Counting on Grace (20 page)

One day I'm walking out of the mill right on the heels of Mrs. Trottier when French Johnny calls her aside.

“Boy healing well, I see,” he says.

She don't speak, but I can see her giving him a look.

“He should be ready to come back in any day now.”

“The hand pains him bad,” she says.

“He can wrap his fingers round a broom, sure enough. There's always sweeping to be done.”

Mrs. Trottier turns on her heel.

“You don't have much more time,” French Johnny calls after her.

I know what he's saying. The boy don't work, then no more housing. It's just like Miss Lesley said. The mill finds a way to suck you back in.

We flow out of the building, the whole crowd of us shoulder to shoulder, like a river running down the side of a hill. Some of us peel off to climb the wooden steps to the store, where the doors are always open when the mill closes. As Papa says, we might as well just hand our pay right over to Mr. Dupree at the end of the week, ‘cause that's where most of it goes. Seems to me I'm angry at everybody these days and now I've come to understand I'm doffing all those long hours just for Mr. Dupree, I'm noisier than ever with my store counting. It makes the others in line snigger to see him dealing with me and they've taken to pushing me to the front so they can listen.

“Now let's see,” I say, licking his pencil and doing my figuring. “The bag of flour is twenty-five cents and the three yards of muslin for my sister, Delia, that's another thirty-five. Five and five is ten, carry the one—”

“You do that on your own time,” he growls. “Lots of people in line here. Next.”

Mrs. Trottier is standing behind me. “I'll wait,” she says in a clear-enough voice. Everybody laughs.

“One and two is three and three is six,” I go on. “Sixty cents for today, Mr. Dupree. I'll write the date on that ‘cause my papa always wants to know. What day is it?”

“August twenty-seventh, 1910,” Mrs. Trottier says. I write it down and fold the paper away into my pocket.

“You watch yourself, missy,” Mr. Dupree hisses at me. He leans down close to the counter and I want to take a step back in case spit flies out of his mouth, but I hold my ground. “You and that Miss Lesley of yours are both going to catch trouble.”

“Whatever do you mean by that, Monsieur Dupree?” Mrs. Trottier asks, her hand on my arm as a way of saying, I'm right here with you.

“None of your business,” he says as he straightens up. “And as for you, Madame Trottier, no, there is no letter for you today. And no more credit neither. Mr. Wilson's cut you off.”

I can feel her hand go slack like all the hope for that letter from Mr. Trottier's cousin was caught up inside her finger bones, but her face don't show it. That's what's different about Mrs. Trottier now. She don't show people no more how her troubles might be getting to her.

The line behind us goes silent. We're all of us thinking, Whatever is she going to do now?

“What do you need, Mrs. Trottier?” I ask in a big loud voice, before I can stop myself. “You can put it on our bill. We're close to paid up.”

There's a stirring in the room. People are not talking yet, but they're thinking.

“Mr. Dupree, you put a sack of her flour on my bill,”
barks Mr. Donahue from behind us. “My boy Thomas is bringing in good money from the farm.”

“She can have some sugar on me,” calls Mrs. Vallee from the back of the store.

Some more voices start calling out as if suddenly we all fell into such a miracle time of good fortune that we're richer than the mill owners. Mr. Dupree's got his hands up and he's yelling for quiet, but it ain't doing no good.

By the time we get out of there, Mrs. Trottier is so loaded down with supplies, we can't hardly carry them between us.

“Lord, Grace, what do I owe all those people?”

“Don't worry, I put it down,” I tell her. “It's here in my pocket.”

Mr. Dupree had no choice but to give her what she asked for and Mrs. Trottier made me keep the records. I never had to write so fast and add so much in my head. Mr. Dupree's pencil was worn down to nothing by the time I got done. When I tried to give him back that little stub of a thing, he waved me out of his sight like I was a fly he'd just as soon squish.

I don't think nothing like that ever happened before in the store. Maybe now people will stop thinking that bad luck is a sickness you can catch.

When I open the door to our kitchen figuring on how to tell them what I done, there is such a commotion of noise that nobody even sees me standing there. Mamère
and Delia are dancing around arm in arm and Henry's banging a pot in time to my papa's tune on the accordion.

“What's going on?” I yell.

“Papa got his old job back,” Henry calls to me. “Loom fixer again starting tomorrow.”

Don't take me long to join in. Loom fixer brings in the top pay in the mill. Now the store bill really will get paid off in no time.

When I tell Miss Lesley what Mr. Dupree said to me over the store counter, she shrugs.

“What can he do to me?” But this worried look flashes across her face as if she's trying to figure her way backward to something she might have forgot.

Arthur sits in the corner reading one book after another.

“I can't write down your life if you don't tell me nothing,” I say to him.

“What does Mr. Hine care about my life?” he snaps. “Or yours.”

“Arthur, learning to write with your left hand will take practice,” says Miss Lesley.

“What good's writing gonna do me?”

Miss Lesley never let him talk this way to her before, but ever since his fingers got cut off, she seems confused about what to say to him. I'm not.

“Just ‘cause you can't do something perfect right off, you're not gonna even try?” I ask him. “Lucky you never had to doff with the wrong hand all along.”

“You're lucky you got two whole hands to doff with.”

“You did too,” I spit back.

“Grace,” says Miss Lesley.

Silence falls down on the room. Even when the truth ain't pretty, I still got to speak it. At least Arthur don't bolt. He just squinches down even lower in his seat.

Feels to me like Arthur's accident broke him into two people. The boy before and the one after. He always had a smart tongue, but he weren't so closed down inside himself the way he is these days. Now he sits in the corner and reads like a rat chewing through feed. No pleasure in it. He just don't know what else to do with himself.

I never did show him the picture of him and me, side by side. It don't feel safe. He'd likely go and rip that one up, considering what he thinks about Mr. Hine. And I'm not letting nobody take that picture away from me.

No letter come for Mrs. Trottier so time's running out on her again. We all bought her stores that one time, but we can't keep on with it. Besides, she told me she's not taking food from her neighbors again without paying them back for the first. And how's she going to do that?

These days my mind jumps so quick from one trouble to the next. It feels like a whole row going down at once and I've got to scurry along and piece up all the ends that are flying around every which way. Only thing that concentrates my brain is writing our life history. I'm all the way through Arthur's life and halfway done with mine. Maybe
Mr. Hine don't care a thing about us no more like Arthur says, but it give me something to do. Once it's done and corrected, Miss Lesley says she'll send it to Mr. Hine to show to his committee.

She sits at her desk, getting the lessons ready for the next week. Arthur chews on his books and I write. The weather's cooling down already, halfway into September. It's quiet in the schoolroom. Every so often when I ask Miss Lesley how to spell a certain word, she speaks out the letters without looking up from her work. I pretend that this is my real job, sitting in the quiet, writing all day without having to run my feet off chasing bobbins.

Before I hear any steps, a shadow moves across the slant of light in the doorway behind me. I must be going deaf from six days a week in the spinning room.

“Good afternoon, Madame Forcier,” says Miss Lesley, staring right over my head.

Mamère here? I don't look up or turn around.

“I come for Arthur. His mother needs him.”

“I see you brought my book. If you're all done with it, I could lend you another.”

“I can read all the words in this one now,” she says.

“You didn't tell me that,” I say, whipping around.

“I've been studying on my own at night,” she says, not paying me no mind. “With no help.”

I turn back to my work while Miss Lesley goes through the pile of books on her desk.

“This is the level-two reader,” she says, handing over the green one. “Henry's on number four, but it won't be long before you catch up with him.”

Mamère takes the book and peers at the front cover. She handles it careful like it might break if she drops it.

“Why don't you look around?” Miss Lesley says. “It won't bother any of us.”

“I just come to tell Arthur his mother's looking for him,” Mamère says, but I can see her starting around the room. Her fingers trail across the bookshelf, then up over the blackboard. Miss Lesley jumps up and writes
Madame Forcier
on the board. “You try it,” she says, holding out the piece of chalk.

“She ain't learned the writing yet, just the letters,” I say quick.

I might as well be a desk, for all the notice they pay me.

“Try the F.”

My mother picks up the chalk, turns it round and round in her fingers and then sniffs it. Her first line down the board makes a nasty squeak and she jumps back as if something bit her.

“Slant it a little,” says Miss Lesley.

She does know how to make the letter F and then the O. She's just puzzling over the R with Miss Lesley on the side waiting for her to work it out when we hear more steps. Mr. Wilson and then Mr. Dupree push their way into the schoolroom, both of them trying to fit through the door at once.

“What's going on here?” barks Mr. Wilson.

“Extra lessons,” says Miss Lesley. There are two pink spots, one on each of her cheeks. “No rules against that as far as I know, Mr. Wilson.”

I close my notebook up quick and slide it away out of
sight. Arthur can't get no lower in his corner. My mother steps away from the board and slaps her hands once or twice the way she does on baking day to dust off the bread flour.

“Where's the boy?” Mr. Wilson says.

“Over there,” says Mr. Dupree, who's been poking around all the time he's been in the room. Who give him permission?

“Boy, you go on out of here now,” Mr. Wilson orders. “You and your mother are moving on.”

“Where?” I ask, but they don't look at me.

“That's why I come down here,” my mother says to Arthur. “To fetch you.”

That's not true. Mamère never went to fetch nobody. She would have sent Henry or Delia. Or me if I'd been around. Arthur was just an excuse so she could get that next reader from Miss Lesley.

“Did my mother get her letter?” Arthur asks, standing up.

There's no mail on Sunday, Arthur, I want to tell him. But I keep quiet.

“I don't know about any letter, son,” says Mr. Wilson. “All I know is your mother says she won't let you work in the mill, not even as a sweeper. That means you two are moving along. Time you give up the house for some real workers. Way past time.”

“You can't do that,” says Miss Lesley in her sure voice. “You can't throw people out as if they're nothing but trash.”

“They've been warned and warned, miss. They've got to be out by tomorrow. New family coming in on the train.”

Arthur is making his way through the desks slowly. He looks at me, but we don't say nothing out loud with our mouths. It's finally happened, his eyes say. Where will you go, my eyes ask. He don't have no answer.

“I'll go along with you, Arthur,” Miss Lesley says, moving to catch up with him. “I want to speak to your mother.”

But Mr. Wilson hooks her by the arm as she tries to pass him by. “Not so quick, miss. I've got business with you too.”

Then suddenly I know what Mr. Dupree is doing here, sneaking around the corners of the room, looking at us out of the sides of his eyes.