Capítulo 13: Chapter 5
"Thou shall not be dirty" and "Thou shall not be impudent" were the two
commandments of Grandmother Henderson upon which hung our total salvation.
Each night in the bitterest winter we were forced to wash faces, arms, necks,
legs and feet before going to bed. She used to add, with a smirk that unprofane
people can't control when venturing into profanity, "and wash as far as possible,
then wash possible."
We would go to the well and wash in the ice-cold, clear water, grease our legs
with the equally cold stiff Vaseline, then tiptoe into the house. We wiped the
dust from our toes and settled down for schoolwork, cornbread, clabbered milk,
prayers and bed, always in that order. Momma was famous for pulling the quilts
off after we had fallen asleep to examine our feet. If they weren't clean enough
for her, she took the switch (she kept one behind the bedroom door for
emergencies) and woke up the offender with a few aptly placed burning
reminders.
The area around the well at night was dark and slick, and boys told about how
snakes love water, so that anyone who had to draw water at night and then stand
there alone and wash knew that moccasins and rattlers, puff adders and boa
constrictors were winding their way to the well and would arrive just as the
person washing got soap in her eyes. But Momma convinced us that not only
was cleanliness next to Godliness, dirtiness was the inventor of misery.
The impudent child was detested by God and a shame to its parents and could
bring destruction to its house and line. All adults had to be addressed as Mister,
Missus, Miss, Auntie, Cousin, Unk, Uncle, Buhbah, Sister, Brother and a
thousand other appellations indicating familial relationship and the lowliness of
the addressor.
Everyone I knew respected these customary laws, except for the powhitetrash
children.
Some families of powhitetrash lived on Momma's farm land behind the
school. Sometimes a gaggle of them came to the Store, filling the whole room,
chasing out the air and even changing the well-known scents. The children
crawled over the shelves and into the potato and onion bins, twanging all the
time in their sharp voices like cigar-box guitars. They took liberties in my Store
that I would never dare. Since Momma told us that the less you say to whitefolks
(or even powhitetrash) the better, Bailey and I would stand, solemn, quiet, in the
displaced air. But if one of the playful apparitions got close to us, I pinched it.
Partly out of angry frustration and partly because I didn't believe in its flesh
reality.
They called my uncle by his first name and ordered him around the Store. He,
to my crying shame, obeyed them in his limping dip-straight-dip fashion.
My grandmother, too, followed their orders, except that she didn't seem to be
servile because she anticipated their needs.
"Here's sugar, Miz Potter, and here's baking powder. You didn't buy soda last
month, you'll probably be needing some."
Momma always directed her statements to the adults, but sometimes, Oh
painful sometimes, the grimy, snotty-nosed girls would answer her.
"Naw, Annie …"—to Momma? Who owned the land they lived on? Who
forgot more than they would ever learn? If there was any justice in the world,
God should strike them dumb at once!—"Just give us some extry sody crackers,
and some more mackerel."
At least they never looked in her face, or I never caught them doing so.
Nobody with a smidgen of training, not even the worst roustabout, would look
right in a grown person's face. It meant the person was trying to take the words
out before they were formed. The dirty little children didn't do that, but they
threw their orders around the Store like lashes from a cat-o'-nine-tails.
When I was around ten years old, those scruffy children caused me the most
painful and confusing experience I had ever had with my grandmother.
One summer morning, after I had swept the dirt yard of leaves, spearmint-gum
wrappers and Vienna-sausage labels, I raked the yellow-red dirt, and made halfmoons carefully, so that the design stood out clearly and mask-like. I put the
rake behind the Store and came through the back of the house to find
Grandmother on the front porch in her big, wide white apron. The apron was so
stiff by virtue of the starch that it could have stood alone. Momma was admiring
the yard, so I joined her. It truly looked like a flat redhead that had been raked
with a big-toothed comb. Momma didn't say anything but I knew she liked it.
She looked over toward the school principal's house and to the right at Mr.
McElroy's. She was hoping one of those community pillars would see the design
before the day's business wiped it out. Then she looked upward to the school.
My head had swung with hers, so at just about the same time we saw a troop of
the powhitetrash kids marching over the hill and down by the side of the school.
I looked to Momma for direction. She did an excellent job of sagging from her
waist down, but from the waist up she seemed to be pulling for the top of the oak
tree across the road. Then she began to moan a hymn. Maybe not to moan, but
the tune was so slow and the meter so strange that she could have been moaning.
She didn't look at me again. When the children reached halfway down the hill,
halfway to the Store, she said without turning, "Sister, go on inside."
I wanted to beg her, "Momma, don't wait for them. Come on inside with me.
If they come in the Store, you go to the bedroom and let me wait on them. They
only frighten me if you're around. Alone I know how to handle them." But of
course I couldn't say anything, so I went in and stood behind the screen door.
Before the girls got to the porch I heard their laughter crackling and popping
like pine logs in a cooking stove. I suppose my lifelong paranoia was born in
those cold, molasses-slow minutes. They came finally to stand on the ground in
front of Momma. At first they pretended seriousness. Then one of them wrapped
her right arm in the crook of her left, pushed out her mouth and started to hum. I
realized that she was aping my grandmother. Another said, "Naw, Helen, you
ain't standing like her. This here's it." Then she lifted her chest, folded her arms
and mocked that strange carriage that was Annie Henderson. Another laughed,
"Naw, you can't do it. Your mouth ain't pooched out enough. It's like this."
I thought about the rifle behind the door, but I knew I'd never be able to hold
it straight, and the .410, our sawed-off shotgun, which stayed loaded and was
fired every New Year's night, was locked in the trunk and Uncle Willie had the
key on his chain. Through the fly-specked screen-door, I could see that the arms
of Momma's apron jiggled from the vibrations of her humming. But her knees
seemed to have locked as if they would never bend again.
She sang on. No louder than before, but no softer either. No slower or faster.
The dirt of the girls' cotton dresses continued on their legs, feet, arms and
faces to make them all of a piece. Their greasy uncolored hair hung down,
uncombed, with a grim finality. I knelt to see them better, to remember them for
all time. The tears that had slipped down my dress left unsurprising dark spots,
and made the front yard blurry and even more unreal. The world had taken a
deep breath and was having doubts about continuing to revolve.
The girls had tired of mocking Momma and turned to other means of
agitation. One crossed her eyes, stuck her thumbs in both sides of her mouth and
said, "Look here, Annie." Grandmother hummed on and the apron strings
trembled. I wanted to throw a handful of black pepper in their faces, to throw lye
on them, to scream that they were dirty, scummy peckerwoods, but I knew I was
as clearly imprisoned behind the scene as the actors outside were confined to
their roles.
One of the smaller girls did a kind of puppet dance while her fellow clowns
laughed at her. But the tall one, who was almost a woman, said something very
quietly, which I couldn't hear. They all moved backward from the porch, still
watching Momma. For an awful second I thought they were going to throw a
rock at Momma, who seemed (except for the apron strings) to have turned into
stone herself. But the big girl turned her back, bent down and put her hands flat
on the ground—she didn't pick up anything. She simply shifted her weight and
did a hand stand.
Her dirty bare feet and long legs went straight for the sky. Her dress fell down
around her shoulders, and she had on no drawers. The slick pubic hair made a
brown triangle where her legs came together. She hung in the vacuum of that
lifeless morning for only a few seconds, then wavered and tumbled. The other
girls clapped her on the back and slapped their hands.
Momma changed her song to "Bread of Heaven, bread of Heaven, feed me till
I want no more."
I found that I was praying too. How long could Momma hold out? What new
indignity would they think of to subject her to? Would I be able to stay out of it?
What would Momma really like me to do?
Then they were moving out of the yard, on their way to town. They bobbed
their heads and shook their slack behinds and turned, one at a time:
"'Bye, Annie."
"'Bye, Annie."
"'Bye, Annie."
Momma never turned her head or unfolded her arms, but she stopped singing
and said, "'Bye, Miz Helen, 'bye, Miz Ruth, 'bye, Miz Eloise."
I burst. A firecracker July-the-Fourth burst. How could Momma call them
Miz? The mean nasty things. Why couldn't she have come inside the sweet, cool
store when we saw them breasting the hill? What did she prove? And then if
they were dirty, mean and impudent, why did Momma have to call them Miz?
She stood another whole song through and then opened the screen door to
look down on me crying in rage. She looked until I looked up. Her face was a
brown moon that shone on me. She was beautiful. Something had happened out
there, which I couldn't completely understand, but I could see that she was
happy. Then she bent down and touched me as mothers of the church "lay hands
on the sick and afflicted" and I quieted.
"Go wash your face, Sister." And she went behind the candy counter and
hummed, "Glory, glory, hallelujah, when I lay my burden down."
I threw the well water on my face and used the weekday handkerchief to blow
my nose. Whatever the contest had been out front, I knew Momma had won.
I took the rake back to the front yard. The smudged footprints were easy to
erase. I worked for a long time on my new design and laid the rake behind the
wash pot. When I came back in the Store, I took Momma's hand and we both
walked outside to look at the pattern.
It was a large heart with lots of hearts growing smaller inside, and piercing
from the outside rim to the smallest heart was an arrow. Momma said, "Sister,
that's right pretty." Then she turned back to the Store and resumed, "Glory,
glory, hallelujah, when I lay my burden down."
Estado de energía semanal
-- Ranking de
Poder 
-- Piedra de
Poder