A Death in the Family - James Agee [92]
“She can’t talk any more, ” Jay said, almost in a whisper.
“Oh no,” Mary said.
But Sadie turned to them and her hard eyes were bright. “She knows ye, ”she said quietly. “Come on over. ” And they climbed slowly and shyly out onto the swept ground. “I’ll tell her about the rest a yuns in a minute,” Sadie said.
“Don’t want to mix her up,” Ralph explained, and they all nodded.
It seemed to Rufus like a long walk over to the old woman because they were all moving so carefully and shyly; it was almost like church. “Don’t holler,” Aunt Sadie was advising his parents, “hit only skeers her. Just talk loud and plain right up next her ear.”
“I know, ” his mother said. “My mother is very deaf, too.”
“Yeah,” his father said. And he bent down close against her ear. “Granmaw?” he called, and he drew a little away, where she could see him, while his wife and his children looked on, each holding one of the mother’s hands. She looked straight into his eyes and her eyes and her face never changed, a look as if she were gazing at some small point at a great distance, with complete but idle intensity, as if what she was watching was no concern of hers. His father leaned forward again and gently kissed her on the mouth, and drew back again where she could see him well, and smiled a little, anxiously. Her face restored itself from his kiss like grass that has been lightly stepped on; her eyes did not alter. Her skin looked like brown-marbled stone over which water has worked for so long that it is as smooth and blind as soap. He leaned to her ear again. “I’m Jay,” he said. “John Henry’s boy.” Her hands crawled in her skirts: every white bone and black vein showed through the brown -splotched skin; the wrinkled knuckles were like pouches; she wore a red rubber guard ahead of her wedding ring. Her mouth opened and shut and they heard her low, dry croaking, but her eyes did not change. They were bright in their thin shadow, but they were as impersonally bright as two perfectly shaped eyes of glass.
“I figure she know you,” Sadie said quietly.
“She can’t talk, can she?” Jay said, and now that he was not looking at her, it was as if they were talking over a stump.
“Times she can,” Sadie said. “Times she can’t. Ain’t only so seldom call for talk, reckon she loses the hang of it. But I figger she knows ye and I am tickled she does.”
His father looked all around him in the shade and he looked sad, and unsure, and then he looked at him. “Come here, Rufus, ” he said.
“Go to him,” his mother whispered for some reason, and she pushed his hand gently as she let it go.
“Just call her Granmaw,” his father said quietly. “Get right up by her ear like you do to Granmaw Lynch and say, ‘Granmaw, I’m Rufus.’ ”
He walked over to her as quietly as if she were asleep, feeling strange to be by himself, and stood on tiptoe beside her and looked down into her sunbonnet towards her ear. Her temple was deeply sunken as if a hammer had struck it and frail as a fledgling’s belly. Her skin was crosshatched with the razor-fine slashes of innumerable square wrinkles and yet every slash was like smooth stone; her ear was just a fallen intricate flap with a small gold ring in it; her smell was faint yet very powerful, and she smelled like new mushrooms and old spices and sweat, like his fingernail when it was coming off. “Granmaw, I’m Rufus,” he said carefully, and yellow-white hair stirred beside her ear. He could feel coldness breathing from her cheek.
“Come out where she can see you,” his father said, and he drew back and stood still further on tiptoe