The Little Friend

“I hope you told them that this is like to put you in the hospital again. Dragging a poor old crippled lady out of her house—”

Diplomatically, Loyal interrupted: “What kindly trial are you on, maam?”

Gum sopped her bread in the syrup. “Nigger stoled a tractor.”

Farish said: “They’re going to make you go all the way down there? Just for that?”

“Well, in my time,” Gum said peacefully, “we didn’t have all this nonsense about a big trial.”

————

When there was no answer to her knock, Harriet nudged Tat’s bedroom door open. In the dimness, she saw her old aunt dozing on the white summer bedspread with her glasses off and her mouth open.

“Tat?” she said, uncertainly. The room smelled of medicine, Grandee water, vetivert and Mentholatum and dust. A fan purred in sleepy half-circles, stirring the filmy curtains to the left and then the right.

Tat slept on. The room was cool and still. Silver-framed photographs on the bureau: Judge Cleve and Harriet’s great-grandmother—cameo at her throat—before the turn of the century; Harriet’s mother as a 1950s debutante, with elbow gloves and a fussy hairdo; a hand-tinted eight-by-ten of Tat’s husband, Mr. Pink, as a young man and a glossy newspaper shot—much later—of Mr. Pink accepting an award from the Chamber of Commerce. On the heavy dressing table stood Tat’s things: Pond’s cold cream, a jelly jar of hairpins, pincushion and Bakelite comb and brush set and a single lipstick—a plain, modest little family, neatly arranged as if for a group picture.

Harriet felt as if she might cry. She flung herself on the bed.

Tat woke with a jolt. “Gracious. Harriet?” Blindly, she struggled up and fumbled for her glasses. “What’s wrong? Where’s your little company?”

“He went home. Tatty, do you love me?”

“What’s the matter? What time is it, honey?” she said, squinting uselessly at the bedside clock. “You’re not crying, are you?” She leaned over to feel Harriet’s forehead with her palm, but it was damp and cool. “What on earth’s the matter?”

“Can I spend the night?”

Tat’s heart sank. “Oh, darling. Poor Tatty’s half dead with allergies.… Please tell me what’s wrong, honey? Are you feeling bad?”

“I won’t be any trouble.”

“Darling. Oh, darling. You are never any trouble for me and Allison isn’t either, but—”

“Why don’t you or Libby or Adelaide ever want me to stay over?”

Tat was flummoxed. “Now Harriet,” she said. She reached over and switched on her reading lamp. “You know that’s not true.”

“You never ask me!”

“Well, look, Harriet. I’ll get the calendar. Let’s pick a date next week, and by then I’ll be feeling better and …”

She trailed away. The child was crying.

“Look here,” she said, in a sprightly voice. Though Tat tried to act interested when her friends rhapsodized about their grandchildren, she wasn’t sorry that she didn’t have any of her own. Children bored and irritated her—a fact she struggled valiantly to conceal from her little nieces. “Let me run get a washcloth. You’ll feel better if.… No, you come with me. Harriet, stand up.”

She took Harriet’s grubby hand and led her down the dark hall to the bathroom. She turned on both faucets in the sink and handed her a bar of pink toilet soap. “Here, sweetheart. Wash your face and hands … hands first. Now then, splash a little of that cool water on your face, that’ll make you feel better.…”

She moistened a washcloth and, busily, dabbed Harriet’s cheeks with it, then handed it to her. “There, darling. Now, will you take this nice cool rag and wash around your neck and under your arms for me?”

Harriet did—mechanically, a single pass over her throat and then reaching the cloth up under her shirt for a couple of feeble swipes.

“Now. I know you can do better than that. Doesn’t Ida make you wash?”

“Yes, maam,” said Harriet, rather hopelessly.

“How come you’re so dirty, then? Does she make you get in the bathtub every day?”

“Yes, maam.”

“Does she make you stick your head under the faucet and check to see if the soap is wet after you get out? It doesn’t do a bit of good, Harriet, if you climb into a tub of hot water and just sit there. Ida Rhew knows good and well that she needs to—”

“It’s not Ida’s fault! Why does everybody blame everything on Ida?”

“Nobody’s blaming her. I know you love Ida, sweetheart, but I think your grandmother may need to have a little talk with her. Ida hasn’t done anything wrong, it’s just that colored people have different ideas—oh, Harriet. Please,” said Tatty, wringing her hands. “No. Please don’t start with that again.”

————