Girlebooks Presents
Radium Halos
by Shelley Stout
© Copyright 2009 Shelley Stout
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other, except for brief quotations in printed reviews—without prior permission of the publisher.
Smashwords Edition
Published by Girlebooks at Smashwords.
This book is also available in print through
LibriFiles Publishing
http://librifiles.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author’s use of names of actual persons (living or dead), places, and characters is incidental to the purposes of the plot, and is not intended to change the fictional character of the work or to disparage any company or its products or services. The book has not been prepared, approved, or licensed by any persons or characters named in the text, their successors, or related corporate entities.
Foreword by Leonard Grossman, Sept. 2009
Five years before I was born, my father, Leonard J. Grossman, represented women from Ottawa, Illinois in litigation against the Radium Dial Corporation seeking not merely damages but also recognition of what had been done to them. I grew up in the shadow of the Radium Dial case, a landmark in workers’ rights in this country. I was deeply proud of my father and infuriated, as he was, by the injustice inflicted on these women. I am sure this background is one reason I became a government lawyer enforcing workers’ rights. So when I came across Radium Halos by Shelley Stout I was very excited.
Sometimes fiction can speak truth in ways that the bare facts cannot. Ms. Stout has found a unique voice in which to tell the tragic story of the Radium Dial workers and at the same time to say much about life in this country. The story goes beyond the Radium Dial case and reflects much about our attitudes toward work, women, mental illness and aging. Along the way it speaks of fear and loyalty and truth itself.
Chapter One
Young folks these days complain too much. When I was young, they taught me to never complain about nothing. If the boss asked you to work a extra hour, you done it without saying a word. If you had a bellyache, you suffered through it until you got home, when you could curl up in bed with a hot-water bottle.
I don’t mind the hospital. I don’t never say one bad thing about it. By and large, I’m happy most days. Happy about being here at Mannington, because it’s home. I don’t never mind the banging, hissing radiators in the winter. I sleep right through the racket most nights. On the hottest summer days, I survive the heat, with only huge, clanking fans to swirl around the stifling air.
Some of the girls here don’t like it when the nurse makes them get up so early. They don’t like to be told to work hard. They whine and carry on. Not like when me and my sister Violet was in our teens and we worked at the Radium Dial in 1923. Course, we was told we could make better wages if we was to work hard. Our supervisor Mrs. Peltz told us if we took pride in our jobs and saved our earnings, we could have us a nice life.
Mrs. Peltz was a older lady, with long eyelashes and deep maroon-colored lipstick. She had only her four front teeth, then gaps for the rest. I couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked like as if she’d painted beauty marks on her wrinkly cheeks.
Me and Violet was in the hall waiting for our interview at the Radium Dial. We had our friend Clara Jane to thank. She already had her a job at the factory. Some of the other girls was outside the office in the hall with us, and a couple of them talked about somebody who begin work last month, only to quit after four days. They said ever single morning at ten o’clock she got sick to her stomach. At first, they thought she was in a family way, but it turns out she just didn’t like the taste of the paint. She had to go and find her a different job.
I set and stared out into the big factory room where the girls was painting. The ceiling seemed to go up to three stories high, just like the auditorium back at Belmont High in North Carolina, where we was from.
After a few minutes, Mrs. Peltz invited Violet into the office first, and then me behind her. We set in the chairs across from her desk. She had her some pretty roses in a vase, and she held up the cards we filled out before we come for the interview.
“I understand you’re new to Ottawa. Even new to Illinois.”
Just like always, I let Violet do the talking. She could talk better because she studied elocution harder than me in school. “Yes ma’am, we are.”
“Well, we hope you’ll stay with us for a long time to come.”
“Thank you,” we both said together.
Mrs. Peltz smiled at me, with her gaps for teeth. “Now girls. I’m sure Clara Jane has told you what the job entails, has she not?”
Violet crossed her legs and pulled down the hem of her dress. “Yes, she told us about the watch dials.”
“Oh. Well you girls won’t be graduating to watch dials just yet.” She rolled her eyes when she said it, like as if we was too dumb to understand. “You’ll be starting off with the clock dials. You’ll have thirty days to show us how well you do. Then, when quality control says you’re ready to graduate up to watches, we’ll let you give them a try.”
“I see,” Violet said.
“Now, have you girls had a little taste of the paint yet? Some girls aren’t fond of the taste, and we can’t hire them.”
Me and Violet turned to each other and giggled. I held a couple fingers over my mouth, because we was both recollecting the same thing. Violet told on me. “Helen here, when she was a baby, she used to eat the paint chips off the sideboard. I was about four-and-a-half, and my job was to keep her away, because she would get these red marks on the edges of her mouth from the red paint. Then, one day, I tried one of them too, and, well, we both became fond of paint chips. After that, our daddy gave us both a whipping.” Mrs. Peltz smiled, but I could tell she didn’t think it was all that funny. “Good,” she said. “Then you shouldn’t mind working here at all.”
She pursed her lips and then opened her desk drawer, taking out a little jar of pale bluish-green paint and three skinny brushes. Before she even opened the jar, she stuck one of the brushes between her lips, to get it wet. “Now, I’ll teach you to do your tipping.”
“Tipping?” I asked.
“That’s how we get a sharp point on the brush.” She stuck the tip of the brush in the paint, then back again in between her lips to make the brush more pointed. “The taste isn’t bad once you get used to it. If you want to achieve specialist, you’ll need to.”
“What’s specialist?” Violet asked.
“That’s the highest you’ll achieve as a dial painter. First, you’ll start off as apprentice. Then, when you’ve received your certificate for expert, you’ll be able to do the watch dials. Later, if your production quota exceeds our standard goals, you’ll be rewarded with an Excellence in Training plaque, and you’ll be in our specialist category. Those girls have special privileges they’ve earned, by working hard and producing more than the others. And they make more money too, of course. You’ll be paid by the piece.”
It was all too much to take in at one time, and I hoped Mrs. Peltz would change the subject.
She opened a different drawer and give each of us a bare clock dial to practice on, and give us each a skinny brush too. I went first. I took a deep breath and stuck the dry, tickly brush between my lips. Then, I stuck the tip of the brush into the paint. “That’s right, Helen. Now, hold the clock face in your other hand.”
Violet watched me, blocking my light, so I nudged her out of my way.
“Don’t forget to do your tipping,” Mrs. Peltz said. “You need to kiss the brush between your lips. Make it a nice sharp point, so you can paint the tiny numbers.”
“Yes ma’am,” I said, worried I would make a mistake. My hand begin to shake, but I knowed I had to try. I stuck the tip of the wet brush between my lips, and kissed it. Soon after that, the paint slipped to the back of my tongue and down my throat. I swallowed it, and it tasted and smelled like a gritty medicine. All of a sudden, I wished I hadn’t come to Illinois.
“It feels sandy, doesn’t it?” Mrs. Peltz said.
“Yes ma’am. It does.” I just stared at her, trying to suck the sandy feel off my tongue. I didn’t want to kiss the brush no more. I tried to paint the number one on the dial, but Mrs. Peltz said to do the number eight first, because that was easier. Round I went with the brush, and I only made one teeny mistake. Mrs. Peltz told me I was a natural. After a while, Violet tried too.
Violet wasn’t near as good a painter as me. She tried real hard that first day, but more often than not, she lost her patience.
I heard a expression once—“The good die young.” But you couldn’t rightly say that was the case with my sister Violet.
#
I reckon most folks know what’s real and what isn’t. Like if they have them a bad dream that wakes them up in the middle of the night while their fists is still squeezed and their heart is in a gallop. Nightmares can be like that. Now and again, I have me a bad dream about Violet. She’s been dead since 1934.
Usually that nightmare don’t bother me for long. I might go right back to sleep after or get me a smoke and go up to the nurse’s station for a light. I can do some of my best thinking late at night when everbody else is asleep. I set in the dark, thinking of the dream and recollecting my sister when she was still alive.
It’s easy to tell it’s a dream because the ward is quiet—no radiators clanging or slippers shuffling across the tile floor. What happens first is I’m setting on the floor of my room at Mannington. My legs is bent to my chest, and my hands is resting on the tops of my knees. Suddenly, the air turns so cold my bones chill, then my heart races and my breath comes in sharp, painful bursts. I’m still cold, but I turn myself over to push up from the floor.
Through the doorway, the light is a faded rose color. Like a gunshot, the rose colored light changes to bright white, and I squeeze my eyes shut and cover them with one arm. I listen for the sound of Violet humming “Little Ella,” her favorite song from when we was girls down in Belmont. The humming gets louder, then Violet turns up in the doorway, and the brightness goes back to the rose color.
The vision I see next is Violet from 1933, just before she got sick and passed. Violet’s fair skin takes on a blush, and she hasn’t aged at all, the way I have in the past thirty-nine years. She wears a flowery robe tied at the waist with a wide, yellow sash, and she carries a box in her hands. “Helen, don’t be scared,” she says to me. But I already am skittish as a ground squirrel.
Next comes the part that always makes me wake up. I tell my arms to stay by their sides, but they don’t listen. I can’t control my fingers as they lift the lid on the box. And I can’t control my eyes neither, as they peer inside at the black emptiness. More than anything, I want to look away, because nobody needs to tell me what I’m about to see. I wait, and then something fades in. It’s a skeleton head with a broad grin of overlapped teeth. I have one of those screams trapped in my throat, and I taste blood on the back of my tongue. Then finally, the scream finds a way out and I wake up.
I don’t know how many times I’ve had me that dream. It gives me the shivers even now to tell it. But last night was different. When I woke up from the nightmare, I wasn’t in my bed. I was flat on a gurney with orderlies all around me. My wrists was strapped down. Somebody’s sweaty hand clutched my last free ankle, buckling it into the leather strap. Because I was screaming, a orderly snapped, “Quiet down, Helen.”
We left the room on the gurney through the double doors of the ward. Along the way from the corner of my eye, I took in the smirking faces of other ladies on the ward. Also some of the nurses. With my wrists and ankles so tight inside those leather straps, all I could do was wiggle my spine trying to escape before we reached the underground tunnel. I hate the tunnel. “Give it a rest, Helen,” the orderly said, in a firecracker voice. “You’re only going to the infirmary.”
Above my head, the ceiling changed from those tube lights to the arched brick ceiling of the tunnel. The floor dipped as we went under the building. Spider webs and dust clung to the faded bricks like Spanish moss. The rolling gurney wheels scraped against the cement floor, with the dead, damp smell all around me like a fog. Ever few feet overhead, a bare light bulb blinded me, while the wheels jolted the gurney, driving over stray stones below or cracks in the cement. I was still screaming because any time I’m in the tunnel I feel like as if I’m in a tomb and it’s smothering me.
“We’re almost there.” I knowed the orderly was meaning to calm me down, but instead, the voice startled me, and I sucked in a breath.
At the other end of the tunnel, a door opened and I had to squint at the bright infirmary lights. Somebody grabbed my arm and then a needle jabbed my skin. I turned my head to tell them to stop, but instead the room faded to nothing.
#
When I opened my eyes next time I wasn’t screaming no more, and I wasn’t scared, neither. I wondered if maybe I hadn’t fell to the floor and they’d scooped me back up, because ever part of me hurt—my neck, my arms, even my back. It felt better to be still. I knowed they give me something, because I could smell formaldee-hyde and my mouth was pasty.
For some reason, my wrists and ankles was still strapped down, only now I was on a bed, alone in a empty room. Then Dr. Winslow come in, followed by the new doctor, only at first, I couldn’t recollect his name.
“Helen, do you remember Dr. Stokes?”
Dr. Stokes. That was his name. Dr. Stokes had him a bird’s beak for a mouth and dark rimmed glasses.
“Ye- yes...” My voice crackled like split logs. The insides of my cheeks was stuck to my gums, and I couldn’t get my tongue to form a word.
The two doctors talked about me to each other like as if I wasn’t there, about my name, which is Helen Waterman, and my age, which is 65. They talked about my mental illness.
“Helen, we’re going to remove your restraints. Can we do that? Will you sit up for us?” Between my toes and the end of the bed was a long distance, since I hadn’t never growed past five-foot-nothing.
“Wa-ter,” I said, hoping somebody would give me some.
“We’ll go ahead and get you out of these while we wait for the nurse, all right Helen?”
Everthing with Dr. Stokes is “we.” “We will do this, or we’ll do that.” Like as if he was a group of people instead of just one doctor. I like him anyway. He has a youthful, sweet-smelling breath. Not like some of the other Mannington doctors whose breath stinks of garlic or cigars. When me and Violet was younguns, we had to put up with our daddy’s cigars, but that didn’t mean we enjoyed smelling them.
But Dr. Stokes is nothing like me and Violet’s daddy. Our daddy was one to change his mood often—at times in good spirits, and at other times, down in the dumps. On occasion, he was mighty strict about certain things. Us girls had to make things up, or leave out information so’s he wouldn’t know what we was up to. Other times, he would allow us to do as we pleased.
Just then, a nurse come in with a metal tray on wheels. I recollected that nurse from last time I was in the infirmary. Nurse Barnes is from New York, and she’s always making a fuss about being from Upstate New York, like as if that makes her better than everbody else. Better than all of us from North Carolina, with her fancy talk. At least now and again I try to talk like folks do on the television, but it don’t always come out just right.
Nurse Barnes was wearing a nurse’s dress, which is uncommon. Ever since it got to be the 1970s, most ladies don’t dress up much no more. They go out in slacks instead of dresses.
“Nurse Barnes, please bring Helen a cup of water.” Dr. Winslow finally got me out of the straps.
I decided right then and there, I wouldn’t say nothing else until I had me a drink.
Once my hands and legs was free, I rubbed my wrists. The straps had made my skin raw, and the leather had left the smell of stale sweat.
Dr. Winslow said he was leaving me in the care of Dr. Stokes. On his way out, Dr. Winslow passed Nurse Barnes, and I managed to raise my shoulders and head, gripping the water cup with both hands while I tried to drink it. Most of it went down my throat, but some soaked into my gown. At least now I could try to speak without my tongue sticking to the insides of my mouth.
Across the hall, a man was cussing up a wild streak, stringing words together in new ways I hadn’t never heard before, and a few I had. First, there was filthy names of private body parts in the same sentence with words like suck and shove, or combinations of “Jesus H,” then a foul word between, followed by “Christ.” I didn’t never like it when somebody used the Lord’s name that a-way.
Next there was a loud crash, like as if somebody kicked a wheeled cart and all the items on it shattered to the floor.
I reckoned that man must be crazy.
When they finally got the noisy man to quiet down, I waited while Dr. Stokes pulled up a chair next to the bed. “Helen, we understand you had a bad dream.”
The dream was now just a far away memory. A trifling memory like dozens of times before. Dr. Winslow knows all about my dream, but I hadn’t never told it yet to Dr. Stokes. Course, there’s some things neither one of the doctors knows, like how me and Violet worked at the Radium Dial factory.
“We’re going to try some new medication,” Dr. Stokes said, “so you’ll sleep better and we can eliminate some of those disturbing images.”
I nodded, recollecting images I seen over the years. When I was a young girl, sometimes I might see a kind of cloud around a person’s head. A soft cloud with blurry edges to it. One time, I seen a cloud around a old woman’s head. One other time, I seen it around a boy’s head we used to go swimming with in the pond back in Belmont. His name was Jerrod. Me and Jerrod looked like we was twins, even though we wasn’t. We was sad to learn just a few weeks after the start of summer he come down with the diphtheria. He died before he was nine.
I chewed on my lower lip, reaching for the sleeve of the doctor’s white coat. “I… I don’t want to leave Mannington. Please don’t make me go live with Pearl.”
Dr. Stokes smiled and patted me on my arm. “Let’s not worry about that now, Helen. We’ll see you tomorrow in our session, and we can discuss it then, okay?”
I let out a breath, and told him it would be fine. Whenever I was worried, Dr. Winslow always had a way to make me feel better, by talking real gentle to me. Dr. Stokes most likely would do the same. Also, Dr. Stokes has got him a sense of humor. One time, he come in to see me and my roommate Neely, wearing a funny straw hat that could light up like a Christmas light.
I cracked a smile for him, because I knowed they would soon return me to my room. I knowed we could talk about me going to live with my niece Pearl at our session in the morning. The first time Pearl mentioned the idea, she said right in front of me, “It’s embarrassing to have a relative up there at Mannington.” Plus, the doctors are sending lots of folks home now, specially the ones who aren’t so bad off.
When Pearl was a little girl, things was different. I brought her up. Now that Pearl is forty-three and has her that personnel job in Gastonia, she thinks she knows everthing. If I do go live with her, she will probably make me feel as if I’m a great big burden.
Oh, I know all about burdens. Keeping a secret hid is a kind of burden, and I’ve kept plenty of those since I was young. Things I never told nobody but my husband, and he’s been gone years.
Thinking about Pearl has stirred up some memories from that 1923 summer when me and Violet lied to our daddy. Memories about the first girls who died from the radium, like Bess and some of the others. About how they was so sick, I didn’t want to visit them.
Nobody can make me talk if I don’t want to. I hold fast to my secrets, specially the ones me and Violet and Clara Jane promised never to tell.
Chapter Two
It’s hard to keep some memories quiet. Like memories of my husband, Jesse, before he was killed in the war—the second one. I still can’t get over the fact they have had so many world wars they have to keep count.
Since I can’t recollect everthing, I rely on the photographs Pearl keeps closed up in her dining room hutch. Photographs of Jesse, short for Justice, in his uniform, all starched and pressed, with those fancy ribbon medals.
Sometimes, when things get specially bad, I long for my husband. I don’t never like to think about the terrible way he died. If anybody ever asks, I just don’t answer them.
I can barely recollect now what it was like to sleep pressed up next to Jesse’s warm body, the soft, curly whiskers on the back of his neck and how he could be inspired in a instant, just from sneaking a glance at me under the covers. I cried ever month when I discovered again there would be no baby.
Our first night together, I giggled all night long like a school girl, but by the time he went off to war, we’d been married and I’d been barren for seventeen years. Violet was more lucky. She give birth to Pearl. Along with Pearl there was a twin baby brother named William, born just after. He didn’t live but a few days.
When I think about that first day I seen Jesse at the factory, I never dreamed I would marry him. Never met nobody more clumsy and dim-witted. At least I thought he was dim-witted, but it turned out he was just shy as a snail.
When me and Jesse got our first home together, it was nothing but a room over a fabric store in Cramerton. We had lots of ladies always coming to the store, and Jesse would tease me about how he had a constant stream of lovely young ladies to gander at, but my supply of good-looking gentlemen was bone dry. I told Jesse it was all right for him to gander all he wanted, but he wasn’t never allowed to touch.
Jesse had got him a job as a fry cook at a diner. He worked nights and weekends and ever space of time between. Finally, after he had been working there for a few months, they give him a day off here and there.
I recollect one day me and Jesse was taking a walk through town, when we run into Frank MacDayne, a boy I had dated once when I was still in high school. Jesse clung to my arm, while I made introductions. The two young men shook hands, while Frank kept looking up at tall Jesse and back down at me, over and over. Up, down, up, down. I told him if he didn’t stop, he’d get a crick in his neck. After that, he only stared at me.
Frank said he worked at Pharr Yarns, in the hosiery department.
After he left, Jesse teased me about it, and said I’d probably be leaving him for Frank. He pushed me away from him, so’s I was standing a few feet away, while he winked.
I pretended I was shocked, and asked why would I leave.
Then Jesse explained it. He said with him, all I would get was a room over a fabric store. With Frank, I would get a lifetime supply of hosiery.
I just smiled nice at my new husband, and told him it wouldn’t matter where we lived. With Jesse, I would’ve been happy living in a junk yard or a palace, so long as he was there with me.
We was out of money most of the time, but we was happy. By the time Violet and Grady was married, they was able to save up a little before Pearl come. After a time, I thought it didn’t bother me no more that other girls around me was having babies and I wasn’t. I would smile nice meeting them on the street, seeing their little bellies poke out from their shirtwaists, and seeing how their skirts would ride up in the front, showing their knees, while the back of the skirt hung down to their calves.
When other young mamas was at the market with their new infants, I would watch the baby’s little noses and mouths, wishing I had a little mouth like that nursing up on my breast. Jesse once told me I had enough love for two or more, so he wouldn’t never be jealous of a baby.
I told him the same. But I didn’t really mean it.
Nobody back home knowed how I first met Jesse at the Radium Dial factory when I was 16, because nobody besides me and Violet knowed we had worked there with Clara Jane Hart in the summer of 1923. I recollect the day Clara first told me and Violet about it.
I had been working my shift at the Belmont Five and Dime, and I set at the kitchen table rubbing the soles of my feet. After that, I set us a loaf of bread to rise in the oven. Me and Violet waited on the front porch for our friend Clara Jane. I couldn’t wait to see her again. We hadn’t seen Clara Jane since her family moved back home to a town near Chicago, when her daddy took that job to be a stock broker.
In Clara’s last letter, she said she had her a surprise.
Violet stuck a hair pin into the side of her wavy, coffee-colored hair. “Could be a new suitor, or maybe she’s decided to move back down here. She always said she liked North Carolina better ‘n Illinois.”
When a friend dropped Clara off, I couldn’t barely wait for the Chevrolet Coupe to pull up in the gravel drive. I just started in right away hollering out hello. “She’s here!” I opened the automobile door for her. “Clara Jane. Oh, Clara. You look wonderful.”
Everthing about Clara Hart made me feel plain, with her tropical sea blue eyes and her shiny hair, inky black and straight, then curved under at her chin. She was dressed in a blue beaded wool suit. A pair of rose gold earrings hung from her ears. Around her collar was a fox fur stole. “Thank you. Oh, Helen and Violet, it’s so good to see both of you,” Clara said.
All of us girls hugged each other, like as if we hadn’t been together for the past one hundred years. Our daddy waved from the back where the chickens was, but he was frowning at us. Felix Meisner didn’t believe in keeping idle when there was work to be done. Soon, he left the chicken coop and walked toward us, wearing his faded denim pants and a ragged checkered shirt. He took off his work gloves and tossed them to the ground.
While he was on his way to us, Clara whispered in my ear. “What kind of mood is he in today?” I whispered back to her that it didn’t matter, because his mood could change at any moment like the weather. Just the night before, he was singing to a phonograph record, when out of the blue, he started in crying and shaking his head to and fro like a lantern in a breeze.
When Daddy reached us, he held out his hand for Clara to shake it. Then, he changed his mind and hugged her a little instead. “My, don’t you look fancy? How’s your Momma and Poppa, Clara?”
“They’re fine, Mr. Meisner. They send their hellos.”
“They let you come all the way down here by yourself? On the train?”
Clara fixed her fur collar. I reckoned she was perspiring in the heat. “Yes sir. After all, I am seventeen years old now.”
Daddy just scratched next to his round nose and rolled his eyes. “How could you be that old already? I remember when you and my girls used to play with rag dolls on the porch.”
I was glad today Daddy was in one of his good moods.
Instead of spending more time with him, we excused ourselves and left for the bedroom me and Violet shared, where we could all be alone. While Clara slid the fur from her neck, I stroked the smooth softness with the back of my hand. Violet snatched it from me. “Let me feel it.”
That made me cross, and I made a little squeak sound.
Clara set on my bed and peeled off her shoes. “These are new, too.”
“Where’d you get enough money for shoes like these?” I asked, wishing I had Clara’s eye-catching legs. I knowed Mr. and Mrs. Hart was just like us as far as money. Not poor, but I was pretty sure they didn’t have lots of extra money neither.
Clara set straight on the side of my bed, knees together. She said part of her surprise was she didn’t live at home anymore with her family. She lived in Ottawa, Illinois. It was a different small town outside of Chicago, and her mama had been forwarding her mail.
“Where do you live exactly? Do you share a room?” Violet asked.
Clara stood from the bed. She was the kind of young girl who had to touch everthing as she passed. She picked up Violet’s bottle of toilet water and set it back down. Then she opened one of the drawers on Violet’s dresser and shut it again. Clara said she lived in a kind of a big boarding house with rooms to let, but the lady who owned it didn’t charge her a nickel, because she did errands for her and took her children to church on Sundays. “And since just after Christmas, I’ve been working at a new company.”
Violet picked something from her front tooth. “I thought you were going to secretarial school.”
“Things just didn’t work out for me there. My folks don’t know yet.”
Clara was just like me and Violet. We had to keep things hid from Daddy, in case he was in one of his cranky moods.
Violet winked at me, but continued talking to Clara. “So you lied to your mama and daddy? I thought you were a good Catholic girl,” she said. With a little shrug of her shoulders, Clara appeared like as if she was fixing to explain, but she kept quiet.
Violet checked her teeth again in the wall mirror and asked Clara the name of the company.
“It’s called The Radium Dial Company, but everybody just calls it the Radium Dial.” She paused to peel off her white gloves. “We paint the numbers on luminous watches and clocks.”
“Luminous?” I asked. Then I recollected…“You mean like on one of these?” I reached to the nightstand for my wind-up alarm clock.
“We probably painted those very numbers at our factory.”
“Huh,” Violet snickered. “Helen here once scratched up the face on a grandfather clock. She got sent to bed without supper for it.”
Clara dropped her chin and frowned at me. I didn’t say nothing, but I was recollecting what I done wrong. I was only seven years old when it happened. I scratched up that clock with the sharp end of a hay hook.
Next, Clara told us how the paint was made of radium powder which was why the clock dials glow in the dark. She said they work at the old high school building, setting at desks upstairs in the auditorium. She called it the “studio.”
It was beginning to sound more interesting as she went along. While I listened, I was busy wishing our daddy was more than just a bee-keeper and a chicken farmer.
“You’ll never believe how much they pay,” Clara continued.
“How much?” Violet asked.
Clara crossed the room to the window. Folding her arms, her eyes got big as sunflowers. “Instead of making five dollars a week at the bakery, where I used to work, guess how much I made my first week.”
I was about to burst from waiting. “Tell us.”
“I made seventeen-fifty.”
Violet stuck her hands on her hips. “Applesauce! Nobody can make that much at a factory job.”
“I make even more, now. Most weeks, I bring home about twenty-five to thirty dollars.”
I didn’t believe a word of it. “You telling the truth?” I asked, beginning to grin.
“Ab-so-loot-ly,” Clara answered. “Just look at my clothes. She fingered her fox fur stole.
I set before the mirror at the dressing table, deciding whether to brush my thick blond hair or straighten my wayward eyebrows. Staring at my own self, I wondered what it would be like to have so much money. I was fond of my job at the five and dime, but I didn’t make enough there to fill a cold cream jar.
Clara snuck over to the door to make sure it was closed tight, asking if we had us any plans yet for the summer.
“No, we don’t,” Violet answered, fixing her blouse collar.
“What if we ask your father? Maybe he’ll let you work at the Radium Dial. Think of all the money you’ll make. You’ll come home rich.”
Since I quit high school just last month, and Violet was already graduated, maybe we could stay longer than just for the summer. It would be the perfect plan, except for one thing—one person.
I stared at Violet. “What about Daddy?”
Clara got a confused look in her eyes. “Can’t you just try to catch him when he’s in one of his good moods? Like he is today?”
“It won’t matter what kind of mood he’s in. He don’t want us to work in any kind of a factory,” I said. “Because of what happened to our mama.”
Clara nodded, with a frown. She was recollecting what me and Violet had told her, years ago.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think about that.” Then Clara set still and didn’t speak for a minute. “You think they’ll ever find the man who did it?”
Violet made a little huff sound. “Not this many years later.”
I have no memory of my mama. When I was in the sixth grade, Violet told me what had happened when we was both just babies. How when our mama worked at the textile mill, a man had beaten and raped her. After that, she was so distressed she couldn’t live with herself, so she took her own life. I seen a photograph of my mama from when she was a young woman, only she wasn’t distressed then.
Going away for the summer wouldn’t be the problem, since last June we went together to South Carolina for two weeks and stayed with our cousins just outside of Clover. I only thought Daddy wouldn’t want us going to work at a factory.
“Don’t be such a worrywart, Helen. Why would he have to know?” Violet asked, while trying on one of Clara’s new shoes. “We can just tell him we’re going up there to Illinois, and we can make something up about what sort of work it is. He’ll be happy we’re earning so much. Then, we can spend some of the money on things he won’t know about like new face powder and getting us a permanent wave. Bring the rest home.”
Violet was always coming up with ways to sneak around and not get caught. Ever since we was younguns, I was the one to lag behind. Violet would invent the ideas, and I would shrug and follow.
For the rest of the afternoon, we planned our summer. Everthing was decided. How we would get there, which room in the boarding house would be ours, train rides to Chicago for all our new clothes, handbags, scarves, and gloves. We talked about which things we would tell our Daddy, and which things we would keep quiet.
“But Clara, don’t we have to be a certain age to work there?” I asked, picking fingerfuls of blond hair from my brush. I reminded her she was seventeen. Violet was eighteen and a half, but I was only sixteen.
“Of course you’re old enough. We’ve got lots of girls there your age. Some even younger.”
After that, I settled down a little more. I got to thinking about Madam Langlie. She was one of those ladies who sets in front of a crystal ball and you give her a quarter and she could tell you what would happen in the future. I only wished I had saved up enough to go see her before we left for Illinois.
Chapter Three
The night we told our daddy the first lie, Violet pulled me outside onto the porch. She whispered so’s he wouldn’t hear. “You think now’s a good time?”
I told her I reckoned it was a perfect time, which was after supper and after Daddy had already finished the apple tarts with fresh cream I baked for him. Also, it was only a few days until the start of summer, and we wanted to wait until closer to the time, so’s he wouldn’t have too long to think about it.
We brought Daddy out to the porch to set with us, and he puffed on his old smelly cigar, but I smiled nice anyway, listening to Violet. “Daddy, Clara Jane told us of a way to make lots of money this summer.”
“Oh?” He blowed smoke away from my eyes and nose.
“Yes sir. She says she makes more than twenty dollars ever week.”
“My God, girl. Where does she work? In a bordello?” His voice drowned out the chorus of crickets just off the porch.
“Oh, no. Of course not. She’s working at a music store in a town outside of Chicago. One of the biggest music stores in the world. They sell sheet music, pianos, violins. Even flutes and clarinets. Just about any instrument you want. She makes a commission.”
“Is that right?” Daddy reached over to pick a teeny chicken feather off his pants leg.
“Yes, and she says she can get a job for me and Helen if we go up there in a few days. Then, we can make all that money and bring it home to you. We can get that new ice box you want. From the Belk’s Department Store in Charlotte.”
Our daddy asked us all sorts of questions, and Violet had her a answer for each one. I just set still and listened to her make things up as she went along, while Daddy nodded and said hmmm. Violet said we wouldn’t need to pay rent at the boarding house since we would help Clara with Mrs. Yearsall’s children, and we would write home once a week to let him know we was all right. “And if things don’t quite work out, we’ll come straight home.”
When Daddy said he needed more time to think about it, Violet said if we didn’t let them know right away, they would give the jobs to somebody else. I wasn’t sure how I would feel if he said no. Maybe me and Violet would just sneak onto the train anyway. He said the subject was closed, and he didn’t want to hear nothing more about it.
A couple of days later, our ice box started to drip and smell bad. Daddy got into one of his moods and after supper we all set again on the back porch, while he grumbled about not having enough money for things. As he set in the rocker, one knee bounced quick-like, and he rubbed his chin with his palm. After a minute, Daddy set and stared off into the yard, not saying nothing. Then, his voice turned dead quiet. “I believe if your mama was here, she woulda wanted you to go.”
That was the best news we could of got. We cheered and hugged our daddy, hoping and praying all that night that we could get on the train before he had him a chance to get into one of his sour moods again and change his mind.
#
This morning at Mannington, a dreadful thing happened when my great-nephew Tony come by. Nurse Wilson called me up to the nurses’ station. “Pearl’s boy is here to see you again. He’s in the visiting room.”
I thanked her, then when nobody could hear me, I said, “What’s he want?”
All last fall, Dr. Winslow told me I needed to work on my behavior around my family. I told him if my family ever started behaving normal around me, I would be glad to oblige.
I was right about Pearl’s first marriage to that Puerto Rican boy, Enrique. I knowed they wouldn’t be married long. She still keeps his last name, which was Velasquez. Ever week, Dr. Winslow tells me, “At least Pearl’s trying.” Pearl says she has plans for me. What bothers me is I can’t figure out exactly what sort of plans she has in mind. I only know whatever it is it can’t possibly be nothing proper.
But that didn’t make no difference. I still didn’t want to see Tony. The only reason my great nephew Tony Velasquez ever comes by is when he’s in the area to get his marijuana. He sees some man he knows and they enter into their business.
Sometimes he brings his girlfriend, Adrienne Connaway. I only wish Tony would bring her more often. Adrienne’s real nice. She’s a nurse, and she’s learning to be a midwife.
For once, Tony didn’t show up empty-handed. “Here, I brought you this.”
He give me a flower bouquet in a pink wicker basket, about the size of a loaf of rye. The flowers was made of plastic, and they smelled like motor oil. I could see they wasn’t real, even though my eyes aren’t as good as before. Not near as sharp as when I used to paint at the factory. “Thank you,” I said, turning the basket over to look at the price tag. Two dollars and thirty cents. That dark-haired lady on the television had one exactly like it on Let’s Make a Deal.
Once we reached my room, Tony’s face begin twitching, like always. He shrugged and then he threw hisself stomach-down across my bed.
“Don’t do that!” I screamed. “You’ll jimmy my hospital corners.”
After that, Tony set up straight, with his knees spread, feet pointing out. “Sorry. I’m tired. Don’t you ever get tired?”
Since I didn’t feel like answering him, I kept quiet. Tony tugged up a sleeve on his uniform shirt. He’s been working for Scott’s Auto Body for the past four years, since 1968. Ever time I see him, his hair’s longer than before. Sometimes, I can barely make out his face under that beard and mustache. I guess he’s still handsome under it. He used to be. The only way I’m sure I’m looking at Tony is because of his strong shoulders. He can do one-arm push-ups, and one time I seen him lift two ladies up, one on each arm. For a while, I feared Tony would have to go to war too, like Adrienne’s brother did. But he has him a trick knee.
After a minute, I asked, “You didn’t bring Adrienne with you today?”
“She’s parking the car.”
Tony stared at Neely’s bed. “Where’s that other girl?” he asked.
“Neely’s with Dr. Stokes. He’s new.”
I didn’t like the way Tony’s hair was different lengths. Ragged in the back and the front. Not like Dr. Winslow or Dr. Stokes. “You ever think about seeing a barber?”
“Adrienne trims my hair for me. And my beard. Look, if you don’t want me here, I’ll split.”
All of a sudden, I couldn’t help thinking of Tony as a boy. He’s twenty-seven now, but when he was little, the older boys would beat him up, just because his mama Pearl and his daddy Enrique divorced before Tony was even old enough to take his first step. I know what it was like to grow up with one parent gone. With me and Violet, it was our mama who was dead at a early age. We got raised by our peculiar father. But Tony had the sour luck to be raised by Pearl.
I set on the side of Neely’s bed, across from Tony. “You don’t have to leave. You smoke one of them cigarettes before you come here today?”
He give me a crooked smile. “What if I did?”
I could smell it on his clothes. “I tell you time and again drugs is bad for you. I should know. They had me on Thor’zine for fourteen years.” I shook my finger at him, like as if I was scolding a child. I pictured him smoking with the smoke above his head in a cloud, like some of those images I used to see as a young girl. Whenever I would see a cloud like that, it always reminded me of the grandfather clock I scratched up. Papa Noone was a drinker and he always smelled of a bitter perspiration. I reckon he didn’t know to use Mum Deodorant under his arms. He worked hard repairing grandfather clocks and cuckoo clocks from the 1800s, but the one I scratched had the face of God behind the clock hands, just like that painting from Michelangelo. Ever since that day, I have tried again and again to paint a face just like it. But I can’t never get it right.
Tony didn’t like me scolding him, so he jumped off the bed, grabbed my finger, and squeezed it. “Look, get off my case, all right? It isn’t just for me. I sell it sometimes, but only to my friends. You know, I came all the way up here to see you, but I didn’t have to.”
“Then why did you come here?”
“Because I brought something… important.”
I wondered what it was, and when would he give it to me. Tony let go of my finger and brushed his dark brown hair from his eyes. He sniffled through his nose, making that clogged up sound like when you need a handkerchief. I wanted to scream, but instead, I pinched myself on the back of my hand, and that made me feel some better.
Finally, Adrienne come into the room. She give me a nice smile, which I always liked about her. She had her pretty light brown hair pulled back into a big clip. “Hi Helen.” Then, she leaned over and give me a little hug. She never wears a brassiere, but she should because she’s got two healthy bosoms up top. Course, if you’re only twenty-six, you don’t always need a brassiere.
“I’m sorry it took me so long,” she said. “They made me park down by the commissary. Plus, Saturdays are always crowded.”
She pulled out my wooden stool and set close to me by Neely’s bed. While she was still smiling, Adrienne took a glance down at my arms. She reached over and held one of my arms up to the light. I don’t mind whenever she checks to see if I been scratching again, because she don’t yank me or talk ugly like some of the nurses we have here. She holds my arm soft and talks to me gentle-like. I wish she worked at Mannington.
“Guess what, Helen,” she said.
“What?”
“I’m going to my first birth soon.”
“You are?” A smile spread across my lips.
Tony interrupted. His face was twitching again. “That woman better not go into labor on the twenty-fifth.”
Adrienne stared at Tony with a scowl in her eyebrows. Then, she recollected and explained to me. “Oh, that’s right. We have tickets to a concert that night.”
“Well, honey,” I said, patting her on the shoulder. “You can’t never count on when a youngun comes into the world. They have a plan all their own.”
Tony took a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. “Mom wanted me to ask you about this letter.” He unfolded it and read it to hisself. “It’s to Violet from the Argonne Laboratory in Illinois.”
I blinked, trying to understand what Tony was talking about. As I tried to reach it, he held it tight, crumpling it, just away from my hand with a crooked smile. Then he give it to me, and I straightened it. When I started to read it, my stomach got hard as a rock. The letter said they wanted Violet to “report for testing.” They wanted to see if she would go to Illinois to be in a science study. Instead of reading the rest, I just glanced at the words. Something about federal funding, and the “Radium Dial Company.”
Ever since that summer, me and Clara Jane and Violet promised we would never tell we worked at the factory. Now they wanted to speak to Violet. How did they know where to send the letter?
Tony and Adrienne asked me what it was all about, but I didn’t want to answer them. I folded the letter and give it back to Tony. He growled at me. “Mom says to get you a day pass and bring you home. She wants to talk to you about it.”
I clamped my lips together and crossed my arms, staring at Tony. “I don’t want to.”
Then, he blocked the doorway of the room, giving Adrienne a mean look. “I’m going to get the pass. You talk to her.” Then Tony was gone, and Adrienne reached for the letter. “Would you like me to read it aloud to you, Helen?”
I didn’t want her to read it to me. I already seen what it was about. Adrienne looked at it again, asking me questions. “Did you work at this factory, Helen? You and your sister?”
To keep from answering her, I twirled a piece of my hair, just behind my ear.
“It says here if Violet has already passed away, you would need to provide a copy of her death certificate,” Adrienne said, pointing to the letter. “And they asked if you know the whereabouts of any of the other ladies listed here at the end.”
Adrienne started in reading the ladies’ names aloud. I recollected one or two. Some, I already know died young, just like Violet. Instead of answering Adrienne, I just kept my tongue.
I done a good job of keeping my secret all through the years. Me and Violet knowed our daddy didn’t want us to work at a factory, and we went right ahead and did it anyway. But that wasn’t the only reason we didn’t never tell we worked there. The other reason was because of something bad we done one night that summer which caused a terrible accident.
I reckoned Tony and Adrienne could get me the day pass and they could take me to Pearl’s if they wanted, but that didn’t mean I was going to tell them nothing I didn’t want to tell.
Chapter Four
On the way to Pearl’s, I set in Tony’s car, chewing the inside of my lip. I was recollecting more of that summer. About the very first day me and Violet went to see the Radium Dial, and we had to stand outside the supervisor’s office to wait our turn for a interview. I hadn’t never been to a interview before. Not even for the Belmont Five and Dime. I got that job cause my friend Maravelle knowed the manager.
Ever since me and Violet arrived in Illinois, I felt guilty about the lie we told our daddy. I started in biting my nails more than usual. Violet kept slapping my arm, and telling me he’d never find out. She asked me, “How will he ever know we’re not working at the music store? He knows only what he needs to know, that we can make more money here than back in Belmont.” I was doing my best to forget it.
Mrs. Peltz, the supervisor, begin to talk to us about our paperwork, but out the window behind her desk a flock of ladies was gathered. Below us, down on the front lawn, some of the other workers was gathered around a delivery truck. Mrs. Peltz’s face got riled up, specially around her eyes. She pushed herself from her chair. “Girls, would you please excuse me a moment?”
“Yes ma’am.”
Once Mrs. Peltz was downstairs and outside, many other girls rushed out behind her, frantic about that delivery truck. Soon Violet took off too, but I stayed in the office. I wondered what all the excitement was about, but I shrugged and reached to touch the vase of golden colored roses on Mrs. Peltz’s desk. I wanted to stick my nose in the roses and smell the perfume, but they was on the other side of the large desk. Sneaking myself around to the other side, I leaned in and sniffed. The flowery sweet smell reminded me of being back home in Belmont and the thick sweet honey Daddy would bring in from the hives.
Suddenly, everthing got real quiet out in the main work room. The studio. I looked out the window and listened. Down there on the front lawn, Mrs. Peltz was doing her best to keep order. The girls was jumping up and down, laughing, and jabbering away about the new furniture for the employees’ lounge. Going back to the roses, I slid one from the vase. I looked up at the doorway, and just at that moment, the custodian boy was rolling a cart of boxes down the hall. He stared at me as he floated by, and I had to stick the rose stem back into the vase.
The custodian boy’s name was Jesse, and Clara Jane had said to stay away from him cause he didn’t have the sense of a doorknob. Me and the boy locked eyes for a time. He was tall and thin, with a healthy sized Adam’s apple. He stood in one place, holding the cart still, then when the girls started to file back inside, he started that cart up again. The whole darn time, he never took his eyes off a me.