by Peter Taylor
“That’s not what I mean,” she heard the kid say again, without blinking an eye, without blushing. “I didn’t know you were that sort of nasty thing here. I didn’t believe you were a fancy woman. Go on out of here. Go away!” he ordered her.
As Josie went down the steps she kept puckering her lips and nodding her head. She was trying to talk to herself about how many times she had been up and down the steps, but she could still see the smooth brown color of his face and his yellow hair, and she could also see her hand trembling on the banister. It seemed like five years since she had come up the steps with the matrons from Memphis.
In the breakfast room she tore open the frail door to George’s little liquor cabinet and took a quart of Bourbon from the shelf. Then she stepped up into the hall and went into the sitting room and took the portable victrola and that record. As she stomped back into the hall, Buddy came running down the steps. He opened the front door and ran out across the veranda and across the lawn. His yellow hair was like a ball of gold in the sunlight as he went through the white gate. But Josie went upstairs.
She locked her door and threw the big key across the room. She knocked the bottle of toilet water and the amber brush off her dressing table as she made room for the victrola. When she had started “Louisville Lady” playing, she sat on the stool and began to wonder. “The kid’s head was like a ball of gold, but I’m not gonna think about him ever once I get back to Memphis,” she told herself. “No, by damn, but I wonder just what George’ll do to me.” She broke the blue seal of the whiskey with her fingernail, and it didn’t seem like more than twenty minutes or half an hour before George was beating and kicking on the door, and she was sitting on the stool and listening and just waiting for him to break the door, and wondering what he’d do to her.
The School Girl
ALL QUESTIONS were quite easy and pleasant to settle with so sensible a girl as Jane Ellen.
“She’s never been anything but a joy to us,” Rachel heard Mr. Patterson say right before the child. He held up the white report card which his daughter brought home that June. Thereon Miss Hood had penned six beautiful E’s (standing for excellence).
One of these E’s was the daughter’s grade in Conduct; and Mrs. Patterson slipped an arm about Jane Ellen’s waist, and she said, “But for this one, all the others would have been as nothing.” She kissed the single curl which was brushed down precisely in the center of the girl’s forehead, apart from her head of bobbed hair, and then sent her upstairs to dress. Rachel, who was Jane Ellen’s black-mammy, lingered at the foot of the stair, listening.
“She’s careful of her person,” said Mrs. Patterson.
“And good students are often careless of their personal appearance,” the father observed further. “Even sloppy, really.”
This year there was no question of whether or not the girl might attend Festival; there had been only the supremely absorbing question of what the child could wear. How high should her heels be? How long the dresses? How severe the neckline in the evening? How stunning should her new hat be? What jewelry?
“It gave me great joy to help get her new clothes ready, for she has no notions of growniness. She consciously selected the pastel shades and the white.”
“Knows what she wants,” said Mr. Patterson.
“Whenever the merchant brought out the suitable piece of cloth, she would say immediately, ‘That will do nicely.’ ”
“And invariably it was something right, was it?”
“Invariably,” affirmed Mrs. Patterson. Leaning forward in her chair she saw that Rachel was still in the hall, paused at the foot of the stair. “The child will need your help, Rachel,” she called impatiently. And as Rachel went noiselessly up the steps she watched the mother settle back into her seat, disappearing behind the dark portiere, and she heard her saying that she declared that she had never before seen a girl so aware of the charm of “simply being sixteen.”
Mr. Patterson said: “She’s a very pretty and a very wise young thing.”
Over her black-mammy’s protest they had put Jane Ellen in boarding school at fifteen, in Belmont at Nashville. This was in the year 1923 and so, of course, before the old regulations had been removed, but she did attend two small dances out at the University that year, and she had returned home virtually a young lady.
Rachel held the white taffeta tea gown before the window. “Clear as bride’s tulle,” she said. The girl answered with a smile in the dressing table mirror. She had brushed her hair close to her head, for she possessed a great, white, broad-brimmed hat to wear to the afternoon party. Rachel watched her move from the dressing table mirror to the full length mirror in the corner of the room. She followed her and stood behind her with the dress over one arm and the white silk petticoat over the other.
Jane Ellen was admiring her new lingerie in the mirror, turning first her one side, then the other. Her figure was plump, and she was only just tall enough to miss being called stubby. Rachel looked in the mirror at the dimples in the girl’s knees and in her elbows as she turned each side to the mirror. She looked closely at the lace on the shoulder strap, and blew softly through her teeth, making a noise which was not distinctly a whistle, a laugh, or a sneer; and she said, not to the girl, but to the room or to the very house, “Nothin’ lack o’ lace here.”
Presently the girl was seated in the platform rocker with one bare leg stuck out straight before her. Rachel squatted with her back to the girl and took the leg under her arm and over her knee. She pulled a silk stocking on over the white, round ankle, straightened it at the heel and stood up as she drew it over the knee. The girl fastened a blue ribboned garter about it. Rachel drew on the other stocking. As Jane Ellen lowered her feet toward the floor, Rachel exclaimed gruffly, “Ah! Ah! look out wid j’,” and slapped the soles of her stocking feet. Then she brought her the new black shoes with the rhinestone buckles on them.
The girl stood up, and Rachel, with great care, dropped the white slip over her head. Rachel stepped back and observed her. “Girl, it’s to y’ knees,” she said. And pointing to the dress: “This here could tolerate two or three petticoats.” The girl laughed and twirled about on one foot before the full length mirror. Rachel caught her wrist and ordered her, “Stop ’at projeckin’!”
Now Rachel slipped the dress over her head and pulled it down over the round little figure. It fitted close about her hips, and both Jane Ellen and Rachel set to work with the snaps at the side plackets.
The hat box was open on the bureau. Rachel was pulling the straight pins from the tissue paper and folding the paper over the edges of the box. She came toward the girl with the big white hat over one fist and the heads of the pins protruding from her lips.
Jane Ellen threw back her head and looked at her hat critically. She took it and slowly pulled it down over her hair. It was a great, white, broad-brimmed hat with the brim turned off the face like the brim of a cavalier’s hat.
She tilted the hat a little to the right. She reached for her yellow quilted purse on her dressing table. She strolled past the full length mirror, smiled at herself there, then smiled at Rachel and blushed.
Her hat and dress were solid white. She frowned into the full length mirror and went and sat down before the dressing table and frowned into that greenish speckled mirror. She adjusted her hat and tugged and pushed at her curls.
Rachel stood in the middle of the room.
Jane Ellen powdered her face and applied the tiniest bit of cheek rouge. She touched her hat again, and now began to rummage in her jewelry box. She held up a rhinestone pin to the hat, then a green buckle, an orange clasp, a gold clasp. She cast down the gold clasp, slammed the box closed, and began to open the drawer to her dressing table.
Her eye was caught by something in the mirror. Rachel saw Jane Ellen’s green eyes in the mirror as they followed something about the room.
All at once Jane Ellen sprang from her seat. She halted herself a moment, then came on her toes across the f
loor.
Rachel, the pins still in her mouth, stood, arms akimbo, in the center of the room while the girl crept past her. Now, still standing in the middle of the room, she looked over her shoulder and saw a large, yellow butterfly hovering about the open window, trying to escape thereby.
It rested on the screen, its wings together. When it fluttered, Rachel saw the exact yellow of the new purse. Then for one silent moment it opened and closed its wings with a rhythm that would seem almost contemplative; yellow wings with black freckles near the slender body between them, with black lines which curved irregularly like the graceful shape of each wing. The yellow, the very tone of the new purse.
The butterfly flew up under the green window shade; the girl sprang at the window and held the shade close over the glass. She pulled out the shade a bit to peep under, and even Rachel could hear the flutter of the wings. But the insect escaped the hand that reached upward. It flew out across the room.
Jane Ellen gave chase, leaping wildly into the air like a Russian dancer. She jumped onto her bed just as the butterfly lit on the mahogany foot post. She stalked the length of the bed, her heels sinking deep into the comfort and mattress, a sweet smile on her lips, and her green eyes focussed precisely on the yellow thing before her. She uttered a wild whoop as she caught one powdery wing between her thumb and her forefinger.
The butterfly flapped about. The girl tiptoed toward Rachel. She reached forward and took three pins from Rachel’s tight lips and carried the flapping butterfly to her dressing table. Rachel saw only the motion of the dimpled elbow as the girl ran one pin again and again through the thing’s soft head and soft striated body. Then the wings were held up to the expanse of white brim, and a pin stuck through each.
Once more Jane Ellen smiled at herself in the full length mirror, and she ran past Rachel out into the hall; and Rachel heard the pitter-patter of her feet upon the stair.
A Walled Garden
NO, MEMPHIS in autumn has not the moss-hung oaks of Natchez. Nor, my dear young man, have we the exotic, the really exotic orange and yellow and rust foliage of the maples at Rye or Saratoga. When our five-month summer season burns itself out, the foliage is left a cheerless brown. Observe that Catawba tree beyond the wall; and the leaves under your feet here on the terrace are mustard and khaki colored; and the air, the atmosphere (who would dare to breathe a deep breath!) is virtually a sea of dust. But we do what we can. We’ve walled ourselves in here with these evergreens and box and jasmine. You must know, yourself, young man, that no beauty is native to us but the verdure of early summer. And it’s as though I’ve had to take my finger, just so, and point out to Frances the lack of sympathy that there is in the climate and in the eroded countryside of this region. I have had to build this garden and say, “See, my child, how nice and sympathetic everything can be.” But now she does see it my way, you understand. You understand, my daughter has finally made her life with me in this little garden plot, and year by year she has come to realize how little else there is hereabouts to compare with it.
And you, you know nothing of flowers? A young man who doesn’t know the zinnia from the aster! How curious that you and my daughter should have made friends. I don’t know under what circumstances you two may have met. In her League work, no doubt. She throws herself so into whatever work she undertakes. Oh? Why, of course, I should have guessed. She simply spent herself on the Chest Drive this year. . . . But my daughter has most of her permanent friends among the flower-minded people. She makes so few friends nowadays outside of our little circle, sees so few people outside our own garden here, really, that I find it quite strange for there to be someone who doesn’t know flowers.
No, nothing, we’ve come to feel, is ever very lovely, really lovely, I mean, in this part of the nation, nothing but this garden; and you can well imagine what even this little bandbox of a garden once was. I created it out of a virtual chaos of a backyard—Franny’s playground, I might say. For three years I nursed that little magnolia there, for one whole summer did nothing but water the ivy on the east wall of the house; if only you could have seen the scrubby hedge and the unsightly servants’ quarters of our neighbors that are beyond my serpentine wall (I suppose, at least, they’re still there). In those days it was all very different, you understand, and Frances’s father was about the house, and Frances was a child. But now in the spring we have what is truly a sweet garden here, modeled on my mother’s at Rye; for three weeks in March our hyacinths are an inspiration to Frances and to me and to all those who come to us regularly; the larkspur and marigold are heavenly in May over there beside the roses.
But you do not know the zinnia from the aster, young man? How curious that you two should have become friends. And now you are impatient with her, and you mustn’t be; I don’t mean to be too indulgent, but she’ll be along presently. Only recently she’s become incredibly painstaking in her toilet again. Whereas in the last few years she’s not cared so much for the popular fads of dress. Gardens and floral design have occupied her—with what guidance I could give—have been pretty much her life, really. Now in the old days, I confess, before her father was taken from us—I lost Mr. Harris in the dreadfully hot summer of ’48 (people don’t generally realize what a dreadful year that was—the worst year for perennials and annuals, alike, since Terrible ’30. Things died that year that I didn’t think would ever die. A dreadful summer)—why, she used then to run here and there with people of every sort, it seemed. I put no restraint upon her, understand. How many times I’ve said to my Franny, “You must make your own life, my child, as you would have it.” Yes, in those days she used to run here and there with people of every sort and variety, it seemed to me. Where was it you say you met, for she goes so few places that are really out anymore? But Mr. Harris would let me put no restraint upon her. I still remember the strongheadedness of her teens that had to be overcome and the testiness in her character when she was nearer to twenty than thirty. And you should have seen her as a tot of twelve when she would be somersaulting and rolling about on this very spot. Honestly, I see that child now, the mud on her middy blouse and her straight yellow hair in her eyes.
When I used to come back from visiting my people at Rye, she would grit her teeth at me and give her confidence to the black cook. I would find my own child become a mad little animal. It was through this door here from the sun-room that I came one September afternoon—just such an afternoon as this, young man—still wearing my traveling suit, and called to my child across the yard for her to come and greet me. I had been away for the two miserable summer months, caring for my sick mother, but at the sight of me the little Indian turned and with a whoop she ran to hide in the scraggly privet hedge which was at the far end of the yard. I called her twice to come from out that filthiest of shrubs. “Frances Ann!” We used to call her by her full name when her father was alive. But she didn’t stir. She crouched at the roots of the hedge and spied at her travel-worn mother between the leaves.
I pleaded with her at first quite indulgently and good-naturedly and described the new ruffled dress and the paper cutouts I had brought from her grandmother at Rye. (I wasn’t to have Mother much longer, and I knew it, and it was hard to come home to this kind of scene.) At last I threatened to withhold my presents until Thanksgiving or Christmas. The cook in the kitchen may have heard some change in my tone, for she came to the kitchen door over beyond the latticework which we’ve since put up, and looked out first at me and then at the child. While I was threatening, my daughter crouched in the dirt and began to mumble things to herself which I could not hear, and the noises she made were like those of an angry little cat. It seems that it was a warmer afternoon than this one—but my garden does deceive—and I had been moving about in my heavy traveling suit. In my exasperation I stepped out into the rays of the sweltering sun, and into the yard which I so detested; and I uttered in a scream the child’s full name, “Frances Ann Harris!” Just then the black cook stepped out onto the back porch, but I order
ed her to return to the kitchen. I began to cross the yard toward Frances Ann—that scowling little creature who was incredibly the same Frances you’ve met—and simultaneously she began to crawl along the hedgerow toward the wire fence that divided my property from the neighbor’s.
I believe it was the extreme heat that made me speak so very harshly and with such swiftness as to make my words incomprehensible. When I saw that the child had reached the fence and intended climbing it, I pulled off my hat, tearing my veil to pieces as I hurried my pace. I don’t actually know what I was saying—I probably couldn’t have told you even a moment later—and I didn’t even feel any pain from the turn which I gave my ankle in the gully across the middle of the yard. But the child kept her nervous little eyes on me and her lips continued to move now and again. Each time her lips moved I believe I must have raised my voice in more intense rage and greater horror at her ugliness. And so, young man, striding straight through the hedge I reached her before she had climbed to the top of the wire fencing. I think I took her by the arm above the elbow, about here, and I said something like, “I shall have to punish you, Frances Ann.” I did not jerk her. I didn’t jerk her one bit, as she wished to make it appear, but rather, as soon as I touched her, she relaxed her hold on the wire and fell to the ground. But she lay there—in her canniness—only the briefest moment looking up and past me through the straight hair that hung over her face like an untrimmed mane. I had barely ordered her to rise when she sprang up and moved with such celerity that she soon was out of my reach again. I followed—running in those high heels—and this time I turned my other ankle in the gully, and I fell there on the ground in that yard, this garden. You won’t believe it—pardon, I must sit down. . . . I hope you don’t think it too odd, me telling you all this. . . . You won’t believe it: I lay there in the ditch and she didn’t come to aid me with childish apologies and such, but instead she deliberately climbed into her swing that hung from the dirty old poplar that was here formerly (I have had it cut down and the roots dug up) and she began to swing, not high and low, but only gently, and stared straight down at her mother through her long hair—which, you may be sure, young man, I had cut the very next day at my own beautician’s and curled into a hundred ringlets.
