“On probation?” the woman said.
“For slipping out at night. Because only town boys can have cars, and when you had a date with a town boy on Friday or Saturday or Sunday, the boys in school wouldn’t have a date with you, because they cant have cars. So I had to slip out. And a girl that didn’t like me told the Dean, because I had a date with a boy she liked and he never asked her for another date. So I had to.”
“If you didn’t slip out, you wouldn’t get to go riding,” the woman said. “Is that it? And now when you slipped out once too often, you’re squealing.”
“Gowan’s not a town boy. He’s from Jefferson. He went to Virginia. He kept on saying how they had taught him to drink like a gentleman, and I begged him just to let me out anywhere and lend me enough money for a ticket because I only had two dollars, but he—”
“Oh, I know your sort,” the woman said. “Honest women. Too good to have anything to do with common people. You’ll slip out at night with the kids, but just let a man come along.” She turned the meat. “Take all you can get, and give nothing. ‘I’m a pure girl; I dont do that.’ You’ll slip out with the kids and burn their gasoline and eat their food, but just let a man so much as look at you and you faint away because your father the judge and your four brothers might not like it.
But just let you get into a jam, then who do you come crying to? to us, the ones that are not good enough to lace the judge’s almighty shoes.” Across the child Temple gazed at the woman’s back, her face like a small pale mask beneath the precarious hat.
“My brother said he would kill Frank. He didn’t say he would give me a whipping if he caught me with him; he said he would kill the goddam son of a bitch in his yellow buggy and my father cursed my brother and said he could run his family a while longer and he drove me into the house and locked me in and went down to the bridge to wait for Frank. But I wasn’t a coward. I climbed down the gutter and headed Frank off and told him. I begged him to go away, but he said we’d both go. When we got back in the buggy I knew it had been the last time.
I knew it, and I begged him again to go away, but he said he’d drive me home to get my suitcase and we’d tell father. He wasn’t a coward either. My father was sitting on the porch. He said ‘Get out of that buggy’ and I got out and I begged Frank to go on, but he got out too and we came up the path and father reached around inside the door and got the shotgun. I got in front of Frank and father said ‘Do you want it too?’ and I tried to stay in front but Frank shoved me behind him and held me and father shot him and said ‘Get down there and sup your dirt, you whore.’ ”
“I have been called that,” Temple whispered, holding the sleeping child in her high thin arms, gazing at the woman’s back.
“But you good women. Cheap sports. Giving nothing, then when you’re caught . . . Do you know what you’ve got into now?” she looked across her shoulder, the fork in her hand. “Do you think you’re meeting kids now? kids that give a damn whether you like it or not? Let me tell you whose house you’ve come into without being asked or wanted; who you’re expecting to drop everything and carry you back where you had no business ever leaving. When he was a soldier in the Philippines he killed another soldier over one of those nigger women and they sent him to Leavenworth. Then the war came and they let him out to go to it. He got two medals, and when it was over they put him back in Leavenworth until the lawyer got a congressman to get him out. Then I could quit jazzing again—”
“Jazzing?” Temple whispered, holding the child, looking herself no more than an elongated and leggy infant in her scant dress and uptilted hat.
“Yes, putty-face!” the woman said. “How do you suppose I paid that lawyer? And that’s the sort of man you think will care that much—” with the fork in her hand she came and snapped her fingers softly and viciously in Temple’s face “—what happens to you. And you, you little doll-faced slut, that think you cant come into a room where a man is without him . . .” Beneath the faded garment her breast moved deep and full. With her hands on her hips she looked at Temple with cold, blazing eyes. “Man? You’ve never seen a real man.
You dont know what it is to be wanted by a real man. And thank your stars you haven’t and never will, for then you’d find just what that little putty face is worth, and all the rest of it you think you are jealous of when you’re just scared of it. And if he is just man enough to call you whore, you’ll say Yes Yes and you’ll crawl naked in the dirt and the mire for him to call you that. . . . Give me that baby.” Temple held the child, gazing at the woman, her mouth moving as if she were saying Yes Yes Yes.
The woman threw the fork onto the table. “Turn loose,” she said, lifting the child. It opened its eyes and wailed. The woman drew a chair out and sat down, the child upon her lap. “Will you hand me one of those diapers on the line yonder?” she said. Temple stood in the floor, her lips still moving. “You’re scared to go out there, aren’t you?” the woman said. She rose.
“No,” Temple said; “I’ll get—”
“I’ll get it.” The unlaced brogans scuffed across the kitchen. She returned and drew another chair up to the stove and spread the two remaining cloths and the undergarment on it, and sat again and laid the child across her lap. It wailed. “Hush,” she said, “hush, now,” her face in the lamplight taking a serene, brooding quality. She changed the child and laid it in the box. Then she took a platter down from a cupboard curtained by a split towsack and took up the fork and came and looked into Temple’s face again.
“Listen. If I get a car for you, will you get out of here?” she said. Staring at her Temple moved her mouth as though she were experimenting with words, tasting them. “Will you go out the back and get into it and go away and never come back here?”
“Yes,” Temple whispered, “anywhere. Anything.”
Without seeming to move her cold eyes at all the woman looked Temple up and down. Temple could feel all her muscles shrinking like severed vines in the noon sun. “You poor little gutless fool,” the woman said in her cold undertone. “Playing at it.”
“I didn’t. I didn’t.”
“You’ll have something to tell them now, when you get back. Wont you?” Face to face, their voices were like shadows upon two close blank walls. “Playing at it.”
“Anything. Just so I get away. Anywhere.”
“It’s not Lee I’m afraid of. Do you think he plays the dog after every hot little bitch that comes along? It’s you.”
“Yes. I’ll go anywhere.”
“I know your sort. I’ve seen them. All running, but not too fast. Not so fast you cant tell a real man when you see him. Do you think you’ve got the only one in the world?”
“Gowan,” Temple whispered, “Gowan.”
“I have slaved for that man,” the woman whispered, her lips scarce moving, in her still, dispassionate voice. It was as though she were reciting a formula for bread. “I worked night shift as a waitress so I could see him Sundays at the prison. I lived two years in a single room, cooking over a gas-jet, because I promised him. I lied to him and made money to get him out of prison, and when I told him how I made it, he beat me. And now you must come here where you’re not wanted. Nobody asked you to come here. Nobody cares whether you are afraid or not. Afraid? You haven’t the guts to be really afraid, any more than you have to be in love.”
“I’ll pay you,” Temple whispered. “Anything you say. My father will give it to me.” The woman watched her, her face motionless, as rigid as when she had been speaking. “I’ll send you clothes. I have a new fur coat. I just wore it since Christmas. It’s as good as new.”
The woman laughed. Her mouth laughed, with no sound, no movement of her face. “Clothes? I had three fur coats once. I gave one of them to a woman in an
