The people in the Quarters were careful what they said when she was around, but she was not blind or deaf. She knew more than they thought, more than July thought. She was no fool.
June always praised the way she managed things. The last time he brought her a piece of cloth and she cut it out and sewed it with strong, tight stitches into a dress, between supper and time to go to bed, June declared that no other woman in the Quarters could have done it. June praised her cooking too. He liked the way she seasoned things. He bragged that she kept the cleanest house in the Quarters, or on the whole plantation for that matter. But July was so taken up with his own life that he had forgotten Mary had any rights at all. He ate the food she cooked for him, slept in the bed she sunned and aired and made up for him, wore the clothes she washed and patched and darned for him, but he seldom noticed they were mended. When she was weary and downhearted, July took what she gave him, then went his way to find some more cheerful woman to go pleasuring with. She had no hat, no decent shoes. She told him so last night. The protracted meeting would begin next week too, but July laughed and said if a woman wanted to save her soul she must mind her husband and treat him right.
She tried to do that. This morning she was up ahead of the morning star, fixing hot coffee and bread for July before he went off with the crowd. But he swallowed it down and hurried off with hardly as much as, “Thank you.”
After he had gone she worked on to keep from thinking about her troubles, but now she was hot and tired, her clothes were wet with sweat. The hands in her lap were skinny and hard, the skin on them was shriveled; her body was worn out, ready to drop to pieces like her faded dress, which was thin from so much washing and wearing.
When she married July everybody said she was the prettiest bride that ever stepped in the Quarters. Now she was withered and ugly with no way to stop being so. Trouble had caught her as a cat catches a mouse and she could not get loose. She would as soon be dead as not, except for baby Unex, who could not be left alone in the world for July would never bother with him; July, who was on his way to town now, laughing, talking, singing gay songs, eating bananas, drinking bottled soda-water, having pleasure in the cool breeze on the river, while she was here, lonesome and downhearted and weary enough to die in this old empty tumble-down home, where every noise sounded hollow and strange.
May Satan wring Cinder’s stringy neck and break her back in two before he drops her into his bottomless pit! July would have stayed at home and been a good husband if Cinder had never come back to the plantation.
Mary heard a hen’s anxious clucking and baby chickens crying, then Maum Hannah’s voice asked softly, “Honey—is you sleepin?”
She sat up quickly. She had heard no step, and she felt confused and guilty that Maum Hannah who believed in loving everybody had caught her crying and wishing bitter curses on Cinder.
“No’m, I ain’ sleep. I just got de headache. I was a-leanin out de window by it’s so awful hot today. Seems like I can’ hardly catch enough air.”
“We must be tanksful we is able to feel de hotness, honey. Be tanksful, gal. Tank Gawd for life, den come look at de present I brought you. My lil blue hen stole a nest in de chimney corner and hatched dese beedies, all blue like dey mammy, an’ spry as can be. A blue hen’s chickens is lucky, so I fetched em to you for seed. But don’ feed em, not yet. Let em sleep in de basket until tomorrow.”
Maum Hannah put them down in a dark corner of the room and carefully covered them up; then she sat down, took her pipe out of her apron pocket and filled its small bowl with plug-cut tobacco. “Git a coal, daughter, an’ light my pipe. I feel de need o a good cool smoke. Dat blue hen sho made me sweat befo I could put em an’ all e chillen in dat basket. You wouldn’ believe it to see how quiet e is now.”
Maum Hannah had come to say something else and she was uncertain just how to begin, but presently she asked between puffs of smoke, “Whe is July, Si May-e?”
“Gone to town on de boat.”
“On de excussion?”
“Yes’m.”
“Is Cinder gone wid em?”
“I don’ know, Auntie.”
Maum Hannah smoked in silence, then she took her pipe out of her mouth and pressed the burning tobacco down tighter.
“Budda Ben’s been a-talkin about how July goes off an’ leaves you all de time whilst ’e’s a-spendin money on dat Cinder.”
Maum Hannah’s eyes sent sidelong looks at Mary to see how these words were being taken. Mary hung her head at first, ashamed that they were so and she could not deny a single word.
“Budda Ben talked it all over last night, an’ we done agree dat you don’ need to stay here wid July lessen you want to. You got a home right yonder wid me an’ Budda de same as you had befo de preacher ever read out de Book over you an’ July an’ made yunnuh man an’ wife. If you want to come home, den you come. Me an’ Budda will divide de last crust o’ bread we got wid you an’ lil Unex, long as we live. You don’ have to stand mistreatment a day longer’n you want to. Not a day. You just say
