An excerpt from a novel by Susan Moger ’64
Chapter 1
New England States Exposition, August 1922.
Four times a day I drop the baby.
It’s not a real baby, but for a stunned heartbeat the audience believes it is. That’s enough to get some of them on their feet, screaming, Stupid, clumsy, gimp. The words slide into my skin and stay there.
When I ask Mr. Ogilvie, the director, if just once I can catch the baby before it hits the stage, he frowns and puts his hands on my shoulders. I squirm away, but he holds on. “I love your sensitivity, Ruthie,” he says, showing corn-yellow teeth. “But sadly a cripple like you can’t be a hero.”
Mr. Ogilvie isn’t the only thing I hate about the Unfit Family show. I hate the name of my character, “Ruthie,” who limps like I do but has no backbone. No one ever calls me my real name, Rowan. I hate the ragged clothes and the idiotic things Mr. Ogilvie tells me to do. And I hate the people in the audience who think they’re not only better off than we are, but better in every way.
Today when Mr. Ogilvie calls, “Places,” I follow the script. Lie on my stomach, breathing in dust, legs toward the curtain, arms stretched out upstage. I look like what I’m supposed to be, a helpless quitter who fell and can’t reach her crutch.
The late August afternoon sun turns the tent into an oven, baking all of us, actors and audience, in the smells of fried onions, tobacco, hair pomade, and sweat. The other actors mutter as they take their places for our opening scene. I can see their feet — Jimmy’s clodhopper farm boots, Minnie’s worn moccasins, Gar’s dirty spats over scuffed black shoes. I’m barefoot.
The head of a nail pokes my thigh and I shift position.
Mr. Ogilvie’s voice sounds from the other side of the curtain, high-pitched and irritating. “Welcome to our show, The Unfit Family: A Blight on America, created by Miss Fanny Ogilvie especially for the New England States Exposition of 1922.”
The last statement is a lie. We have performed the same show at county fairs all over Massachusetts for the past month. But these shows at the Exposition in Springfield are worse. There are four shows a day and lots of people in the audience for each one.
“The actors will act out the story as I narrate it,” Mr. Ogilvie goes on. “And now allow me to introduce the Unfit Family.” The pulley squeaks as he tugs open the curtain.
Sharp gasps from the crowd make my stomach clench.
Mr. Ogilvie points me out first. “Lying before you where she fell is Ruthie, the crippled daughter, thirteen years old.” Like crows, the audience’s curiosity and pity land on me, peering and pecking at my leg, back, and head.
Mr. Ogilvie didn’t just change my name; he shaved three years off my age for the good of the show. He told us, “Your job is to portray the worst family imaginable. But don’t take anything I say to heart. I’m talking about the characters, not you.” On the other hand, he tells us, “Don’t act. Just be yourselves.”
“Over there by the table,” Mr. Ogilvie goes on, “epileptic son, Jimmy, fourteen, is in the throes of a seizure, unable to speak. In the laundry basket is baby Polly, nine months old and already neglected. And at the stove, feeble-minded Minnie, their mother, watches a pot of boiling water. Minnie’s shiftless husband, Gar, father of the children, is seated over there with a whiskey bottle, his constant companion.” Gar always gets a few nervous snickers from the men in the audience. Today someone whistles.
The stage creaks as Mr. Ogilvie paces, drawing in the crowd with his confiding voice. “Some may find this portrayal unbelievable. I assure you it is no exaggeration. Many, many families are destined by their heredity to live like this unfit family.”
The word “family” is my cue to get up on my knees and crawl with difficulty to my crutch. Crawling isn’t easy with my weak left leg, and I play it up to please the crowd. Once I have the crutch, I struggle upright and turn to face the audience.
The wooden benches are full, and it’s standing room only in the back. Men in suits and women in Sunday-best dresses snap their paper fans back and forth, wafting sweat and rosewater into the hot air.
I pick up the basket with baby Polly in it. As usual, Jimmy, in the grip of a fake seizure, bumps against me. As usual, I let go of one basket handle. Baby Polly falls out.
A gasp flutters through the audience like a gust of wind. One woman calls out, “For shame!”
“Ruthie tries,” Mr. Ogilvie says, “but as you can see, when it comes to caring for a baby, she is unfit.”
Ruthie isn’t “unfit” and neither am I, Rowan Collier. As the daughter of Dr. Franklin Collier, scientist, inventor, and historian of our family heritage, I grew up knowing we are the fittest of the fit. Family has always been important to us. I’m named for Father’s great-grandmother, Opportunity Rowan Collier. Father decided that Opportunity sounded too old-fashioned, so I am plain Rowan.
Now I pick up baby Polly and put her back in the clothes basket. Jimmy, no longer in the grip of his fake seizure, piles firewood dangerously high. I struggle to sweep, holding a broom with my free hand.
Minnie, her round face beaded with sweat, drops the pot overflowing with cotton batting “steam,” “scalding” herself and Jimmy. She sinks to the floor and curls into a ball while he hops from foot to foot cradling his hand.
A murmur of concern rises from the audience.
“Save your sympathy for the neighbors of this family,” Mr. Ogilvie says. “Like you, they are kind, upstanding folk who, time and time again, have helped Gar and Minnie. But ask yourself this question: why should they have to?”
Gar drains the whiskey bottle (full of weak tea), drops it, and staggers to the table for another. As he passes Minnie, he pulls her to her feet and mimes a backhand slap across her face. She stumbles against the stove, a crate painted black.
Minnie shakes her fist at Gar and then whacks a rolling pin on the table sending up a cloud of white flour. The fist, the whack, and the flour cloud bring a gust of relieved laughter from the crowd.
Mr. Ogilvie points out our individual weaknesses like tasty menu items. “Ruthie was born with a withered left leg. Jimmy’s seizures will be lifelong. These defects were prevalent in their parents’ families. That’s why you must know your family history before you plan to marry and have children. After the show, visit our exhibit next door to learn what a fit family looks like.”
In real life Jimmy is an epileptic. But Mr. Ogilvie lies about the rest of us. I wasn’t born crippled. I had polio when I was eleven. Minnie isn’t feeble-minded; she has only a fourth-grade education. Gar isn’t a drinker…
“With her intelligence, Ruthie could have a better life,” Mr. Ogilvie says in a fake concerned voice as I act out reading a newspaper to Minnie. “Yet, sadly, she is trapped in this family and in her broken body.”
I’m also trapped with him and Aunt Fan for seven more days.
At the end of the show, I drop my crutch and lie sprawled on the floor, arms outstretched. Jimmy twists his body in a fake seizure. Minnie stands at the stove, looking at the pot boiling over. Gar sits in the chair with a whiskey bottle.
“As you see, nothing changes for this unfit family,” Mr. Ogilvie says in a mournful voice. “Nothing will ever change. Left to themselves, they will continue to reproduce and bring more suffering children into this world.”
My leg is cramping so I ease it into a new position, careful to avoid the nail.
Mr. Ogilvie ends with his worst line of all, “What farmer would allow unfit livestock to breed year after year?”
The words livestock and breed make me want to gag.
A man in the audience shouts, “These unfit folks are still God’s children, not animals.” . . .
Mr. Ogilvie raises his voice. “It is for us, the fit, to take the necessary steps to prune the unfit from the American family tree. We have the tools. Do we have the will?”
It’s over. I scramble up and move downstage with the others to line up in the glare of the stage lights. We bow to more applause, whistles, and foot stomps.
Now Aunt Fan tip-taps across the stage in highheeled pumps, a yellow linen suit, and a white hat. A scent of gardenias follows in her wake. Mr. Ogilvie bows to her. He and Aunt Fan are brother and sister. According to Dorchy, their assistant, they live together here in Springfield. Both are high school teachers the rest of the year, but they spend their summers promoting fitter families.
Speaking to the audience, Aunt Fan sounds sweetly persuasive. “I am Fanny Ogilvie, a hygiene teacher here in Springfield and a volunteer with the New England Betterment Council. Thank you for coming. Now, please follow Mr. Ogilvie to the cottage next door to take our Fitter Families test and validate your family’s heritage.” She makes it sound like an honor. “We are a nonprofit organization, so donations are appreciated.”
We remain onstage while Aunt Fan directs the audience out of the tent. . . . We get pitying looks from people shuffling past. We also get money. People place pennies, nickels, dimes, even quarters — and once a silver dollar — on the stage in front of us.… I concentrate on moving my right foot fast enough to cover the coins before any of the others do.
Today Dorchy, Aunt Fan’s assistant, waves at me from the back row. I scowl at her. We don’t trust her because she works for the Ogilvies. She’s about my age, ramrod straight. Dark hair, green eyes — the eyes of the witch in my book of fairy tales back home. She’s always dressed in a blue gingham dress and white apron with “New England Betterment Council” embroidered on it in red.
It’s Dorchy’s job to pick up anything the audience drops during our shows. Now she comes over to the stage, and holds up a book. “If you can read, you can have this. Say, how old are you? You don’t look thirteen like he says in the show.”
“I’m sixteen.” I study her face and make a guess. “The same as you?”
She nods.
“Dorchy! Back to work.” Aunt Fan trots across the stage, clapping her hands in front of her as if she’s shooing a chicken.
“Sorry, ma’am.” Dorchy gazes up at Aunt Fan and rests the book on the edge of the stage. “I just wanted to tell Ruthie how much she’s improved.”
I drop my ragged costume apron over the book.
“It’s not your place to tell her that,” Aunt Fan snaps. “Run along. Mr. Ogilvie needs you in the cottage.”
Dorchy winks at me over her shoulder as she walks away. She moves like someone who knows where she’s going and could get there blindfolded.
“Now off the stage,” Aunt Fan says. “Be quick about it.” She rubs her mouth. Her false teeth must be hurting.
As Jimmy, Minnie, and Gar leave the stage, I bend over and scoop up my apron and the book.
Backstage I suck in a breath when I see the title Little Women in gold letters on the faded red cover. This is the twin of my own copy of Little Women, left behind in New York, and as familiar as the palm of my hand.
From Of Better Blood by Susan Moger. Used with permission from Albert Whitman & Company. Text copyright 2016 by Susan Moger