“I’VE ALWAYS ENJOYED THE COMPANY OF MORE unusual people than most, simply listening to them and looking at them, so thus I felt drawn without control back to the Woodlief household. My mother, though, told me in no uncertain terms to conquer the urge to go down the hill.
Even though she hadn’t talked to Trudy but that one time, she liked her less and less every day. She told Sade and Amanda and all the rest several times exactly how high Trudy had her leg up on the bureau. Everybody, particularly those overweight, was stunned. These were the kind of women who liked to believe that God has very definite ideas about who should be fat and who should be thin. So, when they featured Trudy, so lean, with her leg up to her shoulders, shaving, they felt doomed.
I waited and kept my distance from the Woodliefs, according to my mother’s wishes. The Woodliefs kept a great deal to themselves as well. But then after about eight or nine or so months, the children fell into a sheer stealing frenzy, stealing anything they could lift to carry, even down to laundry off the line. Women were very embarrassed over having to go down the hill and ask the children to hand back socks and petticoats. I heard one woman say she would’ve much rather sent her husband to bring things home, but she was frankly afraid Trudy would drag him bodily into the house and corrupt his affections for her.
Trudy’s husband, Tommy, stole in a very brazen manner as well, stealing first dogs and then copper, stripping it and then hoarding it in back of his house in broad daylight. My mother had predicted he would do something like this. We’d passed him several times walking, and she whispered to me that Tommy was of an undesirable element.
He’s got criminal blood. He looks like he’d love to go right now and rob a bank.
I can tell.
You can’t tell anything. You simply can’t give anybody the benefit of the doubt.
Why do I have to? Where is it written that I have to give somebody with criminal blood the benefit of the doubt?
Before John Carroll could think through the copper problem, Tommy loaded it up and sold it and off he went. He just took his foot in his hand and left his wife six months along with twins, with already enough kids to bait a trotline.
This threw my mother into an awkward spot. When news of Tommy Woodlief abandoning his family reached the rummy table, she stopped us in the midst of collecting pennies for a fresh deck to announce her change in attitude. No matter how filthy this young woman keeps her house and children, no matter how rude she is and how mean her children are, certainly no woman deserves to be fooled up with twins and left stranded.
Everybody, especially Sade, yelled, Whew! What a bum!
My mother promised them that by the end of the day she’d think of the best way to help. She believed Trudy would be peculiar about community aid, although little did she know that, the second Tommy left, Trudy walked all the way to town to push for Dependent Children checks. My mother developed the same stern face as she had thinking up the Wassermann solution, the same look as when she yanked the crying, newly poor Amanda Bethune up from her table and restored her self-regard, and certainly the same look as when she explained betting to women so they could have a little thrill on a Saturday afternoon. Mr. Roosevelt’s programs were very helpful, but I’m sure he never realized how much women like my mother were doing to help him pick up after Mr. Hoover.
Later that afternoon, as though my mother’s thinking so hard on Trudy’s situation had pulled her to the store, she appeared, smoking and swayback, and she proceeded straight to the counter to hound Porter again about credit. We weren’t used to seeing women smoke, pregnant or otherwise.
Trudy said to Porter, I’m asking again for credit.
Porter said more than likely for the sixth time that week that he had pulled in all his accounts and couldn’t set up any new ones. He said he couldn’t make any exceptions, that he and Celia had to make a living, and he started rambling, overexplaining himself. And then Trudy slammed the flat of her hand on the counter and shouted out loud, Fine! Damn! Then she called the children in from playing in the dust outside. They appeared splinter barefoot and more or less clambered over each other coming through the door. Then they broke apart and shot out and slipped behind various counters like pool balls, extending themselves credit.
Porter was a very fragile man and had difficulty handling anything out of the range of normal, so thus he was robbed of fruity chews and all-day suckers and sheer pocketfulls of ten-for-a-pennies. Celia was braver in this regard and got up from the card table and encouraged the children to unload themselves.
None of this fazed Trudy, who had come back to the living room section of the store and walked around the card table, wishing somebody would make over her and the recent news of her carrying twins. She had previously told us that the X-ray man at the pre-mother clinic had noticed two babies, though the sex, he had said, was a mystery.
Sade noticed Trudy’s longing and put her hand down and said, Well, how does it feel to be having twins?
Trudy said, You get more accomplished than having them one at a time. She said this as though she was talking about having one tooth extracted at a time as opposed to a whole mouthful.
My mother said, Well, I hope you like boys then, because that’s exactly what you’re carrying. I took note of you walking from the rear and you seemed very squared off.
Amanda and Sade had read girls, so Trudy was asked to walk again to break the tie. Trudy turned with her hands on what must have been a hurtful lower back and proceeded from one end of the store to the other one. Everybody looked with an eye towards sizing up sex.
When Trudy got to the door, she turned around and asked what they thought.
Then they all agreed and swore to Trudy that she was carrying a lapful of boys.
Trudy said, Good. She said, Boys’ is all the names I’ve got.
Then she rounded up her children and started out. Amanda interrupted her leaving to ask what she planned to name the babies.
She told us, Bernard and Barnard, these names going so naturally together.
That fairly took our breath. My mother asked her if that wouldn’t get confusing, which it would.
Trudy said, No. She said she intended to call them Pee Wee and Buddy. Then she told us all to have a nice afternoon, and she organized her children out the door and walked the side of the road towards home.
We all got up a nickel or two and my mother trotted me out following Trudy and the children with a little sack of candy. After I caught up and handed over the bag, which they snatched, the children sat down on the ditchbank and fell into the sack. They ate it instantly and threw the bag in the ditch. Trudy picked it up and looked in it, threw it back down and pinched the oldest girl for not saving her any. I thought this was unusual for a mother to care so about candy, but Trudy had birthed first at thirteen and thus understandably mourned sweets.
When I got back to the rummy table, my mother had decided what to do about the Woodliefs. She told the women they’d donate money for Trudy’s groceries, giving it directly to Porter and calling it credit. That way everybody would be pleased. We’d be helping, Porter would get his money, and Trudy’s gang could eat without paying without stealing.
When Trudy returned and slammed her hand on the counter, Porter said he could let her have a particular amount, whatever it was, fifty cents, a dollar, each week, no more no less.
She said in a curt manner, Damn! Ain’t that swell?
But Trudy shopped that day and bought as much Cream of Wheat and Post Toasties as anyone had ever seen walk out of the store at once, thus inspiring in us all a great deal of hope for the Woodliefs.
Hope was dashed, though, the following week when my mother, in trying to get up a little community one-act something, approached the oldest Woodlief girl, Florence, about taking a small part, no talking or singing, just standing there. Everyone was eager to involve Florence, as she was so pretty and appeared so thoughtful. But Florence was of her own mind, and told my mother she didn’t care to act in some goddamn homemade play. My mother’s color left her. Goddamn simply rolled from the child. But Florence took the part finally for a nickel, a carpetbag full of dress-up clothes, and a generous bit of raw sugarcane.