"And say your prayers," his mother said, looking at him suddenly with so much love that he was bewildered. "You're a big boy now, and you can say them by yourself; can't you?" He nodded. She took him by the shoulders and looked at him almost as if she were threading a needle. As she looked at him, some kind of astonishment and some kind of fear grew in her face. Her face began to shine; she smiled; her mouth twitched and trembled. She took him close to her and her cheek was wet. "God bless my dear little boy," she whispered, "for ever and ever! Amen," and again she held him away; her face looked as if she were moving through space at extraordinary speed. "Good-bye, my darling; oh, good-bye!"
"Now you keep aholt a my hand," Victoria told him, the sun flashing her lenses as she looked both ways from the curb. Arching his neck and his forelegs, a bright brown horse drew a buggy crisply but sedately past; in the washed black spokes, sunlight twittered. Far down the sunlight, like a bumblebee, a yellow streetcar buzzed. The trees moved. They did not wait.
" Victoria," he said.
"Wait, chile," said Victoria, breathing hard. "You wait till we're safe across."
"Now what is it, honey?" she asked, once they had attained the other curb.
"Why is your skin so dark?"
He saw her bright little eyes thrust into him through the little lenses and he felt a strong current of pain or danger. He knew that something was wrong. She did not answer him immediately but peered down at him sharply. Then the current passed and she looked away from him, readjusting her fingers so that she took his hand. Her face looked very far away, and resolute. "Just because, chile," she said in a stern and gentle voice. "Just because that was the way God made me."
"Is that why you're colored, Victoria?"
He felt a change in her hand when he said the word "colored." Again she did not answer immediately, nor would she look at him. "Yes," she said at length, "that's why I'm colored."
He felt deeply sad as they walked along, but he did not know why. She seemed to have no more to say, and he had a feeling that it was not proper for him to say anything either. He watched her great, sad face beneath its brilliant cap, but she did not seem to know that he was watching her or even that he was there. But then he felt the pressure of her hand, and squeezed her hand, and he felt that whatever had been wrong was all right again.
After quite a little while Victoria said, " Chile, I want to tell you sumpn." He waited: they walked. " Victoria don't pay it no mind, because she knows you. She knows you wouldn't say a mean thing to nobody, not for this world. But dey is lots of other colored folks dat don't know you, honey. And if you say that, you know, about their skins, about their coloh, they goan think you're trying to be mean to em. They goan to feel awful bad and maybe they be mad at you too, when Victoria knows you doan mean nuthin by it, cause they don't know you like Victoria do. Do you understand me, chile?" He looked earnestly up at her. "Don't say nuthin bout skins, or coloh, wheah colored people can heah you. Cause they goana think you're mean to em. So you be careful." And again she squeezed his hand.
He thought about Victoria while they walked and he wished that she was happy, and he felt that it was because of him that she was not happy. " Victoria," he said.
"What is it, honey?"
"I didn't want to be mean to you."
She stopped abruptly and with creaking and difficulty squatted down in the middle of the sidewalk so that a man who was passing stepped suddenly aside and looked coldly down as he went by. She put both hands on his shoulders and her large, kind face and her kind smell were close to him. "Lord bless you, baby, Victoria knows you didn't! Victoria knows you is de goodest little boy in all dis world! She just had to tell you, you see. Cause colored folks has a hard time in dis world and she knows you wouldn't want to make em feel bad, not even if you didn't mean to."
"I didn't want to make you feel bad."
"Bless your little heart. I don't feel bad, not one bit. You make me feel happy, and your mama makes me feel happy, and there's not one thing in the world I wouldn't do for de bole of you, honey, and dat you know. Dat you know," she said again, rocking her head and smiling and patting both his shoulders. "I missed you terrible, honey," she said, but somehow he felt that she was not talking exactly to him. "I couldn't hardly love you more if you was my own baby." A silence opened around them in which he felt at once great space, the space almost of darkness itself, and great peace and comfort; and the whole of this immensity was pervaded by her vague face and by the waving light of leaves. "Now let's git along," she said, creaking upright and smoothing her starched garments. "We don't want to keep your granmaw waitin."
And there was the dusty ivy on the wall, the small glasshouse in front, and on the porch, Aunt Amelia and his grandma. Even when they were still across the street he saw his Aunt Amelia wave and Victoria waved gaily back, chuckling and croaking, "Hello," and he waved too; and Amelia leaned towards his grandmother who sought out and tilted her little trumpet and Amelia leaned close to it and then they both turned to look and Grandma got up and he could hear her high, "Hello," and they were at the front steps, and Grandma came cautiously down the steps from the porch, and they all met on the brick walk in the shade of the magnolia, while Aunt Amelia came up smiling from behind her mother. And soon Victoria left; she disappeared around a corner, a few blocks up the street, handsomely and gradually as a sailboat.
PART II
Chapter 8
A few minutes before ten, the phone rang. Mary hurried to quiet it. "Hello?"
The voice was a man's, wiry and faint, a country voice. It was asking a question, but she could not hear it clearly.
"Hello?" she asked again. "Will you please talk a little louder? I can't hear… I said I can't hear you! Will you talk a little louder please? Thank you."
Now, straining and impatient, she could hear, though the voice seemed still to come from a great distance.
"Is this Miz Jay Follet?"
"Yes; what is it?" (for there was a silence); "yes, this is she."
After further silence the voice said, "There's been a slight-your husband has been in a accident."
His head! she told herself.
"Yes," she said, in a caved-in voice. At the same moment the voice said, "A serious accident."
"Yes," Mary said more clearly.
"What I wanted to ask, is there a man in his family, some kin, could come out? We'd appreciate if you could send a man out here, right away."
"Yes; yes, there's my brother. Where should he come to?"
"I'm out at Powell Station, at Brannick's Blacksmith Shop, bout twelve miles out the Ball Camp Pike."
"Brannick's bl-"
"B-r-a-n-n-i-c-k. It's right on the left of the Pike comin out just a little way this side, Knoxvul side of Bell's Bridge." She heard muttering, and another muttering voice. "Tell him he can't miss it. We'll keep the light on and a lantern out in front."
"Do you have a doctor?"
"How's that again, ma'am?"
"A doctor, do you have one? Should I send a doctor?"
"That's all right, ma'am. Just some man that's kin."
"He'll come right out just as fast as he can." Walter's auto, she thought. "Thank you very much for calling."
"That's all right, ma'am. I sure do hate to give you bad news."
"Good night."
"Good-bye, ma'am."