The Little Friend

Harriet’s aunt Tat had been at the cemetery with the rest of the Garden Club, but had asked to be driven home because of hay fever; she was fretful, her eyes itched, whopping red wheals had risen on the backs of her hand from the bindweed, and she could understand no better than Hely this dogged insistence upon her house for the afternoon’s play. She’d answered the door still in her dirty gardening clothes: Bermuda shorts and a smock-length African dashiki. Edie had a garment very similar; they were presents from a Baptist missionary friend stationed in Nigeria. The Kente cloth was colorful and cool and both old ladies wore the exotic gifts frequently, for light gardening and errands—quite oblivious to the Black Power symbolism which their “caftans” broadcast to curious onlookers. Young black men leaned out the windows of passing cars and saluted Edie and Tatty with raised fists. “Gray Panthers!” they shouted; and “Eldridge and Bobby, right on!”

Tattycorum did not enjoy working outdoors; Edie had bullied her into the Garden Club project and she wanted to get her khakis and “caftan” off and into the washing machine. She wanted a Benadryl; she wanted a bath; she wanted to finish her library book before it was due the next day. She was not pleased when she opened the door to see the children but she greeted them graciously and with only a touch of irony. “As you can see, Hely, I’m very informal here,” she said for the second time as she led them in a threading pathway through a dim hall narrowed with heavy old barrister’s bookcases, into a trim living-dining area overpowered with a massive mahogany sideboard and buffet from Tribulation and a spotty old gilt-edged mirror so tall it touched the ceiling. Audubon birds of prey glared down at them from on high. An enormous Malayer carpet—also from Tribulation, much too large for any room of the house—lay rolled up a foot thick across the doorway at the far end, like a velvety log rotting obstinately across the path. “Watch your step, now,” she said, extending a hand to help the children over it one at a time, like a scout leader guiding them over a fallen tree in the forest. “Harriet will tell you that her aunt Adelaide is the housekeeper in the family, Libby is good with the little ones, and Edith keeps the trains running on time, but I’m no good at any of that. No, my Daddy always called me the archivist. Do you know what that is?”

She glanced back, sharp and merry, with her red-rimmed eyes. There was a smudge of dirt under her cheekbone. Hely, unobtrusively, cut his own eyes away, for he was a little afraid of all Harriet’s old ladies, with their long noses and their shrewd, birdlike manners, like a pack of witches.

“No?” Tat turned her head and sneezed, violently. “An archivist,” she said, with a gasp, “is just a fancy word for pack rat.… Harriet, darling, please forgive your old auntie for rambling on to your poor company. She doesn’t mean to be tiresome, she only hopes that Hely won’t go home and tell that nice little mother of his what a mess I am over here. Next time,” and her voice dropped as she fell behind with Harriet, “next time, before you come all the way over here, darling, you should call Aunt Tatty on the telephone. What if I hadn’t been here to let you in?”

With a smack, she kissed impassive Harriet on her round cheek (the child was filthy, though the little boy was cleanly, if queerly, dressed in a long white T-shirt which came past his knees like Grandpa’s nightgown). She left them on the back porch and hurried to the kitchen where—teaspoon clattering—she mixed lemonade from tap water and a pouch of citrus-flavored powder from the grocery. Tattycorum had real lemons and sugar—but nowadays they all turned up their noses at the real thing, said Tatty’s friends in the Circle who had grandchildren.

She called to the children to fetch their drinks (“I’m afraid we’re very informal here, Hely, I hope you don’t mind serving yourself”) and hurried to the back of the house to freshen up.

————

On Tat’s clothes-line, which ran across the back porch, hung a checkered quilt with large tan and black squares. The card table where they sat was placed in front of it like a stage set, and the quilt’s squares mirrored the small squares of the game board between them.

“Hey, what does this quilt remind you of?” said Hely cheerfully, kicking the rungs of his chair. “The chess tournament in From Russia with Love? Remember? That first scene, with the giant chessboard?”

“If you touch that bishop,” said Harriet, “you’ll have to go on and move it.”

“I already moved. That pawn there.” He wasn’t interested in chess, or checkers, either; both games made his head hurt. He raised his lemonade glass, and pretended to discover a secret message from the Russians pasted on the bottom, but his arched eyebrow was lost on Harriet.

Harriet, without wasting any time, jumped the black knight out into the middle of the board.