Ivy of the Negatives

MALDY was away for the afternoon. That was a very rare thing, for Maldy clung to the place as if it were a citadel left to her guarding. She held all visiting in contempt, — partly because of her own long experience with visitors, — and as for her scanty shopping, she summarily relegated that to my mother, her only requirements in garments being that they should wear well and should look just like her last ones. But at one point my mother demurred: she would not buy Maldy’s shoes, — so she said after a few experiments, — and have her hobbling about in toepinching or heel-rubbing foot-leather. So twice a year, after Maldy’s needs had for many days been pointed out to her, she, with many postponements and great final reluctance, went to town with my mother. This was one of those occasions.

She had looked back many times before she was out of sight, and we, out of sheer kindliness to her, had maintained a virtuous state of conspicuous idleness on the front porch as long as she could see us. It would be a comforting vision for her to carry with her to the unacceptable experiences of the afternoon.

With Maldy out of sight and a change of atmosphere, we immediately relaxed. Meditation fell upon us. We were not really casting about for anything lawless to do; but still so rare an occasion as this deserved some unwonted employment. It would be unappreciative and tame not to use it appropriately. Uneasiness sat even on Henry, while we all tacitly and inactively awaited a worthy inspiration.

Our meditation was interrupted by the appearance of Ivy Hixon, the daughter of one of the renters, coming on one of her borrowing errands. I had heard my father say that the Hixons were practical Socialists; I don’t know what he meant, but it was obviously connected with borrowing customs. Ivy now carried a black-cracked teacup in her hand.

‘Mom wanted to know would your ma borrow her some saleratus,’ she delivered herself.

Questioning revealed that she wanted some baking soda. I arose with as good an imitation of my mother’s air as I could manage, and led the way into the house. Mary followed us, and finally John. Henry, who found no delight in the freckled Ivy, and had in fact compared her appearance to that of a grass-burr, sent an indifferent glance after us and then took himself off to the stables. For Henry the company of horses never staled.

In the big store-room off the kitchen — a mere pantry could not hold stores for a household of our numbers — we found the soda, and with as many manners as I could take on, I gave Ivy a liberal helping.

Ivy lingered to look around. ‘ You ’ve got lots of things to eat,’ she said.

That had never seemed to me a cause for pride, but I tried to look affluent. However, I thought it better to edge Ivy back into the kitchen. My mother never talked to the renter women about the things we had. But even in the kitchen Ivy found much to comment on and linger over. I was uneasy at first; my mother was full of kindly attentions to the renter families, but the children never came to the house much. However, that prohibition appeared to belong to Maldy’s administration, and to allow Ivy to remain for a while seemed to be a privilege of the day. Soon we were all talking freely, and enjoying Ivy’s admiration of the number and size of our kitchen utensils. She applauded the kitchen stove especially. Maldy’s stove was no doubt a thing to admire, although at that time, not having the housekeeping point of view, we did not realize its praiseworthiness.

The fire had been left, in Maldy’s hurried after-dinner departure. Even its heat, as we assisted Ivy to admire it, seemed of a peculiarly efficient sort. Assuming technical knowledge, we displayed dampers and drafts and oven-depths. Ivy looked appreciatively into the still warm oven.

‘Mom made a cake onst,’ she said, ‘when Uncle Jake’s folks come.’

It was not for us to speak of cakes.

‘Can you cook?’ she asked me.

‘Some,’ I answered conservatively. I had once mixed up corn-bread under Maldy’s impatient direction.

‘I can fry side-meat, and potatoes, and make saleratus biscuits.’

We had heard that renters lived chiefly on hot biscuit; when I add that they called bread ’light bread’ always, I have sufficiently indicated their social standing in our eyes.

‘We could make a cake right now,’ said Ivy. She spoke as one suggesting an enterprise, but a merely natural one to undertake.

I was silent, as of course Mary was also.

Said John in a moment, ‘Let’s make a cake.’

John had no culinary self-respect to preserve. Anyway, he was thinking less of the adventure than of the desirable result.

‘You put eggs in it, and milk and lots of sugar and flour and butter if you got it, and lard if you ain’t,’ said Ivy glibly. ‘I bet you folks got all them things.’

‘ Oh, yes,’ I answered hastily. ‘ We ’ve got everything.’

That seemed to be acquiescence, and we stood somehow committed to the undertaking. Anyhow adventure, the more lawless the better, had been calling to us.

However, Ivy Hixon was not going to dictate to us in our own kitchen. Having made the suggestion, her officiousness expanded and threatened to take control of us all. I prepared to assert myself.

‘You beat the eggs first,’ said Ivy. ‘Mom took three.’

While I considered, Mary, the methodical, climbed to a shelf and brought down a cook-book. The possession of a cook-book was merely a concession to convention on Maldy’s part, for she was never seen to use it and had been heard to speak contemptuously of it. Mary’s little forefinger traveled down the index column to cakes.

‘There’s a good many,’ she said. ‘What kind do we want? Here’s Brown Stone Front and Nancy Hanks and Five Egg and Good White Cake and Jelly Cake and Chocolate Layer and Marble and Fairy Lily —’

‘Let’s have that,’ I said.

Mary turned to it. ‘Whites of seven eggs, cup and a half of sugar,’ she began.

‘What do you do with the yolks?’ I interrupted. I had supposed that an egg was a unit in cooking.

Mary laboriously followed through the list of items and figures. ‘It don’t say,’ she said.

‘Mom put ’em in,’said Ivy. ‘Mom’s cake was yallow. It was n’t no lily cake,’ she finished contemptuously. With the advent of the cook-book authority seemed likely to slip from her. ‘Mom put three whole eggs in hern.’

‘Let’s make a big cake,’ said John.

‘Read the five-egg one,’ I dictated.

‘Five eggs beaten separately —’ began Mary.

‘That’s awful funny,’ said Ivy.

We all looked dubious, in fact.

Mary finished out the proportions of the cake, — conventional enough, I suppose. The final statement, that the recipe would make a very large cake, was decisive for every one.

‘All right,’ I said briskly.

I really was not, for my part, eager for the result, but the situation began to please me.

‘John, you fix up the fire, and don’t take Maldy’s cobs. Mary, we’ve got to wash our hands first.’

That was not sheer virtue; a look at Ivy’s had suggested it. Ivy joined us in common ablution, and I think saw the complexion of her hands for the first time in many a day.

‘We must clean our finger-nails,’ added Mary gently, to my surprise.

Ivy plainly thought that unnecessary, but followed suit, matching the novel enterprise from her own experience, however, with, ‘ Mom digs out the baby’s nails sometimes.’

But that concession to elegance over, Ivy quickly resumed her place. I turned from the towel to find her setting out a flat crock for a mixing-bowl, a row of five tea-cups, and a fork.

‘What are those for?’ I asked.

‘To beat the eggs in. The book says so.’

I had never seen a process like that, and was doubtful; but still, many an operation went on in the kitchen on which I did not trouble to cast my eye. I was not in a position to contradict, but I tried at least to awe Ivy by reaching down an egg-beater instead of the fork. Ivy looked at it a moment, tested its movement and, unimpressed, accepted it as a matter of course. She hung over the cook-book, business in her mien, energy radiating from her elbows.

Nature had dealt but meagrely with Ivy. Her hair was sandy,—sandy to the touch, too, I fancied, — her face was sandy, her hands looked sandy. Her dress, to my embarrassment, was an old one of my own; I tried to act as if unconscious of the fact. It hung loosely from her round shoulders and—although she was nearly as old as I — was far too long for her; but as she was barefooted, that was a good thing. Her scratched feet looked sandy too. Her hair was tied with a white string, which was braided in for two or three inches from the end. I had suggested that means of security to Ellen when she braided my hair, but she did not accept the suggestion, although it would doubtless have saved me from many a reproof. Whether because of this device or not, Ivy’s scrawny little braid turned sharply outward from her meagre shoulders and, with her quick, jerky movements, bobbed about like a question-mark incessantly questioning. Before we got through with our enterprise, that curled-up arc of hair seemed to me to be making the cake, it was so active, so ubiquitous.

Ivy turned briskly from the cookbook and disappeared into the storeroom. She was back almost instantly.

‘Say, there ain’t but six eggs, and if we’d take them they’d know for sure. You go and get some more. I bet there’s a plenty.’

Dignity compelled me to pass the order on to John. Assuming initiative, I proceeded to get out the other ingredients, but always with Ivy at my elbow, making additional suggestions.

‘When you’re gettin’ get a plenty. That’s what Aunt Em says. But Mom says when you ain’t got no money — Say, ain’t you folks got lots of sugar! Say, you could have a cake every day.’

Her eyes saw every article in the store-room, and her tongue commented without trammel. Between times she issued orders with freedom and decision. I was always just going to, but Ivy steadily forestalled me. It seemed as if, whenever I turned to do a thing, Ivy’s arc of braid was always bobbing just ahead of me. Information which I imparted to her became her own as completely as if it had never been mine. Within a few minutes she knew all the household equipment as well as Mary and I put together. It need not be supposed that I acquiesced readily in this system of precedence; but when there is no crevice in the front of authority where one can interpose opposition, and when one is hampered by hospitality besides, where is one going to begin to assert one’s independence?

The mixing-spoon was hardly ever out of Ivy’s hands. She stirred and beat and sifted and stirred, in a housewifely ecstasy of creation. The words ‘a plenty’ rolled lusciously from her tongue constantly when she caught sight of our household stores. Only steady self-control kept her from altering the proportion of ingredients, when abundance of butter or sugar came into view. It seemed a pity not to use more when there was ‘a plenty.’ Her imagination reached forward, and she hinted at something else to be done when the cake was off our hands. But this time even John did not rise to the suggestion.

I should not have supposed that one person could find sufficient orders for three. I found myself obeying in a sort of bewilderment. Mary was kept busy washing dishes, because, as Ivy said, the elders would not want to find the kitchen ’all gaumed up when they come back.’ It did seem wise to remove our traces. The eggs were beaten separately — that is, individually — and the process took some time. John thought it unnecessary but Ivy overruled him with the words of the book. For one of comparatively limited acquaintance with literature, Ivy had remarkable reverence for the printed word. She seemed to take pride in having cooking thus connected with her stinted accomplishment of reading.

At last everything was in, stirred and beaten, and beaten and stirred. Everybody, even John, had been allowed to take a hand at this; but it was Ivy’s freckled little arms which gave the last loving strokes. At this moment Henry strolled in.

We had got so used to Ivy that we had forgotten to miss Henry. But John, going out to find another egg to replace one which somebody had dropped on the floor, — we regretted it, but Ivy said there were plenty more, — had mentioned to Henry that an enterprise was afoot within. After a little time for consideration, Henry decided to enter. He came loafing in, his hands in his pockets and a general air of mature leisure about him. I had just got out a cake-pan and Ivy had taken it from me and was buttering it with flying whisks of her fingers. She was putting a good deal of butter on it.

Henry eyed the process a moment with a remotely critical air. I think it was the first time he had noticed the operation at all, but it was for him to suggest improvement now that he was here.

‘You’re putting too much butter on that,’ he said briefly, without introduction.

Ivy paused and looked at him, every freckle darting out surprise. She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand and eyed him above her buttery fingers.

‘You never made no cake,’ she answered .

‘Cake should n’t taste of butter,’ said Henry, speaking calmly but succinctly, as an expert authority. ‘It’ll make it fall,’ he added.

Ivy, determined not to be impressed, continued to eye him as she ran her fingers round and round the pan. Henry took one hand from its pocket, lifted the mixing-spoon and let the batter drip from it while he scrutinized the compound intelligently.

‘It’s too thin,’ he delivered judgment.

‘It’s just like the book says, I guess,’ returned Ivy forcibly.

Ivy was really misnamed. We were all responsible for the cake, but Ivy seemed to be its natural defender.

His attention called to the cookbook, Henry turned to peruse it. He wore the air of a passing authority who had no personal interest in pointing out error. He did not keep us waiting long, however, before he spoke again.

‘Lots of cakes have raisins in them. Let’s put raisins in this.’

Let us! Even we who knew Henry well had never seen him adopt an exploit with greater promptness. But then we were used to Henry; many a time had he gathered us to his banner as sheep to a cause. Ivy alone found him a novelty.

‘The book never said nothin’ about puttin’ in no raisins,’ she said. ‘This ain’t, that kind of cake.’

With the air of one who was bloodied but spiritually unbowed, she stirred the cake again and bade me look at the fire. A few minutes before she would have given the order to John. Whether she acknowledged it or not, masculinity seemed to be in a stage of readjustment.

Mary, returning, reported that there were no raisins in store. It was embarrassing to us to admit that there was anything we did not have. Henry considered. Was there a substitute? He detained the putting of the cake into the oven with a glance and a wave of the hand, while he meditated.

‘Raisins are nothing but grapes,’ mused John, ‘but grapes are n’t ripe yet.’

Henry turned his eye on the window. The rest of us indicated the stages of our mental processes by discussion. Henry merely announced his results.

‘We’ll get some cherries,’he said.

Ivy, who had been impatiently heeling and toeing beside the kitchentable, burst forth, ‘I never heard of no cherries in no cake. I bet they’d spoil it.’

‘They’ll make it thicker,’ said Henry, conceding a reply to her evident depth of feeling.

Ivy continued to stand by the table, smoothing and patting the surface of her cake — her cherished cake — while Henry marshaled the rest of us out to the Early Richmond cherry trees. As a precaution he added her to the party, although she declared that the cake would fall while we were gone.

It took only a few minutes, however, for the five of us to gather and stone a quart or more of cherries. Henry dumped the lot, reeking juice, into the batter and stirred them in.

‘It’s thinner’n ever,’ wailed Ivy, ‘and it looks like all git out.’

Henry scrutinized it carefully. ‘It is n’t any thinner, but it’s too thin yet. We’ll get some more cherries.’

This time we got two quarts. Henry stirred them in.

Another wail broke from Ivy. ‘It’s thinner’n ever,’ she almost sobbed. ‘You’ve done and spoiled it.’

‘You did n’t put flour enough into this,’ said Henry. ‘That’s what’s the matter.’

‘We put all the book said,’ said I.

Between wrath and grief Ivy was almost beyond speech.

‘Well, it takes more of some kinds than others. I guess this is a thin kind.'

We put in three more cups of flour, while Ivy stood in the background, a mute angry spirit of protest. When the flour was all in, we each inserted — not the first time — a finger at the edge of the batter and tasted our compound. It tasted queer, and floury. Ivy frankly made a face.

‘You did n’t put enough sugar in this,’ said Henry. ‘Cakes take a lot of sugar.’

‘We put in all the book said,’ we answered once more.

‘It ain’t sweet enough,’ said Henry, tasting again. ‘We’ll put in more sugar.’

We put in two more cups of sugar. The batter was now almost running over the crock, and needed very careful stirring. The cake-pan which had been ready before was now out of the question; Henry found a small dishpan and bade me grease it. Mary washed the other and put it away. John made up the fire once more and the cake went into the oven. We thought it polite to offer Ivy the crock to scrape, but she briefly declined it. Half an hour before each of us had had an eye on that crock; but now no one cared for it. Mary washed it and put it away. She also washed up the table and everything else, and as far as we could see there was nothing to tell the tale of us except the cake in the oven.

At the end of ten minutes, as the cake did not seem to be near baked, we settled down in various ways. No further enterprise seemed desirable. We really wished that Ivy would go home, but as she did not seem inclined to do so I read her Ali Baba. She interrupted occasionally to say, ‘I bet that ain’t never happened.’ Her attitude surprised me; I did not mind its apparent discourtesy, but I did not see why anyone should demand fact in a narrative.

Any occupation we had on hand was interrupted frequently while we looked into the oven. Mary took a doll and went about some serious maternal business. The rest of us collectively looked into the oven every three minutes. If that cake had ever intended to do itself credit, it lost its chance through the embarrassment of our steady watching. As it was, the baking process was curious. We watched eagerly for the moment of rising, but it never came. It did once break its temporary shell to spout up in the middle with a small geyser-like formation, distinguished from the hopeless depression of the rest of the surface. The rest of the time it sank and sank, until it seemed likely to go through the bottom of the oven. The substance of the whole was of such consistency that it would have taken a chemical analysis to tell whether it was baked or not. Like other Benjamin Wests we nearly decimated the newest broom for straws, — each of us used several every time we opened the oven door, — but every time we withdrew them gummy and unpalatable.

Time was wearing rapidly away. They might be home at any moment. Ivy declined any further tales and crouched steadfastly by the oven door.

At last the cake began to recede from the sides of the pan and Henry, returning from a brief visit to his pony, announced that it was all drying up and must be taken out immediately. Anticipation swelled among us. We forgot to watch the drive. Eagerness secured a burnt hand for each of us. But at last the cake was transferred from the oven to the kitchen-table. One last problem arose. How did one take a cake from the pan? The natural thing seemed to be to take it by the little knob in the centre and lift it out. That proved unsuccessful. Henry and Ivy each had a theory; it is needless to say that Henry’s was to be tried first, even over Ivy’s final protest.

‘Now you all stand back,’ Henry was saying, as he selected a knife, ‘and I ’ll —'

Voices and wheels were heard outside. We looked at each other in consternation — consternation quite out of proportion to the offense. Panic fell upon us. Henry snatched up the cake, pan and all, and with his usual quickness of resource, made for the regions of the kitchen-garden, which lay near. It was on the other side of the house from the drive, and was screened from it by some lilac bushes. At the very nearest place to the house, a bit of soft, fine-delved ground lay waiting a later sowing of something, turnips probably. Henry seized a hoe which was convenietly at hand, made a hole in the soft earth, and in an instant that cake, with all its promise unfulfilled and its suspense still unanswered, was in its tomb. The dishpan was thrown to a convenient place under the lilac-bushes, and, the whole affair cleared up, we turned back to welcome the homecomers with as interested an air as if we had spent the afternoon merely waiting for their return.

Ivy had stood looking on at the interment as if she were the embodiment of all possible mourners. Tragedy sat on her brow and grief trembled on her lips. The moment anticipated all the afternoon was snatched from her as the child of her hands went under the soil. Even her braid had uncurled itself and hung straight and pendulous as any braid. As we turned away, I had a glimpse of pursed-up lips and hard-winking eyes, and I suspected that a tear fell on the unworthy grave of that cherry cake, the first and last of its kind.

For us it was all over. We should have liked to see how that cake tasted, but Maldy always got an unusually good supper when she came back from town, as if to show her scorn of all she had seen in her absence. Anyway, we had had doubts about the cake from the first. I never had believed that we could make a cake, even when we were doing it.

As we went into the house again, everybody eagerly assisting in carrying in the packages, — with surreptitious squeezes and fingerings to help surmises as to contents, — I saw Ivy darting homeward through the orchard. Her braid hopped up and down on her shoulders, and her slim skirt wrapped and flapped about her thin legs. The impetuosity of her movement suggested more than mere hurry, I thought, remembering certain moments of my own.

The evening went off very well, considering everything. After my mother had been away for a whole afternoon, we always had a very good time in the evening, and were allowed to sit up a little later than usual. And yet I went to bed with a sense of something impending. Certain matters had already called for remark. Henry explained that we had the fire on in order to have it ready when they came home. Such thoughtfulness should have brought out approbation, but Maldy made no comment. As for the cup of soda — well, Ivy Hixon had come for it, but why she went away without it, no one knew. Maldy was no questioner, I will say that for her. But she went about the kitchen that evening with a roving eye which promised no good for us. Our sin, which had seemed mild in the beginning, hardly equal to the occasion in fact, began to assume the appalling proportions of a crime. I went to bed meditating confession.

Mary lay still for a while in her usual little fashion and then went off to sleep. Our room was at the back of the house, and I could hear Maldy moving about below, setting all ready for the morning. Who knew what she might be discovering? Had we put away the flour-sifter and closed the sugar-bin and restored the baking powder to its place? I followed her steps in my imagination, picturing what she was looking at. Her steps seemed to grow heavier and more portentous. What was she seeing now?

Even when everything grew quiet underneath, I still listened for signs to reassure or terrorize. I sat up in bed embracing my knees, while my strained attention was fixed below. But everything was so still down there, that my alertness finally relaxed and my eyes wandered to the moon-lighted spaces below my window. Even the corner of the kitchen-garden which I could see, had a sort of agreeableness, with the moonlight and the moon-made shadows upon it. I mused awhile, watching the glorified lawn, and finally, with elbows on knees and chin on hands, began to make up a story about what I was going to do when I was twenty-five.

Suddenly I sprang from the bed and ran to the window. Out in that garden corner some one was moving. I could n’t see very plainly at first, but undoubtedly there was a moving figure there. How had Maldy ever discovered? But as I looked I saw that it was Ivy. She was groping around for the hoe we had used in the afternoon. I was indignant. Of course somebody would see her — and then! She did not find the hoe, and stood for a moment undecided. Then she dropped to her knees and began to dig away at the soft earth with her hands. I condemned her entirely. She had got us into this and now she was going to get us caught. And digging up cake out of the ground, too! I felt contempt.

A step sounded heavily on the porch below. Maldy always walked with a curious unbending tread. She stalked straight out by the path and around by the lilac-bushes. Now Ivy Hixon had done it! She, too, heard by this time, and sat back on her heels to listen. Thus she was when Maldy rounded the lilacs and came upon her. Then she jumped up with a cry. I was almost sorry for her then, for I knew Maldy’s summary handling of the renter children. Still, Ivy had brought this on herself.

Maldy questioned abruptly and gruffly, standing with her hands on her hips and her elbows squared. Ivy answered, her speech all running together, until it ended in a high little wail, with a tragic gesture toward the ground at her feet. Maldy questioned further, her attitude tentative. Ivy answered again, her voice each time running up to its pathetic little wail at the end, and her hands making their tragic movement. This was not the effective Ivy of the afternoon. I could imagine her ending with, ‘And I never got none of it! ’ To my relief, however, Maldy seemed to be relaxing. She spoke briefly, but with reserve.

Presently she turned toward the house, Ivy following her, evidently at her bidding. Ivy waited on this side of the lilac-bushes while Maldy went into the kitchen, to get the cracked cup and the soda, I supposed. I really was relieved, though not on Ivy’s account alone.

Maldy returned, her bearing still amicable. But what was this she was bringing? The cup of soda, to be sure, and with it the remnant of the fresh sponge cake she had beaten up for supper—and a piece of fruit cake! I nearly fell out of the window as it came to view. Fruit cake was Maldy’s choicest and best-concealed treasure. I suspected that even my mother asked her permission to use it. It was the topmost crown of our rarest social occasions. Maldy seemed always to have some, but we never caught her making it. When I have said that we never even asked her for it, I have said all.

She was giving it to Ivy. She said, ‘Don’t you eat this to-night, but you put it away and have it some time.’ Then she relapsed into her renterchildren tone, ‘Now you better go right along home. Don’t be hanging around here.’

Ivy went, cutting across the lawn and down through the shadowy orchard spaces. Her disposing of the sponge-cake as she went did not seem to interfere with her speed.

The next morning Henry himself slipped the dishpan down to the yards and washed it in the watering-trough. Unfortunately Maldy happened to be in the kitchen when he cautiously brought it in, and her eye required an explanation of him.

‘Why, I took this out yesterday to pick cherries in,’ he began —

‘Huuf,’ said Maldy, and turned her back on him. She gave the dishpan a proper washing with soap and hot water, and hung it up in its place without another word.