“JOE BOB’S LEG IS well again,” announced Judy one day several weeks later. “The nurse took the bandage off.”
Judy and Joe Bob stopped in at Mrs. Harmon’s to pick up Lonnie. Lonnie was walking now and he stayed with Mrs. Harmon while Papa and Mama went to the bean house to work and the children were in school. Judy had bravely entered the Third Grade and was happy with her new teacher, Miss Norris.
“Land sakes!” said Mrs. Harmon. “So she did, and his leg looks as good as new.”
All the canal children came running up and everybody looked at Joe Bob’s leg.
“I’m going to be a nurse when I grow up,” said Judy. “Just see what Miss Burnette gave me.”
The children crowded close—Joe Bob, Cora Jane and Lonnie, Gwyn Holloway and Tessie with their baby sister in her arms, and the new twins, Roberta and Rosella Parish who had recently come to live on the canal bank. Judy displayed a First Aid kit.
“It’s got everything in it—mercurochrome, adhesive tape, and gauze for bandages,” said Judy proudly. “Traveling around so much, Miss Burnette said we might need it. And she told me what to do with everything.”
“My baby’s got a cut on her finger,” said Tessie Holloway.
“I’ll fix it,” said Judy. She washed the cut and bandaged it neatly.
“I got a baby too,” said Rosella Parish. “I think she’s got a cut, I’ll go get her.”
Soon seven-year-old Rosella came staggering out with a fat baby in her arms. “She ain’t got a cut, but her hands are stuck shut, and she cries if you try to open ’em. Her toes are stuck together too, and her feet are sore.”
“I can’t fix that,” said Judy, closing her kit. “You take her to the nurse at school. That’s muck-sores. It comes from lettin’ her play in the dirt—this black muck. It makes people’s skin raw and sore. White people can’t stand it to pick beans in the muck fields, their skin gets too sore. Even the colored people get it, but not so bad. Miss Burnette was tellin’ about it. You take the baby to the clinic at school.”
“I got a dozen mosquito bites,” said Gwyn Holloway, but Judy had closed her kit.
“Read us outa your book, Judy,” begged Tessie.
“Yes, let’s play school,” begged the others.
Judy put her First Aid kit inside the tent and brought out her Geography. She sat down on a crate and the children clustered round. They squirmed uneasily, scratching mosquito bites.
“Now children,” began Judy, “what does it say on the book?”
“‘A New World Lies Before Us!’” chanted the children in unison.
“And we want to learn all about the country we live in,” added Judy. “Here’s the map of the United States. Today I want each of you to tell me where you came from and we’ll find it on the map.”
First Joe Bob pointed out Troy, Alabama, then Tessie found Newport, Tennessee. The twins looked in Arkansas for Bald Knob but could not find it.
Just then Papa and Mama came home.
“Papa, we can’t find it,” said Judy. “Bald Knob just ain’t in Arkansas at all.”
The twins began to cry. “Yes it is! Yes it is! We came from there.”
Papa took the Geography and looked all over the state of Arkansas. “It’s there all right,” he said. “I think it’s that tiny little black speck. They just forgot to print the name.” The children all looked at the black speck and the twins were very proud. Then they looked for Lake Okeechobee and Judy pointed out Bean Town. The children all put a finger on it. “That’s where we are right now,” they said.
“All of us here live in the Southern States,” Judy went on. “When we study the New England States I’ll show you where a girl in my class lives. Now tell me, what are the products of the Southern States?”
The children looked at each other. Nobody knew.
“What do they grow in the Southern States?” repeated Judy. “Cotton,” answered Joe Bob. “We used to pick it.”
“Cotton,” echoed the twins. “We picked it too.”
“Sugar cane,” said Gwyn Holloway.
“Cane syrup and ’lasses,” added Tessie.
“Lumber—pine trees and turpentine,” said Joe Bob. “We saw them tapping the trees in Georgia and North Florida. We saw turpentine camps.”
After Judy read a few paragraphs aloud, the children began to shout all at once: “Oranges from Florida!” “Apples from Arkansas!” “Tobacco from North Carolina and Tennessee!” “Peaches from Georgia!” “Rice and salt from Louisiana!” “Cattle and wool from Texas!”
“Tomorrow we will study the rivers of the Southern States,” said Judy. “Class dismissed.” The children scattered and began to play.
“They’re learnin’ more outa that ole book than they do at school,” said Mama.
“Judy has a way with her,” said Mrs. Harmon. “Tells me she’s gonna be a nurse when she grows up.”
Mama laughed. “All because of Joe Bob’s leg. Don’t know which she likes the best, that school nurse or Miss Norris, her teacher. She’s a big girl to be only in Third Grade, but she says there’s some eleven and twelve years old in the class. They’re from families who follow the crops and they miss a lot of school.”
“She’ll soon catch up to Fifth Grade where she belongs,” said Mrs. Harmon, “if you folks stay here and keep her in school.”
“That’s just the trouble,” sighed Mama. “We was countin’ on steady work and gittin’ a little cash money ahead. But it don’t seem to be much. Each day the field hands can’t start pickin’ the beans till the vines dry off about eleven in the morning. We go to the bean house at noon and hang around, waitin’ for the belts to start.” Today they didn’t start till two and then ran for only an hour. We git twenty-five cents an hour, so we made fifty cents—the two of us.”
“What does Jim do in the bean house?” asked Mrs. Harmon.
“First one thing, then another,” said Mama. “Sometimes he packs beans, sometimes he catches ’em, sometimes he works on a loading crew—that is, on the busy days. On slack days, the men just hang around like the women-folks.”
“Yesterday you didn’t work at all, did you?” asked Mrs. Harmon.
“No, on account of the rain they couldn’t pick, so we didn’t earn a penny. And every day the whole family’s got to eat,” said Mama. “If we can’t earn more’n this, we’ll have to move on, and that’ll put the young uns back in their school work. Their Papa’s set on ’em learnin’ somethin’.”
“Don’t go yet,” said Mrs. Harmon. “The peak of the bean season will soon be here, and then you can earn a-plenty and git caught up.”
Mrs. Harmon was right.
Suddenly the crop reached its peak and the bean houses ran day and night, weekdays and Sundays. It was a rushing life. Papa and Mama were gone from noon till midnight, sometimes till 2 A.M. Then they would come in exhausted and throw themselves on the mattress without taking trouble to undress. Several times they did not get back until 5:30 the next morning. Judy took care of the children after school, got them their evening meal and put them to bed on their bundle of quilts. She was glad Mrs. Harmon was so near, at night.
The Drummonds needed money badly. Every extra hour that Mama and Papa could stick it out meant a few cents more. There was the back rent for camping on the canal bank and the always over-due grocery bill to be paid. New clothes were needed, and they must try to save a little. Nobody knew how long the peak of the bean harvest would last or what job would come next. The future was dark and uncertain.
Judy got used to having her parents away in the afternoon. Sometimes, coming back from school, she took Joe Bob and Cora Jane and walked through the main street of Bean Town to look in the show windows. They made up a game, picking out things in the windows that they liked best.
One day they met Madame Rosie. They came upon her so suddenly there was no escape. Madame Rosie bought them all double ice-cream cones and led them to her tent. Joe Bob and Cora Jane sat still, pretty scared, licking hard on their cones to keep them from dripping. Judy was surprised to find her shyness gone. It was as easy to talk to Madame Rosie as to Mrs. Harmon.
“You told my fortune once, didn’t you?” said Judy.
“You bet, and a beautiful fortune I saw for you too, dearie,” said Madame Rosie. “But tell me—what do you eat for breakfast?”
“Mama’s workin’ all night in the bean house now,” said Judy. “She gets doggone tard watchin’ them beans go by in the glarin’ light and with all the noise of the machinery. She’s so sleepy in the morning, sometimes she don’t git up at all. I can cook fried bread as good as she can——”
“‘Fried bread,’ what’s that?” asked Madame Rosie sharply.
“It’s jest self-risin’ flour and water,” said Judy. “You mix it with your hand and throw it in a skillet with grease.”
“I never heard o’ fried bread where I come from,” said Madame Rosie.
“Where’s that?” asked Judy eagerly.
“Well, from most everywhere,” said the woman.
“Mister Mulligan comes from everywhere too,” said Judy, “but he was born in Killarney, Ireland. I showed it to him on the map.”
“Oh, I was born in Chicago, but——” began Madame Rosie.
“That’s in the Central States,” said Judy. “I’ll bring my Geography and show you some time.”
But Madame Rosie was more interested in food than in Geography, perhaps because she herself was so well fed. “What does that fried bread look like?” she persisted.
“It’s a thick pancake, hard and solid. It bites hard, but it stays by you a long time,” said Judy.
“Taste good?”
“Not very. It just fills you up.”
“I thought you folks ate cornbread all the time .…”
“Mama says it’s easier to buy a poke o’ white flour, and Papa likes his biscuit and gravy, only Mama hasn’t any oven to bake biscuit now.”
“What did you eat for breakfast back home in Alabama?” asked Madame Rosie.
“Fried fatback and molasses and biscuit and gravy,” said Judy. “That was before Papa swapped the oven.”
“Good heavens! Never no milk nor orange juice?” cried Madame Rosie. “Think of bringin’ up kids like that. It’s a wonder they don’t die. Must be tough stock.”
“We got a goat,” said Judy, “only she don’t give much milk when we don’t feed her grain. Just weeds and bushes don’t make much milk, but what we git, Lonnie drinks it. And we had oranges once! That was when we lived by our little lake … I called it the Mirror of the Sky .…”
“Florida full of oranges … oranges rottin’ on the ground in all the groves … and kids right here never gittin’ a drop of orange juice!” mumbled Madame Rosie. “Can you beat that? Does your Mama ever cook any vegetables?”
“No ma’m, she don’t have no time to cook,” explained Judy. “At the bean house she can get all the ‘culls’ she wants—them’s the beans that they throw out. Sometimes other things too— lettuce and cabbage and tomatoes and peppers—but she don’t bother to bring them home no more. She ain’t got no time to cook.”
“Did you have a vegetable garden in Alabama?” asked Madame Rosie.
“No ma’m,” said Judy. “Old Man Reeves wouldn’t let us. He made Papa plant cotton right up to the house on all sides. Said good cotton land shouldn’t be wasted.”
“What do you eat for supper while Mama’s at the bean house?”
“Papa gives me a dime, or a quarter when he’s got it, and we stop and buy hot-dogs and pop on our way home from school,” said Judy.
“You can’t cook?” asked Madame Rosie.
“No ma’m,” said Judy, “Miz Harmon asks us to supper sometimes. She lives next door, she’s from Michigan—that’s in the Central States. Bessie Harmon can cook—her Mama learned her how.”
“You get Bessie to give you lessons,” suggested Madame Rosie.
“But I ain’t got no time either,” said Judy. “I’m sewin’. Miz Harmon’s helpin’ me make my new dress. She’s learnin’ me to sew on Mama’s sewin’-machine.” Judy’s face lighted up as she told about buying the goat with a dime, and how the goat brought her the feed sack for a new dress. “It’ll be pretty, don’t you think?”
“Yes I do,” said Madame Rosie.
Then Judy told about Gloria Rathbone, the prettiest girl in the Third Grade, who was going to have a birthday party when she was nine years old, in a couple of weeks.
“I gotta go home and sew on my dress,” said Judy. “I’m going to wear it to Gloria’s party. Where do you think she’s from? Connecticut! That’s in the New England States.”
Madame Rosie said goodbye and watched the little group disappear down the street. Joe Bob and Cora Jane hadn’t said a word all through the visit, but they talked about the ice-cream cones all the way home. When they got there, Mama called from inside the tent. She was lying down and said she felt sick. Mrs. Harmon brought Lonnie in.
“I came back early,” said Mama. “I told the boss that bean work was too rushing for a woman, and that I was sick and couldn’t stand it no longer. He told me I needn’t come back no more. I’ve lost my job, and the beans are beginning to play out. The belts only ran two hours today.”
“Too bad,” said Mrs. Harmon. “That’s the way it goes. My folks was laid off last week. We’re lucky we have so many of us can work. We earn enough to git by.”
“We won’t be movin’ on, will we?” asked Judy anxiously. “Gloria Rathbone’s goin’ to have a birthday party at her house and if I git my new dress done, I can wear it.”
“When the boss laid me off, it made your Papa mad,” said Mama. “He talked back to the boss and told him he wasn’t treatin’ us right and said he wouldn’t work for him no more.”
“We ain’t leavin’, are we?” cried Judy.
Suddenly the thought of moving on was more than she could bear. She remembered how awful the prospect of living on the canal bank had seemed when they first came. Now all that was changed. They had made a way of life in this dreadful and impossible place, and now that life seemed more desirable than any she had known before. There was the school, the nurse, the kind Third Grade teacher, Madame Rosie, the nice neighbors, the Geography book and the new dress. The canal bank had become home. How could she leave all this and get used to being on the go again?
“Papa’s gone to git a job in celery,” said Mama in a low voice.
“Hope he ain’t rheumatic,” said Mrs. Harmon. “He’ll have to work in the wet all day in celery. Of course they furnish him rubber apron, boots and gloves. Work’s heavier too than in beans and the shifts are sixteen hours at a stretch.”
Mrs. Harmon went out. Mama turned her face to the tent wall.
“Oh, this ain’t no way to live,” said Mama in a dull voice. “Never no meetin’ to go to, never no preachin’ to listen to, never no all-day singin’ .… A woman at the bean house told me they have meetin’ every Sunday at that government camp at Belle Glade. Wisht we’d a gone there to live. They got runnin’ water there too .…”
“We couldn’t get in,” said Judy. “That government camp was plumb full. Don’t you remember?”
“Oh, if only I could go to an all-day singin’ once again .…”
Mama was homesick for Alabama and the little meetinghouse there. Judy could see that she was crying. She got out her print cloth and tried to sew on the new dress, but she couldn’t enjoy it somehow.
The days passed. If Papa was over-tired from work in beans, he became nervous and irritable after he started in celery. It wasn’t long until his joints began to ache, and he knew he would have to get out of the wash house or come down with rheumatism. His old longing to be outdoors came back in full force.
“Here we are in the land of sunshine,” he said to Mama one day, “and we never see the sun. What good does it do us?”
“We’re layin’ by a little cash money,” said Mama, trying to be cheerful. “Remember that little farm we’re goin’ to git?”
“I’ll be an ole man before I git it,” said Papa bitterly. “I feel like an ole man already I’m so sore in my joints.”
Judy finished her new dress, and on Gloria Rathbone’s ninth birthday she wore it to school. It was made jumper style with a gathered skirt, and a plain white blouse underneath. Mrs. Harmon had given her the cloth for the blouse and Mrs. Holloway had loaned her her iron to press them with.
Bright red cannas were blooming along the canal, and Judy gathered a bunch. When she gave them to Miss Norris, she noticed some girls pointing their fingers at her and whispering, but she was too happy to bother. All day she did good work, and Miss Norris told her that as soon as her Arithmetic caught up to her Reading, she could go in the Fourth Grade.
Judy beamed. She kept looking at Gloria—pretty Gloria with her soft blond curls clustered round her face. Gloria wore a silk dress today. The party was to be at Gloria’s house. Judy wanted to see the house that Gloria lived in. She knew it would be a nice one and have carpet on the floor like Grandma Wyatt’s. It was a long time since she had been in a house.
At last school was dismissed and all the children hurried out. Judy waited by the side door until Joe Bob and Cora Jane came, and got them started on their way home alone. Then she looked for Gloria and the other Third Graders.
They were going out the gate on the other side of the school yard. They had their arms linked around each other’s waists and Gloria with the sunshine hair was in the middle.
“Glor-ia! Glor-ia!” called Judy. She called Beverly and Alice and Betty Anne by name too.
But they kept right on going.
“Wait for me, Gloria!” sang out Judy. “I’m coming to your birthday party too!”
Gloria and the other girls turned their heads and looked back. Then they started to run off down the street.
Judy stopped, overcome. They didn’t want her. They were running away from her. She couldn’t believe it. She refused to believe it. She chased the girls and caught up close behind them.
Then Gloria switched around and said haughtily, “What do you want? Why are you coming with us, I’d like to know?”
“I made … my new dress … to wear to your birthday p-p-par-ty, Gloria,” stammered Judy. “I’ve never been to a party in all my life——”
“You’re not invited!” Gloria stamped her foot on the sidewalk. She wore new patent-leather slippers today. “I don’t want you—in your old feed-sack dress! And your dirty bare feet—I suppose you don’t even own a pair of shoes. Who’d want a big, overgrown bean-picker at their party? I don’t, so there!”
Beverly and Alice and Betty Anne and the others all linked arms again with Gloria in the middle. They went skipping off down the street.
Judy stood there. She had to believe it now—Gloria had said it plainly enough. She wasn’t invited. You had to be invited, to go to a birthday party. Judy didn’t know that before.
She looked down at her bare feet. They were stained and dirty. She had washed them clean the night before, but she had never once thought of shoes. Her new dress had taken all her attention. Of course you couldn’t go to a party without shoes. That was it. You had to have shoes to be invited.
She walked slowly home. Bessie Harmon caught up with her and asked what was wrong. Judy told her everything.
“Aw—what do you bother with them little babies for?” said Bessie. ‘You’ll go through the Fourth Grade in no time, and then you’ll be in Fifth, with girls your own age. That little Gloria Rathbone’s a snooty Yankee from Hartford, Connecticut. Thinks she’s the whole cheese because her father owns one of these big packing plants down here.”
A Yankee! Judy thought of the things her parents had said about mean, thieving Yankees. It couldn’t be true—Gloria was so pretty and Judy had liked her so much …
“Bet she’s a dumb-bell,” Bessie went on. “Does she ever know her lessons?”
“She don’t know her multiplication table yet,” said Judy, “and I been helpin’ her with her spelling.”
“Aw—forget her then,” said practical Bessie. “Hope you sassed her good.”
“No, I never said a word,” admitted Judy.
The thought comforted her. For once, when she might have said many things to be sorry for, she had held her tongue.
Judy felt better after listening to Bessie. But she wondered what she would tell all the children along the canal. They would all want to hear about the party and see what she had brought for them.
But when she got home, nobody asked her anything. Something more important was happening. The party faded away.
Papa! Mama! Are we leaving? She tried to find the words but couldn’t.
She saw in one glance that the place where the tent had been standing was empty, and that the jalopy and trailer were loaded. Missy was in the trailer, bleating noisily.
All the neighbors were crowding round to say goodbye. Papa and Mama and the children were already in their seats. They were waiting for her to come.
“Goodbye, goodbye,” called Bessie and her mother. “See you down here again next winter.”
“Goodbye, goodbye,” called the Holloways. “We’ll meet you in New Jersey.”
“Goodbye! Good luck!” called Mister Mulligan.
Over the sound of the engine Judy could hear the neighbors’ voices, but she could not see them. Her eyes were blurred with tears.
“We’re on the go again,” she whispered to herself.