That was when the youngest one turned and ran out of the room.
She locked herself in the bath and they could hear her being sick.
She thought about half-past-ten-oclock in the morning.
Sunday morning, and the couples strolling toward church.
She remembered it was still Sunday, the same Sunday, looking at the fading peaceful gesture of the clock.
Maybe it was half-past-ten this morning, that half-past-ten-oclock.
Then I’m not here, she thought.
This is not me.
Then I’m at school.
I have a date tonight with.……thinking of the student with whom she had the date.
But she couldn’t remember who it would be.
She kept the dates written down in her Latin ‘pony’, so she didn’t have to bother about who it was.
She’d just dress, and after a while somebody would call for her.
So I better get up and dress, she said, looking at the clock.
She rose and crossed the room quietly.
She watched the clock face, but although she could see a warped turmoil of faint light and shadow in geometric miniature swinging across it, she could not see herself.
It’s this nightie, she thought, looking at her arms, her breast rising out of a dissolving pall beneath which her toes peeped in pale, fleet intervals as she walked. She drew the bolt quietly and returned to the bed and lay with her head cradled in her arms.
There was still a little light in the room.
She found that she was hearing her watch; had been hearing it for some time.
She discovered that the house was full of noises, seeping into the room muffled and indistinguishable, as though from a distance.
A bell rang faintly and shrilly somewhere; someone mounted the stairs in a swishing garment.
The feet went on past the door and mounted another stair and ceased.
She listened to the watch.
A car started beneath the window with a grind of gears; again the faint bell rang, shrill and prolonged.
She found that the faint light yet in the room was from a street lamp.
Then she realised that it was night and that the darkness beyond was full of the sound of the city.
She heard the two dogs come up the stairs in a furious scrabble.
The noise passed the door and stopped, became utterly still; so still that she could almost see them crouching there in the dark against the wall, watching the stairs.
One of them was named Mister something, Temple thought, waiting to hear Miss Reba’s feet on the stairs.
But it was not Miss Reba; they came too steadily and too lightly.
The door opened; the dogs surged in in two shapeless blurs and scuttled under the bed and crouched, whimpering.
“You, dawgs!” Minnie’s voice said.
“You make me spill this.”
The light came on.
Minnie carried a tray.
“I got you some supper,” she said.
“Where them dawgs gone to?”
“Under the bed,” Temple said.
“I dont want any.”
Minnie came and set the tray on the bed and looked down at Temple, her pleasant face knowing and placid.
“You want me to—” she said, extending her hand.
Temple turned her face quickly away.
She heard Minnie kneel, cajoling the dogs, the dogs snarling back at her with whimpering, asthmatic snarls and clicking teeth.
“Come outen there, now,” Minnie said.
“They know fo Miss Reba do when she fixing to get drunk.
You, Mr Binford!”
Temple raised her head.
“Mr Binford?”
“He the one with the blue ribbon,” Minnie said.
Stooping, she flapped her arm at the dogs.