“Cal,” she said. “Why didn’t I know all this before?”
Calpurnia frowned and sought an answer. “You’re sort of ’hind f’omus, Miss Scout. You sort of haven’t caught up with yourself … now if you’d been raised on a farm you’da known it before you could walk, or if there’d been any women around—if your mamma had lived you’da known it—”
“Mamma?”
“Yessum. You’da seen things like your daddy kissin’ your mamma and you’da asked questions soon as you learned to talk, I bet.”
“Did they do all that?”
Calpurnia revealed her gold-crowned molars. “Bless your heart, how do you think you got here? Sure they did.”
“Well I don’t think they would.”
“Baby, you’ll have to grow some more before this makes sense to you, but your daddy and your mamma loved each other something fierce, and when you love somebody like that, Miss Scout, why that’s what you want to do. That’s what everybody wants to do when they love like that. They want to get married, they want to kiss and hug and carry on and have babies all the time.”
“I don’t think Aunty and Uncle Jimmy do.”
Calpurnia picked at her apron. “Miss Scout, different folks get married for different kinds of reasons. Miss Alexandra, I think she got married to keep house.” Calpurnia scratched her head. “But that’s not anything you need to study about, that’s not any of your concern. Don’t you study about other folks’s business till you take care of your own.”
Calpurnia got to her feet. “Right now your business is not to give any heed to what those folks from Old Sarum tell you—you ain’t called upon to contradict ’em, just don’t pay ’em any attention—and if you want to know somethin’, you just run to old Cal.”
“Why didn’t you tell me all this to start with?”
“’Cause things started for you a mite early, and you didn’t seem to take to it so much, and we didn’t think you’d take to the rest of it any better. Mr. Finch said wait a while till you got used to the idea, but we didn’t count on you finding out so quick and so wrong, Miss Scout.”
Jean Louise stretched luxuriously and yawned, delighted with her existence. She was becoming sleepy and was not sure she could stay awake until supper. “We having hot biscuits tonight, Cal?”
“Yes ma’am.”
She heard the front door slam and Jem clump down the hall. He was headed for the kitchen, where he would open the refrigerator and swallow a quart of milk to quench his football-practice thirst. Before she dozed off, it occurred to her that for the first time in her life Calpurnia had said “Yes ma’am” and “Miss Scout” to her, forms of address usually reserved for the presence of high company. I must be getting old, she thought.
Jem wakened her when he snapped on the overhead light. She saw him walking toward her, the big maroon M standing out starkly on his white sweater.
“Are you awake, Little Three-Eyes?”
“Don’t be sarcastic,” she said. If Henry or Calpurnia had told on her she would die, but she would take them with her.
She stared at her brother. His hair was damp and he smelled of the strong soap in the schoolhouse locker rooms. Better start it first, she thought.
“Huh, you’ve been smoking,” she said. “Smell it a mile.”
“Haven’t.”
“Don’t see how you can play in the line anyway. You’re too skinny.”
Jem smiled and declined her gambit. They’ve told him, she thought.
Jem patted his M. “Old Never-Miss-’Em-Finch, that’s me. Caught seven out of ten this afternoon,” he said.
He went to the table and picked up a football magazine, opened it, thumbed through it, and was thumbing through it again when he said: “Scout, if there’s ever anything that happens to you or something—you know—something you might not want to tell Atticus about—”
“Huh?”
“You know, if you get in trouble at school or anything—you just let me know. I’ll take care of you.”
Jem sauntered from the livingroom, leaving Jean Louise wide-eyed and wondering if she were fully awake.
12
SUNLIGHT ROUSED HER. She looked at her watch. Five o’clock. Someone had covered her up during the night. She threw off the spread, put her feet to the floor, and sat gazing at her long legs, startled to find them twenty-six years old. Her loafers were standing at attention where she had stepped out of them twelve hours ago. One sock was lying beside her shoes and she discovered its mate on her foot. She removed the sock and padded softly to the dressing table, where she caught sight of herself in the mirror.
She looked ruefully at her reflection. You have had what Mr. Burgess would call “The ’Orrors,” she told it. Golly, I haven’t waked up like this for fifteen years. Today is Monday, I’ve been home since Saturday, I have eleven days of my vacation left, and I wake up with the screamin’ meemies. She laughed at herself: well, it was the longest on record—longer than elephants and nothing to show for it.
She picked up a package of cigarettes and three kitchen matches, stuffed the matches behind the cellophane wrapper, and walked quietly into the hall. She opened the wooden door, then the screen door.
On any other day she would have stood barefoot on the wet grass listening to the mockingbirds’ early service; she would have pondered over the meaninglessness of silent, austere beauty renewing itself with every sunrise and going ungazed at by half the world. She would have walked beneath yellow-ringed pines rising to a brilliant eastern sky, and her senses would have succumbed to the joy of the morning.