downward, that had been calling to her, impatient, while she messed with dolls, called her now; the wrist would be l
oose like Mrs. Schultz’s wrist, as she held up the doll she wanted but could not buy.

  She lost herself for a time in the wrist, but the dolls had made her behind in the housework. Clytie was gone to the bookmobile with Donna Mae, and the breakfast dishes still unwashed and the beds not made. She went into the kitchen, stared a moment at the mess that no matter what she did would be there again tomorrow and all the days after, then turned sharp about and flopped upon her own unmade bed. She lay and looked at the ceiling—she was so tired she wished she could lie forever and never move or think. What was the good of trying to keep your own if when they grew up their days were like your own—changeovers and ugly painted dolls? She remembered Amos, gone with Enoch. What if for one little second he forgot and ran in front of car—or if somebody drunk sped through an alley, as often happened?

  She sprang up and hurried outside, but had only got as far as the big chughole alley—the street of the flying kites, Cassie had called it—before she heard Enoch’s long drawn cry, “Gen-u-ine maple dolls—hand carved.”

  She stared through the quivering heat waves toward the sounds until guilty thoughts of the dirty dishes drove her home. She had the beds made and the kitchen clean, ready to start dirtying again for lunch, when Amos came banging through the kitchen door, screaming that he was hungry and they’d sold five dolls.

  The others went more slowly. It was at twilight three or four days later that Enoch came running home with the empty wagon bouncing behind him. He was near speechless with running and exultation, and for an instant stood gasping, thrusting money into his mother’s hands. “Guess what, Mom,” he cried at last. “A cop took one, a real honest-to-goodness cop inu scout car. An boy, did he like it.”

  “You done good, real good, son,” Gertie said, straightening bills, arranging change. “Yer pop’s not worken, but this money’s goen fer clothes fer you, an you git a dime fer ever doll you—” She began to count the money again, and looked at Enoch when she’d finished. “Son, if you sold all four a them dolls they’s money fer one a missen—an yer pop told you not to give credit.”