Carson McCullers

  JOHN HENRY: How? How did that boy change into a girl? Did he kiss his elbow? (He tries to kiss his elbow.)

  BERENICE: It was just one of them things, Candy Lamb. Yep, I have come to the conclusion that what you ought to be thinking about is a beau. A nice little white boy beau.

  FRANKIE: I don’t want any beau. What would I do with one? Do you mean something like a soldier who would maybe take me to the Idle Hour?

  BERENICE: Who’s talking about soldiers? I’m talking about a nice little white boy beau your own age. How ’bout that little old Barney next door?

  FRANKIE: Barney MacKean! That nasty Barney!

  BERENICE: Certainly! You could make out with him until somebody better comes along. He would do.

  FRANKIE: You are the biggest crazy in this town.

  BERENICE: The crazy calls the sane the crazy.

  (BARNEY MACKEAN, a boy of twelve, shirtless and wearing shorts, and HELEN FLETCHER, a girl of twelve or fourteen, cross the yard from the left, go through the arbor and out on the right. FRANKIE and JOHN HENRY watch them from the window.)

  FRANKIE: Yonder’s Barney now with Helen Fletcher. They are going to the alley behind the Wests’ garage. They do something bad back there. I don’t know what it is.

  BERENICE: If you don’t know what it is, how come you know it is bad?

  FRANKIE: I just know it. I think maybe they look at each other and peepee or something. They don’t let anybody watch them.

  JOHN HENRY: I watched them once.

  FRANKIE: What do they do?

  JOHN HENRY: I saw. They don’t peepee.

  FRANKIE: Then what do they do?

  JOHN HENRY: I don’t know what it was. But I watched them. How many of them did you catch, Berenice? Them beaus?

  BERENICE: How many? Candy Lamb, how many hairs is in this plait? You’re talking to Miss Berenice Sadie Brown.

  FRANKIE: I think you ought to quit worrying about beaus and be content with T. T. I bet you are forty years old.

  BERENICE: Wise-mouth. How do you know so much? I got as much right as anybody else to continue to have a good time as long as I can. And as far as that goes, I’m not so old as some peoples would try and make out. I ain’t changed life yet.

  JOHN HENRY: Did they all treat you to the picture show, them beaus?

  BERENICE: To the show, or one thing or another. Wipe off your mouth.

  (There is the sound of piano tuning.)

  JOHN HENRY: The piano tuning man.

  BERENICE: Ye Gods, I seriously believe this will be the last straw.

  JOHN HENRY: Me too.

  FRANKIE: It makes me sad. And jittery too. (She walks around the room.) They tell me that when they want to punish the crazy people in Milledgeville, they tie them up and make them listen to piano tuning. (She puts the empty coal scuttle on her head and walks around the table.)

  BERENICE: We could turn on the radio and drown him out.

  FRANKIE: I don’t want the radio on. (She goes into the interior room and takes off her dress, speaking from inside.) But I advise you to keep the radio on after I leave. Some day you will very likely hear us speak over the radio.

  BERENICE: Speak about what, pray tell me?

  FRANKIE: I don’t know exactly what about. But probably some eye witness account about something. We will be asked to speak.

  BERENICE: I don’t follow you. What are we going to eye witness? And who will ask us to speak?

  JOHN HENRY (excitedly): What, Frankie? Who is speaking on the radio?

  FRANKIE: When I said we, you thought I meant you and me and John Henry West. To speak over the world radio. I have never heard of anything so funny since I was born.

  JOHN HENRY (climbing up to kneel on the seat of the chair): Who? What?

  FRANKIE: Ha! Ha! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!

  (FRANKIE goes around punching things with her fist, and shadow boxing. BERENICE raises her right hand for peace. Then suddenly they all stop. FRANKIE goes to the window, and JOHN HENRY hurries there also and stands on tiptoe with his hands on the sill. BERENICE turns her head to see what has happened. The piano is still. Three young girls in clean dresses are passing before the arbor. FRANKIE watches them silently at the window.)

  JOHN HENRY (softly): The club of girls.

  FRANKIE: What do you son-of-a-bitches mean crossing my yard? How many times must I tell you not to set foot on my Papa’s property?

  BERENICE: Just ignore them and make like you don’t see them pass.

  FRANKIE: Don’t mention those crooks to me.

  (T. T. and HONEY approach by way of the back yard. HONEY is whistling a blues tune.)

  BERENICE: Why don’t you show me the new dress? I’m anxious to see what you selected. (FRANKIE goes into the interior room. T. T. knocks on the door. He and HONEY enter.) Why T. T. what you doing around here this time of day?

  T. T.: Good afternoon, Miss Berenice. I’m here on a sad mission.

  BERENICE (startled): What’s wrong?

  T. T.: It’s about Sis Laura Thompson. She suddenly had a stroke and died.

  BERENICE: What! Why she was by here just yesterday. We just ate her peas. They in my stomach right now, and her lyin’ dead on the cooling board this minute. The Lord works in strange ways.

  T. T.: Passed away at dawn this morning.

  FRANKIE (putting her head in the doorway): Who is it that’s dead?

  BERENICE: Sis Laura, Sugar. That old vegetable lady.

  FRANKIE (unseen, from the interior room): Just to think—she passed by yesterday.

  T. T.: Miss Berenice, I’m going around to take up a donation for the funeral. The policy people say Sis Laura’s claim has lapsed.

  BERENICE: Well, here’s fifty cents. The poor old soul.

  T. T.: She was brisk as a chipmunk to the last. The Lord had appointed the time for her. I hope I go that way.

  FRANKIE (from the interior room): I’ve got something to show you all. Shut your eyes and don’t open them until I tell you. (She enters the room dressed in an orange satin evening dress with silver shoes and stockings.) These are the wedding clothes. (BERENICE, T. T. and JOHN HENRY stare.)

  JOHN HENRY: Oh, how pretty!

  FRANKIE: Now tell me your honest opinion. (There is a pause.) What’s the matter? Don’t you like it, Berenice?

  BERENICE: No. It don’t do.

  FRANKIE: What do you mean? It don’t do.

  BERENICE: Exactly that. It just don’t do. (She shakes her head while FRANKIE looks at the dress.)

  FRANKIE: But I don’t see what you mean. What is wrong?

  BERENICE: Well, if you don’t see it I can’t explain it to you. Look there at your head, to begin with. (FRANKIE goes to the mirror.) You had all your hair shaved off like a convict and now you tie this ribbon around this head without any hair. Just looks peculiar.

  FRANKIE: But I’m going to wash and try to stretch my hair tonight.

  BERENICE: Stretch your hair! How you going to stretch your hair? And look at them elbows. Here you got on a grown woman’s evening dress. And that brown crust on your elbows. The two things just don’t mix. (FRANKIE, embarrassed, covers her elbows with her hands. BERENICE is still shaking her head.) Take it back down to the store.

  T. T.: The dress is too growny looking.

  FRANKIE: But I can’t take it back. It’s bargain basement.

  BERENICE: Very well then. Come here. Let me see what I can do.

  FRANKIE (going to BERENICE, who works with the dress): I think you’re just not accustomed to seeing anybody dressed up.

  BERENICE: I’m not accustomed to seein’ a human Christmas tree in August.

  JOHN HENRY: Frankie’s dress looks like a Christmas tree.

  FRANKIE: Two-faced Judas! You just now said it was pretty. Old double-faced Judas! (The sounds of piano tuning are heard again.) Oh, that piano tuner!

  BERENICE: Step back a little now.

  FRANKIE (looking in the mirror): Don’t you honestly think it’s pretty? Give me your candy opinion.

  BERENI
CE: I never knew anybody so unreasonable! You ask me my candy opinion, I give you my candy opinion. You ask me again, and I give it to you again. But what you want is not my honest opinion, but my good opinion of something I know is wrong.

  FRANKIE: I only want to look pretty.

  BERENICE: Pretty is as pretty does. Ain’t that right, T. T.? You will look well enough for anybody’s wedding. Excepting your own.

  (MR. ADDAMS enters through the hall door.)

  MR. ADDAMS: Hello, everybody. (to FRANKIE) I don’t want you roaming around the streets all morning and not coming home at dinner time. Looks like I’ll have to tie you up in the back yard.

  FRANKIE: I had business to tend to. Papa, look!

  MR. ADDAMS: What is it, Miss Picklepriss?

  FRANKIE: Sometimes I think you have turned stone blind. You never even noticed my new dress.

  MR. ADDAMS: I thought it was a show costume.

  FRANKIE: Show costume! Papa, why is it you don’t ever notice what I have on or pay any serious mind to me? You just walk around like a mule with blinders on, not seeing or caring.

  MR. ADDAMS: Never mind that now. (to T. T. and HONEY) I need some help down at my store. My porter failed me again. I wonder if you or Honey could help me next week.

  T. T.: I will if I can, sir, Mr. Addams. What days would be convenient for you, sir?

  MR. ADDAMS: Say Wednesday afternoon.

  T. T.: Now, Mr. Addams, that’s one afternoon I promised to work for Mr. Finny, sir. I can’t promise anything, Mr. Addams. But if Mr. Finny change his mind about needing me, I’ll work for you, sir.

  MR. ADDAMS: How about you, Honey?

  HONEY (shortly): I ain’t got the time.

  MR. ADDAMS: I’ll be so glad when the war is over and you biggety, worthless niggers get back to work. And, furthermore, you sir me! Hear me?

  HONEY (reluctantly): Yes,—sir.

  MR. ADDAMS: I better go back to the store now and get my nose down to the grindstone. You stay home, Frankie. (He goes out through the hall door.)

  JOHN HENRY: Uncle Royal called Honey a nigger. Is Honey a nigger?

  BERENICE: Be quiet now, John Henry. (to HONEY) Honey, I got a good mind to shake you till you spit. Not saying sir to Mr. Addams, and acting so impudent.

  HONEY: T. T. said sir enough for a whole crowd of niggers. But for folks that calls me nigger, I got a real good nigger razor. (He takes a razor from his pocket. FRANKIE and JOHN HENRY crowd close to look. When JOHN HENRY touches the razor HONEY says:) Don’t touch it, Butch, it’s sharp. Liable to hurt yourself.

  BERENICE: Put up that razor, Satan! I worry myself sick over you. You going to die before your appointed span.

  JOHN HENRY: Why is Honey a nigger?

  BERENICE: Jesus knows.

  HONEY: I’m so tensed up. My nerves been scraped with a razor. Berenice, loan me a dollar.

  BERENICE: I ain’t handing you no dollar, worthless, to get high on them reefer cigarettes.

  HONEY: Gimme, Berenice, I’m so tensed up and miserable. The nigger hole. I’m sick of smothering in the nigger hole. I can’t stand it no more.

  (Relenting, BERENICE gets her pocketbook from the shelf, opens it, and takes out some change.)

  BERENICE: Here’s thirty cents. You can buy two beers.

  HONEY: Well, thankful for tiny, infinitesimal favors. I better be dancing off now.

  T. T.: Same here. I still have to make a good deal of donation visits this afternoon. (HONEY and T. T. go to the door.)

  BERENICE: So long, T. T. I’m counting on you for tomorrow and you too, Honey.

  FRANKIE and JOHN HENRY: So long.

  T. T.: Good-bye, you all. Good-bye. (He goes out, crossing the yard.)

  BERENICE: Poor ole Sis Laura. I certainly hope that when my time comes I will have kept up my policy. I dread to think the church would ever have to bury me. When I die.

  JOHN HENRY: Are you going to die, Berenice?

  BERENICE: Why, Candy, everybody has to die.

  JOHN HENRY: Everybody? Are you going to die, Frankie?

  FRANKIE: I doubt it. I honestly don’t think I’ll ever die.

  JOHN HENRY: What is “die”?

  FRANKIE: It must be terrible to be nothing but black, black, black.

  BERENICE: Yes, baby.

  FRANKIE: How many dead people do you know? I know six dead people in all. I’m not counting my mother. There’s William Boyd who was killed in Italy. I knew him by sight and name. An’ that man who climbed poles for the telephone company. An’ Lou Baker. The porter at Finny’s place who was murdered in the alley back of Papa’s store. Somebody drew a razor on him and the alley people said that his cut throat shivered like a mouth and spoke ghost words to the sun.

  JOHN HENRY: Ludie Maxwell Freeman is dead.

  FRANKIE: I didn’t count Ludie; it wouldn’t be fair. Because he died just before I was born. (to BERENICE) Do you think very frequently about Ludie?

  BERENICE: You know I do. I think about the five years when me and Ludie was together, and about all the bad times I seen since. Sometimes I almost wish I had never knew Ludie at all. It leaves you too lonesome afterward. When you walk home in the evening on the way from work, it makes a little lonesome quinch come in you. And you take up with too many sorry men to try to get over the feeling.

  FRANKIE: But T. T. is not sorry.

  BERENICE: I wasn’t referring to T. T. He is a fine upstanding colored gentleman, who has walked in a state of grace all his life.

  FRANKIE: When are you going to marry with him?

  BERENICE: I ain’t going to marry with him.

  FRANKIE: But you were just now saying . . .

  BERENICE: I was saying how sincerely I respect T. T. and sincerely regard T. T. (There is a pause.) But he don’t make me shiver none.

  FRANKIE: Listen, Berenice, I have something queer to tell you. It’s something that happened when I was walking around town today. Now I don’t exactly know how to explain what I mean.

  BERENICE: What is it?

  FRANKIE (now and then pulling her bangs or lower lip): I was walking along and I passed two stores with a alley in between. The sun was frying hot. And just as I passed this alley, I caught a glimpse of something in the corner of my left eye. A dark double shape. And this glimpse brought to my mind—so sudden and clear—my brother and the bride that I just stood there and couldn’t hardly bear to look and see what it was. It was like they were there in that alley, although I knew that they are in Winter Hill almost a hundred miles away. (There is a pause.) Then I turn slowly and look. And you know what was there? (There is a pause.) It was just two colored boys. That was all. But it gave me such a queer feeling.

  (BERENICE has been listening attentively. She stares at FRANKIE, then draws a package of cigarettes from her bosom and lights one.)

  BERENICE: Listen at me! Can you see through these bones in my forehead? (She points to her forehead.) Have you, Frankie Addams, been reading my mind? (There is a pause.) That’s the most remarkable thing I ever heard of.

  FRANKIE: What I mean is that . . .

  BERENICE: I know what you mean. You mean right here in the corner of your eye. (She points to her eye.) You suddenly catch something there. And this cold shiver run all the way down you. And you whirl around. And you stand there facing Jesus knows what. But not Ludie, not who you want. And for a minute you feel like you been dropped down a well.

  FRANKIE: Yes. That is it. (FRANKIE reaches for a cigarette and lights it, coughing a bit.)

  BERENICE: Well, that is mighty remarkable. This is a thing been happening to me all my life. Yet just now is the first time I ever heard it put into words. (There is a pause.) Yes, that is the way it is when you are in love. A thing known and not spoken.

  FRANKIE (patting her foot): Yet I always maintained I never believed in love. I didn’t admit it and never put any of it in my shows.

  JOHN HENRY: I never believed in love.

  BERENICE: Now I will tell you something. And it is to be a warning to you. Y
ou hear me, John Henry. You hear me, Frankie.

  JOHN HENRY: Yes. (He points his forefinger.) Frankie is smoking.

  BERENICE (squaring her shoulders): Now I am here to tell you I was happy. There was no human woman in all the world more happy than I was in them days. And that includes everybody. You listening to me, John Henry? It includes all queens and millionaires and first ladies of the land. And I mean it includes people of all color. You hear me, Frankie? No human woman in all the world was happier than Berenice Sadie Brown.

  FRANKIE: The five years you were married to Ludie.

  BERENICE: From that autumn morning when I first met him on the road in front of Campbell’s Filling Station until the very night he died, November, the year 1933.

  FRANKIE: The very year and the very month I was born.

  BERENICE: The coldest November I ever seen. Every morning there was frost and puddles were crusted with ice. The sunshine was pale yellow like it is in winter time. Sounds carried far away, and I remember a hound dog that used to howl toward sundown. And everything I seen come to me as a kind of sign.

  FRANKIE: I think it is a kind of sign I was born the same year and the same month he died.

  BERENICE: And it was a Thursday towards six o’clock. About this time of day. Only November. I remember I went to the passage and opened the front door. Dark was coming on; the old hound was howling far away. And I go back in the room and lay down on Ludie’s bed. I lay myself down over Ludie with my arms spread out and my face on his face. And I pray that the Lord would contage my strength to him. And I ask the Lord let it be anybody, but not let it be Ludie. And I lay there and pray for a long time. Until night.

  JOHN HENRY: How? (in a higher, wailing voice) How, Berenice?

  BERENICE: That night he died. I tell you he died. Ludie! Ludie Freeman! Ludie Maxwell Freeman died! (She hums.)

  FRANKIE (after a pause): It seems to me I feel sadder about Ludie than any other dead person. Although I never knew him. I know I ought to cry sometimes about my mother, or anyhow Granny. But it looks like I can’t. But Ludie—maybe it was because I was born so soon after Ludie died. But you were starting out to tell some kind of a warning.

  BERENICE (looking puzzled for a moment): Warning? Oh, yes! I was going to tell you how this thing we was talking about applies to me. (As BERENICE begins to talk FRANKIE goes to a shelf above the refrigerator and brings back a fig bar to the table.) It was the April of the following year that I went one Sunday to the church where the congregation was strange to me. I had my forehead down on the top of the pew in front of me, and my eyes were open—not peeping around in secret, mind you, but just open. When suddenly this shiver ran all the way through me. I had caught sight of something from the corner of my eye. And I looked slowly to the left. There on the pew, just six inches from my eyes, was this thumb.