Miss Bobbit did not hear them; at least she never poked her head out the door. Then one day Mrs. Sawyer, coming over to borrow a cup of sugar, rattled on a good deal about her new boarders. You know, she said, squinting her chicken-bright eyes, the husband was a crook, uh huh, the child told me herself. Hasn’t an ounce of shame, not a mite.
Said her daddy was the dearest daddy and the sweetest singing man in the whole of Tennessee.… And I said, honey, where is he? and just as offhand as you please she says, Oh, he’s in the penitentiary and we don’t hear from him no more. Say, now, does that make your blood run cold? Uh huh, and I been thinking, her mama, I been thinking she’s some kinda foreigner: never says a word, and sometimes it looks like she don’t understand what nobody says to her. And you know, they eat everything raw. Raw eggs, raw turnips, carrots—no meat whatsoever. For reasons of health, the child says, but ho! she’s been straight out on the bed running a fever since last Tuesday.
That same afternoon Aunt El went out to water her roses, only to discover them gone. These were special roses, ones she’d planned to send to the flower show in Mobile, and so naturally she got a little hysterical. She rang up the Sheriff, and said, listen here, Sheriff, you come over here right fast. I mean somebody’s got off with all my Lady Anne’s that I’ve devoted myself to heart and soul since early spring.
When the Sheriff’s car pulled up outside our house, all the neighbors along the street came out on their porches, and Mrs. Sawyer, layers of cold cream whitening her face, trotted across the road. Oh shoot, she said, very disappointed to find no one had been murdered, oh shoot, she said, nobody’s stole them roses. Your Billy Bob brought them roses over and left them for little Bobbit. Aunt El did not say one word. She just marched over to the peach tree, and cut herself a switch.
Ohhh, Billy Bob, she stalked along the street calling his name, and then she found him down at Speedy’s garage where he and Preacher were watching Speedy take a motor apart. She simply lifted him by the hair and, switching blueblazes, towed him home. But she couldn’t make him say he was sorry and she couldn’t make him cry. And when she was finished with him he ran into the backyard and climbed high into the tower of a pecan tree and swore he wasn’t ever going to come down. Then his daddy came home, and it was time to have supper. His daddy stood at the window and called to him: Son, we aren’t mad with you, so come down and eat your supper.
But Billy Bob wouldn’t budge. Aunt El went and leaned against the tree. She spoke in a voice soft as the gathering light. I’m sorry, son, she said, I didn’t mean whipping you so hard like that. I’ve fixed a nice supper, son, potato salad and boiled ham and deviled eggs. Go away, said Billy Bob, I don’t want no supper, and I hate you like all-fire. His daddy said he ought not to talk like that to his mother, and she began to cry. She stood there under the tree and cried, raising the hem of her skirt to dab at her eyes. I don’t hate you, son.… If I don’t love you I wouldn’t whip you. The pecan leaves began to rattle; Billy Bob slid slowly to the ground, and Aunt El, brushing her fingers through his hair, pulled him against her. Aw, Ma, he said, Aw, Ma.
After supper Billy Bob came and flung himself on the foot of my bed. He smelled all sour and sweet, the way boys do, and I felt very sorry for him, especially because he looked so worried. His eyes were almost shut with worry. You’re s’posed to send sick folks flowers, he said righteously. About this time we heard the victrola, a lilting faraway sound, and a night moth flew through the window, drifting in the air delicate as the music. But it was dark now, and we couldn’t tell if Miss Bobbit was dancing. Billy Bob, as though he were in pain, doubled up on the bed like a jackknife; but his face was suddenly clear, his grubby boy-eyes twitching like candles. She’s so cute, he whispered, she’s the cutest dickens I ever saw, gee, to hell with it, I don’t care, I’d pick all the roses in China.
Preacher would have picked all the roses in China, too. He was as crazy about her as Billy Bob. But Miss Bobbit did not notice them. The sole communication we had with her was a note to Aunt El thanking her for the flowers. Day after day she sat on her porch, always dressed to beat the band, and doing a piece of embroidery, or combing curls in her hair, or reading a Webster’s dictionary—formal, but friendly enough; if you said good-day to her she said good-day to you. Even so, the boys never could seem to get up the nerve to go over and talk with her, and most of the time she simply looked through them, even when they tomcatted up and down the street trying to get her eye.
They wrestled, played Tarzan, did foolheaded bicycle tricks. It was a sorry business. A great many girls in town strolled by the Sawyer house two and three times within an hour just on the chance of getting a look. Some of the girls who did this were: Cora McCall, Mary Murphy Jones, Janice Ackerman. Miss Bobbit did not show any interest in them either. Cora would not speak to Billy Bob any more. The same was true with Janice and Preacher.
As a matter of fact, Janice wrote Preacher a letter in red ink on lace-trimmed paper in which she told him he was vile beyond all human beings and words, that she considered their engagement broken, that he could have back the stuffed squirrel he’d given her. Preacher, saying he wanted to act nice, stopped her the next time she passed our house, and said, well, hell, she could keep that old squirrel if she wanted to. Afterwards, he couldn’t understand why Janice ran away bawling the way she did.
Then one day the boys were being crazier than usual; Billy Bob was sagging around in his daddy’s World War khakis, and Preacher, stripped to the waist, had a naked woman drawn on his chest with one of Aunt El’s old lipsticks. They looked like perfect fools, but Miss Bobbit, reclining in a swing, merely yawned.
It was noon, and there was no one passing in the street, except a colored girl, baby-fat and sugar-plum shaped, who hummed along carrying a pail of blackberries. But the boys, teasing at her like gnats, joined hands and wouldn’t let her go by, not until she paid a tariff. I ain’t studyin’ no tariff, she said, what kinda tariff you talkin’ about, mister? A party in the barn, said Preacher, between clenched teeth, mighty nice party in the barn.
And she, with a sulky shrug, said, huh, she intended studyin’ no barn parties. Whereupon Billy Bob capsized her berry pail, and when she, with despairing, piglike shrieks, bent down in futile gestures of rescue, Preacher, who can be mean as the devil, gave her behind a kick which sent her sprawling jellylike among the blackberries and the dust. Miss Bobbit came tearing across the road, her finger wagging like a metronome; like a schoolteacher she clapped her hands, stamped her foot, and said: “It is a well-known fact that gentlemen are put on the face of the earth for the protection of ladies.
Do you suppose boys behave this way in towns like Memphis, New York, London, Hollywood or Paris?” The boys hung back, and shoved their hands in their pockets. Miss Bobbit helped the colored girl to her feet; she dusted her off, dried her eyes, held out a handkerchief and told her to blow. “A pretty pass,” she said, “a fine situation when a lady can’t walk safely in the public daylight.”
Then the two of them went back and sat on Mrs. Sawyer’s porch; and for the next year they were never far apart, Miss Bobbit and this baby elephant, whose name was Rosalba Cat. At first, Mrs. Sawyer raised a fuss about Rosalba being so much at her house. She told Aunt El that it went against the grain to have a nigger lolling smack there in plain sight on her front porch. But Miss Bobbit had a certain magic, whatever she did she did it with completeness, and so directly, so solemnly, that there was nothing to do but accept it.
For instance, the tradespeople in town used to snicker when they called her Miss Bobbit; but by and by she was Miss Bobbit, and they gave her stiff little bows as she whirled by spinning her parasol. Miss Bobbit told everyone that Rosalba was her sister, which caused a good many jokes; but like most of her ideas, it gradually seemed natural, and when we would overhear them calling each other Sister Rosalba and Sister Bobbit none of us cracked a smile.
But Sister Rosalba and Sister Bobbit did some queer things. There was the business about the dogs. Now there are a great
