Death In The Family, A - James Agee [41]
“Yes.”
“Now you be very careful that you never say anything about how she smells where Victoria can hear you. Will you? Say yes if you will.”
“Yes.”
“Because even though you like the way she smells, you might hurt her feelings terribly if you said any such thing, and you wouldn’t want to hurt dear old Victoria’s feelings, I know. Would you, would you, Rufus?”
“No.”
“Because Victoria is—is colored, Rufus. That’s why her skin is so dark, and colored people are very sensitive about the way they smell. Do you know what sensitive means?”
He nodded cautiously.
“It means there are things that hurt your feelings so badly, things you can’t help, that you feel like crying, and nice colored people feel that way about the way they smell. So you be very careful. Will you? Say yes if you will?”
“Yes.”
“Now tell me what I’ve asked you to be careful about, Rufus.”
“Don’t tell Victoria she smells.”
“Or say anything about it where she can hear.”
“Or say anything about it where she can hear.”
“Why not?”
“Because she might cry.”
“That’s right. And, Rufus, Victoria is very very clean. Absolutely spic and span.”
Spic an span.
Victoria would not allow his mother to get dinner and after they had eaten she also took entire charge of packing some of his clothes into a box, asking advice, however, on each thing that she took out of the drawer. Then Victoria bathed him and dressed him in clean clothes from the skin out, much to his mystification, and once he was ready, his mother called him to her and told him that Victoria was going to take him on a little visit to stay a few days with Granpa and Granma and Uncle Andrew and Aunt Amelia, and he must be a very good boy and do his very best not to wet the bed because when he came back, very soon now, in only a few more days, the surprise would be there and he would know what it was. He said that if the surprise was coming so soon he wanted to stay and see it, and she replied that that was just why he was going away to Granma’s, so the surprise could come all by itself. He asked why it couldn’t come if he was there and she said because he might frighten it away because it would still be very tiny and very much afraid, so if he really wanted the surprise to come, he could help more than anything else by being a good boy and going right along to Granma’s. Victoria would come and bring him home again just as soon as the surprise was ready for him; “Won’t you, Victoria?” And Victoria, who throughout this conversation had appeared to be tremendously amused about something, giving tight little cackles of swallowed laughter and murmuring, “Bless his heart,” whenever he spoke, said that indeed she most certainly would.
“And say your prayers,” his mother said, looking at him suddenly with so much love that he was bewildered. “You’re a big boy now, and you can say them by yourself; can’t you?” He nodded. She took him by the shoulders and looked at him almost as if she were threading a needle. As she looked at him, some kind of astonishment and some kind of fear grew in her face. Her face began to shine; she smiled; her mouth twitched and trembled. She took him close to her and her cheek was wet. “God bless my dear little boy,” she whispered, “for ever and ever! Amen,” and again she held him away; her face looked as if she were moving through space at extraordinary speed. “Good-bye, my darling; oh, good-bye!”
“Now you keep aholt a my hand,” Victoria told him, the sun flashing her lenses as she looked both ways from the curb. Arching his neck and his forelegs, a bright brown horse drew a buggy crisply but sedately past; in the washed black spokes, sunlight twittered. Far down the sunlight, like a bumblebee, a yellow streetcar buzzed. The trees moved. They did not wait.
“Victoria,” he said.
“Wait, chile,” said Victoria, breathing hard. “You wait till we’re safe across.”
“Now what is it, honey?” she asked, once they had attained the other curb.
“Why is your skin so dark?”
He saw her bright little eyes thrust into him through the little lenses and he felt