Crackpot, p.21
Crackpot, page 21
Sure, she knew Daddy told the same stories over and over again, and it was hard to stop him once the telling fit was on him, and sometimes it nearly drove her crazy too, but she understood what he was talking about and they never even tried to understand, and just made Daddy seem small and alone among them. They were the blind ones, though they didn’t even know it, because they couldn’t really see him, and the wonder of his life, and how he was chosen to save the town, and everything. And Hoda felt ashamed of herself for being embarrassed because he didn’t even seem to know he was making it easy for people to ignore him. She was doubly enraged at these strangers for their disrespect, because she herself could hardly bear to listen to Daddy tell it all the way through any more, and when she saw he was going to begin to tell she began to cast about in her mind for something to distract him with, and sometimes she would make up any excuse she could think of on the spur of the moment to get out of the house, interrupting him too, and leaving him with the so familiar words in his mouth, while she rushed out to walk the streets by herself. Why? She might just as well have stayed and listened to Daddy, even if it meant she must hear the same old stories in the same old words yet again. Only she just couldn’t bear it. Why? They were true, weren’t they? every word. But oh Daddy, is it all you know? And especially, she couldn’t bear it when she heard him begin with other people, and saw them glance at each other and set themselves to find a place to jump in and talk right over him, or just simply walk away, and leave him standing there, holding up his life that no one wanted to see.
She was bad, as bad as, worse than they were, because she knew better, and still could hardly bear to listen anymore. There was an awfulness in her, inside and out, she could feel it, though at first she didn’t know what it was that was going on in there. Then one day it came into her head that maybe she was sick with the same thing Mamma had; maybe she had a big lump growing in there too. Sometimes she could actually feel it, if she lay still and put her hands up on her stomach, and pressed down with her fingers through the fat. There it was, she had hold of it, creepy death-making thing, pushing out, not caring a damn if it killed her dead. Naw, what was she scaring herself about? That was just a gas balloon, bubbling up inside and trying to work its way out; she could tell. How? Maybe Mamma thought it was gas too, at first. It’s not gas, it’s a lump. You’re sick. You did a lot of things you’re not supposed to, and Mamma knows, wherever she is, even if you fooled Daddy. Maybe you caught a disease. You’ll die; there’s rot in your stomach. You’ll die like your mamma, screaming your head off. It’ll hurt so much you’ll go crazy screaming. I don’t wanna go, Mamma! Not yet! Who’ll take care of Daddy? I don’t want to die, Mamma! Take it away! Don’t let them give me a lump!
Noo, noo, don’t be impatient. It’ll go away. It’ll pass. That’s what Mamma used to say when she was sick. ‘It’ll pass, don’t worry.’ And it always passed when Mamma said so. Keep your mind off it. Hoda could keep her mind off it, if she tried. There was plenty to do. And see, it passed. She felt okay again. She didn’t wake up feeling lousy any more.
But the fear of the lump didn’t pass, the feeling that maybe she’d done something awful, and that lump was growing in her and spreading out and one day she would wake up screaming and screaming and screaming until they took her away. No she wouldn’t. It was only the loneliness of not being able to talk to anyone about it that made her think horrid thoughts. It wasn’t as if she was really even feeling sick or anything. She ate well enough; she couldn’t be very sick if her appetite was that good. So she was fat, so what? She would continue to be fat if her appetite continued to be this good. For heaven’s sake, she couldn’t be healthier if she could dance the way she danced, after a day of cleaning somebody’s house, and then bring someone home to the shack for what Seraphina had called “a little nightcap” afterwards, too.
The shack was working out fine, since she’d cleaned up a part of it, as a place to slip into from the back lane, especially with older customers, whose voices puzzled Daddy when she brought them home, since he had recognized one or two of them, and knew they couldn’t possibly be students. So she had to pretend they’d come to buy baskets instead of what she’d really brought them home for, and instead of going in the bedroom with her they had to stay out in the kitchen and have tea and a chat with Daddy, and the expression on their faces when they found themselves trapped this way, and the frantic miming for her to do something about it, were really so funny that she had left one customer with Daddy once and locked herself in the toilet for a long time and had a fit of the giggles all by herself. Of course she had never intended to cheat them, and made sure she made it up to them later, but to avoid further awkwardness, nowadays she made use of the shack instead. Later on, when it got to be really cold again, she would have to figure out some other arrangements for the grown-ups. That was one of the reasons why she felt just sick, sometimes, because she was always having to think of more ways to keep on fooling Daddy, as if his blindness was never a final thing; she had to keep on blinding him over and over again. And it seemed somehow worse that it was always so easy. Whatever story she thought up, however flimsy she herself feared it to be, he found in it an interpretation which, if not precisely what she had intended, would lend itself to her convenience. He was so far from objecting, in fact, when she had announced, when the other kids were let out of school that summer, that she had completed her formal education and would not return to school in September, but was going to freelance in different jobs, that he commented approvingly on the forward march of modern times. In his day, in the old country, it was only learned old men who turned their homes into places of thought and study. Now, even a young girl, if she had the talent, and the brains, could do the same. It was as though there were something in Daddy that acquiesced in not knowing.
The worse she felt about it the more stubborn became her insistence that her clients buy baskets, because Daddy was really pleased with how well his business was going. And so was Hoda, too, with the increase in her earnings, which made it even more impossible to change the things that made her feel bad. Her venture downtown had taught her that she could charge a bit more than she had been doing, especially when she began to get grown men for customers, and then charge a little more on top of that for the bag or basket, if the customer hadn’t bought one recently. And for the younger guys, she adjusted things according to a kind of instinct she had, about what they could afford at any given time. And when a bunch of them wanted to come on a gang shag, she gave them a lump sum bargain rate. It was, to use an expression that Yankl the butcher used to use when he wrapped her meat scraps, for “good will.” That way a lot of young kids who couldn’t afford it on their own got a chance, by clubbing together, and later on, when they did have something to spend, they knew where they could solo. In time Hoda was to become something of a legend in the district, as the girl who had broken in just about every mother’s son of them.
Nor was the reputation which she was beginning to gain limited to activities in the strictly personal sphere. Hoda knew herself as a social being. She smarted not only from personal wrongs, but suffered also over the ills of society. With all that was happening in the world a person didn’t have time and maybe didn’t even have the right to spend all his time worrying about his personal affairs and feelings. Mr. Polonick had always said so, and she knew that was how Daddy felt, and she felt that way too. It wasn’t only in Russia that things had got so bad they had to have a revolution to free the working classes from their slavery. The way the workers were being treated right here and now in this very city, no wonder they were out on strike. It was slavery, just like in old Russia; try to make people work without paying them enough to feed their families; try to force them to shut up. “Shut up and starve; you’re only workers!” Well, we’ll show you shut up. We’ll shut you up too, all of you. We’ll strike! See how you like it not to have the work rolling out and the money rolling in for a change! That was the way to do it. All the workers had to get together and to say NO! NO! NO! in one mighty voice, like they were doing right here and now, in this very city! Everybody was striking, everybody! Hoda got a feeling from people that she had never got before, a little bit like, only a lot better than it used to be in the marketplace. They were all striking out against injustice together. Hoda and Seraphina went all over to see, and Hoda talked to all kinds of strikers and they laughed and joked and Hoda was very excited, and encouraged everybody, and congratulated them because at last they had taken a stand, and when the workers at last stood up together and refused to work, the whole city stood still. Never was there such a ferment of still standingness. People stood and walked about on the streets, even on the streetcar tracks where now no cars ran. In front of closed shops people gathered and talked and asked what news and shrugged, because even the workers’ paper wasn’t coming out any more. If a rumble of wheels was heard down the way everybody ran to see who dared try to be a scab, and then they all laughed and joked with the breadman or milkman when they saw his permit sticker, and everybody was relieved, and then even the breadmen and milkmen stopped work. And then only the people wandered the streets and assured each other that they would hold firm, and wondered uneasily for how long that would have to be, and Hoda for one didn’t care how long they would have to hold out as long as they won and taught those bosses a lesson!
But the bosses weren’t going to give up their slave labour that easily. Hoda rushed to and fro with rumours of what they were planning. They had brought in blackleg cops! There was a big fight and Hoda missed it, between the strikers and the blacklegs. They had arrested a whole bunch of the good guys! All the strike leaders, but don’t worry! The strikers were not afraid! It just made them mad! It made Hoda mad. Sure, the mayor and the council had stopped scratching their arses and now they were scratching the bosses arses! “Oh yes, we’ll help you break the strike! We’ll throw them in jail!” Well they could think again if they thought they were going to strangle the strike. In the synagogue even, the old men were horrified when Hoda brought the news of the arrests. Just like in old Russia! And now the mayor had banned the big parade. They were going to bring in the mounties! But that wasn’t going to stop the workers. They would parade anyway. “What do you have to do to win the right to live like a human being?” they asked each other, and Hoda asked too. Strike, yes, parade, yes, fight, even, if necessary, yes!
Hoda walked along the sidewalk, encouraging the men who marched up Main Street toward the City Hall. Let the mayor say “no no no” all he liked. Let him call in the mounties if he liked. They would stand firm! Pretty soon she was practically running, she was so eager to get there. Hoda had lost Seraphina somewhere in the crowd of men. Seraphina was all right in some ways, but she was too dumb to understand what the strike really meant to people, and was really more interested in picking up the odd little bit of business here and there, and Hoda suspected that she was not very high principled about whom she did it with, and would as easily take their filthy money from the bosses or blacklegs as comfort the strikers. She kept on nodding her head and saying “Nyes, nyes,” when Hoda explained to her that that was scabbing, but Hoda had the feeling that she was wasting her breath.
Hoda was always to regret that she never reached the City Hall that day. People told her afterwards that everybody gathered there out front, all the workers from all over the city, and all they wanted was their rights, and what they got instead was those damn mounties charging them on their horses and smashing their heads with big clubs. But that didn’t scare them. The workers fought back, and that was the thing Hoda wished she had seen, though she got her own in where she was, too, and she hoped at least one cop would never forget it. But what was the mayor doing all that time? You wouldn’t believe it but he was standing on the City Hall steps, quacking away like a duck, while his cops were killing workers, and when even mounties charging on their horses couldn’t make the workers go away the cops started shooting with guns, sure, they didn’t care whom they killed, guys who’d fought in the war, too. But what did he care, standing there and reading from a piece of paper while the workers bled, siccing his cops on them in one breath and in another reading from his piece of paper that it was all their fault because they mustn’t riot, mustn’t strike, mustn’t earn a living, mustn’t feed their kids, mustn’t demand their rights, mustn’t even breathe or be human.
It’s funny how you fall into things. Hoda hadn’t even known she was a natural revolutionary till that day. Sure she was all for the strike and the workers, but she didn’t really know what she could do till the day of the great parade when she saw the way the mounties were treating the strikers, and especially the way that cop was pushing Mr. Polonick around. It all happened so quickly she could hardly remember the sequence herself. First of all she was running along the sidewalk trying to keep up with the march of the men on the street. Then she recognized Mr. Polonick, who’d got unravelled from the marching workers and was running back and forth like a loose end beside them. She couldn’t hear what he was saying but she could see from the way his arms were moving and the way he skipped around that he was talking to the strikers like he used to talk to the kids in class. And the strikers were marching quickly by and every now and then turning a tolerant head or waving an arm, unheeding but friendly, at him. What right did that mountie have to come riding straight up at him, crowding between him and the marchers, forcing him to skip and stumble toward the kerb? Damn cops! Damn bullies! And what right did he have to turn his horse around and come back toward where little Mr. Polonick was straightening himself up again? And what right did he have (Hoda was running toward Mr. Polonick now) to lean down that way from his horse, holding that club of his up as though…“Oh no you won’t!” Hoda grabbed up at the arm that held the club, jumping up at the mountie from the back and side so he didn’t even see her coming, he was so anxious to take aim at Mr. Polonick. She felt the big arm jerk under her and she held on with both her own, sinking her teeth through the cloth that came handiest, into firm, living flesh. The cop gave a startled shout of pain and involuntarily loosed his hold on the reins. The horse jerked out from under him, and at the same time Hoda loosed the grip of her teeth and her arms and with one closed fist caught him on the side of the face as he fell. She heard the shouted “Hurray!” from the marching workers and the spectators as she stepped back, and saw that the cop was on his hands and knees and one of the people had rushed forward to kick his club out of his way. Hoda grinned round at the voiced approval of the world. “Good going! Did you see what she did? Pulled him right off his horse!” But she didn’t have much time to savour her triumph.
“Run, Hoda!” Mr. Polonick was pulling her by the arm. “Run! They’ll arrest you if they catch you!”
Hoda ran. Mr. Polonick ran with her. They twisted together down the side streets and alleys back toward home. Pretty soon Hoda had to slow down because her stomach was hurting from being bounced along, though she was holding it with her hands as she ran. Mr. Polonick had slowed down too. He thanked her. “You’re a brave girl, Hoda,” he said, after they had walked quietly down familiar streets again for a little while and seemed to have eluded all pursuit. “The rest of us talk a lot,” he continued humbly, “but when we see the truncheon bearing down on us we’re afraid. I was afraid. I thought, ‘What am I doing here?’ But you knew what you were doing there. You jumped right in, without talking, without arguing. You saw something was wrong and you had to act to set it right.”
If they put her in jail what would happen to Daddy? “Don’t tell my daddy, please. He doesn’t know where I went.”
Mr. Polonick said her daddy would be proud of her if he knew, but he promised. He made Hoda promise in turn that she would stay near home for the next few days and not let herself be seen too much in public till the strike was settled and the mounties were off the streets. Best she should not take chances in case this mountie or some of their spy scabs had got a description of her. Hoda promised. Then Mr. Polonick asked if maybe Hoda wouldn’t come to a meeting sometime, when this was all over, of a group of young communists, his comrades. He wanted to introduce them to a brave girl, of the kind that had won their freedom from slavery for the Russian people. And he wanted the chance to thank her publicly for saving his life.
Hoda said yes, of course she’d come. She was a little dazzled by his talk. She hadn’t even realized that she had saved his life. And she hardly ever got invited places, especially not this way, with a real “please come” and “it would be a great favour” in his voice, not like when a teacher speaks to a pupil, but like a grown-up speaks to a grown-up he respects and maybe even admires a little. They shook hands warmly when they parted, and Hoda almost regretted that she had decided it would be best not to worry Daddy, because she was really dying to tell him.
