Counting on Grace: Chapters 5–10

Delia let me push her bobbin dolly.

The air in the mill is stuffy and linty and sweaty at the same time ‘cause all day long water sprays down on the frames from little hoses in the ceiling. Wet keeps the threads from breaking. The windows are shut tight even in the summer.

The inspector always stops in at the front office and dawdles around there for a while so us kids have time to hide.

When he sees Mamère waiting with me, he finishes fastening on his white apron and straightens that bow tie. It looks kind of puny flopping around next to French Johnny's big thick neck, but he's proud to wear it ‘cause then everybody knows he's second hand, even strangers coming into the mill.

I feel a jolt in my stomach.

Mamère runs six frames. Twelve sides. One hundred and thirty-six bobbins per side. That will keep your feet dancing, girl. We start them up one after another and each frame needs to be doffed at least once a shift.

“You better not mess with it,” I repeat in that Delia voice that thinks it knows everything. I burst out laughing at the prissy pinched look on her face.

I can barely follow the movements as she lifts the full bobbin off with her left hand, drops it in the box on the top of the dolly and lowers the empty bobbin over the spindle with her right hand. Her eye seems to guide her to the tip of each spindle.

Mamère says that left-handed people are touched by the lucky stick. But I don't feel lucky right now when I've got to learn this big bumbling right hand to hold the empty bobbins.

“Ready?” Mamère calls. Her voice sounds peevish. She has already reset the builder, that green metal wheel in the corner of the frame.

“Watch while she jogs the rail.” Mamère taps the foot pedal once, two times, three. “That gets the snarls out. Now pray all the ends are up.”

The frame starts its whirring, spinning work again and I start breathing too even though I didn't know I'd stopped.

It feels like I've got to clear the lint out of my throat before my dinner can make its way down so I stand to the side, hawking and spitting into the handkerchief. Soon my mouth burns raw from working so hard.

Suddenly I miss the feeling of all of us in that room together with the little kids droning away in the front rows and the sun sliding in the open windows and the cough and grumble of the river running over the rocks down at the bottom of the hill.

Now all the kids are scavenging for the biggest lint balls and rolling them in the grease.

We're having a great cotton ball fight when Mamère hoists herself up on the high windowsill and calls, “Grace, enough nonsense,” and we have to stop.

She tells Mrs. Senay what to do about her ailing baby and asks Mrs. Cordeau when Norma will be coming in.

Her clear cool voice rises up to the rafters like a bird let loose.

I'm so lost in my dancing that I don't hear the commotion until Bridget yanks my arm and I finally go still.

French Johnny comes striding down the aisle between two frames.

Then the roving gets stubborn and won't feed properly onto the bobbins.

“Why don't you go clean your own frames?”
He shrugs. “It's more fun tormenting you,” he says.

I'm still catching my breath, waiting for my heart to stop making such a racket.

The rest of the kids start slinking away. Nobody wants to tangle with the teacher more than they have to.

“Having the book in there distracts you,” she says. “You have to pay attention to your work.”

I told her she could tilt her head over to the side so my letters would look straight to her. I told her people and letters can't necessarily sit still or stand the way she wants them to.

This is to inform you that there are underage children working in the cotton mill in the town of North Pownal, Vermont. These children range in age from eight to thirteen.

“That's as far as we got,” Arthur says. “Before you barged in.”

“They investigate places where children are not supposed to be working because they are too young. Believe it or not, there are laws against child labor. They're just not enforced,” Miss Lesley says.

When that inspector comes, we'll just hide in the elevator the way we always do until he leaves the premises.

“We clean the machines on Saturdays. And some other times if the roving gets too bunched up. Delia's got scars on her fingers from the cleaning hook.”
“Perfect,” says Miss Lesley, and I smile. I'm passing the test. “Arthur, put down machine maintenance.”

She writes out another big word for him to copy. It says Anonymous.
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“It means the person writing the letter don't wish to be known,” Arthur says.

I'll mail this next week when I take the trolley down to Massachusetts to see my sister.

Massachusetts is one state that enforces their child labor laws.

But back in the 1840s, girls like Lucy couldn't wait to get to the mills. They were running away from the drudgery of the farms.