CHAPTER THREE

MA’S OWN PA was a sailor out of New Haven, who drowned at sea in 1793, when she was still a little girl. Not long after, her ma died of yellow fever. Ma was put out to live with her aunt and uncle, but they had eight young of their own, and didn’t need another one. She was last at the trough for everything, she always said—never had a stitch of new clothing, but always wore hand-me-downs that two or three of her cousins had already grown out of, and were patched so much that there wasn’t anything of the original cloth left to them. She hated going anywhere looking like a patchwork quilt, for the other kids would giggle at her and make fun, and even the grown-ups would make jokes about how warm she must be in a nice quilt like that, and such. She was last at the food, too, for she sat at the bottom of the table, and by the time she was served, the others would have got all the meat out of the stew, and left her with nothing but potatoes and gravy. She lived on potatoes most of the time she was growing up, she always said.

When she was fourteen her uncle said he couldn’t afford to keep her anymore, she was old enough to take care of herself. He found her a job with Mrs. Agnes Reed, who kept a dame school, where some of the families sent their kids. It was the best thing that ever happened to her, Ma always said. She didn’t get any pay, except a copper cent at Thanksgiving, but Mrs. Reed liked her, and got her off the potato diet and saw to it that she had some clothes that had only been handed down once, instead of two or three times.

On top of it, Mrs. Reed saw to it that Ma got some schooling. Not as much as the other kids, for she had her work to do, sweeping and scrubbing and helping the cook. But Mrs. Reed put her in the reading and writing classes, and taught her some ciphering, too. Being allowed to go to that school was the first time anybody ever did anything for Ma, she always said. She loved going to school, and studied hard whenever she had a spare moment. “Oh, I’d have studied all day long if I could have,” Ma said. “I wanted to study Latin, mathematics, geography, everything they taught. But, of course, I had my work to do, and knew I was lucky to be taught anything at all. I’d have given anything to have gotten to be a schoolteacher myself. It seemed to me just like the greatest thing. But there wasn’t any chance of that.”

So, with Ma talking about what a wonderful thing it was to be a schoolteacher, it was natural that I would get fired up about the idea, and I was happy to go to school. It was a whole lot more interesting than sitting in front of the spinning wheel all day long, which was what we did on the farm most of the time during the winter. There were four of us to keep in clothes. That meant spinning an awful lot of yarn, weaving it into cloth on the big loom, and then cutting and sewing to make dresses and shirts and trousers and coats.

The spinning wheel was in the parlor next to Ma and Pa’s bed. It stood on three legs with a board across them like a small table. On one end was the great big walking wheel—about three feet across—held by an upright post on one side; on the other end was a horizontal rod held by two little rods on a kind of swivel. The horizontal rod led the spindle, which was turned by a belt that came off the wheel. Ma and I would take turns carding and spinning.

Carding is the really dreary part. When you get the wool off the sheep it’s all tangled and has twigs and straw and all kinds of things—even old dried-up dead bugs—stuck in it. The cards are flat hard leather brushes with wire sticking up. You put some wool on one of the cards and brushed the other one over it till all the twigs and things were cleared out. This also separated the fibers so they came off the card in rolls like real curly hair. These rolls were called rolags.

I hated the carding because my arms got so tired, and my fingers would get pricked with burrs and nettles and briars in the wool. The spinning wasn’t so bad. Sometimes it was even fun to see how even I could get the yarn and how fast I could do it.

What I did was stand next to the walking wheel, and reach down into a basket and pick up a roll of wool. Then I’d sort of mush one end of the roll onto the end of the yarn on the spindle with my left hand, and push the wheel back with my right hand. The spindle would start turning and twisting the wool I was holding. My job was to walk backward four or five small steps, stretching out the wool roll so it got twisted into yarn. The idea was to pull at it very evenly so the yarn didn’t get too thin, or bunch up. Ma said all those steps added up to as much as twenty miles a day sometimes.

When I’d walked backward to where I couldn’t reach the wheel, I’d take my three or four steps forward, pick up another roll, and start all over again. A good spinner could spin as much as three thousand yards of yarn in a day. That would be enough to knit five pairs of mittens, almost. Ma could spin that much, and I was getting pretty close.

But even with the two of us spinning our lives away, it seemed like we never had enough yarn for all the clothes we needed. Pa used to do the weaving, but now he took the yarn over to Mr. Grumble, who wove it into homespun in exchange for Pa plowing his fields.

That night, after supper, George and I went out to the barn to water the ox and the chickens. “Why did Pa have to do it, George?” I said.

“It’s the debts,” George said.

“Then why did he buy that blame clock?”

He didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he said, “We shouldn’t talk against Pa. He’s our father.”

That was right, but I couldn’t help myself. “If he’s the father, he should have more sense. I hate not going to school. I’m going to hate going to the mill.”

“Maybe it won’t be so bad, Annie. Days when it’s bitter cold and snowing, and I’m up in the wood-lot bucking logs, you’ll be mighty glad to be under cover.”

It was mighty tedious though. Reading about Julius Caesar’s wars or learning about foreign places, like Switzerland and the West Indies, was a whole lot more interesting than spinning wool. I learned the most amazing things—there were mountains in Switzerland where there was snow all year round; but in the West Indies a lot of the people had never seen snow and didn’t know what it was.

A week later Pa took me down to the mill and signed me up. It was a cold, rainy October day, gloomy as could be, which suited me, because I was mighty gloomy inside, and the weather matched up. We sloshed down the farm lane, and then at the end of it turned left onto the road into Humphreysville. The village was in a valley where two streams came flashing down out of the hills and joined a river. The river went over a falls, and ran on down the valley through a forest.

Below the falls, just outside the village, a bridge crossed the river, and on either side of the falls were the factories—great buildings four stories high, and two hundred feet long. Each had a huge wheel that was turned by water shunted out of the river through a deep ditch, which carried the water under the wheel to move it, and then bent back into the river again. We turned off the village road onto the road to the woolen mill, which ran alongside the river. The noise was something fierce—the roar of the water going over the falls; the squeaking and groaning of the big wheels as they turned; and coming from inside the mills, the thumping and rattling of the machinery.

Inside, the noise was even louder, for the machines banged and shook and clanged. There were rows of them stretching down the full length of the floor, and at each machine were two boys, most of them dirty and wearing worn clothing. As Pa and I came in all the boys looked up; and when they saw I was a girl, they set to buzzing among themselves and winking at me. I’d never had so many boys look at me at once, and it made me feel mighty queer. I wondered how it would be to work amongst those boys all day long—would they go on winking and buzzing, or would they get used to me?

We walked down the wooden floor to the end of the mill, with all those boys still staring at me and making me nervous. In the back there was a little office with a couple of chairs, a table, and a chest. Mr. Hoggart was sitting there. He was a short man, but broad, and had sparse red hair, and a pink face and a big round red nose. Pa went in, and I stood outside looking around. I was mighty curious about the boys. I was pretty interested in seeing boys who stole and lied and cheated and cursed as if it was the most natural thing. It was because they didn’t have a proper upbringing, Robert said, and couldn’t help themselves. So I looked at this one and that one, trying to see if boys like that looked any different from ordinary boys; but it seemed like every time I started to look at one of them he’d know it, and swivel his head around from the machine and give me a wink. I’d snap my head away, and blush—for who knew what they were thinking?

Then Pa and Mr. Hoggart came out of the office. “All right, Annie,” Pa said. “It’s arranged. Mighty lucky for you, too, to be able to work inside all winter where it’s warm and dry, rather than out in the snow and cold like some.”

I didn’t mention that it was warm and dry in school, too. Instead I said, “How long is it for, Pa?”

“Six months. We’ll see how it goes after that.”

My heart sank. Six months seemed like forever.

Mr. Hoggart rubbed his chin and grinned at me. “Mighty pretty girl. I’ll be bound she’s married soon enough, with those big brown eyes.”

I blushed. I didn’t like him grinning at me that way, and saying I was pretty. It was all right for Pa to say it, or Robert—I’d really like if Robert would say that; but I didn’t like the way Mr. Hoggart looked at me.