Baker Towers (16 page)

“Sorry I missed you on Saturday,” Irene said. “I left my glasses at the dentist’s. I had to run back and get them.”

“That’s okay. I had a nice visit with your mother.”

Irene chewed silently at a thumbnail. Her fingernails, Joyce noticed, were bitten to the quick.

“I guess you met Susan.” She spoke very quietly; Joyce had to strain to hear her. “My baby sister.”

“Yes,” said Joyce. “I did.”

“The last of the Mohicans.” Irene smiled wanly. “With ten brothers and sisters she’ll be spoiled rotten. You can imagine.”

Joyce thought of the Punnett squares she’d studied in high school biology; then of Irene’s parents, with their watery blue eyes. Irene hadn’t taken biology. No one had told her that two blue-eyed parents couldn’t produce a brown-eyed baby.

“She’s a beautiful child,” Joyce said.

“I think so, too,” said Irene.

J
OYCE’S TASK
, at first glance, was a simple one. She was assigned to a machine and given two piles of fabric—one pile of collars, one pile of
facings. She was to stitch a collar to the underside of a facing, then pass the pieces on to Mrs. Purdy, who fitted them into the bodice of a dress at a speed that seemed supernatural. One after another Joyce stitched together the curved bits of fabric, cursing her slowness. Around her the machines roared. The foreman, a big sullen man named Alvin Blick, watched her from the door. Twice she attached the collars backwards.
Criminy,
she thought.
I’ll go crazy doing this.

By the end of her second day she had developed a system, a way of laying out the pieces on her table and folding the edges together so that the fabric fed smoothly into the machine. After that the work became automatic, and her mind began to wander. She remembered the interminable trip to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, three days by train. Basic training; the heat a constant presence, like a sleeping beast. Maneuvers at noon: the malevolent sun, girls collapsing on the parade grounds. The air force had provided salt tablets; the briny water turned her stomach, but still she kept drinking. It was impossible to drink enough. At night she slept deeply, the night loud with bugs. Sometimes, when the factory whistle roused her, she felt she’d traveled a hundred miles. Then she looked up from her machine and saw she hadn’t been anywhere at all.

She worked as part of a team. There were four girls who fused collars and facings, three older women who attached the collars to the bodices. To Joyce’s left sat Mrs. Purdy’s daughter, a big, slow-witted girl named Betty. Though she’d worked there for months, she was clumsier than Joyce. At least twice an hour her thread would break. Several times a day the fabric became caught in her machine. When this happened, Mrs. Purdy would get up from her own machine and lumber over to Betty’s. She moved slowly, rheumatism in her knees and back. Only her fingers were fast.

Blick, the foreman, began to notice. “You’re getting backed up,” he’d
yell, and it was true: a pile of collars and facings would accumulate each time Mrs. Purdy left her machine. At those moments Joyce thought of her sister Dorothy, who’d lasted eight months before Alvin Blick fired her. Dorothy was as timid as Betty Purdy; Joyce imagined her trembling like a child whenever Blick glanced in her direction.

He’s a bully,
she thought. She had strong opinions about bullies. The air force was full of them. She’d spent four years at their mercy.

One day after lunch she returned to her machine early and showed Betty her method for laying out the fabric. “It’s quicker this way,” she said. She felt Alvin Blick watching them from across the room.

The whistle blew; the women settled at their machines. Later, when Betty’s thread broke, Joyce reached over and quickly rethreaded the machine. Mrs. Purdy looked up, surprised.

“Thank you, dear,” she whispered.

Joyce became so skilled at rethreading Betty’s machine that she barely rose from her chair; most times Alvin Blick, busy barking orders at the cutters or glaring at one of the other girls, didn’t even notice. Over time Betty’s thread broke less often; only rarely did the machine gobble up her fabric. Free of interruptions, Mrs. Purdy attached collars to bodices at her usual blistering speed. Joyce was nearly as fast. In this way their section became the most efficient on the floor. The women downstairs, who assembled the bodices before sending them up to Mrs. Purdy, could scarcely keep up.

L
ucy loved all holidays, but Halloween was her favorite. The festivities combined candy and compliments, her two favorite treats. Each year her mother sewed her a special costume. At different times she had been a fairy, a gypsy, a kitten with whiskers and a tail of fake fur. This year she would be Pocahontas, the Indian princess. Her sister Dorothy would come home from Washington especially for the occasion, to braid her long black hair.

In the past her costumes had gotten only two wearings: trick-or-treat in the neighborhood, and the children’s costume party in the fire hall uptown. But this year the third grade had an especially nice teacher. A Halloween party would be held Friday morning at school.

On Thursday afternoon Lucy sat at the kitchen table, flattening cookie dough with a rolling pin. Her mother padded around in bare feet, singing along with the radio: “Come on-a My House,” in a funny voice that sounded like her aunt Marcella. The song always made Lucy laugh. They were singing together when the back door opened.

“Mama, what are you doing?” Joyce stood in the doorway, her coat over her arm, a pinched expression on her face. A draft filled the kitchen.

“Making cookies.” Her mother stood with her back to the oven. “Your sister need them for school.”

Joyce sighed.

Lucy stared down at her floury hands, the circle of dough she had rolled flat on the counter. They had cut the dough into different shapes—a witch, a jack-o’-lantern—and dusted them with colored sugar. In between they nibbled at the sweet, buttery dough, which tasted better than the finished cookies.

Her mother took a pan from the oven. “I leave the sugar off these. See? They’re not so bad.”

“Mama.”

“Me, I just bake them. I don’t eat none.”

Lucy’s heart quickened. It was a lie; they had each eaten five or six. Her mother turned on the faucet and scraped at the bar of soap, to clean the black-and-orange sugar from beneath her fingernails.

Joyce turned to Lucy. “Honey, go upstairs and wash your hands. You’re all sticky.” She smiled then—an afterthought, it seemed to Lucy. Joyce was usually too busy to smile. Busy reading something, cleaning something, folding laundry with more energy than seemed necessary. When she picked clean sheets from the clothesline, the fabric made a whipping noise, like a flag flapping in the wind. She expected Lucy to be busy, too: to red up her room and set the table every night for supper, to gather the eggs each morning before school.

“After that you can start your homework,” Joyce called after her. “I’ll be up in a minute to see how you’re doing.”

A
T THE TOP
of the stairs Lucy listened.

“Mama, you can’t,” said Joyce. “The doctor told you. No more sweets.”

“I make for your sister. That school cafeteria, they cut corners. She don’t get enough to eat.”

“She doesn’t need them either. Lucy is overweight. She can barely fit into her uniform.”

Lucy’s hands went to her belly, swollen now with raw cookie dough.

“She still growing,” said Mama.

“We have to do something. It’s not bad now, but what happens when she gets older? She could have a weight problem for the rest of her life.”

Lucy backed away from the railing. A coppery taste in her mouth, from gnawing the inside of her cheek.

“Lucy is beautiful,” said Mama. “She’ll always be beautiful.”

S
HE
WAS
BEAUTIFUL;
Lucy knew this as she knew her eyes were brown. She’d been told it her whole life—by her mother and Dorothy, her Italian aunts, the Polish ladies who lived in the neighborhood. An Indian princess: this was how Lucy had come to think of herself. She was no blond, bland Rapunzel, cooped up in the tower; but a warrior in the wild, fast and strong. Born in November, just past the cutoff date, she’d been kept back a year and was the oldest in her class. She was also the tallest. She could run faster and throw farther than any boy in the third grade. At the noon recess they played stickball, dodgeball, frenzied games of tag and Red Rover. She came back to the classroom soaked with
sweat, her blouse sticking to her back. If the other girls ignored her, she didn’t care. Pocahontas had no girlfriends either. Her braves were the only friends she needed.

Now, standing before the bedroom mirror, she examined the swell of her belly. She was getting bigger; lately her school uniform cut her under the arms. Each night after supper, she undid the top button of her dungarees. Her mother had always changed into her nightgown after supper, removing her girdle with a great sigh of relief. Lucy could see that the girdle hurt her, leaving angry red marks across her belly. Now she wore the girdle all the time. Since Joyce’s return, they had all suffered.

There was a knock at the door.

“How’s the homework coming?” Joyce called.

Lucy buttoned her dungarees.

“Fine,” she answered. Her mother never asked about homework; neither, when she visited, did Dorothy. Instead they listened to the radio after supper: first the news, then
Gunsmoke
or
The Red Skelton Show.
Fridays were the best nights, because of Mario Lanza. He sang in a deep voice, like a priest; his show was her mother’s favorite, a special occasion. Friday nights they shared a big bowl of buttered popcorn and a plate of macaroons.

Joyce came into the room and sat on the bed. “What are you learning in arithmetic?” she asked, peering over Lucy’s shoulder. “Times tables?” She took the book from Lucy’s hands. “Let me quiz you.”

Lucy felt sick. “That’s okay.”

“I don’t mind. What’s three times eight?”

Joyce led her through the threes and fours. By the fives she was struggling. By the sixes it was clear that she hadn’t studied at all.

“We just started the sixes today,” said Lucy, taking back her book. This was a lie. They’d already been assigned the elevens and twelves.

“Just the same, you don’t want to fall behind. If you’re not sure of the sixes, you’ll get all confused with the sevens.” Joyce glanced at the clock. “Give it another half hour.”

“But my program is starting.” Every Thursday she listened to
Tom Corbett, Space Cadet.
She had never missed an episode. “Can’t I study after that?”

“At nine o’clock? You’ll fall asleep on your math book.” Joyce rose. “Twenty minutes on the sixes. I’ll quiz you again tomorrow night.”

L
UCY LAY IN BED
, unable to sleep. Her stomach hurt, but it was anger that kept her awake. She glanced at the clock. Eleven-thirty, and her mother still hadn’t come to bed.

She crept downstairs and found Rose sitting at the kitchen table. Before her were three cookies on a plate.

“Whatsa matter,
bella
? How come you still awake?”

“I couldn’t sleep.” Lucy sat. “Can I have a cookie?”

Her mother handed her one.

“What happened to the rest?”

“I had a couple. I make you some more tomorrow. Here.” She handed Lucy another cookie and took the last for herself. “We eat the last two. Don’t tell your sister.” She smiled, showing her gold tooth.

Lucy held the cookie, shaped like a witch.
Like Joyce,
she thought, but she knew better than to say so. Her mother wouldn’t stand for it.

“Your sister, she just trying to help,” her mother said, as though she’d read Lucy’s mind. “It’s okay for you. You still growing. Me, I’m an old lady. I got to watch what I eat.”

Lucy swallowed hard. She had noticed it already. Other mothers wore
Bermuda shorts and lipstick. Their voices were girlish. They did not have gray hair. The girls at school had noticed, too. Once, when her mother had walked her to school wearing a scarf over her head, Connie Kukla had laughed at her. “Your mom looks like a
stata baba,
” she teased. Lucy hated Connie Kukla. It was the worst thing anyone had ever said to her in her life.

“Whatsa matter,
bella
? Come here.”

Lucy settled into her mother’s lap, the broad bosom dusted with cookie crumbs. She inhaled and wiped her running nose. “You’re not old.”

Her mother handed her the last cookie.

“You’re a good girl,” she said.

“I
SEE WHAT
you’ve been doing.”

Joyce looked up from her machine. The deep voice had startled her. The other girls had already filed down to the lunchroom. Alvin Blick stood before her, his hands in his pockets.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Helping that Purdy girl.” He smiled, showing bad teeth. His fat face was flushed; pink blotches stood out on his neck.
Why, he’s nervous,
Joyce thought.