Then Mom yawned, and Dad stood up immediately. “Ready to leave, Belle?” he inquired solicitously, and she nodded without looking at him, and he went into the bedroom for her coat and hat. No one else noticed, they were still playing the trust game. Now Arden was falling back against Billy, but she couldn’t let herself do it, and the friends were making catcalls and urging her on and laughing, and only Anastasia saw her mother frown with anxiety and speak to Ed, and notice him leave the room. She followed. “Mother’s glasses,” he said.
“Which ones?”
“The reading glasses—you asked her to look at some pictures,” he said with an edge of reproach.
They found the glasses and he carried them to Belle as if he were making a votive offering, bending as he handed them to her, expecting, wanting, praise and thanks. Got none. She put them into her bag and stood up so he could help her with her coat.
Heads rose. “Leaving already?”
“The fun’s just started.”
“Aw, don’t go yet,” Ellie begged.
Belle offered him a purse-lipped smile, murmured something about “the old folks” needing their sleep, and tottered toward the door.
Arden was sitting cross-legged on the floor. “You haven’t even played the game, Grampa,” she argued sweetly.
“Oh, that’s for you young ones,” he echoed Belle. He tried to offer her a hearty laugh.
“Well, he can play it now,” Anastasia cried out, and put her arm around his neck and jumped in the air, all five feet seven inches of her, all 130 pounds. “Catch me!” she cried.
And he did—he put his arms out, one under her waist, and one under her knees, and then he staggered, and both of them went down in a heap together. The room splintered into a chaos of hysterical laughter; everyone was laughing except Belle, who smiled a little through her shock. Ed laughed, but quickly extricated himself and ran to her side as if she were the one who had fallen and needed help. He put an arm around her waist.
“Are you all right, Belle?”
Anastasia was laughing too hard to get up, and Toni came over and reached for her hand. There were tears running down her cheeks as she turned to Ellie: “You see? The story of my life!” No one else heard her. They were all laughing too hard.
When the landlord of the Jamaica apartment announced he was raising their rent, a new knowledge pierced the cold wall of order Belle had built around herself. She recognized she had possessed this knowledge for a long time; but she had not known she had it. It was the understanding that whatever happened, she would have to do all the thinking for them, all the planning. She knew Ed had simply placed himself in her hands, and would do whatever she decided. And she knew that he knew that she would never do anything foolish or extreme, that he could trust her to be practical, to live within his earnings, and not to ask him to do anything he would hate. But she was not pleased with his trust. When this knowledge poked itself at her, she felt pity for herself—so alone she was—and outraged at Ed’s dependency.
She began to scour the newspapers for houses for rent. There were many in those days, and often you did not have to look in the newspapers—everyone knew someone with a house for rent. But the Dabrowskis could afford very little rent, and Belle knew they had to have two bedrooms. They could not go on sleeping four to a room, although Ed would never complain or even suggest that they move. But Anastasia was getting big now and it was humiliating to Belle to think she might wake up some night when…Besides, soon Joy too would outgrow her crib. They would have had to move even if the rent hadn’t been raised.
One Saturday in August, they took the children on the trolley back to Manse Street and left them with Momma. Wally was there on a visit, and he had a car there, which they borrowed. Ed drove to the places listed in the ads Belle had cut out of the newspaper. They found a house in South Ozone Park. It was a little house in a neighborhood like the one in Forest Hills, only much poorer—small one-family houses, a few with garages. There were trees in front and yards in back. The house for rent had a yard bordered with poplar trees, although the grass was overgrown; it had five rooms—three down, two bedrooms up, with a bathroom. The downstairs was supposed to be, Belle knew, living room, dining room, kitchen; but she had no dining room furniture, so she could call the front room the porch, the central room the living room. It was terribly important to Belle to have a porch. And the front room was bright and light, with five windows, as bright as a porch should be.
The problem was the house rented for $35 a month, and they would have to pay for heat. The apartment had been $35 a month, but the heat was supplied. After the raise, of course, it would be $40—but Belle wasn’t sure coal would cost only $5 a month, $60 a year. Still, she felt they had no choice. Maybe Ed would get another raise. He was earning $33 a week now; with a few more dollars, they’d probably get by. Anyway, she wanted this house. She loved it. It was little, and the neighborhood was poor, but there was something about it that charmed her—the trees in front, the front steps, the way people sat out on them that August evening. The small grass patch in front was bordered with a privet hedge, and had a big hydrangea bush in its center.
They moved on the first of September. Anastasia was to start first grade in September; and Joy was nearly two. They borrowed a truck from Martha’s brother, Henry Beck, and he and Ed moved the furniture. Belle felt almost happy. The apartment had been small, cramped, and dark. The house was light, and bigger—their sparse furniture did not fill it. And she’d have a garden! All her life, Belle had wanted to be like the ladies who sat in their gardens in the afternoon, and now she would be able to do that.
The yard would have to be worked on, of course. It had been allowed to grow wild; the grass was waist-high, and as thick as reeds. Beyond the yard was a huge open field; far behind their back fence was a cleared space where boys played baseball. After the furniture was moved in, and Henry Beck had been given a couple of beers—Ed had one with him—and left, the small family went out onto the tiny back porch that overlooked the yard. Belle and Ed were both almost smiling. She said she’d plant a garden; Ed chuckled and said he saw he had his work cut out for him. Joy, in a sunsuit, let go of Belle’s hand when she saw the reeds like a field of wheat. She toddled down the three steps to the concrete patch behind the house, and through the opening in the low hedge, and out into the overgrown yard. She cried out with delight, entered the reeds, and disappeared. All they could see, the three of them, was the rustling of stalks as Joy went exploring. And Mommy and Daddy began to laugh. They laughed and laughed as the reeds shook around invisible Joy. Anastasia stared at them, let her ears fill with the sound: laughter! Then she began to laugh too. The three of them stood together, watching the reeds move, laughing, and for the first time, Anastasia became aware of Joy, her cute little sister, with chubby arms and legs and hair so blond it was almost white, and immense blue eyes that begged you to look into them, to smile, to take her in your arms. And Anastasia saw her, invisible as she was, and her heart overflowed with love for this little creature who could make them all laugh together.
2
THINGS WERE HARD IN the new house because they needed furniture now. The children’s bedroom held only the two cribs, and the front downstairs room was empty. Out of Ed’s $33 a week, Belle had to set aside $10 for the rent and electric bill; Ed needed $3 a week for carfare, the newspaper, and coffee to go with the sandwich Belle fixed for him each night. She put aside another $4 a week to cover the coal bills and to pay for insurance—a policy for $2,500 on Ed and two she had taken out for the children’s college. She paid $2 a month, and when they were eighteen, they would get $1,000 each—a huge sum, Belle felt, one that would see them through four years: That left her with $16 a week for food and clothes and other things—doctor’s bills (please let them stay healthy!) and any furniture they might buy.
Ed would not let her buy anything that was poorly made, and she had high standards of taste, so they shopped long and hard to find two suites of furniture, both s
olid maple. She found a maple couch and two chairs with detached cushions, for the “porch” for $50; and a maple bedroom set—two bedsteads, two mattresses and inner springs, two chests of drawers and a mirror—for $75. Both sets cost $1 down, $1 a week, which meant $2 less a week for food. But if they stayed healthy, they could manage. Belle bought remnants at Montgomery Ward’s fabric department, and made curtains for the kitchen, the bathroom, and the back door. She waited until Montgomery Ward had a sale on ninon curtains, and bought sheer white panels for all the other windows and the front door, which had glass panes. These were a huge expense—$10 all at once—but she had saved for ten weeks. The saving and the worry made her brow furrow. Each week, she tried to slip a dollar bill underneath her bureau drawer, where Ed had suggested they hide their savings.
Ed set to work too. First he cleared the yard and planted grass and dug beds for Belle where she wanted them. She brought clippings from Momma and planted perennials along the outside rim of the yard, in a border. Then Ed brought his tools from the house on Quincy Street and began to clean and arrange the cellar of the new house.
Anastasia started school. Belle did her hair in braids and dressed her up on the first day of school, and pushing Joy in the kiddie car, walked with Anastasia to the dark redbrick building with cement courtyards and a high wire fence around it. P.S. 45, Queens: it was old; it had been built for the children of the poor, and looked it. But to Anastasia, it was a brave new world.
Shy and friendless as she had been, she was surprised to feel herself confident and happy in this new world where there were people, noise, talking, and things—books, papers, blackboards. She charged in with a big grin and devoured the reader the teacher had just handed out as their term text. She raised her hand and went up to speak to the teacher.
“May I have another book?”
The teacher glanced at her with irritation. “Didn’t you get your book?”
“Yes. But I’ve finished it.”
The teacher looked at her for a moment. Then she took her to the side wall of the classroom, where a shelf lay under the big windows. On the shelf were twenty or so books. “Anastasia, take as many of these as you want. Be sure to bring them back, though. Then you can take more.”
Anastasia’s eyes lighted. Books! At home there were only two books, both of which she had been able to read for a long time—the Mother Goose, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses, which she had been given last Christmas. She loved these books, but she had read them so many times she felt a little bored with them. Besides that, there were only the funnies. Daddy used to read her the funnies every Sunday morning: Mommy told him to. But one Sunday, after they moved into the new house, Daddy wouldn’t read her the comics. He just said No. He was busy. He said Wait. She waited, but still he said no. Anastasia was near tears, but angry, and she picked up the paper and thought, I’ll show him, I’ll read them myself! She was looking at Tiny Tim: and suddenly, she realized, she could read them without him. But there were only a few comics each night when Daddy brought home the Daily News, and the books on Mommy’s bureau were too hard for her. Now she had many many books to read. She took six home with her the first night, and returned them to school the next day. In the first week, she had exhausted the little shelf. She settled back into boredom until the teacher led her—only her—to the little library in the end room. After that, she always had books.
And the children were fun, and she loved recess. They played and danced, and Anastasia knew the boys all liked her, and she liked them too. And after a couple of weeks, four or five of them began to follow her home in the afternoons, and sometimes, after she’d had her milk and cookies, she’d go out and play with them, but sometimes she wouldn’t. It depended on what she felt like doing. Sometimes she felt like staying in the house and drawing. Mommy always teased her about the boys, as if she, Anastasia, had done something flirty to make them follow her home, as if Anastasia were somehow…she did not know the right word, but as if she should feel ashamed or something. Still, she loved to go to school every morning. She would reach the schoolyard and run in and lots of children from her class would turn and cry out “Here’s Anastasia!” and her heart would fill up and she knew her smile was plastered clear across her face, and she would jump in their midst and start to play. She was always the leader, but the others didn’t seem to mind that.
Belle too felt happier. She created a new daily order, as peaceful and quiet as her life in the apartment. She took some pride in this, for she had no real experience of family life. She didn’t even know what a peaceful family life would be; she had to invent it, with some help from the radio. The families she had known were all ripped apart by raging fathers and weeping mothers; of all her childhood friends, only Gertrude Hunrath had not been reluctant to go home after school or work, and Gertrude had only a mother and a sister.
Belle was determined to create another kind of home. She saw the look in Ed’s eye when he happened to glance at Joy or Anastasia, especially if they were making any noise, or sitting on the floor in the middle of the room. She knew how he felt, and she had made up her mind that he would not be like her own father. One night when he came home from work, Anastasia was sitting on the piano bench sounding out “Twinkle, Twinkle” with one finger, and he stormed into the porch with raised hand and shouted at her to stop. Belle called him into the kitchen and closed the kitchen door. She told him then: he would not raise his voice to the children, he would not raise his hand to them. The children were good children, and were allowed to talk, or play the piano, or sit on the floor. And if he abused them, she would leave him. She said it just like that. And he looked away as if he were ashamed, or embarrassed, but he never yelled or raised his hand again. She saw his face darken when he looked at them, and she heard him grumble at them, imagining she could not hear him with her deaf ear. But she heard. She shrugged. As long as he leaves them alone, it’s all right. What can you expect of a man? Men hate children, that’s the way they are. Ed was just normal. Only she would not permit him to be like her father.
Her new aspiration was a washing machine. They had quite good ones now, with a centerpost that rubbed the clothes as you would on a washboard, and a wringer that you could put the clothes through—so much easier than wringing them by hand. But she could not afford one. Maybe next year, when the porch furniture was paid off. Meantime, she scrubbed the clothes every Monday in the deep tub beside the sink, on a washboard with heavy yellow soap. Then she’d transfer each load into the sink itself, let the wash water out, and pour in fresh cool water to rinse them. Each Sunday evening Ed strung a long line from one tree to another in the yard, so it was there waiting for her in good weather. If the weather was bad, he strung lines in the basement, but it was too small to hold all the wash at once.
The first things she washed were Ed’s shirts; then the bed sheets and pillowcases; the white bath towels; then kitchen towels. Sometimes there was a white tablecloth as well. After washing these, rinsing them and wringing them, she heated starch in a pot over the gas flame. While it was thickening, she let hot water run into the shallow sink. She took the square of bluing from its package and inserted it, holding it in a net bag, in the water. When the water was sufficiently blue, and the starch sufficiently thick, she poured the starch into the sink as well. Then she put in the white clothes to soak while she filled the deep tub with hot water and soap and put in the colored clothes, underwear, and the printed tablecloth to soak. Then she wrung out the whites as hard as she could, straining her hands, and carried them outside in the enamel basin and hung them on the line. She loved the clean smell of them and the sound of the sheets flapping in the wind. Then she went back into the kitchen and scrubbed the colored clothes, rinsed them, and thinned the starch for Anastasia’s blouse, Ed’s underwear shorts, and Joy’s dress, and her housedress. Each of them had three changes of clothing: Ed wore his white shirts for two days. On the rare occasions when they went to visit Jean and Eric over the weekend,
he would have to wear a shirt three times, because he had only three of them and needed one for Monday morning. Around the house he wore old mended shirts. Belle had three cotton housedresses and one good dress. All her beautiful clothes were gone now—they no longer fit her since she had had the children, and besides, they were out of style. Some she had given away, some were packed away in the big trunk she kept in the children’s closet.
After the colored clothes were starched, she hung them on the line too. Then it was time to make lunch for Anastasia and Joy. She would open a can of Campbell’s soup and make a sandwich of baloney or peanut butter and jelly, or Velveeta cheese grilled in butter in a frying pan. She herself would have toast and tea, but the girls always had a big glass of milk. Anastasia hated milk, so Belle put Hershey’s chocolate syrup in it from a can.
It was fun to call Joy in from play, to wash her little face and hands. Joy was always chirping about something, something silly of course, she was only a baby, but she made Belle smile. Anastasia was another matter: often she came in scowling and said little. She was so serious, so grown up. She never talked about silly things. But Joy adored her older sister, gazed at her as if she were from a higher world, and Belle saw that Anastasia often treated Joy with disdain. Sometimes Belle would reproach Anastasia for this: