3

David and Ben started working at the Asher on Sunday. They won t tell what they did, but Ben says it was “too close to housework” for him.

That makes me mad. It’s easy for them to scorn clothes-washing and floor-scrubbing and chicken-plucking. It’s all done for them—I even make up their bed! And Mama’s silly about them; she always has been: David because he’s her firstborn and Ben because he’s so much like Daddy as a boy. At least that’s what she thinks:

“I just look at him and catch up on all of Jim Perritt I missed.”

And Ben doesn’t look any more like Daddy than a frog.

“It’s his walk,” she says. “It’s how he looks out of his eyes.”

So I’m glad they’re getting a little taste of dust rags and paste wax. I hope Mr. Asher has them do everything that’s to be done. Puts them in little aprons. Makes them wear maid hats. I’d walk the four miles to town just to see it!

They’ve got to work all this week, which is the last one before school starts. Then they’ll go in on Saturdays for a while. I wonder if all those fancy lunches were worth it.

Mama and I are busy getting clothes ready for school. Monday we altered and mended, yesterday we washed, and today were ironing. We’re set up in the kitchen with basket, clothes, the board, and three irons—one to heat up while the other cools from use, and a small one for finishing.

“No child of mine is going to drag around like a ragamuffin,” she says, as though that’s a fate you have to fight all the time. “You’re lucky, Mandy. You’re the one with new clothes.”

But new isn’t exactly the word. Mama’s sister, Aunt Laura, sent a box of her discarded clothes from Memphis. That’s where Omie lives too. It’s not that the clothes aren’t nice—they’re too nice is the problem: a black file suit, nipped at the waist; a water-blue taffeta skirt; a slick red dress with hardly a front.

“How could she wear that?” I ask Mama.

“Well, Laura’s endowed,” she says.

“Endowed? You mean with money?”

Mama smiles.

“No, I mean her bust is full enough that she fills this out. Of course, it’s still a bit scandalous, but Laura is Laura.”

Mama’s still smiling, then shrugs the smile away.

“At any rate, with a little white yoke I can fill it in for you. And the suit just needs to be hemmed.”

“Oh, Mama, I can’t go to school in clothes like that!”

“And why not? They’re perfectly decent clothes. Or will be.”

“But nobody wears clothes like that! And I’m not—I don’t even fill out a slip.”

Mama pats her stomach, where the dress is stretched like a

skin.

“Well, I certainly do.”

I don’t know what to say to that.

“And you’ll look better in Lauras clothes than you will in your birthday suit. You’ve grown too much over the summer to wear most of last year’s clothes. Besides, Mandy, by the end of this year you don’t know how you’ll look. You’re getting to an age—” Her voice trails off. She gestures for me to bring her the hot iron from the stove.

“What do you mean?” I ask, setting the hot weight down, taking back the cool one.

For a minute Mama just looks at me.

“You’ll be starting to mature is all,” she says. Then she sprinkles water from a jar onto the iron to test its heat.

I want to ask more, but her face says the talk is finished. It’s the same with the clothes. No point in arguing. So I go on dipping shirts in starch and rolling them into balls. And I keep an eye on Anna and Helen through the screen door. They’re in the back yard shelling beans.

School will be all right somehow, though. It always is. Just thinking about it makes my throat tighten. “Pencil fever,” Daddy calls it when I can’t wait to go back to school. “Darnedest thing I ever saw.”

Daddy finished the eighth grade and Mama went on into high school, so they know what it’s like. Except they didn’t have Mr. Aden for a teacher. If they had, they might have caught pencil fever too.

Mr. Aden’s from Boston. He came to Goose Rock on a mission, he says, but he and the Almighty got separated on the way down, so he doesn’t work for a church.

“I work for you,” he tells us, “for the tilling of your minds and the fruit of your ever-growing souls.”

I told Mama and Daddy that.

“Bet he gets a check, too,” Daddy said.

Sure he does, but that’s not the main thing. Mr. Aden has a greater goal in life than “worshiping the brazen dollar.” That’s why he came to the mountains.

“People are different here,” he says.

Daddy says we can’t worship what we haven’t got.

I expect Mr. Aden just got tired of Boston, the way a full person pushes back his plate. But that wouldn’t happen to me. I’m hungry enough to feast on a city forever: theaters and cobbled streets, museums and libraries and running water! We have to pump our water in Goose Rock, of course, and order books from Sears-Roebuck. That means we don’t get many. A library means free books, all you want, over and over.

“You’ll have a library here,” Mr. Aden promised us. “The spirit requires books and there will be money for them once people’s bodily needs are met. We must be patient. In the meantime, I’ll make a school library of my collection.”

And that’s what he did. The first week I brought home Jane Eyre ….

“Amanda!”

“Oh—what, Mama?”

“I’ve been talking to you for five minutes and I don’t believe you’ve heard a word.”

“I’m sorry. I guess I was daydreaming.”

“Well, those shirts are going to turn to bricks if you don’t hand them over here. And these I’ve finished need to be hung up in the boys’ room.”

I’ve exchanged the wet rolls of cloth for the billowing shirts when I hear a knock at the door. A steady knock, insistent.

“My word, who could that be?” Mama says, putting down the iron, smoothing her dress front with her hands.

“Amanda, you wait here.”

From the kitchen I watch her heavy journey around the dining room table and into the parlor. I can’t see the front door.

“May I help you?”

“Mrs. Perritt?” a husky young voice asks.

“Yes?”

“I’m Cob Russell, Wilt Russell’s son, from Russell’s Grocery, you know, in Manchester…”

“Yes?” For some reason, she lets him fumble.

“And I need to talk to you about business.”

“Come right in then.”

“Particular business,” the voice adds, as though that makes the situation clear.

“Won’t you have a seat?” Mama offers.

“No.” His voice jerks. “That is, this won’t take but a minute.”

“Very well.”

“It’s, it’s this bill: we’ve carried you over for three months and, well, you’ve always been solid customers, but…”

“I paid that bill,” Mama says, her words separate and firm as stones.

Paper rattles. Cob Russell seems to be hunting.

“Yes,” he agrees, “but this check—your bank won’t cover it.”

“May I see it, please?”

Making sure the girls are still at their task, I tiptoe into the parlor and across to the corner where I can see him hand her the check.

She looks at it, nods in recognition, and then, cool as you please, tears it up. Confetti floats through his open hand.

“You needn’t come out here again,” she tells him. “We will pay what we owe.”

He just stands there with his jaw dropped.

Mama starts for the door and he stumbles after her. I duck into the kitchen, busying myself with shirts.

A minute later, Mama comes back. “Well, young lady,” she says, dusting off her hands, “have you seen enough?”