Ella of All-of-a-Kind Family Read online

  “Real beauty!” Mama snapped. “Aunt Fanny says Ruthie’s hair is so chopped up, she looks like a shorn sheep. She’s ashamed to show her before people. Whatever gave you the notion in the first place? Aunt Fanny wanted you over there to mind Ruthie, not to be barbers!”

  “First of all, Mama, don’t blame Gertie,” Charlotte said. “She had nothing to do with it. It was me.…”

  Mama paced up and down. “But why? Whatever possessed you?”

  “Well, Ruthie’s hair was flopping into her eyes all the time. It was positively disgraceful! So I decided to do her a big favor and cut her bangs so she wouldn’t get crosseyed. And also, to enhance her beauty at the same time.”

  Henny spiraled a finger alongside her head. “Charlotte with her fanciful ideas!”

  “It was a great idea!” Gertie carried on for Charlotte. “Only for some reason, it just kept coming out lopsided. Charlotte only tried to even it out. So …” Gertie lifted her shoulders, at a loss for further words.

  “But to cut it all off!” Mama exploded. “I never heard of such a thing in my entire life!”

  “In Little Women, Jo cut her hair off to sell it for money,” Charlotte volunteered.

  Henny tittered. “What are you going to do? Start selling hair for a living?”

  Mama shook her head. “Oh, Charlotte, if I thought for one moment that you did this bad thing deliberately, you’d get from Papa the worst licking you ever got in your whole life! Now you go right in and telephone Aunt Fanny and apologize!”

  Charlotte blanched. “Now?”

  “Now!” commanded Mama.

  Charlotte moved toward the telephone on dragging feet, with Gertie trailing after her. Slowly she gave the operator Aunt Fanny’s phone number. Soon her aunt’s voice, loud and irate, came buzzing over the wire. Charlotte listened meekly. When finally Aunt Fanny paused for breath, she began, “I’m sorry.…” But the angry buzzing had already resumed.

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Fanny.…” Charlotte tried again, but the buzzing went right on.

  Charlotte kept looking helplessly at Gertie. After what seemed an eternity, Gertie heard her say contritely, “All right, Aunt Fanny, no more hair-cutting, I promise!”

  She raised her hand as if Aunt Fanny could see her. “And you know what, Aunt Fanny? I won’t take any more money for staying with Ruthie until her hair grows back, no matter how long it takes!”

  3

  Election in the Balance

  Rose plunked down her lunch tray and slid in among the knot of girls seated around a school cafeteria table. “Election for term representative to the General Organization is just a week away. Who’s getting your vote?”

  Lolly spooned up the last remaining beans on her plate. “I don’t know. Who’s running?”

  “There are three candidates this time—Calvin Spencer …”

  “Oh, the good-looking one with curly hair and beautiful eyes,” Hannah gushed.

  “Yes,” agreed Henny, “but he’s awfully stuck on himself. Thinks he’s God’s gift to women.”

  “Still you’ve got to admit he’s great fun in class,” Betty said. “He’s always coming up with some wisecrack.”

  Henny dismissed Calvin with a flip of her hand. “Aw, he’s just a big show-off. Who are the other two?”

  “Jack Berger, the bean pole with the long nose—and Dennis Reilly. You know, the one whose ears stick out.”

  “Yeh,” Henny grinned, “one look at him and you can tell which way the wind blows.”

  The girls burst into hysterics.

  “Not much of a choice,” Jenny remarked. “Not that it matters which one gets elected. It would still be a boy.”

  Rae nodded. “And with a boy representative to the General Organization, most of the activities and programs are always planned for boys.”

  “So why don’t we get a girl to run for a change?” Henny suggested.

  “A girl!” the others chorused.

  “Sure. Why not? Why does it always have to be a boy?” Henny looked around at the startled faces. “What’s the matter? Don’t you think a girl could handle the job?”

  “I guess she could,” Bessie considered. “It’s just that we never thought of it before.”

  “I’m with you, Henny,” Rose cried. “I think it’s a great idea! Let’s try. Even if we don’t win, at least they’ll realize girls have some rights after all.”

  “Who says we can’t win? Don’t forget the boys will have to split their votes three ways, while we’ll have only one candidate.” Henny was getting increasingly enthusiastic. “And if we can get all the girls to pull together, we stand a very good chance of winning.”

  “That’s right,” Mary broke in. “Who’ll we nominate?”

  “Henny, of course,” Rose replied immediately.

  “Wait a minute!” protested Henny. “Why me?”

  “Because you’d be just perfect!” Rae burst out.

  “Besides, it was your idea,” Mary went on. She turned to the others. “Henny’s a great debater. When it comes to an argument, nobody can equal her.”

  “Sure!” Lolly seized on the suggestion. “She’s just like quicksilver. Try to catch her on one point and she’s off like a shot on another. She could hold her own against any one of those candidates!”

  By now everyone was sold on the idea. “Henny, you’ve got to do it!” they coaxed. “We need you.”

  “As term representative,” Jenny tempted, “you’ll get to arrange the athletic events. You’ll have to go out with the teams every time they play against some other high school. Think of all the boys you’ll get to meet!”

  “You’re marvelous in gym,” Lolly piped up. “Who knows? Maybe they’ll even let you play on their basketball team.”

  The girls all ha-ha-ed at such a fanciful notion. When the merriment had subsided, Rose continued her urging. “Come on, Henny, what do you say?”

  Any lingering doubts Henny might have had were slipping away. She felt a heady excitement at the challenge. “Okay, I’ll do it!” she declared. “But I’m going to need lots of help.”

  “You’ll get it!” everyone promised.

  “We’ll have to work fast,” Henny continued. “Remember we’ve only got a week for campaigning.” She was agog with ideas. “We’re going to need lots of posters to hang up. And lots of leaflets to hand out. We’ll have to enlist the help of the art kids to draw them for us.”

  “Henny, you’re marvelous!” Hannah whooped. “The boys are going to get the surprise of their lives.”

  Lolly thought a moment. “I’ve got it! The first thing we’ve got to do is challenge our opponents to a debate. That’ll give our candidate a real chance to shine!”

  Mary laughed gleefully. “Boy, this is going to be some fun!”

  At home everyone was amused over Henny’s running for office, except possibly Papa. “Listen to her! A regular suffragette already! Next thing you know, she’ll be marching in a parade carrying a sign like all those crazy women.”

  “They’re not crazy, Papa,” Henny retorted.

  Papa shook his head doubtfully. “I feel sorry for our country. What’s going to happen when the women start taking over?”

  “It might even be better,” Mama returned mildly.

  Papa clapped a hand to his head in mock horror. “Mama, you too?”

  “Why not? Mama’s a woman,” Ella said. “Equal rights for women. It’s coming, Papa. You can’t stop it. Pretty soon the Suffrage Amendment is going to be submitted to the states. I bet by next year, women will have the right to vote.”

  Papa looked around at his family. “Charlie, with six suffragettes surrounding us, you and I don’t stand a chance.” His voice sounded woebegone, but his eyes were twinkling.

  “The only thing, Henny,” Mama added as an afterthought, “you’re already so busy with your Social Club and your boyfriends, you pay little enough attention to your schoolwork now. What’s going to happen when you have even less time to spare for your lessons?”
<
br />   “Aw Ma, what are you worried about? I get passing marks.”

  “Just about,” Mama acknowledged. “But I’m never quite sure you’re going to make it.”

  “I’ll make it all right, you’ll see. And just think of all the fun I’m going to have meeting lots of new boys,” Henny cried, smiling mischievously.

  When the campaign first got under way, the boys treated it as some kind of joke. “The charge of the Suffragette Brigade,” Calvin yelled, as the girls began putting up posters.

  “That’s just what we need around here, a girl rep,” Jack Berger’s gang jeered. “Instead of a baseball game, she could organize a sewing bee. Wouldn’t that be just dandy?”

  As for Reilly’s supporters, they went around yelling:

  Petticoat Lane

  Gives me a pain.

  The jibes only made the girls redouble their efforts. Every possible moment was spent lining up the girls and even corralling every boy who was willing to listen.

  As election day neared, the boys began to play rough. They defaced the girls’ signs with scribbles and daubs of paint. They handed out leaflets with statements like “How about it, boys? Do you want to join a cooking class?” Posters Henny’s campaigners pinned up in the morning were found lying crumpled and torn on the floor by midday. Even the attractive poster outside their homeroom door was not spared. The pretty girl’s face on it was disfigured by a large black walrus moustache. Underneath someone had penned, “Henrietta, the Suffragette.”

  “Those horrible boys!” Lolly stormed. “I could kill them for this!”

  “Forget it,” Henny told her. “It just proves they’re getting scared.”

  “Okay, so they’re scared,” Hannah snapped. “But how can we go on running a campaign when they’re constantly interfering with us?”

  “Never mind. There’s still the big debate tomorrow,” Rose reminded her. “There they’ll have to meet us on equal ground. It’s all up to you now, Henny.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Henny responded with a confident grin.

  Actually she was more anxious than she cared to admit. Her speech was ready. She’d worked hard over it, then tried it out on Ella and Sarah and felt encouraged when they had pronounced it good. But then one never knew what might happen during the rebuttal period.

  Late afternoon the day of the debate, all the students were assembled in the auditorium. On stage right, Henny, seated beside her campaign manager, Rose, looked across uneasily to the empty chairs on the other side. It was getting late. Where were her opponents?

  “I don’t get it,” she murmured to Rose. “I have a feeling that something’s up.”

  The audience was growing restive. Soon cries of impatience and scattered applause began echoing through the room. “Come on! Let’s get going!”

  “Where are those boys?” Lolly demanded. “Why don’t they show up?”

  “Maybe we’ve scared them off,” ventured Jenny.

  Finally the teacher in charge of the debate said to Rose, “We’d better not wait any longer or the audience will start leaving. Your opponents will just have to lose the debate by default.”

  “All right,” Rose agreed. She stood up. “Fellow students,” she began, raising her hand for attention.

  She never got it. All at once there came the sound of scuffling feet, buzzings, and sudden exclamations. Hilarious guffaws punctuated the air. What was going on?

  Necks craned toward the rear of the auditorium. There stood the missing candidates dressed in regulation girls’ gym bloomers, navy blue and puffed-out pleats! At a signal, they linked arms and came marching down the center aisle with Calvin holding aloft a poster proclaiming in big black letters, “We are the fighting Suffragettes!”

  Up the steps of the stage they stomped, grimacing and tittering in silly-girl fashion. Bowing clumsily, Calvin thrust the poster into an astonished Rose’s hands. Then the three turned their backs on the audience and—allez oop!—each executed a handstand. Their skinny legs projected comically from the bulky bloomers as they teetered unsteadily on their hands. It sent waves of laughter bouncing from wall to wall.

  Utterly taken aback, Henny stood by numbly. She must do something! She could not let them get away with this. But what? Then in a flash, it came to her! Today was gym day. What a lucky break!

  She picked up her schoolbag and dashed off into the wings. Yanking out her own gym bloomers from the bag, she ripped off her skirt and slipped them on. She was back on stage in a jiffy.

  By now the three boys were throwing kisses to the audience and looking mighty pleased with themselves at the commotion they had caused.

  Pushing past them, Henny strode to the front of the stage. She put two fingers to her lips and blew a loud, piercing whistle. Instantly, the audience quieted down, wondering what was going to happen next.

  “Fellow students,” Henny shouted, “this was supposed to be a debate. But if this is the only kind of argument my opponents can come up with, then let ’em try this!”

  Whereupon she executed three perfect cartwheels across the stage floor. Then going into a handstand, she gracefully flipped over backward, landing quietly and smoothly upright on her feet. Arms outstretched, she curtsied gracefully. A roar of approval rose from the audience.

  For a moment, the boys were nonplussed. Then beanpole Jack also attempted a cartwheel. It was done so awkwardly that he knocked over a chair, bumping into his companions so that all three tangled in a heap. The result was that this time everyone appeared to be laughing at them rather than with them.

  “You see,” Henny pointed triumphantly at the crestfallen three. “They tried to turn this meeting upside down and look where they landed!” She pointed to her own feet. “But what we need is a representative with understanding.”

  At which the whole audience, girls and boys, stood up and cheered. “Henny! Henny! Yea, Henny!”

  The day after election, Calvin, Jack, and Dennis approached the table in the cafeteria where Henny’s friends were gathered.

  “Where’s our new General Organization rep?” they inquired.

  “She’s around somewhere,” Jenny replied, warily.

  “That Henny sure is a tough gal to beat,” Calvin admitted grudgingly.

  Rose laughed. “Well, she always was a whiz in gymnastics.”

  “Still, we did have a lot of fun,” Jack said.

  “We did,” Rose agreed. “Only thing I’m sorry about though is that we never did get down to a serious discussion.”

  “What about?” demanded Calvin.

  “Well you fellers have to get smart. You don’t know what girls are like today,” Rose replied. “Remember, when the war was on and there was a great need for workers, women moved right in on the job—in offices, hospitals, factories—every place we can think of.” Her voice got louder and louder. “Now that the war is over, you can’t send us back to the kitchen!”

  “That’s right,” Hannah rushed in. “When women get the right to vote, they’ll run for public office, too!”

  “What do you girls want? A female president?” growled Calvin.

  “Give us one reason why not?” Rose demanded.

  Calvin backed off. “Okay. We’ll argue about that some other time. Here!” He thrust an envelope at Rose. “Give this to Henny!”

  Later Henny read the note to the girls.

  We were fools when we decided to act like fools.

  So we got fooled!

  Congratulations on your victory.

  Calvin Spencer

  Jack Berger

  Dennis Reilly

  “Well,” Henny said with a bright smile, “it proves they’re good sports after all.”

  4

  The Letter

  “No—no!” Professor Calvano insisted. “You’re still singing from the throat! Push the voice up! The tone must come through the head!”

  He put his fingers through his wiry hair so that it stood up like bristles on an angry porcupine.

  “Listen!” Bouncin
g up from the piano stool like a jack-in-the-box, he flung back his head and put his left hand on his chest. Mouth open wide, he sang, “Aah,” his right arm meanwhile describing a slow circle. The note swelled till it resounded throughout the parlor.

  He hopped back onto the stool, his fingers poised over the piano keys. “Now you!” he ordered.

  Ella’s brow furrowed. The correct posture, the proper breath deep from the diaphragm, keeping the voice in the front of the mouth—the clear pronunciation of the foreign words. It was just plain hard work! But she did so love the opera arias. When she managed to sing even a single line without error, that was pure joy. She tried once again.

  Professor Calvano shook his head doubtfully. “Well—so, so. Take a rest, then we do it some more.”

  Ella’s spirits dampened. Slumped in her chair, she watched the professor riffling through a pile of music. What a nervous, jittery person! But he’s really a marvelous teacher. He works so hard with me. These last two years I’ve made a lot of progress, I know. I can feel it. I look forward to my lessons. Dread them, too. He can be pretty frightening the way he’s always demanding the best from me. If he doesn’t get it, he grows furious, making sarcastic remarks till I feel completely crushed.

  She sighed. It isn’t always easy to do one’s best. Especially after a long, dreary day at the office. If only I could devote all my time to just music, what progress I could make. Well, what’s the use even thinking about it? I have to work, else how could I pay for my lessons?

  Gosh, I’m hungry. I wonder what Mama has for dinner.

  “All right,” Professor Calvano broke into her thoughts. “Sing now the aria from The Bohemian Girl.”

  Fatigue miraculously effaced, hunger forgotten, she sang the song she so dearly loved:

  As through the streets

  I wandered onward merrily …

  Her voice emerged clear, the tone velvet smooth, the high notes taken with ease.

  “Stop! Stop!” Professor Calvano yelled. He covered his ears and shook his head from side to side in agony. “I can’t stand it!”