The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [20]
Mick leaned on the banisters of the stairs. The sudden crying had started her with the hiccups. It seemed to her as she thought back over the last month that she had never really believed in her mind that the violin would work. But in her heart she had kept making herself believe. And even now it was hard not to believe a little. She was tired out. Bill wasn’t ever a help with anything now. She used to think Bill was the grandest person in the world. She used to follow after him every place he went out--fishing in the woods, to the clubhouses he built with other boys, to the slot machine in the back of Mr. Brannon’s restaurant--everywhere. Maybe he hadn’t meant to let her down like this. But anyway they could never be good buddies again.
In the hall there was the smell of cigarettes and Sunday dinner. Mick took a deep breath and walked back toward the kitchen. The dinner began to smell good and she was hungry.
She could hear Portia’s voice as she talked to Bubber, and it was like she was half-singing something or telling him a story.
‘And that is the various reason why I’m a whole lot more fortunate than most colored girls,’ Portia said as she opened the door. ‘Why?’ asked Mick.
Portia and Bubber were sitting at the kitchen table eating their dinner. Portia’s green print dress was cool-looking against her dark brown skin. She had on green earrings and her hair was combed very tight and neat.
‘You all time pounce in on the very tail of what somebody say and then want to know all about it,’ Portia said. She got up and stood over the hot stove, putting dinner on Mick’s plate.
‘Bubber and me was just talking about my Grandpapa’s home out on the Old Sardis Road. I was telling Bubber how he and my uncles owns the whole place themself. Fifteen and a half acre. They always plants four of them in cotton, some years swapping back to peas to keep the dirt rich, and one acre on a hill is just for peaches. They haves a mule and a breed sow and all the time from twenty to twenty-five laying hens and fryers. They haves a vegetable patch and two pecan trees and plenty figs and plums and berries. This here is the truth. Not many white farms has done with their land good as my Grandpapa.’
Mick put her elbows on the table and leaned over her plate.
Portia had always rather talk about the farm than anything else, except about her husband and brother. To hear her tell it you would think that colored farm was the very White House itself.
‘The home started with just one little room. And through the years they done built on until there’s space for my Grandpapa, his four sons and their wives and childrens, and my brother Hamilton. In the parlor they haves a real organ and a gramophone. And on the wall they haves a large picture of my Grandpapa taken in his lodge uniform. They cans all the fruit and vegetables and no matter how cold and rainy the winter turns they pretty near always haves plenty to eat.’
‘How come you don’t go live with them, then?’ Mick asked.
Portia stopped peeling her potatoes and her long, brown fingers tapped on the table in time to her words. ‘This here the way it is. See--each person done built on his room for his family. They all done worked hard during all these years. And of course times is hard for everybody now. But see--I lived with my Grandpapa when I were a little girl. But I haven’t never done any work out there since. Any time, though, if me and Willie and Highboy gets in bad trouble us can always go back.’
‘Didn’t your Father build on a room? ’ Portia stopped chewing. ‘Whose Father? You mean my Father?’
‘Sure,’ said Mick. ‘You know good and well my Father is a colored doctor