across the back of a pew. Dorrie was the only person Elise had met who was outspoken enough to tell Helene Price when she was flat or in the wrong key.
Elise followed her gaze, and found Helene standing near the front of the church talking to the preacher, Reverend Satterwhite.
“Thinks she’s so high-and-mighty,” Dorrie was saying, bringing Elise’s eyes back to her. “I remember when she was just Helen, growin’ up at the edge of town. Her family was about th’ poorest I know of, ’cause my mama used t’ feed them young’ns more than their own folks ever fed them—then she married Bert Price, and him th’ boss of th’ supply room, and she was suddenly Helene, all high and mighty, but she ain’t nothin’ but Helen, no matter what she thinks of herself.”
Elise found that she liked Dorrie Keith as heartily as she detested Helene, and was surprised when she learned the two were distant cousins.
“She just about lived at our house growin’ up,” Dorrie told Elise one day, “though t’ hear her talk now you’d ’a thought we were her poor relations—tried t’ give me a old wore-out dress of hers not too long ago, as if I’d have some old rag she’d wore—”
Dorrie lived with her husband, Clarence, and their four sons only a few streets away from Elise and Janson in the mill village, and Elise began walking to church on Sunday mornings and afternoons and Wednesday evenings by way of Dorrie’s house.
It was nice to finally have a friend in the mill village, even if that friend was old enough to be Elise’s own mother, nice to have another woman to talk to about being pregnant, and about what having a baby would be like.
Elise sat in Dorrie’s kitchen late on a Thursday afternoon in March. Janson had left for his shift in the card room at the mill and would not be home until early the next morning, and Elise had been looking for company when she had walked the few streets to Dorrie’s house. Dorrie had just gotten in from the shift she worked in the spinning room, and was beginning supper for her family, but she had been uncharacteristically silent almost from the moment she had met Elise at the door. Dorrie was peeling potatoes for supper, her eyes going to the door repeatedly, until Elise at last asked her what was wrong.
“They sent for Clarence just as soon as we got in from our shift, told him t’ bring Wheeler James t’ th’ mill office,” Dorrie said, meeting Elise’s eyes from where she sat just opposite Elise at the old table then looking away again. “Men—” she said, the word coming out almost as if it were a curse. She peeled viciously at a potato, taking away chunks of white with the peelings, “they think we got nothin’ t’ say when they go t’ talk somethin’ important. Women’re there t’ birth ’em, an’ bury ’em, an’ in between we get t’ clean their bottoms an’ bandage their heads an’ put ’em t’ bed if they’ve had a drunk—they sent for Wheeler James an’ for Clarence with no mention ’a me, as if I ain’t been in th’ mill every bit as long as Clarence, as if I ain’t Wheeler James’s mama, as if I ain’t got nothin’ t’ say, or even th’ right t’ know—”
“Why would they want to see Wheeler James at the mill office?” Elise asked. Wheeler James was Dorrie’s oldest son, only a couple of months younger than Elise herself, very tall and thin, with a quiet manner that did little to show the brilliant mind that Elise had found behind his brown eyes and shy smile. He seemed to know something about almost any subject she could bring up, and could do mathematics in his head that she could never hope to do with pencil and paper and unlimited time.
“Mr. Eason offered him a night shift in th’ twister room at th’ mill, soon as school’s out this year,” Dorrie said, an odd tone in her voice.
“A night shift—for the summer?”
“No, permanent.” Dorrie’s eyes moved back toward the door, and Elise realized she was waiting for her husband and son to return from the mill office.
“But, there’s no way he can work all night and go to school the next day.”
“I know that.”
“But, he shouldn’t quit school; there’s so much he could do with his life. He—”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Dorrie asked, anger coming to her brown eyes and into her voice as she turned to look at Elise once again. “Don’t you think I know how smart he is? Don’t you think I know that he’s got in him t’ be anythin’ he wants t’ be—I’ve knowed it since he was talkin’ in complete sentences at two, and readin’ books when he was only four. I’ve watched him grow up, thinkin’ every day, dreamin’ every day, about him finishin’ school, not just the village school here, but goin’ on beyond it, maybe even college—”
“Then, why—” But Elise’s words were cut short as the door that led from the rear porch into the kitchen opened, and Clarence entered followed by Wheeler James. Clarence did not bring his eyes to his wife, but turned instead to take the battered hat from his head and hang it on a peg by the door. Wheeler James walked past him without a word, not looking at his mother or Elise. He crossed the room and went through the doorway into the middle room of their half of the house, closing the door silently behind himself. Elise watched him go, then turned her eyes back to Clarence and Dorrie, seeing a look of what seemed to be almost physical pain pass between them.
“Wheeler James comes int’ th’ mill just as soon as school’s out this year,” Clarence said, quietly.
For a moment Dorrie did not speak. She still held the small knife in her hand, the bowl of half-peeled vegetables now forgotten on the table before her. “What if he went t’ live with Aunt Min? It wouldn’t be th’ same as livin’ here, but he could finish school, an’ then maybe—”
But Clarence was shaking his pale head. “It won’t work, Dorrie. If he don’t come int’ th’ mill this summer, Mr. Eason’ll put us out ’a this house, an’ out ’a th’ mill—we got th’ other boys t’ think about. We can’t be losin’ our jobs an’ th’ roof over our heads.”
“He wouldn’t do that, not just because Wheeler James won’t come int’ th’ mill. There’s plenty ’a people willin’ t’ take a shift, grown men with families, an’ women who are needin’ th’ work. One boy can’t really matter that much—” But, even as Dorrie said the words, Elise could see she did not believe them.
Clarence was staring at his wife, a look of pity in his light-colored eyes, and Elise wondered who the pity was for: Wheeler James, who wanted nothing more than to finish school, Dorrie who was seeing her dreams for her son ripped apart before her eyes, or Clarence, who had dreamed of something better for his sons. “There’s nothin’ we can do, Dorrie. Mill houses are for mill workers, and mill workers’ children are expected t’ come int’ th’ mill in their own time—we’ve always knowed that. Mr. Eason ain’t gonna let Wheeler James go against what’s been done all these years, even if it means puttin’ us all out in th’ street.”
Or burning a cotton crop, or costing a man the land his parents had fought and died to give to him, just to keep the same kind of control over the farming community that he had over the mill village, Elise thought. Her eyes came to rest on Dorrie and on the knife Dorrie still held only an instant before Dorrie’s free hand closed over the blade.
Elise rose to her feet, seeing a flicker of physical pain pass across Dorrie’s features, and then stopped as Dorrie opened her fingers outward to drop the knife and stare at the blood spreading across her open palm. Clarence was suddenly kneeling beside her, pulling a white handkerchief from his pocket to wrap it around her hand.
“We
