Read Online Collected Stories of Carson McCullers by Carson Mccullers - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Carson Mccullers
Ads: Link
snaggled front teeth, and greasy blond hair held back by a jeweled barrette. I was forbidden to play with her, perhaps because my Grandmother or parents sensed an unwholesome element in the relation; if this supposition is true they were quite right. I had once kissed Tit, who was my best friend but only a second cousin, so that day by day I was slowly turning into a colored person. It was summer, and day by day I was turning darker. Perhaps I had some notion that Hattie, having once revealed this fearful transformation, might somehow have the power to stop it. In the dual bondage of guilt and fear, I followed her around the neighborhood, and often she demanded nickels and dimes.
The memories of childhood have a strange shuttling quality, and areas of darkness ring the spaces of light. The memories of childhood are like clear candles in an acre of night, illuminating fixed scenes from the surrounding darkness. I don't remember where Hattie lived, but one passageway, one room, have an uncanny clarity. Nor do I know how I happened to go to this room, but anyway I was there with Hattie and my cousin, Tit. It was late afternoon, the room was not quite dark. Hattie was wearing an Indian dress, with a headband of bright red feathers, and she had asked if we knew where babies come from. The Indian feathers in her band looked, for some reason, scary to me.
"They grow in the insides of ladies," Tit said.
"If you swear you will never tell a living soul then I will show you something."
We must have sworn, though I remember a reluctance, and a dread of further revelations. Hattie climbed up on a chair and brought down something from a closet shelf. It was a bottle, with something queer and red inside.
"Do you know what this is?" she asked.
The thing inside the bottle resembled nothing I had ever seen before. It was Tit who asked: "What is it?"
Hattie waited and her face beneath the band of feathers wore a crafty expression. After some moments of suspense, she said:
"It's a dead pickled baby."
The room was very quiet. Tit and I exchanged a sidelong look
of
horror. I could not look again at the bottle, but Tit was gazing at it with fascinated dread.
"Whose?" he asked finally in a low voice.
"See the little old red head with the mouth. And the little teensy red legs squelched up under it. My brother brought it home when he was learning to be a drug store man."
Tit reached out a finger and touched the bottle, then put his hands behind his back. He asked again, this time in a whisper: "Whose? Whose baby?"
"It is an orphan," Hattie said.
I remember the light whispering sound of our footsteps as we tiptoed from the room, and that the passageway was dark and at the end there was a curtain. That, thank goodness, is my final recollection of this Hattie. But the pickled orphan haunted me for some time; I dreamed once that the Thing had got out of the jar and was scuttling around the Orphans' Home and I was locked in there and It was scuttling after meâDid I believe that in that gloomy, gabled house there were shelves with rows of these eerie bottles? Probably yesâand no. For the child knows two layers of realityâthat of the world, which is accepted like an immense collusion of all adultsâand the unacknowledged, hidden secret, the profound. In any case, I kept close to my Grandmother when in the late afternoon we passed by the Home on our way from town. At that time I knew none of the orphans, as they went to the Third Street School.
It was a few years later that two occurrences came about that brought me in a direct relation with the Home. Meanwhile, I looked on myself as a big girl, and had passed the place a thousand times, walking alone, or on skates, or bicycle. The terror had diminished to a sort of special fascination. I always stared at the Home in passing, and sometimes I would see the orphans, walking with Sunday slowness on their way to Sunday school and church, grouped in marching formation with the two
The memories of childhood have a strange shuttling quality, and areas of darkness ring the spaces of light. The memories of childhood are like clear candles in an acre of night, illuminating fixed scenes from the surrounding darkness. I don't remember where Hattie lived, but one passageway, one room, have an uncanny clarity. Nor do I know how I happened to go to this room, but anyway I was there with Hattie and my cousin, Tit. It was late afternoon, the room was not quite dark. Hattie was wearing an Indian dress, with a headband of bright red feathers, and she had asked if we knew where babies come from. The Indian feathers in her band looked, for some reason, scary to me.
"They grow in the insides of ladies," Tit said.
"If you swear you will never tell a living soul then I will show you something."
We must have sworn, though I remember a reluctance, and a dread of further revelations. Hattie climbed up on a chair and brought down something from a closet shelf. It was a bottle, with something queer and red inside.
"Do you know what this is?" she asked.
The thing inside the bottle resembled nothing I had ever seen before. It was Tit who asked: "What is it?"
Hattie waited and her face beneath the band of feathers wore a crafty expression. After some moments of suspense, she said:
"It's a dead pickled baby."
The room was very quiet. Tit and I exchanged a sidelong look
of
horror. I could not look again at the bottle, but Tit was gazing at it with fascinated dread.
"Whose?" he asked finally in a low voice.
"See the little old red head with the mouth. And the little teensy red legs squelched up under it. My brother brought it home when he was learning to be a drug store man."
Tit reached out a finger and touched the bottle, then put his hands behind his back. He asked again, this time in a whisper: "Whose? Whose baby?"
"It is an orphan," Hattie said.
I remember the light whispering sound of our footsteps as we tiptoed from the room, and that the passageway was dark and at the end there was a curtain. That, thank goodness, is my final recollection of this Hattie. But the pickled orphan haunted me for some time; I dreamed once that the Thing had got out of the jar and was scuttling around the Orphans' Home and I was locked in there and It was scuttling after meâDid I believe that in that gloomy, gabled house there were shelves with rows of these eerie bottles? Probably yesâand no. For the child knows two layers of realityâthat of the world, which is accepted like an immense collusion of all adultsâand the unacknowledged, hidden secret, the profound. In any case, I kept close to my Grandmother when in the late afternoon we passed by the Home on our way from town. At that time I knew none of the orphans, as they went to the Third Street School.
It was a few years later that two occurrences came about that brought me in a direct relation with the Home. Meanwhile, I looked on myself as a big girl, and had passed the place a thousand times, walking alone, or on skates, or bicycle. The terror had diminished to a sort of special fascination. I always stared at the Home in passing, and sometimes I would see the orphans, walking with Sunday slowness on their way to Sunday school and church, grouped in marching formation with the two
Similar Books
