“She looks all right.
Come through it fine.”
Rose of Sharon’s eyes questioned Ma, and Ma tried to avoid the question.
Mrs. Wainwright walked to the stove.
“Ma.”
“Yeah? What you want?”
“Is—it—all right?”
Ma gave up the attempt.
She kneeled down on the mattress.
“You can have more,” she said. “We done ever’thing we knowed.”
Rose of Sharon struggled and pushed herself up.
“Ma!”
“You couldn’ he’p it.”
The girl lay back again, and covered her eyes with her arms.
Ruthie crept close and looked down in awe.
She whispered harshly,
“She sick, Ma?
She gonna die?”
“’Course not.
She’s gonna be awright.
Awright.”
Pa came in with his armload of packages.
“How is she?”
“Awright,” Ma said. “She’s gonna be awright.”
Ruthie reported to Winfield.
“She ain’t gonna die.
Ma says so.”
And Winfield, picking his teeth with a splinter in a very adult manner, said,
“I knowed it all the time.”
“How’d you know?”
“I won’t tell,” said Winfield, and he spat out a piece of the splinter.
Ma built the fire up with the last twigs and cooked the bacon and made gravy.
Pa had brought store bread.
Ma scowled when she saw it.
“We got any money lef’?”
“Nope,” said Pa. “But we was so hungry.”
“An’ you got store bread,” Ma said accusingly.
“Well, we was awful hungry.
Worked all night long.”
Ma sighed.
“Now what we gonna do?”
As they ate, the water crept up and up.
Al gulped his food and he and Pa built the platform.
Five feet wide, six feet long, four feet above the floor.
And the water crept to the edge of the doorway, seemed to hesitate a long time, and then moved slowly inward over the floor.
And outside, the rain began again, as it had before, big heavy drops splashing on the water, pounding hollowly on the roof.
Al said,
“Come on now, let’s get the mattresses up.
Let’s put the blankets up, so they don’t git wet.”
They piled their possessions up on the platform, and the water crept over the floor.