Chapter 2 #2
One time I asked Miss Garnett how many children did she have at home?
Spend enough time with a woman, you do get curious.
She told me she did have one but it died inside her.
I shuddered to think. They do not tell us much about lady business here, but my mama told me some.
I thought about that dead baby a lot, generally when I was watching scary shapes on the ceiling at bedtime.
Often she watched me from the hall in between talking to ladies. If I had nothing better to do, I watched her back. We regularly had us a staring contest, which she usually won. I fall right to sleep if I am not up and moving or learning something interesting.
That brown mold on the walls had only just started to grow. I should’ve known there was more coming.
On Tuesdays we have what you call Bible story hour.
That is when the Fatass comes up to the schoolroom and reads us a Jesus parable.
Her real name is Miss Pripp and she is very fat and bossy and makes us take tests.
One time she stood a stupid illiterate girl at the front and spanked her for not writing correct answers.
I didn’t want to see it, but it is hard not to look when somebody is getting spanked.
And after Christmas, Miss Pripp bragged about all the presents Santy Claus brought to her home because her boys had been such good children.
About a month ago, for story hour, she told us to draw a scene of Jesus, use any story you like, and the best drawer will win a red pencil.
I had my eye on that red pencil, I could mark up a page like I was a real teacher.
So I did me a Last Supper like in The Children’s Bible pictures, laying out grape platters and wine caskets, and I put interesting looks on all the disciples’ faces.
To make it stand out I crayoned a title on the piece, Jesus Gives Judas the Finger, which I thought was eye-catching.
I had seen my mama give somebody the finger and it was effective. I did not know it was dirty.
But when Miss Pripp saw my picture, her mouth pruned tight.
She said, This right here, young lady, is blasphemy against the Lord, and she wrote a big red F on it.
She could not wait to show it to our teacher, Miss Spencer.
They huddled over it, whispering, and then those two marched it straight down to Miss Garnett.
Later on I heard Dorella won that red pencil for a very mediocre baby laying in a manger.
I thought I just had a trip to the belt closet coming to me.
And that would be that. But no, Miss Garnett marched me down to the office and called a committee meeting in the Ladies’ Lounge.
I snuck out and listened outside the door.
I heard her tell them that I was tainting the other girls with my filthy behavior and I could hear her rattling my drawing, probably slicing the air with her hands. Nobody arguing with her. Not a one.
When Miss Garnett walked out, she looked all satisfied with her flat self. Smiling like she had won something at the fair. She said, From now on, you will be in the office all day, Meg.
What about school—
You are not allowed in the schoolroom anymore.
The night of Ava’s twelfth birthday, we pretended to be asleep until we heard old Miss Mildred turn the lock on our door.
She is the old lady who sleeps downstairs at night and everything on her sags, her eyes, her bosoms almost to her belly.
She does not fool with any type brassiere.
Soon as we heard the lock click, me and Ava scooted our cots closer together.
There are still scratch marks in the floor from all our scooting.
Ava said, Fried ham with cheese grits, johnnycakes, chocolate bars, hard candies, them little pies with the cream inside.
First thing I want is fried chicken, I said, with meat gravy and a box of Cracker Jack, and I don’t care what they say, I am not bothering with vegetables.
Bacon, Ava said and we both thought on that a minute. In the morning she was headed to the Gulf Coast to work at the cannery with the two other twelve-year-olds Miss Garnett sent down there already. Ava is eight months older than me.
When I go, I will be the fastest food canner they ever seen, I said. They will say: Who is this girl who can can food so expert? I think she deserves a raise.
Shut up, Nutmeg, Dorella hissed in her cot.
Ava said she was buying cigarettes with her pay.
I told her she did not even know how to smoke.
I said I would be saving up for a complete set of encyclopedia letters.
Ava called me the most boring person in America.
Long as I draw a paycheck is all. We both agreed it would be nice to smell the ocean air.
By the way her voice drifted, I knew Ava was getting sleepy, but I didn’t want us to sleep yet because then it would be tomorrow.
So to keep her awake I came up with a idea for her to send me a letter.
She could disguise it as a mama looking for a blond-headed girl of around eleven years of age with a small gap in her front teeth and one ear sticks out a little more than the other, and she could put in secret messages, too, things like what kind of food the girl should like to eat so I would know those were the foods Ava was eating down there, because if anybody could get her hands on a letter here, that would be me.
I could tell her interest was waning but she yawned and said she’d try.
I will be fine when you are gone, Ava, I told her, but her breathing had already gone even.
Miss Garnett was the one came up with the work program idea in the first place.
She said it was for big girls with what they call Placement Problems. Before that, we would get sent off to the Home in Water Valley or a facility in Jackson where I heard they got so many orphans stuffed in there they parade them down the street to try and get them adopted.
Girls, stand still and erect. I have an important announcement, Miss Garnett said one day when I had been here about six or so months.
As chairlady of the Orphan Children Committee, and she pointed to a gold pin she wore on her dress, I am proud to announce that girls who have not been placed by their twelfth birthday and don’t seem likely to be, and here she gave me and Ava a look that could shave ice, will be sent to work for the Biloxi Canning Corporation down on the coast. They will provide your housing on premises and you will attend a school and learn a valuable skill in a good Christian environment—I said still and erect, Ava—and you will even receive a wage for your work.
Boy, you should have seen those charity ladies light up when Miss Garnett made her speech.
They said, When jobs are so hard to come by these days!
Some even clapped their hands like they were at a circus show because by damn they come here to Hold Babies and do not need us big girls interrupting their Baby-Rocking Time.
And Miss Garnett was slicing good now, talking about the unwed mother, how it is bred into them, that feebleminded business, all we need is our girls turning into one themselves and leaving their own children to starve.
Next to me, Ava was nodding like a mule right along with the ladies. But I was not nodding like a mule.
Remember, this was back when I still had ideas. That play in my head might have started to crumble around the edges, but deep down I still thought there was a good chance my mama would come for me.
And that is exactly what I told Miss Garnett and the rest of them. I told them I was not relocating to any stinking factory. I intended to be right here when my damn mama came back for me.
I got a trip to the belt closet for that little remark.
That is a room with a chair and a leather strap hung on the wall, with holes punched in it so it will fly faster.
The chair is for when the lady has got to sit and take herself a rest. While she beat my backside, Miss Garnett gave me the speech of how hot hell would be and how God does not approve of filthy-mouthed little girls.
I hopped and danced at first, but then I bit my lip and made myself take it.
The other girls said she would give extra licks if she missed.
It stung like a swat of thorns, then like little razor teeth, then it burned like a red-hot iron pressed to the back of my knees.
But I did not cry or even wet my pants because I was not going to no damn canning factory.
That night in bed, Ava got holt of me.
She said, You are pathetic.
I said, You are more pathetic than me.
She said, Your mama ain’t coming back for you, Meg, so you need to get that shit straight in your head.
How do you know, you are no fortune teller. Maybe she’s riding here this very minute. Maybe her motorcar broke down. Maybe she has just been waiting on a thing to come in. But even I could hear the old list of excuses thinning.
Grow some sense, stupid. Your mama left you exact same as mine.
It was not the same. Your mama didn’t even like you.
True, Ava said. Ava had told me how her mama kept the otherns but she just give up on me.
Brung her to the Orphan and drove off in the truck.
Back then I had not watched that many girls get brought here yet, but after a year and a half, I have seen it all.
The fit throwers, the bawling criers, the strangely silents, the beggars, the hitters, the cussers, the pants wetters.
I have seen Drop-Off Situations and Push-and-Runs, sisters that want to stay longer hugging goodbye.
Mamas lingering, I hear them pacing out on the front porch.
If they make it inside, they are still begging: Just one more minute with her, please.
When Miss Garnett takes their most precious thing away, those mamas’ faces make you want to lay your head on your desk.
But I have never once seen a mama come back to get a girl.
It makes no difference how we got here, Meg, they still ain’t coming back to get us, Ava said.
But something inside me kept believing my situation was different.
Times might have got hard, but me and my mama were not starving to death nor did we have fifteen other kids to feed and need to get rid of a few.
I am small, I hardly eat much. We still had us a proper house to live in.
My mama did not even pack her best shoes before she left—or anything else.
She said she was planning to cut my hair.
You do not just say that to your only girl.
Ava crawled out of her cot and sat on my chest like it was a saddle, locking my arms down with her strong legs.
She said, Now you listen to me, Meg, and repeat after me.
I could tell by the way she was panting through her nose she was serious.
My mama left me on purpose and mamas do not come back. Now you say it, repeat it back to me.
I got a hand loose and swatted at her but she pinned it down again. But what mama leaves a girl two days before Christmas?
It’ll help you, goddammit. Say, Mamas do not come back! Ava sounded desperate but when I would not say it she leaned down and whispered hot in my ear, We are the same, Meg, don’t you see that? We are sisters. So say it till you believe it.
It was getting so I couldn’t breathe. And not because she had her knees on my chest.
Ava is smarter than me. She said it would help me if I would just say it, dammit.
And so after a while I did. Because deep down I suspected she was right. She was older. She was stronger than me. Mama left me on purpose. Mamas do not come back.
Again, she said. I said it over and over and over. Mama left me on purpose, mamas do not come back. And ends up, my best friend Ava was right. It took a while but it was like cutting a bad thing off, a old wet soggy thing dragging wherever I went.
Pretty soon, I quit doing that pretend play so much. And then I just quit doing it at all. That is a friend. That is a sister. Because mamas do not come back.
The morning after Ava’s twelfth birthday, was she excited.
Chattering with the girls at the breakfast table.
The ladies had got her all washed and fit for travel.
They even got her some shoes to wear on the train.
They looked too big but they were only slightly worn, white with a black stripe running down the side. They looked pretty good to me.
While Ava was telling the other girls goodbye, a low rushing started up in my ears. She hugged me and she smelled clean and not like a orphan at all. She said, When you come down to the factory, I’m teaching you to smoke whether you like it or not.
I wanted to tell her what I had been planning, that we are sisters and you promise to write, don’t you. But no sound would come out of my mouth, the rushing was so loud in my ears.
How are we so quiet with all this noise inside us?
I will be right back. Mama wrote that on the wall.
Miss Garnett said, Ava, it’s time to go. She reached for Ava but was careful not to touch her. And just like that, Ava was gone.