The narrow stairwell turned back upon itself in a succession of niggard reaches. The light, falling through a thickly-curtained door at the front and through a shuttered window at the rear of each stage, had a weary quality. A spent quality; defunctive, exhausted—a protracted weariness like a vitiated backwater beyond sunlight and the vivid noises of sunlight and day. There was a defunctive odor of irregular food, vaguely alcoholic, and Temple even in her ignorance seemed to be surrounded by a ghostly promiscuity of intimate garments, of discreet whispers of flesh stale and oft-assailed and impregnable beyond each silent door which they passed. Behind her, about hers and Miss Reba’s feet the two dogs scrabbled in nappy gleams, their claws clicking on the metal strips which bound the carpet to the stairs.
Later, lying in bed, a towel wrapped about her naked loins, she could hear them sniffing and whining outside the door. Her coat and hat hung on nails in the door, her dress and stockings lay upon a chair, and it seemed to her that she could hear the rhythmic splush-splush of the washing-board somewhere and she flung herself again in an agony for concealment as she had when they took her knickers off.
“Now, now,” Miss Reba said. “I bled for four days, myself. It aint nothing. Doctor Quinn’ll stop it in two minutes, and Minnie’ll have them all washed and pressed and you wont never know it. That blood’ll be worth a thousand dollars to you, honey.” She lifted the tankard, the flowers on her hat rigidly moribund, nodding in macabre was hael. “Us poor girls,” she said. The drawn shades, cracked into a myriad pattern like old skin, blew faintly on the bright air, breathing into the room on waning surges the sound of Sabbath traffic, festive, steady, evanescent. Temple lay motionless in the bed, her legs straight and close, the covers to her chin and her face small and wan, framed in the rich sprawl of her hair. Miss Reba lowered the tankard, gasping for breath. In her hoarse, fainting voice she began to tell Temple how lucky she was.
“Every girl in the district has been trying to get him, honey. There’s one, a little married woman slips down here sometimes, she offered Minnie twenty-five dollars just to get him into the room, that’s all. But do you think he’d so much as look at one of them? Girls that have took in a hundred dollars a night. No, sir. Spend his money like water, but do you think he’d look at one of them except to dance with her? I always knowed it wasn’t going to be none of these here common whores he’d take. I’d tell them, I’d say, the one of yez that gets him’ll wear diamonds, I says, but it aint going to be none of you common whores, and now Minnie’ll have them washed and pressed until you wont know it.”
“I cant wear it again,” Temple whispered. “I cant.”
“No more you’ll have to, if you dont want. You can give them to Minnie, though I dont know what she’ll do with them except maybe—” At the door the dogs began to whimper louder. Feet approached. The door opened. A negro maid entered, carrying a tray bearing a quart bottle of beer and a glass of gin, the dogs surging in around her feet. “And tomorrow the stores’ll be open and me and you’ll go shopping, like he said for us to. Like I said, the girl that gets him’ll wear diamonds: you just see if I wasn’t—” she turned, mountainous, the tankard lifted, as the two dogs scrambled onto the bed and then onto her lap, snapping viciously at one another. From their curled shapeless faces bead-like eyes glared with choleric ferocity, their mouths gaped pinkly upon needle-like teeth. “Reba!” Miss Reba said, “get down! You, Mr Binford!” flinging them down, their teeth clicking about her hands. “You just bite me, you —Did you get Miss—What’s your name, honey? I didn’t quite catch it.”
“Temple,” Temple whispered.
“I mean, your first name, honey. We dont stand on no ceremony here.”
“That’s it. Temple. Temple Drake.”
“You got a boy’s name, aint you?—Miss Temple’s things washed, Minnie?”
“Yessum,” the maid said. “Hit’s dryin now hind the stove.” She came with the tray, shoving the dogs gingerly aside while they clicked their teeth at her ankles.
“You wash it out good?”
“I had a time with it,” Minnie said. “Seem like that the most hardest blood of all to get—” With a convulsive movement Temple flopped over, ducking her head beneath the covers. She felt Miss Reba’s hand.
“Now, now. Now, now. Here, take your drink. This one’s on me. I aint going to let no girl of Popeye’s—”
“I dont want anymore,” Temple said.
“Now, now,” Miss Reba said. “Drink it and you’ll feel better.” She lifted Temple’s head. Temple clutched the covers to her throat. Miss Reba held the glass to her lips. She gulped it, writhed down again, clutching the covers about her, her eyes wide and black above the covers. “I bet you got that towel disarranged,” Miss Reba said, putting her hand on the covers.
“No,” Temple whispered. “It’s all right. It’s still there.” She shrank, cringing; they could see the cringing of her legs beneath the covers.
“Did you get Dr Quinn, Minnie?” Miss Reba said.
“Yessum.” Minnie was filling the tankard from the bottle, a dull frosting pacing the rise of liquor within the metal. “He say he dont make no Sunday afternoon calls.”
“Did you tell him who wanted him? Did you tell him Miss Reba wanted him?”
“Yessum. He say he dont—”
“You go back and tell that suh—You tell him I’ll— No; wait.” She rose heavily. “Sending a message like that back to me, that can put him in jail three times over.” She waddled toward the door, the dogs crowding about the felt slippers. The maid followed and closed the door. Temple could hear Miss Reba cursing the dogs as she descended the stairs with terrific slowness. The sounds died away.
The shades blew steadily in the windows, with faint rasping sounds. Temple began to hear a clock. It sat on the mantel above a grate filled with fluted green paper. The clock was of flowered china, supported by four china nymphs. It had only one hand, scrolled and gilded, halfway between ten and eleven, lending to the otherwise blank face a quality of unequivocal assertion, as though it had nothing whatever to do with time.
Temple rose from the bed. Holding the towel about her she stole toward the door, her ears acute, her eyes a little blind with the strain of listening. It was twilight; in a dim mirror, a pellucid oblong of dusk set on end, she had a glimpse of herself like a thin ghost, a pale shadow moving in the uttermost profundity of shadow. She reached the door. At once she began to hear a hundred conflicting sounds in a single converging threat and she clawed furiously at the door until she found the bolt, dropping the towel to drive it home. Then she caught up the towel, her face averted, and ran back and sprang into the bed and clawed the covers to her chin and lay there, listening to the secret whisper of her blood.
