Curtis, part twenty-six

Leta wished she had a better recipe. Although she had many homemaking skills, baking bread was not one of them. Up until that Wednesday morning, she had been able to feed biscuits to her new husband Curtis and his brood of 12 children, but each batch was small, and they needed more. They needed bread. As a city girl, she had always had bread purchased from the bakery. On occasion, an aunt or her mother would make bread, but this was a rare occurrence. In her adult life, Leta tried to make bread or rolls only a few times, and each incident was unsuccessful. She did not have the endurance to let the bread rise properly, or she failed to adjust the room temperature enough to warm the yeast enough for it to be active.

Her daughter Vivian was far more successful at this kind of baking, and Leta had often enjoyed the loaves her daughter made. She wished her daughter was with her, or she could at least telephone. But Curtis had no telephone, and Leta’s task was to make bread.

The morning was still new. The cows milked. The children that could go were off to school. The breakfast dishes were all put away. The eggs gathered. The chickens fed. The rain had graciously stopped at some point during the night. The sun was shining. The oven was warm. Curtis and his older boys were hammering on the roof to hopefully patch the leaks.

Leta was standing at the table. She had assembled all the necessary ingredients: flour, milk, lard, butter, sugar, salt and the yeast. The water was hot, but too hot she feared. The measuring cups and spoons were laid out. She had ten loaf pans, three large bowls and several towels. Her apron was pulled tightly to her. She rubbed her hands against her apron, as if to wipe off any food parts she had collected from her labors.

“Are you all right, ma’am?” Curtis’s oldest girl asked. She was standing near the backdoor, having returned from the cellar where she had transported the jars of applesauce they made the previous afternoon.

“There you are,” Leta responded with a half-smile. “I’ve been waiting for you. Please bring me the hot water from the stove, so we can get our yeast working.”

“Water?” the girl questioned.

“It’s right there in the pot,” Leta answered.

“Yes, ma’am,” the girl said and crossed the room.

“Wash your hands first,” Leta instructed.

“Did you already scald the milk, ma’am?”

“The milk?” Leta questioned and then caught herself. “Oh dear, I completely forgot. Why don’t I do that while you prepare the yeast? I figure we’ll make 12 loaves today.”

Leta was relieved. Scalding milk was something she could do. Getting the water temperature perfect to activate the yeast made her anxious.

After washing her hands, the girl took the pot of water from the stove.

“It’s still a little too hot, ma’am,” the girl noted. “But that’ll give us time to scald the milk.”

“Of course,” Leta said. “You seem to know quite a bit about bread making.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ve been making bread with my mama for as long as I can remember. Ever since I was little.”

Then the girl became quiet.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” she apologized anxiously. “I hope I didn’t upset you by talking about my mama. Papa says we’re not—“

“—Nonsense!” Leta exclaimed. “You may talk about your mother as much as you like.”

For the first time in the few days that they had known each other, Leta saw her stepdaughter relax.

As they continued to make the bread, Leta was impressed with how comfortable the girl was at this chore, so much so that Leta encouraged her to take the lead. The girl was already feeling confident, and Leta’s compliments made her want to do a good job. This enabled Leta to become a supervisor with gentle advice and compliments, and learn at the same time.

To be continued.

Curtis, part twenty-five

Leta stood in the middle of the kitchen with her arms akimbo and frowned. The assortment of children that had been working on various projects all stopped while she tended to their youngest sibling’s burn. The oldest girl was sitting with her sister at the large table, soaking the little one’s hand in a bowl of cool water. The little one whimpered softly. Before the emergency, Leta had been speaking with her new husband in the living room. Without consulting or even informing her he had taken part of the miserably rainy afternoon to go to the market for groceries. She had wanted to go to the market herself and was irritated by his behavior. Then, while she was tending to his child, he and his oldest boy had quietly brought all of the supplies they purchased—mostly cooking supplies—into the kitchen, stacked them in the corner and then disappeared.

For the first time since she had married Curtis, she wanted to walk out the door of the shanty he called a house, wipe her feet on the miserable excuse for a front porch and head north to her own little room in the Toledo boarding house where she had been living before she married the man. At the very thought, she felt a kind of release from the relentless body of need, responsibility and labor she was currently living in. That one simple act would relieve her of this tremendous burden. She could be sitting in her chair, sipping bourbon and watching the rain through the window.

“Ma’am?” the oldest girl said quietly, distracting Leta from her contemplation.

Leta saw that all the children had stopped their chores and were staring at her.

“Okay, children,” she declared. “Time to get back to work.”

When Curtis returned to the house later in the evening, he said not a word, and she did not want to scold him in front of the children. Besides, being trapped in the house had made them all so irritable that any spark would create complete bedlam. The heavy fire Leta kept in the wood stove, the smell of cooked apples and fresh beef and gravy with a steaming bowl of mashed potatoes provided a welcome coziness, but Leta knew that the slightest comment, gesture or glance could disrupt the tentative calm.

After they had eaten, most of the children attempted to scatter as they had the previous night, but this time Leta was prepared.

“Hold it!” she commanded. “No one is leaving the kitchen until he has cleared his plate from the table and put it in the bin of water beside the sink.”

Several of the boys looked at their father imploringly, but Curtis, too, realized that there was tension in the room, even if he did not know why, and he simply shrugged his shoulder lightly.

“After you do that, I want you to light a fire in the fireplace,” he added. “We need to clear out some of this dampness.”

The room was getting dark and the rain renewed its relentless battering.

“And someone needs to empty all the pots,” Leta added, referring to the variety of pails and pots that were collecting water from the leaks, “before they overflow.”

While Leta could feel the tension rise in the little shack of a house, the children followed her instructions. The boys emptied all the pots and started a fire in the fireplace. Three of the girls washed and dried the dishes. The oldest girl put the smaller children to bed. And her husband checked on the animals.

An hour later they were all in bed.

To be continued.

Curtis, part twenty-four

While she had yet to develop any particular emotional connection to her new husband Curtis’s 12 children, having only just met them a day earlier, the child’s scream seized her mothering instinct. She was in the living room with her husband and one of his older sons about to launch into an argument, and immediately all thoughts of the disrespectful disregard being perpetrated toward her were replaced by a child’s urgent need.

She raced into the kitchen to find Curtis’s oldest girl carrying the youngest girl, only three, toward the sink. The older girl was holding the forearm of the little one in one hand and pointing the hand toward the sink.

“Water!” she shouted, and one of the other children started pumping water. By the time Leta reached them, the older one had the little one’s hand under the running water.

“What happened?” Leta asked.

“I had her take some of the apples to put in the pot. She dropped one, and burned herself picking it up,” the older girl answered.

“Let me see,” Leta instructed and reached for the child’s hand.

“No!” the little girl screamed and pulled her hand away.

“Now, Willa, you know she needs to see it. Let’s show her,” the older girl directed. She firmly forced the child’s hand toward Leta.

Leta took it gently in her own for examination. The palm was red, and the fingers a slightly deeper red. There was no indication of blistering.

Tears were still flowing down the girl’s cheeks, and she was whimpering, partly in fear, Leta suspected.

“Well, now, that’s not too bad at all,” she said. “It’s going to sting for a little while.”

She had the older girl set the little one onto the table, filled a bowl with water and instructed the child to keep her hand in the bowl.

“Do you think you can do that?” Leta asked.

The little girl just stared at her.

“Sure she can,” the older girl said confidently, as she followed Leta’s directions with her baby sister. Initially, she had to exert some effort to separate herself from the clinging child.

“You know, when my son was little, he burned himself several times,” Leta said. “When he got excited about things, he would forget to think, and then he burned himself. But he always healed and so will you. You’ll be just fine. You just sit here, all right?”

The little girl nodded. But when her older sister pulled away, she grabbed her and started to cry again.

“Sorry, ma’am,” the older girl apologized with a strained look.

“That’s all right,” Leta said gently. “You just stay her with her for a little while. We’ll manage.”

“So, Curtis…” Leta continued turning her attention to the children’s father whom she had presumed followed her into the kitchen to investigate the child’s scream. She was surprised to find that he wasn’t in the room.

“Curtis?”

To be continued.

Curtis, parts twenty-one through twenty-three

The heavy rain that had started in the middle of the night continued throughout the day, and Leta was miserable. While the old wood stove kept the kitchen as warm and cozy as possible, all of her plans and intentions were shelved. Instead, she, the oldest girl and one of the boys spent their entire day emptying pots and water buckets that served as receptacles for the ten or so leaks in the house. The girl—Betsy—was primarily assigned to regularly mop the water running down the wall in the girls’ bedroom. As they had no formal mop, Leta gave her a urine-stained child’s dressing gown she had found on the floor and a bucket.

She strung a clothesline through the kitchen to hang wet coats, clothes and rags, but with such a large brood—twelve children, her husband and herself—it was quite a challenge to fit everything. Even she had been out into the rain three times in the morning—to milk the cows, feed the chickens and gather eggs, and once to the outhouse.

The backyard was all mud, and they all tracked it into the house, despite her plea that they leave their shoes at the door. So she had a small shovel, bucket and rag beside the door to keep the kitchen as maintained as she possibly could.

This was quite a task, as the teenaged boys tramped in and out throughout the day.

At least, she was able to send seven of the twelve children off to school. However, even that was a challenge, as she had neglected to consider that they all would need to take lunch with them. With no bread in the house, she made three more batches of biscuits, filled them with raspberry jam she had one of the girls retrieve from the cellar, and added a small apple for each. They barely caught the bus.

The littlest child refused to brave the rain and promptly peed through her clothes onto the floor. This required a quick stripping and bathing of the child, as well as washing all of her soiled clothes. Leta had the older girl bundle the little one in a towel and put her in a chair by the fire until her clothes were dry. In the meantime, she washed the bedpan from beneath her own bed and put it in the corner of the kitchen.

The four-year-old boy was greatly relieved, because he didn’t like to go out into the rain either. Having received permission to use the indoor receptacle, he became very eager to assist Leta. This was good, for she needed someone to help empty the pails and pots she was using to collect the water of the eight leaks throughout the house. While the filled pans were too heavy for him, he could return the empties back.

For lunch, she fed everyone biscuits with jam, a meal that made her already irritable companions obviously more unpleasant.

“Curtis,” she explained to her husband, “I’ve been practically stuck in the house all morning. We can’t even get to the garden. It’s one giant mud pit out there.”

“It’s a farm, Mrs. Curtis,” he chided. “A little rain never hurt anyone.”

“Well,” she said brusquely, “we’re out of wood. You or one of the boys needs to bring some more in or it’s going to get cool and damp in here pretty quickly.

“Betsy can do that.”

And then he abruptly stood, grabbed his coat and hat and walked out of the house.

“What about the leaks?” she called after him.

Betsy and the little ones were staring at her.

“What?” she asked in frustration.

“Papa don’t like to be talked back to, ma’am,” Betsy said.

Regardless, the heavy rain continued, keeping Leta and the children quite busy. Fortunately, the girl fetched enough wood from the pile out back to keep the kitchen warm and cozy and stave off the damp. But Leta felt far from productive. And she had so many plans to transform the dirty, rickety house into a clean and pleasant home for her new husband and, by extension, his twelve children.

That he had twelve children became extremely apparent later in the afternoon when the school bus stopped out front, and the number crammed into the house increased from four to eleven. Further, the new arrivals were all wet, mud-coated and hungry.

While Leta was arranging their coats and hats on the clotheslines she had strung throughout the kitchen, one of the girls grabbed the basket of biscuits sitting on the counter and passed them out to the others.

“Biscuits again?” one of the twins griped. “Biscuits, biscuits, all we got around here is biscuits!”

“Hush up,” one of the older girls ordered, “you know Papa don’t like backtalk.”

Still, they devoured them all, the older ones having two each. The portioning of the bread raised tempers, and they were already irritable. They began to pinch, poke and slap each other, and Leta understood that such bickering would soon escalate unless she put a stop to it.

“Here, here,” Leta said, “that’s enough of that.”

They didn’t listen at all. The four-year-old pressed against her, either out of sympathy for her plight or simply to use her as a shield for the upcoming sibling battle.

Leta gritted her teeth and raised her voice a little, “I said, that’s enough of that.”

Still, the children continued, their volume and agitation increasing.

Finally, Leta could refrain no longer. She lifted a large skillet and slammed it hard onto the stove.

“Stop it!” she ordered.

The children froze where they were and stared with gaping mouths.

“Now that I have your attention,” Leta said, “we can get some things accomplished around here.”

She couldn’t remember any of their names, so she just pointed.

“You two are now in charge of all of the leaks. I want you to empty whatever pots and pails we’re using to collect the drips into the large tub over there in the corner.”

“What do we do when we’re finished?” one questioned.

“You won’t be,” she answered.

She pointed to the second oldest girl. “You are in charge of clothes and coats.”

The girl looked at her with confusion.

“That means rinsing out the muddy clothes and hanging them on the line, taking down the dry clothes and coats and putting them away. You’re also in charge of keeping the floor clean. There’s water on the stove, but I’d put another pot on there if I were you.

“You two are in charge of fetching apples from the cellar,” she continued. Use these pots. And I don’t want you tracking mud into the kitchen, so you will stand at the back door and hand off your full pots to her, and she will dump them in the sink. I think about eight trips should do it. I’m going to be making some applesauce.

“Now, who’s left?

One boy, the oldest girl and her little guy raised their hands.

“You,” Leta said, pointing to the boy, “are in charge of gathering all the dirty dishes you can find. I’ll put some water on and then you will be washing and drying them and putting them away.”

“But that’s women’s work!” he protested.

“Ma’am,” the oldest girl added, “I can do that.”

“No,” Leta said, “I need you to help me peel the apples. I think he can manage.”

“But papa says—“ the boy began.

“—I am the boss of this kitchen,” Leta interrupted firmly, “and you will do what I say.”

Then she addressed the two youngest.

“And I have special jobs for you,” she said. “We are going to have lots of apple peelings that need to be taken from the sink and put into that pail over there. Do you think you can manage?”

They nodded.

“Can’t I have a man’s job?” the disgruntled boy mumbled.

Leta ignored him. “We all have our jobs. Now let’s get to work!”

Soon after the kitchen was humming with activity. Leta had assigned everyone tasks, and for the most part, they pursued them. One of the older boys was displeased with his doing dishes assignment and disappeared out the back door, leaving the dirty dishes that were scattered around the living room for another day. Leta was too busy herself to notice. She and the oldest girl were peeling and dicing apples that she set to cooking on a large pot.

At four-thirty, her husband Curtis and one of the older boys barreled through the front door with a large sac of flour, a sac of corn meal, a sac of oatmeal, a large tin of lard, coffee, and a sizable piece of beef.

Leta heard them, dropped what she was doing and ran into the living room to learn the cause of the commotion. Several of the children followed her.

“What is going on here?” she asked.

“Just bringing in some items from the market, Mrs. Curtis,” her husband said as he dropped the bag of oatmeal onto the floor.

“You went to the market?” she inquired.

“Just to pick up some stuff we need,” her husband answered. “Couldn’t do much else with all this rain.”

“But I wanted to go to the market with you!” Leta protested.

“And we brought you something, ma’am,” the older boy said, as he handed her a full sac.

“Really?” she said, feeling less dismayed.

She opened the bag to find it full of several blocks.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Yeast,” her husband answered. “For making bread. Biscuits are good. Bread is better.”

Leta was furious. This was not a gift. It was more work for her, and furthermore, work she was unaccustomed to doing. She had not made bread since she was a little girl with her mother, and even then all she did was assist. In addition, her husband’s making the surreptitious excursion into town and the market without informing her while leaving her trapped in the house with two handfuls of children during a downpour was particularly irritating.

“Now see here—“ she began with her voice raised, but that was the most that she was able to speak before a scream erupted from the kitchen.

Leta instinctively turned her attention to the source and ran from the living room to investigate.

To be continued.