Father will be dead in a year they say ifhe doesnt stop drinking and he wont stop he cant stop since I since last summer and then they’ll send Benjy to Jackson I cant cry I cant even cry one minute she was standing in the door the next minute he was pulling at her dress and bellowing his voice hammered back and forth between the walls in waves and she shrinking against the wall getting smaller and smaller with her white face her eyes like thumbs dug into it until he pushed her out of the room his voice hammering back and forth as though its own momentum would not let it stop as though there were no place for it in silence bellowing
When you opened the door a belltinkled, but just once, high and clear and smallin the neat obscurity above the door, as though it were gauged and tempered to make that single clear small sound so as not to wear the bell out nor to require the expenditure of too much silence in restoring it when the door opened upon the recent warmscent of baking; a little dirty child with eyes like a toy bear’s and two patent-leather pig-tails.
“Hello, sister.” Her face was like a cup of milk dashed with coffee in the sweet warm emptiness. “Anybody here?”
But she merely watched me until a door opened and the lady came. Above the counter where the ranks of crisp shapes behind the glass her neat grey face her hair tight and sparse from her neat grey skull, spectacles in neat grey rims riding approaching like something on a wire, like a cash boxin a store. She looked like a librarian. Something among dusty shelves of ordered certitudes long divorced from reality, desiccating peacefully, as if a breath of that air which sees injustice done
“Two of these, please, ma’am.”
From under the counter she produced a square cut from a newspaper and laid it on the counter and lifted the two buns out. The little girl watched them with still and unwinking eyes like two currants floating motionless in a cup of weak coffee Land of the kike home of the wop. Watching the bread, the neat grey hands, a broad gold band on the left forefinger, knuckled there by a blue knuckle.
“Do you do your own baking, ma’am?”
“Sir?” she said. Like that. Sir? Like on the stage. Sir? “Five cents. Was there anything else?” “No, ma’am. Not for me. This lady wants something.” She was not tall enough to see over
the case, so she went to the end of the counter and looked at the little girl. “Did you bring her in here?”
“No, ma’am. She was here when I came.”
“You little wretch,” she said. She came out around the counter, but she didnt touch the little girl. “Have you got anything in your pockets?”
“She hasnt got any pockets,” I said. “She wasnt doing anything. She was just standing here, waiting for you.”
“Why didnt the bell ring, then?” She glared at me. She just needed a bunch of switches, a blackboard behind her 2 X 2 e 5. “She’llhide it under her dress and a body’d never know it. You, child. How’d you get in here?”
The little girlsaid nothing. She looked at the woman, then she gave me a flying black glance and looked at the woman again, “Themforeigners,” the woman said. “How’d she get in without the bellringing?”
“She came in when I opened the door,” I said. “It rang once for both of us. She couldnt reach anything from here, anyway. Besides, I dont think she would. Would you, sister?” The little girllooked at me, secretive, contemplative. “What do you want? bread?”
She extended her fist. It uncurled upon a nickel, moist and dirty, moist dirt ridged into her flesh. The coin was damp and warm. I could smellit, faintly metallic.
“Have you got a five cent loaf, please, ma’am?”
Frombeneath the counter she produced a square cut froma newspaper sheet and laid it on the counter and wrapped a loaf into it. I laid the coin and another one on the counter. “And another one of those buns, please, ma’am.”
She took another bun fromthe case. “Give me that parcel,” she said. I gave it to her and she unwrapped it and put the third bun in and wrapped it and took up the coins and found two coppers in her apron and gave them to me. I handed them to the little girl. Her fingers closed about them, damp and hot, like worms.
“You going to give her that bun?” the woman said.
“Yessum,” I said. “I expect your cooking smells as good to her as it does to me.”
I took up the two packages and gave the bread to the little girl, the woman all iron-grey behind the counter, watching us with cold certitude. “You wait a minute,” she said. She went to the rear. The door opened again and closed. The little girl watched me, holding the bread
against her dirty dress.
“What’s your name?” I said. She quit looking at me, but she was still motionless. She didnt even seem to breathe. The woman returned. She had a funny looking thing in her hand. She carried it sort of like it might have been a dead pet rat.
“Here,” she said. The child looked at her. “Take it,” the woman said, jabbing it at the little girl. “It just looks peculiar. I calculate you wont know the difference when you eat it. Here. I cant stand here all day.” The child took it, still watching her. The woman rubbed her hands on her apron. “I got to have that bell fixed,” she said. She went to the door and jerked it open. The little bell tinkled once, faint and clear and invisible. We moved toward the door and the woman’s peering back.
“Thank you for the cake,” I said.
“Them foreigners,” she said, staring up into the obscurity where the bell tinkled. “Take my advice and stay clear of them, young man.”
“Yessum,” I said. “Come on, sister.” We went out. “Thank you, ma’am.”
She swung the door to, then jerked it open again, making the bell give forth its single small note. “Foreigners,” she said, peering up at the bell.
We went on. “Well,” I said, “How about some ice cream?” She was eating the gnarled cake. “Do you like ice cream?” She gave me a black stilllook, chewing. “Come on.”
We came to the drugstore and had some ice cream. She wouldn’t put the loaf down. “Why not put it down so you can eat better?” I said, offering to take it. But she held to it, chewing the ice cream like it was taffy. The bitten cake lay on the table. She ate the ice cream steadily, then she fellto on the cake again, looking about at the showcases. I finished mine and we went out.
“Which way do you live?” I said.
A buggy, the one with the white horse it was. Only Doc Peabody is fat. Three hundred pounds. You ride with himon the uphill side, holding on. Children. Walking easier than holding uphill. Seen the doctor yet have you seen Caddy
I dont have to I cant ask now afterward it will be all right it wont matter
Because women so delicate so mysterious Father said. Delicate equilibrium of periodical filth between two moons balanced. Moons he said full and yellow as harvest moons her hips thighs. Outside outside of them always but. Yellow. Feet soles with walking like. Then know that some man that all those mysterious and imperious concealed. With all that inside of them shapes an outward suavity waiting for a touch to. Liquid putrefaction like drowned things floating like pale rubber flabbily filled getting the odour of honeysuckle allmixed up.
“You’d better take your bread on home, hadnt you?”
She looked at me. She chewed quietly and steadily; at regular intervals a small distension passed smoothly down her throat. I opened my package and gave her one of the buns. “Goodbye,” I said.
I went on. Then I looked back. She was behind me. “Do you live down this way?” She said nothing. She walked beside me, under my elbow sort of, eating. We went on. It was quiet, hardly anyone about getting the odour of honeysuckle all mixed She would have told me not to let me sit there on the steps hearing her door twilight slamming hearing Benjy still crying Supper she would have to come down then getting honeysuckle all mixed up in it We reached the corner.
“Well, I’ve got to go down this way,” I said, “Goodbye.” She stopped too. She swallowed the last of the cake, then she began on the bun, watching me across it. “Goodbye,” I said. I turned into the street and went on, but I went to the next corner before I stopped.
“Which way do you live?” I said. “This way?” I pointed down the street. She just looked at me. “Do you live over that way? I bet you live close to the station, where the trains are. Dont you?” She just looked at me, serene and secret and chewing. The street was empty both ways, with quiet lawns and houses neat among the trees, but no one at all except back there. We turned and went back. Two men sat in chairs in front of a store.
“Do you all know this little
