Florence Crannell Means

“ Jimmie looked at the funnies, and Grandma and Rose-Ellen did the dishes. Julie Albi, who had come to play, sat waiting with heels hooked over a chair-rung.
The shabby kitchen was pleasant, with rag rugs on the painted floor and crisp, worn curtains. The table and chairs were cream-color, and the table wore an embroidered flour-sack cover. Grandpa pottered with a loose door-latch until Grandma wrung the suds from her hands and cried fiercely, "What's the use doing such things, Grampa? You know good and well we can't stay on here. Everything's being taken away from us, even our children. ”

“ Grandpa said, "They can't expect decent folks . . . !"
Grandma said, "We've got to stretch out somewheres. Even under a tree. This baby. . . ."
Sally was crying a miserable little cry, and an Italian woman who reminded Rose-Ellen of Mrs. Albi peered out of a patched tent and said, "Iss a bambina! Oooh, the little so-white bambina! Look you here, quick! The people next door have leave these tent. You move in before some other bodies."
"These tent" was a top and three walls of dirty canvas. "If you'd told me a Beecham would lay down in a filthy place like this. . . ." Grandma declared. ”

“ Grandma admitted grudgingly, "keeping so nice in such a hullabaloo."
"They are admire-able in lots of ways," Rose-Ellen answered. "I never knew anyone I liked much better than Nico. And the Mexicans are the very best in all the art work at the vacation school. I think the Japanese learn quickest."
"Do folks treat 'em nice?" asked Grandma.
"In the school," Rose-Ellen told her. "But outside school they act like even Nico had smallpox. They make me sick!" ”

“ Before she left home in the early morning, Grandma saw to it that there was no fire in the old-new washtub stove, and that Sally's knitted string harness was on, so that she could not reach the irrigation ditch, and that Carrie was tethered.
The beets, planted two months ago, had come up in even green rows. Now they must be thinned. With short-handled hoes the grown people chopped out foot-long strips of plants. Dick and Rose-Ellen followed on hands and knees, and pulled the extra plants from the clumps so that a single strong plant was left every twelve inches. ”

“ School had not started yet, so the children worked all day. Sometimes Rose-Ellen could not keep from crying, she was so tired. And when she cried, Grandma's mouth worked over her store teeth in the way that meant she felt bad.
"But we've got to get in under it, all of us," she scolded, to keep from crying herself. "We've got to earn what we can. I never see the beat of it. If we scrabble as hard as we can, we just only keep from sliding backwards." ”

“ Grandpa blew his nose. "Well, it takes money to give the kids the vittles they ought to have."
"I won't go away from my own house!" howled Jimmie.
Rose-Ellen and Dick blinked at each other. It was one thing to scrap a little and quite another to be entirely apart. And the baby. . . .
"Would Miss Piper take . . . Sally?" Rose-Ellen quavered.
Grandma nodded, lips tight.
"They shan't!" Rose-Ellen whispered.
"Nonsense!" Daddy said hoarsely, his hands tightening on Jimmie's shoulder and Rose-Ellen's. "It's better for families to stick together, even if they don't get everything they need. ”

“ She laughed into her hands as if it were a great joke.
"They do nothing but talk," said Angelina.
Next day the camp had a surprise. Along came the nurses and men with badges to help them. Into shack after shack they went, inspecting the food supplies. Rose-Ellen, staying home with sick Jimmie, watched a nurse trot out of the Serafini shack, carrying long loaves of bread and loops of sausage, alive with flies, while Mrs. Serafini shouted wrathfully after her. Into the garbage pail popped the bread and sausage and back to the shack trotted the nurse for more. ”

“ Dick exclaimed, crumbling off a piece of mud plaster thick with straw.
"Like the bricks the Israelites made in Egypt," said Grandpa; "only Pharaoh wanted them to do without the straw."
"It's a Mexican village," observed Grandma. "I'd feel like a cat in a strange garret here. And not a smidgin of shade. That shack off there under the cottonwood tree looks cooler."
"It's a chicken-coop!" squealed Rose-Ellen as they walked over to it. "Gramma wants to live in a chicken-coop!"
"It's empty. And it'd be a sight easier to clean than some places where humans have lived," Grandma replied stoutly. ”

“ Nursing in a tent was a bad dream for patient and nurses. Grandma kept boiling water to irrigate his ear and sterilize the utensils, Rose-Ellen told stories, shouting so he could hear. At night Daddy held him in strong, tired arms and sang funny songs he had learned in his one year of college. Grandma tempted Jimmie's appetite with eggs and sugar and vanilla beaten up with Carrie's milk, and with little broiled hamburgers and fresh vegetables--food such as the Beechams hadn't had for months. ”

“ These were great marshes, drained like cranberry bogs and planted in onions. Whole families could work there, planting, weeding, pulling, packing.
("I've learned a lot!" thought Rose-Ellen. "I used to ask the grocer for a nickel's worth of dry onions, and I never did guess how they came to be there.")
The first year was dreary. Maw took the baby (Mary, then) and laid her on a blanket at the end of the row she was working, with Tom to watch her. Cissy worked along with the grown folks, or some days stayed home and did the washing and minded Tom and Mary. ”

“ The people from the Dust Bowl, as the district is called, had to migrate, or starve. A great many of them went to the near-by state Of California, which grows much fruit and vegetables. There are perhaps two hundred thousand people migrating to California alone each year.
Of course there isn't nearly enough work for them all, and there aren't good living places for those who have work. That means that the children--like you--don't have the rights of young American citizens--like you. A great many of them can't go to school, and are growing up ignorant ”

“ But it was surprising to see Vicente come from the cluttered, dirty Garcia rooms, almost as clean and sweet as Nico, though with nails more violently red.
The Beechams found it a problem to dress at all in their chicken-apartment. Dick tried to get ready in one room and Rose-Ellen in the other, and everything she wanted was in his room and everything he wanted in hers. ”

“ Jimmie burst into tears. "Well, even if she doesn't, she does the best she can," he sobbed. "Isn't she one of the family?"
Miss Joyce patted his frail little shoulder and said "Oh, well . . . !"
So Carrie was fastened into her trailer again, and the sedan rattled southward all day, through peach orchards and vineyards where the grapevines were fastened to short stakes so that they looked like bushes instead of vines.
"It's . . . real sightly country," said Grandma, who felt much better after her rest. "If only a body could settle down, I can't figure any place much nicer. ”

“ Meanwhile the rest of the family had answered the whistle of the row boss, and were being introduced to the cranberries. Dick and Rose-Ellen were excited and happy, for it was the first fruit they had ever picked. Though the wet bushes gave them shower baths, the sun soon dried them. Since the ground was deep in mud, they had gone barefoot, on the advice of Pauline Isabel, the colored girl in a neighboring shack. The cool mud squshed up between their toes and plastered their legs pleasantly.
The grown folks had been given wooden hands for picking--scoops with finger-like cleats! ”

“ Next day both were ill with the fever that was sweeping the hop camp.
Next time the nurses came they had medicines and suggestions for Grandma. They liked her, and looked smilingly at the clock and approvingly at Carrie and at the covered garbage can and at the food draped with mosquito netting.
"We're going to have to enforce those rules," they told Grandma. "There wouldn't be half the sickness if everyone minded as you do."
That evening people from all parts of the camp gathered to discuss the renewed orders: Italians, Mexicans, Americans, Indians. ”

“ When the grown folks came from work, just ahead of the school children, they found Jimmie and Sally white and shaky but safe. The woolen quilt had smothered out the flames before Sally was hurt at all; and Jimmie had only a pair of blistered hands.
"If I hadn't put a wool petticoat on her, and wool stockings," Grandma kept saying, while she sat and rocked the whimpering baby. "And if our Jimmie hadn't been so smart as to think of the bedclothes. . . .
"Not all children have been so lucky," Daddy said in a shaky voice, crouching beside Grandma and touching Sally's downy head. ”

“ Both Rose-Ellen and Dick had been leaders in the city school, and now they felt so lonesome that Rose-Ellen often cried when she got home.
It was too long a walk for Jimmie, who begged not to go anyway. Besides, he was needed at home to mind Sally.
Of course the grown folks wanted to earn all they could. The pay was thirty cents a gallon; and just as it took a lot of cranberries to make a peck, it took a lot of these middle-sized oysters to make a gallon. To keep the oysters fresh, the sheds were left so cold that the workers must often dip their numb hands into pails of hot water. ”

“ Albi, "we went into Jersey. For two months we all pick the berries. Enough we earn to put-it food into our mouth. And the keeds! They go white and skinny, and they come home, like you see it, brown and fat." Her voice rose and she waved the baby dramatically. "Not so good the houses, I would not lie to you. But we make like we have the peekaneeka. By night the cool fresh air blow on us and by day the warm fresh air. And vegetables and fruit so cheap, so cheap."
"But what good will that do us, Mis' Albi?" Grandma asked flatly. ”

“ She had learned Buenos dias, good day, from a Mexican neighbor; bambina bella, pretty baby girl, from the Serafinis, and Sayonara, good-by, from a Japanese boss in the peas.
Rose-Ellen pulled the baby back and gave her a kiss in the hollow at the back of her neck. Then she tried to think of something to say herself. "Maybe they'll have school and church school at this next place for a change."
"Aw, you're sissy," Dick grumbled in his new, thick-thin voice. "If church was so much, why wouldn't it keep folks from being treated like us? Huh?"
Grandma roused herself from her limp stillness. ”

“ The children went tiptoeing, hobbling, rushing through the clean, bare rooms, their voices echoing as they called back their news. "Gramma, there's a real bathroom!" "Gramma, soon's you feel better you can bake a pie in this gas stove!" "Gramma, here's an e-_lec_-tric refrigerator! And a washing machine! And a screened porch with a table to eat at!"
Good California smells of eucalyptus trees and, herbs and flowers drifted through open doors and windows, together with the chuckling, scolding, joyous clamor of mocking birds. ”

“ You may think we have nothing to do with them when you sometimes pass a jalopy packed inside with a whole family, from grandma to baby, and outside with bedding and what-not.
But we have something to do with them many times a day. Every time we sit down at our table we have something to do with them. Our sugar may come from these children's work; our oranges, too, and our peas, lettuce, melons, berries, cranberries, walnuts . . . ! Every time we put on a cotton dress, we accept something from them. ”

“ The public health nurses, when they came to visit the sick ones, warned the women to cover food and garbage, but most of the women laughed at the advice.
"Those doctor always tell us things," the Beechams' Italian neighbor, Mrs. Serafini, said lightly. She was dandling a sad baby while the sad baby sucked a disk of salami, heavy with spices. "And those nurse also are crazy. Back in asparagus I send-it my kids to the Center, and what you think? They take off Pepe's clothes! They say it is not healthy that she wear the swaddlings. ”

“ Leaving Jimmie to mind Sally in the car, the Beechams went to picking at once. Grandma had saved their old cotton sacks, fortunately, since they cost a dollar apiece.
Rose-Ellen's heart thumped as if she were running a race. Everyone was picking at top speed, for there were far too many pickers and they all tried to get more than their share. The Beechams started at noon. At night, when they weighed in, Grandpa and Daddy each got forty cents, Grandma twenty-five, Dick twenty, and Rose-Ellen fifteen. ”

“ Grandma!
They were too intent to notice the car stopping beside them until a man's voice said, "Sorry, folks, but you'll have to move on. Against regulations, this is."
"We're Americans, ain't we?" Grandpa blustered, shaken with anxiety and anger. "You can't shove us off the earth."
"Be on your way in twenty-four hours," the man said, pushing back his coat to show the star on his vest. "I'm sorry, but that's the way it is."
"Americans?" Daddy said harshly, watching the sheriff go. "We're folks without a country." ”