The Little Friend

by Donna Tartt

  Hely punched Harriet on the shoulder. “We ought to hop on that and ride to New Orleans sometime. Some night.”

  Harriet turned away from him, folding her arms across her chest, and looked out at the street. Thunder growled in the distance. Opposite, the awning of the hardware store flapped in the wind, and bits of paper skittered and somersaulted down the sidewalk.

  Hely looked at the sky, held out a palm. Just as the girl clicked the key in the lock of the glass door, a drop of rain splashed on his forehead.

  ————

  “Gum, can you drive the Trans Am?” said Danny. He was high, high as a kite, and his grandmother looked as spiny as an old cactus in her red flowered house-dress: flowery, he told himself, staring up at her from the chair where he sat, red paper flower.

  And Gum—like a cactus—stood vegetating for a moment before she gasped and responded, in her spiny voice:

  “Driving’s not the problem. It’s just real low down to the ground for me. This arthuritis.”

  “Well, I can’t—” Danny had to stop and reconsider, begin again—“I can drive you to Jury Duty if you want but that aint going to fix the car being low on the ground.” Everything was the wrong height for his grandmother. When the pickup was working, she complained that the cab was too high.

  “Oh,” Gum said peacefully, “I don’t mind if you drive me, son. You might as well do something with that expensive truck-driving education of yours.”

  Slowly, slowly, with her light little brown claw of a hand resting on Danny’s arm, she hobbled out to the car—through the packed-dirt yard where Farish sat in his lawn chair taking apart a telephone, and it occurred to Danny (in a vivid flash, as these things sometimes did) that all his brothers, himself included, saw deep into the nature of things. Curtis saw the good in people; Eugene saw God’s presence in the world, how each thing had its own work and its own orderly place; Danny saw into people’s minds, and what made them act the way they did, and sometimes—the drugs were making him think it—sometimes he could even see a little bit into the future. And Farish—before his accident, anyway—had seen more deeply into things than any of them. Farish understood power, and hidden possibilities; he understood what made things work—whether it was engines, or the animals out in the taxidermy shed. But nowadays, if he was interested in something, he had to cut it up and strew it all over the ground to make sure nothing special was inside.

  Gum didn’t like the radio, so they rode into town in silence. Danny was aware of every bit of metal in the car’s bronze body, whirring simultaneously.

  “Well,” she said placidly. “I worried from the start that nothing was ever going to come from that truck-driving job.”

  Danny said nothing. The truck-driving days, back before his second felony arrest, had been the happiest of his life. He’d been running around a lot, playing guitar at night, with vague hopes of starting a band, and driving a truck seemed pretty boring and ordinary in comparison with the future he’d had lined up for himself. But now, when he looked back on it—only a few years ago, though it seemed a lifetime—it was the days in the trucks and not the nights in the bars that he remembered with longing.

  Gum sighed. “I guess it’s just as well,” she said, in her thin, wispy old voice. “You’d have been driving that old truck till you died.”

  Better than getting stuck here at home, thought Danny. His grandmother had always made him feel stupid for liking that job. “Danny don’t expect much from life.” That’s what she’d gone around saying after the truck outfit had hired him. “It’s good you don’t expect much, Danny, because you won’t be disappointed.” It was the main lesson in life she had drilled into her grandsons: not to expect much from the world. The world was a mean place, dog eat dog (to quote another of her favorite sayings). If any of her boys expected too much, or rose above themselves, they would get their hopes knocked down and broken. But in Danny’s view, this wasn’t much of a lesson.

  “It’s like I told Ricky Lee.” Scabs and sores and atrophied black veins on the backs of her hands, folded complacently in her lap. “When he got that basketball scholarship to Delta State, he was going to have to work nights on top of his school and his ball practice just to pay for his books. I said ‘I just hate to think about you having to work so much harder than everybody else, Ricky. Just so’s a lot of rich kids who got more than you do can stand around and make fun of you.’ ”

  “Right,” said Danny, when he realized his grandmother expected him to say something. Ricky Lee hadn’t taken the scholarship; Gum and Farish, between them, had managed to make enough fun of him so he turned it down. And where was Ricky now? In jail.

  “All that. Going to school and working the night shift. Just to play ball.”

  Danny vowed that Gum would be driving herself to the courthouse tomorrow.

  ————

  Harriet woke that morning and looked at the ceiling for a little while before she remembered where she was. She sat up—she had slept in her clothes again, with dirty feet—and went downstairs.

  Ida Rhew was hanging laundry out in the yard. Harriet stood watching her. She thought of going up for a bath—unasked—to please Ida, and decided not to: appearing unwashed, in yesterday’s grimy clothes, would certainly make it clear to Ida how vital it was that she stay. Humming, her mouth full of clothespins, Ida reached down into her basket. She did not seem troubled or sad, only preoccupied.

  “Are you fired?” said Harriet, watching her closely.

  Ida started; then took the clothespins out of her mouth. “Well, good morning, Harriet!” she said, with a hearty, impersonal cheer that made Harriet’s heart sink. “Aint you filthy? Get in there and wash up.”

  “Are you fired?”

  “No, I aint fired. I’ve decided,” said Ida, returning to her work, “I’ve decided to go on down to Hattiesburg and live with my daughter.”

  Sparrows twittered overhead. Ida shook out a wet pillowcase, with a loud flap, and pinned it on the line. “That’s what I decided,” she said. “It’s time.”

  Harriet’s mouth was dry. “How far is Hattiesburg,” she said, although she knew, without being told, that it was near the Gulf Coast—hundreds of miles away.

  “All the way down there. Down where they have all those old long-needled pine! You don’t need me any more,” said Ida—casually, as if she were telling Harriet that she didn’t need any more dessert or Coca-Cola. “I’s married when I’s only a few years older than you. With a baby.”

  Harriet was shocked and insulted. She hated babies—Ida knew very well how much.

  “Yes maam.” Absent-mindedly, Ida pinned another shirt on the line. “Everything changes. I’s only fifteen years old when I married Charley T. Soon you’ll be married, too.”

  There was no point in arguing with her. “Is Charley T. going with you?”

  “ ’Cose he is.”

  “Does he want to go?”

  “I reckon.”

  “What will you do down there?”

  “What, me or Charley?”

  “You.”

  “I don’t know. Work for somebody else, I guess. Sit some other kids, or babies.”

  To think of Ida—Ida!—abandoning her for some slobbery baby!

  “When are you leaving?” she asked Ida, coldly.

  “Next week.”

  There was nothing else to say. Ida’s demeanor made it plain that she wasn’t interested in further conversation. Harriet stood and watched her for a moment—bending to the basket, hanging up the clothes, bending to the basket again—and then walked away, across the yard, in the empty, unreal sunshine. When she went in the house, her mother—hovering anxiously, in the Blue Fairy nightgown—pittered into the kitchen and tried to kiss her, but Harriet wrenched away and stamped out the back door.

  “Harriet? What’s the matter, sweetheart?” her mother called after her piteously, out the back door. “You seem like you’re mad at me … ? Harriet?”

  Ida looked at Harriet incredul
ously as she stormed past; she took the clothespins out of her mouth. “Answer yo mama,” she said, in the voice that usually stopped Harriet cold.

  “I don’t have to mind you any more,” Harriet said, and kept walking.

  ————

  “If your mother wants to let Ida go,” said Edie, “I can’t interfere.”

  Harriet attempted, unsuccessfully, to catch Edie’s eye. “Why not?” she said at last, and—when Edie went back to her pad and pencil—“Edie, why not?”

  “Because I can’t,” said Edie, who was trying to decide what to pack for her trip to Charleston. Her navy pumps were the most comfortable, but they did not look nearly so well with her pastel summer suits as the spectators. She was also a little annoyed that Charlotte had not consulted her about such an important decision as whether or not to hire or fire the maid.

  Presently, Harriet said: “But why can’t you interfere?”

  Edie laid down her pencil. “Harriet, it’s not my place.”

  “Your place?”

  “I wasn’t consulted. Don’t you worry, little girl,” said Edie, in a brighter key, rising to pour herself another cup of coffee and laying an absent-minded hand upon Harriet’s shoulder. “Everything will work out for the best! You’ll see!”

  Gratified to have cleared things up so easily, Edie sat back down with her coffee and said, after what was to her a peaceful silence: “I certainly wish I had some of those nice little wash-and-wear suits to take on my trip. The ones I have are all worn down, and linen isn’t practical for travel. I could hang a garment bag in the back of the car.…” She was not looking at Harriet, but somewhere over the top of her head; and she slipped back into thought without noticing Harriet’s red face or her hostile, provocative stare.

  After some moments—preoccupied ones, for Edie—steps creaked up the back porch. “Hello!” A shadowy form—hand to brow—peered in through the screen door. “Edith?”

  “Well, I declare!” cried another voice, thin and cheery. “Is that Harriet you’ve got in there with you?”

  Before Edie could get up from the table, Harriet hopped up and scooted to the back door—past Tat, to Libby on the porch.

  “Where’s Adelaide?” said Edie to Tat, who was smiling over her shoulder at Harriet.

  Tat rolled her eyes. “She wanted to stop off at the grocery store for a jar of Sanka.”

  “Oh, my,” Libby was saying, out on the back porch, in a slightly muffled voice. “Harriet, my goodness! What a joyous welcome.…”

  “Harriet,” called Edie sharply, “don’t hang all over Libby.”

  She waited, and listened. From the porch, she heard Libby say: “Are you sure you’re all right, my angel?”

  “Heavens,” said Tatty, “is the child crying?”

  “Libby, how much do you pay Odean a week?”

  “Goodness! What makes you ask a question like that?”

  Edie got up and marched to the screen door. “That’s none of your business, Harriet,” she snapped. “Get inside.”

  “Oh, Harriet’s not bothering me,” said Libby, disengaging her arm, adjusting her spectacles and peering at Harriet with innocent and unsuspicious perplexity.

  “Your grandmother means—” Tat said, following Edie onto the porch—since childhood, it had been her task to rephrase, diplomatically, Edie’s sharp dictums and decrees—“what she means is, Harriet, it’s not polite to ask people about money.”

  “I don’t care,” said Libby, loyally. “Harriet, I pay Odean thirty-five dollars a week.”

  “Mother only pays Ida twenty. That’s not right, is it?”

  “Well,” said Libby, blinking, after what was obviously a stunned pause, “I don’t know. I mean, your mother’s not wrong, but—”

  Edie—who was determined not to waste the morning discussing a fired housekeeper—interrupted: “Your hair looks pretty, Lib. Doesn’t her hair look beautiful? Who did it?”

  “Mrs. Ryan,” said Libby, bringing a flustered hand up to hover at her temple.

  “We’ve all got so gray-headed now,” Tatty said pleasantly, “you can’t tell one from the other.”

  “Don’t you like Libby’s hair?” said Edie, sternly. “Harriet?”

  Harriet, on the verge of tears, looked angrily away.

  “I know a little girl who could stand to get her own hair cut,” said Tat, waggishly. “Does your mother still send you down to the barber, Harriet, or do you get to go to the beauty shop?”

  “I reckon Mr. Liberti can do it just as well and not charge half as much,” said Edie. “Tat, you ought to have told Adelaide not to stop at the grocery store. I told her I had a bunch of hot chocolate in those little individual envelopes that I’d already packed for her.”

  “Edith, I did tell her, but she says she can’t have sugar.”

  Edie drew back mischievously, in mock astonishment. “Why not? Does sugar make her wild, too?” Adelaide had recently begun to refuse coffee, citing this as the cause.

  “If she wants Sanka, I don’t see any reason why she shouldn’t have it.”

  Edie snorted. “Nor do I. I certainly don’t want Adelaide to be wild.”

  “What? What’s all this about wild?” said Libby, startled.

  “Oh, didn’t you know? Adelaide can’t have coffee. Because coffee makes her wild.” Adelaide had only started saying this recently, since her silly choir friend Mrs. Pitcock had started to go around saying the same thing.

  “Well, I like a cup of Sanka myself, every now and then,” Tat said. “But it’s not as if I must have it. I can get along without it just fine.”

  “Well, it’s not as if we’re going to the Belgian Congo! They sell Sanka in the city of Charleston, there’s no reason for her to haul a great big jar of it in her suitcase!”

  “I don’t see why not. When you’re taking the hot chocolate. For yourself.”

  “You know how early Addie does get up, Edith,” interjected Libby, anxiously, “and she’s afraid that the room service won’t open until seven or eight—”

  “That’s why I packed this good hot chocolate! A cup of hot chocolate won’t hurt Adelaide one bit.”

  “I don’t mind what I have, hot chocolate sounds awfully good! Just think,” said Libby, clapping her hands and turning to Harriet. “This time next week we’ll be in South Carolina! I’m so excited!”

  “Yes,” Tat said brightly. “And your grandmother’s mighty smart to drive us all there.”

  “I don’t know about smart, but I expect I can get all of us there and back in one piece.”

  “Libby, Ida Rhew quit,” said Harriet in a miserable rush, “she’s leaving town—”

  “Quit?” asked Libby, who was hard of hearing; she glanced imploringly at Edith, who tended to speak more loudly and distinctly than most people. “I’m afraid you’ll have to slow down a little, Harriet.”

  “She’s talking about Ida Rhew that works for them,” said Edie, folding her arms over her chest. “She’s leaving, and Harriet is upset about it. I’ve told her that things change, and that people move on, and that’s just the way the world is.”

  Libby’s face fell. With candid sympathy, she gazed at Harriet.

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” said Tat. “You’ll miss Ida, I know you will, sweetheart, she’s been with you a long time.”

  “Ah,” said Libby, “but this child loves Ida! You love Ida, don’t you darling,” she said to Harriet, “the way that I love Odean.”

  Tat and Edie rolled their eyes at each other, and Edie said: “You love Odean a little too much, Lib.” Odean’s laziness was an old, old joke among Libby’s sisters; she sat around the house, supposedly in ill-health, while Libby brought her cold drinks and did the washing-up.

  “But Odean’s been with me for fifty years,” said Libby. “She’s my family. She was with me out at Tribulation, for Heaven’s sake, and she’s not in good health.”

  Tat said: “She takes advantage of you, Libby.”

  “Darling,” said Libby, who had
grown quite pink in the face, “I mean to tell you that Odean carried me out of the house when I was so sick with pneumonia that time out in the country. Carried me! On her back! All the way from Tribulation over to Chippokes!”

  Edie said, thinly: “Well, she certainly doesn’t do much now.”

  Quietly, Libby turned to Harriet for a long moment, and her watery old eyes were steady and compassionate.

  “It’s awful being a child,” she said, simply, “at the mercy of other people.”

  “Just wait until you’re grown up,” Tatty said encouragingly, putting an arm around Harriet’s shoulder. “Then you’ll have your own house, and Ida Rhew can come live with you. How about that?”

  “Nonsense,” said Edie. “She’ll get over it soon enough. Maids come, and maids go—”

  “I’ll never get over it!” shrieked Harriet, startling them all.

  Before any of them could say anything, she threw off Tatty’s arm and turned and ran off. Edie lifted her eyebrows, resignedly, as if to say: this is what I have put up with all morning.

  “My goodness!” said Tat, at last, passing a hand over her forehead.

  “To tell you the truth,” Edie said, “I think Charlotte’s making a mistake, but I’m tired of putting my foot in over there.”

  “You’ve always done everything for Charlotte, Edith.”

  “So I have. And it’s why she doesn’t know how to do anything for herself. I think it’s high time she started taking more responsibility.”

  “But what about the girls?” said Libby. “Do you think they’ll be all right?”

  “Libby, you had Tribulation to run and Daddy and the rest of us to look after when you were hardly older than she is,” said Edie, nodding in the direction in which Harriet had disappeared.

  “That’s so. But these children aren’t like we were, Edith. They’re more sensitive.”

  “Well, it didn’t matter if we were sensitive. We didn’t have any choice.”

  “What’s wrong with that child?” said Adelaide—powdered and lipsticked, her hair freshly curled—as she started up the porch. “I met her running down the street like a thunderbolt, dirty as anything. And she wouldn’t even speak to me.”