EVERY NIGHT IN LONDON Junction Lena cried and sometimes their mother rocked her in her arms, big girl that she was, and sang to her. Sometimes she cried, too, leaning over to hide her tears on Lena’s yellow curls, and sometimes this sniffling woke up the sensitive Florrie who would set up a great sympathetic bellow and have to be taken up, too. Marcia stood in front of this emotional spectacle, puzzled and unmoved.
“What’s Lena bawling about?” she asked repeatedly, and her mother always answered, “She’s homesick for the old house on Peach Street.”
Marcia tried in vain to understand. Lena had been as excited as she herself had been to come to London Junction. All right, now they were here. They had their wish, didn’t they? Just as they’d made it so often on loads of hay and falling stars. But instead of being happy Lena had to bawl. It didn’t make sense. Mama cried, too. Florrie always cried, so that didn’t count.
“Well, I do miss Towser,” Marcia thoughtfully acknowledged, but she could go no further in comprehending her sister’s delicate and doubtless more mature emotions. In less triste moments, Marcia studied her for other signs of the strange difference between them, a difference she longed to rectify, if she could only understand it. Sometimes she begged for a demonstration for the benefit of her playmates.
“Show Georgie how you cry when you’re homesick,” Marcia would urge, but Lena would only be snappish and run away, blushing.
Marcia was five years old now, fifteen months younger than Lena, but she was half an inch taller because she took after the Willards instead of the Reeds. It was an understood thing that Lena was the pretty one, with her yellow curls and rosy cheeks, but Marcia was proud of having bigger feet so she got new shoes first, and the fact that she could hold her breath longer. She did admire Lena’s social poise, her not being afraid of boys but stalking past them, nose calmly in air, and she desperately envied Lena’s birthmark, a strawberry basket on her neck, caused, it was said, by her mother’s passion for strawberries. Lena, for her part, was envious of grown-up solicitude over Marcia’s health, remarks that she looked “peaked” and sickly. Marcia had a memory, too, though this was a matter of wonder and pride to Lena more than envy. Marcia could remember everything that ever happened, almost from her first tooth. She could remember knowing what people were saying before she could talk and she could remember bitterly the humiliation of being helpless. She remembered being carried in her mother’s arms to a family reunion and given ice cream for the first time. She had cried over its being too cold and her mother said, “Here, Baby, I’ll put it on a stove to warm it.” Any fool of even less than two could see it was a table and not a stove, but for some philosophic reason Baby Marcia decided to let the thing pass without protest. If her mother wanted to think a table was a stove, she would just have to wait for a bigger vocabulary to argue the matter. This was the beginning of a series of disillusioning experiences with adult intelligence, and the recurrent question of whether adults were playing a constant game of insulting trickery, or whether they just didn’t know much. Lena was gravely shocked by Marcia’s spoken doubts, so Marcia kept her thoughts to herself.
Lena went to Primary School in London Junction now and no longer considered Marcia a fit companion in public, but walked home with a girlfriend her own age named Mary Evelyn Stewart. The double name was very fascinating so Marcia changed her own name to Marcia Lily and Lena took the name of Lena Gladys. They tried to make Florrie use her full elegant name of Florence Adeline, but with her customary obstinacy she yelled defiantly, “Me Florrie! Me Florrie!”
“All right, then, be Florrie,” Lena Gladys said contemptuously. “But Mary Evelyn and I won’t ride you around any more in your go-cart after school.”
Lena and Mary Evelyn had a glamorous life in Primary that set them far above Marcia. They had to learn pieces to speak on Exercise Day once a month. Since Mary Evelyn’s mother worked in the Fair Store, both children learned in the Willard sitting room, while Marcia, burning with jealousy, played by herself in a corner, cutting out lady paper dolls all with two names. Marcia couldn’t go to school till next term, although she had read and written almost as soon as she walked and talked. This, like her memory, was a dubious talent, for it was not healthy to be different from other children. It wasn’t healthy to learn Lena’s and Mary Evelyn’s pieces the second time she heard them laboriously spelled out, and it was certainly not tactful. Her mother, with a little schoolgirl on each knee, looked down at Marcia helplessly.
“Marcia, you’re supposed to be playing paper dolls!” she protested. “If the girls haven’t begun to know their pieces by this time, there’s no reason why you should.”
“She isn’t even six,” Lena Gladys said coldly to her personal friend, Mary Evelyn. “Now, I’ll begin mine again. ‘The gingerbread dog and the calico cat—’ ”
“ ‘Side by side on the table sat,’ ” Marcia shrieked, and ran out into the yard yelling the rest of the piece until her mother caught her and boxed her ears.
This correction, not being understood, was forgotten on Exercise Day the next month, when Lena (and of course Marcia) had learned “Little Orphan Annie” with gestures. Mama left Florrie at Grandma’s and took Marcia to visit the First Grade. It was an exciting day with the rustle of mothers’ best silks, the smell of chalk dust and newly scrubbed halls, and the squirming of the children sitting two at a desk to make room for the Second Graders. Marcia and her mother sat with the visiting mothers and smaller children in folding chairs on one side of the room. The teacher had drawn a flag in colors on the blackboard, and there were pussy willows and autumn leaves on her desk. She tapped a little silver gong on her desk when everyone was seated, and she said, “Before we begin the Exercises, perhaps some of our little visitors have a piece they would like to recite for us.” Without further urging, Marcia slid off her mother’s lap and marched over to the platform, where she recited at terrific speed with glib gestures “Little Orphan Annie.” The performance was marked by her mother’s horrified face and the sound of Lena sobbing softly into her Reader, “That’s my piece! Now I haven’t got any piece!”
Even after a punishment for this breach of etiquette and her stout defense, “But Lena didn’t know it anyway!” Marcia continued to steal Lena’s arithmetic or reader and run easily through the homework while Lena was patiently working over one word in her Speller. Marcia could not understand why it took her sister or Mary Evelyn so long to learn things when they were like candy—you saw them, ate them, and that was the end. Nor could she understand why it was bad for her to find the books so simple, just because she wasn’t in school yet. It was confusing to be scolded for doing Lena’s lessons, and then overhear her father chuckling about it to Mr. Friend. These were all matters that would clear up certainly when she started going to school so there was no use puzzling about them.
They lived in one side of a two-family house next to Friend’s Grocery Store, after the summer at Grandma’s and Aunt Lois’s house. Often the children walked past the Furness mansion on Main Boulevard and pretended they lived there just as their father had promised. The big house was empty and they could stroll around the orchard, and even peek through windows of the buildings, unless the old caretaker happened to be around. Through the bars of the cellar windows they could see the basement bowling alley, and back of that the greenhouse with broken panes and cracked flowerpots with dead ferns, for no one had lived in the place since old Mrs. Furness had died. They took their shoes off and went wading on the porch, for the rain leaked through the roof to make delicious puddles and a wading pool of the garden fountain. The great overgrown lawn was a treasure of four-leaf clovers, mole cellars, garter snakes, and hoary dandelions to be blown away in a wish. This was their real home, because their father had said so, and any other place was only marking time.
“It’s a good thing I decided not to take the Furness place,” their father said to their mother. “I understand the heater used to eat up ten tons of coals a season, and with the laundry in the basement you’d be running up and down those stairs every minute. I’m mighty glad I thought it over again.”
“Oh, darling, you know we couldn’t—ever!” their mother gently protested. “I can’t understand your even thinking about it.”
But this lack of faith always made their father mad. He was often cross nowadays, and always tired out. Their mother was always shushing them with “Papa has a lot on his mind at his new job, so do be quiet.” There were many nights when Aunt Lois and Grandma came in for what seemed to be a very grave family conference. The children were sent to bed early, but they could hear their father’s voice get higher and higher, shouting down Aunt Lois’s tense quick words. The nursery was over the living room and by peeking down the open register the girls could see the grown-ups and hear them without actually understanding what these meetings were all about, except that Papa seemed to be the center of them, both leader and victim. Mama sometimes cried, and Grandma’s only contribution seemed as moderator, clucking out a “Now, now, there’s more to it than that!” Papa usually shouted out the same answers every time. If a fellow had brains there was no sense in his working in a furniture factory for a foreman that didn’t even speak English, he said. “I got brains. I got a personality. Carson’s a mighty smart man. He’s the boss and he knows what’s what. If the boss thinks I got the personality for the road, I don’t see what you women have to kick about, trying to hold me back.” The arguments often had their start before Papa’s arrival, with Mama complaining to her mother and sister about something Papa was threatening to do. But as soon as they offered advice and sympathy, Mama went over to Papa’s side. By the end of the evening Grandma and Aunt Lois went home annoyed and baffled, and through the register the children could see Mama tenderly embracing Papa, saying, “I know they’re my folks, Harry, and they mean a lot to me, but they’ve no right to criticize you.”
“That’s all right,” Papa growled. “Only thing is, they get you all upset and that’s what makes me sore. Carson’s been mighty nice to me and you don’t seem to appreciate that. He says I’d be worth a fortune to him on the road. You said you didn’t want me to work nights at the factory so I told him so. He knows I’m too smart for that. Besides if I go on the road, maybe I can pick up a chance at a big job—maybe in Cleveland, Chicago, Pittsburgh. London Junction isn’t the only place in the world.”
“Oh, Harry! A real city?” then their mother’s voice dropped. “But we’ve hardly lived in London Junction yet. I’m not sure I’d like Cleveland.”
Scraps from these scenes were excitedly pieced together in the dark into whispered clues by Lena and Marcia; they were repeated to Mary Evelyn at recess the next day, eventually resulting in Mary Evelyn’s mother saying to Lena’s mother at the Fair Store one day, “Well, I hear you folks are moving to Cleveland any day now. Your little girl told my little girl.” Mama was surprised, then burst out laughing, though later she scolded Lena for telling lies. Lena cried, but Marcia boldly spoke up, “If Papa tells lies, then we can tell lies, too!” This brought Mama’s wrath on Marcia, while Lena complacently ran out to play with Mary Evelyn.
The mature new life of her older sister was desperately fascinating to Marcia, now constantly left out. On Sundays she hoped to have Lena to herself for Sunday School, but even there Mary Evelyn came first. One Sunday they were dressed up in their green nun’s veiling jumper dresses with polka-dot blouses and felt tricorn hats, ready to march off to the First Christian Church, a penny in each little crocheted purse. But at the corner of Maple and Fourth they met Mary Evelyn.
“Hello, Mary Evelyn,” said Lena.
“Hello, Lena Gladys,” said Mary Evelyn.
“Hello,” Marcia said breathlessly, but Mary Evelyn paid no attention, just staring at Lena as if they had a secret together.
“You go on to the Christian Church,” Lena directed Marcia, firmly. “I’m going to Mary Evelyn’s Sunday School.”
“But you can’t!” gasped Marcia. “Mary Evelyn is a Presbyterian, and they sing different songs.”
“Is she a tattletale?” Mary Evelyn asked Lena, as if Marcia was a doll and couldn’t talk for herself. Mary Evelyn was tall for her age. She had a velvet dress and a locket with an opal and asafedita in it, a prayer book with a lock, and a nickel for collection. She had very red cheeks just as Lena had, and a fat black braid down her back with the ends tightly curled. She had a pink velvet hat with a big bow under her chin, for her mother bought all her clothes from a catalog. She did not care to walk in public with anybody younger than she was, so Marcia was obliged to keep several steps behind the two older girls. As she kept shouting remarks to them, the conspicuity was almost worse than letting her come along with them. Lena threatened to tell Mama and this stopped Marcia for a minute or two. Still, she would rather be lectured for walking behind them than go all by herself to the First Christian Sunday School. Presently, crushed by criticism and threats, she stood on the corner watching unhappily while Lena Gladys and Mary Evelyn stalked proudly down the street toward the Presbyterian Church. She wanted to get even by going home and tattling, but she didn’t quite dare risk their scorn. Her pride was shattered by being treated like a baby, but more than that she was mystified by the difference between herself and Lena. What made Lena have the courage to step into a strange church, knowing she might get spanked for doing this without permission? What made it more fun for Lena to do things without permission, anyway? Marcia hopscotched by herself on the corner, pretending to have a good time in case they turned around and looked, but they did not seem to care what she did, providing she didn’t bother them. Desolately she saw that they were actually turning in the Presbyterian churchyard and leaving her. She had only to turn up East Maple and go to the Christian Church, but she couldn’t bear to go all alone. Suddenly, with a little gasp at her own daring, she began running in the direction of the other girls, and as the last bell chimed, she fell over the brownstone steps of the Presbyterian Church, tearing a big hole in the knee of her stocking. A strange big man with whiskers lifted her up and carried her into the assembly door just as they began singing, “I washed my hands this morning, so very clean and white—” The big man put Marcia down on a chair where she sat rigidly, her heart pounding almost visibly under her jumper. If it had not been for the encouraging sight of Lena standing smugly in the front row with Mary Evelyn, and the fact that the great door was closed, she would have rushed wildly out again, back to her proper church. She saw that she was in a row with boys, too, some of them giants of eight or nine years old, and this threw her into fresh panic. She kept her eyes fixed on Lena, standing so calmly, her yellow curls prettily ruffling out from under her felt hat; she ached with envy of this marvellous poise. Then she thought of what Lena and Mary Evelyn would do to her when they found she had tagged, and this prospect was worse than fear of her mother’s scolding. She thought, too, of what the stained-glass God of the First Christian Church would do, if He found her in a Presbyterian Church, and it was no comfort thinking He might do the same thing to Lena because clearly Lena did not fear Him. She saw Georgie Hollis from across the street making faces at her and even read his lips, “What are you doing in my Sunday School?”
Then everybody sat down and a very big, very old woman rustled up to the platform. She had mixed yellow and gray hair that looked like old corn silk piled in ropes on her head and loose downy cheeks that wobbled as she walked. Moreover, she flashed a sparkling lot of gold teeth, a black-ribboned pince-nez and a ruffled blouse covered with brooches, and chains that clinked with authority. There was a silence as she looked over the audience. Marcia hoped her heart did not thunder out her guilty presence.
“I am going to tell you little folks about Sin,” said the lady in a sweet, whining Sunday-School voice. “Look what I have here. A glass of pure water, a white rabbit’s foot and a bottle of black ink. The rabbit’s foot represents the purity of your souls when you are little children. The ink is black like sin and the pure water is the Spirit of Goodness. Does everyone see?”
Marcia craned her neck and saw the rabbit’s foot held up.
“Now, the rabbit’s foot I dip in the pure water of goodness and see? It stays as white as snow. But then I dip it into the ink of Sin and look! Sin makes the soul black.”
This turned out to be absolutely true and there was a murmur as the lady dangled the black rabbit’s foot before the astonished audience. Marcia gripped her seat, feeling faintly sick with the knowledge of her own rabbit’s foot soul turning black with sin inside her. She heard the slow sugary voice drone on, “Now, children, what do we mean by Sin?”
No one answered. The lady looked around, frowning impatiently.
“Come, come, children, I’m sure we know what Sin is. Come, Mary Evelyn, you’ve been coming to Sunday School regularly, what is Sin?”
“Ice cream,” said Mary Evelyn hopefully.
Someone tittered.
“No, no, ice cream isn’t a sin, except when it is forbidden,” said the lady sharply. Mary Evelyn pouted. Marcia felt her own hand going up almost of its own accord.
“There’s a little hand. What is Sin, dear?”
“Going to the wrong Sunday School,” Marcia said clearly.
This was even worse than ice cream for an answer. The lady was scowling as if she wished she had never dirtied her nice rabbit’s foot for the benefit of these young stupids. Furthermore, it made Lena and Mary Evelyn turn around and look at the offender. Marcia felt her face burning hot, and her stomach felt as if she’d been riding on a streetcar. She wished urgently that she might drop dead, but then someone opened the door and called out, “Are you through, Miss Marshall? The children may go to their classes now, and we can resume the discussion at Collection time.”
With a burst of desperation Marcia ran for the open door and hurtled herself into the great outdoors, falling down on the same step as before and bruising her other knee. She ran down the street toward home, certain of being chased by a pack of Presbyterians and was only reassured at the corner of Maple by the Kandy Kitchen sign. This cheery sight reminded her that she still had her penny so she went inside. At the candy counter she hesitated between a licorice shoestring and a chocolate peppermint that might have a penny prize in it. She chose the peppermint and was rewarded by biting on a coin at once, which allowed her to have a second candy. She loitered over this one, making it last till she had finished a wonderful funny paper the Kandy Kitchen man had opened up over the ice cream table. Instead of being about Buster Brown and Mary Jane, this had a magical story about some one named Little Nemo. Marcia pored over this, happily sucking on her peppermint. She felt mature and independent now, ashamed that she had ever been so childish as to tag after Lena and Mary Evelyn. Suddenly she realized that she was biting on a second penny, unheard-of good fortune, and this reward gave her an inspiration.
“Mr. Kitchen,” she said to the bald top of a head on the other side of the counter, “do you sell rabbit’s foots?”
Mr. Kitchen’s hand scratched the bald top and he said no, but if he ever caught a jackrabbit he’d give her a foot for luck.
“I don’t want it for luck,” Marcia explained. “I want it to play Sin with like the Presbyterians do. I guess maybe I can make one.”
She could hardly wait to run home and make herself a rabbit’s foot out of cotton and string. She decided she would have to get the ink out of Papa’s desk while he was mowing the back lawn. Planning this treat, she saw Lena and Mary Evelyn marching primly around the corner, so she ran out, following them at a few paces, forgetting her vow.
“Tagtail,” said Mary Evelyn loudly without turning around.
“Pooh on you,” answered Marcia.
“Don’t pay any attention to her,” said Lena.
“She’ll never go to heaven and be an angel like us,” said Mary Evelyn, primly.
“I don’t care, then I’ll go to hell and play with all the little devils,” said Marcia fiercely. “I’d rather.”
This awed her elders into silence, though she could see them exchanging a look of shocked horror. Her own words had even frightened herself and she had a panicky feeling that the man in the balloon might have overheard.
“Let’s not let her play house with us,” said Mary Evelyn.
“I don’t care, I don’t care!” shrilly answered Marcia. “I don’t play baby games like house. I’m going to get me a rabbit’s foot and play Sin. Right now, too.”
The two other girls whispered together over this, clearly intrigued. Finally Lena stopped.
“All right, you can walk with us,” she said graciously. “We’ll play Sin, too. How do we do it?”
“Come on and I’ll show you!” Marcia jubilantly cried. If it had not been Sunday they would have run all the way home to start the game. It was too bad Mary Evelyn spilled ink on her dress, but if everybody was going to get spanked, Mary Evelyn might as well, too.