Free Clear Springs by Bobbie Ann Mason Page B

the stock from its wartime low. They bought a black cow, a heifer, a Jersey, a Holstein. They traded for some more mules. And Daddy bought the goat he had always wanted.
    Mama was still determined to improve our lives. When Daddy’s tobacco crop did poorly, bringing only fifty-two dollars and fifty cents, she immediately ordered a hundred baby chicks. She sold eggs to the local hatchery, and she took orders for fryers. She butchered and plucked and dressed her chickens and delivered them to people intown. In the spring of the following year, when it was clear that Wilburn had permanently settled into farming, she started work once again at the Merit Clothing Company.
    “Why do you want to go back to work there?” Granny said reprovingly. “Why don’t you stay home and take care of these little girls?”
    “But I can give them more if I make a little money,” Mama argued. “I want to be able to
do
for them.”
    To spare Granny from having to take care of us, Mama left my sister and me at the Clubhouse, a day-care center for Merit children. The factory was considered progressive and enlightened for having such a facility. I hated the Clubhouse. Janice loved it because there were other children to play with. I hated it because I didn’t want to be around other children.
    I was seven, too old for afternoon naps. I lay crumpled on a straw mat in agonized wakefulness while a sausagelike woman with squinty eyes supervised our slumber. The only thing at the Clubhouse I liked were the ten-o’clock and three-o’clock Popsicles. The days were long, and there wasn’t much to do, except swing or slide in the hard-dirt playground. I tried sitting under a tree. I read a book but got teased. I wanted to stay home with Granny and help her make albums of poems and pictures. We liked to cut out cartoons from magazines. The watchbird cartoons were my favorites. The watchbird was a crazed, gangly, glum bird squatting on a branch and spouting homilies beneath the tag “This is a watchbird watching you.”
    After a few weeks, Mama took pity on me and rescued me from the Clubhouse. Janice had to leave too. She bawled, but I celebrated, although I missed the Popsicles. We stayed with Granny and Granddaddy during the day while Mama worked. In the early mornings, Daddy was away on his milk route. Granddaddy hadn’t wanted to spend the money to upgrade the dairy for pasteurization, so Daddy now sold our milk in bulk to a company in town and then bought it back, pasteurized and bottled. He delivered it to his old customers on his prewar route.
    When Daddy came home from his milk route at mid-morning, he always brought us a treat from the grocery, where he delivered milk and cream. He brought two carefully selected packages of candy for Janice and me. They might be banana kisses, cherry kisses, peanut butter kisses, cinnamon hots, or a rattling little box of Boston baked beans. They were always clever little packages with numerous individualpieces, like my puzzles, except the pieces were all just alike, pleasures guaranteed to be repeated.
    Granny was piecing a star quilt. It was for me someday when I married. I helped her, learning to piece diamonds together to make stars. Granny created a pattern from a diamond she had traced onto newspaper. She cut the diamonds from flour-sack dresses my sister and I had outgrown. From her stacks of diamonds, she selected complementary colors for each star.
    In her breezy hallway on a hot day, we lolled on her wicker furniture. She read the paper after dinner, after she had washed the dishes and put away her apron. Janice played on the cool linoleum floor, and all afternoon (or “evening,” as we always said) I sewed quilt pieces with Granny until the factory whistle blew. The clock ticktocked loudly, and the hands jumped merrily along. I was very aware of time passing, and the whistle always blew before we were ready to quit. I tried to follow Granny’s patience and guidance, her sureness as she sewed