The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Kate Chopin [138]
“Joe say he seed ‘em pass yonder back Mr. Ben’s lane. Dey a elephant mos’ as big as dat corn-crib,223 walkin’ long des like he somebody. An’ a whole pa’cel wild critters shet up in a cage. An’ all kind o’ dogs an’ hosses; an’ de ladies rarin’ an’ pitchin’ in red skirts all fill’ up wid gole an’ diamonds.
“We all’s goin’. Did you ax yo’ gran’ma? How come you don’t ax yo’ gran’pap?”
“That’s my business; ‘tain’t none o’ yo’s, Black-Gal. You better be get-tin’ yonder home, tendin’ to yo’ work, I think.”
“I ain’t got no work, ’cep’ iron out my pink flounce’ dress fo’ de suckus.” But she took herself off with an air of lofty contempt, swinging her tattered skirts. It was after that that Ninette’s tears began to drop and spatter.
Resentment rose and rose within her like a leaven,224 causing her to ferment with wickedness and to make all manner of diabolical wishes in regard to the circus. The worst of these was that she wished it would rain.
“I hope to goodness it’ll po’ down rain; po’ down rain; po’ down rain!” She uttered the wish with the air of a young Medusa pronouncing a blighting curse.
“I like to see ’em all drippin’ wet. Black-Gal with her pink flounces, all drippin’ wet.” She spoke these wishes in the very presence of her grandfather and grandmother, for they understood not a word of English; and she used that language to express her individual opinion on many occasions.
“What do you say, Ninette?” asked her grandmother. Ninette had brought in the last of the tin pails and was ranging them on a shelf in the kitchen.
“I said I hoped it would rain,” she answered, wiping her face and fanning herself with a pie pan as though the oppressive heat had suggested the desire for a change of weather.
“You are a wicked girl,” said her grandmother, turning on her, “when you know your grandfather has acres and acres of cotton ready to fall, that the rain would ruin. He’s angry enough, too, with every man, woman and child leaving the fields to-day to take themselves off to the village. There ought to be a law to compel them to pick their cotton; those trifling creatures! Ah! it was different in the good old days.”
Ninette possessed a sensitive soul, and she believed in miracles. For instance, if she were to go to the circus that afternoon she would consider it a miracle. Hope follows on the heels of Faith. And the white-winged goddess—which is Hope—did not leave her, but prompted her to many little surreptitious acts of preparation in the event of the miracle coming to pass.
She peeped into the clothes-press to see that her gingham dress was where she had folded and left it the Sunday before, after mass. She inspected her shoes and got out a clean pair of stockings which she hid beneath the pillow. In the tin basin behind the house, she scrubbed her face and neck till they were red as a boiled crawfish. And her hair, which was too short to plait, she plastered and tied back with a green ribbon; it stood out in a little bristling, stiff tail.
The noon hour had hardly passed, than an unusual agitation began to be visible throughout the surrounding country. The fields were deserted. People, black and white, began passing along the road in squads and detachments. Ponies were galloping on both sides of the river, carrying two and as many as three, on their backs. Blue and green carts with rampant mules; top-buggies and no-top buggies; family carriages that groaned with age and decrepitude; heavy wagons filled with piccaninnies225 made a passing procession that nothing short of a circus in town could have accounted for.
Grandfather Bézeau was too angry to look at it. He retired to the hall, where he sat gloomily reading a two-weeks-old paper. He looked about ninety years old; he was in reality, not more than seventy.
Grandmother Bézeau stayed out on the gallery, apparently to cast ridicule and contempt upon the heedless and extravagant multitude; in reality, to satisfy a womanly