Free Yonnondio: From the Thirties by Tillie Olsen Page A

and is gone Jim; a woman’s face, thinning, skin tightening over the broad cheekbones, the great dark
     eyes down a terrace of sunken flesh, fading until the eyelids shut over forever Anna . A child’s thin face looks up a moment, wondering dazed eyes Mazie; a boy’s face, scowl over the mouth, eyes hurt with the hurt of not understanding,
     then insane with anger Will . On this face, half baby’s, half child’s, the breath of fever glows, closing the
     sober eyes; a tiny boy running along croons a song that is silenced; a tiny girl’s
     fists beat the air, stiffening, stiffened Ben, Jimmie, Baby Bess .
    Yes, it is here Jim and Anna Holbrook have come to live. (Old and familiar the streets
     to them, the scenery of their childhood, rearranged.) Over the cobbled streets, past
     the two blocks of dump and straggling grass, past the human dump heap where the nameless
     FrankLloydWrights of the proletariat have wrought their wondrous futuristic structures
     out of flat battered tin cans, fruit boxes and gunny sacks, cardboard and mother earth.
     In this ancient battered house that leans over the river. What matter the second story,
     windowless and roofless, the paper-thin boards, the dirt which has eaten into and
     become a part of the walls? It has a space that might be called a yard, and when the
     wind blows hard to the west, you can smell river and dump instead of packing house.
    (And beauty? Until the mammoth stone beauty of the city has carved itself into their
     blood, the children can lie on their bellies near the edge of the cliff and watch
     the trains and freights, the glittering railroad tracks, the broken bottles dumped
     below, the rubbish moving on the littered belly of the river.)
    “See, Anna,” says Jim. “It’s got a yard for the kids. They wont be runnin out in the
     streets to play, anyhow. And just think, runnin water with a faucet and a toilet inside
     the house. We never had that before.”
    “No” (trying not to see or smell).
    “And electric lights. Hey, over there, kids—you ever see electric lights in the house?
     And electric lights if we want.”
    “If we want?”
    “You know what I mean, if we can fork over. We’ll have ’em too, quickern a hen could
     lay an egg.”
    “Yes. Lets go inside, Jim.” (Holding Baby Bess to her nostrils, holding Bess against
     the corrosive eating into her heart.)
    “Sure—and four rooms. Say, what’s the matter with you? Lookin as if you’re seein a
     corpse. I know this aint no palace, but you ought to see what other folks are livin
     in for what we’re payin.”
    “Sure, Jim, I know it’s a real find. Guess I’m tired, that’s all.”
    “Ma,” said Ben, running up, “what smells so awful funny? It makes me sick to my tummy,
     Ma. It smell like this all the time?”
     
    When Anna made Will and Mazie ready for school that first morning, she stood them
     up against the wall and said fiercely, “You two got a chance to really learn something
     now; you’re goin to a good school, not a country one. I catch you not doin good and
     I’ll knock the livin daylights out of you, you hear?”
    But Mazie hated it. The first day: “Mazie and Will Holbrook have come from the country
     where they grow thecorn and wheat and all our milk comes from say hello to Mazie and Will children.”
     Her palm held in Will’s moist with fear. A big room, biggern the whole country school,
     squirming with faces, staring. (Whatcha shiverin for, you scairt? Me? Scared?) Faces
     mad and tired and scared and hungry and dead and their eyes like they want to eat
     you up. No, dont look at the faces, look out the window—but it is greasy, like drippings
     was smeared all over, and stink comes in from the top, comes in and fills the room.
     All the faces (if her heart wouldn’t beat so fast) … Dont look, read the funny words
     on the blackboard—Na-tion-al-it-ies American Armenian Bohemian Chinese Croatian (Croatian—that
     was what ol’ man Kvaternick was,