Death In The Family, A - James Agee [107]
He did not want to help her, be wanted to be my himself and see if he could find the paper with the names in it, but he felt that he ought to try to be good, for by now he felt a dark uneasiness about something, he was not quite sure what, that he had done. He walked over to her. “I’ll help you,” he said.
“No,” Catherine said, without even looking up. It was the Mother Goose book and with her orange crayon she was scrawling all over the cow which jumped over the moon, inside and outside the lines of the cow.
“Aunt Hannah says to,” he said, disgusted to see what she was doing to the cow.
“No,” Catherine said, and again she did not look up or stop scrawling for a second.
“That ain’t no color for a cow,” he said. “Whoever saw an orange cow?” She made no reply, but he could see that her face was getting red. “Besides, you’re not even coloring inside the cow,” he said. “Just look at that. You’re just running that crayon around all over the place and it isn’t even the right color.” She bore down even harder and harder with the crayon and pushed it in a wider and wider tangle of lines and all of a sudden it snapped and the long part rolled to the floor. “See now, you busted it,” Rufus said.
“Leave me alone!” She tried to draw with the stub of the crayon but it was too short, and the paper got in the way. She looked along the window sill and selected a brown crayon.
“What you goana do with that brown one?” Rufus said. “You already got all that orange all over everything, what you goana do with that brown one?” Catherine took the brown crayon and made a brutal tangle of dark lines all over the orange lines. “Now all you did is just spoil it,” Rufus said. “You don’t know how to draw!”
“Quit it!” Catherine yelled, and all of a sudden she was crying. He heard his Aunt Hannah’s sharp voice from the kitchen: “Rufus?”
He was furious with Catherine. “Crybaby,” he whispered with cold hatred: “Tattletale!”
And there was Aunt Hannah at the door, just as mad as a hornet. “Now, what’s the matter? What have you done to her!” She walked straight at him.
It wasn’t fair. How did she know he was doing anything? With a feeling of real righteousness he talked back: “I didn’t do one single thing to her. She was just messing everything up on her picture and I tried to help her like you told me to and all of a sudden she started to cry.”
“What did he do, Catherine?”
“He wouldn’t let me alone.”
“Why good night, I never even touched you and you’re a liar if you say I did!”
All of a sudden he felt himself gripped by the shoulders and shaken and he turned his rattling head from his sister to look into his Aunt Hannah’s freezing glare.
“Now you just listen to me,” she said. “Are you listening?” she sputtered. “Are you listening?” she said still more intensely.
“Yes,” he managed to get out, though the word was all shaken up.
“I don’t want to spank you on this day of all days, but if I hear you say one more rough thing like that to your sister I’ll give you a spanking you’ll remember to your dying day, do you hear me? Do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“And if you tease her or make her cry just one more time I’ll—I’ll turn the whole matter over to your Uncle Andrew and we’ll see what he’ll do about it. Do you want me to call him? He’s upstairs this minute! Shall I call him?” She stopped shaking him and looked at him. “Shall I?” He shook his head; he was terrified. “All right, but this is my last warning. Do you understand?”
“Yes’m.”
“Now if you can’t play with Catherine in peace like a decent boy just—stay by yourself. Look at some pictures. Read a book. But you be quiet. And good. Do you hear me?”
“Yes’m.”
“Very well.” She stood up and her joints snapped. “Come with me, Catherine,” she said. “Let’s bring your crayons.” And she helped Catherine gather up the crayons and the stubs from the window sill and from the carpet. Catherine’s face was still red but she was not crying any more. As she passed Rufus she gave him a glance filled with satisfaction, and he answered it with a glance of helpless malevolence.
He listened