Counting on Grace (9 page)

Delia's got two nasty frames with troubles from top to bottom. Now French Johnny spends his time over there when he used to torment Mrs. Trottier. I see Mamère keeping an eye on Delia and sometimes if I'm taking too long with my doffing, she runs over to help. At break time, she lets everybody know that Delia's got the worst two frames in the room. With all the boasting Mamère's done about us
two girls, she can see the women smiling to themselves when Delia's in trouble. They used to smile that same way over Mrs. Trottier.

I told Delia to name her worst frame Thomas ‘cause they both are limpers with something crooked about them, but she said I've got a wicked devil streak in me. I don't mean to be nasty. I just tell the truth the way I see it.

My three girls do fine. Marie, Thérèse and Bernadette. I named them after saints so's they'll keep on behaving themselves. I wish my hands were machines too, especially the right one. I can hold two bobbins now but that's not enough. I'm working myself up to four, but no matter how fast I go, I can always feel Mamère waiting on me.

I have bad dreams about my slow self that make me start up shouting in the middle of the night. Delia rolls me over and tells me to hush up and sleep. Henry don't even budge on his side. Henry could nod off in the middle of the noisy weaving room if he had to. Most nights Delia makes him sleep between us so I don't wake her with my thrashing.

Those first weeks were the worst. So many things can go wrong, especially at the end of the day when my feet get to aching and shaking and my back feels like someone has rammed a steel rod right down the middle of it and I can't twist or turn without the bones complaining.

But now it's better. I talk to my hands and my machines to keep them all doing the right thing at the right time. It's
the plan I come up with to hold my mind still so it don't go wandering off. You've got to pay attention in the mill or else those big old bad machines, they'll snatch at any loose piece hanging off a person and gobble it up. After all, it's their job to grab the roving and spin it into thread. It's my job to stay out of the way and make sure they're spinning cotton and not a hank of my hair or one of my fingers or a piece of my smock.

I'm like Miss Lesley now with her eye on us schoolchildren outside in the yard during recess. “Now, Albert, you behave yourself this morning or I'll have to shut you down, put you in the back of the room with the girls.” “Edwin, I don't like that smart look you're giving me. No recess for you today. You stay inside and work right through the break.” For once I can talk all I want with nobody telling me to hush. Nobody cares, long as I get those bobbin babies moved in and out of their cradles.

The thinking is what gets me in trouble. A picture pops in my mind of a kid biting Miss Lesley's finger in two or snatching at her dress the way a frame does if you give it half a chance. The very idea makes me laugh and then my mind follows that funny picture and suddenly, in the middle of the side I just doffed, a piece of slub gets through, which makes one end fly around and hit the next one and the next. Before I know it, I've got a regular snowstorm of cotton and my mother's throwing the shipper handle and yelling at me again.

Arthur don't work as hard as me. His mother's only got two frames. There's times I catch him staring out the
window so fierce you'd think his eyes would burn a hole right through the dirty glass. He's still dreaming about running away. Dinnertimes when we break, he keeps on with the story of the soldier named Henry.

In the first battle, he stood and fought and was proud of himself. But the second time the Confederate soldiers attacked, he ran away.

“Why'd he run that time?” I ask.

“ ‘Cause he says it's the duty of every little piece of the army to save itself,” Arthur says.

“If everybody thought that way, there'd be no army left.”

Arthur just shakes his head like I'm a crazy person.

Delia's machine is down again, third time since the starting bell.

My mother yells, “Doff number six,” which is Thérèse and I'm already there tending to her.

“My good girl,” I whisper to her as I scoop up my empty bobbins, nudging the bobbin truck along ahead of me. And my right hand is getting smarter. This is the first day it's been able to hold three bobbins at once. I drop each one cleanly over its spindle with no trouble. Therese's bobbins come off just as easy in my left hand. I'm humming now, clocking along as regular as my frame, the full bobbins piling up in the box on top of the bobbin truck. I flip the separators back in place and drop down the thread boards faster than ever before.

“Done,” I yell, but Mamère don't hear me ‘cause she's still fussing with Delia's frame. I look up at the board where the doffing schedule is posted. We're ahead on number six, but then like Delia said, my mother don't pay much attention to that schedule. I signal for Hubert the bobbin boy, and he comes along all bent over like he's running at a wall. He's so short and scrawny it's the only way he can get the big bobbin truck moving. Off it goes with Hubert's skinny legs and toes doing the pushing, his black oily heels never touching the floor.

Number one, Albert, is filling up so I figure I'll save time and clear his scavenger rolls. It's the spinner's job, but I've watched Mamère and Delia do it a hundred times. I pull over a box, step up on it and lift up the first roll with several laps of lint.

“Come on, Albert, you behave now. Easy does it,” I whisper, and even though it's heavier than I thought, the roll is sliding out just the way it should.

“What are you doing?” shouts French Johnny's voice in my ear and I jump and sure enough, a lap hits an end soon as I take my eye off it and the broken end wraps around the bottom roll. By the time I work it out at least eight ends are down.

Mamère pushes me off the box and out of the way with one rough hand, throws the shipper handle with the other just as the next scavenger roll down the way spits itself out onto the floor. I stumble backward and my feet slip.

It's French Johnny who sets me right, one of his big hands curled around each of my shoulders, but I twist away from him soon as I get my balance.

The whole time my mother is screaming, “Bete,
bete, bete, stupide fille,”
and the way her voice is pitched everybody can hear and they look up as French Johnny walks away with a grin on his face.

Now we have at least twelve ends flying around on Albert, and my mother has to shut down two other frames so they don't spill over. I piece up, twisting the thread together fast as I can, but she's faster of course and soon as she catches up with me she just shoves me out of the way with her hip. I wipe down the scavenger roll and shove the wad of lint into the pocket of my smock, but she snatches the roll from me and clears it again, which is her way of saying nothing I do helps none. She can't count on me.

The pain in my chest comes from not breathing ‘cause if I breathe I will cry and I don't never let myself do that.

At the dinner break, I sit by myself, hunched over my knees. Delia tries to get me to eat, but I shake my head. The pain in my chest has spread to my stomach. Whatever I swallow will come back up, I'm sure of it. Better to stay hungry.

I see Arthur heading over to my corner, but I give him a stare that makes him veer away.

I don't look at Mamère, but I can hear Mrs. Trottier talking to her.

“Don't be so hard on Grace. It's only her third week,” she says, and I want to kill Arthur's mother, grind her up
between my teeth and spit what's left of her little bony bones out the window. Last thing I need is that woman standing up for me.

I cringe waiting for Mamère's answer.

“You pay attention to your own business, madame,” says my mother in a sharp voice. “I train my girls whatever way I please. They learn their jobs right. If Delia hadn't taken so much time piecing up your ends, she would have gotten her own frames months ago.”

I peek through my fingers to see them glaring at each other, trembling like two dogs ready to fight. Mrs. Trottier backs away first and my mother smiles in a way that says, I won. She always wins her spats with people.

Only thing bigger and bossier than my mother in the spinning room is the frames.

When we walk out of the mill that evening, Arthur stays away from me. The soldier story usually takes my mind off my troubles, but I pretend I don't care to hear it tonight.

It is raining. I tip my head up so the water can run down my throat. Then I take the handkerchief out of my smock and press it to my mouth. Wrong pocket. I put that wad of scavenger roll lint in the wrong pocket and now it's stuck up against my nose. I want to throw the garbage ball of cotton over the border into Massachusetts, as far away from me as ever it can get, but I don't have the strength. I toss it into a nearby bush and for some strange reason that's when the
crying starts. I've been holding those tears down all day long, but it's no use trying to stop them now.

I lean over to hawk and spit in the bushes. People pass me by, barely noticing, thinking it's only the cotton coming back up the way it does for all of us.

When Delia sees me coming in the door, she has the sense to keep quiet. Just takes a rag and wipes my face down as if I'm a baby.

Pépé is humming tonight and that's not good. Whenever he starts singing, it means he's even more out of his head than usual.

“He was trying to drag the trunk out the kitchen door when I come home from school today,” Henry reports as we sit down to dinner.

“Don't do no harm,” Mamère says.

“Sausage!” Pépé demands. He is stabbing at the potatoes in his bowl, looking for meat. There ain't been none since we had to pay Madame Boucher extra to look in on him mornings. I'm still on learner's pay. Mamère's pay is down too ‘cause of me. And Delia's not making up the difference with her two cranky machines. Even with me working,
we've fallen farther behind on the store bill. Papa says Mr. Dupree is cheating us, but there's no way to prove that.

Mamère shakes her head at Pépé. “Eat up,
mon père.”

“Sausage,” he cries again, and throws his wooden spoon across the room. It slaps up against the wall and crashes to the floor. The brown gravy water leaves a long drip mark.