Counting on Grace (22 page)

I say yes, but I don't intend to.

“Off I go, then.” Her voice sounds brisk the way it always did when she was ordering me to sit back down at my desk.

“Arthur says he'll write to me.”

“Letters got us in this trouble in the first place,” she says.

“But I'm the only one left behind,” I shout, and it snatches the top off the bottle of tears that I thought were all stopped up inside.

She hunches down in front of me and tries wiping them away, fast as they come. I expect the ink off her fingers is leaving black streaks on my face. “I know, Grace,” she says. “I'll write. I promise.” Seems to me that crying scares her as much as me ‘cause suddenly she tucks some scrunched-up piece of paper in my smock pocket and she's gone, scrambling down the last bit of the hill to the main road.

I watch long as I can, but the dark rubs out the sight of her in her blue dress before she even turns the corner. When I get home, I unfold the paper and read it by the light of a candle. It tells me her address in North Adams. So she do mean me to write her.

Delia's sprawled across the whole bed. Even though she don't wake up, her body knows to move over and make room for me when I slide under the blanket.

With all the confusion of the day, I never did get my clothes hung up to dry. In the morning Delia takes pity on me and gives me her old smock to wear. Most summer days I don't bother with my drawers ‘cause there's nothing worse than standing by your frame with wet clothes sticking to your skin. But Delia's smock is big on me and flaps around, which means I've got to borrow Henry's extra union suit off the line and pull that on underneath.

My mother and father busy themselves around the kitchen. Nobody's looking at me and nobody's talking. We all manage to get out of the house without saying a word to one another. Henry comes to the mill with us ‘cause word's gone around town that the schoolroom will stay locked until further notice.

The wind is up. Vermont in September gives you warnings, says, Remember what I've got in store for you. I wish
I'd put on my coat like Delia, but I always leave the house in a jumble. She's so different from me. Some nights she even lays out her smock as if she's a fancy girl with three to choose from and what a bother it would be fussing over which one to wear in the morning.

We walk past Arthur's house on the way down the hill. The front door is standing open like someone just took a quick trip to the store. Someone who thought they'd be coming back shortly. I wonder where Arthur is by now. Did he get to Manchester yet? Did they find that cousin? Is he going to have to go right back into a mill?

French Johnny sends Valerie over to doff for Delia, which is a good thing for us Forciers ‘cause it means Delia's hank clock numbers will be up. But he don't give Delia Mrs. Trottier's machines, which makes Mamère really mad. Lunch break she grumbles about it.

“Everybody knows those machines are better than Delia's. He needs to move her over.”

Nobody says nothing for a minute and then Madame Cordeau calls out, “You got the six best frames in the room already, Adeline. How much more you want?”

“And that girl of yours is getting ahead of herself,” calls someone else. I don't see who. “Why does she get schooling on Sunday?”

“It's ‘cause of her the teacher got fired,” says another. I'm keeping my head down. “The way she makes trouble with Dupree.”

Everybody's stirring and putting their eyes here and there, but not looking at my mother. People can turn on you so fast when they're all bunched up together. It happens just the same way with my frames when one end flies off and gives the next one ideas.

“Somebody says now you're learning yourself to read,” says Mrs. Donahue.

“What's wrong with that?” Mamère demands. “Any one of you could try it. And your children could have gone on Sundays. Miss Lesley didn't set a limit on numbers.”

Wouldn't Miss Lesley be surprised to hear this, I think. My mother standing up for her.

The grumbling settles down after that, but there's no singing at break. Come to think of it, there ain't been none for a while.

I can't believe it's the beginning of the week and I've got six days to plow through. My feet are already pounding, but my head is misbehaving even worse. I can't make my brain stay satisfied with bobbin counting. It keeps wandering off to Arthur and then to Miss Lesley. Is she all packed up by now? How's she getting down to that sister's house? Does the sister know she's coming? Will Miss Lesley really end up in a mill? How can that be?

If I'd been paying mind I would have felt that first warning tug, the only pinch of time you got to pull yourself out. Once I figure what's happening, I'm getting turned round from front to back by bad old Edwin, who's snatched a
flapping piece of my big borrowed smock and is gobbling it right up.

“Mamère,” I scream. “Mamère!”

Edwin keeps on munching and I'm facing front now but getting pulled back against the frame with the buzzing spindles moving closer and closer. I scream again and suddenly a whole wall of Mamère presses into my face and she is reaching right over my head to throw the shipper handle. Finally the buzzing stops just inches from my ears.

I'm all twisted up in the machine with my back pressed hard against the clearing board. The tops of the spindles are digging into me something bad and the blouse under my smock is cutting into my neck.

“Get me out!” I scream.

“Hush, Grace, it's all right,” my mother says, but her eyes look wide and scared. She reaches in behind and starts hauling on my smock to drag it out from between the gears, but Edwin is hanging on just as tight. It feels like they're two dogs fighting over me and I ain't nothing but a bone.

“Mamère, stop,” I cry out. “You're choking me.”

“Leave her be,” says French Johnny's voice. “I'll cut her out.”

It hurts to move my head, but when he passes in front of me, I see he's got a big old knife out in the open.

“You be careful, Johnny,” my mother warns.

“Step away now, Adeline. I need to get in there beside her.”

My mother don't move. “I'll do the cutting,” she says.

“Adeline, you listen to me. I've done this before. Get out of my way.”

She finally moves around so her face is right in front where I can see her.

“You stand very still, Grace, and nothing will happen,” she says to me. But it don't sound much like she believes it. And where does she think I'm going anyway? I'm trying hard as I can to put some distance between me and that bad old Edwin, but my feet can't keep themselves straight on the oily floor.

“For mercy's sake, girl, stop moving around,” mutters French Johnny. “I don't want to cut you.” He smells like sweat and grease and smoke all at once. I shut my eyes to try and think of something else. I wish I could hold my nose too, but Edwin's pinned me bad enough so I can't move my arms.

The knife saws its way through the smock from just behind my knees and up my back where the cloth's pulled in the tightest. I suck in my breath and hold it to give French Johnny all the space he needs to slip that blade past my shoulder bones.

The bottom part of me comes free, which means my feet start to slide out in the grease. French Johnny puts his arm around my waist to hold me up and now I think I'm really going to be sick all over him and myself what with the smell and the feeling of his arm passing over my front like that. But the top part of me is still caught fast and there's only an inch between my neck and the frame.

“Damn, girl,” whispers French Johnny. His hot breath tickles me right in the ear like he's telling me some secret. “You really did this one up fine.”

The knife is worked in so close I can hear it chomping away, one little cloth bite after another.

“Ouch,” I yell when the point pokes me in the back of the head. It ain't nothing but a pinprick, but I'm making sure French Johnny knows how close he is.

“Johnny,” cries Mamère.

And then suddenly with no warning, the knife makes its way through to air right behind my neck and I fall forward against French Johnny's arm and my feet are scrambling down below trying their best to be holding me up. My back and my legs are bare, open to the air and all the eyes in the room.

“Now look at this,” roars French Johnny over the noise of the frames. “This crazy girl's wearing her brother's drawers.” I yell and squirm away. Then I hear a slap but for once it don't land on me.

“You leave her be, Johnny.” There's a growl in Mamère's voice I never heard before. She twirls me around and backs me up against her so nobody else can see.

Behind French Johnny, the torn-away half of Delia's smock is hanging out from between the spindles like a piece of meat in a dog's mouth. And beyond that down the row, people are staring.

“You had no cause to do that,” French Johnny mutters, rubbing the red mark on his cheek.

“Grace, you all right?” asks Mamère, and this time it's her voice in my ear.

“Course she is, Adeline,” he answers for me. “I made sure that knife never touched her.” For once he don't got that blustery voice of his. He sounds shamed.

“I thank you for that,” my mother says, each word careful as it goes past my ear. If nobody else gives away that they
saw what happened, then there's a chance the slap will be one of those pretend secrets we all keep and he won't have to punish her. After all, she's still the best spinner he's got and that counts for a lot. By the time he turns around to check the room, everybody's back to their spinning as if their eyes never lifted from their frames.

“Go on, Johnny, and leave us be,” Mamère says. “My frames need to be shut down.”

“That girl of yours is more trouble than ten others,” he says. But he goes.

“Mamère,” says Delia's voice. “Grace can wear my coat.”

I'm beginning to shake a little, which is strange ‘cause now it's all over. But it feels like my body's not really part of me at this moment. It's taking its own time getting through to the other side of this.

Mamère is still holding me against her, but I know everybody's seen me lying across French Johnny's arm with my backside showing. It'll just be a matter of time before Dougie or Felix starts tormenting me about Henry's union suit. The snickering will jump from their mouths to someone else's until it runs right around the mill and on into the town.

“Hold your arms out,” Delia tells me, and I do what she says.

“Things in a mess?” Mamère asks as the two of them wrap me in the coat. I feel like a package getting bundled up for mailing.

“Bad enough,” Delia says. “I got to two of yours before the clearing boards went. But the rest are down. And so are mine.”

What she's saying is, we've got an hour of piecing up before we can start the frames. An hour off the hank clocks.

“Go
along home, Grace,” my mother says, but her voice shakes a little. “You can walk?”

I nod. It's not the walking that bothers me. It's all the eyes watching as I pass.

“I'll take you to the stairs,” says Delia. Sometimes it torments me that Delia seems to know what I'm thinking without me telling her. This time I'm grateful.