Death In The Family, A - James Agee [109]
First thing after breakfast Aunt Hannah said, “Now come with me, children,” and they followed her into the bathroom. There she washed their faces and hands and arms, and behind the ears, and their necks, and up each nostril, carefully and gently with soap and warm water; she did not get soap in the eyes of either of them, or hurt their skins with the washcloth. Then she took them into the bedroom and opened the bureaus and took out everything bran clean, from the skin out, and told Rufus to get his clothes on and to ask for help if he wanted it, and started dressing Catherine. Rufus began to see the connection between all this and the bath, the night before. When he had on his underclothes she brought out new black stockings and his Sunday serge. While she was helping Catherine on with her stockings, which were also new but white, the phone rang and she said, “Now sit still and be good. I’ll be straight back,” and hustled from the room. They heard her say, rather loudly and distinctly, up the hall, “I’m getting it, Mary,” then her feet, fast on the stairs. They sat very still, looking at the open door, and tried to hear. They found they could hear quite distinctly, for Hannah spoke to the telephone as she did to her deaf brother and sister-in-law. They heard: “Hello ... Hello ... Yes ... Father?”, and when they heard the word “Father” they looked at each other with curiosity and with an uneasy premonition. They heard “Yes ... yes ... yes ... yes ... yes ... yes, Father ... yes ... yes, as well as could be expected ... yes ... yes ... Thank you. I’ll tell her ... yes ... yes ... very well ... yes ... The Highland Avenue ... yes ... yes ... any ... yes ... any car to the corner of Church and Gay, then transfer to the Highland—yes—very well ... yes ... Thank you ... we’ll be waiting ... yes ... no ... yes, Father ... yes F— ... good b ... yes, Father ... Thank you ... goo— ... yes ... Thank you ... good-bye ... good-bye.”
They heard her let out a long, tired, angry breath and they could hear her joints snapping as she sprinted up the stairs. They were sitting exactly where she had left them. Rufus thought, Maybe she will say we were good children, but without a word she finished with Catherine’s stockings. She gave Rufus a new white shirt from which he slowly and with fascination drew the pins, running them between his teeth as he watched Aunt Hannah help Catherine into her new dress, which was white, speckled with small dark blue flowers. Catherine stood holding the hem and looking at the skirt and at her white-stockinged feet, which she could see through the skirt. “And now your necktie,” Aunt Hannah said. She took his dark blue tie and made expert motions beneath his chin while alternately he tried to watch her hands and looked into her intent eyes behind their heavy lenses. Her eyes looked stern and sad and exhausted.
Then she cleaned their nails and combed and brushed their hair, and put a clean handkerchief in Rufus’ breast pocket and blacked their shoes. “Now wait a moment,” she said, leaving the room. They heard her rap softly on their mother’s door.
“Mary?” she said.
“Yes,” they heard dimly.
“The children are ready. Shall I bring them in?”
“Yes do, Hannah; thank you.”
“Come in now and see your mother,” she told them from the door.
They followed her in.
“Oh, they look very nice;” she exclaimed, in a voice so odd that it seemed to the children that she must be sorry that they did. Yet by her face they could see that she was not sorry. “Hannah, thank you so much, I don’t know what I’d have ...”
But Hannah had left the room and closed the door.
They stood and looked at her with curiosity. Her eyes seemed larger and brighter than usual; her hair was done up as carefully as if she were going to a party. She wore her wrapper and where it opened in front they could see that she had on something dull and black underneath. Her face was like folded gray cloths.
She watched them look