They were coming up to the post office, and Catherine did not say any more. She parked the car by the steps and went inside to ask about mail. The door of the post office was open, and Lillian could look inside the small one-room building at her sister talking to the clerk behind the screen. She saw Catherine turning away empty-handed. Catherine came back outside and got into the car.
“The mail?” Lillian said.
“It’s gone.”
“We knew it all the time, didn’t we?”
Catherine was silent.
“Didn’t we, Catherine?”
“I couldn’t tell him I couldn’t go over there.”
“Won’t he find it out?”
“He’ll understand.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
After picking up the mail at the store, Catherine drove into the quarters. As she came up to Charlotte Moses’s house, she looked for Jackson on the porch. He was not there. Catherine blew the horn and waved at Charlotte and Mary Louise, and both of them waved back at her.
“I see he’s not there,” Lillian said.
“I didn’t know you looked.”
“I didn’t have to,” Lillian said. “I just looked at your face.”
Catherine smiled to herself and glanced through the rearview mirror to see whether Jackson would come out on the porch. He did not. After driving about two hundred yards farther into the quarters, she drove onto a small bridge and stopped before a gate. Lillian got out to open the gate for her.
“Want to ride up to the house?” she asked Lillian.
“I’ll walk,” Lillian said.
Lillian shut the gate and stood by the fence, looking over the yard and at the house. A half-dozen or more trees—pecan and oak—went from the fence to the house, from front to back. Gray Spanish moss hung from most of the trees all the way to the ground. The yard was covered with dead leaves.
The house, big, old, paintless, sat on wooden blocks at least three feet high. Eight or nine wooden steps led up to a long and warped front porch. A chair was propped behind one of the doors and a cat had climbed into the chair and gone to sleep. Lillian felt so depressed from just looking at the place that she asked herself how would she ever spend the summer here.
“When was the last time you killed a snake?” she asked, coming toward Catherine.
Catherine had parked the car under the shade in back, and she had come around the house with the suitcase. She held the suitcase in both hands, waiting for Lillian at the end of the porch.
“Just yesterday,” she said. “Caught him going under the house. Frisky little rascal.”
“Should have been exciting,” Lillian said, looking over the yard.
“Missed him the first couple times,” Catherine said. “But I got him. Scroochy little old thing.”
“Scroochy?” Lillian said.
“Well, you know; wig-wagging, moving fast.”
Lillian looked across the yard at the cornfield that came up to the back fence. But the mere sight of the field, the odor of the hay and dry corn, seemed to make it hotter—depressing her even more.
They went up onto the porch. The old porch creaked as they walked across it to the door. The cat in the chair looked up at them but would not move. Catherine picked him up and dropped him on the floor. The cat stretched himself, yawned, and rubbed against the leg of the chair.
“Where’s Nelson?” Lillian asked.
“I took him over on the lane this morning,” Catherine said. “Auntie and them kept him. I’ll go back and get him after supper tonight.”
They went inside the house and down a dark narrow hall to Lillian’s room. The expression that came on her face when she entered the room showed that she disapproved of everything in the room, including the curtains that hung at the window. Catherine set the suitcase beside the bed and turned to her again.
“You’re going to change now, or do you want something cold to drink?”
“I better get out of these things,” Lillian said. “I’m about to burn up. How are they—Auntie and Grandmon?”
“All right,” Catherine said. “Grandmon isn’t getting around at all any more. Auntie does everything over there now.”
“I might go over there with you tonight.”
“They said for you to be sure to come.”
“I might go—I’m not promising anything. It’s burning up, isn’t it?”
“I suppose it was hot like this in New Orleans,” Catherine said.
“No, it was not,” Lillian said. “This is the hottest place in the world.”
After changing into a more comfortable dress, Lillian followed Catherine into the kitchen. The kitchen was big and spacious with all sizes of pots and pans hanging on nails against the wall. The floor had been scrubbed that day and crushed red bricks had been sprinkled over it. In the corner by the window was a white gas stove, and across from it, by the door that led up the hall, was a big modern refrigerator. The kitchen table, which had been handmade, but well done, sat in the middle of the floor, facing the back door.
Catherine opened the window and went to the refrigerator to get the cold drinks. After looking over the kitchen with the same disdainful look that she had given her own bedroom, Lillian sat down at the table. When the cat came up to her and rubbed against her leg, she picked him up to hold in her lap.
“A piece of cake?” Catherine asked.
“Yes, I am a little hungry,” Lillian said.
Catherine cut off a piece of cake for each one of them and brought the things to the table. Lillian set the cat on the floor and began eating. When Catherine sat down, Lillian looked across the table at her.
“How’ve you been, Cathy?” she asked.
“I’ve been all right.”
Lillian did not like the way Catherine looked. Catherine looked tired. She was only three years older than Lillian, but she looked much older than her age. The clothes she wore, the way she talked and carried herself, all gave you the impression of a much older person.
“When did you hear from Bernard?”
“Quite a while now.”
“He quit writing?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t there anybody, Cathy?”
“No.”
“There ought to be.”
“I’m happy.”
“Really, Cathy?”
Catherine ate slowly, trying not to look at Lillian. Lillian continued to stare at her.
“I love my sister, that’s why I talk to her like I do,” Lillian said. “There ought to be somebody.”
“I have my child.”
“Is that enough, Cathy?”
“I know what you’re getting to, Lily,” Catherine said, looking at her now. “My answer is still the same. I’m going to stay here with them.”
“If it means to throw away your life? Not only yours, but your child’s too?”
“I don’t think I’m throwing away my life. I’m doing what anybody would do.”
“Not anybody.”
“Well, I’m doing what I think is best.”
Lillian held the fork in heir hand, looking across the table at Catherine. She had eaten only a small piece of the cake. She had not touched the bottle of cold drink.
“Catherine, what’s wrong with this house?”
Catherine looked at her and broke off a small piece of cake.
“Nothing,” she said.
“What’s wrong here, Catherine?” Lillian asked as though she had not heard her.
“Nothing,” Catherine repeated.
Lillian frowned impatiently, looking across the table at Catherine.
“I’ve been asking this ever since I started coming back here, and you keep saying nothing.”
“There is nothing.”
“Then why don’t you leave?”
Catherine looked at her.
“Go the way you’re going, Lily?”
“Go any way you want to.”
“No thanks, Lily.”
The two sisters looked at each
other, then Catherine looked away.
“You don’t like what I’m doing?”
“You’re grown, Lily. You can do what you want to.”
“But you don’t like it?”
Catherine was silent.
“Maybe I ought to marry somebody black and bring him here to meet Daddy. That would be just nice, wouldn’t it?”
Catherine remained silent.
“Only I can’t marry anybody black. I can’t look at a black person with anything like that in my mind. They’ve made sure of that.”
“All you want is an argument, Lily—you don’t care what about.”
“I want answers.”
“I’ve given you all the answers I know.”
“You’ve given me a bunch of lies, Catherine, but no answers.”
Catherine looked at her and looked away again.
“You’re all I have, Catherine,” Lillian said. “If you don’t give me the answers, who will?”
“You have a mother and a father, Lillian.”
“By name only.”
“They’re real.”
“They’re strangers to me. They’re more than strangers to me. They’re two people I can’t stand to be alone with.”
“Have you ever tried?” Catherine asked.
“Don’t put that blame on me, Catherine,” Lillian said. “Don’t shift it on my back now. I didn’t walk out of this house—remember that. I was taken away from here—sent away from here—traded off like a dog.”
“Nobody traded you off. You was put there to get an education.”
“I got one. A thorough one. One on hating.”
“They didn’t tell you to hate, Lillian,” Catherine said.
“Didn’t they? Everything black. My mother is not black, but she was thrown in as an extra subject.”
“Don’t say things like that, Lily.”
“Why not, Catherine?”
“Because they never told you to hate Mama. I’m sure they didn’t.”
“Not directly—no. Because then I’d want to know why. But indirectly they told me a million times to hate her. There’re so many little ways to make you hate, and they used every one of them.” She stopped and looked at Catherine a moment. “That’s why I say you’re the only person I have. Those in the city, Mama and Daddy, they’re all strangers to me. There’s a fence between us. I can see them, I can hear them, but I can’t feel them. I can feel you. You’re the only person I can feel.…
“That other way—I’ve thought about it. I’ve thought about it over and over. I’m not in love with it. I can’t ever be. But I have no other choice. I’m not black, Cathy. I hate black. I hate black worse than the whites hate it. I have black friends, but only at a distance. I feel for my mother, but only at a distance. I don’t let my black friends come close to me. I don’t let her come close to me. I don’t say get away. I’ve never said that. I just can’t open my heart out to them.
“I haven’t opened my heart out to that white world either. But I’m going there because I must go somewhere. I can’t stand in the middle of the road any longer. Neither can you, and neither can you let Nelson. Daddy and his sisters can’t understand this. They want us to be Creoles. Creoles. What a joke. Today you’re one way or the other; you’re white or you’re black. There is no in-between.”
Catherine remained silent. She was not looking at Lillian, but she was listening.
“This is the last time I’ll be coming here, Catherine. When I leave this time, I’m leaving for good. I want you to understand why. I don’t care if the others do or not. I don’t give a damn—”
Catherine looked at her painfully.
“No, Catherine, I don’t give a damn. Mama—I really don’t hate her. It’s just that I can’t get up any close feeling for her. I want to—yes; but I can’t. As for the others, I don’t care if they live or die tomorrow—that includes Daddy.” She was silent a moment. “I want to say everything. I want to clear up everything this time. I don’t want any kind of questions to stand between my sister and myself—the only person that I can, probably ever will, love.”
Catherine continued to look down at the table and not at Lillian.
“I want you to understand, Cathy. I want you to understand what has happened to us, and what is still happening. You to understand, Cathy. Only you.”
Catherine raised her head slowly and looked at Lillian.
“Do you understand, Cathy?”
She did understand, but she did not say anything. What could she say? She did not approve of what Lillian was doing. But she did not have any other suggestion.
Lillian looked at Catherine and turned away. Catherine’s hand touched Lillian gently on the arm. Lillian looked at her again, but she did not find in Catherine’s face what she expected to see there. She wanted approval, she found love.
“What do you want for supper?”
Lillian shook her head. “I don’t care.”
“A chicken’ll be all right?”
Lillian nodded her head. “If that’s what the others want.”
Catherine squeezed Lillian’s arm a little. Lillian looked at Catherine and felt like crying. But this would have been a sign of weakness. She could not afford this.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Catherine had finished cooking, had taken a bath, and put on another dress when she heard the tractor coming out of the field. The sun was nearly down, throwing the shadows of the house and the trees across the road. The dust in the road, which had been stirred around all day by people going up and down the quarters, was now trying to settle. And the chanting of crickets and croaking of frogs had begun to fill the air.
Catherine came into the kitchen where Lillian sat reading a book. Catherine was wearing a pink dress with a little white collar and short sleeves. Raoul had bought the dress for her about a month ago, but this was the first time that she had worn it.
“What are you reading?” Catherine asked.
“One of those romantic novels,” Lillian said.
“Love and all that?”
“And fighting and robbing. A little of everything.” Lillian looked at the dress. “I like your dress,” she said.
Catherine was wearing it especially for Lillian, because Lillian was always complaining that she did not have anything decent to wear. She turned around so Lillian could see the dress both front and back. Lillian smiled, nodded, and went back to reading her book.
Catherine could hear the tractor more clearly now. She knew it had crossed the railroad tracks and had come into the quarters. She stood by the table looking down at Lillian reading the book. She knew that Lillian heard the tractor, too.
“Lily?” she said.
“Yes?” Lillian said, not looking up. Lillian seemed to know what Catherine had in mind.
“Why don’t you open the gate?”
Lillian shook her head and continued reading.
Catherine stood over her a moment and went out into the yard. She arrived at the gate only seconds before the tractor did. She had just unchained it and swung it open when Raoul drove across the bridge. Catherine shut the gate and followed the tractor to the back. It was dark now and she could hardly see Della climbing down from the trailer to the ground.
“How did it go?” she asked, coming up to the trailer.
“All right,” Della said.
Della took off her straw hat and the head scarf that she wore under the hat. Catherine could smell the sour sweat-dirt odor of the scarf.
“Been hot all day,” Della said.
“Murder,” Catherine said.
Della looked at Catherine in the dark. She looked at her long and questioningly. Catherine knew the meaning of this look, and she nodded her head.
Della looked toward the house. The light in the kitchen was on, and Della could see the light shining through the door on the ground.
“What’s she saying?”
“Same thing.”
“Still leaving?”
“Still leaving.”
/> Della nodded slightly, as though this was what she had expected to hear.
“Maybe that’s the best,” she said. “Maybe it is. I don’t know.”
“Hey, up there,” Catherine called to Raoul.
Raoul sat upon the tractor racing the motor. He did not hear Catherine, and Catherine yelled at him again. He still did not hear her.
“What did you cook?” Della asked.
“A chicken,” Catherine said.
“Good,” Della said. “I’m just ’s hungry ’s I’m tired.”
“Did you get through?”
“Couple rows left. Can knock that out in half a day.”
They went across the yard toward the house.
Della stopped at the water faucet to pass some water over her face. Catherine knew she would wash up again when she got inside, but she was doing this now before meeting Lillian. She looked at Catherine for approval. Catherine nodded. They walked on. When they came inside, Lillian raised her head long enough to smile, to say, “Mama”; then she looked into the book again. “Lillian,” Della said.
And for the moment, those two words were the limit of their conversation.
“Fix me some water, Catherine,” Della said.
Catherine half filled the washpan with hot water from a kettle on the stove; then she drew in some cold water from the faucet in the wall and carried the pan to the window. Della laid her head scarf and her straw hat on top of the refrigerator and went to the window to wash. There was silence: Lillian with her head down in her book; Della washing her face and arms as quietly as possible; and Catherine standing back looking at both of them. She heard the tractor motor turned off, and Raoul walking toward the house. Raoul was about to say something to her when he saw Lillian sitting at the table. Raoul stopped so suddenly that you would have thought he had come upon a stranger in his house.
“Daddy,” she said.
Raoul nodded and passed Catherine the crocker sack that he had brought from the tractor.
“What’s in it?” Catherine asked. “Last time, I put my hand on a half-dead ’coon.”
“Mushmelons,” Raoul said.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Supper was eaten in near silence. Della asked questions every now and then, but Lillian’s answers were so dry and abrupt that Della would be silent several minutes before saying anything else. Lillian kept her head down throughout the meal. Everyone at the table could see how uncomfortable she was, and this made everyone else feel uncomfortable also. Catherine asked Raoul questions about the field, but his answers were as dry and abrupt as Lillian’s answers were to Della.