“Who is dis all dressed up so fine,” Budda Ben asked from the doorway. “Wid earrings a-danglin an’ a headkerchief makin’ em look like a grown ’oman? Who it is?”
Mary could hardly draw her eyes away from the wavy glass where her image was fairly dazzling. “Does you tink dey fits me, Budda? Does you like-em, Auntie? Please stop a-frownin an’ look at em, Budda Ben. I know you ain’ never seen prettier ones.” She said it all in one breath, then stopped to gaze in the looking-glass, where her white teeth and black eyes flashed bright as the earrings themselves.
III
Mary’s wedding-day had dawned but instead of being up at first fowl crow and running around helping Maum Hannah get everything ready, she lay still in her bed in the shed room, thinking, pretending to sleep, watching the streaks of light creep in through the cabin cracks, while the old woman moved quietly about in the big room, rousing the fire in the chimney, filling the kettle with fresh water, stirring at the pots on the hearth and pushing them up closer to the fire so the breakfast victuals could cook faster.
Mary was happy over her wedding. God knew she had loved July all of her life; yet when she thought of leaving Maum Hannah and Budda Ben and this kind old house where she had been born and where she had spent most of her life, something inside her breast ached.
She had no father and her mother had been dead for years, but Maum Hannah had been like a mother to her, Budda Ben, Maum Hannah’s crippled son, had been both a father and a brother, and this old tottering house was like a dear friend. She loved every board in its weather-beaten sides, every shingle in its warped roof, every rusty nail that held it together.
The house where she and July would live at the other end of the Quarter street was exactly like it, for it was built at the same time, by the same people and by the same pattern. Its roof was warped too, its rotted shingles were edged with small green ferns, the wide-mouthed chimney rising out of its ridgepole took up a third of the inside wall in the same way. It was an old unpainted wooden cabin sitting low on the earth, heavy with years, yet able and strong in its beam and joists and rafters and sides, for it was built in the old days when men took time to choose timbers carefully and to lay them together with skill. Like this old house, it had held many generations. Red birth, black death, hate, sorrow and love had all dwelt inside it, sheltered by its roof, shielded by its walls. July’s people had lived in it for generations, but this was the home where she was born. Everything here was part of her life. She was born in this same bed. The crippled table over in the corner, heaped high with clean quilts, had been there ever since she could remember. The cupboard where her clothes stayed and the leaning shelf by the window with the four sad-irons resting on it after their hard week’s work had never been out of their places since they were put there by women who lived here before Maum Hannah was born. When Maum Hannah died they would all belong to Mary. Crippled Budda Ben was bound to die ahead of his mother who prayed to God every day of her life to let her outlive him, so that when he died she could see that his box was made right. Budda’s poor legs must not be cramped when they were laid away in the ground for their last long rest. She knew how to pray and she would outlive Budda Ben as sure as the world.
He was snoring peacefully in the shed room next to Mary’s as Maum Hannah went tripping quietly about the big room so as not to wake him. The shed-room door was open so Mary could see the wedding-cakes standing in a long white row in front of the jugs of wedding-wine. When Maum Hannah began examining them and talking softly to herself Mary couldn’t help smiling to see how she peeped at one, then another, turning each around, appraising them all, grunting with pride in so much beauty. “My jaws pure leak water just to look at em,” Maum Hannah murmured. The neighbors had baked and iced them all except the bride’s cake which stood like a tall steeple in the center of the row. Maum Hannah made that one herself, and it was the tallest and loveliest cake Mary had ever seen: Its big bottom layer had been baked in a dishpan and the other layers grew smaller as they rose higher and higher until the last layer came, and that had to be baked in a tomato can for no pan in the Quarters was small enough to be right for it. When it was all finished, iced white and dotted over with white spots, Budda Ben hobbled to Grab-All, as the crossroads store was called because it got every cent everybody ever had, and bought pink and white candies that looked like rice grains and sprinkled these all over the whole cake. Then it
