The Little Friend

Better than getting stuck here at home, thought Danny. His grandmother had always made him feel stupid for liking that job. “Danny don’t expect much from life.” That’s what she’d gone around saying after the truck outfit had hired him. “It’s good you don’t expect much, Danny, because you won’t be disappointed.” It was the main lesson in life she had drilled into her grandsons: not to expect much from the world. The world was a mean place, dog eat dog (to quote another of her favorite sayings). If any of her boys expected too much, or rose above themselves, they would get their hopes knocked down and broken. But in Danny’s view, this wasn’t much of a lesson.

“It’s like I told Ricky Lee.” Scabs and sores and atrophied black veins on the backs of her hands, folded complacently in her lap. “When he got that basketball scholarship to Delta State, he was going to have to work nights on top of his school and his ball practice just to pay for his books. I said ‘I just hate to think about you having to work so much harder than everybody else, Ricky. Just so’s a lot of rich kids who got more than you do can stand around and make fun of you.’ ”

“Right,” said Danny, when he realized his grandmother expected him to say something. Ricky Lee hadn’t taken the scholarship; Gum and Farish, between them, had managed to make enough fun of him so he turned it down. And where was Ricky now? In jail.

“All that. Going to school and working the night shift. Just to play ball.”

Danny vowed that Gum would be driving herself to the courthouse tomorrow.

————

Harriet woke that morning and looked at the ceiling for a little while before she remembered where she was. She sat up—she had slept in her clothes again, with dirty feet—and went downstairs.

Ida Rhew was hanging laundry out in the yard. Harriet stood watching her. She thought of going up for a bath—unasked—to please Ida, and decided not to: appearing unwashed, in yesterday’s grimy clothes, would certainly make it clear to Ida how vital it was that she stay. Humming, her mouth full of clothespins, Ida reached down into her basket. She did not seem troubled or sad, only preoccupied.

“Are you fired?” said Harriet, watching her closely.

Ida started; then took the clothespins out of her mouth. “Well, good morning, Harriet!” she said, with a hearty, impersonal cheer that made Harriet’s heart sink. “Aint you filthy? Get in there and wash up.”

“Are you fired?”

“No, I aint fired. I’ve decided,” said Ida, returning to her work, “I’ve decided to go on down to Hattiesburg and live with my daughter.”

Sparrows twittered overhead. Ida shook out a wet pillowcase, with a loud flap, and pinned it on the line. “That’s what I decided,” she said. “It’s time.”

Harriet’s mouth was dry. “How far is Hattiesburg,” she said, although she knew, without being told, that it was near the Gulf Coast—hundreds of miles away.

“All the way down there. Down where they have all those old long-needled pine! You don’t need me any more,” said Ida—casually, as if she were telling Harriet that she didn’t need any more dessert or Coca-Cola. “I’s married when I’s only a few years older than you. With a baby.”

Harriet was shocked and insulted. She hated babies—Ida knew very well how much.

“Yes maam.” Absent-mindedly, Ida pinned another shirt on the line. “Everything changes. I’s only fifteen years old when I married Charley T. Soon you’ll be married, too.”

There was no point in arguing with her. “Is Charley T. going with you?”

“ ’Cose he is.”

“Does he want to go?”

“I reckon.”

“What will you do down there?”

“What, me or Charley?”

“You.”

“I don’t know. Work for somebody else, I guess. Sit some other kids, or babies.”

To think of Ida—Ida!—abandoning her for some slobbery baby!

“When are you leaving?” she asked Ida, coldly.

“Next week.”

There was nothing else to say. Ida’s demeanor made it plain that she wasn’t interested in further conversation. Harriet stood and watched her for a moment—bending to the basket, hanging up the clothes, bending to the basket again—and then walked away, across the yard, in the empty, unreal sunshine. When she went in the house, her mother—hovering anxiously, in the Blue Fairy nightgown—pittered into the kitchen and tried to kiss her, but Harriet wrenched away and stamped out the back door.

“Harriet? What’s the matter, sweetheart?” her mother called after her piteously, out the back door. “You seem like you’re mad at me … ? Harriet?”

Ida looked at Harriet incredulously as she stormed past; she took the clothespins out of her mouth. “Answer yo mama,” she said, in the voice that usually stopped Harriet cold.

“I don’t have to mind you any more,” Harriet said, and kept walking.

————

“If your mother wants to let Ida go,” said Edie, “I can’t interfere.”

Harriet attempted, unsuccessfully, to catch Edie’s eye. “Why not?” she said at last, and—when Edie went back to her pad and pencil—“Edie, why not?”