Chapter v Pagan Babies

8/14/2019 Chapter v Pagan Babies

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S. Keyron McDermott

209 Tyler St.

Cascade, IA 52033

Chapter V

Going Home

I am a teenager by the time we leave St. Marys Home and Orphanage. I have my

period and my boobs are growing not as fast or as big as I would like -- but they are. It

is May and school is about out. Mrs. Miller, our bland-faced social worker with the

colorless hair pulled back from her face into a bun tight as an aerial artist I once saw

hanging by her pony tail on the Ed Sullivan Show -- so that you expect to see little

bubbles of blood at her hairline -- calls me into her office in the Catholic Charities wing

the Thursday after my birthday.

You can pretty well figure that somebody wearing a plain brown suit with a plain

brown blouse and shoes, no jewelry and blood bubbling out of her hair roots is the sort

who, if you go along with the program, no problem. Curtains, if you dont. She hands me

note embossed with the Catholic Charities logo like the statue in the circular drive at

front of the Home and instructs me to give it to my teacher explaining that she will be

picking me up at 2:30 on Friday. When I leave, I sneak a surreptitious peek at the letter:

To the teacher of Shirley McDermott,Please excuse Shirley from classes Friday afternoon, May 15 th. I will pick her up

sometime after lunch. If you have any questions, please contact me at this office.

Sincerely,Clara Miller, Family Social Worker


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This could mean anything from TB x-rays to being accused of stealing. Though

my instinct is that it has to do with Mom, but if you are forward and ask a person like

Mrs. Miller about it, she writes on your record that youre aggressive, impertinent,

insolent, prying reticent, uncooperative and a lot of other word-ofthe-week

words that dont mean good things.

I scout out Jan, who is in the kitchen doing her job: making baloney sandwiches

for school lunches. She isnt the chapel person anymore because Sister Cure dArs

replaced Gorilla in January and now we rotate jobs every week. Everybody gets to do

everything. First, I ask her if she is going anywhere Friday.

To school. Why?

I show her the note from Mrs. Miller, and I swear her to secrecy -- if it gets back

to Mrs. Miller, I am in deep, dark, double Dutch. We discuss it and conclude I must be

going up to Sunnycrest to talk to Mom, so I am really surprised when Mrs. Miller picks

me up and Janice is in the car! I am cool and pretend this is biz as usual, but Im even

more surprised when heads out of town going west.

As you leave the city of Dubuque and the Mississippi River, the steep bluffs and

rocky prominences of the city relax and the land rolls out softly out into the green hills

and pastures of the Eastern Iowa countryside. A serious rain had begun at noon, but has

dwindled a half-hearted drizzle, and the pale spring sun is happily ducking in and out

between gray-white cloud bunches. An illusive rainbow hide-and-seeks behind us in the

east. We are all three silently riveted to the sight of the painfully beautiful land: deep

green pastures like newly-laid carpet between the black as coal freshly plowed and

planted fields; trees, eye-popping bright shades of yellow, blue green and lime, the


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weeping willows swaying gracefully as a long-armed corps de ballet by the roadside. It

has never seemed beautiful before, and I wonder if its only because were going home.

As we drive Mrs. Miller explains: Now, the reason I am bringing the two of you

back to your house, is for you to take a long, close look at it and to think hard. The

doctors say your mother is now free of TB, but her compromised condition means she is

unable to do housework. The question is, do you think you two will you be able to?

Oh, I am sure. . . I begin, but she cuts me off.

Dont be so sure. You need to assess the situation honestly.

What do you want to bet shes writing a report? I want to tell Jan, and warn her

everything we do and say will be written down, but how while Mrs. Miller is listening?

Before we know it, we pass the Twelve-Mile House and then Corsellos drive-in at the

edge of town at the pops into view and a minute later we are on Main Street passing Doc

Armstrongs office, then Freddie Beckers, and McNallys gas station and the old Chew

Mansion East Side school. Under the water tower Mrs. Miller brakes and sticks out her

arm. Were waiting for Ed Hawkinss pick-up with a pig in the bed to rattle around the

corner in front of us and when he does, she turns right.

The sight of the white house at the bottom of the hill, even though it looks

deserted, makes me so happy, I want to hoot and holler, jump out of the car and run down

to it. I glance back and see Jan leaning forward eagerly too. The big elms at the back

shake their new green leaves excitedly when they see us. The lawn, with new grass

struggling up through straw-colored tufts, looks as if nobody mowed last year.

Mrs. Miller will write scatterbrainedand impulsive if I jump and run around,

so I sit pretending I am barely interested. We get out of the car and follow her along the


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sidewalk next to the ratty, matted lawn and up to the front door. She fumbles in her purse

for the key, locates it in a plain, white envelope, unlocks the door and motions us in.

Inside, is a double whammy. First, a whack across the face by an awful musty

smell, then the shock of how shoddy, shabby and small it is. The smell sticks in my

nostrils like a blood clot after a nosebleed and makes it hard to breathe. None of the

chairs match the linoleum or the curtains in the living room. No carpet, rugs, fancy

lamps, ash trays or vases. Looking at Jan, I cant tell what she is thinking. I wander

through the dining room, into the kitchen and then the pantry and open a cupboard door.

Nothing but a chipped battered set of canisters with dented lids. I struggle the top off the

sugar, and its empty. So is the flour.

We need flour and sugar, and . . . ah groceries, I say, figuring then she will write

in the report: Shirley is observant and able to anticipate household necessities.

I open a couple other cupboards and say to Jan, We got to go shopping.

No kidding, its totally empty, she concurs.

We head upstairs on the steep, narrow, noisy steps. It is a fresh jolt to see how

small, ugly and dusty the bedrooms are, that the bedspreads and the curtains dont match

either. I recall the bright fushia and blue Ginnys room at Our Lady of the Woods and

thank God she is thousands of miles away in Italy. Imagining her, my stomach aches with

an embarrassment that fuels my doubt.

The people who live here dont do much dusting, I laugh. Though it isnt funny,

I hope it keeps Mrs. Miller from noticing the cast-off furniture and how frayed and faded

chenille bedspreads and homemade quilts are. In addition, it will also inform her we

know what housework is required.


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Have you seen the bathroom?

It doesnt work; Daddy didnt. . .

You didnt look, she gestures around the corner.

In the smallest of the four rooms upstairs, before he died, Daddy had installed a

bathroom, but never got it connected. I flush the toilet and whish it works! Someone

had finished my fathers work! I turn on the faucets, but nothing came out the H side, so

we still had no hot water.

I tell Mrs. Miller sounding adult-serious, We have gotten attached to flush toilets

at St. Marys. Not to mention going to ballets with Woodie big sisters, I think.

The doctors are satisfied the lesions on your mothers lungs are healed. In other

words, she is no longer an active TB case, and therefore it is no longer necessary for her

to be in Sunnycrest. However, she is unable to do any heavy housework scrubbing,

sweeping, hanging clothes. . .

Catching her drift I say, Kneading bread?

Janice adds: Ironing.

Mrs. Miller nods. What I brought you out here to find out is if you feel you are

grown-up enough to take care of this house.

I was 13 years old last week.

Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen or twenty-six or forty-six, this house represents a lot of

work. Looking at Jan, she continues, And youre only eleven. Laundry for six people is

no small matter.

There are two of us, I emphasize.


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But you have shown yourself to be very uneven -- quite responsible at times,

she pauses, Well, lets just say, less so at others.

I would rather scrub floors here than there. I say.

Besides, the dining room at the Home is lots bigger, Jan says.

Everything is bigger, I add.

Yes, but there you have help -- the staff does the laundry, hallways, and windows

here. . . she pauses and Id bet she had sat in meetings with the doctors arguing the

same thing.

My littlest brother is growing up in a strange big city without any of us, I argue

passionately.

And this is ourhouse, not somebody elses, Jan says, following my lead.

Yeah, its easier to clean your own house.

Mrs. Miller smiles indulgently, and I conclude weve said the right things.

All the way back to Dubuque, I gaze out the window mesmerized by the contrast

of green pasture-islands shimmering in the black-fields sea, so I dont have to talk. I had

said the right things, but I am dogged by my reservations. Yes, it is home and I want to be

there, but I hadnt remembered it being so small, smelly, shabby and awful! How could

Edie and I keep it clean by ourselves, plus bake bread, do laundry and go to school?

When we get back to the Home, we two go immediately down to the Little Boys

and Little Girls and tell Wally and Colleen where we have been. They are wide-eyed and

happier than I expect and we swear them to secrecy. I had wonder if they too wont be so

attached to their friends, flush toilets, unlimited hot dogs and store-bought breakfast rolls,

they might not want to go home, but I am wrong. I am only one with doubts.


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We four return to Cascade in the Home station wagon as we had left in it. Only it

is early one muggy, overcast late May day after Cathedral school is out for the summer.

The windows are open, the place smells like Spic and Span, and there isnt a speck of

dust. Just like the day we left, my Aunt Dolores is there. She, Aunt Viola and my cousins

have cleaned. The eight rooms of house at the bottom of water tower hill are still shabby,

but they are dust-free, and Im glad to be home.

Plump as an overstuffed pillow, Mom is there, too. We hug and kiss her and

everybody runs around crazy-like, galloping up and down the steps running in an out as if

getting acquainted again. The kids run across the road and climb the oak tree and return

to report there are mulberries already! Then Wally and Colleen run down to the beaver

dam and see two babies.

Mom, wheres Denny, I thought he was coming too?

Oh, he is, but your Uncle has to take a few days off work because Eva doesnt

drive. Im hoping we can get this place housecleaned, plant some garden and into a

routine first.

She looks at me concerned, runs her hand through her hair the way she used to,

grave but not gray because she is so pink and fat from being in the sanatorium. A year

there has cured her TB, but not her tendency to worry. When my aunts leave Mom says

The Catholic Charities people were reluctant for us to come back here. They said you

were too young. I insisted, but now that I see all there is to do, I . . .

Aw, Mom, dont worry. You should have seen the dining room we scrubbed

every night at the Home. It was big as this whole house, I say with a grand, careless


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wave realizing as I do, that there were a dozen of us scrubbing that floor, this only looked

small to us by comparison to huge dormitory and playrooms.

Child, do you understand that I cant do a thing.Not a thing? I cant even walk

upstairs.

Then you wont even know if we dont make our beds! I laugh.

Even if nobody everlooks upstairs, the washing and bread baking alone. . . she

moans.

Speaking of that, you better show me how to make bread. I had already

discovered the best remedy for fear get busy.

Yes, she agrees, it is still early enough to allow the dough to rise twice and

again in the pans.

As I crumble the yeast, she explains hot water kills it, but cold doesnt work, it

must be lukewarm and muses, Well start the serious housecleaning tomorrow.

After the bread is mixed, kneaded and set in the sun to rise, we make lunch, get

the kids back up from the beaver dam and eat. Next, we unpack and sort our clothes into

winter and summer, what fits, what doesnt, what can be passed down next year and what

has to go in the rag bag to be used for patching. When thats done, I punch the bread

dough down, and Wally and Colleen start on the lawn. After that, we open the trunks, fold

our wool winter clothes with mothballs and transfer the summer ones to our drawers.

Before we know, it is time to cook supper -- our favorite, goulash with crumbled up

hamburger, macaroni and a jar of tomatoes from the basement along with a quart jar of

green beans we had canned the year before we left. Opening the jars and seeing them

empty, Mom begins lamenting that we have no garden, and though we point out there are


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and knocked over the chair barrier, and this flood of yellow runs peeping and pooping all

over the house. Something about running causes baby chicks to poop and poop and poop

and poop. What a mess! What a stench! We had to catch them all and put them back, then

move everything to one side and Mom had to scrub up the poops. Then take off our shoes

and clean them because you cant have everybody tracking chicken poop all over the

house. After that, we had to move all the stuff from one side of the kitchen to the other, to

get the poops they dropped there. I mean, it was after ten oclock that night when we

finally finished. Standing there, I can feel my face turn bright red thinking about Jud or

Jude or Cathy Rooney or God forbid! Ginny knowing about our chickens. Just the smell

alone, the whole house. I put my hands over my face for the humiliation of it.

Whats wrong? Mom asks.

Aw nothing. I was just thinking about the time the kids let the chickens loose all

over the kitchen.

Well, hopefully theyre grown up enough now that we wont have that kind of

nonsense anymore.

The bread rises while were planting and mowing and Mom comes in and shows

me how to light the oven with a wooden kitchen match, so I dont blow it up. Soon the

smell of bread mingles with the May air and the scent of the earth we are now spading for

the vegetables and the grass we have mowed. It smells so glorious, and where we have

mowed looks so great, and Mom is so pleased with us that suddenly, Im thrilled too. The

sunset begins to streak the western sky improbable shades of pink, blue, and purple like a

bunch of wild sprite kids experimenting with a giant package of crayons or colored

markers. These are the longest, loveliest days of the year and after 9 p.m., when we can


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can hear the corn grow and sometimes, I sit in the outdoor toilet alone and listen to the

corn growing in Fangmanns field behind the house and wish I were the nice type.

Eventually Mom finds somebody to give her a deal on a couple dozen pullets, an

extremely smart move because now we are welfare and it is ADC checks and what seems

like tons of corn meal, flour and the powdered eggs. The flour isnt really white and

makes everything you bake course and gray-brown. For weekends we mix it with some

well-milled bleached from the store, so our bread isnt so dark, flat or heavy, and

reconstitute the powdered milk by mixing it half and half with store-bought whole, so its

drinkable. The powdered egg packages say Use like real eggs. Well, you could, but

dont kid yourself, cakes made with powdered eggs are flat and taste funny. There is

nothing like spherical orbs fresh from a hen that is like a real egg. Occasionally, there is

meat in the commodities box, but not often, though always good Cheddar and real butter.

Commodities peanut butter comes in Crisco-like cans, with two inches of oil on the top

and practically solid ground peanuts at the bottom. It takes Paul Bunyan muscles and a

hefty putty knife to stir, so Mom doesnt even try. We have diarrhea or constipation

peanut butter depending on whether were at the top or bottom of the can. We envy

people who can afford homogenized Skippy and Peter Pan in jars, ham sausage

sandwiches, bananas and hostess cupcakes for lunch and hide our homemade bread

sandwiches our lunch bags as we eat at school. Occasionally Mom lets us make cookies.

Several nights a week we have corn meal mush and Johnny Cake, and I know

Mom is worried sick that we arent eating enough meat and are growing up dumb

because there are always articles in magazines people give her and experts talking on the

radio about it. We mix up a gruel of corn meal, vegetable table scraps and feed it to the


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chickens, so we also have eggs and the occasional chicken for Sunday dinner and Mom

feels better. I secretly figure this is why she doesnt want Denny to come back home. At

Aunt Evas in Chicago, he is undoubtedly eating more meat than us. All she has to do is

write a letter and tell them to bring him back, and I know that is why she doesnt. It

makes me angry, but I am not sure at whom, you cant be mad at the commodities.

When she finally does write, we work diligently without much complaining to get

the place spiffed up. (As if a three-year-old boy would notice!) By the Fourth of July

weekend, the yard is completely mowed, the house mostly cleaned, and from the look of

the lettuce, tomatoes and onions in the garden no one would know what a late start we

got. Yeah, we hadnt finished all the housecleaning, but then, does anybody ever?

Needless to say, we were all dying to see our baby brother.

Finally about 3:30 that Tuesday afternoon, my aunt and uncle maneuver their

ocean liner of an Oldsmobile into our yard, and a thin, apprehensive-looking boy gets out

of the back seat. I know it is Denny because he has the same white hair and blue eyes, but

he isnt a baby anymore; he is a kid. Its disappointing, as we want our baby brother back.

Though you can see he really likes playing with us, and my cousins did too. We have

more interesting stuff than Chicago like the beaver dam. Wally had once seen them drop a

tree. They are trying to build their dam big enough to make a lake and flood Louie

Fangmanns corn, so hes always taking it out but they are always building it back up.

Wally warns everybody to be super quiet, tiptoe and dont talk, but when our cousin Pat

steps on a mushroom that he thinks is a live thing, he screams. Thats city kids for you:

goofy and spooky. The guard beavers whack the water with their tails and they dive


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under. Then Denny starts crying because he thinks they are gone forever. Wally explains

theres no need to cry, theyll be back soon as they think the coast is clear. We return to

the house for a while, and sure enough, the beavers are back beavering.

My uncle Walter gives us nickels and dimes to ride the Ferris wheel and play the

carnival games in the Legion Park across the street. Janice and Wally save theirs for

bicycles. Jeannie Crowleys Dad gave her two dollars, and she pays for Jan, so she gets to

ride and saves her money. Talk about a lucky stiff. The next morning all of us, get up at

dawn and go over to the park and look for money and she finds a whole dollar! What did

I tell you? We always look around the beer stand and nobody can figure out why people

like getting drunk so much because it makes them butter fingers and they drop their

change.

When it comes time to leave later in the day, and my aunt and uncle got into the

car without him, Denny looks terribly sad and Aunt Eva looks like she is going to cry

herself. Who could blame her a cute little boy like Denny? Now I feel as sad for them

as I did when we were leaving for St. Marys.

Next thing we know, summer is over and know we are back in school again.

Right as winter sets in, when the warm days are done, Mike Henry gives me his

paper route because he is already a freshman in high school and paper routes are a grade

school job. I am delivering theDes Moines Register, which is not as good as theDubuque

Telegraph Herald, because the TH has twice or three times the customers and gets

delivered after school, when it is warm. The TH carriers make more money, have more

subscribers closer together and dont have to get up before six, but it is really hard to get

one of those routes. It is a special pain on Saturday because after we heat the water and


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wash the clothes and hang them out, I have to scrub the kitchen floor (because you cant

help slopping water with a wringer washer) and then collect for my paper route. A few

customers like the Hotel and Jack McNally pay in advance, which is good because then

there are fewer places to collect Saturday. Mom and the kids help me deliver on Sunday

in the car because more people take the Sunday paper and they are so heavy, they

wouldnt all fit them in my bag and would have to go back downtown to fill then people

wouldnt get their paper until afternoon and be cranky. I am sometimes late for school,

because by the time I eat breakfast and walk back across town, its already 8:30. Some

days I dont think I am going to make it through the winter: what with hanging clothes

and delivering papers my feet and hands are always frozen stiff. The only time it is great

is Christmas because I get loads of tips which I use to buy Christmas presents for

everybody -- and candy, mainly boxes of chocolate covered cherries. After we eat our

goulash or corn meal mush or cheese sandwiches, we pass around the box. They are like

sweet eggs the chocolate shell cracks, when you bite into it and the sweet white stuff

spills deliciously out and around your mouth, last theres a cherry in the middle like a

sugar yoke.

Sister Mary Magdeline is our eighth grade teacher. Youd think she might cut me

some slack and not mark me late every single time I am, because she knows I have a

paper route and to help at home, but she does. We call her Pinchers because she is thin

as a ruler and mean as a pinch bug with these long bony fingers that grab a person by the

back of the neck and paralyze them. Every morning and afternoon during Advent, she

collects money for pagan babies after prayers and the pledge of allegiance. After lunch as

well, because a lot of kids live close enough to walk home for lunch and could bring


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money back. It was the seventh grade against the eighth grade and everybody in the

winning class would get a special St. Francis holy card -- very cool with a picture of St.

Francis with all the animals around him on a piece of beautiful parchment or heavy

colored paper. On the front of the holy card under the picture of St. Francis surrounded by

animals is a little bio: St. Francis of Assisi, the son of a rich Italian merchant, was a

wastrel as a young man. A ferocious wolf began terrorizing the town, so Francis went up

into the hills to find it. When he did, he made the sign of the cross and the wolf became

tame. St. Francis is the patron saint of animals, and he did many other good works in his

life including starting the Franciscan brothers and the Poor Clare sisters.

She passes one around so we can see it and everyone wants one because they are

perfect to keep your place in a book or to flip back and forth between the regular normal

parts of the mass in the middle of your missal and the parts that change in the front.

Pagan babies, of course, dont have the good luck all of you had to be born into

a good Catholic family, Pinchers tells us. When they die, they will live for eternity in

Limbo, never be admitted to the presence of God. So it is really important that we support

the Catholic missionaries who will convert their parents to the one true religion, and who

will baptize their kids, so they can go to heaven.

Sister tells us they will also instruct them not to run around nude the way African

savages do, paint their faces, and listen to their witch doctors . . . which makes me think

of the Headshrink of St. Marys Home and Orphanage and smile. However, my class

doesnt contribute as much as she would like and one day she becomes quite put out.

Since we barely have money to eat meat so we dont grow up stupid, I have only given a

couple nickels and a dime to the pagan babies and dont worry about it.


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Sister looks at me and says, Pay attention, Miss McDermott, stop day dreaming

Then she glances around the room, frowns, sighs and continues: I am very, very

disappointed with the seventh and eighth grade classes. You are the two oldest groups in

the grade school. You should be setting the standards for the lower grades, but instead I

find that all the rooms but the first and second grade are ahead of us. Shame on you!

Shame on every single one of you. I am personally embarrassed for every single solitary

one of you. And, She glances at several of us in turn, . . . I happen to know several of

you have money because you have jobs.

What she doesnt know is, I think, I am trying to save up for a bike. God himself

knows I need one if you have a paper route that stretches from Lucy McNallys to

Lehmans Auto and to the stockyards and back, you need a bike. I have signed up for

every bike raffle as many times as they would let me, done a half dozen storm heaven

novenas, but its always somebody, who already has a good bike who wins. After the last

time, I started to wonder what God is doing, if he is even in heaven. I know this is wrong,

but I just cant help it.

At least, Sister Magdeline scoffs sarcastically, the seventh grade has made a

better effort than the eighth! and with her veil swinging and beads rattling insistently,

points to the $12.56 written under words, 7th Grade, Pagan Babies in the farthest, highest

point of the slate board running across the front of the classroom. Then crosses

dramatically past her desk to the right side of the room, where we eighth graders sit in

three rows of eight each, knocks her knuckles insistently against the board just under

where the monitor Kay Peiffer has written $11.09 and says, This-is-just-plain-

disgraceful.Just-plain-disgraceful.


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She alternately fixes me and several of my classmates -- Sandy, Jeannie, Monica

Kenny, Richard -- in gaze of pure contempt. There are any number of you people who

have paper routes, baby sit, shovel walks and are paid for household chores.

We are all squirming in our seats. Kenny is covering his face because he has

terrible acne and the nuns tirade is making him feel like fresh new pimples are popping

out even as she speaks. Jeannie is slouching down in her seat because she is too tall and it

is making her feel more self-conscious.

Worst of all, some of you receive allowances for which you do absolutely

nothing. She raps her knocks on the edge of the large oak desk to punctuate the phrase

as she repeats it, Ab-so-lute-ly nothing.

Then locks on Robert, who we all know gets a an allowance from his mother for

keeping his room clean, and never does because he likes it messy its homier that way

he says. Robert is fidgeting like a first grader. She mostly ignores the country kids

Phyllis, Helen, Steven and Richard because she thinks farm kids have to do chores they

dont get paid for.

I have absolutely no insight into what makes some of you people so extremely

niggardly, parsimonious Scrooges when it comes to the crying needs of the poor,

neglected souls of Africa. . . The nuns and priests who have vowed poverty, chastity and

obedience, simply havent the wherewithal to support this work, or I am sure they would,

as they have already generously dedicated their whole lives to it, so the money must

come from you. It must come from good Catholic people.

I feel ashamed of myself and wish desperately that I had a lot of money to give.


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On the other hand, I am confident I know where some of your money goes: You

are spending it on rock and roll records, pop, and candy. Now I feel about an inch high.

Maybe Mr. or Mrs. Goetzinger tells her that almost every morning I take a quarter out of

my paid-ahead fund and after I deliver the west side, on my way back through town, I

stop there, warm up and buy a glazed jelly doughnut and a candy bar to eat while I walk

the rest of the route..

Sandy reaches into her desk, pulls out her pencil case, unzips it and fumbles

around among the pencils, pens and erasers, pulls fifty cents out and zips it closed. She

raises her hand, Sister nods to her, she rises from her seat, walks to the front of the room

and drops the two quarters into the round metal former Lord Albert tobacco can with

pictures of emaciated African children glued on it. While the two coins are still clinking

and rolling Sister comes to our side and changes the zero to a five: $11.59 on the board.

Sandys face is a wide smile of relief returning to her place. While she is doing this,

Kenny Dolphin has been rummaging in his pants pocket. He raises his hand, receives

Sisters nod, goes to box folding up a dollar bill and slips it in.

Now, she says changing the one in our total to a two, that is a whole lot more

like it. I am sure God will bless your sacrifice.

Meanwhile on the seventh grade side, Sue Devaney has leaned down and

removed her shoe, out of which she takes a dollar bill. Sue is the adopted of Orland, the

undertaker, and his wife Mame, who has only one adopted sister and they are rich. She

sits up, raises her hand and Sister acknowledges her. She runs to the front of the room as

if eager to keep the eighth grade behind. Just as eagerly on her heels comes Peggy Otting,

about the only only child in town, receives the nod, and brings up another dollar. Next is


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Danny Dolphin, whose father has a bar on Main Street and everybody knows including

Sister -- that his dad pays him to put beer in the cooler and take out the empties.

On our side of the room, suddenly Phyllis, Patty, her cousin Corky, Judy and Bob

all unearth nickels, dimes, quarters and even dollars in their pockets, pencil cases, and

books. Raising our total to $15.74 brings a another salvo of change and bills from the

seventh graders and in turn Mike Howard, Dick Noonan, Peggy Otting and Mary Ann

Kramer cough up, as do Alan and Dave.

I raise my hand and ask, Sister, may I please go to the cloak room?

Yes, certainly.

I leave the classroom and immediately turn left into the long, narrow room where

each of my classmates coats hangs on a hook under his or her name our lunches in paper

bags on the narrow shelf above our coats because it is no longer cool to carry a lunch

pail. In the left hand pocket of my coat, under my well-used handkerchief, I find the

envelope with Jack McNallys $6.20 for December. He pays in advance because he has

too many customers on Saturday. I return to the classroom with the envelope, and feel

like a hero stuffing the five-dollar bill into the Pagan Baby can.

That, of course, brings more donations from the seventh grade (Danny must have

a whole roll of bills in his pocket) and before I finish I have given the other dollar and

twenty cents, and soak up the looks of admiration I get from my classmates. Walking

home, I realize if Mom finds out she is going to be furious. I am taking the money for

morning treats out of the paid-ahead subscriptions, getting two extra papers because Nina

Mortensen has died and Josie Lane left after Thanksgiving for Florida. It seems every

time I get a new subscription, I lose an old one. Today, I have given Jack McNallys


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entire months subscription to the Pagan Babies. The most you can make on such a small

route is four or five dollars a week and I am not making half that. I am angry at myself

and Pinchers.

Chapter v Pagan Babies

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Transcript of Chapter v Pagan Babies