ABOUT four years after Emma’s death Jim Calhoun had an accident in the mill that changed him and made his and Bonnie’s life together more difficult. He was on night work, and because he was tired, or because he had been growing careless, no one could say, he broke his wrist in a frame machine. Doctor Foley, the same one who had come to Emma, set the wrist, but it did not heal, and the hand was cut off.
With a stump in place of a right hand Jim could not work in the mill. He got odd jobs around the village: but where he had been a man who took some pride in having his work done well, he became careless about everything, and uninterested. He had never been the best sort of husband, but Bonnie understood him, and had learned early not to expect too much. And she loved him. Loving was as natural to her as the breath she took into herself without thought, so she had a child every year. To them she gave every care she could, and was very proud of each one. The oldest, who had been born before Emma left them, was named Emma, the next was a boy, John, and there were two others, Laurel and Kirkland.
John was married to Zinie during the year that followed Emma’s death. They had one child and another on the way; and lived in the same house with Bonnie. Together John and Bonnie managed to keep Granpap, who had lost his place as a watchman because he was too old and was caught asleep more than once.
At home, with nothing to do, Granpap lost all interest in life. He lay in bed most of the day, and at last stayed there. Until one evening, he called Bonnie and talked to her about his coming death, of which he was sure.
“I’m a-going t’ my long home,” he said.
“No,” Bonnie told him. “You’ll live t’ be a hundred.”
This was what she had told him so many times, but there was nothing else to say.
“No, Bonnie, I’ll follow Emma soon. Maybe if the good Lord had seen fit to let me stay in the country I might have lived. But hit was not t’ be . . . . I want you and John t’ give me a good funeral. And remember to turn my feet to the east, so I can meet my Lord face to face on Judgment Day. Now I want t’ see John.”
A few days afterward the old man died. He had asked for a tombstone, but this was something they could not afford. John cut out a headpiece from a slab of wood, and carved Granpap’s name, John Kirkland, across the top. They set this up at the head of the grave.
With Granpap gone they all thought of moving to Bethune where a huge factory had been built by a northern manufacturer. They had seen word about it written in the papers for months before, and had heard many things—that new houses were being prepared for those who worked, with bath rooms and every sort of new device for making people comfortable.
The papers had great headlines across the top that were easy to read, saying that the people from the North who were building the factory were welcome. Everyone seemed happy about the new mill—especially those in the town. The stores and banks had signs of welcome in them, and even the preachers spoke of it, saying that at last the interests of North and South, which had been severed by the Civil War, were brought together again—the blue and the gray were one.
Zinie was rather cautious by nature, and she persuaded John to wait until others went to work in Bethune, so they might hear first how things went there. It was well they did wait. For, one by one, families came back, or those that stayed found they were no better off than they had seen before.
The bathrooms were there in the new houses. But the wages were lower, and no matter whether a man had one child or eight he must take in boarders; so people were forced to keep mattresses in the new bath tubs where a boarder of two of the youngest children could sleep. Sometimes when the boarder happened to be on the night shift the tub was used as a bed day and night. So John and Zinie remained at the Wentworth Mills.
One day, quite suddenly, in the twist room where he worked, big Jim Martin fell down on the floor. Doctor Foley said he died of heart trouble, for which he had been giving Jim medicine bought at his drug store.
Jim’s death forced John and Zinie to break up the house with Bonnie, for Jennie needed them to help with money, in order that all the Martin young might have enough food. Lillie was in the mill, and Jennie worked there, but this did not make enough for the rest to live on. They needed what John could bring in.
Bonnie could see that it was right for Zinie to go to her people, but she felt bereft when they were gone from her. She liked them both, and it had been more than good to have them in the house, especially since Jim Calhoun often stayed away for days together. Though the Company did not charge much for rent, she found it necessary to get a place that was cheaper.
In a field of broom straw, off Company land, she knew of a cabin that had been lived in by colored people. This would rent for a small sum. She moved in immediately; and one Saturday afternoon and Sunday cleaned the two rooms and kitchen leanto. She scrubbed the floors, and with a flour mixture pasted fresh newspapers over the walls.
During the day she left the children at home with five-year-old Emma. Each morning she rose at four, made her own breakfast, and left coffee and a pot of hominy with flour gravy on the stove where little Emma could reach them when the children woke. She left them regretfully, lying across the bed in which she had slept with them during the night. Thoughts of them stayed with her during the day while she walked before her looms. She was afraid a flame from the chimney might set fire to the house, and sometimes the fear that some accident had happened to one of them made her long to give up the work and rush back to see that they were well.
At night, being tired, she walked slowly home for part of the way. But as she neared the cabin, in spite of trying to be sensible, she would begin to walk fast and then to run. Only when she came just outside the cabin and heard their voices in the room, talking naturally, could her fears quiet down.
On Sundays she stayed away from church, partly because that was the only day on which she could be with the children. But she had lost interest in the church. Mr. Turnipseed had gone to Bethune, and a Mr. Simpkins had come to the Wentworth village. Even before she had moved to the cabin, Mr. Simpkins had made Bonnie angry, though she herself acknowledged at the time to Zinie that there was no good reason in her anger. The preacher was very much worked up over the way young people were behaving. He said they no longer had any reverence for parents: no longer any morals. The young girls went about painting their cheeks and lips and dancing unholy dances, learned from the moving pictures. They thought, not of God and heaven, but of the flesh and the devil.
Zinie said he was right, for recently Lillie, her younger sister, had gone away from the mill to work in the ten cent store in town. She still lived at home, but she painted herself, and danced, and even drank some while she was out late at night, with men who were not known in the village.
Bonnie felt that young people should enjoy themselves, and she sympathized too much with Lillie. Perhaps, she said to Zinie, the sort of time Lillie was having was not the best, but she could see that the girl was only feeling around to enjoy life so long as she could, while she was still young.
But the thing that really disturbed Bonnie was the preacher’s insistence on the sacredness of the family, and his anger at those who did not keep their families together. Nothing would have pleased her more than to stay at home and raise her children in the best way she knew how. And there were many other women like her in the village. Mr. Simpkins seemed to think if they wished they could stay at home and have a life of comparative ease. Because his wife could stay at home, he thought that other men’s wives could do the same. Bonnie could not go to church Sunday after Sunday and hear him scold them for letting the family and the home break up without getting too angry. So she stayed at home with her young ones.
She talked with John who came over sometimes—about the mill. At first she had been very glad to give the best she had to her work. Now she saved her strength wherever possible.
One day at the looms she was wondering where the money for cloth to cover the almost naked young ones would come from. And she thought, “Hit costs ten cents a yard. How much do I need?” She counted that up. Then another thought came. “I work at my looms and am paid fifty cents for making sixty yards of cloth. And to-day at the store I’m a-going t’ pay ten cents a yard for the same cloth. The cloth I make for fifty cents is sold for six dollars.”
She spoke of this to her brother and to John Stevens who had come for a visit, for John wanted Bonnie to get acquainted with his friend, and had brought him to her shack in the field, for she had a sick baby.
“Somewhere in between, hit seems that somebody makes five dollars and fifty cents,” she said.
“Well, it seems so,” John Stevens answered, looking at her and smiling a little. “But you see the owners, they figure that some money must be added to that cloth to pay for wear and tear on their machines and their buildings and such like.”
“They pay themselves for wear and tear on the machines,” Bonnie spoke. “But hit seems I don’t get paid for wear and tear on myself.”
She had spoken the words almost in fun, only trying to make a play with the words that John Stevens had spoken. But when she had said them she stopped short, for in those half playful words she felt that she had struck something that had been worrying her, some idea that had tugged at her while she worked, and at home.
She saw John and John Stevens give each other a look of understanding.
When they left after a short visit, for John Stevens must get back to his work since it was not his Sunday off, Bonnie held John back inside the door.
“He’s nice,” she said. “I liked him as soon as he set foot in the door. You bring him again.”
The next day, about the middle of the morning, Bonnie came running into the twist room where John was working.
“John,” she said, “John.” He saw that she was pale and breathless. “Little Emma’s come t’ say the baby is very sick. You go for the doctor right away and send him.”
“What’s the matter with him?” John stopped his machines, but his sister was already gone, and the section boss was standing beside him.
Bonnie had sent her little girl back to the cabin. All the way over, stumbling on the road she wondered what the sickness might be. The cold he had been sick with for several days had been just like the colds all the children had at times. She cut across the field. The broomstraw, weak as it was, seemed to hold her back, and she pushed her way through as if it was a wall that she must break down.
Running toward the cabin she could hear no sound but her own breathing, but at the place where the clearing began she could almost hear the stillness that surrounded the shack and filled it inside.
There in the room the other children were near the bed. The baby’s head just showed above the bed clothes. Little Emma had one hand on the quilt as if she was hushing the baby to make it stop crying. Yet the child was not crying. The stillness she had felt outside continued in the room.
She hurried to the bed and pulled down the covers. The child was still. In her arms he lay without moving, but she had seen that his eyes were open. She shook him almost angrily, then held him close to her face. His lips touched her cheek, but there was no breath coming from his half open mouth. Then she had to accept what she had really known when she took him up. There was no life in him. She laid him down on the bed and turned to the other young ones.
The doctor was angry with her for not calling him before. The baby, he said, must have had pneumonia for two days at least. Bonnie was silent before him. There were words that came up in her, but with the child lying on the bed, she could not speak them.
When the funeral was over and Bonnie went back to the weave room, all who worked there were sympathetic and kind. Mary, the colored woman who swept on Bonnie’s side of the room, came up and said:
“I heard about your baby, and I’m real sorry.”
“Hit’s kind of you t’ say that,” Bonnie told her as she had told the others. Now she could not speak of it. She reproached herself that she had not done something that might have prevented the child’s death. If she had not thought of expense and called the doctor earlier. It was thinking of the money involved that had held her back.
Mary Allen came up to her again before the whistle blew for going home.
“My chile, Savannah,” she said, “is a right smart gal. She’s fifteen, and of cose can’t work in the mill, so I’m trying to find her a place with some white folks in town. But I ain’t yet found a thing. So if she could stay with your children for a few days until you get more peaceful in your mind, I’d be glad for her to do it.”
Bonnie looked at Mary Allen, at her plump, good natured black face that was full of sympathy, and Mary Allen turned away. For a long time afterward Bonnie remembered with shame the thought that was behind the look she had given Mary. For she was thinking of what people said—that colored people were all shiftless and no account; and had believed what they said in face of the fact that Mary Allen did her work in the mill quietly and as if she was willing to do her best. There were days when she did not sweep so well. But there were also days when Bonnie felt that the threads might break and faults come into the cloth without her caring.
For Mary Allen sent her child to Bonnie that same evening. And after the first two days Bonnie left the children with her without any trouble in her mind. Savannah, skinny as her mother was fat, opened her eyes wide when Bonnie spoke to her of the things to be done for the children.
“Yes’m,” she said. “We’ve got plenty of them at home. I knows what to do.”
And she did know. Bonnie’s terror about the other children left alone had been made so much greater by the death of one. And Savannah’s presence during that week made her anxiety less. It was her need to have that anxiety lightened when the new grave had just been covered up that Mary Allen understood.