Counting on Grace (13 page)

The next night after supper I'm hauling the wet laundry back up to hang in the kitchen when I stop short at the door. I hear my father and mother talking about me.

“That teacher will put fancy ideas in her head,” says Mamère. “The way she's done with Arthur. Boy spends all his time staring out the window, dreaming. Grace is too slow as it is. Even after all this time, I can't count on her the way I could with Delia.”

I want to scream no, don't say that, Mamère. Don't say you can't count on me or I'll die the way Claire did. I suck in my breath to stop myself from bursting into the room.

“She's only schooling two hours a week, Adeline. And her learning is doing us some good. Dupree will think twice before he cheats us again.”

“Long as she understands that the mill is all she's ever going to have. She needs to settle down and accept that.”

There is this silence. Then Papa's voice says, “She's more like you than you know, Adeline.”

“How?”

“You didn't settle down and accept the farm. You wanted a better life. She could too.”

I hear Mamère go into the bedroom and shut the door behind her. Even though the laundry is heavy and wet against my hip, I wait awhile longer before I go inside.

With Pépé gone, it seems there's more room for Papa's voice in the house than there ever was before.

Arthur is the first one to see the man.

“Mr. Wilson got on the train and same time, someone else got off,” he calls in my ear when we pass each other in the row that runs between two of our frames. “A man with a load of boxes. He's coming in the mill.”

Ever since we wrote that letter to the Child Labor place, Arthur is waiting for an inspector to come and shut down the mill. I told him over and over that nobody cares about a bunch of us kids in a little nowhere Vermont town, but he says I'm wrong. Whenever the train whistle blows, Arthur manages to get himself over to the window. He needs to keep occupied when those two frames of his mother's are up and running and he's cleared his boards and has nothing to do. Wish I had a minute with nothing to do. If Mamère hadn't tangled with Madame Trottier so many times, we could get Arthur to help me doff. But the two
mothers practically spit at each other now every time they get close.

Then the man from the train walks onto the floor. That is strange. Nobody rings a bell or scoots us into the elevator so it means he ain't an inspector. The man is wearing a brown slouch hat, a tie and round glasses pushed up to the top of his long skinny nose. He looks small standing next to French Johnny, but he has big ears. When he takes off his hat, you can see those ears sticking out so far from his head you expect them to wave at you.

I want to keep watching him, but I make myself stare at my hands ‘cause for once they are moving along lickety-split. Ever since I figured out that number with Miss Lesley, one thousand six hundred and thirty-two, I decided I will count each bobbin as I drop it in the box. That keeps my mind tied down to what I'm doing and I figure it makes me practice my numbers at the same time. One morning I counted six sides one after another and told Arthur I'd doffed eight hundred and twelve bobbins so far that day. Arthur said I was wrong ‘cause one hundred and thirty-six don't go into eight hundred and twelve. Sometimes I'd like to smack his smart self.

Besides that, Mamère is in a bad mood. George has been giving us trouble all morning and I sure don't want to take any chance with Marie when she is being her so-good self.

When things are singing along like that, it don't matter how many strangers are staring at me from the end of the row.

Before I know it, French Johnny is standing by my elbow breathing his hot-air breath on the place at the top of my head where my braids cross over each other.

“One hundred and thirty-five, thirty-six. Done,” I sing out to my mother and her foot lifts to jog the rail.

French Johnny gives her a wave. She lowers her foot to the floor without starting up the frame and goes back over to clear her scavenger rolls.

“This fellow come from the head office to photograph the frames,” he says. “You move aside, Grace.”

“No,” says the man. He has to shake French Johnny's arm and shout to make himself heard. “I want the girl in the picture too. For scale.”

Neither one of us knows what that word means and he can tell. “It shows how large the machine is if she stands in front,” the man explains. “Those are my instructions.”

French Johnny cocks his head. One of Delia's frames has gone down.

“Hurry it up,” he calls back over his shoulder as he leaves us looking at each other.

The man starts to unpack his equipment. He must be stronger than he looks to be lugging all this stuff on and off trains and up three flights of stairs to the spinning room. He slides a leather pouch off his shoulder and lowers it to the ground ever so slowly as if it's got some kind of treasure inside. Then he unpacks a wooden box with a tube that points straight out of the middle. I can read the name on it and it has the same first letters as mine. Graflex, it says. He props Mr. Graflex up on top of a spindly-looking set of legs splayed out in three directions like a dog trying to stop itself on a hill. Then he comes over to me.

“My name is Lewis Hine,” he says, and sticks out his hand. The ends of his fingers are stained all brown-yellow the way my Pépé's were from his cigarettes. I drop into a curtsy. The mill is a strange place to be curtsying, but I've
got two new cuts on the top of my right hand and one on the inside and I don't need to stir them up.

His hat tilted to the side, he leans over close, but I pull away quick. He's a strange one. It turns out he is just asking my name. Imagine that. A grown man wanting to know my name.

“Grace,” I say, my voice pitched proper so he can hear it through the buzzing in the room.

“How old are you?”

This is a trick question and I know the answer just fine. “Fourteen,” I say without a blink.

“Really? You don't look that old. You must be about forty-eight inches tall.”

“How do you know?” He talks to me easy the way Arthur does so it don't feel strange to be asking him questions. I can see Arthur out of the corner of my eye watching us the whole time and I like that, for once, Arthur don't know what's going on and I do.

“I measure you against my vest buttons. You come up to number three. That makes you four feet tall.”

Now why would this man care how tall I am? Maybe the head office wants to know the size of the workers. I hope that's not some new way of figuring out how old we are.

“What are you going to do to me?” I ask.

“Take your picture, that's all. Have you ever had your picture taken?”

“Will it hurt?”

“No, Grace. There will be a flash for a second, which will make your eyes sparkle because the room will be a thousand times brighter than it's ever been before. Don't
blink if you can help it. Now I need you to stand here,” he says, and sets me up in front of Marie.

I lean against her and rest my arm on her thread board. When I look up, a handle's popped up out of the top of Mr. Graflex and Mr. Hine is peering down inside like he's looking for something. The tube sticking out has a big old eye at the end of it and that's sliding out toward me and then moving away again. I stick out my tongue at it and when he looks up again, he's chuckling to himself. So he must have seen me, even though he was staring down into Mr. Graflex's innards. He goes around to the front of the camera and flips a little lever no bigger than a lapette right on the edge of the eye.

I walk over to watch.

“Grace, I meant you to stay by the frame,” he says. “Now I'll have to focus again.”

I reach out and touch the black folds that push the eye back and forth. “My father's accordion looks like this.”

“Those are the bellows,” he says. “Now, when you go back to your machine, don't stand too close. I don't want you to hurt yourself.”

I laugh. “Marie won't hurt me,” I tell him. “She's my good girl.”

He looks confused.

“My frame. You've got Monsieur Graflex and I've got Mademoiselle Marie.”

“You don't miss much, do you, Mademoiselle Grace,” he says, and he's smiling again.

“No, I don't,” I say. I wish my mother would tell me something like that. “What's in your pocket?”

He glances around nervously.

“Don't worry. French Johnny ain't paying no attention,” I tell him. “He's working on Delia's clearing boards. She's my sister and she's got two of the worst frames in the room. What's in your pocket?” I ask again.

He slides out the most perfect little notebook I've ever seen and a pencil. “I'm taking notes.”

“About me?”

“Yes. Your name and height and the age you say you are.”

“You take notes in your pocket?”

“It's a trick I learned a long time ago. I keep the pencil pressed against the paper and the paper pressed against my leg bone. Most times I can read what I've written. Can you read?”

“Sure. I can count and spell too. Give me the little book and I'll show you.” He pulls it out and hands it to me. I squat down to write my name with his nubbly pencil, but just like he said, it's there already. Miss Lesley would tell him his writing is nothing but a messy scribble, but I can make it out.
Grace, 48 inches, says she's 14.
He's been doing these notes the whole time we've been talking with his hand hidden in his pocket.

“How many sides do you doff?” he asks. He's pulling a black square thing out of his shoulder pouch.

“Twelve.”

“That's a lot.”

“My mother is top spinner and she's got six frames. Six times two makes twelve sides. One hundred and thirty-six bobbins to a side times twelve makes one thousand six hundred and thirty-two.”

He looks surprised by how high I can count. “How many of you kids work in the mill?”

“About twenty or so.”

“Put down their names and ages for me,” he says. He's already figured out how to make his voice cross under the noise in the room.

Now he's opening the back of the camera, sliding in the metal square from his pouch, and I can tell his hands know what they're doing. He's as fast with his picture-taking machine as Mamère is with her frames.

Arthur
, I write.
12. Dougie. 10.
He just started last week. Henry told us it put Miss Lesley in one of her bad moods when French Johnny come for him.
Briget. 13.
Her name looks funny but I keep going. The little pencil keeps digging into the cut on the inside of my hand, but I pay no mind. My letters are slanting the way Miss Lesley likes, but each one takes such a long time. If Arthur was the one doing the writing, he'd be finished by now.

“You go to school?” Mr. Hine asks.

“Not no more. But Miss Lesley gives me and Arthur lessons on Sundays.” Now I'm the one checking to see who's listening to us. “I won't tell about your pocket notes if you don't tell about my schooling.”

“Deal,” he says. “I'd like to meet this Miss Lesley.” Now he's shaking some white powder like flour onto a flat box on the floor.

“The school's up the hill,” I tell him. I tuck the notebook deep into the folds of my skirt ‘cause I can feel Mamère poking her head around every time she gets to the end of a row. Edwin is down ready to be doffed and Thérèse
is going to be right behind. Looks like I'll be working through the break. But I don't care right now. I love the little notebook so much I want to steal it.

“Grace, do you know a boardinghouse in town where I can spend the night?”

“We take boarders,” I say, and my mind is racing ahead. This man with his tie and his suit, he looks richer than the other ones who stayed in Pépé's bed. “But it's one dollar,” I shout louder than I mean to. He don't seem to blink at the price, but the light is reflecting off his glasses so I can't really see his eyes. “And you have to pay before you eat.”

“That'll be fine. Where do you live?”

“Up on French Hill. The Forcier place. Everybody in town knows where it is.” I want to turn somersaults. Won't Mamère be pleased when she finds out. A whole dollar coming into the house ‘cause of me.