Aino stayed at Ilmahenki until the next Friday. She gave Eleanor a last kiss and handed her to Alma. It hurt to leave her, but it was better than leaving her in that dingy downstairs apartment with strangers.
All the way to Astoria, her mind was on the quarterly Saturday night membership meeting. A proposal to hire new workers but just pay them wages and not allow membership was on the table. Many current members saw it as a way to increase their own share of the co-op’s surplus. She was utterly opposed. It defeated the entire purpose of a co-op. Labor was only a “factor of production,” and there was a “labor market” where prices, called wages, were bid up and down, only because the culture saw people the same way it saw machines.
Everyone voting on everything had started to bother her. Voitto had once told her that it was dangerous to let a group of fools make important decisions—and it got more dangerous the more fools there were. That was why, he said, Lenin made the party the vanguard of the proletariat. She didn’t like that either. A few powerful party members making decisions for the workers were no different from a few wealthy owners making decisions for the workers. She laughed at herself. She wanted everyone to vote but vote her way.
When Aino reached the mill in the afternoon, Alvar Kari nervously told her that there was talk, mostly among the wives, that a divorced woman shouldn’t be on the board. She knew it was Alvar’s kind way of saying that if the co-op were to be in good standing in the community, it shouldn’t have an adulterer who abandoned her baby and who was a member of a traitorous radical organization on its board. The wives of the board members were invited to discreet coffee klatches by concerned women over the next two weeks. Then the coffee klatches were expanded to the wives of key workers. Aino chose to leave.
Per the bylaws, the co-op would refund Aino’s original membership contribution and retained patronage—over a ten-year period. She left with nothing, feeling enormous anger about the unfairness of it all.
She stopped by Matti and Kyllikki’s little house in Uniontown on her way home. Kyllikki, strands of hair sticking to her sweaty face, was washing clothes with Pilvi.
“Why aren’t you at the mill?” Kyllikki asked as Aino walked in. “Pour yourself some coffee.” She indicated the stove and went back to pounding the clothes with a solid round stick in a large galvanized tub of water she kept reheating with water from the big kettle on the woodstove. She had all the windows open. Pilvi, who had her own little stick, was pounding away at the tub with Kyllikki.
“I quit before I was voted off the board. I’m a disgraced woman.”
Kyllikki stopped pounding. “Gossiping hypocritical old biddies.” She smashed the washing stick down hard, startling Pilvi. Aarni came in with another load of kindling for the firebox. “Why don’t you go see if Billy Haskins can play,” Kyllikki said. Aarni bolted out of the house with Kyllikki shouting after him: “And if he can’t, go find Suvi at school and … Do you want a nickel?” Aarni came back in a flash. Fishing out two nickels from the penny jar on the shelf above the stove, Kyllikki said, “And tell Suvi to take you both to Roth’s for a phosphate.” She paid the bribe and he went running down the street. Pilvi looked between her mother and aunt, not quite sure how to react to seeing her brother and sister get a nickel. Kyllikki picked her up and set her at the table, whispering in her ear, “If you can sit here like a big girl and not interrupt us, I’ll let you have some girls’ coffee with a sugar cube.”
“Talk,” she said to Aino, having cleared the way for action.
“The drumbeat was it didn’t look good for the co-op to have a divorced, unpatriotic Wobbly on the board.”
Kyllikki took that in, then asked, “Did it have anything to do with Hillström?”
“That was years ago.”
“Yes, but it’s today’s news.”
The two sat in silence, taking it in, Pilvi looking wide-eyed, sensing something but keeping quiet.
“I’m going to Portland,” Aino said. “There’s serious work to do.”
“What?”
“I’ve been wasting my time with that stupid co-op.”
“I hardly call creating jobs for thirty men and having Eleanor wasting time.”
“Depends on how you look at it.”
As soon as the words were out, Aino felt a shift in Kyllikki to something deep in her core. It was a mother bear standing firm over her cubs. It was deep roots that allowed the grass to move with the wind, but never lose its grip on the earth. It was Kyllikki’s power, so different from Matti’s power.
“How you look at things determines where you’re standing to look.”
“I don’t need a lecture.”
“No. You need a kick in the rear.” Kyllikki leaned across the table. “You have a child and you almost lost her. And you want to leave her again?”
Aino bristled. “I’ll send for her as soon as I’m settled.”
“Aino, you might find this hard to swallow, but sending for her isn’t the issue. Putting her second is the issue.”
“Letting her stay with her uncle and aunt for a couple of weeks isn’t putting her second.”
“Stop dreaming!” Kyllikki slapped her hand on the table, making the dishes rattle. Pilvi’s eyes grew wider. “The Wobblies are done. Finished. The government, the owners, and the people, Aino, the people, see you as traitors. Your leadership is all in jail. It’s a wonderful dream, Aino, One Big Union, but it’s a dream butting up against reality. The AF of L has it right.”
“We’ve got to change reality! Lenin has it right.”
“You can’t serve God and mammon. Jesus had it right.”
“Matthew, chapter six, verse twenty-four,” Aino said sarcastically. “Don’t preach to me about money. You and Matti are trying to get rich as fast as you can. If Astoria had a country club, you’d join it.”
“Mammon’s not just about money, Aino. God’s about love and mammon’s about the ten thousand petty things that get in love’s way. Yes, money’s one of them, but the expression is the love of money is the root of all evil, not money itself. And if you tell me you love the IWW, I’m telling you that you’re fooling yourself. You can’t love an ideal. You can only love people.”
“Oh, great, you love concrete things, not ideals. So, do you love this?” Aino indicated the room all around her. “Concrete things like your washtub of dirty clothes, your dances on Saturday nights, your little house on the hill. My ideal is making history. You and your things … you’re going nowhere.”
Aino immediately knew she’d overstepped—again. It had been mean. She watched Kyllikki struggle for control and then gain it.
Aino sighed. “I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, Aino, Aino,” Kyllikki was shaking her head. “We’re all going to the same place, Aino, the grave. All that you or any of us will take with us is love.”
“No one takes anything to the grave.”
“You need to choose either Eleanor, your living, breathing daughter, or the IWW.”
“I can do both.”
“It’s not the doing, Aino. It’s the attitude or priorities. It’s the …” She was searching for words and although Finnish was her first tongue, her adult vocabulary was English. “It’s like the position you choose to see things from, your stance in life. Matti can be motivated to make money because he loves logging or because he loves money or because he loves his family. The logging’s the same.” Kyllikki smiled affectionately thinking of Matti. “He got over money when he nearly killed Reder and, but for you, would have gone to jail.”
“Right there! John Reder can throw poor people in jail or throw you and Matti out of Chinook County with impunity because of this rotten-to-the core system.”
“Poor people all over Russia and Finland have been thrown in jail because of the rotten-to-the-core system you reds came up with.”
“Yes, people are angry on both sides, but communism is about helping others, while capitalism is all about helping yourself.”
“Isms!” Kyllikki nearly spit the word. “Socialism, communism, capitalism. All isms are about words and people worship the words the same way other people worship God.”
“One Big Union isn’t an ism. Direct action isn’t an ism.”
“Helping your friend, caring for your child, that’s direct action. The isms just wrap the desire for power, money, and security in pretty words.” Kyllikki gave a tired sigh. “Who’s going to run Finland if the reds take over? Who’s going to run the One Big Union, Aino? Grow up.”
Aino shot to her feet. Pilvi pulled her girls’ coffee up tight to her chest. “I choose the IWW.” Aino was nearly spitting, trembling.
“You get on that train to Portland instead of the boat to Knappton and you’ll regret it the rest of your days.”
“Don’t talk to me about regret.” Aino reached into the washtub and pulled up one of Matti’s long johns, the water streaming from it. “This is the life you chose.” She dropped the wet long johns back into the tub and stalked out the door.