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Updated: September 1, 2025
"You can have your old school." Sally woke with a cry like a kitten's mew and Rose-Ellen lugged her out, balanced on her hip. Mrs. Albi's Michael was the same age, but he would have made two of Sally. Above Sally's small white face her pale hair stood up thinly; her big gray eyes and little pale mouth were solemn.
The rent was a dollar a week, but they could work it out, if they would rather, cleaning up the camp. Grandpa said they'd better work it out, since it might be hard to find jobs near by. Even Rose-Ellen, even Dick and Jimmie, were excited over the laundry tubs in the central building, and more interested in the shower baths.
Grandpa groaned. "Taken away? Us?" gasped Rose-Ellen. "What's all this?" Daddy demanded. He stood in the doorway staring at Grandpa and Grandma, and his bright dark eyes looked almost as unbelieving as they had when Mother slipped away from him. "You can't mean they want to take away our children?"
So Rose-Ellen patted him on the arm as they passed, saying, "Hi, Daddy, I'm after Grampa!" and hop-skipped on toward the old cobbler shop. Before Rose-Ellen was born, when Daddy was a boy, even, Grandpa had had his shop at that corner of the city street. There he was, standing behind the counter in the shadowy shop, his shoulders drooping like Daddy's.
"But all the same, I want for you young-ones to keep away from them. I saw a baby that looked as if it had measles." "If only there was a Center," Rose-Ellen complained, "or if they even had room for us in school. I feel as if I'd scream, staying in this horrid tent so much."
"The Garcias' and Martinezes' houses are better if they are mud and haven't any shade," Rose-Ellen told Grandma. "The walls are so thick that inside they're like cool caves." She and Dick had made friends in the Mexican village with Vicente Garcia and her brother Joe, and with Nico Martinez, next door to the Garcias', and her brothers.
Starting home, he took Rose-Ellen's small damp hand in his big damp one. The sun blinded them as they walked westward, and the heat struck at them fiercely from pavement and wall, as if it were fighting them. Rose-Ellen was strong and didn't mind. She held her head straight to make her thick brown curls hit against her backbone.
"Tommie's was a yaller automobile." "Why'd you have pictures?" asked Jimmie. "I were going on eleven, but I couldn't read," Cissy confessed. Rose-Ellen patted Jimmie stealthily and didn't tell Cissy that he was going on ten and couldn't read either. Cissy went on with her tale of the Center. There was toothbrush and wash-up drill. There were clean play-suits that churches had sent from far cities.
At night, when they weighed in, Grandpa and Daddy each got forty cents, Grandma twenty-five, Dick twenty, and Rose-Ellen fifteen. When he paid them, the foreman said, "No more work here. All cleaned up." "Good land," Grandma protested, her voice shaking, "bring us from Coloraydo for a half day's work?" "Sorry," said the foreman. "First come, first served."
Grandma kept boiling water to irrigate his ear and sterilize the utensils, Rose-Ellen told stories, shouting so he could hear. At night Daddy held him in strong, tired arms and sang funny songs he had learned in his one year of college.
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