at us soberly, then he grinned.
"Er- h'rm," he said. He was beginning to preface some things he said
with a throaty noise, and I thought he must at last be getting old,
but he looked the same. "I don't exactly know how to say this," he
began.
"Well, just say it," said Jem. "Have we done something?"
Our father was actually fidgeting. "No, I just want to explain to
you that- your Aunt Alexandra asked me... son, you know you're a
Finch, don't you?"
"That's what I've been told." Jem looked out of the corners of his
eyes. His voice rose uncontrollably, "Atticus, what's the matter?"
Atticus crossed his knees and folded his arms. "I'm trying to tell
you the facts of life."
Jem's disgust deepened. "I know all that stuff," he said.
Atticus suddenly grew serious. In his lawyer's voice, without a
shade of inflection, he said: "Your aunt has asked me to try and
impress upon you and Jean Louise that you are not from run-of-the-mill
people, that you are the product of several generations' gentle
breeding-" Atticus paused, watching me locate an elusive redbug on
my leg.
"Gentle breeding," he continued, when I had found and scratched
it, "and that you should try to live up to your name-" Atticus
persevered in spite of us: "She asked me to tell you you must try to
behave like the little lady and gentleman that you are. She wants to
talk to you about the family and what it's meant to Maycomb County
through the years, so you'll have some idea of who you are, so you
might be moved to behave accordingly," he concluded at a gallop.
Stunned, Jem and I looked at each other, then at Atticus, whose
collar seemed to worry him. We did not speak to him.
Presently I picked up a comb from Jem's dresser and ran its teeth
along the edge.
"Stop that noise," Atticus said.
His curtness stung me. The comb was midway in its journey, and I
banged it down. For no reason I felt myself beginning to cry, but I
could not stop. This was not my father. My father never thought
these thoughts. My father never spoke so. Aunt Alexandra had put him
up to this, somehow. Through my tears I saw Jem standing in a
similar pool of isolation, his head cocked to one side.
There was nowhere to go, but I turned to go and met Atticus's vest
front. I buried my head in it and listened to the small internal
noises that went on behind the light blue cloth: his watch ticking,
the faint crackle of his starched shirt, the soft sound of his
breathing.
"Your stomach's growling," I said.
"I know it," he said.
"You better take some soda."
"I will," he said.
"Atticus, is all this behavin' an' stuff gonna make things
different? I mean are you-?"
I felt his hand on the back of my head. "Don't you worry about
anything," he said. "It's not time to worry."
When I heard that, I knew he had come back to us. The blood in my
legs began to flow again, and I raised my head. "You really want us to
do all that? I can't remember everything Finches are supposed to
do...."
"I don't want you to remember it. Forget it."
He went to the door and out of the room, shutting the door behind
him. He nearly slammed it, but caught himself at the last minute and
closed it softly. As Jem and I stared, the door opened again and
Atticus peered around. His eyebrows were raised, his glasses had
slipped. "Get more like Cousin Joshua every day, don't I? Do you think
I'll end up costing the family five hundred dollars?"
I know now what he was trying to do, but Atticus was only a man.
It takes a woman to do that kind of work.
14
Although we heard no more about the Finch family from Aunt
Alexandra, we heard plenty from the town. On Saturdays, armed with our
nickels, when Jem permitted me to accompany him (he was now positively
allergic to my presence when in public), we would squirm our way
through sweating sidewalk crowds and sometimes hear, "There's his
chillun," or, "Yonder's some Finches." Turning to face our accusers,
we would see only a couple of farmers studying the enema bags in the
Mayco Drugstore window. Or two dumpy countrywomen in straw hats
sitting in a Hoover cart.
"They c'n go loose and rape up the countryside for all of 'em who
run this county care," was one obscure observation we met head on from
a skinny gentleman when he passed us. Which reminded me that I had a
question to ask Atticus.
"What's rape?" I asked him that night.
Atticus looked around from behind his paper. He was in his chair
by the window. As we grew older, Jem and I thought it generous to
allow Atticus thirty minutes to himself after supper.
He sighed, and said rape was carnal knowledge of a female by force
and without consent.
"Well if that's all it is why did Calpurnia dry me up when I asked
her what it was?"
Atticus looked pensive. "What's that again?"
"Well, I asked Calpurnia comin' from church that day what it was and
she said ask you but I forgot to and now I'm askin' you."
His paper was now in his lap. "Again, please," he said.
I told him in detail about our trip to church with Calpurnia.
Atticus seemed to enjoy it, but Aunt Alexandra, who was sitting in a
corner quietly sewing, put down her embroidery and stared at us.
"You all were coming back from Calpurnia's church that Sunday?"
Jem said, "Yessum, she took us."
I remembered something. "Yessum, and she promised me I could come
out to her house some afternoon. Atticus. I'll go next Sunday if
it's all right, can I? Cal said she'd come get me if you were off in
the car."
"You may not."
Aunt Alexandra said it. I wheeled around, startled, then turned back
to Atticus in time to catch his swift glance at her, but it was too
late. I said, "I didn't ask you!"
For a big man, Atticus could get up and down from a chair faster
than anyone I ever knew. He was on his feet. "Apologize to your aunt,"
he said.
"I didn't ask her, I asked you-"
Atticus turned his head and pinned me to the wall with his good eye.
His voice was deadly: "First, apologize to your aunt."
"I'm sorry, Aunty," I muttered.
"Now then," he said. "Let's get this clear: you do as Calpurnia
tells you, you do as I tell you, and as long as your aunt's in this
house, you will do as she tells you. Understand?"
I understood, pondered a while, and concluded that the only way I
could retire with a shred of dignity was to go to the bathroom,
where I stayed long enough to make them think I had to go.
Returning, I lingered in the hall to hear a fierce discussion going on
in the livingroom. Through the door I could see Jem on the sofa with a
football magazine in front of his face, his head turning as if its
pages contained a live tennis match.
"...you've got to do something about her," Aunty was saying. "You've
let things go on too long, Atticus, too long."
"I don't see any harm in letting her go out there. Cal'd look
after her there as well as she does here."
Who was the "her" they were talking about? My heart sank: me. I felt
the starched walls of a pink cotton penitentiary closing in on me, and
for the second time in my life I thought of running away. Immediately.
"Atticus, it's all right to be soft-hearted, you're an easy man, but
you have a daughter to think of. A daughter who's growing up."
"That's what I am thinking of."
"And don't try to get around it. You've got to face it sooner or
later and it might as well be tonight. We don't need her now."
Atticus's voice was even: "Alexandra, Calpurnia's not leaving this
house until she wants to. You may think otherwise, but I couldn't have
got along without her all these years. She's a faithful member of this
family and you'll simply have to accept things the way they are.
Besides, sister, I don't want you working your head off for us- you've
no reason to do that. We still need Cal as much as we ever did."
"But Atticus-"
"Besides, I don't think the children've suffered one bit from her
having brought them up. If anything, she's been harder on them in some
ways than a mother would have been... she's never let them get away
with anything, she's never indulged them the way most colored nurses
do. She tried to bring them up according to her lights, and Cal's
lights are pretty good- and another thing, the children love her."
I breathed again. It wasn't me, it was only Calpurnia they were
talking about. Revived, I entered the livingroom. Atticus had
retreated behind his newspaper and Aunt Alexandra was worrying her
embroidery. Punk, punk, punk, her needle broke the taut circle. She
stopped, and pulled the cloth tighter: punk-punk-punk. She was
furious.
Jem got up and padded across the rug. He motioned me to follow. He
led me to his room and closed the door. His face was grave.
"They've been fussing, Scout."
Jem and I fussed a great deal these days, but I had never heard of
or seen anyone quarrel with Atticus. It was not a comfortable sight.
"Scout, try not to antagonize Aunty, hear?"
Atticus's remarks were still rankling, which made me miss the
request in Jem's question. My feathers rose again. "You tryin' to tell
me what to do?"
"Naw, it's- he's got a lot on his mind now, without us worrying
him."
"Like what?" Atticus didn't appear to have anything especially on
his mind.
"It's this Tom Robinson case that's worryin' him to death-"
I said Atticus didn't worry about anything. Besides, the case
never bothered us except about once a week and then it didn't last.
"That's because you can't hold something in your mind but a little
while," said Jem. "It's different with grown folks, we-"
His maddening superiority was unbearable these days. He didn't
want to do anything but read and go off by himself. Still,
everything he read he passed along to me, but with this difference:
formerly, because he thought I'd like it; now, for my edification
