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Retirement Talk for Boomers, Seniors, and Retirees

Frog Spit

Jackie Spinks

                                                    Chapter Three

“Look Adina, look at that backyard? No outhouse. Rich people don’t need to go to the toilet.” Just thinking about it seemed blasphemous.  To even think that a King or Queen might possible pull down her pants and squat on a toilet, oh, it would never happen.

“But rich people die, Selma, you believe that, don’t you ?” Adina said.

“They do?  Really?”

Lars ignored their conversation and gazed around at his small band of rustics: dirty, unkempt, hair matted, with unwashed faces and torsos so scrawny and odorous, had he been an outside observer, he would have thought them a family who’d recently emerged from a cave-- rather then the adventurous, recently converted Mormons, newly arrived in America, that they were.

All of them, even little Selma had the wiry, tense look of people who’d labored at heavy, repetitious work with too few calories for too many hours.

Selma and her sisters wore dresses that drooped at the shoulders and at the waist, two sizes too large.  Although Brita was an expert seamstress she couldn’t afford material for dresses, so (1) they were made extra large to grow into and (2) if still wearable when the last one out-grew the clothes, they were made over for someone else.

“I never wore anything that fit until I grew up,” Selma said. “But nobody objected—hand-me-downs were a way of life, with the oldest boys and girls feeling a sort of prestige wearing their parent’s remade cast-offs. 

For this greatest adventure of their lives, the boys wore hand-me-down suits from their uncles and cousins, with trousers, referred to by their peers on the ship coming over, as high-water pants, because they reached mid-ankle, which the boys tried to lengthen by wearing their pants slung low on their hips. Selma was awed to see boys and girls wearing shoes and clothes that fit.

“They must be rich,” she whispered to Adina.

“Everyone’s rich in America.” Adina replied.

Selma stared in wonder at such indulgent wealth, because of the preciousness of clothes and shoes in their village in Sweden,  with Brita periodically cautioning one of the kids, “Now, don’t get dirty,” Selma grew up awed by people who wore  clean, well-fitted clothes.

Lars had been raided by some financial Vikings when he sold their possessions and they had lost much of their small bankroll, but, in spite of one obstacle after another they had managed with help from relatives and were able to gather up steerage passage and get to America.

Now, here they were, a wide-eyed, somber faced, filthy bunch of sallow-faced immigrants, who’s English consisted of “Tanks,” and “Hello.”
           The predominant feeling of every member of the family, when they first stepped off the ferry in Bellingham was a feeling they were a bunch of yokels who’d wound up in a la-la party—and had crashed it uninvited.  And furthermore, now that they were at the party, were being tested by invisible guests, who’d been invited, and hard as the immigrants tried to pass the test they’d failed.  And after they’d rung up one mistake too many were being psychologically rejected.  It didn’t take much to wipe the bloom off their arrival as they all were so fearful, and so everything they did was self-effacing, with constant smiles and apologies.

Brita was still fuming about how Lars lost their money and until they reached Bellingham would take it out on anyone nearby, but in this new country she was as careful as everyone else.

Everyone carried something.  Brita carried the baby, Lars carried the trunks and the kids carried boxes and stuffed pillowcases. 

Years, later, the family would sit around the kitchen table, near the wood stove with nothing but a kerosene lamp and the flickering fire from the grate in the stove for light and they’d darn socks, sharpen axes, give thanks they were inside feeling warm and fed, and then regale each other like old soldiers about their battles.  They would talk of their early days in Bellingham as they watched the frost silver the windows.

Stories of their rites of passage, their fears, their shock, their wonder and especially their goofs, which brought on peels of laugher and embarrassed silences.

“We were so dumb, if they’d had an IQ test at Ellis Island and only those with normal IQ’s could get in, they would have sent us back to Sweden.”
           “I heard that was what the did to some.”

“Sweden wouldn’t have taken us back.”

“Ja, they’d have discarded us up on some Arctic atoll.”
           They showed Brita how to open a can with a can opener, but nobody told her the milk had to be diluted.  So here they were, drinking undiluted evaporated canned milk, talking about how funny it tasted and what kind of cows made that kind of funny-tasting milk.”

“And don’t forget boiling the banana the steward gave you.”
           “So what—you thought it needed to be boiled, too.”
           “And how about the time Laura saw a girl pull a handle and gum came out and we all thought we’d found the fountain of American wealth.”

“I remember.”
           “Yeah, we were  walking along wondering how we were going to find the Mormon missionaries that were supposed to have met our boat and Laura spied some kind of gum or candy dispenser.  She was so excited; she was sure she’d discovered the pot of gold, when she saw this kid pull the lever and get candy from the machine.”

“Look, look Ma, candy comes out of that thing!” and Laura pointed.  “I saw a girl pull a lever and candy came out.  Just like that.”
           This was truly the wealth of America.  All you had to do was pull a lever and America gave kids all the candy they wanted.

Selma said, “I did too.”

“Oh, you’re crazy,” Adina, always the cynic, said.

“NO, no, I saw that girl pull the lever and candy came out and she ate the candy.  I saw it!  I saw it!  I did! Please believe me!”

“You’re crazy,” but with less vehemence this time.  Wanting to believe but reluctant to be conned again, they all traipsed across the street, balancing on boards, the little one, Selma, running ahead and all the family gathered around the candy dispenser while Laura pulled the lever.  No candy.

“Try it again, Laura,” Selma instructed.  So Laura pulled the lever.  And pulled it again.  And again.  And again.  Still no candy.

At last, defeated, Laura hunkered down by the gum dispenser in her Swedish homespun, best dress, three sizes too big for her and started to cry.

“It doesn’t give candy for me.  You try it Selma.”

“Yeah, maybe it doesn’t like you Laura,” Adina said.

“You try it Adina.”

Adina pulled the lever and waited.  Nothing.  Then Selma, Wilfred, Waldemar, Walter and everyone tried.  Nothing.  “America doesn’t like us.  Even the candy doesn’t like us, because they gave candy to the American girl, when she pulled the lever.  I swear it did.”
           Believing Laura and somewhat disillusioned with an America so unfair to hardworking, pious, new Mormons, they walked carefully, single file along the boardwalk laid at the edge of streets that bustled with carts, buggies, animals and people.

Everywhere they looked they saw tree stumps six or more feet in diameter and everywhere commotion—everyone and everything buzzing with activity.

When Adina, who wanted to believe and who was disappointed with an America that withheld its candy from foreigners, saw the men leaping from log to log in the bay, shoving the logs with poles toward the wharves; she was astonished that the men never fell off the logs and  said, “Look at them.  They must be so brave.”

Not all that beguiled with bravery, Laura pointed at an automobile, “Look at that.”
           “What is it?” They all watched the car lurch by until I was out of sight.

“It’s a giant cockroach that will gobble you up.” Wil said, “So stay away from it.”
           The girls huddled together, fearful, then Adina spoke up, “Wil, you’re a big liar.”

“Pa, Wil says that big black thing’s a giant bug,” Laura pulled up alongside of Lars, who was leading his little band of hayseeds.

“Oh, that!  It’s a horseless carriage,” Lars said

“How does it move without any horses?”

“It has an engine.”

“Are there little horses in the engine?”

“No, just metal things.”
           They all tried to figure out how it moved without little horses inside.”

Pigs and cows roamed the streets. “I wonder why they let them loose to wander like that?” Brita said, offended first by America’s cheapness with their candy and now with their sloth.

“No fences.  Where are the fences?”  She shook her head.

And then Selma fell in love with some beautifully dressed woman..  How the girls gaped at them.  Fascinated by the way they slithered around the cows and pigs, as they strolled down the street and never letting anything touch them,  they were loss in wonder.

“They’re magic,” Laura said.

“The three girls stared and stared and Brita didn’t like it.  The little sisters hesitated to smile at the women, riveted by such elegance.

When one of the women walked by the family and then stopped to peer in a shop window, Selma tried to touch the glowing burgundy softness of her dress.  She had already decided she was going to be a seamstress, like her mother when she grew up, so she was fascinated by fabric and as she had never seen velvet before and stroked it, hoping to touch it so lightly, the woman would be unaware.

But, the woman alert to the slightest movement, glanced down and seeing Selma fearfully shrink back, lifted Selma’s long blond curls, gave her a gold-toothed smile and said something in English, which Selma didn’t understand.  Then she walked on, swinging her purse and smiling at the rest of the family, in particular Lars.

“Laura, did you see that?  She touched me.” Selma had been anointed.  “Wasn’t she beautiful?”

“Yeah. Lucky you!”

“And did you see her beautiful teeth?  They were gold.  Really gold.  How rich you must be, to be born with gold teeth.”
           “Ja.  I bet she’s more rich than the Lady Cemoria.”
           “Do you think so?”
           “She’s more beautiful than the Lady.”
           “But richer—do you think?”

“The Cemoria doesn’t have gold teeth and doesn’t wear such beautiful clothes as that.”
           “Don’t look at them” Brita pulled her charmed daughters away from the woman, who had now congregated on a corner with some friends and was gaily talking with much laughing and hand movements.

“But why, Ma?”

“You might catch something.”
           “How, Ma?”

Brita, never one to allow herself to become tainted by reality, invoked rank.

“Just do as I say.”  Brita might be from the back hills of Sweden but she knew a woman, that beautifully dressed, didn’t get those clothes cleaning fish in the cannery.  Brita didn’t need daughters enthralled by these kinds of women.  And Lars seemed much too chipper after she’d smiled at him. 

The group followed Lars languidly down the street as he looked for the missionaries.  Lars was worried where they would spend the night.  If he could only find someone who spoke Swedish, he could find where they could spend the night.  Selma, tired from all the walking, lagged behind dragging her pillow slip filled with linen.  Suddenly somebody, in haste, pushed Selma off the board sidewalk onto the muddy road.

Selma sat for a minute dazed, then slowly picked herself up, “I think Laura’s right.  I don’t think they like us,” Selma looked down at her dirty dress and tried to wipe the mud off.  “Maybe we should go back home.”

“Oh, Selma, you think everybody dislikes you.” Adina said.

“I do not.”
           “It was an accident,” Adina said, “It didn’t have anything to do with whether they liked us or not.”

But Selma couldn’t quite get in sync with Adina and continued to wonder if that act was some down-with-foreigners thing.  Looking at her muddy dress, Selma who was unaware of her smelly and bedraggled, scrawny appearance, and had a fetish for cleanliness, washing and rinsing herself and her clothes over and over, like she was stained by the Mark of Cain—now found it her turn to cry.  This was the last straw.

“Pa, let’s go home.  I don’t like it here.”
”We want to go home, too, Pa,” the rest of the kids piped up.

“This isn’t like the missionaries said it would be.”

And Lars, in a quandary as to what to say or do and to end Selma’s weeping, stopped at a vegetable stand and for three pennies bought each of them an orange.

           “What do we do with it, Pa?” they asked in unison.

           ‘You eat it.”  So they took a bite, skin and all, as did Lars and Brita.  None of them had ever seen an orange before and was unaware you were supposed to peel it.

           So pinching their faces, they ate the orange—skin and all.  As they sat eating their oranges and spitting out the seeds, wondering if they planted the seed it could grow into a plant,  an African-American woman walked by.

           “Adina, look at that lady’s skin!  She’s so brown.  Do you think she’s burned herself?” Selma excitedly whispered.

           “I don’t know,” Adina, rotated her body to peer more closely.

           “You’re not supposed to stare.” Laura slapped at Adina.  Everyone was becoming cranky with all this newness.

           “Ma, that lady’s skin is brown.  She must have gotten a terrible sunburn.”  During the summer months in Sweden working twelve hours a day in the field their skins usually dried out and turned a pale beige, but never a dark brown like this.

           Selma pulled on her mother’s skirt, “Did she get burned Ma?”

           “No I think she was born that way.  Isn’t that right Lars?”

           “Yep, think so.”
           “Borned burned!  How could that be?”

           “No she was born with that skin color.  Isn’t it beautiful?”

           “I wish I had that skin color,” Adina seeking some communitarian involvement, like in the village back home, murmured the one word she knew in English to the woman with the dark brown skin, who’d stopped at the same outdoor fruit stand where they’d gotten their oranges.

           “Hello.”  Adina had moved up to her and taken her hand.  No answer.  The woman shakily withdrew her hand, looked fearfully at Lars and rushed off.

           “Nobody likes us,” Wil said.

           “Dodo, you’re so pushy.  Don’t you know you’re supposed to let the adult speak first?”  Laura nudged Adina with her elbow.

           They turned away from this unusual person, so distant from what they were accustomed to.  All they’d ever seen were people with pale skin, blonde hair and blue eyes, even the missionaries, while they had brown eyes, were pale, hence this person so different from themselves seemed like a Goddess.

           Finally they came to a little glade where they decided to sit down and rest.  Lars told them to stay put and he’d go looking for someone who spoke Swedish. After all this was supposed to be an area of America, with a lot of Scandinavian people, so he should come upon someone who spoke Swedish.

           “Now don’t trust the first person you see,” Brita scolded.

           “Maybe, when you’re an outsider you have to put your trust in strangers,” Lars said.  Brita was still fuming about the way Lars lost most of their money.

           “Well, we can’t trust all strangers.”

           “If we hadn’t trusted the missionaries we wouldn’t be here.”

           “And where are they now?”

           “We just failed to make connections.”

           “What about those men that gypped you out of our money?”

                                                  **********

           And now as they sat at the kitchen table in their farm house, so much more financially secure, the lost money forgotten, Waldemar said, “I think that undiluted milk was the reason I never got any broken bones up in the logging camps when that tree fell on me.”

           Ah, what a time they had.  But this was one party where the uninvited guests couldn’t bow out and say, “Oops, my mistake,” and make a getaway.  But the feeling, I’m sorry to say,  of wanting to make a getaway hung around for years.

           Or like Walter said, “We had about as much value as frog spit.”