The Little Friend полностью

On the shelves she found badminton rackets, pruning shears and handsaw, numberless extension cords, a yellow plastic hard hat like construction workers wore; more garden tools, of every description: loppers, rose-snips, weed-fork and shrub rake and three different sizes of trowel; Chester’s own gloves. But not the gloves that Ida had given her. She could feel herself getting hysterical. Chester knows where they are, she told herself. I’ll ask him. Chester only worked on Mondays; on other days, he worked either for the county—pulling weeds and cutting grass, in the cemetery—or at odd jobs around town.

She was breathing hard, in the dusty, gasoline-smelling dimness, staring at the litter of tools on the oily floor and wondering where to look next—for she had to find the red gloves; I have to, she thought, her eyes darting over the mess, I’ll die if I’ve lost them—when Hely ran up and poked his head in the door. “Harriet!” he gasped, clinging to the door frame. “We’ve got to go get the bikes!”

“Bikes?” said Harriet, after a confused silence.

“They’re still there! My dad noticed my bike was gone and he’s going to whip me if I’ve lost it! Come on!”

Harriet tried to focus her attention on the bicycles, but all she could think of were the gloves. “I’ll go later,” she said at last.

“No! Now! I’m not going by myself!”

“Well, wait a little while, and I’ll—”

“No!” Hely wailed. “We have to go now!”

“Look, I’ve got to go in and wash my hands. Put all this junk back on the shelf for me, okay?”

Hely stared at the jumble on the floor. “All of it?”

“Do you remember some red gloves I used to have? They used to be in that bucket there.”

Hely looked at her with apprehension, like she was crazy.

“Garden gloves. Red cloth with elastic at the wrist.”

“Harriet, I’m serious. The bikes have been outside all night. They might not even be there any more.”

“If you find them, just tell me, all right?”

She ran back to the vegetable bed and tossed the weeds she’d pulled into a big, careless pile. Never mind, she told herself, I’ll clean it up later.… Then she snatched up the box of vegetables and ran back into the house.

Ida wasn’t in the kitchen. Quickly, without soap, Harriet rinsed the dirt off her hands at the sink. Then she carried the box into the living room, where she found Ida sitting in her tweed chair with her knees apart and her head in her hands.

“Ida?” Harriet said timidly.

Stiffly, Ida Rhew swung her head around. Her eyes were still red.

“I—I brought you something,” Harriet stammered. She set the cardboard box down on the floor by Ida’s feet.

Dully, Ida stared down at the vegetables. “What am I going to do?” she said, and shook her head. “Where will I go?”

“You can take them home if you want to,” said Harriet helpfully. She picked up the eggplant to show it to Ida.

“Your mama say I don’t do a good job. How I’m supposed to do a good job when she got newspapers and trash stacked clear up the walls?” Ida picked up the corner of her apron and wiped her eyes on it. “Alls she pays me is twenty dollars a week. And that aint right. Odean over at Miss Libby’s gets thirty-five and she aint got a mess like this nor two children to fool with, either.”

Harriet’s hands felt useless, dangling at her sides. She longed to hug Ida, to kiss her cheek, to fall in her lap and burst into tears—yet something in Ida’s voice and in the tense, unnatural way that Ida sat made her afraid to come any closer.

“Your mama say—she say yall are big now and don’t need looking after any more. You’s both in school. And after school, yall can take of yourselves.”

Their eyes met—Ida’s, red and teary; Harriet’s round and ringing with horror—and stayed together for a moment that Harriet would remember until she died. Ida looked away first.

“And she’s right,” she said, in a more resigned voice. “Allison’s in high school and you—you don’t need anybody to stay at home all day and watch out for you any more. You’s in school most of the year anyway.”

“I’ve been in school for seven years!”

“Well, that’s what she tell me.”

Harriet dashed upstairs to her mother’s room and ran in without knocking. She found her mother sitting on the side of the bed and Allison on her knees, crying with her face pressed into the bedspread. When Harriet came in, she raised her head and, with swollen eyes, gave Harriet a look so anguished that it took her aback.

“Not you, too,” said her mother. Her voice was blurred and her eyes drowsy. “Leave me alone, girls. I want to lie down for a minute.…”

“You can’t fire Ida.”

“Well, I like Ida too, girls, but she doesn’t work for free and lately it seems as if she’s dissatisfied.”

These were all things that Harriet’s father said; her voice was slow and mechanical, as if she were reciting a memorized speech.

“You can’t fire her,” repeated Harriet shrilly.

“Your father says—”

“So what? He doesn’t live here.”