9

Not a Bit Professional

GRACE had been right when she sent Mother off after the paper alone. I’d barely finished cleaning the floor, and hadn’t had any chance to go hunting for boards and boxes, when the paint man brought Mother home. And besides bringing the things Grace had told her to get, he brought a long folding table and several different kinds of brushes, a knife with a little curved blade, and a couple of smoothing wheels. “You can keep these till you’re finished with your paper-hanging,” he told Mother. Then he asked, “You’ve hung it before, haven’t you?”

Mother smiled and said, “I’ve helped my husband with it several times, and am sure we won’t have any trouble.” Then she thanked him for bringing her home and for offering to let us use his table and tools.

As soon as he had gone she rubbed her hand over the smooth table top, and said, “Wasn’t it nice of Mr. Evans to offer us the use of all his professional equipment? My! This will certainly make our task much easier! I was worried about our trying to put up wallpaper without the proper things to do it with. While I’m changing my clothes, Gracie, you might whack up some sandwiches and put water on to boil for tea. I think we’d better eat before we tackle this papering job; we won’t want to stop right in the middle of it.”

It’s a good thing we did eat first, and that Mother let both Grace and me have tea with our sandwiches. And when she said, “tackle this papering job,” she picked just the right words.

While we were eating, Mother and Grace decided that we’d better start with the ceiling. Then they talked about whether it would be better to trim the edges off the paper and butt it, or whether it would be best to overlap it. At last Mother said, “Let’s overlap it. The design is watered silk, so the overlaps won’t show badly. We must remember that we’re not experts at paper-hanging, and if we should fail to trim the edges exactly even we might have a little difficulty in making the strips butt together nicely. Well, let’s clear things up here and get started; I’m anxious to see how it’s going to look.”

“Gracie, I’ll do the measuring, we’ll let Ralph paint the paste on, and you may do the actual hanging; you’re much handier on top of that stepladder than I. Let me think a moment. . . . It seems to me that Father used to fold his paper in some way as he put the paste on. Yes, I’m sure he did. . . . I can see him in my mind’s eye now, going up the stepladder with the paper folded and letting it unfold, section by section, as he went along. Oh, my! I’d nearly forgotten! When he had a ceiling to do he used to put a plank up on two chairs, so he could walk along it as he spread the paper out. Son, do you have any idea as to where you might get hold of a good stout plank?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I told her, “we’ve got one at the store that I used when I was washing the ceiling. Shall I run and get it before closing time?”

“And you’ll have to get another stepladder, too,” Grace interrupted. “This ceiling is ten feet high, so chairs wouldn’t be any good, or boxes, or anything like that.”

“I don’t know where I’d find another stepladder,” I told her, “but I could bring the ladder I use when I wash the windows. It’s not very tall and . . .”

“Never mind the details, but run along and get them quickly,” Mother told me. “We have no time to waste if we’re going to finish papering this kitchen tonight. I’ll have the paste ready by the time you’re back.”

I couldn’t hurry very much with the heavy plank and the ladder. When I reached home with them Grace was just starting to paste one end of a long strip of paper, while Mother held the rest of it in her arms. “Good!” Mother said. “I’m glad you got here just when you did. You might run around and draw the paper along on the table as Gracie pastes it.”

I drew until I was tight against the wall, but Grace had been able to paste only as far as the middle of the strip. “Now just stop a moment and let me think,” Mother told us. “Father never used to get his paper strung out like this. He folded the sheet in some manner, and I’m sure he kept it all right on the table as he pasted. But then, we never had so big a ceiling to cover. Gracie, suppose you help Ralph fold that pasted portion together smoothly. Don’t let it touch this dirty floor.”

If we’d both had four hands, or if our arms had been six feet long, we might have been able to do what Mother told us. As it was, we made sort of a mess of it. Before we had the paper folded back, we’d dragged it on the floor three or four times, put nearly a dozen wrinkles in it, and had paste clear up to our wrists.

“Don’t feel badly,” Mother told us. “I’m sure that when it’s on the ceiling any soiled spots will sponge right off, and the creases will smooth out easily with a little brushing. Gracie, if you’d just fold that half over loosely a few times, Ralph could hold it in his arms while we paste the other end.”

Mother’s face looked puzzled as she drew the strip across the table while Grace slapped on the paste. But when she’d reached the far wall she sang out, “Now I remember how it’s done! This part has to be folded over so that both ends meet at the middle. In that way the whole outside is left dry, then it is simply folded back and forth accordion-fashion from each end. Gracie, if you’ll take one of these corners we’ll lift this end high and walk forward until it will meet the part Ralph’s holding.”

Mother’s idea seemed to be a good one, but neither her arms nor Grace’s were long enough to reach that high. The loop hit the floor and the two pasted sides stuck together before the ends would come within two feet of meeting.

“Hmmmmmf!” Mother sniffed, as she stood pinching her lips and looking at the sticky place between the two ends. “We’ll have to go back and try it again. Ralph, try to hold your end real tightly while we get this unstuck.”

I braced my stomach against the table while Grace and Mother pulled and the pasted sides came apart with the sound of a dozen little pigs at a trough.

It took us nearly an hour to get that piece of paper folded so that the two ends met, and so that all the accordion folds on each side were even. But when we had it finished it looked real neat, lying there on the table in twin bundles. Mother wiped her hands on her apron and said, “There! That was a lot of work, but we’ve learned by it. Well, let’s get it up on the ceiling. Ralph, suppose you set up the plank now, and Gracie, we’ll put this first strip right along the top of this wall.”

As Mother spoke, she pulled a gooey end a few inches out of the bundle and said, “Now, Gracie, if you start with this edge square against the end wall I don’t think you’ll have a bit of difficulty. I’ll put a clean cloth over the broom and help you with it as soon as you have the strip started.”

Grace needed at least six hands when she tried to get the end of the strip stuck into the corner of the ceiling. She couldn’t lift the limp end up without using both hands, and if she did that she couldn’t hold onto the bundle of folds. So she held the bundle against the wall with her chest, then tried to make a quick stab into the corner with the pasted end. It didn’t work worth a cent.

Grace made the stab so fast that when she reached the end of the first fold, the whole bundle flipped over between her chest and the wall. It kicked her backwards as if it had been a mule. Mother was standing right below her and caught her, but Grace kept a tight hold on the end of the paper, and, of course, the pasted side was toward her. Her arms must have kept on going when Mother caught her, because she wrapped that paper around her face and head so tight it looked like a hornet’s nest.

“That’s enough, dear,” Mother told her as they wiped some of the paste out of Grace’s hair and eyebrows. “We’ll let it go for tonight. Maybe tomorrow we might find a paper hanger who wouldn’t charge us too much if we hired him to do the ceilings only. I still think we could manage the walls ourselves, but these big, high ceilings are doubtlessly a little too difficult for us.”

Mother didn’t seem to be at all provoked about the trouble we’d been having, but Grace was furious. And when Grace was furious nothing but a straight out-and-out order from Mother could stop her. She swiped the paste off her lips with the back of her hand, spit it off the end of her tongue angrily, and snapped, “No, they’re not! If it took brains to hang paper on a ceiling there wouldn’t be so much of it done, and if other people can do it we can do it!”

“Don’t be . . .” And then Mother stopped herself without saying, “impertinent.” I guess she felt sort of proud of Grace’s spunk, just as I did.

Nobody said a word for three or four minutes, but we all stared up at the corner and tried to figure out how we could get the paper started in it. “Well,” Grace said at last, “I know how we can do it. It won’t be the way a paper hanger would do it, but I’ll bet a cookie it will work. Ralph, you pick up the mess, and we’ll put it back together again in a bundle of folds. Then I want you to stand tight in the corner, facing out and holding the bundle as high as you can in your arms. I’ll hold the end into the corner, and, Mother, you can reach over our heads and sweep the paper against the ceiling with the broom.”

“Hmmmmm, that doesn’t sound exactly professional, does it?” Mother said, “though I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. Let’s try it.”

I think Grace’s idea might have worked if it hadn’t been for two or three things: Mother was only a couple of inches over five feet tall and the ceiling was ten feet high, so she had to stand on her tiptoes to reach it with a broom. Then, too, we didn’t have the paper folded the right way, and I was standing on the wrong side of Grace. She had to pin me too tight against the wall before she could reach over me and into the corner; then there was no room left for Mother to poke the broom in between us. After she’d nearly swept my nose off, and had pushed the pasted side of the paper into Grace’s face, she called up to us, “I have an idea! Gracie, you’ll have to stand in the corner, with Ralph on the outside. That will leave the dry side of the paper toward you and give me a chance to get at it with the broom.”

When we’d switched around, Grace took the limp end of the strip in her fingers, and was trying to hold it into the corner when Mother sang out, “Now I remember! I can see it as plainly as if it were yesterday! Father didn’t hold the paper up to the ceiling with his hands; he used to put a wide brush—like the one Mr. Evans brought us—under the end, then push it tightly into the corner.”

“Well then,” Grace said, “let’s have the brush and we’ll try it, but you start sweeping just as soon as I get the end in the corner.”

Standing the way I was, Grace had to pull the end of the paper right up past my face, so I couldn’t see what either she or Mother was doing. And holding those slippery folds of paper up under my chin was like trying to hold an armful of wet eels. I was having a terrible time with them when Mother called out, “There! There! I thought you’d be able to do it all right, Gracie. Now step back a little, Ralph, so I won’t brush the pasted side against your face when I sweep.”

I should have had sense enough to have stepped back slowly, but with Mother having to stand on her tiptoes I didn’t trust her too much with that broom, and I didn’t want to get a faceful of paste, so I stepped quick. For a tenth of a second a stream of paper whizzed past my face like a runaway belt on a machine. Then it came to the end of a fold, jerked the bundle out of my arms, and hauled the whole works down on top of Mother’s head. She didn’t scold me at all, but Grace gave me fits. She was right in the middle of it when the door opened and Uncle Frank came in.

At first he started to laugh, but when he saw how mad Grace was he stopped, and asked, “Didn’t you folks know that it’s after ten o’clock?”

Mother wiped some paste off one cheek, where the end of the strip had slapped her, and said, “No, we didn’t, but do you know anything about hanging paper on a ceiling?”

“Just enough not to try it,” he told her. “Pat Skerry does a good job, and he’s reasonable. I’ll speak to him in the morning. You folks had better leave things just as they are and come on home now.”

Grace was still hopping mad, and blurted out, “No siree! Not if I have to stay here all night! I’m not going anywhere until I’ve got this one strip up. Ralph, fold that stuff and bring it up here again! And Mother, would you pass me that brush he yanked out of my hands?”

“Yes, but I will not stand for your rudeness!” Mother told her. “We are all anxious to do whatever we can by ourselves, and this has been just as exasperating for the rest of us as for you, but it is no excuse for rudeness. Now I shall let you try just this once more; then we will stop, regardless of the outcome. In the morning I will decide as to whether or not we will try to go on with it by ourselves.”

While I was picking up the paper and refolding it Grace told Uncle Frank that she was sorry she’d been rude, but she sounded more as if she were saying it because she had to than because she wanted to. And if she wasn’t rude to me after I’d climbed up on the plank with her, she came just as close to it as she dared. As she shot off her last orders she was pulling the end of the paper carefully from the bundle and fitting it evenly over the bristles of the brush. I couldn’t see what she did after that, but the paper moved slowly up past my face, there was a slupping sound, and Mother sang out, “That’s it, Gracie! That’s almost exactly the way Father used to do it! Now draw the brush toward you a little, till you can see if you have the strip running straight with the side wall. Fine! Fine! Now brush a little more.”

Grace must have been so busy that she didn’t think about telling me to move back, but I had to. That time I moved real slowly, but, because of the way we had the paper folded, it didn’t help much. For every foot Grace brushed up onto the ceiling, another foot of the sticky stuff came oozing out of the bundle and slopped over toward me. I was nearly smothered before I could get Grace to stop brushing.

It was really Mother who stopped her. “There! There! That’s enough!” she called. Then, while Uncle Frank was helping me get untangled and down from the plank, she said, “I think you have found the knack of it, Gracie, and that we shall be able to do it without help as soon as we’ve discovered the proper way to make the folds. But there’s no use in trying to go any farther tonight; that strip is pretty well worn out, so pull it down and we’ll go and get some rest. Tomorrow is going to be a busy, busy day.”

I was up bright and early the next morning, but Mother and Grace were way ahead of me, though they hadn’t even started to cook breakfast. They had Aunt Hilda’s kitchen table piled high with strips of newspaper, folded in about fifty different ways; some with paste on them and some without. “I think I’ve got it!” Mother told Grace as I came into the kitchen. She was just finishing a strip that she had folded into a neat little stack, and the folds looked like the uncut pages that are sometimes left in a book.

Grace watched Mother’s fingers the way a coyote watches a ground squirrel, and she pounced on the package just as quickly when Mother had finished with it. “Wheee!” she squealed. “That will be as handy as a pocket in a shirt! I’ll bet a cookie I could almost put paper up alone with it folded this way. Let’s hurry up and get breakfast out of the way so we can go try it.”

Mother shook her head as if she were disappointed. “It’s not a bit professional,” she said, “not a bit the way Father used to do it. I distinctly remember that he always began by folding both ends clear in to the middle.”

“What difference does that make if it will work this way?” Grace asked.

“None, I suppose,” Mother answered, “but the other way must be better or Father wouldn’t have done it. I’m just a little bit dubious about this working as well as you think. . . . But then, we’ll never know till we try it, will we? Suppose you set the table while I put the oatmeal on to boil. Ralph, did you brush your teeth this morning? It seems to me you’re out here awfully early.”

It was just after half-past-seven when Mother and Grace went past the store that morning, and they’d already been to the Maddox house for a stepladder, a couple of boards, and a few dishes. I didn’t have a chance to go and see what luck they were having before school time, but when I got there at noon the kitchen ceiling was papered about as well as anyone could have done it, and Grace was strutting like a pouter pigeon. Anyone would have thought she’d done the papering all by herself, but I knew Mother better than that; she’d always give Grace the credit, even when she’d done the lion’s share of a job herself.

By the time I’d finished my afternoon deliveries Mother and Grace had most of the paper on the kitchen walls, and it was real pretty; yellow, with little bits of white figures all over it—horses pulling carts, tiny houses, barns, ducks and chickens. I’d just come in and was looking at them when Grace yapped at me, “Don’t be wasting your time looking at pictures! There’ll be plenty of time for that after this house is cleaned up, and we still have a long way to go before we can live in it. Get a pail of hot water and start washing the ceiling in Mother’s bedroom!”

“Gracie!” Mother said sharply, “I’ll give any orders that may be necessary.” Then she looked down at me and said, “That might be a good place to start, Son. With tomorrow being Saturday, you’ll have no time to help us in the evening, and I’d like to get that room ready, so that we may be in our own home for Sunday. We’ll be through with this border in a few minutes and you may have both stepladders, but be careful of the one from the store—it’s rickety.”

That Friday night we worked until after ten o’clock, and only stopped long enough for sandwiches and tea—Mother let both of us have it that night, and from then on—but when we quit we had the kitchen and Mother’s bedroom ready to move into. Grace helped me wash the walls in the bedroom while Mother painted the woodwork in the kitchen, then we all pitched into the floors with scalding water, lye, and the stiffest brushes I could find at the store. We used water as fast as the stove could heat it, and every pailful we poured down the sink was about half mud. But when we were through the floors were scrubbed right down to the bare boards, and our fingernails were as brown as chestnuts from the lye.

Saturday morning Mother had Mr. Young move in the kitchen table, the bed that would be hers, chairs, bedclothes, dishes, and anything we had a clean place for. At noon Grace brought the younger children from Uncle Frank’s house, and we all had our first meal in our new house together. By supper time the paint in the kitchen was dry enough that Mother could hang the curtains, and the house became our home.

Mother wouldn’t let us work on Sunday, even at cleaning the house, but she and Grace were back at it early Monday morning, and I helped them in the evenings. By the end of the week we had the whole first floor scrubbed clean, the parlor and the dining room papered, curtains up at the windows, and the furniture moved in.

By the end of February no one could have guessed that we hadn’t been living in that house all our lives—nobody but Mother, and Grace, and I.