A Daughter of the Morning. Gale Zona
stairs—they had a blotched carpet that I hated because it looked like raw meat and gristle.
"Why don't you go yourself?" I says.
"Because Mis' Bingy'll be ashamed before me," she says; "but she won't think you know about it. Take her this."
I took the loaf of steam brown bread.
"If Luke comes," I says, "have him walk along after me."
The way to Mis' Bingy's was longer to go by the road, or short through the wood-lot. I went by the road, because I thought maybe I might meet somebody. The worst of the farm wasn't only the work. It was never seein' anybody. I only met a few wagons, and none of 'em stopped to say anything. Lena Curtsy went by, dressed up in black-and-white, with a long veil. She looks like a circus rider, not only Sundays but every day. But Luke likes the look of her, he said so.
"You're goin' the wrong way, Cossy!" she calls out.
"No, I ain't, either," I says, short enough. I can't bear the sight of her. And yet, if I have anything to brag about, it's always her I want to brag it to.
Just when I turned off to Bingy's, I met the boys. We never waited supper for 'em, because sometimes they get home and sometimes they don't. They were coming from the end of the street-car line, black from the blast furnace.
"Where you goin', kid?" says Bert.
I nodded to the house.
"Well, then, tell her she'd better watch out for Bingy," says Henny. "He's crazy drunk down to the Dew Drop. I wouldn't stay there if I was her."
I ran the rest of the way to the Bingy house. I went round to the back door. Mis' Bingy was in the kitchen, sitting on the edge of the bed. She had the bed put up in the kitchen when the baby was born, and she'd kept it there all the year. When I stepped on to the boards, she jumped and screamed.
"Here's some steam brown bread," I says.
She set down again, trembling all over. The baby was laying over back in the bed, and it woke up and whimpered. Mis' Bingy kind of poored it with one hand, and with the other she pushed up the bandage around her head. She was big and wild-looking, and her hair was always coming down in a long, coiled-up mess on her shoulders. Her hands looked worse than Ma's.
"I guess I look funny, don't I?" she says, trying to smile. "I cut my head open some—by accident."
I hate a lie. Not because it's wicked so much as because it never fools anybody.
"Mis' Bingy," I says, "I know that Mr. Bingy threw a dish at you last night and cut your head open, because he was drunk. Well, I just met Henny, and he says he's down to the Inn, crazy drunk. Henny don't want you should stay here."
She kind of give out, as though her spine wouldn't hold up. I guess she had the idea none of the neighbors knew.
"Where can I go?" she says.
There was only one place that I could think of. "Come on over with me," I says. "Pa and the boys are there. They won't let him hurt you."
She shook her head. "I'd have to come back some time," she says.
"Why would you?" I asked her.
She looked at me kind of funny.
"He's my husband," she says—and she kind of straightened up and looked dignified, without meaning to. I just stood and looked at her. Think of it making her look like that to own that drunken coward for a husband!
"What if he is?" I says. "He's a brute, and we all know it."
She cried a little. "You hadn't ought to speak to me so," she says. "If I go, how'll I earn my living, and the baby's?" she says.
I hadn't thought of that. "That's so," I says. "You are tied, ain't you?"
I couldn't get her to come with me. She's got the bed made up in the front room up-stairs, and she was going up there that night and lock her door, and leave the kitchen open.
"He may not be so bad," she says. "Maybe he'll be so drunk he'll tumble on the bed asleep, or maybe he'll be sick. I always hope for one of them."
I went back through the wood-lot. It was so different out there from home and Mis' Bingy's that it felt good. I found a place in a book once that told about the woods. It gave me a nice feeling. I used to get it out of the school library whenever it was in and read the place over, to get the feeling again. Almost always it gave it to me. In the real woods I didn't always get it. They come so close up to me that they bothered me. I always thought I was going to get to something, and I never did. And yet I always liked it in the wood-lot. And it was nice to be away from home and from Mis' Bingy's.
I forgot the whole bunch of 'em for a while. It was the night of a moon, and you could see it in the trees, like a big fat face that was friends with you. When a bird did just one note, it felt pleasant. After a while I stopped still, because it seemed as if something was near to me; but I wasn't scared, even if it was quite dark. I thought to myself that I wisht my family and all the folks I knew was still and kept to themselves same as the trees does, instead of rushing at you every minute, out loud. I never knew any folks that acted different from that, though. Luke was just like that, too.
I was thinking of this when I see him coming to meet me, down the path. He ain't a big man, Luke.
"Hello, Cossy," he says. "That you?"
"Hello, Luke," I says. I dunno why it is—with the boys at home I can joke. But Luke, he always makes me feel just plain. I just says "Hello, Luke," and stood still, and waited for him to come up to me. He turned and walked along beside me.
"I was afraid I wouldn't meet you," he says. "I was afraid I'd miss you. My, it's a good thing to get you somewheres by yourself."
"Why?" I says.
"Oh, the boys are always around, or your pa, or somebody. I've got a right to talk to you sometimes by yourself."
"Well, go ahead, then. Talk to me."
All of a sudden he stopped still in the path.
"Do you mean that?" he ask.
"Mean what?" I says. I couldn't think what he meant.
"That I can talk to you now? My way?"
"Oh," I says. I knew then. I guess I should have known before, if I'd stopped to think. But someway I never could put my mind on Luke all the time he was saying anything.
"Cossy," he says, "I've tried to talk to you; you always got round it or else somebody else come in. You know what I want."
I didn't say anything. I sort of waited, not so much to see what he was going to do as to see what I was going to do.
Then he didn't say anything. But he put his arm around me, and put his hand around my arm. I let him. I wasn't mad, so I didn't pretend.
"Let's us sit down here," he says.
We sat under a big tree and he drew my head down on his shoulder.
"You're all kinds of a peach," he says, "that's what you are, Cossy—I bet you've known for weeks I want you to marry me. Ain't you?"
"Yes," I says, "I s'pose I have."
He laughed. "You're a funny girl," he says.
"It's silly to pretend," I says.
"You bet," he says, "it's silly to pretend. Give me a kiss, then. Kiss me yourself."
I did. I had to see whether I was pretending not to want to, or whether I really didn't want to. I see right away that I didn't want to.
"Marry me, Cossy," he says. "Will you?"
I was twenty years old. For a long time Ma had been asking me why I didn't marry some nice young man. "Marry some nice young man," she says. "You'll be happier, Cossy." Why would I be happier, I wondered. What would make me happy? There would be, I supposed, a