Across the Fruited Plain

by Florence Crannell Means

("I've learned a lot!" thought Rose-Ellen. "I used to ask the grocer for a nickel's worth of dry onions, and I never did guess how they came to be there.")

The first year was dreary. Maw took the baby (Mary, then) and laid her on a blanket at the end of the row she was working, with Tom to watch her. Cissy worked along with the grown folks, or some days stayed home and did the washing and minded Tom and Mary.

"I shore didn't know how to wash good as I do now." She patted her faded dress, pretty clean, though not like the clothes of Grandma's washing.

There was one thing about it, Cissy said; after a day in onions, with the sun shining hot on her sunbonnet and not much to eat, she didn't care if there wasn't any play or fun at night; she was glad enough to drop down on the floor and go to sleep as soon as she'd had corn pone and coffee. Sometimes she was sick from the sun beating down on her head and she had to crawl into the shade of a crate and lie there.

The second year was different. Next summer, early, when the cherries had set their green beads and the laylocks had quit blooming, there came two young ladies. They came of an evening, and talked to Paw and Maw as they sat on the doorsill with their shoes kicked off and their bare toes resting themselves.

First Paw and Maw wouldn't talk to them because why would these pretty young ladies come mixing around with strangers? Paw and Maw allowed they had something up their sleeves. But the ladies patted Georgie, the baby then, and held him; and Cissy crept closer and closer, because they smelled so nice. And then they asked Maw if they couldn't take Cissy in their car and pay her as much as she earned picking. She was to help them invite the children to a place where they could be safe and happy while their grown folks worked.

Cissy couldn't hardly sense it; but Maw let her go, because she was puny. The teachers got an old schoolhouse to use; and church folks came to paint the walls; and P.W.A. workers made chairs and tables; and the church ladies made curtains. The teachers got icebox, stove, and piano from a second-hand store.

Yet, at first, it was hard to get people to send their children even to this beautiful place. They'd rather risk locking them in at home, or keeping them at the end of the onion row. That first morning, the teachers gathered up only nine children. Those nine told what it was like, and next day there were fifteen, and by the end of the summer "upwards of forty-five."

Cissy told about the Center as she might tell about fairyland. Across one wall were nails, with kits sent by children from the different churches. The kits held tooth brushes, washcloths, combs. Above each nail was a picture by which the child could know his own toilet equipment.