1130
PARTISAN REVIEW
keep its heat for her mother, and when she finally returned to the
parlor, she found her mother still talking
haiku
with her aunt and
uncle, the three of them on another round of tea. Her father was
nowhere in sight.
At Japanese school the next day (Wednesday, it was), Rosie
was grave and giddy by turns. Preoccupied at her desk in the row
for students on Book Eight, she made up for it at recess by perform–
ing wild mimicry for the benefit of her friend Chizuko. She held her
nose and whined a witticism or two in what she considered was the
manner of Fred Allen; she assumed intoxication and a British accent
to go over the climax of the Rudy Vallee recording of the pub con–
versation about William Ewart Gladstone; she was the child Shirley
Temple piping, "On the Good Ship Lollipop"; she was the gentleman
soprano of the Four Inkspots trilling,
"If
I Didn't Care." And she
felt reasonably satisfied when Chizuko wept and gasped, "Oh, Rosie,
you ought to be in the movies!"
Her father came after her at noon, bringing her sandwiches of
minced ham and two nectarines to eat while she rode, so that she
could pitch right into the sorting when they got home. The lugs were
piling up, he said, and the ripe tomatoes in them would probably have
to be taken to the cannery tomorrow if they were not ready for the
produce haulers tonight. "This heat's not doing them any good. And
we've got no time for a break today."
It
was
hot, probably the hottest day of the year, and Rosie's
blouse stuck damply to her back even under the protection of the
canvas. But she worked as efficiently as a flawless machine and kept
the stalls heaped, with one part of her mind listening in to the parental
murmuring about the heat and the tomatoes and with another part
planning the exact words she would say to JesUs when he drove up
with the first load of the afternoon. But when at last she saw that
the pick-up was coming, her hands went berserk and the tomatoes
started falling in the wrong stalls, and her father said, "Hey, hey!
Rosie, watch what you're doing!"
"Well, I have to go to the
benjo,"
she said, hiding panic.
"Go
in the weeds over there," he said, only half-joking.
"Oh, Father!" she protested.
