BY THE TIME THE COLLEGE crowd left at the end of Christmas vacation, Emily was too busy to miss them. She had scarcely seen them in the handful of days that intervened; Don, she had not seen at all. The momentum inspired by the highly successful Wrestling Champs had pushed her into another project.
She was teaching English one day a week to Mrs. Mohanna and Mrs. Tabbit.
It had come about because she went to return the baklawa cake pan and found Mrs. Mohanna alone. Her husband and children, her interpreters, were gone, and yet she was bursting to express her feelings. With her bright eyes pleading to be understood, her small hands gesturing, she rushed to pick up Layla’s doll, the perfume, the picture books and puzzles. (The skates and mittens were significantly absent.) She ran her fingers up and down an imaginary piano and kept saying “God Bless” and “Thanks” and “God Bless” again.
When she rushed to the kitchen Emily, using sign language herself, took the long-handled coffee pot out of her hands. Mrs. Mohanna understood and laughed. She seized Emily girlishly by the hand and they ran outside, up the snowy street to Mrs. Tabbit’s house.
Emily had never been in Yusef’s home before. It was a little more pretentious than Kalil’s. The lamp hanging from the ceiling was made of brass with a dangling chain. There were easy chairs and pictures on the walls.
Mr. Tabbit was not at home, and neither was Yusef. But there was an assortment of younger children to whom Mrs. Tabbit—a short fat woman with a merry face—spoke volubly in Arabic. They said haltingly but politely that their mother was full of thanks and that their brother had liked the skates. Mrs. Tabbit herself ventured a few English phrases, but they were obviously her entire vocabulary.
Mrs. Tabbit, too, ran to the kitchen, and Emily didn’t know her well enough to protest, which amused Mrs. Mohanna who twinkled at her. The children went out to play, and while the three women drank sweet, dark, foamy coffee out of tiny cups they tried to talk.
It was interesting, Emily observed, to see how much they could communicate in spite of the barrier of language. Mrs. Tabbit showed Emily her embroidery work, and Mrs. Mohanna ran home to get hers. They admired Emily’s watch bracelet but she didn’t know how to tell them it came from her grandfather. They admired the locket and she said, “Mother,” pointing to each of them and rocking a baby and nodding and then at herself, shaking her head. After a puzzled moment they cried together, “Imma!” “Imma!” and Emily repeated “Mother! Mother!” and they said “Mother,” jubilantly.
Then and there Emily decided to teach them English. Here was another thing she could do, right in her own home without neglecting her grandfather. She would get a small blackboard and some chalk—
When she told him her idea, Grandpa Webster began to laugh. “By Jingo, you’re your grandmother all over again! She taught school in a parlor, too.”
“I remember,” Emily said. It had been the first school in Deep Valley, ’way back in the fifties.
“And your mother would be all het up about this!” he added, looking wise.
The Syrians were slower to accept the idea. Emily was rebuffed at first, with excessive politeness, but nevertheless rebuffed, when she took it to Little Syria. Mr. Mohanna of the poetic speech and huge mustache, and prosperous Mr. Tabbit who wore a gold watch chain, were alike dubious of the proposition, and the women were suddenly shy.
But Emily pointed out how much help the women could be to their children with school work and to their husbands in business if they learned a little English. She told of the pleasant time they had had drinking coffee together.
“I want them to come to my house now.”
She spoke eloquently, and she was plainly a popular figure. She won. They settled upon Wednesday as a good day for the classes, and the following Wednesday the women arrived, smiling, gay scarves over their heads, and Emily, like her grandmother, taught school in a parlor.
Or, rather, in a dining room, for Grandpa Webster wouldn’t have been left out for the world. She set the blackboard up near his easy chair. He helped with the lessons, and afterwards, when they had coffee, he taught the women to say “coffee,” “sugar,” “cream,” and “doughnuts” with much laughter.
They were fascinated by the little house. Mrs. Mohanna touched the piano and said, “Layla? Layla?” Mrs. Tabbit admired the antimacassars which Emily’s grandmother had crocheted for her chairs.
The next week they asked if they might bring Mrs. Scundar. The following week it was Mrs. Mahluff. They were learning quickly, and their gratitude was touching. They never came empty-handed; in spite of Emily’s protests they brought pastries and embroidered belts and pieces of handmade lace.
No wonder they were happy about it, Emily thought! They had been like caged birds. Their husbands learned English at business where they did very well, she had discovered. Some of those who had come ten years before and started out as peddlers, now owned their own stores. The children learned the new language at school, but the women had no chance to learn.
“This class should include all the women in the settlement. But I couldn’t handle that in my small house. The public schools ought to take it over.”
She broached the matter to her grandfather. “Don’t you suppose the schools could be persuaded to start English classes for the Syrians?”
“No harm in trying, and we’ve got that contraption there.” He nodded at the telephone.
Emily laughed. “I’ll call Miss Fowler.”
At first she thought she would ask Miss Fowler to supper. The plan required a leisurely talking over. But she still had that shrinking from bringing outsiders into the little house. Instead she asked if she might bring a picnic supper to Miss Fowler’s apartment. She told briefly what her scheme was.
Miss Fowler was enthusiastic. “You have a wonderful idea, Emily. Two wonderful ideas, for I’d love a picnic supper. Bring enough for three, though. I know another teacher who would be interested in working up Americanization classes.”
“When may I come?”
“Tomorrow night? I’ll make the coffee.”
Elatedly, Emily put beans to soak. Miss Fowler came from Boston; she ought to like baked beans. They would keep hot, too, in a crockery jar. The next day she baked them, according to her grandmother’s recipe, and baked brown bread and made cole slaw. She baked an apple pie and fixed the basket daintily with a lunch cloth and napkins on top.
She sat with her grandfather while he ate his bread and milk, talking about the great plan. She had changed to the new rose-colored wool, and now she put on the brown velvet hat with the rose underneath, and her coat and furs; and picked up the basket.
“You look like Little Red Riding Hood,” he chuckled as she started away.
The basket was heavy, but Emily was too happy to mind. She walked briskly over the dark slough. She was bursting with her plan. And it was fun to be taking a picnic to Miss Fowler’s. She had come to be fond of the little apartment, so warmly inviting with its fire, its books and magazines, and the pictures which always beckoned her thoughts to far-away places.
When Miss Fowler drew her hospitably into the living room, Emily saw a card table set up before the fire.
“I thought we’d have our picnic here,” Miss Fowler said. A tall man came in with an armful of wood.
“Emily, you know Mr. Wakeman.”
“Why, of course!” She looked up into friendly brown eyes.
He put down the wood, dusted himself off, and they shook hands.
“You look like Little Red Riding Hood, Miss Emily.”
“That’s just what my grandfather said.”
He lifted the basket. “This is heavy. Did you walk?”
“Oh, yes!”
“And she lives all the way across the slough!”
When Emily’s wraps were hung in the closet, they all went to the kitchen with the basket.
“I hope things are still hot,” said Emily. “That coffee smells good, Miss Fowler.”
“So does this,” observed Mr. Wakeman, sniffing at the pie.
“You’ve even brought a lunch cloth and napkins!” Miss Fowler spread them on the card table, and Emily set out the baked beans and brown bread, the butter in its print of strawberry leaves, the cole slaw.
As soon as they were seated Miss Fowler said, “Start right in on your big idea, Emily. This can’t be a late party, for Jed and I teach tomorrow.”
Jed! Emily put down her fork. She looked across the table at the large, handsome young man who was serving himself to beans with pleased concentration.
“Do you, by any chance, wrestle?”
He looked up, smiling. “Yes.”
“Are you, by any chance, Mr. Jed?”
“Some people call me that. You can just drop off the mister.”
Emily stared at him radiantly. “Oh! Oh! I don’t know what to say! I don’t know how to tell you what that meant to Kalil and Yusef—the day we started the Wrestling Champs—that’s our club!” She was too confused to talk intelligibly.
“Kalil told me that he won,” Jed Wakeman said.
“Oh, yes! He won! And it changed everything for them. The American boys looked at them with different eyes…” She broke off. “But they said Mr. Jed had gone away.”
“Why, yes! I was away for Christmas. But they told me all about it when I came back.”
“All about what?” Miss Fowler said. “I want to hear.” So Emily told the story, bubbling over with her excitement and the happy memory of Kalil’s great triumph. She told about her grandfather acting as referee, and how Kalil and Yusef had been renamed Charley and Joe, and about the name of the club, the Wrestling Champs. All three were laughing.
“To think of you being Mr. Jed!” Emily ended.
“Well, you didn’t know that I was Mr. Jed, but I’ve known for some time that you were Emily. The boys told me about the Wrestling Champs, and Layla told me about her music lessons and, of course, the women try out their English on me.”
“Wait till Grandpa hears!” Emily said.
The baked beans were a great success. Jed Wakeman ate like Bobby Sibley, Emily thought. She didn’t eat much. She was too busy talking.
“What are the women like, Emily?”
“They’re sweet. So warm-hearted and hospitable! And they’re very religious. Their religion is the center of their lives. They get respect and obedience from their children. They do beautiful embroidery and crocheting. And their cooking!” She turned to Jed. “Have you tasted baklawa?”
“Yes. It’s heavenly. But it can’t compete with this pie.”
“They deserve to be helped.” Emily looked as she looked on the debating platform, alert and eager.
“The men need help, too,” said Jed. “They need some simple classes in American history and government to help them in getting their Americanization papers.”
“That’s their greatest ambition,” said Emily, “to get their Americanization papers. They love America. They adore it. It’s hard to understand when you see their difficulties and humiliations here. The new world must be a lot better than the old one.”
“Freedom is pretty important,” Jed said soberly.
Miss Fowler said that many of the larger cities had such classes for the foreign born. They met in the evening.
“The government finances them, I believe. But the application has to be approved by the school authorities. I’m sure Miss Bangeter will like the idea, and Mr. Hunt, the Superintendent of Schools. I’ll talk to them tomorrow.”
“I’ll talk to Mr. Sibley if you want me to,” Emily cried. “He’s very influential.”
“Leave something for me,” said Jed.
“You’ve done enough already!” She looked at him with shining eyes. “How did you come to be interested in the Syrians?” she asked.
He laughed. “Why, it’s because of the Syrians I’m here. I’m a southerner.”
“I could tell that from the way you talk.”
“Louisiana. Tulane University. I want to take my Master’s in sociology after I’ve taught a year or two. I heard about the Syrian colony here. It’s a particularly interesting one. Deep Valley, of course, is a bit of New England transplanted to the middle west, and in the heart of it is this alien growth. I thought I’d like to do a thesis on the reactions of the two groups. I was especially interested to see just what the New Englanders were doing to help.”
“I’m afraid you found they weren’t doing anything,” Emily said.
“Well!” answered Jed. “One of them was!”
Everything he said seemed complimentary, somehow, although he wasn’t gallant in the artificial sense. But plainly he liked her, and she liked him.
When the dishes were washed and he had helped Emily into her coat, he went for his own.
“I’ll carry that basket home,” he said.
“It was a lovely supper, Emily,” Miss Fowler declared, smiling. “And I think we’ve accomplished quite a lot.”
They walked home across a starlit slough, Jed carrying the basket and holding her arm, looming very tall and big above her. They were still talking about Syrians. He knew where they came from. It was the Lebanon district, he said. She told him about Mr. Meecham.
“I want to interview that old gentleman.”
“He likes the Syrians, Grandpa said.”
When they turned in at the gate he stopped and looked up the path to the little house. Light from the lamp her grandfather had left in the window streamed across the snow.
“So this is the Hull House of Deep Valley!” Jed said.
Emily looked up quickly. “Why do you say that?”
“Well, it is, isn’t it? Jane Addams invited the poor and the lonely and the strange right into her house in order to help them, and you’re doing the same.”
Sensing something tense in her silence, he said in a puzzled tone, “You’ve read Twenty Years at Hull House, haven’t you?”
“Yes. My oration, when I graduated, was about Jane Addams and Hull House.”
“And you never saw the similarity between what she did and what you’re doing?”
“Not till this moment. But I’ve often thought I would like to do what she did, if I could only go to college.”
“And now you’re doing it without going to college!” he replied.
On the porch he took off his hat. “I’d like to come to call if I may.”
“Of course. My grandfather will be so delighted to meet Mr. Jed.”
“When may I come?”
“Saturday night?”
“Thank you very much.”
“That Jed Wakeman is nice,” Emily remarked aloud when she reached her own room. He was, she thought, such a happy normal person, so—outgiving.
Her eyes chanced to fall on Don’s picture inspecting her disdainfully. She took it up and changed it from the front row of pictures to the back. As she did so she wished she could put him that easily into the background of her life.
She turned away smiling. “Just wait till I tell Grandpa that he’s going to meet Mr. Jed!”