Chapter 12
After three days of wonderfulness, more charity ladies trickle back in.
I am sitting back in my baby-bird egg, enjoying the view.
The way the sun shines through the un-boarded-up window.
The tree out there Birdie says is called a chinaberry and it shushes in the breeze.
She says she can finally see her dang hand in front of her face in here.
Her motto is sometimes it is better to ask for the forgiveness than the permission.
Ladies walk past the office and exclaim, Well look at that!
like they had not ever noticed this little room before.
Ask me, they are just glad it got done because it wasn’t them had to do it.
Meanwhile the Asskisser looks to be all nerves, waiting to see if Miss Garnett comes in.
The way she keeps touching the copper pin on her collar, she is wetting her pants hoping it will turn silver soon.
I bet she thinks we girls do not notice things like that.
I pray to baby Jesus Miss Garnett is still sick as a dog. But the word around the place is she is on the mend.
I hear the Fatass say out in the hall, What I’d like to know is where she took the money from to buy all that paint.
Oh I just been stealing it out your pocketbook, Pripp. Little bit every day, Birdie calls back without looking up from our desk.
Stop that, Birdie, Miss Frances says. Birdie found a little money left over in the books to pay for it, isn’t that wonderful?
Well, she’s gonna have to answer to Garnett on that.
Long as I don’t get in trouble, I don’t care what the Big Phony thinks. Though it would be nice if it irritated her a little. I sit back and think about that.
Sure enough, at eight thirty sharp, I hear the clacking. Like so many skeleton bones coming in the door. Birdie has gone upstairs to take another look at our ceiling.
I hear, Welcome back, Garnett! We all been prayin foya. I lean out and here the Big Phony comes, moving stiff like somebody stuck a broom handle up her. She stops and lifts her nose to smell. That is change you are smelling, lady.
Garnett, it was so smart of you to freshen the office up before the inspector visits, a lady says.
Now that one burns me up. And then she is standing in the door of the office, fixing her gray eyes on me in my nice new blue walls.
The Fatass warned her but not this good.
She looks at the sun streaming pretty in here, and lookathere, Birdie even put a little potted plant up on the file cabinet.
She kind of lurches at me when she sees that.
I sit still in my chair and try not to look like a criminal even though I still got some blue and white evidence on me.
The Asskisser follows her into the office and asks, What do you think of the spiffing up Birdie did, Garnett? It looks real good, doesn’t it?
That Big Phony looks at the un-boarded-up window, then at me. Her skin is a even paler shade of runny oatmeal. It is eating her alive that I am not sitting in sickly light with mold all around me. But she knows she has got to act happy. Well look at this, is all she can get out.
Miss Frances is waiting on more praise than that, though. But don’t you think it looks better? Especially considering you’ve got the little girl sitting in here and all. Birdie worked so hard getting it done in time.
Don’t bring me into this, lady. I wish the flat-faced phony was still in bed.
Where is Birdie? Miss Garnett wants to know.
But Miss Frances keeps going. You know, Birdie came in early and scrubbed the walls and ceiling and everything. And to be honest, it kind of needed it, don’t you think? I hadn’t realized how dingy it’d gotten until she cleaned it up.
Well, well, well. I didn’t think the Asskisser had it in her.
Miss Garnett’s smile turns so tight it curves down in the corners. What we NEED is for Birdie to finish the books so we’ll get the funding to keep this place going. I’m sure you’d understand that better if you were on the senior committee, Frances.
Miss Frances shrinks back down in her neck. She says she better go tend to the toddlers.
Soon after, Birdie walks in. Welcome back, Garnett.
Please tell me while you were painting walls you also had time to finish the books like you were assigned? Miss Garnett’s nose is flared wide. I can see all up in there.
Don’t worry, I finished, I’ve just got a few questions.
She don’t care one way or the other if Miss Garnett likes her paint job, she goes right to pointing to things in the books.
Asking what is this entry and that one. Covering a card with my hand, I draw a new portrait of the Big Phony.
I give her a tooth missing so she looks like a witch.
When I compared last year and the year before to this year, Birdie says, opening books, I realized a lot more used to be spent on the big girls. Clothing, food, books …
The big girls need scripture, not storybooks, Miss Garnett says. She starts to babble about their line and how the mothers of these girls are giving birth left and right, breeding more imbeciles. I add horns to her flat face, a hairy mole.
Birdie taps her finger on a number in the book. So most of the money allocated for the big girls is going towards the cost of the work program? Is that right? And so is the girls’ pay?
Well, I look up at that. I want to hear about pay.
It’s going towards their futures. Unfortunately, with the new child labor laws, their hours are limited and their pay is a pittance. So as of now there’s nothing left over. She tells some ladies at the door she will be out momentarily.
I look at Birdie to see what that means, but she is asking more questions, pointing to the book.
Miss Garnett says, Transportation, food, clothing. Separate safe housing for the girls, it’s very costly.
I agree they need to be kept safe, but maybe children shouldn’t be working in a cannery at all.
Can you get back to the thing about pay? I ask.
It’s a wonderful opportunity, Miss Garnett says. She is looking serious at Birdie. We don’t just keep these girls separate for their own safety. We’ve got to do something for the sake of our society. There’s legislation down at the capitol already. Now we just need to see to it that it’s enforced.
I watch Birdie’s eyebrows rise. She looks the way I felt when she pulled the boards off the window. Ah, her face seems to say. I see now. How it is in your world.
All I want to know is do we get damn paid.
Miss Garnett tucks the books in her arms and walks out, and Birdie follows after her.
When Birdie is back in the office, I say, Tell it to me straight: Do we get our pay for sticking things in a can or not?
She rubs hard between her eyes. It leaves a red mark. Your pay goes towards your housing and board until you’re old enough to work a full day, which is sixteen. So. No. I’m sorry, Meg.
Sixteen is grown.
Oh, but it gets worse.
Birdie says, Now that I’ve finished my assigned assignment, she excused me for the rest of the week. She frowns. But I’m worried, Meg.
On a different day I would figure she is worried about being a old maid with a newspaper subscription and needing cash money, since it is usually those things. But today she says she is worried about me.
Six months is a long time to be here and not have a person, Meg. Which is what she calls the human being you want to be around most. The way Ava was mine.
Do you have to go home?
I do. I’m sorry.
I straighten the pencils, the eraser, the Bible in the center. But there is a lonesome taste in the air.
Do you miss your mama, Meg?
What a thing to ask a orphan.
It’s alright to say you miss her.
No, it’s not.
If you don’t want to talk about her, it’s alright. But it might help you.
Will it?
Try it, start small. Tell me something good you remember about her.
I do want to.
Just one thing.
I could try.
She was good at dancing.
What kind of dancing?
Jitterbug. Foxtrot. She taught me the latest moves.
What else?
She read everything she could get her hands on, even the back of the soup can.
What else?
She is buried down so deep I got to think hard.
That means I am starting to forget her. She smelled like rose talc.
She was better with a needle than a real seamstress, she taught me to tell time from a silver wristwatch with a broke clasp, she liked fall over spring for the mood, and she tried to hug me, but I ran off down the road and that is a regret I have.
I am not sure how much of this I have said out loud.
At View Day I want you to please try your hardest to get adopted, alright Meg?
Why bother? View Day is a waste of my sweet time.
It’s tricky to explain, but will you please just try? I won’t be here, but Frances will. I’m gonna see if there’s anything she can do to help.
I lie and say I will try, though that woman out there will just steer them clear. Birdie gathers up her pocketbook and glasses and reaches over and squeezes both my hands and says, I am so lucky to know you, Meg.
The days after Birdie is gone grow long and dull again. Long, skinny fingers hold the hands of the clock so they do not move for hours. It makes me grumpy every time I see the biscuit drawer empty. A couple times I stick my nose down there and try to smell the biscuits of yore.
Miss Garnett comes in the office the morning after the inspector’s visit. She pushes the warped door half closed and moves up behind me. I get stiff all over. Here we go, I think. Sure enough, she starts fooling with my hair. I can hear her lips unsticking, gearing up for the damn dirty, filthy—
But I do not fall in a mess or drool this time, not even a little. Since that inspector visit, I have damn had it up to here with her.
Yesterday morning, she told us big girls to line up in the hall—Stand still and erect, girls—hair brushed and itchy in our white Sunday dresses. Miss Garnett’s nothing-colored dress was ironed flat as a board, and she’d had her bland hair done stiff around her head. I don’t know why some women try.