The City

They tell me,

“The country will be good for you,”

and send me like a package

to my grandparents’ cottage.

On the highway

the car is an eraser,

friends and houses disappear.

Driving all day,

country is what’s left

when everything else

is taken away.

We live in Detroit. Even though it’s 1933 and the Depression, the city is alive with things to do. The sidewalks are crowded with people. The air has the rich smell of the buses and cars that rush by our apartment. The Packard automobile factory is just down the street. Before the Depression, when all the people lost their jobs, the factory windows flickered day and night with a wonderful blue-green light. It made you think witchery was going on inside.

There are six apartments in our building. We aren’t the only members of our family who live there. When the Depression came, all of Grandpapa’s children moved into his apartment building because they couldn’t afford to keep their own houses. Our apartment is on the first floor. My Aunt Edna and Uncle Tom live across the way from us. Aunt Fritzie and Uncle Tim live over us on the second floor, and Uncle John and Aunt Emmy live across from them.

We’re all supposed to pay rent to my grandfather, but none of us do. My uncles have lost their jobs. Only my Aunt Edna works. She is a schoolteacher. When my grandfather comes to collect the rents, all he gets is oatmeal cookies at our place, date and nut squares from Aunt Ella, store-bought cookies from Aunt Edna, and a big kiss from Aunt Fritzie. My grandfather never complains.

The good thing about having so many aunts and uncles under the same roof is that if one of them gets bored with me there is always another aunt and uncle. The bad thing is that they don’t have any children of their own, so I am always being divided up.

I love the city. Before I got sick, my mom would put on her best dress, her hat with the veil, and her white gloves. I would wear my organdy dress and my crocheted gloves. We’d take the bus downtown. Holding hands, we’d wander through Hudson’s Department Store — all twelve floors. We never bought anything. It was the Depression, and we didn’t have money to spend. Still, as long as we were in the store we could pretend that anything we wanted was ours.

My parents took me to the Art Institute, where you walk through a great hall lined with the armor that knights used to wear. Besides all the pictures there is a room with mummies, which are dead people all bandaged up. On Sunday afternoons, if we had enough money for gasoline, we would join the long lines of automobiles snaking down East Grand Boulevard on their way to Belle Isle for picnics and canoeing. There is always something to see and do in the city.

Usually when I saw my grandparents it was in their big old-fashioned house in the city, but twice I had gone with my mother and father for short visits to Greenbush, where my grandparents had a summer cottage on Lake Huron. I remembered two things about those visits. There was nothing to do, and the huge lake you couldn’t see to the end of was everywhere you looked. I was so relieved when it was time to climb into the car and leave that I hardly noticed my grandparents waving good-bye, a sad look on their faces.

I never guessed that one day I would be sent away from the city to spend a whole summer with my grandparents. It happened because I got sick. First I had a sore throat. Then the doctor listened to my heart. He shook his head and said I had to go to bed for five months — half of fifth grade. I lost January, February, March, April, and May. There was nothing to do but read books and write poems.

The poems happened because of the get-well letters my teacher made my classmates write to me. One of the letters was a poem. It was a dumb one written by Lucille Macken, who thought she was so smart:

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

Because you’re sick,

I feel sorry for you.

I was sure I could write better poems. So I tried. I didn’t think they were very good, but my mom saw them and said they were excellent — her favorite word for something that’s not bad; she’s an optimist.

Just when I could finally get out of bed, my parents sat me down.

“We have a wonderful surprise for you,” Mom said. Surprises are someone else’s idea of what you would like. “The doctor feels you need fresh air.” She was trying to look happy, but it wasn’t working.

I began to worry. I knew the only place you find fresh air is where there is nothing else.

Dad said, “You’re going to spend the whole summer in Greenbush with your grandmama and grandpapa at their cottage on Lake Huron.”

“What do you mean the whole summer?” I guessed what my dad must mean. Three months. Thirty days times three. Ninety days times twenty-four hours. There would be thousands of hours. I would hate every one of them. I’d be far away from my friends. There would be nothing to do in the country. That big lake would be there ready to swallow me up.

Besides, there was my grandmama. We often go to my grandparents’ home in the city. But I am always a little afraid of Grandmama. She seems sour and prickly. You have to think ahead about what you say to her or you’ll get a tart reply. Now I was going to have to spend the whole summer with her.

“But I’m all better,” I pleaded.

“You still have headaches,” Dad reminded me.

“No, I don’t,” I said. I wasn’t telling the truth. Sometimes my head felt like someone was careening around inside it with a hammer.

I moped. I sulked. I refused to eat. I cried. I tried temper tantrums. All my parents would say is, “Dr. Kellet thinks a summer in the country will be good for you.” Things that are supposed to be good for you usually turn out to be terrible.

There was another reason why I had to spend the summer with my grandparents. My dad is a builder. With the Depression, no one is building anything. Things are so bad that for a couple of days in March all the banks in the country closed down. Every morning my father shines his shoes and brushes his hat. He whistles “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” while he brushes and shines. I think it’s for good luck. Mom presses his trousers, the steam from her damp pressing cloth clouding the kitchen. As Dad leaves he always says, “I’ve got a feeling today is my lucky day.” At supper time when he comes home he just looks at Mom and shakes his head. After I’m in bed at night I can hear their worried whispers in the next room.

Little by little the nice things we had, presents from my dad to my mom or from my grandparents to us, have disappeared. Mom’s silver dresser set and even her sewing machine were sold for money to buy groceries. I know the special food they buy to make me healthy is expensive. That makes me feel so bad I can hardly eat it. So it just gets wasted, which is even worse. “In the country you’ll have wonderful things to eat, Elsa,” Mom said. And I knew that was the other reason I was being sent away.

So on June 5 we left for Greenbush and my grandparents’ cottage. Dad took a day off. I think he was sort of relieved to have a reason not to have to face all those people who don’t want him to build things. Just before we piled into the car, Mother said, “Here’s a present for you.” It was wrapped up in the pretty paper and ribbon she saved from my dad’s birthday present to her. I was still sulking, but except for Christmas and my birthday I’d never had a present, so it was hard pretending I wasn’t excited. I unwrapped the present carefully to save the paper. There was a notebook with flowers all over the cover and empty pages.

“It’s for your poems,” Mom said.

We got in the car and headed for the country. I watched through the car windows as the buildings got smaller and the trees got larger. Where there should have been houses there were only fields. I opened my new notebook. It’s hard to write when you’re bumping around in a car, but I wrote a poem.