Short Fiction, Kate Chopin [sci fi books to read txt] 📗

was the fifteenth of August, the great feast of the Assumption, so generally observed in the Catholic parishes of Louisiana. The Chotard family were on their way to mass, and Odalie had insisted upon stopping to “show herself” to her old friend and protégée. Aunt Pinky.

The helpless, shrivelled old negress sat in the depths of a large, ruddy-fashioned chair. A loosely hanging unbleached cotton gown enveloped her mite of a figure. What was visible of her hair beneath the bandana turban, looked like white sheep’s wool. She wore round, silver-rimmed spectacles, which gave her an air of wisdom and respectability, and she held in her hand the branch of a hickory sapling, with which she kept mosquitoes and flies at bay, and even chickens and pigs that sometimes penetrated the heart of her domain.

Odalie walked straight up to the old woman and kissed her on the cheek.

“Well, Aunt Pinky, yere I am,” she announced with evident self-complacency, turning herself slowly and stiffly around like a mechanical dummy. In one hand she held her prayerbook, fan and handkerchief, in the other the blue parasol, still open; and on her plump hands were blue cotton mitts. Aunt Pinky beamed and chuckled; Odalie hardly expected her to be able to do more.

“Now you saw me,” the child continued. “I reckon you satisfied. I mus’ go; I ain’t got a minute to was’e.” But at the threshold she turned to inquire, bluntly:

“W’ere’s Pug?”

“Pug,” replied Aunt Pinky, in her tremulous old-woman’s voice. “She’s gone to chu’ch; done gone; she done gone,” nodding her head in seeming approval of Pug’s action.

“To church!” echoed Odalie with a look of consternation settling in her round eyes.

“She gone to chu’ch,” reiterated Aunt Pinky. “Say she kain’t miss chu’ch on de fifteent’; de debble gwine pester her twell jedgment, she miss chu’ch on de fifteent’.”

Odalie’s plump cheeks fairly quivered with indignation and she stamped her foot. She looked up and down the long, dusty road that skirted the river. Nothing was to be seen save the blue cart with its dejected looking mule and patient occupants. She walked to the end of the gallery and called out to a negro boy whose black bullet-head showed up in bold relief against the white of the cotton patch:

“He, Baptiste! W’ere’s yo’ ma? Ask yo’ ma if she can’t come set with Aunt Pinky.”

“Mammy, she gone to chu’ch,” screamed Baptiste in answer.

“Bonté! w’at’s taken you all darkies with yo’ ‘church’ today? You come along yere Baptiste an’ set with Aunt Pinky. That Pug! I’m goin’ to make yo’ ma wear her out fo’ that trick of hers⁠—leavin’ Aunt Pinky like that.”

But at the first intimation of what was wanted of him, Baptiste dipped below the cotton like a fish beneath water, leaving no sight nor sound of himself to answer Odalie’s repeated calls. Her mother and sister were beginning to show signs of impatience.

“But, I can’t go,” she cried out to them. “It’s nobody to stay with Aunt Pinky. I can’t leave Aunt Pinky like that, to fall out of her chair, maybe, like she already fell out once.”

“You goin’ to miss mass on the fifteenth, you, Odalie! W’at you thinkin’ about?” came in shrill rebuke from her sister. But her mother offering no objection, the boy lost not a moment in starting the mule forward at a brisk trot. She watched them disappear in a cloud of dust; and turning with a dejected, almost tearful countenance, re-entered the room.

Aunt Pinky seemed to accept her reappearance as a matter of course; and even evinced no surprise at seeing her remove her hat and mitts, which she laid carefully, almost religiously, on the bed, together with her book, fan and handkerchief.

Then Odalie went and seated herself some distance from the old woman in her own small, low rocking-chair. She rocked herself furiously, making a great clatter with the rockers over the wide, uneven boards of the cabin floor; and she looked out through the open door.

“Puggy, she done gone to chu’ch; done gone. Say de debble gwine pester her twell jedgment⁠—”

“You done tole me that, Aunt Pinky; neva mine; don’t le’s talk about it.”

Aunt Pinky thus rebuked, settled back into silence and Odalie continued to rock and stare out of the door.

Once she arose, and taking the hickory branch from Aunt Pinky’s nerveless hand, made a bold and sudden charge upon a little pig that seemed bent upon keeping her company. She pursued him with flying heels and loud cries as far as the road. She came back flushed and breathless and her curls hanging rather limp around her face; she began again to rock herself and gaze silently out of the door.

“You gwine make yo’ fus’ c’mmunion?”

This seemingly sober inquiry on the part of Aunt Pinky at once shattered Odalie’s illhumor and dispelled every shadow of it. She leaned back and laughed with wild abandonment.

“Mais w’at you thinkin’ about. Aunt Pinky? How you don’t remember I made my firs’ communion las’ year, with this same dress w’at maman let out the tuck,” holding up the altered skirt for Aunt Pinky’s inspection. “An’ with this same petticoat w’at maman added this ruffle an’ crochet’ edge; excep’ I had a w’ite sash.”

These evidences proved beyond question convincing and seemed to satisfy Aunt Pinky. Odalie rocked as furiously as ever, but she sang now, and the swaying chair had worked its way nearer to the old woman.

“You gwine git mar’ied?”

“I declare, Aunt Pinky,” said Odalie, when she had ceased laughing and was wiping her eyes, “I declare, sometime’ I think you gittin’ plumb foolish. How you expec’ me to git married w’en I’m on’y thirteen?”

Evidently Aunt Pinky did not know why or how she expected anything so preposterous; Odalie’s holiday attire that filled her with contemplative rapture, had doubtless incited her to these vagaries.

The child now drew her chair quite close to the old woman’s knee after she had gone out to the rear of the cabin to