The Cape Ann Read Online Free PDF Page B

as Catholic mothers. Mama didn’t mind teaching me the words. Not only was she a Catholic mother, but she was also the mother of a future college student; she was concerned that I know every kind of word so that there wouldn’t be a lot of surprises when I started reading college books.
    Mama had washed her face and changed into a cotton dress, but I didn’t think she’d been to bed. She was slow moving and short tempered. Her hair wasn’t combed, and she wore no lipstick. Normally the first thing she did after washing her face was put on lipstick and comb her hair.
    Turning my back and pulling on clean underpants, I asked, “Are you afraid Papa won’t come back?”
    “No,” she said. “He’ll come back.
You’re
not afraid, are you?”
    “No,” I lied. One more lie to add to the inventory of sins I was keeping on a pad I had hidden away. If I didn’t keep track, I’d never remember them all when I got in the confessional next year.
    The nuns had suggested that if we were afraid we’d forget something when we knelt in that dim little closet, we should take with us a list of our sins. We were not to write anything on the paper but sins. The rest of the ritual must be memorized. And no forgetting!
    That very night, asking Mama for a tablet for catechism class, I’d begun my sorry record, which I hid in the bottom drawer of a doll chest that had been Mama’s when she was a child.
    “Have you got your lesson memorized?” Mama inquired, heading me toward the kitchen. There was water heating in the tea kettle, and she poured some into an enamel basin in the sink, then added a little cold from the single faucet.
    “I think so.”
    Soaping a cloth, Mama scrubbed my ears, and after that my face and neck, rubbing me half raw. “A bath tonight,” she said, slipping a favorite dress over my head. She always let me wear one of my favorites to instruction. “For luck,” she said. This was a red onewith little white polka dots and a white collar. Mama had starched it within an inch of its life. I liked the skirt to stand out stiff. It made me feel like I might be able to tap dance. Mama tied the sash in a perfect bow at my back, then fetched my shoes and socks and handed them to me.
    “Come in the living room.” She carried in a chair from the kitchen and, when I had pulled on my shoes and socks, she motioned me to sit on it. Slipping a comb with big teeth from her pocket, she grabbed my
Baltimore Catechism
from the sideboard and handed it to me.
    “Look at that while I get the gum out of your hair.” From her glum, resigned tone, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.
    I’d gotten gum in my hair before but never such a wad. I only hoped she wouldn’t have to cut all the hair off that side of my head. She worked for several minutes with the big-toothed comb, then, grunting in disgust, went to the bedroom for the brush and scissors.
    I was in tears from the pain and from the anticipated disgrace of arriving at instruction with half a head of hair. It was impossible to concentrate on the catechism book while Mama yanked my head around as though she were pulling weeds.
    At length she said, “Look at that,” and held out her hand to show a great, nasty straw pile of hair and gum.
    I put my hand to the side of my head. There was
some
hair still there. Mama finished brushing what was left, then fastened it back with bobby pins and little red bows. I fled to the bedroom for a look in the mirror. Thank God for a clever mama.
    While I downed a bowl of puffed wheat, a dish towel tied around my neck to protect my dress, Mama sat down at the kitchen table. “How many men were at Herbie Wendel’s?” she asked coolly, as if she didn’t really care.
    “Counting Papa, five.”
    “Who were they?” In front of whose wives would she have to hold up her head, pretending that Papa’s losses were unimportant?
    “Mr. Wendel, Mr. Grubb, Mr. Navarin, and Mr. Nelson.”
    “Axel Nelson?” she said with some