Chapter 11 #3
It’s still bound to be an improvement over where they came from, Miss Frances says. These girls are lucky to have a roof over their heads.
Have you seen the roof? Birdie says. And there’s a rathole behind Meg’s chair.
It’s a charity, Birdie. We’re doing the best we can with what we have.
Alright, alright. But it’s only how the dang bubonic plague started.
After that, they get to talking about Miss Frances’s big birthday dinner coming up, how she hopes her husband will give her a extra-special gift this year since he will not take her on a trip.
I do not find it appropriate to discuss in front of a orphan who gets zero squat. That is just damn manners.
Miss Frances nuzzles Ella Jane’s hair with her chin. Would it be awful of me to say I hope Ella Jane doesn’t get adopted next week?
Yep, Birdie says.
If Rory’d let me, I’d bring her right on home with me. I look away. I do not need to hear that either.
Later on, when Miss Garnett comes back with the mailbag, Birdie tells her, I could probably get somebody in to fix the holes and paint the walls. Least give you an idea of how much it would run you to fix that roof.
The Phony nods like isn’t that a interesting idea. I do appreciate that, Birdie. So much. But as I’ve said, all we need is for you to get these books ready. What she is really thinking is this lady ought to mind her own damn beeswax.
What would it hurt to have him come look? I always say, water’s worse than termites—
Miss Garnett clasps her hands like she is begging, praying for this lady to shut up. Because if we don’t have the means to pay for it, wouldn’t we just be wasting the poor man’s time? So please, just finish the books so we can get our funding.
Alright, Birdie says and sighs.
If that’s all, back to work, girls!
I’m not a girl, Garnett, Birdie mumbles when she is out of earshot. I’m a grown woman with a Blanton Bookkeeping Correspondence Course certificate, and you don’t need more drapes and throw pillows, what you need is to fix the dang roof.
Finally I think she is smelling a phony.
After more frowning up at the mold, she gets her a wet cloth and rubs it on the wall.
That mess does not come off, I tell her. I have tried my own self.
She gives up and sits back down and starts going through the mailbag. Mrs. Garnett Pittman. To Whom It May Concern … She hands me a couple envelopes. It is always the same. They are all looking for a baby girl.
Something wrong? she asks.
Generally I do not trust these ladies farther than I could throw them, but I take a chance since she does not seem like those other ladies. My friend Ava went down at the cannery. I know it’s not allowed, but I was hoping she would send me a letter.
Well, she’s probably busy. Canning things. A little girl. She frowns her forehead. Do you have a choice to go there, or can you stay here if you want to?
I look at her a minute, so she can hear what she just said.
You’re right, she says. Who in their right mind would want to stay here.
Guess who ain’t giving you dirty looks today?
When Birdie tells me who, I say it my own self: Well glory be to the Lord.
Yesterday afternoon, Miss Mildred hollered out in the hall, Garnett, another toddler just threw up.
And anybody with brains knew what was about to happen here.
One vomit and you can expect a couple volunteers to sneak out the door.
Two vomits and they do not sneak, they herd like buffalo, saying they cannot afford to get their own kids or husband sick at home.
By five o’clock, Miss Garnett’s hair was frayed loose around her head and she looked green as a pea.
Today Birdie has on the blue dress with the white buttons again, so I know she has come in seven days now.
There is the one with the black buttons, the one with the white buttons, and the one with the imitation mother-of-pearl buttons, and she wears them on a rotation basis.
When I predicted which she would wear next, she called me clever.
Looks like we’ve about got the place to ourselves today, she says while I eat my biscuits.
Her sister and a few ladies have shut themselves up in the toddler room and nursery so as not to get the whole house sick.
All I got to do is think the word vomit and I can damn smell it.
That does not work with bacon or blueberry cobbler, but who can explain the mind.
It is hardly nine o’clock when Birdie shuts the ledger and pushes it aside.
I straighten it. I’ve had it, Meg, I can’t look at that dirty wall another minute, she says and walks out and comes back with a apron on and a rag and a bucket of something stronger smelling than soap.
She starts scrubbing the moldy wall behind my chair in circles.
It just smears the ugly brown around. But she lets it sit a minute.
When she circle scrubs it a second time, look at that, it makes a area of clean yellowy wall.
I hop up and tell her, I could help, you know. I am good at cleaning. Lord, anything to get me out of this chair, even scrubbing a thing.
She gets me a rag from the kitchen, and I scrub at the low parts, she scrubs the high. The smell makes my nose tickle.
Don’t touch your eyes, there’s bleach in here. Frances’ll get snippy with me if I blind an orphan.
When the smell gets very strong, she looks around the hall. Left and right like it is a busy street she is trying to cross. Then she goes to our window and wiggles off the second-to-bottom board without me even helping and pushes the window up another five inches.
Ah. More fresh air blows in, we can both breathe better now.
While we clean in circles, I ask how long she expects to stay before she has to go on back home. I am keeping count of how many biscuits are in my future. She says in about two weeks, after her sister’s birthday. She is up here in the first place to ask her sister’s family for money—
How much? I have always had a interest in money. I forgot my mama said it was rude to ask.
More than a little and less than a lot, she says.
She tells me her sister’s husband has plenty to spare and even a private telephone line, but Miss Frances is still cross with Birdie on account of a goose picture she drew about a hundred years ago.
Well, I tell her, I would like to see that.
She steps off the chair where she was scrubbing high and draws a lady’s face on a card with cheekbones and a sharp beak nose that really does favor Miss Frances, and then she draws a neck down five whole View Day cards lined up together, with a teeny-tiny goose body down at the bottom.
I am laughing. Lord, it looks just like her.
Shhh, they’ll hear us, but she is laughing too. If they think we’re having any fun in here, they’ll separate us.
Ain’t that the truth.
Next she lays yesterday’s newspaper on the desk and stands up on her chair with the mop, reaching and groaning to get to the ugly brown spots. Mopping a ceiling instead of a floor, now that is hard labor, especially when you cannot stop laughing. Sure enough, the toddler room door flings open.
Birdie, what—what are you doing up there? Miss Frances asks.
Just cleaning. This ceiling. She might as well’ve said just robbing this bank, she looks so guilty. I’m almost done with the books.
Miss Frances frowns at me, she knows I should be at the desk, drooling. But when you’re done, you’ll go back to working on the books, right?
Right. Soon as I finish the ceiling.
Miss Frances eyes the clean wall and says, I didn’t really realize how dirty it was in here.
By eleven, is my arm tired. But I keep on scrubbing circles.
Birdie? I ask. What exactly is a feebleminded woman?
She draws the mop down off the ceiling and thinks it over. I guess somebody that’s … touched in the head.
As in crazy?
I reckon, but you know, crazy’s relative. That means we all are a little, but we think everybody else is. Like a one-way mirror. But there is actual crazy out there.
I believe the only actual crazy person I have seen with my eyes is that Old Miss Rondo who used to sit and beg on the square. When I asked Mama what happened to her to make her that way, she said, Sometimes people just have a bad day.
After lunch, it is looking a lot better in here.
Good job, Meg, she says. You are good at cleaning.
I tell her thank you and I get that from my mama.
She ran a tight ship, huh?
Oh yes, I tell her. When she was cleaning, it was like a tornado blowing through town.
That right?
When she cleaned, it was cleaner than before you even used it.
Lord, I have not thought of that in years.
What else do you remember?
She— Oh, you.
Birdie has a way of getting you to talk when you do not want to. She could probably get criminals to confess the crimes.
It might help you to talk about her, Birdie says. But I shut my mouth. Ava said it is best to get her out of my mind.
When we are done cleaning, we are both tuckered out.
Everything is dripped on, including us. We wipe the drips off the floor and that old file cabinet leaning like the Leaning Tower of something.
I got to say, the walls do look better. Not perfect where the mold stained hard, but better.
It is a shame, though, that paint is such a unfortunate color.
The shade of something a old sick person would cough up.
Miss Mildred walks by, damp and soggy from buying more castor oil in town. She takes one look and says, Well, it’s about time. That is it, no questions asked. By the way, sounds like Garnett’s gone be out sick another day. She sneaks Birdie a smile.
Glory hallelujah.
The next morning after breakfast, I get a whiff of something strong. All I can report is it is not the smell of something you want to eat. I walk fast up the hall, curious—No running, young lady. Even when Miss Garnett is not here, I hear her talking in my brain.