suade Grandmother to allow her to come with them. "Very well, this once," Grandmother said, "since it"s a family reunion."
This once! This once! She could not look hard enough at everything. She even peeped down between the wide crevices of the piled-up plank seats, where she was astonished to see odd-looking, roughly dressed little boys peeping up from the dust below. They were squatted in little heaps, staring up quietly. She looked squarely into the eyes of one, who returned her a look so peculiar she gazed and gazed, trying to understand it. It was a bold grinning stare without any kind of friendliness in it. He was a thin, dirty little boy with a floppy old checkerboard cap pulled over crumpled red ears and dust-colored hair. As she gazed he nudged the little boy next to him, whispered, and the second little boy caught her eye. This was too much. Miranda pulled Dicey"s sleeve. "Dicey, what are those little boys doing down there?" "Down where?"
asked Dicey, but she seemed to know already, for she bent over and looked through the crevice, drew her knees together and her skirts around her, and said severely: "You jus mind yo" own business and stop throwin" yo" legs around that way. Don"t you pay any mind. Plenty o" monkeys right here in the show widout you studyin dat kind."
An enormous bra.s.s band seemed to explode right at Miranda"s ear. She jumped, quivered, thrilled blindly and almost forgot to breathe as sound and color and smell rushed together and poured through her skin and hair and beat in her head and hands and feet and pit of her stomach. "Oh," she called out in her panic, closing her eyes and seizing Dicey"s hand hard. The flaring lights burned through her lids, a roar of laughter like rage drowned out the steady raging of the drums and horns. She opened her eyes ...
A creature in a blousy white overall with ruffles at the neck and ankles, with bone-white skull and chalk-white face, with tufted eyebrows far apart in the middle of his forehead, the lids in a black sharp angle, a long scarlet mouth stretching back into sunken cheeks, turned up at the corners in a perpetual bitter grimace of pain, astonishment, not smiling, pranced along a wire stretched down the center of the ring, balancing a long thin pole with little wheels at either end. Miranda thought at first he was walking on air, or flying, and this did not surprise her; but when she saw the wire, she was terrified. High above their heads the inhuman figure 344.
pranced, spinning the little wheels. He paused, slipped, the flapping white leg waved in s.p.a.ce; he staggered, wobbled, slipped sidewise, plunged, and caught the wire with frantic knee, hanging there upside down, the other leg waving like a feeler above his head; slipped once more, caught by one frenzied heel, and swung back and forth like a scarf ... The crowd roared with savage delight, shrieks of dreadful laughter like devils in delicious torment ...
Miranda shrieked too, with real pain, clutching at her stomach with her knees drawn up ... The man on the wire, hanging by his foot, turned his head like a seal from side to side and blew sneering kisses from his cruel mouth. Then Miranda covered her eyes and screamed, the tears pouring over her cheeks and chin.
"Take her home," said her father, "get her out of here at once,"
but the laughter was not wiped from his face. He merely glanced at her and back to the ring. "Take her away, Dicey," called the Grandmother, from under her half-raised crepe veil. Dicey, rebelliously, very slowly, without taking her gaze from the white figure swaying on the wire, rose, seized the limp, suffering bundle, prodded and lumped her way over knees and feet, through the crowd, down the levels of the scaffolding, across a s.p.a.ce of sandy tanbark, out through a flap in the tent. Miranda was crying steadily with an occasional hiccough. A dwarf was standing in the entrance, wearing a little woolly beard, a pointed cap, tight red breeches, long shoes with turned-up toes. He carried a thin white wand.
Miranda almost touched him before she saw him, her distorted face with its open mouth and glistening tears almost level with his. He leaned forward and peered at her with kind, not-human golden eyes, like a near-sighted dog: then made a horrid grimace at her, imitating her own face. Miranda struck at him in sheer ill temper, screaming. Dicey drew her away quickly, but not before Miranda had seen in his face, suddenly, a look of haughty, remote dis-pleasure, a true grown-up look. She knew it well. It chilled her with a new kind of fear: she had not believed he was really human.
"Raincheck, get your raincheck!" said a very disagreeable looking fellow as they pa.s.sed. Dicey turned toward him almost in tears herself. "Mister, caint you see I won"t be able to git back? I got this young un to see to ... What good dat lil piece of paper goin to do me?" me?" All the way home she was cross, and grumbled under her breath: little ole meany ... little ole scare-cat ... gret big All the way home she was cross, and grumbled under her breath: little ole meany ... little ole scare-cat ... gret big 345.
baby ... never go nowhere ... never see nothin ... come on here now, hurry up-always ruinin everything for othah folks ... won"t let anybody rest a minute, won"t let anybody have any good times ... come on here now, you wanted to go home and you"re going there ... s.n.a.t.c.hing Miranda along, vicious but cautious, careful not to cross the line where Miranda could say outright: "Dicey did this or said this to me ..." Dicey was allowed a certain freedom up to a point.
The family trooped into the house just before dark and scattered out all over it. From every room came the sound of chatter and laughter. The other children told Miranda what she had missed: wonderful little ponies with plumes and bells on their bridles, ridden by darling little monkeys in velvet jackets and peaked hats ... trained white goats that danced ... a baby elephant that crossed his front feet and leaned against his cage and opened his mouth to be fed, such such a baby! ... more clowns, funnier than the first one even ... beautiful ladies with bright yellow hair, wearing white silk tights with red satin sashes had performed on white trapezes; they also had hung by their toes, but how gracefully, like flying birds! Huge white horses had lolloped around and round the ring with men and women dancing on their backs! One man had swung by his teeth from the top of the tent and another had put his head in a lion"s mouth. Ah, what she had not missed! Everybody had been enjoying themselves while she was missing her first big circus and spoiling the day for Dicey. Poor Dicey. Poor dear Dicey. The other children who hadn"t thought of Dicey until that moment, mourned over her with sad mouths, their malicious eyes watching Miranda squirm. Dicey had been looking forward for weeks to this day! And then Miranda must get scared-"Can you a baby! ... more clowns, funnier than the first one even ... beautiful ladies with bright yellow hair, wearing white silk tights with red satin sashes had performed on white trapezes; they also had hung by their toes, but how gracefully, like flying birds! Huge white horses had lolloped around and round the ring with men and women dancing on their backs! One man had swung by his teeth from the top of the tent and another had put his head in a lion"s mouth. Ah, what she had not missed! Everybody had been enjoying themselves while she was missing her first big circus and spoiling the day for Dicey. Poor Dicey. Poor dear Dicey. The other children who hadn"t thought of Dicey until that moment, mourned over her with sad mouths, their malicious eyes watching Miranda squirm. Dicey had been looking forward for weeks to this day! And then Miranda must get scared-"Can you imagine imagine being afraid of that funny old clown?" each one asked the other, and then they smiled pityingly on Miranda ... being afraid of that funny old clown?" each one asked the other, and then they smiled pityingly on Miranda ...
Then too, it had been a very important occasion in another way: it was the first time Grandmother had ever allowed herself to be persuaded to go to the circus. One could not gather, from her rather generalized opinions, whether there had been no circuses when she was young, or there had been and it was not proper to see them. At any rate for her usual sound reasons, Grandmother had never approved of circuses, and though she would not deny she had been amused somewhat, still there had been sights and 346.
sounds in this one which she maintained were, to say the least, not particularly edifying to the young. Her son Harry, who came in while the children made an early supper, looked at their illuminated faces, all the brothers and sisters and visiting cousins, and said, "This basket of young doesn"t seem to be much damaged."
His mother said, "The fruits of their present are in a future so far off, neither of us may live to know whether harm has been done or not. That is the trouble," and she went on ladling out hot milk to pour over their b.u.t.tered toast. Miranda was sitting silent, her underlip drooping. Her father smiled at her. "You missed it, Baby,"
he said softly, "and what good did that do you?"
Miranda burst again into tears: had to be taken away at last, and her supper was brought up to her. Dicey was exasperated and silent. Miranda could not eat. She tried, as if she were really remembering them, to think of the beautiful wild beings in white satin and spangles and red sashes who danced and frolicked on the trapezes; of the sweet little furry ponies and the lovely pet monkeys in their comical clothes. She fell asleep, and her invented memories gave way before her real ones, the bitter terrified face of the man in blowsy white falling to his death-ah, the cruel joke!
-and the terrible grimace of the unsmiling dwarf. She screamed in her sleep and sat up crying for deliverance from her torments.
Dicey came, her cross, sleepy eyes half-closed, her big dark mouth pouted, thumping the floor with her thick bare feet. "I swear," swear," she said, in a violent hoa.r.s.e whisper. "What the matter with you? You need a good spankin, I she said, in a violent hoa.r.s.e whisper. "What the matter with you? You need a good spankin, I swear! swear! Wakin everybody up like this ..." Wakin everybody up like this ..."
Miranda was completely subjugated by her fears. She had a way of answering Dicey back. She would say, "Oh, hush up, Dicey." Or she would say, "I don"t have to mind you. you. I don"t have to mind anybody but my grandmother," which was provokingly true. And she would say, "You don"t know what you"re talking about." The day just past had changed that. Miranda sincerely did not want anybody, not even Dicey, to be cross with her. Ordinarily she did not care how cross she made the hara.s.sed adults around her. Now if Dicey must be cross, she still did not really care, if only Dicey might not turn out the lights and leave her to the fathomless terrors of the darkness where sleep could overtake her once more. I don"t have to mind anybody but my grandmother," which was provokingly true. And she would say, "You don"t know what you"re talking about." The day just past had changed that. Miranda sincerely did not want anybody, not even Dicey, to be cross with her. Ordinarily she did not care how cross she made the hara.s.sed adults around her. Now if Dicey must be cross, she still did not really care, if only Dicey might not turn out the lights and leave her to the fathomless terrors of the darkness where sleep could overtake her once more.
347.
She hugged Dicey with both arms, crying, "Don"t, don"t leave me.
Don"t be so angry! I c-c-can"t b-bear it!" be so angry! I c-c-can"t b-bear it!"
Dicey lay down beside her with a long moaning sigh, which meant that she was collecting her patience and making up her mind to remember that she was a Christian and must bear her cross. "Now you go to sleep," she said, in her usual warm being-good voice. "Now you jes shut yo eyes and go to sleep. I ain"t going to leave you. Dicey ain"t mad at n.o.body ... n.o.body n.o.body in the whole worl" ..." in the whole worl" ..."
THE LAST LEAF.
Old Nannie sat hunched upon herself expecting her own death momentarily. The Grandmother had said to her at parting, with the easy prophecy of the aged, that this might be their last farewell on earth; they embraced and kissed each other on the cheeks, and once more promised to meet each other in heaven. Nannie was prepared to start her journey at once. The children gathered around her: "Aunt Nannie, never you mind! We love you!" She paid no attention; she did not care whether they loved her or not.
Years afterward, Maria, the elder girl, thought with a pang, they had not really been so very nice to Aunt Nannie. They went on depending upon her as they always had, letting her a.s.sume more burdens and more, allowing her to work harder than she should have. The old woman grew silent, hunched over more deeply-she was thin and tall also, with a n.o.bly modeled Negro face, worn to the bone and a thick fine sooty black, no mixed blood in Nannie -and her spine seemed suddenly to have given way. They could hear her groaning at night on her knees beside her bed, asking G.o.d to let her rest.
When a black family moved out of a little cabin across the narrow creek, the first cabin empty for years, Nannie went down to look at it. She came back and asked Mister Harry, "Whut you aim to do wid dat cabin?" Mister Harry said, "Nothing," he supposed; and Nannie asked for it. She wanted a house of her own, she said; in her whole life she never had a place of her very own. Mister 348.
Harry said, of course she could have it. But the whole family was surprised, a little wounded. "Lemme go there and pa.s.s my last days in peace, chil"ren," she said. They had the place scrubbed and whitewashed, shelves put in and the chimney cleaned, they fixed Nannie up with a good bed and a fairly good carpet and allowed her to take all sorts of odds and ends from the house. It was astonishing to discover that Nannie had always liked and hoped to own certain things, she had seemed so contented and wantless. She moved away, and as the children said afterwards to each other, it was almost funny and certainly very sweet to see how she tried not to be too happy the day she left, but they felt rather put upon, just the same.
Thereafter she sat in the serene idleness of making patchwork and braiding woolen rugs. Her grandchildren and her white family visited her, and all kinds of white persons who had never owned a soul related to Nannie, went to see her, to buy her rugs or leave little presents with her.
She had always worn black wool dresses, or black and white figured calico with starchy white ap.r.o.ns and a white ruffled mob-cap, or a black taffety cap for Sundays. She had been finicking precise and neat in her ways, and she still was. But she was no more the faithful old servant Nannie, a freed slave: she was an aged Bantu woman of independent means, sitting on the steps, breathing the free air. She began wearing a blue bandanna wrapped around her head, and at the age of eighty-five she took to smoking a corncob pipe. The black iris of the deep, withdrawn old eyes turned a chocolate brown and seemed to spread over the whole surface of the eyeball. As her sight failed, the eyelids crinkled and drew in, so that her face was like an eyeless mask.
The children, brought up in an out-of-date sentimental way of thinking, had always complacently believed that Nannie was a real member of the family, perfectly happy with them, and this rebuke, so quiedy and firmly administered, chastened them somewhat. The lesson sank in as the years went on and Nannie continued to sit on the doorstep of her cabin. They were growing up, times were changing, the old world was sliding from under their feet, they had not yet laid hold of the new one. They missed Nannie every day.
As their fortunes went down, and they had very few servants, they 349.
needed her terribly. They realized how much the old woman had done for them, simply by seeing how, almost immediately after she went, everything slackened, lost tone, went oif edge. Work did not accomplish itself as it once had. They had not learned how to work for themselves, they were all lazy and incapable of sustained effort or planning. They had not been taught and they had not yet educated themselves. Now and then Nannie would come back up the hill for a visit. She worked then almost as she had before, with a kind of satisfaction in proving to them that she had been almost indispensable. They would miss her more than ever when she went away. To show their grat.i.tude, and their hope that she would come again, they would heap upon her baskets and bales of the precious rubbish she loved, and one of her great grandsons Skid or Hasty would push them away beside her on a wheelbarrow. She would again for a moment be the amiable, dependent, like-one-of-the-family old servant: "I know my chil"ren won"t let me go away empty-handed."
Uncle Jimbilly still pottered around, mending harness, currying horses, patching fences, now and then setting out a few plants or loosening the earth around shrubs in the spring. He muttered perpetually to himself, his blue mouth always moving in an endless disjointed comment on things past and present, and even to come, no doubt, though there was nothing about him that suggested any connection with even the nearest future ... Maria had not realized until after her grandmother"s death that Uncle Jimbilly and Aunt Nannie were husband and wife ... That marriage of convenience, in which they had been mated with truly royal policy, with an eye to the blood and family stability, had dissolved of itself between them when the reasons for its being had likewise dissolved ... They took no notice whatever of each other"s existence, they seemed to forget they had children together (each spoke of "my children"), they had stored up no common memories that either wished to keep. Aunt Nannie moved away into her own house without even a glance or thought for Uncle Jimbilly, and he did not seem to notice that she was gone ... He slept in a little attic over the smoke-house, and ate in the kitchen at odd hours, and did as he pleased, lonely as a wandering spirit and almost as invisible ... But one day he pa.s.sed by the little house and saw 350.
Aunt Nannie sitting on her steps with her pipe. He sat down awhile, groaning a little as he bent himself into angles, and sunned himself like a weary old dog. He would have stayed on from that minute, but Nannie would not have him. "Whut you doin with all this big house to yoself?" he wanted to know. " "Tain"t no more than just enough fo" me," she told him pointedly; "I don" aim to pa.s.s my las" days waitin on no man," she added, "I"ve served my time, I"ve done my do, and dat"s all." So Uncle Jimbilly crept back up the hill and into his smoke-house attic, and never went near her again ...
On summer evenings she sat by herself long after dark, smoking to keep away the mosquitoes, until she was ready to sleep. She said she wasn"t afraid of anything: never had been, never expected to be. She had long ago got in the way of thinking that night was a blessing, it brought the time when she didn"t have to work any more until tomorrow. Even after she stopped working for good and all, she still looked forward with longing to the night, as if all the acc.u.mulated fatigues of her life, lying now embedded in her bones, still begged for eas.e.m.e.nt. But when night came, she remembered that she didn"t have to get up in the morning until she was ready. So she would sit in the luxury of having at her disposal all of G.o.d"s good time there was in this world.
When Mister Harry, in the old days, had stood out against her word in some petty dispute, she could always get the better of him by slapping her slatty old chest with the flat of her long hand and crying out: "Why, Mister Harry, you, ain"t you shamed to talk lak dat to me? I nuhsed you at dis bosom!"
Harry knew this was not literally true. She had nursed three of his elder brothers; but he always said at once, "All right, Mammy, all right, for G.o.d"s sake!"-precisely as he said it to his own mother, exploding in his natural irascibility as if he hoped to clear the air somewhat of the smothering matriarchal tyranny to which he had been delivered by the death of his father. Still he submitted, being of that latest generation of sons who acknowledged, however reluctantly, however bitterly, their mystical never to be forgiven debt to the womb that bore them, and the breast that suckled them.
351.
THE FIG TREE.
Old Aunt Nannie had a habit of gripping with her knees to hold Miranda while she brushed her hair or b.u.t.toned her dress down the back. When Miranda wriggled, Aunt Nannie squeezed still harder, and Miranda wriggled more, but never enough to get away.
Aunt Nannie gathered up Miranda"s scalp lock firmly, snapped a rubber band around it, jammed a freshly starched white chambray bonnet over her ears and forehead, fastened the crown to the lock with a large safety pin, and said: "Got to hold you still someways.
Here now, don"t you take this off your head till the sun go down."
"I didn"t want a bonnet, it"s too hot, I wanted a hat," said Miranda.
"You not goin" to get a hat, you goin" to get just what you got,"
said Aunt Nannie in the bossy voice she used for washing and dressing time, "and mo"over some of these days I"m goin" to sew sew this bonnet to your topknot. Your daddy says if you get freckles he blame me. Now, you"re all ready to set out." this bonnet to your topknot. Your daddy says if you get freckles he blame me. Now, you"re all ready to set out."
"Where are we going, Aunty?" Miranda could never find out about anything until the last minute. She was always being surprised. Once she went to sleep in her bed with her kitten curled on the pillow purring, and woke up in a stuffy tight bed in a train, hugging a hot-water bottle; and there was Grandmother stretched out beside her in her McLeod tartan dressing-gown, her eyes wide open. Miranda thought something wonderful had happened. "My goodness, Grandmother, where are we going?" And it was only for another trip to El Paso to see Uncle Bill.
Now Tom and d.i.c.k were hitched to the carry-all standing outside the gate with boxes and baskets tied on everywhere. Grandmother was walking alone through the house very slowly, taking a last look at everything. Now and then she put something else in the big leather portmoney on her arm until it was pretty bulgy. She carried a long black mohair skirt on her other arm, the one she put on over her other skirt when she rode horseback. Her son Harry, Miranda"s father, followed her saying: "I can"t see the sense in rushing off to Halifax on five minutes" notice."
352.
Grandmother said, walking on: "It"s five hours exactly." Halifax wasn"t the name of Grandmother"s farm at all, it was Cedar Grove, but Father always called it Halifax. "Hot as Halifax," he would say when he wanted to describe something very hot. Cedar Grove was very hot, but they went there every summer because Grandmother loved it. "I went to Cedar Grove for fifty summers before you were born," she told Miranda, who remembered last summer very well, and the summer before a little. Miranda liked it for watermelons and gra.s.shoppers and the long rows of blooming chinaberry trees where the hounds flattened themselves out and slept. They whined and winked their eyelids and worked their feet and barked faintly in their sleep, and Uncle Jimbilly said it was because dogs always dreamed they were chasing something. In the middle of the day when Miranda looked down over the thick green fields towards the spring she could simply see it being hot: everything blue and sleepy and the mourning doves calling.
"Are we going to Halifax, Aunty?"
"Now just ask your dad if you wanta know so much."
"Are we going to Halifax, Dad?"
Her father twitched her bonnet straight and pulled her hair forward so it would show. "You mustn"t get sunburned. No, let it alone. Show the pretty curls. You"ll be wading in Whirlypool before supper this evening."
Grandmother said, "Don"t say Halifax, child, say Cedar Grove.
Call things by their right names."
"Yes, ma"am," said Miranda. Grandmother said again, to her son, "It"s five hours, exactly, and your Aunt Eliza has had plenty of time to pack up her telescope, and take my saddle horse. She"s been there three hours by now. I imagine she"s got the telescope already set up on the hen-house roof. I hope nothing happens."
"You worry too much, Mammy," said her son, trying to conceal his impatience.
"I am not worrying," said Grandmother, shifting her riding skirt to the arm carrying the portmoney. "It will scarcely be any good taking this," she said; "I might in fact as well throw it away for this summer."
"Never mind, Mammy, we"ll send to the Black Farm for Pompey, he"s a good easy saddler."
"You may ride him yourself," said Grandmother. "I"ll never 353.
mount Pompey while Fiddler is alive. Fiddler is my horse, and I hate having his mouth spoiled by a careless rider. Eliza never could ride, and she never will... ."
Miranda gave a little skip and ran away. So they were going to Cedar Grove. Miranda never got over being surprised at the way grown-up people simply did not seem able to give anyone a straight answer to any question, unless the answer was "No." Then it popped out with no trouble at all. At a little distance, she heard her grandmother say, "Harry, have you seen my riding crop lately?" and her father answered, at least maybe he thought it was an answer, "Now, Mammy, for G.o.d"s sake let"s get this thing over with." That was it, exactly.
Another strange way her father had of talking was calling Grandmother "Mammy." Aunt Jane was Mammy. Sometimes he called Grandmother "Mama," but she wasn"t Mama either, she was really Grandmother. Mama was dead. Dead meant gone away forever.
Dying was something that happened all the time, to people and everything else. Somebody died, and there was a long string of carriages going at a slow walk over the rocky ridge of the hill towards the river while the bell tolled and tolled, and that person was never seen again by anybody. Kittens and chickens and specially little turkeys died much oftener, and sometimes calves, but hardly ever cows or horses. Lizards on rocks turned into sh.e.l.ls, with no lizard inside at all. If caterpillars all curled up and furry didn"t move when you poked them with a stick, that meant they were dead-it was a sure sign.
When Miranda found any creature that didn"t move or make a noise, or looked somehow different from the live ones, she always buried it in a little grave with flowers on top and a smooth stone at the head. Even gra.s.shoppers. Everything dead had to be treated this way. "This way and no other!" Grandmother always said when she was laying down the law about all kinds of things. "It must be done this this way, and no other!" way, and no other!"
Miranda went down the crooked flat-stone walk hopping zigzag between the gra.s.s tufts. First there were pomegranate and cape jessamine bushes mixed together; then it got very dark and shady and that was the fig grove. She went to her favorite fig tree where the deep branches bowed down level with her chin, and she could 354.
gather figs without having to climb and skin her knees. Grandmother hadn"t remembered to take any figs to the country the last time, she said there were plenty of them at Cedar Grove. But the ones at Cedar Grove were big soft greenish white ones, and these at home were black and sugary. It was strange that Grandmother did not seem to notice the difference. The air was sweet among the fig trees, and chickens were always getting out of the run and rushing there to eat the figs off the ground. One mother hen was scurrying around scratching and clucking. She would scratch around a fig lying there in plain sight and cluck to her children as if it was a worm and she had dug it up for them.
"Old smarty," said Miranda, "you"re just pretending."
When the little chickens all ran to their mother under Miranda"s fig tree, one little chicken did not move. He was spread out on his side with his eyes shut and his mouth open. He was yellow fur in spots and pinfeathers in spots, and the rest of him was naked and sunburned. "Lazy," said Miranda, poking him with her toe. Then she saw that he was dead.
Oh, and in no time at all they"d be setting out for Halifax.
Grandmother never went away, she always set out for somewhere.
She"d have to hurry like anything to get him buried properly. Back into the house she went on tiptoe hoping not to be seen, for Grandmother always asked: "Where are you going, child? What are you doing? What is that you"re carrying? Where did you get it? Who gave you permission?" and after Miranda had explained all that, even if there turned out not to be anything wrong in it, nothing ever seemed so nice any more. Besides it took forever to get away.
Miranda slid open her bureau drawer, third down, left-hand side where her new shoes were still wrapped in tissue paper in a nice white box the right size for a chicken with pinfeathers. She pushed the rustling white folded things and the lavender bags out of the way and trembled a little. Down in front the carry-all wheels screeched and crunched on the gravel, with Old Uncle Jimbilly yelling like a foghorn, "Hiyi, thar, back up, you steeds! Back up thar, you!" and of course, that meant he was turning Tom and d.i.c.k around so they would be pointing towards Halifax. They"d be after her, calling and hurrying her, and she wouldn"t have time for anything and they wouldn"t listen to a word.
355.
It wasn"t hard work digging a hole with her little spade in the loose dry soil. Miranda wrapped the slimpsy chicken in tissue paper, trying to make it look pretty, laid it in the box carefully, and covered it up with a nice mound, just like people"s. She had hardly got it piled up grave shape, kneeling and leaning to smooth it over, when a strange sound came from somewhere, a very sad little crying sound. It said Weep, weep, weep, three times like that slowly, and it seemed to come from the mound of dirt. "My goodness," Miranda asked herself aloud, "what"s that?" She pushed her bonnet off her ears and listened hard. "Weep, weep," said the tiny sad voice. And People began calling and urging her, their voices coming nearer. She began to clamor, too.
"Yes, Aunty, wait a minute, Aunty!"
"You come right on here this minute, we"re goin"!"
"You have have to wait, Aunty!" to wait, Aunty!"
Her father was coming along the edge of the fig trees. "Hurry up, Baby, you"ll get left!"
Miranda felt she couldn"t bear to be left. She ran all shaking with fright. Her father gave her the annoyed look he always gave her when he said something to upset her and then saw that she was upset. His words were kind but his voice scolded: "Stop getting so excited, Baby, you know we wouldn"t leave you for anything."
Miranda wanted to talk back: "Then why did you say so?" but she was still listening for that tiny sound: "Weep, weep." She lagged and pulled backward, looking over her shoulder, but her father hurried her towards the carry-all. But things didn"t make sounds if they were dead. They couldn"t. That was one of the signs. Oh, but she had heard it.
Her father sat in front and drove, and old Uncle Jimbilly didn"t do anything but get down and open gates. Grandmother and Aunt Nannie sat in the back seat, with Miranda between them. She loved setting out somewhere, with everybody smiling and settling down and looking up at the weather, with the horses bouncing and pulling on the reins, the springs jolting and swaying with a creaky noise that made you feel sure you were traveling. That evening she would go wading with Maria and Paul and Uncle Jimbilly, and that very night she would lie out on the gra.s.s in her nightgown to cool off, and they would all drink lemonade before going to bed. Sister Maria and Brother Paul would already be burned like m.u.f.fins be- 356.
cause they were sent on ahead the minute school was out. Sister Maria had got freckled and Father was furious. "Keep your bonnet on," he said to Miranda, sternly. "Now remember. I"m not going to have that face ruined, too." But oh, what had made that funny sound? Miranda"s ears buzzed and she had a dull round pain in her just under her front ribs. She had to go back and let him out. He"d never get out by himself, all tangled up in tissue paper and that s...o...b..x. He"d never get out without her.
"Grandmother, I"ve got to go back. Oh, I"ve got got to go back!" to go back!"
Grandmother turned Miranda"s face around by the chin and looked at her closely, the way grown folks did. Grandmother"s eyes were always the same. They never looked kind or sad or angry or tired or anything. They just looked, blue and still. "What is the matter with you, Miranda, what happened?"
"Oh, I"ve got to go back-I forg-got something important."
"Stop that silly crying and tell me what you want."
Miranda couldn"t stop. Her father looked very anxious.
"Mammy, maybe the Baby"s sick." He reached out his handkerchief to her face. "What"s the matter with my honey? Did you eat something?"
Miranda had to stand up to cry as hard as she wanted to. The wheels went grinding round in the road, the carry-all wobbled so that Grandmother had to take her by one arm, and her father by the other. They stared at each other over Miranda"s head with a moveless gaze that Miranda had seen often, and their eyes looked exactly alike. Miranda blinked up at them, waiting to see who would win. Then Grandmother"s hand fell away, and Miranda was handed over to her father. He gave the reins to Uncle Jimbilly, and lifted her over the top of the seat. She sprawled against his chest and knees as if he were an armchair and stopped crying at once.
"We can"t go back just for notions," he told her in the reasoning tone he always talked in when Grandmother scolded, and held the m.u.f.fly handkerchief for her. "Now, blow hard. What did you forget, honey? We"ll find another. Was it your doll?"
Miranda hated dolls. She never played with them. She always pulled the wigs off and tied them on the kittens, like hats. The kittens pulled them off instantly. It was fun. She put the doll clothes on the kittens and it took any one of them just half a minute to get them all off again. Kittens had sense. Miranda wailed 357.
suddenly, "Oh, I want my doll!" and cried again, trying to drown out the strange little sound, "Weep, weep"- "Well now, if that"s all," said her father comfortably, "there"s a raft of dolls at Cedar Grove, and about forty fresh kittens. How"d you like that?"
"Forty?" asked Miranda.
"About," said Father.
Old Aunt Nannie leaned and held out her hand. "Look, honey, I toted you some nice black figs."