Collected Stories by Carson McCullers
"Who?"
"Why, Jamie Beale," said Berenice. "That big old no-good Jamie Beale. It was the first time I ever laid eyes on him."
"Is that why you married him?" F. Jasmine asked, for Jamie Beale was the name of the sorry old liquor-drinker, who was the second husband. "Because he had a mashed thumb like Ludie's?"
"Jesus knows," said Berenice. "I don't. I felt drawn to him on account of the thumb. And then one thing led to another. First thing I knew I had married him."
"Well, I think that was silly," F. Jasmine said. "To marry him just because of that thumb."
"Me too," said Berenice. "I'm not trying to dispute with you. I'm just telling you what happened. And the very same thing occurred in the case of Henry Johnson."
Henry Johnson was the third husband, the one who had gone crazy on Berenice. He was all right for three weeks after they had married, but then he went crazy, and he behaved in such a crazy way that finally she had to quit him.
"You mean to sit there and tell me Henry Johnson had one of those mashed thumbs too?"
"No," said Berenice. "It was not the thumb that time. It was the coat."
F. Jasmine and John Henry looked at each other, for what she was saying did not seem to make much sense. But Berenice's dark eye was sober and certain, and she nodded to them in a definite way.
"To understand this, you have to know what happened after Ludie died. He had a policy due to pay off two hundred and fifty dollars. I won't go into the whole business, but what happened was that I was cheated by them policy people out of fifty dollars. And in two days I had to scour around and raise the fifty dollars to make out for the funeral. Because I couldn't let Ludie be put away cheap. I pawned everything I could lay hands on. And I sold my coat and Ludie's coat. To that second-hand clothing store on Front Avenue."
"Oh!" F. Jasmine said. "Then you mean Henry Johnson bought Ludie's coat and you married him because of it."
"Not exactly," said Berenice. "I was walking down that street alongside of the City Hall one evening when I suddenly seen this shape before me. Now the shape of this boy ahead of me was so similar to Ludie through the shoulders and the back of the head that I almost dropped dead there on the sidewalk. I followed and run behind him. It was Henry Johnson, and that was the first time I ever saw him also, since he lived in the country and didn't come much into town. But he had chanced to buy Ludie's coat and he was built on the same shape as Ludie. And from the back view it looked like he was Ludie's ghost or Ludie's twin. But how I married him I don't exactly know, for to begin with it was clear that he did not have his share of sense. But you let a boy hang around and you get fond of him. Anyway, that's how I married Henry Johnson."
"People certainy do curious things."
"You telling me," said Berenice. She glanced at F. Jasmine, who was pouring a slow ribbon of condensed milk over a soda cracker, to finish her dinner with a sweet sandwich.
"I swear, Frankie! I believe you got a tape worm. I am perfecdy serious. Your father looks over them big grocery bills and he naturally suspicions that I carry things off."
"You do," F. Jasmine said. "Sometimes."
"He reads over them grocery bills and he complains to me, Berenice, what in the name of holy creation did we do with six cans of condensed milk and forty-leven dozen eggs and eight boxes of marshmallows in one week. And I have to admit to him: Frankie eat them. I have to say to him: Mr. Addams, you think you feeding something human back here in your kitchen. That's what you think. I have to say to him: Yes, you imagine it is something human."
"After today I'm not going to be greedy any more," F. Jasmine said. "But I don't understand the point of what you was telling. I don't see how that about Jamie Beale and Henry Johnson applies to it me."
"It applies to everybody and it is a warning."
"But how?"
"Why, don't you see what I was doing?" asked Berenice. "I loved Ludie and he was the first man I loved. Therefore, I had to go and copy myself forever afterward. What I did was to marry off little pieces of Ludie whenever I come across them. It was just my misfortune they all turned out to be the wrong pieces. My intention was to repeat me and Ludie. Now don't you see?"
"I see what you're driving at," F. Jasmine said. "But I don't see how it is a warning applied to me."
"Then do I have to tell you?" asked Berenice.
F. Jasmine did not nod or answer, for she felt that Berenice had laid a trap for her, and was going to make remarks she did not want to hear. Berenice stopped to light herself another cigarette and two blue slow scrolls of smoke came from her nostrils and lazed above the dirty dishes on the table. Mr. Schwarzenbaum was playing an arpeggio. F. Jasmine waited and it seemed a long time.
"You and that wedding at Winter Hill," Berenice said finally. "That is what I am warning about. I can see right through them two gray eyes of yours like they was glass. And what I see is the saddest piece of foolishness I ever knew."
"Gray eyes is glass," John Henry whispered.
But F. Jasmine would not let herself be seen through and outstared; she hardened and tensed her eyes and did not look away from Berenice.
"I see what you have in your mind. Don't think I don't. You see something unheard of at Winter Hill tomorrow, and you right in the center. You think you going to march down the center of the aisle right in between your brother and the bride. You think you going to break into that wedding, and Jesus knows what else."
"No," F. Jasmine said. "I don't see myself walking down the center of the aisle between them."
"I see through them eyes," said Berenice. "Don't argue with me."
John Henry said again, but softer: "Gray eyes is glass."
"But what I'm warning is this," said Berenice. "If you start out falling in love with some unheard-of thing like that, what is going to happen to you? If you take a mania like this, it won't be the last time and of that you can be sure. So what will become of you? Will you be trying to break into weddings the rest of your days? And what kind of life would that be?"
"It makes me sick to listen at people who don't have any sense," F. Jasmine said, and she put her two fingers in her ears, but she did not push in the fingers very tight and she could still hear Berenice.
"You just laying yourself this fancy trap to catch yourself in trouble," Berenice went on. "And you know it. You been through the B section of the seventh grade and you arc already twelve years old."
F. Jasmine did not speak of the wedding, but her argument passed over it, and she said: "They will take me. You wait and see."
"And when they don't?"
"I told you," F. Jasmine said. "I will shoot myself with Papa's pistol. But they will take me. And we're never coming back to this part of the country again."
"Well, I been trying to reason seriously," said Berenice. "But I see it is no use. You determined to suffer."
"Who said I was going to suffer?" F. Jasmine said.
"I know you," said Berenice. "You will suffer."
"You are just jealous," F. Jasmine said. "You are just trying to deprive me of all the pleasure of leaving town. And kill the joy of it"
"I am just trying to head this off," said Berenice. "But I sec it is no use.
John Henry whispered for the last time: "Gray eyes is glass."
It was past six o'clock, and the slow old afternoon began slowly to die. F. Jasmine took her fingers from her ears and breathed a long tired sigh. When she had sighed, John Henry sighed also, and Berenice concluded with the longest sigh of all. Mr. Schwarzenbaum had played a ragged little waltz; but the piano was not yet tuned to suit him, and he began to harp and insist on another note. Again he played the scale up until the seventh note, and again he stuck there and did not finish. F. Jasmine was no longer watching the music with her eyes; but John Henry was watching, and when the piano stuck on the last note F. Jasmine could see him harden his behind and sit there stiff in the chair, his eyes raised, waiting.
"It is that last note," F. Jasmine said. "If you start with A and
John Henry was grinning with his snaggle teeth and giggling softly. "Tee-tee," he said, and he pulled at Berenice's sleeve. "Did you hear what Frankie said? Tee-tee."
"Shut your trap," F. Jasmine said. "Quit always being so evil-minded." She got up from the table, but she did not know where to go. "You didn't say anything about Willis Rhodes. Did he have a mashed thumb or a coat or something?"
"Lord!" said Berenice, and her voice was so sudden and shocked that F. Jasmine turned and went back to the table. "Now that is a story would make the hair rise on your head. You mean to say I never told you about what happened with me and Willis Rhodes?"
"No," F. Jasmine said. Willis Rhodes was the last and the worst of the four husbands, and he was so terrible that Berenice had had to call the Law on him. "What?"
"Well, imagine this!" said Berenice. "Imagine a cold bitter January night. And me laying all by myself in the big parlor bed. Alone in the house, because everybody else had gone for the Saturday night to Forks Falls. Me, mind you, who hates to sleep in a empty old bed all by myself and is nervous in a house alone. Past twelve o'clock on this cold bitter January night. Can you remember wintertime, John Henry?"
John Henry nodded.
"Now imagine this!" said Berenice again. She had begun stacking the dishes so that three dirty plates were piled before her on the table. Her dark eye circled around the table, roping in F. Jasmine and John Henry as her audience. F. Jasmine leaned forward, her mouth open and her hands holding the table edge. John Henry shivered down in his chair and he watched Berenice through his glasses without batting his eyes. Berenice had started in a low and creepy voice, then suddenly she stopped and sat there looking at the two of them.
"So what?" F. Jasmine urged, leaning closer across the table. "What happened?"
But Berenice did not speak. She looked from one of them to the other, and shook her head slowly. Then when she spoke again her voice was completely changed, and she said: "Why, I wish you would look yonder. I wish you would look."
F. Jasmine glanced quickly behind her, but there was only the stove, the wall, the empty stair.
"What?" she asked. "What happened?"
"I wish you would look," Berenice repeated. "Them two little pitchers and them four big ears." She got up suddenly from the table. "Come on, less wash the dishes. Then we going to make some cup cakes to take tomorrow on the trip."
There was nothing F. Jasmine could do to show Berenice how she felt. After a long time, when the table before her was already cleared and Berenice stood washing dishes at the sink, she only said:
"If it's anything I mortally despise it's a person who starts out to tell something and works up people's interest and then stops."
"I admit it," said Berenice. "And I am sorry. But it was just one of them things I suddenly realize I couldn't tell you and John Henry."
John Henry was skipping and scuttling back and forth across the kitchen, from the stairway to the back porch door. "Cup cakes!" he sang. "Cup cakes! Cup cakes!"
"You could have sent him out of the room," F. Jasmine said. "And told me. But don't think I care. I don't care a particle what happened. I just wish Willis Rhodes had come in about that time and slit your throat."
"That is a ugly way to talk," said Berenice. "Especially since I got a surprise for you. Go out on the back porch and look in the wicker basket covered with a newspaper."
F. Jasmine got up, but grudgingly, and she walked in a crippled way to the back porch. Then she stood in the doorway holding the pink organdie dress. Contrary to all that Berenice had maintained, the collar was pleated with tiny little pleats, as it was meant to be. She must have done it before dinner when F. Jasmine was upstairs.
"Well, this is mighty nice of you," she said. "I appreciate it."
She would have liked for her expression to be split into two parts, so that one eye stared at Berenice in an accusing way, and the other eye thanked her with a grateful look. But the human face does not divide like this, and the two expressions canceled out each other.
"Cheer up," said Berenice. "Who can tell what will happen? You might dress up in that fresh pink dress tomorrow and meet the cutest little white boy in Winter Hill you ever seen. It's just on such trips as these that you run into beaus."
"But that's not what I'm talking about," F. Jasmine said. Then, after a while, still leaning against the doorway, she added: "Somehow we got off on the wrong kind of conversation."
The twilight was white, and it lasted for a long while. Time in August could be divided into four parts: morning, afternoon, twilight, and dark. At twilight the sky became a curious blue-green which soon faded to white. The air was soft gray, and the arbor and trees were slowly darkening. It was the hour when sparrows gathered and whirled above the rooftops of the town, and when in the darkened elms along the street there was the August sound of the cicadas. Noises at twilight had a blurred sound, and they lingered: the slam of a screen door down the street, voices of children, the whir of a lawnmower from a yard somewhere. F. Jasmine brought in the evening newspaper, and dark was coming in the kitchen. The corners in the room at first were dark, then the drawings on the wall faded. The three of them watched the dark come on in silence.
"The army is now in Paris."
"That's good."
They were quiet awhile and then F. Jasmine said: "I have a lot of things to do. I ought to start out now."
But although she stood ready in the doorway, she did not go. On this last evening, the last time with the three of them together in the kitchen, she felt there was some final thing she ought to say or do before she went away. For many months she had been ready to leave this kitchen, never to return again; but now that the time had come, she stood there with her head and shoulder leaning against the door jamb, somehow unready. It was the darkening hour when the remarks they made had a sad and beautiful sound, although there would be nothing sad or beautiful about the meanings of the words.
F. Jasmine said quietly: "I intend to take two baths tonight. One long soaking bath and scrub with a brush. I'm going to try to scrape this brown crust off my elbows. Then let out the dirty water and take a second bath."
"That's a good idea," said Berenice. "I will be glad to see you clean."
"I will take another bath," John Henry said. His voice was thin and sad; she could not see him in the darkening room, since he stood in the corner by the stove. At seven Berenice had bathed him and dressed him in his shorts again. She heard him shuffle carefully across the room, for after the bath he had put on Berenice's hat and was trying to walk in Berenice's high-heeled shoes. Again he asked a question which by itself meant nothing. "Why?" he asked.
"Why what, Baby?" said Berenice.
He did not answer, and it was F. Jasmine who finally said: "Why is it against the law to change your name?"
Berenice sat in a chair against the pale white light of the window. She held the newspaper open before her, and her head was twisted down and to one side as she strained to see what was printed there. When F. Jasmine spoke, she folded the paper and put it away on the table.
"You can figure that out," she said. "Just because. Think of the confusion."
"I don't see why," F. Jasmine said.
"What is that on your neck?" said Berenice. "I thought it was a head you carried on that neck. Just think. Suppose 1 would suddenly up and call myself Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt. And you would begin naming yourself Joe Louis. And John Henry would try to pass off as Henry Ford. Now what kind of confusion do you think that would cause?"
"Don't talk childish," F. Jasmine said. "That is not the kind of changing I mean. I mean from a name that doesn't suit you to a name you prefer. Like I changed from Fran
"But still it would be a confusion," Berenice insisted. "Suppose we all suddenly change to entirely different names. Nobody would ever know who anybody was talking about. The whole world would go crazy."
"I don't see—"
"Because things accumulate around your name," said Berenice. "You have a name and one thing after another happens to you, and you behave in various ways and do things, so that soon the name begins to have a meaning. Things have accumulated around the name. If it is bad and you have a bad reputation, then you just can't jump out of your name and escape like that. And if it is good and you have a good reputation, then you should be content and satisfied."
"But what had accumulated around my old name?" F. Jasmine asked. Then, when Berenice did not reply at once, F. Jasmine answered her own question. "Nothing! See? My name just didn't mean anything."
"Well, that's not exactly so," said Berenice. "People think of Frankie Addams and it brings to the mind that Frankie is finished with the B section of the seventh grade. And Frankie found the golden egg at the Baptist Easter Hunt. And Frankie lives on Grove Street and—"
"But those things are nothing," F. Jasmine said. "See? They're not worth while. Nothing ever happened to me."
"But it will," said Berenice. "Things will happen."
"What?" F. Jasmine asked.
Berenice sighed and reached for the Chesterfield package inside her bosom. "You pin me down like that and I can't tell you truthfully. If I could I would be a wizard. I wouldn't be sitting here in this kitchen right now, but making a fine living on Wall Street as a wizard. All I can say is that things will happen. Just what, I don't know."
"By the way," F. Jasmine said after a while. "I thought I would go around to your house and see Big Mama. I don't believe in those fortunes, or anything like that, but I thought I might as well."
"Suit yourself. However, I don't think it is necessary."
"I suppose I ought to leave now," F. Jasmine said.