The Cake Therapist by Judith Fertig Page B

coughing again.
    She didn’t want any questions about mill fever. A lot of men got mill fever during the first months of breathing in the tiny cotton fibers that floated in the air. But then their lungs got used to it. Men like Edward, who had been gassed in the trenches of the Great War, however, didn’t always get used to it. Coughing led to not sleeping, which led to lethargy and weakness.
    She’d also heard from a neighbor that if Mr. Kellerman thought someone was sick, he conveniently “forgot” to come to their house for the payment. If it looked like they’d skipped a payment, the life insurance company would drop them, and then they’d get nothing when they needed it most.
    Mr. Kellerman stood up to leave just as Olive and Edie came in with stacks of old newspapers under their arms.
    “Frankie let me pull the wagon,” Edie told her mother. Her face was flushed with the heat.
    “Shhhh, Edie. Papa’s sleeping,” Grace said to her with a smile. And for Mr. Kellerman’s benefit as he tipped his hat on the back porch, she nodded toward the front of the house and lied: “He’s on the night shift now.”
    When he was out of sight, Olive fumed. “You always say we have to tell the truth.”
    “Just put the newspapers over here, Olive. Little pitchers have big ears.” Grace draped a length of oilcloth on the kitchen table. She placed some of the stacked newspapers down the length of the fabric, folded the fabric over, and started to whipstitch the open sides together with a thick needle meant for leatherwork.
    Just before noon, she heard the ragman’s cart. His little son ran to the back and knocked on the screen door.
    Olive let him in. “It’s that boy again, Mama.”
    “That little boy has a name, Olive.” She looked at him. “Come in, please, Shemuel.”
    “Do you have anything for us today, Mrs. Habig?”
    “Yes, I do, so please sit down for a moment while I get things together.”
    The ragman’s son sat down at the little table, eyeing the beans in the colander.
    Grace cut a slice of bread, then opened the peanut butter tin and gave it a good stir to blend in the oil that had floated to the top. She spread the peanut butter on the bread and took a raisin cookie from the cookie jar.
    “Here, Shemuel, eat this while Edie gets your bundle.” She placed the bread and the cookie on a plate at the table. She pointed to Edie, and Edie knew to get the unusable fabric scraps that Shemuel and his father would take to the paper mill.
    “Olive, please get our guest a glass of milk.”
    “But, Mama,” Olive started to complain.
    “Olive, do as you’re told.”
    Olive poured the last of the bottled milk into a glass.
    The girls had milk for breakfast, Grace told herself, and she couldn’t let this hollow-cheeked boy go hungry. She just couldn’t.
    Shemuel wolfed down the peanut butter bread and ate the cookie in two bites. He gulped down the milk, then jumped up from the table.
    “Thank you, Mrs. Habig.”
    Grace looked at him sadly.
What a life he must live.
    Shyly, Edie handed him the bundle.
    “See you next week, Mrs. Habig?”
    Grace smiled. He bolted out the screen door and back to the cart, where his father was probably fuming, thought Grace.
Serves the old bastard right.
    “He smells poor,” blurted Olive.
    “He can’t help it,” Grace gently replied.
    That night, when the upstairs still held the heat of the day, the little family settled in for the night in the back room of the cellar, away from the empty coal bin, but right near the wringer washer and the laundry tubs, the packets of starch and bluing. It smelled clean and fresh down there, and it was certainly cooler.
    Grace spread an old tarp on the packed-earth floor and then arranged the oilcloth pallets she had made earlier in the day for the family to sleep on. She lit a kerosene lamp that cast a shadow on the whitewashed stone walls.
    “Guess what this is,” Olive said to Edie, making shadow puppets on the wall.
    “A