Death In The Family, A - James Agee [98]
Before he did anything about Catherine he put his cap back in the tissue paper. Then he got her clothes. “Take off your nightie,” he said. “Sopping wet,” he added, as nearly like his mother as possible.
“You’re sopping wet too,” she retorted.
“No, I didn’t either,” he said, “not last night.”
He found that she could do a certain amount of dressing herself; she got on the panties and she nearly got her underwaist on right too, except that it was backwards. “That’s all right,” he told her, as much like his mother as he was able, you do it fine. Just a little bit crooked”; and he fixed it right.
He buttoned her panties to her underwaist. It was much less easy, he found, than buttoning his own clothes. “Stand still,” he said, because to tell her so seemed only a proper part of carrying out his duty.
“I am,” Catherine replied, with such firmness that he said no more.
That was all that either of them said before they went down to breakfast.
Chapter 15
Catherine did not like being buttoned up by Rufus or bossed around by him, and breakfast wasn’t like breakfast either. Aunt Hannah didn’t say anything and neither did Rufus and neither did she, and she felt that even if she wanted to say anything she oughtn’t. Everything was queer, it was so still and it seemed dark. Aunt Hannah sliced the banana so thin on the Post Toasties it looked cold and wet and slimy. She gave each of them a little bit of coffee in their milk and she made Rufus’ a little bit darker than hers. She didn’t say, “Eat”; “Eat you breakfast, Catherine”; “Don’t dawdle,” like Catherine’s mother; she didn’t say anything. Catherine did not feel hungry, but she felt mildly curious because things tasted so different, and she ate slowly ahead, tasting each mouthful. Everything was so still that it made Catherine feel uneasy and sad. There were little noises when a fork or spoon touched a dish; the only other noise was the very thin dry toast Aunt Hannah kept slowly crunching and the fluttering sipping of the steamy coffee with which she wet each mouthful of dry crumbs enough to swallow it. When Catherine tried to make a similar noise sipping her milk, her Aunt Hannah glanced at her sharply as if she wondered if Catherine was trying to be a smart aleck but she did not say anything. Catherine was not trying to be a smart aleck but she felt she had better not make that noise again. The fried eggs had hardly any pepper and they were so soft the yellow ran out over the white and the white plate and looked so nasty she didn’t want to eat it but she ate it because she didn’t want to be told to and because she felt there was some special reason, still, why she ought to be a good girl. She felt very uneasy, but there was nothing to do but eat, so she always took care to get a good hold on her tumbler and did not take too much on her spoon, and hardly spilled at all, and when she became aware of how little she was spilling it made her feel like a big girl and yet she did not feel any less uneasy, because she knew there was something wrong. She was not as much interested in eating as she was in the way things were, and listening carefully, looking mostly at her plate, every sound she heard and the whole quietness which was so much stronger than the sounds, meant that things were not good. What it was was that he wasn’t here. Her mother wasn’t either, but she was upstairs. He wasn’t even upstairs. He was coming home last night but he didn’t come home and he wasn’t coming home now either, and her mother felt so awful she cried, and Aunt Hannah wasn’t saying anything, just making all that noise with the toast and big loud sips with the coffee and swallowing, grrmmp, and then the same thing over again and over again, and every time she made the noise with the toast it was almost scary, as if she was talking about some awful thing, and every time she sipped it was like crying or like when Granma sucked in air between her teeth when she hurt herself, and