CHAPTER 2
Let Them Eat Worms
TERPSICHORE WATCHED HER FATHER AS HE STOOD IN front of the mirror by the front door to straighten the part in his hair.
Her mother watched too, her face grim.
Pop took his fedora from the hook by the door and adjusted it on his head.
“Don’t I get a say in this?” Mother asked. “Why don’t we just admit we’re not making it on our own and apply for relief like most of the other mill families? Or we could move in with my mother in Madison. We don’t have to do something as drastic as moving to Alaska.”
He held up one hand against anything else she might say. “It’s my job to provide for this family, not the government’s,” he said. “And I’m not saying we’re going to do it.”
“But you’re sure acting like it,” Mother said. “We belong here, where we have friends—and doctors and schools and libraries.”
“This may be a ghost town soon,” Pop said.
“Maybe the mill will reopen,” Terpsichore said. “Maybe you’ll get your job back and we won’t have to move.”
“Look out the window, Terpsichore. How many trees do you see on the hills?”
The hills were once covered with oak and maple trees that turned red, orange, and gold in the fall. Now all that was left was stumps and scrub. There weren’t any trees left to feed to the mill.
Mother darted back and forth between the table and the sink as if the fate of the world rested on her having a tidy kitchen. Pop caught up with her to plant a kiss on the top of her head before he left the house.
• • •
At recess, instead of making snow forts in the fresh snow, everyone huddled to hear who might be applying to move to Alaska. It turned out that lots of fathers were going to the county building that morning.
Terpsichore and her best friend, Eileen, were a huddle of two. “Does your dad want to move to Alaska?” Terpsichore asked.
“Da thinks that we have to go if we can,” Eileen said. “If we don’t, we’ll probably have to move in with Uncle Patrick in his apartment in Chicago.”
“And if we don’t go to Alaska,” Terpsichore said, “we’ll probably have to move in with Grandmother VanHagen in Madison.” Terpsichore thought of Grandmother’s house, where everything was so proper and quiet you were afraid to laugh out loud. Maybe Alaska wouldn’t be so bad compared to that. “How will they choose the families who get to go?”
“You have to have farming experience, so my da thinks we’ll have a good chance of getting picked,” Eileen said. “I bet some people applying have never grown a radish or milked a cow.”
“I don’t know if a henhouse and vegetable patch would count as a farm,” Terpsichore said. “So maybe we won’t get picked.” She shrugged. “And I don’t even know if I’d want to go. One minute I think it would be a crackerjack adventure and the next minute I think of all I’d miss, especially you—if you’re still here, that is.”
“We won’t be able to stay here long—and I don’t want to live in my uncle’s apartment, so I hope we go to Alaska,” Eileen said.
“Then the only way we can stay together is to both go. We have to make it happen.” Terpsichore took off the mitten on her right hand. “Pinky promise?”
Eileen took off her right mitten too. “Pinky promise!”
They interlocked little fingers.
“I do solemnly promise,” Terpsichore said, “I will do everything in my power to help my family go to Alaska.”
Eileen repeated the pledge, and with fingers still interlocked, they shook hands three times.
• • •
That evening, Pop told the family about his visit to the county building. “I got some crazy news today.” He looked at all of them: Mother, his little Muses—Terpsichore, Calliope, and Polyhymnia—and baby Matthew in his cradle.
“In order to qualify for the Alaska program you have to be on relief. So because we’ve skimped and made do instead of going on relief we’re not eligible. We’re the kind of self-reliant people needed up north, but we were rejected before they even read my application. It makes no sense at all.”
Pop’s forehead wrinkled in frustration. Terpsichore had to agree with her father. It wasn’t fair that they were disqualified because they hadn’t gone on relief. When Pop lost his job last year, he had sold his car to Mr. Nostrand—the owner of the general store—and Mother sold some jewelry, so they’d have money to live on till they figured out how to make it without the income from the mill.
Terpsichore locked her pinky fingers under the table. She couldn’t let Eileen’s family go to Alaska without the Johnsons. What could she do?
Pop picked up the stack of forms he’d filled out and threw them in the air. “That’s what I think of their requirements. I’d like to go to Alaska, but I would rather eat worms than go on relief.” He stomped outside.
Cally started to cry. “I don’t want to eat worms.”
“Me neither,” said Polly.
Terpsichore knew her father didn’t really mean for them to eat worms, so she tried to make a joke of it. “Maybe if you dipped them in flour and fried them? Or chopped them up and mixed them with bread crumbs and baked them like a meat loaf?”
“That’s disgusting, Trip.” Cally gagged into her napkin.
Polly pushed back her chair and dashed to the bathroom. It sounded like she made it there before upchucking.
“Terpsichore Johnson! Now look what you’ve done,” her mother said. “You’d think at your age you’d have more sense than to say things that send your sisters into gastric spasms.”
“It’s not my fault,” Terpsichore said. “Pop talked about eating worms first.”
Terpsichore crawled under the table to pick up the forms her father had tossed. There were forms for applying for relief and forms to apply for the Alaska program. She’d promised Eileen she would do everything she could to make sure her family went to Alaska. She’d think of something, or her name wasn’t Terpsichore Johnson!