Why, he’s strong as a little bull, isn’t he?
He’s a regular little giant, that’s what he is.
Why, he’s perfectly wild, isn’t he?
His eyes popping out of his head.
I thought he was going to knock a hole in the wall.
— Yes, ma’am.
Why, law me, yes, child.
It’s GOOD soup,” resorting to her broad mimicry in order to make him laugh.
And he would laugh against his will between his sobs, in a greater torture because of this agony of affection and reconciliation than because of the abuse.
Presently, when he had grown quiet, she would send him off to the store for pickles, cakes, cold bottled drinks; he would depart with red eyes, his cheeks furrowed dirtily by his tears, wondering desperately as he went down the street why the thing had happened, and drawing his foot sharply off the ground and craning his neck convulsively as shame burnt in him.
There was in Helen a restless hatred of dullness, respectability.
Yet she was at heart a severely conventional person, in spite of her occasional vulgarity, which was merely a manifestation of her restless energy, a very naive, a childishly innocent person about even the simple wickedness of the village.
She had several devoted young men on her list — plain, hard-drinking country types: one, a native, lean, red-faced, alcoholic, a city surveyor, who adored her; another, a strapping florid blond from the Tennessee coal fields; another, a young South Carolinian, townsman of her older sister’s fiance.
These young men — Hugh Parker, Jim Phelps, and Joe Cathcart, were innocently devoted; they liked her tireless and dominant energy, the eager monopoly of her tongue, her big sincerity and deep kindliness.
She played and sang for them — threw all her energy into entertaining them.
They brought her boxes of candy, little presents, were divided jealously among themselves, but united in their affirmation that she was “a fine girl.”
And she would get Jim Phelps and Hugh Parker to bring her a drink of whisky as well: she had begun to depend on small potations of alcohol for the stimulus it gave her fevered body — a small drink was enough to operate electrically in her blood: it renewed her, energized her, gave her a temporary and hectic vitality.
Thus, although she never drank much at a time and showed, beyond the renewed vitality and gaiety, no sign of intoxication, she nibbled at the bottle.
“I’ll take a drink whenever I can get it,” she said.
She liked, almost invariably, young fast women.
She liked the hectic pleasure of their lives, the sense of danger, their humor and liberality.
She was drawn magnetically to all the wedded harlotry, which, escaping the Sunday discipline of a Southern village, and the Saturday lust of sodden husbands, came gaily to Altamont in summer.
She liked people who, as she said, “didn’t mind taking a little drink now and then.”
She liked Mary Thomas, a tall jolly young prostitute who came from Kentucky: she was a manicurist in an Altamont Hotel.
“There are two things I want to see,” said Mary, “a rooster’s you-know-what and a hen’s what-is-it.”
She was full of loud compelling laughter.
She had a small room with a sleeping porch, at the front of the house upstairs.
Eugene brought her some cigarettes once: she stood before the window in a thin petticoat, her feet wide apart, her long sensual legs outlined against the light.
Helen wore her dresses, hats, and silk stockings.
Sometimes they drank together.
And, with humorous sentimentality, she defended her.
“Well, she’s no hypocrite.
That’s one thing sure.
She doesn’t care who knows it.”
Or,
“She’s no worse than a lot of your little goody-goodies, if the truth’s known.
She’s only more open about it.”
Or again, irritated at some implied criticism of her own friendliness with the girl, she would say angrily:
“What do you know about her?
You’d better be careful how you talk about people.
You’ll get into trouble about it some day.”
Nevertheless, she was scrupulous in her public avoidance of the girl and, illogically, in a moment of unreasoning annoyance she would attack Eliza:
“Why do you keep such people in your house, mama?
Every one in town knows about her.
Your place is getting the reputation of a regular chippyhouse all over town.”
Eliza pursed her lips angrily:
“I don’t pay any attention to them,” she said.
“I consider myself as good as any one.
I hold my head up, and I expect every one else to do likewise.
You don’t catch me associating with them.”