Wilson began to fall asleep, and his rocking swing stopped.
“I thought it was more than I could bear. Then my baby died, and without reason. Just one morning when I went over to lift her from her crib, she was dead. We lived on the edge of town then and I ran in to our doctor and brought him, and he told me, ‘She’s dead.’ It was a fact then. Dead. Now she could be buried. Dead; that meant she was no longer. That meant that something that had been wasn’t any longer, come and gone. And I told myself that, and tried to keep eating, and tried to sleep, and found a job in a factory, and gave the house back to the bank and rented a room from an old lady, and lived for several years like I was dreaming. Several years, Mrs. Montgomery. One year, then two, then three. Month after month, never going out, having no friends, waiting quietly with Mrs. Wokey, and sitting in my room listening to her, peaceful until she went to bed and her footsteps carried by my door, because then it seemed like I would be alone. The sound of that old woman’s footsteps was the most precious thing I had. So I always tried to be asleep before that. Many nights I would try to calm myself with self-imposed peaceful thoughts, then her terrible mounting of the staircase would begin and I would listen to the living, last sounds carrying by my door, wide awake. My light burned all night.”
Della began to shake her head.
“No,” Sarah continued. “The more despairingly I tell it, the more accurate. I lived for years like that. At first I tried towithstand the temptation of talking to myself, but gave in when my thoughts became much like talking themselves and the only way I could keep from saying little things endlessly to myself, like ‘What are you going to do tonight?’ was to say them out loud. So I conversed with myself about the daily routines of my life. Then two months after starting this the bus driver of the bus I took to work in the morning asked me while handing back my change if I wouldn’t go to a movie with him that weekend. I looked at him and he smiled. I was frightened, but, looking into his face while he smiled, I felt like I had never seen what a smile was before, or what it meant. It meant simply, I am happy, and wish you to be.’ It’s a wonderful thing to smile—showing one’s teeth. It’s a guarantee that the world is what we make it, and not by definition ugly. He saw that I was frightened. . . . I’d never looked at him before. That will show you how I was those years. Three years of riding that bus and I’d never looked at the driver. He said I could tell him the next morning and his mustache twitched. So all that night I thought about nothing else. I talked it over with myself after Mrs. Wokey went to bed. I didn’t go to work the rest of the week, so that I wouldn’t have to answer.
“Sometime after my twenty-first birthday (birthdays have always been important to me) I did go out with him. He owned his own automobile, and after the movie (which made me laugh and picture myself as the heroine) we drove out into the country, and the wind came in the windows, and I could put my head out and watch the night reel by, my hair blowing back against the rear window. I was nearly delirious with private joy, and I was afraid he would see it on my face and would think it meant something. It seemed like we were flying. I know at one time he said we were going fifty miles an hour. That seems slow now, but nothing will ever be so fast. My mind was secretly racing. I imagined myself flying recklessly, casting all caution to the wind, putting my life on the line for a few moments of mad, frantic thrills. I had never felt like that before. I thought if Mrs. Wokey were to see me she would be shocked and scold me and tell meto get out of her house, though that would hurt her very much because she loved me and desperately wanted to keep me close to her old, quiet ways. I felt they were evil thoughts. Cecil drove me home and I rushed inside, ran upstairs to my room and watched him drive away. I sat by my little table until I was sure I had my pounding heart under control, and went downstairs. Mrs. Wokey was reading one of her magazines and I went out and got a bowl of ice cream and ate the whole thing. I thought what it would be for me to flip out a cigarette and light it—what she would think.
“ ‘Thing’s are mighty quiet around here tonight,’ I said to Mrs. Wokey.
“ ‘Well, yes they are,’ she returned and looked at me from over her magazine.
“ ‘Very quiet,’ I said. ‘Of course
