Face the Winter Naked Read online

  "You don't need to get on your high horse," Vera sputtered. "You're their mother. They should be here with you."

  "They're here enough. I can't be with them every minute. Besides, they're doing things their dad would do with them if he was here."

  "Oh yes, if he was here." Vera turned back to the door. "That seems to be the problem, doesn't it?"

  Her daughter ignored the remark.

  Daniel Tomelin's children often waited for him on the front porch, eyeing every movement on the road. Just a few days ago, Catherine ran inside, yelling, "Mama! Mama! My daddy's here!" But when LaDaisy hurried outdoors to look, she saw no one at all. "No, Cath, Daddy isn't here. You saw someone else. If it was Daddy, he'd be swinging you around and hugging you right this minute."

  The girl was crestfallen as LaDaisy stooped down and placed both hands on her cheeks. She raised her daughter's face and met the confused hazel eyes staring up at her.

  "I don't know when Daddy's coming home, honey. Maybe if we all ask Jesus, Daddy will come." She gave the girl a hug, then rose. "Now run along and play."

  Another time, Bobby thought he saw Daniel by his bed in the middle of the night.

  "It was just a dream," his mother had said, tucking him back into bed.

  Vera had no idea what it was like living with three frightened children who didn't know from one day to another where their bread was coming from.

  Mary had fallen asleep, the nipple sliding out one corner of her mouth. LaDaisy raised her to a shoulder, gently patted and rubbed her back. The soft baby skin was sweaty, but smelled sweetly of talcum as she hunched her body and tried to climb up her mother's chest. Then came a burp, and with it a bit of milk against LaDaisy's print smock. Thank God she's too young to know.

  She was small for four months—the smallest of the whole Tomelin brood—and hadn't thrived as the other babies had. While the others had teethed and babbled at this age, their baby sister was unusually lethargic. LaDaisy worried about this. But then she worried about a lot of other things these days, too.

  She frowned as she watched her mother. Vera looked out of place in the modest Tomelin house, wearing a pastel crepe dress and a perky little straw hat with fake asters around the crown. A cloud of pink veil encircled the hat, covering the woman's tightly curled hair. But Vera fooled no one, least of all her daughter. For all her money, she often shopped at Kresge's five-and-dime on the Square, instead of the more expensive Knoepker or Bundschu department stores on Maple. The hat was old, the dress homemade, and under the henna rinse was a headful of gray.

  LaDaisy turned the baby face-down across her lap, patting and stroking as Mary dozed.

  "Sit down, Mama. You're driving me crazy."

  Vera turned and stared at her daughter, her double chins pressed closely to her neck, her mouth a tight, straight crack outlined in blood.

  "I can't stay. I just came to check on you. If you had a telephone, it would save me the trouble of driving over here."

  You came to snoop. LaDaisy rocked gently back and forth in the rocker, her bare feet sliding—slish, slish, slish—on the cool linoleum.

  "I can barely pay for electricity, let alone a telephone," she said. "But as long as you're here, you're welcome to stay for supper."

  Vera came over and looked down at Mary.

  "Rufus likes me home when he gets off work, you know. We're having company for supper—Ida and Clay. I just came out to shop and thought I'd drop by."

  LaDaisy looked up. "How's Ida Mae doing?"

  "Some better. She's not as queasy."

  "She looked miserable last time I saw her. I think she's feeling panicky about the birth."

  LaDaisy recalled the conversation.

  "Please be honest with me," her sister had said. "Does it hurt much?"

  "Does it hurt? Oh yes. It hurts like hell sometimes. But you'll push the baby out, then nurse it and forget all about the pain."

  Ida Mae wrung her hands. "I can't do it!"

  "It's too late now. You and Clayton made a baby and it can't stay in there forever."

  LaDaisy and her sister were as different as rain and sunshine—one like her mother, the other tall and slender after their father, Richard Blue. One outgoing, the other backward and shy. Why Clay ever married Ida Mae was a mystery, unless he wanted a woman he could dominate.

  "The girl's got no spunk," Daniel had said after meeting Ida Mae for the first time. "She lets people walk all over her, and that includes your mother."

  Whatever the reason for Ida's strange, retiring personality, there was certainly no love lost between the two sisters. Competition had been fierce between them from early childhood. After their parents' bitter divorce, LaDaisy got the brunt of Vera's anger toward Richard, and Ida Mae quickly learned how to manipulate the situation.

  But all that was in the past now, or at least it should be. As a woman and mother herself, she sympathized with her sister's first experience with birth. Under the circumstances, any woman would be nervous.

  Her mother was still rambling and LaDaisy brought her attention back.

  "I really came to insist you move back home. You can have your old room back—I repapered it in a nice rosebud pattern and made new curtains and a bedspread. Did I tell you? Maybe I did. Even your dolls are still propped up on the closet shelf."

  "I don't play with dolls anymore, Mama. But you could bring them over here for your granddaughters. I would've brought them when I moved out, but I forgot."

  "Oh, no," Vera said, "those dolls are my only reminders of your childhood at home. I won't part with them."

  "Maybe you should charge them rent."

  "Don't sass your mother!"

  LaDaisy kept on rocking, occasionally stroking Mary's sweaty curls away from her face. It was useless trying to get the dolls, her personal property, given to her for birthdays and Christmases. Catherine would delight in those baby dolls, since she'd never had a store-bought one.

  "You didn't come here to talk about dolls," she said.

  "I already said why I came. If I told you once, I told you a hundred times, we can easily make room for Daniel's children."

  LaDaisy stiffened. "Daniel's? For Pete's sake, Mama, do you think Daniel made our children all by himself? Do you think I wouldn't uncross my legs and help?"

  "There's no need to talk nasty. You know what I mean."

  "Unfortunately, I do. You mean Daniel put these kids in me without my knowledge or permission. What you really mean is they're his children, not mine."

  "You're as stubborn as your father. I'll bet Richard hasn't been to see you for years. Does he write?"

  "Sometimes."

  "He knows about his grandchildren."

  "Of course." LaDaisy became thoughtful. "Anyway, having five beautiful children is nothing to be ashamed of. Daddy would love Daniel if he knew him better, as almost everyone does."

  Vera sat stiffly on the edge of the davenport, puffed out like an old hen settling her feathers over a clutch of eggs. She wiggled inside her tight corset, seeking to adjust her fat folds more comfortably. Beads of perspiration glistened on her face.

  "Why can't you be sensible, child?"

  "Maybe that's the whole problem, Mama. Why do you treat me like a child when I'm a grown woman with kids of my own?" LaDaisy glanced at her baby. "Would you like to hold Mary?"

  Vera shook her head. "Not right now—she's probably wet and I'm wearing good clothes."

  You never want to cuddle this baby.

  LaDaisy fought to keep her composure, thinking how selfish her mother was. Vera was all wrapped up in Ida.

  She thought her sister had done a stupid thing, dropping out of school and getting married right in the middle of the Depression. But their mother thought Ida Mae had married well, for Clay had bought some property for back taxes, including the house Daniel and his family rented. Now the girl was expecting, and her big sister was beginning to think the two deserved each other.

  It was a wonder Ida Mae didn't see, but the heavier
she grew, the more her husband ogled other women. How could she not notice?

  Now, Vera stood and smoothed down her skirt.

  "I guess I know when I'm not welcome."

  LaDaisy had an uncanny way of shutting her mother's whining voice out of her mind. The rocker creaked back and forth, back and forth. Her feet continued to hiss along the floor. The antique clock ticked loudly in the otherwise quiet room. It was the same old story. Ever since Daniel's disappearance, her mother had harped about her going home.

  She nodded dreamily, her head tilted back. Through half-closed eyes she watched a fly buzzing dangerously near a huge spider's web strung across one corner of the ceiling, tempted to land on the sticky trap. She had better get the broom later and sweep it down. Daniel always said spiders were mostly harmless—'less of course you came across a black widow—and they rid the house of flies.

  Again, her mother's voice cut through her dreamy veil. LaDaisy half listened, half not.

  "I've been thinking," Vera said. "You might as well divorce him."

  The fly landed on the web and fluttered its wings; the more it fought, the tighter the spider glue held. Divorce Daniel? She struggled to refocus her eyes. The rocker stopped rocking.

  "What did you say?"

  "I said you can divorce Daniel for walking out on you. I know this nice lawyer, name's Roger Belton. He—"

  LaDaisy straightened up and blinked to clear her eyes; she'd almost fallen asleep listening to her mother's constant drone. She glanced down at her infant, softly stroked the fine, moist curls.

  "Daniel loves his babies. He'll be back."

  "When? He could be dead for all we know." She went over and picked up one of Daniel's caps, stared at it for a few moments without speaking, then laid it on the end table and brushed her hand on her skirt. "When's the last time Daniel said he loved you?"

  "More recently than Rufus told you, I'm sure."

  Mary wiggled and grunted. LaDaisy raised her up against a shoulder. The last thing she wanted was for Mary to wake up. If she didn't get her nap out, the house would be in an uproar the rest of the day. She commenced rocking again, softly patting Mary's bottom. The wet diaper had soaked LaDaisy's smock.

  She became aware of her mother staring, and looked up.

  "It's none of your business if he loves me or not."

  Vera crossed the room and retrieved her bag from the table by the front door. LaDaisy thought of a little girl's Sunday school pocketbook; she could imagine in it a hanky, two pennies, a stick of Spearmint gum, and the crumpled scrap of her Sunday school work sheet.

  "A man who loves his wife tells her so," Vera said. "I'll bet Daniel hasn't said those words since your wedding night."

  "We already know how each other feels," LaDaisy said, weary of the conversation. "You don't live with someone, go through something like this terrible Depression, and not know what they're thinking and feeling." I am so tired of defending him.

  "Ha! Did you read his mind the day he ran out on you? If you did, you'd know where he is, wouldn't you? But you don't know, and he isn't coming back to his responsibilities. Mark my words, LaDaisy, Daniel saw his chance for freedom."

  LaDaisy ran a shaky hand through her bobbed chestnut hair, around back of her neck. She made no reply, but waited for her mother to leave.

  Vera stood on the other side of the room, as firmly planted as the giant oak out front, her roots growing through the linoleum, her hand on the screen door handle and gazing at her daughter.

  "What are you and the children eating? Or do you send them to their aunt's house for meals?"

  "We manage."

  "On the meager wages you get from hemming up a few dresses and sewing rips in other people's clothes? You weren't brought up for menial work, LaDaisy. Why land sakes, a daughter of mine doing maid's work. Do you also take in laundry? No wonder people call you La Crazy."

  LaDaisy frowned. La Crazy, La Lazy. Childhood nicknames her sister had called her. She was doing well to get her own family's clothes washed.

  "Laundry? Hmmm, thanks for the suggestion."

  "Daniel wasn't good for anything except making babies," Vera said. "He made another one, then took off, leaving you to give birth and care for four children alone."

  Mary's diaper was soggy but it could wait. It was all LaDaisy could do to sit and listen to her mother insulting Daniel Tomelin, the only man in the world she couldn't live without.

  "I already told you he didn't know I was expecting."

  Vera shook her head, her curls bouncing close to her cheeks. Her rouge was too bright against the pale funeral makeup, as was her lipstick. LaDaisy could never understand why her mother, with all her money, would go around looking like a clown.

  She knew Vera was peeved that she'd married into such a "plain" family—Vera's own words. Now, something inside the younger woman snapped. Years of coping with her mother's insults rose like bile in her throat.

  "If you ever talk about Daniel that way again, so help me God, I'll never speak to you as long as I live."

  "I'm just offering my help."

  "Your help isn't needed." LaDaisy felt her face redden. "It's like Hoover sitting up there in his fancy mansion telling us to cheer up, things are getting better. Well I don't have chicken on my table every Sunday. Dammit to hell, Mama! We know it won't be all right for a long time, if ever. I've got me a scrub bucket out on the back porch. Why don't you and Hoover come over and scrub my floors?"

  "Now you listen here!"

  "No, you listen. I don't need you or Rufus Baker, President Hoover, Daniel's folks, or Clay Huff to take care of us. If Daniel never comes home, you'll see I don't need him, either. We'll manage without charity."

  Vera tried to speak again, but LaDaisy cut her off, her eyes glistening with tears. "I'm a Tomelin now, Mama, and we have pride if we don't have much else."

  Vera's hand flew up to her chest, fluttering there like a moth. "You're not yourself. I'll come back when you're feeling better." She paused in the doorway, holding the screen door open. "Rufus will be by here later with a box of clothes that might fit the children."

  More charity.

  LaDaisy had no grudges against her stepfather, for Rufus had always treated her well. Still, she thought he should assert some authority over his wife and call her down when she became a meddling shrew in her oldest daughter's life. The fact is, the man was content to let Vera run things at home while he attended to business at the store.

  After she left, LaDaisy carried Mary to the bedroom, put her down in the cradle, and changed her diaper. Mary sighed and stuck her thumb in her mouth; for once, LaDaisy left it there. She glanced at the basket of dirty laundry a neighbor had delivered earlier, dreading the thought of heating water and filling tubs to scrub the clothes by hand.

  She lay down on the bed and closed her eyes, settling her body from its emotional onslaught in order to make milk; but her whirling thoughts would not settle.

  Her life was falling apart since Daniel disappeared. Could her mother be right? Would he never return? She didn't know what to believe.

  Politicians encouraged citizens to hang on—"Things have to get better." But many of their friends and neighbors had been out of work for months. Their lives had become a hellish existence. Their children wore rags, and everyone slept in the same bed in cold weather. Some had burned their furniture to keep warm. The mothers were too depressed to look after the kids, and their papas had given up looking for work and sat staring into space, smoking stale cigarette butts collected from the gutters.

  My kids won't ever be in that condition, if I have to mend and scrub the shitty underdrawers of all the gentry in Missouri.

  As for Daniel, wherever he was, he could still be proud of his family. LaDaisy told herself he still cared what happened to them, but for some reason, he was unable to face the hardships of the Depression. She thought of his mandolin on the walnut shelf he made to keep it away from small, destructive hands. Something must've bothered him badly to run off wi
thout it, or even a word of good-bye.

  Her breath came heavily after the confrontation with her mother. A pulse battered her temples and brought the first signs of a migraine, as though she hadn't enough to contend with. When tears threatened, she willed them to stop—there had to be milk for nursing Elizabeth Channing's infant. Strong, painful emotions would dry up her supply.

  Her mother would faint if she knew that within the next hour her headstrong daughter would wet-nurse another woman's baby.

  She reached over to the nightstand and switched the radio on, lay back again and let the music soothe her mind. All of me. Why not take all of me. Her hand moved absently to her belly and rested there while she remembered.

  Her husband had taken all of her before leaving for God knows where. She hadn't thought about it much until now, when the memory of the embarrassing act returned full-force. He'd seemed distracted when he finished too soon and rolled over with his back to her. Was that when she'd conceived Mary?

  She hadn't suspected she was pregnant when Daniel left, and when she realized it was true, the shock was frightening. Alone and pregnant? It was the worst thing that could happen. But she gathered her wits and sought work to support herself and the three children. She ironed and sewed for financially secure families in big iron-fenced houses. To save money, she delivered Mary herself.

  Mary's arrival had been a blessing in disguise, for it provided a way to feed her family. When she learned that young Elizabeth Channing was unable to feed her own baby, LaDaisy seized the chance to wet-nurse baby Ralph in return for milk, eggs, butter, and meat.

  After a few minutes of rest, she left the house by the enclosed back porch, past the old wringer washer and galvanized tubs, and followed the path to the privy. Returning, she heated water and bathed her breasts, inspecting her nipples for signs of irritation. She toweled them gently and slipped into a clean brassiere and smock.

  She looked in on her youngest son, grateful that Bobby usually napped long enough for her to nurse Ralph. Quietly returning to the front room to wait for Elizabeth, she considered her children.