From the Improvement Era, February 1942 –

Growing Pains

By Georgia L. Pinkerton

Liddie May, the tip of her stubby nose pressing the chilly pane so eagerly that it made a small underdone pancake there, devoured with china-blue stare the content of Welkins’ display window.

“Ain’t they perty?” she whisperingly questioned. “Ain’t they the pertiest things in the whole world? W’y they’re perty as things up in heaven — angels’ wings an’ th’ pearly gates an’ golden stairs! An’ tu think that up there on th’ farm us kids usta cut out ol’ pichers in catalogs an’ paste ’em on paper and call them valuntimes!”

Liddie May’s nose performed the miraculous feat of expressing pitying contempt for the ignorance of those farm kids, and that without lessening the pressure. Then the whispering went on: “Jes’ look at the butiful lace ruffles an’ th’ cute little babies aflyin’ around an’ th’ posies! An’ see th’ pigeon-birds with letters in their mouths! Wouldn’t it be jes’ grand if I could give ev’rybody a valuntime? Wouldn’t it be fine?

She sighed — a mighty sigh that threatened the worn seams of the faded blue gingham, once the property of Luzella Belle, eleven, and almost ready for Pearl Marie, nearly eight. The Billings family was handy that way.

“But what’s th’ use a’ wishin’?” she mourned. “Valuntimes cost money, an’ I guess there ain’t no money in this fambly tu spend on things jes’ becus they’re perty!” She had learned that lesson well in her nine lean years on the rocky hill farm. ‘Taters and mush, handed-down dresses, and shoes for winter had been the important things there.

But even as she sighed a daring thought came. Maybe —

“If I was you,” Aunt Hetty had said to Ma when she had come up for Pa’s funeral last month, “I’d sell this heap o’ rocks fer whatever I could get outa it, an’ I’d move to Ruggly. You could do washin’ an’ make a sight more than you can here, an’ the girls could get jobs and make their own money. Even Liddie May could run errands and tend babies.”

Yes, that’s what Aunt Hetty had said, and Ma had followed her advice and it had been true. Maybe her part would be true, too. Maybe she could earn money to spend for valuntimes. Of course, not this year! Valuntime’s Day was tomorrow. But there’d be another next year — and then —

“I’ll git Ma th’ big one with angels flyin’ around,” she decided. “She can put it upon the shelf by the clock where she can see it when she’s washin’. It’ll make her feel better about Pa, him bein’ in such a lovely place. An’ I’ll git the gold fiddle one fer Emmie Jane. She likes fiddles so much an’ feels so bad ’cause she can’t have a real one an* learn to play it. The one with th’ red roses an’ th’ perty, perty lace’ll be for Granma. Roses is her fav’rite flowers. Oh, I’ll git jes’ dozens fer people. Won’t it be grand!”

The school bell snatched her away finally, but she came next day to gloat and dream. She came the next — and found the window full of hot water bottles marked down to ninety-seven cents. However, she accepted the change cheerfully. She knew every one of the beauties by heart, and besides she had no time for mooning before windows. There was money to be earned. That day she made her first dime tending Mrs. Peter’s fat, spoiled baby. The feel of the cool, thin disk in her hot little palm made her forget her aching arms. The Valuntime Fund was started.

On through the months it grew. There were back-slidings. Nickels went for seats for herself and her little sisters at the “picher show.” Pennies bought candy and gum like they used to have only at Christmas on the farm. A whole dime was given in exchange for a dimun ring for Ma on her birthday. Ma always had wanted a dimun, and she worked so hard she deserved one. But Liddie May, being good with babies, was much in demand, so she could afford to be extravagant. There was plenty left.

In the first of the following February, Liddie May, at Welkins’ Drug Store for a dime’s worth of alum for the baby’s sore mouth, heard old Mr. Welkin tell Jake Bauer, the clerk, to get out last year’s valentines after lunch so they could get them sold before the new stock came in. Liddie May knew, then, that her dream was about to come true.

One of Ma’s washing customers had sent ice cream for dinner, but Liddie May couldn’t find room even for this. She was too full of excited happiness.

“I’m goin’ to buy valuntimes, lovely, perty valuntimes, to make the people glad,” she sang under her breath as she skipped down the street, her precious two dollars and fifteen cents tied up in her best handkerchief.

“Can I see ’em — the valuntimes?” she asked reverently the minute she entered the store.

“Here, Jake,” called Mr. Welkin

to his’ clerk hidden somewhere behind the back counter, “here’s a young lady who believes in shopping early. Show her the valentines if you have them unpacked.”

Jake arose lankily from his half-finished task, his hands full of slightly shop-worn valentines.

“Any special kind?” he asked flipping some penny ones onto the counter.

Liddie May didn’t even see them. “First I’d like th’ big beautiful one,” she began breathlessly, “with th’ angels flyin’ around an’ a lotta little baby angels.”

Jake rummaged through the box. “Here it is,” he said unenthusiastically.

But Liddie May shook her head.

“No, that ain’t the one. Mine’s bigger an’ shinier and, oh, a lot beautifuler. My angel, it looked — oh — jes’ grand. This one ain’t got any nose, an’ th’ lace — it’s jes’ paper punched fulla holes.”

“Sorry,” Jake told her with a mock solemnity, “but he’s the only angel we have in stock.”

Liddie May swallowed her disappointment.

“You musta sold mine last thing last year,” she said. “Le’s see th’ others — th’ gold fiddle an’ the roses.”

Jake patiently hunted out the fiddle. She took it with fingers that trembled. One look and she started to protest that it wasn’t the one, that it couldn’t be, but the heart-breaking truth was beginning to dawn. There wasn’t any other valuntimes. These were the things for which she had tended cross babies, washed mountains of greasy dishes, and run errands for fault-finding women.

And all her pains of disillusionment were not for herself. Most were for ma who now would never know the comfort a beautiful angel was to bring, for those who would never be made happier by Liddie May’s valuntimes.

A tear rolled out of one blue eye and down a chapped cheek.

“Yes, I guess that’s th’ one, all right,” she admitted, “but I kinda remembered ’em different. You see I wanted this one for Emmie Jane to kinda make up tu her ’cause she wants so bad to have a real fiddle. But I thought it wus grander, a real gold one, an’ here it’s jes’ a picher. It couldn’t make up to nobody fer nothin.”

Jake, thoroughly uncomfortable, offered another. Liddie May recognized it. There were the red roses and the pigeon-birds with the letters; but the roses looked like red cabbages and the bird’s eyes were half-way down their necks. They, too, were “jes’ pichers” like on canned peaches and macaroni boxes.

“I guess I won’t take any but these two little ones for my two littliest sisters. They’re jes’ kids like I was last year, so maybe they’ll like ’em.”

She put down two nickels and went out with her purchase. Life was an empty thing, she decided as she trudged along the street. There was nothing to work for any more — little even to live for. Valuntimes had been her goal for so long — super-valuntimes, that she now knew had never really existed.

“They was jes’ pichers,” she mourned.

Past the post office she plodded; past Ruggly’s Cash Grocery; past — nearly past — Doland’s Dry Goods Emporium. But at the last window something bade her stop — look —

Liddie May, the tip of her stubby nose pressing the chilly pane so eagerly that it made a small, underdone pancake there, devoured with china-blue stare the content of Doland’s display window.

“Ain’t they beautiful?” she whispered ecstatically. “Ain’t they the beautifullest things on earth? So soft and shiny, an’ th’ beautiful colors! W’y, they look like queens’ and princess’ clo’s. They look like they was made outa th’ rainbow an’ whole fields a’ flowers! Oh, they’re jes’ too beautiful.”

Her sharp eyes discovered a price tag. Her clever brain did a problem in multiplication and subtraction.

“I’m gonna get some fer Ma an’ Granma an’ th’ girls. Not now. There ain’t money enough now. But I’ll get a lotta jobs an’ by Christmas I’ll have enough. I’ll get the pink with the green trimmin’ fer Ma. She ain’t never had any but old flour sack ones, so she deserves the pertiest.”

And so, before a window of shining, shimmering silk, silk more shining and shimmering than any spun by lowly worm, Liddie May was healed, was given back the sure knowledge that life is worth while and very good.