Counting on Grace (19 page)

Miss Lesley is so excited that we heard from Mr. Hine. She takes care to lock the door and then we settle down around her desk to see what he sent.

First thing she pulls out of the envelope is nothing but a thin skinny book she calls a report. The pictures show kids working in the mill. There's a bobbin-winder boy in a factory and a bunch of kids standing outside and a line of kids going to work. Arthur studies on them for so long that I have to pull the report away from him so I can get a closer look.

“These pictures don't show us,” I say. “He didn't send nothing else?”

Miss Lesley pulls out a big notebook and a letter. “This is what he wrote.”

I open up the book and smooth down the lined pages. “He promised to send me one of these.”

“When?” Arthur asks.

“He left a note on our kitchen table.”

Arthur looks mad that I got something and he didn't. “You never told me that.”

“Are you two listening?” Miss Lesley says. “The notebook is for both of you.”

Now I'm mad. Mr. Hine said he would give me my own notebook, not one I've got to share with Arthur.

She reads.

“He wants us to write in this book?” Arthur asks. “What are we supposed to say?”

“Put down your life before it disappears,” I tell him. “That's what he told me.” But I am sad too. “Where are my pictures? He promised to send them. There ain't nothing more in that package?”

“That's it, Grace. There
is
nothing more.”

“I told you the man don't keep his promises,” Arthur growled.

“Doesn't—” says Miss Lesley as usual. I feel sorry for her sometimes. She's never going to change the way we talk.

“Doesn't keep them,” interrupts Arthur with an itch in his voice. “I'm not going to write down one word for him.”

Miss Lesley and I don't look at each other and don't say nothing right away, but we know what Arthur's thinking. He's worried about writing with two fingers missing.

Suddenly I get an idea. I open to the very first page of the notebook. “Well, I'm going to do it,” I say. “Watch me, Arthur.”

I put the pencil in my left hand and write at the top of the first white page:
The Life of Arthur Trottier As Told by Him to
Mr.
Lewis Hine.

All three of us are watching that hand of mine skimming across the paper as if it's got a life of its own, the letters coming out easy and leaning forward like they're running along to catch up with what I'm thinking.

“Arthur Trottier is twelve years old. He was born on
—”

“December seventh, eighteen ninety-seven,” says Arthur, and I write it. Something don't look right.

Miss Lesley tells me, “The
eighteen
needs a
g
in it, Grace.”

“You're writing with your left hand,” Arthur says out of the blue like he's been studying for a while on what's different about me.

“It's easy, Arthur,” I say.

“That's your strong hand. Of course it's easy for you.”

He's right. Arthur didn't lose no brains when he lost his fingers.

But I keep going. “We're starting at the beginning.
Arthur was born in Canada,”
I write.
“He moved to America when he was
—”

“Four.”

I bet Miss Lesley is itching to change the pencil into my right hand, but she keeps quiet. Finally, she says, “Your letters are nice and even, Grace. Writing with your left hand. I wouldn't have expected that.”

We're both tiptoeing along, pretending we ain't one bit interested in Arthur.

“Let me try,” he says, and pulls the pencil out of my fingers.

His poor sorry right hand come sliding out of his sleeve like an animal poking its nose from behind a bush. I push the notebook over to his side of the desk. The thumb and the finger take hold of the pencil fine. But when Arthur tries to make the first letter, the pencil flips sideways. He tries two more times, but there ain't nothing but space where there oughta be those backup fingers helping to fix the pencil in its proper place.

Miss Lesley sets it up in Arthur's left hand and curls the fingers around it.

He makes a funny backward A, then an R.

“It takes a while to get used to,” I tell him.

“Grace should know,” Miss Lesley says in this quiet voice. “According to her, I've been making her use the wrong hand ever since she started writing.”

That's right, I think, but I keep my mouth shut. She's saying she's sorry in her own way. That's good enough for me.

By the time Arthur gets through his name, his face is all sweaty. He throws down the pencil. “I can't do it.”

“It will take practice,” says Miss Lesley. “It's as hard as
learning to walk again. Meanwhile Grace will be our scribe.”

“What's a scribe?”

“The person who writes down the story.”

Imagine that. Me.

There's an envelope sitting on the kitchen table waiting for me when we come in from the mill one night.

“What's that?” Mamère asks.

“Mr. Dupree give it to me,” Henry says. “Mail for Grace.”

“For Grace?” asks Delia.

Everybody stares at me like I done something wrong again. The only mail we ever get is from family in Canada. They don't write much. And nobody ever wrote me a letter before.

“It must be from Mr. Hine,” I say. So see, Arthur, he did keep his promise.

We five slide into our seats around the table as if we're settling down for supper. Everybody's got their eyes on that envelope like it might stand up and walk off if we don't keep watching it.

“It says ‘Grace Forcier’ right here.” Mamère is running her finger across my name in the black ink.

“And ‘Lewis Hine’ up here in the corner. ‘National Child—’ “ I stop myself. Labor Committee. I should have known that was coming. It's exactly what Mr. Hine wrote at the top of Miss Lesley's envelope.

“Child what?” Mamère asks.

I have to lie. “I can't read the other words. But it come all the way from New York City.”

I flip the envelope over quick, but I don't need to worry too much. Mamère is getting pretty good at reading, but not so's she could piece that one out.

Papa hands me a knife. I slit open the top of the envelope and peek inside. There are two pictures. I pull out the first one and look at it, taking my time. When Henry tries to poke his nose in, I push him away with my elbow.

It's me, the same one I saw before, but this time I'm not a ghost girl. My hair is dark and pulled back off my head. My eyes are big and staring right at old Mr. Graflex, just like Mr. Hine told me to do. I'm leaning on Marie still and my left arm looks all skinny and strange, which don't make no sense ‘cause that's my strong arm. My big clumsy right hand with the cut on the top hangs down below my pocket, which is bulging out with cotton waste. My feet are black with oil as usual. The smock's got grease spots all over it.

I still have a fearful look on my face like I think Mr. Graflex might gobble me up if I don't watch him every minute. And my eyes have this old-woman worry in them. But you know what? I think I'm kind of pretty too.

The others can't wait no longer. Delia snatches the
picture out of my hand and studies it with Papa and Henry looking on. Then she shrugs and hands it to Mamère. Seems like we're all waiting for Mamère and what she's going to say.

She puts out a finger and touches me somewhere on the face. And then before any one of us can stop her, she rips the picture in half and then again and then another time. She goes on ripping while I open my mouth to scream, but no sound comes out.

“Adeline, what are you doing?” my father cries, but by then I am nothing but a heap of shredded, jumbled-up paper on the tablecloth. A piece of my leg is sitting on top of three of Marie's bobbins. One of my big eyes got ripped apart from the other and is staring up at me from the pile.

“That Mr. Hine is a bad man,” Mamère says, slapping her palm on top of me, all piled in jagged pieces. “I won't have people seeing Grace in her mill smock. He should have pictured her in her Sunday dress.”

I am out of the room before anybody else moves. I am running and running, stumbling over my own feet as I head down the hill. I've got Mr. Hine's envelope pressed close to me and nobody is ever going to get it away from me.

I've gone into hiding down in Arthur's old place, the tumbledown shack by the river. I don't even know how I got myself there, but there are bramble scrapes across my cheeks ‘cause I was moving fast, not caring what snatched out at me from the woods. I'm curled in the corner and I'm talking quiet.

“It's time you come back to get me, Pépé. I'm ready to
go to Canada now. I hate Mamère. She slapped you in the face and now she ripped me in two. I can't doff next to her no more. If you don't come soon, I'm headed upriver on my own to find you.”

Someone is saying my name and I start up. But it's not Pépé. It's my father's voice, calling. If I sit quiet, he'll go away.

I'm wrong. He keeps getting closer.

“You here, Grace?”

I don't speak. I don't move.

The door scrapes open past all the summer growth that's pushed up through the rotten floorboards. Papa lifts the lantern high so the light makes its way to me.

“It's time you come home now, Grace.”

I shake my head, but I know he's right. I just don't intend to go easy.

He puts a hand to his back, the way he always does when he's changing positions. Then slowly he squats down next to me. “There's something more in that envelope.”

I nod.

“What is it?”

“I don't know. There weren't no light to see.”

“Let's take a look.”

I stare at him.

“I won't touch it, I promise. You can hold it the whole time.” He puts the lantern down next to us on the ground and I pull out the last thing left in the envelope.

It's the picture of me and Arthur. This time there's nothing scared about me. It looks as if I'm ready to punch Mr. Graflex right in the middle of his sliding eye. I'm side by side with Arthur with his big old ears flapping and his
elbows sticking out. His chin is lifted like he's trying to look older than he is. His hands are resting easy, thumbs caught in the corners of his overalls.

You can see all his fingers.

“Well, don't you look like something,” my father says with a wondering sound in his voice. “That's my Grace.”

“I'm kind of pretty, ain't I, Papa?”

“I don't know much about pretty. But you do look like someone to be reckoned with. You get that from your mother.”

“Don't tell me that,” I cry. “Don't.”

He lays a hand on my arm. “Your mother's always been a fighter. Sometimes she strikes out without thinking first.”

“Like the time she slapped Pépé.”

“Yes. That too.”

“I miss Pépé. I pretend he's coming back, but I know he ain't.”

Papa nods. “Your grandfather was a proud man,” he says. “Your mother too. She doesn't want people looking down on us, Grace.”

But that don't give her the right to tear me up like that, I think. I don't say it. When he gets to his feet, I go along with him. I keep my hateful thoughts to myself, but it don't mean they're gone away.

That night after everybody's asleep, I hide my picture with my notebook behind the bureau. Nobody will think to look there.

If Mamère is sorry about ripping me into pieces, she don't act it. She's harder than ever on me at the frames. I do what she tells me, but inside I am burning up. I'll make sure nobody ever sees me in a mill-smock picture again, ‘cause I won't be wearing one for much longer. I'll find some way to get myself out of this mill. It won't be Arthur's way ‘cause I need all my fingers for my writing. But no matter what, I'm going to leave Mamère to do her own doffing. Then what will happen to her hank clock numbers?