quietly too from vacant light to light between the dark windows and the walls: but one faint single light dimly visible in what my new infallible roue's instinct recognised immediately as a competitor of Miss Reba; a single light similar in wanness behind Miss Reba's curtains because even here throe must by this time have spent itself; even Minnie herself gone to bed or home or wherever she retired to at her and Miss Reba's trade's evensong. Because Miss Reba herself unlocked the front door to us, smelling strongly of gin and, in her hard handsome competent way, even beginning to look like it. She had changed her dress too. This one didn't have hardly any top to it at all, and in those days ladies—women—didn't really paint their faces, so that was the first time I ever saw that too. And she had on still more diamonds, as big and yellowish as the first two. No: five. But Minnie hadn't gone to bed either. She was standing in the door to Miss Reba's room, looking just about worn out.
'All fixed?' Miss Reba said, locking the door behind us. 'Yes,' Miss Corrie said. 'Why dont you go to bed? Minnie, make her go to bed.'
'You could a asked me that a hour back from now,' Minnie said. 'I just wish wouldn't nobody still be asking it two hours ahead from now. But you wasn't here that other time two years ago.'
'Come on to bed,' Miss Corrie said. 'When we get back from Possum Wednesday—'
'God damn it, Parsham,' Miss Reba said. 'All right,' Miss Corrie said. '—Wednesday, Minnie will have found out where he is and we can go and get him.'
'Sure,' Miss Reba said. 'And bury him right there in the same ditch this time, pick and shovel and all, if I had any sense. You want a drink?' she said to Boon. 'Minnie's a damn Christian scientist or republican or something and wont take one.'
'Somebody around here has got to not take one,' Minnie said. 'It dont need no republican for that. All it needs is just to be wore out and want to go to bed.'
'That's what we all need,' Miss Corrie said. 'That train leaves at four, and it's already after one. Come on, now.'
'Go to bed then,' Miss Reba said. 'Who the hell's stopping you?' So we went upstairs. Then Otis and I went upstairs again; he knew the way: an attic, with nothing in it but some trunks and boxes and a mattress made up into a bed on the floor. Otis had a nightshirt but (the nightshirt still had the creases in it where Miss Corrie I suppose had bought it off the shelf in the store) he went to bed just like I had to: took off his pants and shoes and turned off the light and lay down too. There was one little window and now we could see the moon and then I could even see inside the room because of the moonlight; there was something wrong with him; I was tired and coming up the stairs I had thought I would be asleep almost before I finished lying down. But I could feel him lying there beside me, not just wide awake, but rather like something that never slept in its life and didn't even know it never had.
And suddenly there was something wrong with me too. It was like I didn't know what it was yet: only that there was something wrong and in a minute now I would know what and I would hate it; and suddenly I didn't want to be there at all, I didn't want to be in Memphis or ever to have heard of Memphis: I wanted to be at home. Otis said Twenty-three skiddoo again.
'The jack that's here,' he said. 'You can even smell it. It aint fair that it's just women can make money pugnuck-ling while all a man can do is just try to snatch onto a little of it while it's passing by—' There was that word again, that I had asked twice what it meant. But not any more, not again: lying there tense and rigid with the moon-shaped window lying across mine and Otis's legs, trying not to hear him but having to: '—one of the rooms is right under here; on a busy night like Sad-dy was you can hear them right up through the floor. But there aint no chance here. Even if I could get a auger and bore a peephole through it, that nigger and Miss Reba wouldn't let me bring nobody up here to make no money off of and even if I did they would probably take the money away from me like that son of a bitch done that pee a noler money today. But it was different back home at Aunt Fit-tie's, when Bee—' He stopped. He lay perfectly still. He said Twenty-three skiddoo again.
'Bee?' I said. But it was too late. No, it wasn't too late. Because I already knew now.
'How old are you?' he said.
'Eleven,' I said.
'You got a year on me then,' he said. 'Too bad you aint going to be here after tonight. If you just stayed around here next week, we might figger that peephole out some way.'
'What for?' I said. You see, I had to ask it. Because what I wanted was to be back home. I wanted my mother. Because you should be prepared for experience, knowledge, knowing: not bludgeoned unaware in the dark as by a highwayman or footpad. I was just eleven, remember. There are things, circumstances, conditions in the world which should not be there but are, and you cant escape them and indeed, you would not escape them even if you had the choice, since they too are a part of Motion, of participating in life, being alive. But they should arrive with grace, decency. I was having to learn too much too fast, unassisted; I had nowhere to put it, no receptacle, pigeonhole prepared yet to accept it without pain and lacerations. He was lying face up, as I was. He hadn't moved, not even his eyes. But I could feel him watching me.
'You dont know much, do you?' he said. 'Where did you say you was from?'
'Missippi,' I said.
'------t,' he said. 'No wonder you dont know nothing.'
'All right,' I said. 'Bee is Miss Corrie.'
'Here I am, throwing money away like it wasn't nothing,' he said. 'But maybe me and you both can make something out of it. Sure. Her name is Everbe Corinthia, named for Grandmaw. And what a hell of a name that is to have to work under. Bad enough even over there around Kiblett, where some of them already knowed it and was used to it and the others was usually in too much of a hurry to give a hoot whether she called herself nothing or not. But here in Memphis, in a house like this that they tell me every girl in Memphis is trying to get into it as soon as a room is vacant. So it never made much difference over there around Kiblett after her maw died and Aunt Fittie taken her to raise and started her out soon as she got big enough. Then when she found out how much more money there was in Memphis and come over here, never nobody knowed about the Everbe and so she could call herself Corrie. So whenever I'm over here visiting her, like last summer and now, since I know about the Everbe, she gives me five cents a day not to tell nobody. You see? Instead of telling you like I slipped up and done, if I had just went to her instead and said, At five cents a day I can try not to forget, but ten cents a day would make it twice as hard to. But never mind; I can tell her tomorrow that you know it too, and maybe we both can—'
'Who was Aunt Fittie?' I said.
'I dont know,' he said. 'Folks just called her Aunt Fit-tie. She might have been kin to some of us, but I dont know. Lived by herself in a house on the edge of town until she taken Bee in after Bee's maw died and soon as Bee
