literature assignments

 

For this response essay, we are going to get a little more creative with things. Choose from one of the prompts below:

1. In “Hills Like White Elephants,” we have a conversation between two characters that is very vague, but reveals a lot about the characters and what is going on in their lives once you analyze the conversation. For this option, you will write a story from the point of view of one of the characters in the story, revealing more to us then what we get from the story. You can write from the man’s point of view, from the girl’s point of view, from the waitress’s point of view, or bystander–you choose. Be creative and be sure to work in clues and information from the story that apply. 

2. In “Why I Live at the P.O.”, we have a story told from one character’s point of view–Sister’s. Well, we all know there are many sides to a story, right? For this option, you will choose one of the other character’s from the story (besides Sister) and write a letter from the person to Sister or tell the story from that character’s perspective. What really happened? Is sister telling the truth, or are her versions of events biased? 

Be creative! This should be 2-3 pages long, double-spaced. Please used MLA format (Times New Roman Font, size 12, double-spaced, page numbers upper right, so on and so forth)

ERNEST HEMINGWAY
(1899-4961)

HILLS LIKE WHITE ELEPHANTS

The hills across the valley of the Ebro’ were long and white. On this side
there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of
rails in the sun. Close against the side of the station there was the warm
shadow of the building and a curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads,
hung across the open door into the bar, to keep out flies. The American and
the girl with him sat at a table in the shade, outside the building. It was very
hot and the express from Barcelona would come in forty minutes. It
stopped at this junction for two minutes and went on to Madrid.

“What should we drink?” the girl asked. She had taken off her hat and
put it on the table.

“It’s pretty hot,” the man said.
“Let’s drink beer.”
“Dos cervezas,” the man said into the curtain.
“Big ones?” a woman asked from the doorway.
“Yes. Two big ones.”
The woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads. She put the

felt pads and the beer glasses on the table and looked at the man and the
girl. The girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun
and the country was brown and dry.

“They look like white elephants,” she said.
“I’ve never seen one,” the man drank his beer.
“No, you wouldn’t have.”
” I might have,” the man said. “Just because you say I wouldn’t have

doesn’t prove anything.”
The girl looked at the bead curtain. “They’ve painted something on it,”

she said. “What does it say?”
“Anis del Toro. It’s a drink.”
“Could we try it?”
The man called “Listen” through the curtain. The woman came out

from the bar.
“Four reales.”
“We want two Anis del Toro.”
“With water?”
“Do you want it with water?”
” I don’t know,” the girl said. “Is it good with water?”
“It’s all right.”
“You want them with water?” asked the woman.

1. River in the north of Spain.

Ernest Hemingway 229

“Yes, with water.”
” I t tastes like licorice,” the girl said and put the glass down.
“That’s the way with everything.”
“Yes,” said the girl. “Everything tastes of licorice. Especially all the

things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe.”
“Oh, cut it out.”
“You started it,” the girl said. ” I was being amused. I was having a fine

time.”
“Well, let’s try and have a fine time.”
“All right. I was trying. I said the mountains looked like white ele-

phants. Wasn’t that bright?”
“That was bright.”
” I wanted to try this new drink. That’s all we do, isn’t it—look at things

and try new drinks?”
” I guess so.”
The girl looked across at the hills.
“They’re lovely hills,” she said. “They don’t really look like white ele-

phants. I just meant the coloring of their skin through the trees.” “Should
we have another drink?”

“All right.”
The warm wind blew the bead curtain against the table.
“The beer’s nice and cool,” the man said.
“It’s lovely,” the girl said.
“It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig,” the man said. “It’s not

really an operation at all.”
The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on.
” I know you wouldn’t mind it, Jig. It’s really not anything. It’s just to let

the air in.”
The girl did not say anything.
“I ‘ l l go with you and I’ll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in

and then it’s all perfectly natural.”
“Then what will we do afterward?”
“We’ll be fine afterward. Just like we were before.”
“What makes you think so?”
“That’s the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that’s made us

unhappy.”
The girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of

two of the strings of beads.
“And you think then we’ll be all right and be happy.”
” I know we will. You don’t have to be afraid. I’ve known lots of people

that have done it.”
“So have I , ” said the girl. “And afterward they were all so happy.”

“Well,” the man said, “if you don’t want to you don’t have to. I wouldn’t
have you do it if you didn’t want to. But I know it’s perfectly simple.”

“And you really want to?”

230 Short Fiction

” I think it’s the best thing to do. But I don’t want you to do it if you
don’t really want to.”

“And if I do it you’ll be happy and things will be like they were and
you’ll love me?”

” I love you now. You know I love you.”
” I know. But if I do it, then it will be nice again if I say things are like

white elephants, and you’ll like it?”
“I’ll love it. I love it now but I just can’t think about it. You know how I

get when I worry.”
” I f I do it you won’t ever worry?”
” I won’t worry about that because it’s perfectly simple.”
“Then I’ll do it. Because I don’t care about me.”
“What do you mean?”
” I don’t care about me.”
“Well, I care about you.”
“Oh, yes. But I don’t care about me. And I’ll do it and then everything

will be fine.”
” I don’t want you to do it if you feel that way. ”
The girl stood up and walked to the end of the station. Across, on the

other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far
away, beyond the river, were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved
across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees.

“And we could have all this,” she said. “And we could have everything
and every day we make it more impossible.”

“What did you say?”
” I said we could have everything.”
“We can have everything.”
“No, we can’t.”
“We can have the whole world.”
“No, we can’t.”
“We can go everywhere.”
“No, we can’t. It isn’t ours any more.”
“It’s ours.”
“No, it isn’t. And once they take it away, you never get it back.”
“But they haven’t taken it away.”
“We’ll wait and see.”
“Come on back in the shade,” he said. “You mustn’t feel that way.” ” I
don’t feel any way,” the girl said. ” I just know things.”
” I don’t want you to do anything that you don’t want to do—”
“Nor that isn’t good for me,” she said. ” I know. Could we have another

beer?”
“All right. But you’ve got to realize—”
” I realize,” the girl said. “Can’t we maybe stop talking?”
They sat down at the table and the girl looked across at the hills on the

dry side of the valley and the man looked at her and at the table.
“You’ve got to realize,” he said, “that I don’t want you to do it if you

Ernest Hemingway 231

don’t want to. I’m perfectly willing to go through with it if it means any-thing
to you.”

“Doesn’t it mean anything to you? We could get along.”
“Of course it does. But I don’t want anybody but you. I don’t want any

one else. And I know it’s perfectly simple.”
“Yes, you know it’s perfectly simple.”
“It’s all right for you to say that, but I do know it.”
“Would you do something for me now?”
“I’d do anything for you.”
“Would you please please please please please please please stop

talking?”
He did not say anything but looked at the bags against the wall of the

station. There were labels on them from all the hotels where they had spent
nights.

“But I don’t want you to,” he said, ” I don’t care anything about it.”
“I’ll scream,” the girl said.
The woman came out through the curtains with two glasses of beer and

put them down on the damp felt pads. “The train comes in five minutes,” she
said.

“What did she say?” asked the girl.
“That the train is coming in five minutes.”
The girl smiled brightly at the woman, to thank her.
“I’d better take the bags over to the other side of the station,” the man

said. She smiled at him.
“All right. Then come back and we’ll finish the beer.”
He picked up the two heavy bags and carried them around the station to

the other tracks. He looked up the tracks but could not see the train.
Coming back, he walked through the barroom, where people waiting for the
train were drinking. He drank an Anis at the bar and looked at the people.
They were all waiting reasonably for the train. He went out through the bead
curtain. She was sitting at the table and smiled at him.

“Do you feel better?” he asked.
” I feel fine,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I feel fine.”

1927

1

Why I Live at the P.O.

Eudora Welty

I was getting along fine with Mama, Papa-Daddy and Uncle Rondo until my sister

Stella-Rondo just separated from her husband and came back home again. Mr. Whitaker! Of

course I went with Mr. Whitaker first, when he first appeared here in China Grove, taking “Pose

Yourself” photos, and Stella-Rondo broke us up. Told him I was one-sided. Bigger on one side

than the other, which is a deliberate, calculated falsehood: I’m the same. Stella-Rondo is exactly

twelve months to the day younger than I am and for that reason she’s spoiled.

She’s always had anything in the world she wanted and then she’d throw it away. Papa-

Daddy gave her this gorgeous Add-a-Pearl necklace when she was eight years old and she threw

it away playing baseball when she was nine, with only two pearls.

So as soon as she got married and moved away from home the first thing she did was

separate! From Mr. Whitaker! This photographer with the popeyes she said she trusted. Came

home from one of those towns up in Illinois and to our complete surprise brought this child of

two.

Mama said she like to made her drop dead for a second. “Here you had this marvelous

blonde child and never so much as wrote your mother a word about it,” says Mama. “I’m

thoroughly ashamed of you.” But of course she wasn’t.

Stella-Rondo just calmly takes off this hat, I wish you could see it. She says, “Why, Mama,

Shirley-T.’s adopted, I can prove it.”

“How?” says Mama, but all I says was, “H’m!” There I was over the hot stove, trying to

stretch two chickens over five people and a completely unexpected child into the bargain, without

one moment’s notice.

“What do you mean—’H’m!’?” says Stella-Rondo, and Mama says, “I heard that, Sister.”

I said that oh, I didn’t mean a thing, only that whoever Shirley-T. was, she was the spit-

image of Papa-Daddy if he’d cut off his beard, which of course he’d never do in the world. Papa-

Daddy’s Mama’s papa and sulks.

Stella-Rondo got furious! She said, “Sister, I don’t need to tell you you got a lot of nerve

and always did have and I’ll thank you to make no future reference to my adopted child

whatsoever.”

“Very well,” I said. “Very well, very well. Of course I noticed at once she looks like Mr.

Whitaker’s side too. That frown. She looks like a cross between Mr. Whitaker and Papa-Daddy.”

“Well, all I can say is she isn’t.”

“She looks exactly like Shirley Temple to me,” says Mama, but Shirley-T. just ran away

from her.

So the first thing Stella-Rondo did at the table was turn Papa-Daddy against me.

“Papa-Daddy,” she says. He was trying to cut up his meat. “Papa-Daddy!” I was taken

completely by surprise. Papa-Daddy is about a million years old and’s got this long-long beard.

“Papa-Daddy, Sister says she fails to understand why you don’t cut off your beard.”

So Papa-Daddy l-a-y-s down his knife and fork! He’s real rich. Mama says he is, he says he

isn’t. So he says, “Have I heard correctly? You don’t understand why I don’t cut off my beard?”

“Why,” I says, “Papa-Daddy, of course I understand, I did not say any such of a thing, the

idea!”

He says, “Hussy!”

2

I says, “Papa-Daddy, you know I wouldn’t any more want you to cut off your beard than

the man in the moon. It was the farthest thing from my mind! Stella-Rondo sat there and made

that up while she was eating breast of chicken.”

But he says, “So the postmistress fails to understand why I don’t cut off my beard. Which

job I got you through my influence with the government. ‘Bird’s nest’—is that what you call it?”

Not that it isn’t the next to smallest P.O. in the entire state of Mississippi.

I says, “Oh, Papa-Daddy,” I says, “I didn’t say any such of a thing, I never dreamed it was a

bird’s nest, I have always been grateful though this is the next to smallest P.O. in the state of

Mississippi, and I do not enjoy being referred to as a hussy by my own grandfather.”

But Stella-Rondo says, “Yes, you did say it too. Anybody in the world could of heard you,

that had ears.”

“Stop right there,” says Mama, looking at me. So I pulled my napkin straight back through

the napkin ring and left the table.

As soon as I was out of the room Mama says, “Call her back, or she’ll starve to death,” but

Papa-Daddy says, “This is the beard I started growing on the Coast when I was fifteen years old.”

He would of gone on till nightfall if Shirley-T. hadn’t lost the Milky Way she ate in Cairo.

So Papa-Daddy says, “I am going out and lie in the hammock, and you can all sit here and

remember my words: I’ll never cut off my beard as long as I live, even one inch, and I don’t

appreciate it in you at all.” Passed right by me in the hall and went straight out and got in the

hammock.

It would be a holiday. It wasn’t five minutes before Uncle Rondo suddenly appeared in the

hall in one of Stella-Rondo’s flesh-colored kimonos, all cut on the bias, like something Mr.

Whitaker probably thought was gorgeous.

“Uncle Rondo!” I says. “I didn’t know who that was! Where are you going?”

“Sister,” he says, “get out of my way, I’m poisoned.”

“If you’re poisoned stay away from Papa-Daddy,” I says. “Keep out of the hammock. Papa-

Daddy will certainly beat you on the head if you come within forty miles of him. He thinks I

deliberately said he ought to cut off his beard after he got me the P.O., and I’ve told him and told

him and told him, and he acts like he just don’t hear me. Papa-Daddy must of gone stone deaf.”

“He picked a fine day to do it then,” says Uncle Rondo, and before you could say “Jack

Robinson” flew out in the yard.

What he’d really done, he’d drunk another bottle of that prescription. He does it every

single Fourth of July as sure as shooting, and it’s horribly expensive. Then he falls over in the

hammock and snores. So he insisted on zigzagging right on out to the hammock, looking like a

half-wit.

Papa-Daddy woke up with this horrible yell and right there without moving an inch he tried

to turn Uncle Rondo against me. I heard every word he said. Oh, he told Uncle Rondo I didn’t

learn to read till I was eight years old and he didn’t see how in the world I ever got the mail put

up at the P.O., much less read it all, and he said if Uncle Rondo could only fathom the lengths he

had gone to to get me that job! And he said on the other hand he thought Stella-Rondo had a

brilliant mind and deserved credit for getting out of town. All the time he was just lying there

swinging as pretty as you please and looping out his beard, and poor Uncle Rondo was pleading

with him to slow down the hammock, it was making him as dizzy as a witch to watch it. But

that’s what Papa-Daddy likes about a hammock. So Uncle Rondo was too dizzy to get turned

against me for the time being. He’s Mama’s only brother and is a good case of a one-track mind.

Ask anybody. A certified pharmacist.

3

Just then I heard Stella-Rondo raising the upstairs window. While she was married she got

this peculiar idea that it’s cooler with the windows shut and locked. So she has to raise the

window before she can make a soul hear her outdoors.

So she raises the window and says, “Oh!” You would have thought she was mortally

wounded.

Uncle Rondo and Papa-Daddy didn’t even look up, but kept right on with what they were

doing. I had to laugh.

I flew up the stairs and threw the door open! I says, “What in the wide world’s the matter,

Stella-Rondo? You mortally wounded?”

“No,” she says, “I am not mortally wounded but I wish you would do me the favor of

looking out that window there and telling me what you see.”

So I shade my eyes and look out the window. “I see the front yard,” I says. “Don’t you see

any human beings?” she says.

“I see Uncle Rondo trying to run Papa-Daddy out of the hammock,” I says. “Nothing more.

Naturally, it’s so suffocating-hot in the house, with all the windows shut and locked, everybody

who cares to stay in their right mind will have to go out and get in the hammock before the

Fourth of July is over.”

“Don’t you notice anything different about Uncle Rondo?” asks Stella-Rondo.

“Why, no, except he’s got on some terrible-looking flesh-colored contraption I wouldn’t be

found dead in, is all I can see,” I says.

“Never mind, you won’t be found dead in it, because it happens to be part of my trousseau,

and Mr. Whitaker took several dozen photographs of me in it,” says Stella-Rondo. “What on

earth could Uncle Rondo mean by wearing part of my trousseau out in the broad open daylight

without saying so much as ‘Kiss my foot,’ knowing I only got home this morning after my

separation and hung my negligee up on the bathroom door, just as nervous as I could be?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, and what do you expect me to do about it?” I says. “Jump out the

window?”

“No, I expect nothing of the kind. I simply declare that Uncle Rondo looks like a fool in it,

that’s all,” she says. “It makes me sick to my stomach.”

“Well, he looks as good as he can,” I says. “As good as anybody in reason could.” I stood

up for Uncle Rondo, please remember. And I said to Stella-Rondo, “I think I would do well not

to criticize so freely if I were you and came home with a two-year-old child I had never said a

word about, and no explanation whatever about my separation.”

“I asked you the instant I entered this house not to refer one more time to my adopted child,

and you gave me your word of honor you would not,” was all Stella-Rondo would say, and

started pulling out every one of her eyebrows with some cheap Kress tweezers.

So I merely slammed the door behind me and went down and made some green-tomato

pickle. Somebody had to do it. Of course Mama had turned both the niggers loose; she always

said no earthly power could hold one anyway on the Fourth of July, so she wouldn’t even try. It

turned out that Jaypan fell in the lake and came within a very narrow limit of drowning.

So Mama trots in. Lifts up the lid and says, “H’m! Not very good for your Uncle Rondo in

his precarious condition, I must say. Or poor little adopted Shirley-T. Shame on

you!”

4

That made me tired. I says, “Well, Stella-Rondo had better thank her lucky stars it was her

instead of me came trotting in with that very peculiar-looking child. Now if it had been me tha

ttrotted in from Illinois and brought a peculiar-looking child of two, I shudder to think of the

reception I’d of got, much less controlled the diet of an entire family.”

“But you must remember, Sister, that you were never married to Mr. Whitaker in the first

place and didn’t go up to Illinois to live,” says Mama, shaking a spoon in my face. “If you had I

would of been just as overjoyed to see you and your little adopted girl as I was to see Stella-

Rondo, when you wound up with your separation and came on back home.”

“You would not,” I says.

“Don’t contradict me, I would,” says Mama.

But I said she couldn’t convince me though she talked till she was blue in the face. Then I

said, “Besides, you know as well as I do that that child is not adopted.”

“She most certainly is adopted,” says Mama, stiff as a poker.

I says, “Why, Mama, Stella-Rondo had her just as sure as anything in this world, and just

too stuck up to admit it.”

“Why, Sister,” said Mama. “Here I thought we were going to have a pleasant Fourth of

July, and you start right out not believing a word your own baby sister tells you!”

“Just like Cousin Annie Flo. Went to her grave denying the facts of life,” I remind Mama.

“I told you if you ever mentioned Annie Flo’s name I’d slap your face,” says Mama, and

slaps my face.

“All right, you wait and see,” I says.

“I,” says Mama, “I prefer to take my children’s word for anything when it’s humanly

possible.” You ought to see Mama, she weighs two hundred pounds and has real tiny feet.

Just then something perfectly horrible occurred to me.

“Mama,” I says, “can that child talk?” I simply had to whisper! “Mama, I wonder if that

child can be—you know—in any way? Do you realize,” I says, “that she hasn’t spoken one

single, solitary word to a human being up to this minute? This is the way she looks,” I says, and I

looked like this.

Well, Mama and I just stood there and stared at each other. It was horrible!

“I remember well that Joe Whitaker frequently drank like a fish,” says Mama. “I believed

to my soul he drank chemicals.” And without another word she marches to the foot of the stairs

and calls Stella-Rondo.

“Stella-Rondo? O-o-o-o-o! Stella-Rondo!”

“What?” says Stella-Rondo from upstairs. Not even the grace to get up off the bed.

“Can that child of yours talk?” asks Mama. Stella-Rondo says, “Can she what?” “Talk!

Talk!” says Mama. “Burdyburdyburdyburdy!”

So Stella-Rondo yells back, “Who says she can’t talk?”

“Sister says so,” says Mama.

“You didn’t have to tell me, I know whose word of honor don’t mean a thing in this house,”

says Stella-Rondo.

And in a minute the loudest Yankee voice I ever heard in my life yells out, “OE’m Pop-OE

the Sailor-r-r-r Ma-a-an!” and then somebody jumps up and down in the upstairs hall. In another

second the house would of fallen down.

5

“Not only talks, she can tap-dance!” calls Stella-Rondo. “Which is more than some people I

won’t name can do.”

“Why, the little precious darling thing!” Mama says, so surprised. “Just as smart as she can

be!” Starts talking baby talk right there. Then she turns on me. “Sister, you ought to be

thoroughly ashamed! Run upstairs this instant and apologize to Stella-Rondo and Shirley-T.”

“Apologize for what?” I says. “I merely wondered if the child was normal, that’s all. Now

that she’s proved she is, why, I have nothing further to say.”

But Mama just turned on her heel and flew out, furious. She ran right upstairs and hugged

the baby. She believed it was adopted. Stella-Rondo hadn’t done a thing but turn her against me

from upstairs while I stood there helpless over the hot stove. So that made Mama, Papa-Daddy

and the baby all on Stella-Rondo’s side.

Next, Uncle Rondo.

I must say that Uncle Rondo has been marvelous to me at various times in the past and I

was completely unprepared to be made to jump out of my skin, the way it turned out. Once

Stella-Rondo did something perfectly horrible to him—broke a chain letter from Flanders

Field—and he took the radio back he had given her and gave it to me. Stella-Rondo was furious!

For six months we all had to call her Stella instead of Stella- Rondo, or she wouldn’t answer. I

always thought Uncle Rondo had all the brains of the entire family. Another time he sent me to

Mammoth Cave, with all expenses paid.

But this would be the day he was drinking that prescription, the Fourth of July.

So at supper Stella-Rondo speaks up and says she thinks Uncle Rondo ought to try to eat a

little something. So finally Uncle Rondo said he would try a little cold biscuits and ketchup, but

that was all. So she brought it to him.

“Do you think it wise to disport with ketchup in Stella-Rondo’s flesh-colored kimono?” I

says. Trying to be considerate! If Stella-Rondo couldn’t watch out for her trousseau, somebody

had to.

“Any objections?” asks Uncle Rondo, just about to pour out all the ketchup.

“Don’t mind what she says, Uncle Rondo,” says Stella-Rondo. “Sister has been devoting

this solid afternoon to sneering out my bedroom window at the way you look.”

“What’s that?” says Uncle Rondo. Uncle Rondo has got the most terrible temper in the

world. Anything is liable to make him tear the house down if it comes at the wrong time.

So Stella-Rondo says, “Sister says, ‘Uncle Rondo certainly does look like a fool in that pink

kimono!’ ”

Do you remember who it was really said that?

Uncle Rondo spills out all the ketchup and jumps out of his chair and tears off the kimono

and throws it down on the dirty floor and puts his foot on it. It had to be sent all the way to

Jackson to the cleaners and repleated.

“So that’s your opinion of your Uncle Rondo, is it?” he says. “I look like a fool, do I? Well,

that’s the last straw. A whole day in this house with nothing to do, and then to hear you come out

with a remark like that behind my back!”

“I didn’t say any such of a thing, Uncle Rondo,” I says, “and I’m not saying who did, either.

Why, I think you look all right. Just try to take care of yourself and not talk and eat at the same

time,” I says. “I think you better go lie down.”

“Lie down my foot,” says Uncle Rondo. I ought to of known by that he was fixing to do

something perfectly horrible.

6

So he didn’t do anything that night in the precarious state he was in—just played Casino

with Mama and Stella-Rondo and Shirley-T. and gave Shirley-T. a nickel with a head on both

sides. It tickled her nearly to death, and she called him “Papa.” But at 6:30 A.M. the next

morning, he threw a whole five-cent package of some unsold one-inch firecrackers from the store

as hard as he could into my bedroom and they every one went off. Not one bad one in the string.

Anybody else, there’d be one that wouldn’t go off.

Well, I’m just terribly susceptible to noise of any kind, the doctor has always told me I was

the most sensitive person he had ever seen in his whole life, and I was simply prostrated. I

couldn’t eat! People tell me they heard it as far as the cemetery, and old Aunt Jep Patterson, that

had been holding her own so good, thought it was Judgment Day and she was going to meet her

whole family. It’s usually so quiet here.

And I’ll tell you it didn’t take me any longer than a minute to make up my mind what to do.

There I was with the whole entire house on Stella-Rondo’s side and turned against me. If I have

anything at all I have pride.

So I just decided I’d go straight down to the P.O. There’s plenty of room there in the back, I

says to myself.

Well! I made no bones about letting the family catch on to what I was up to. I didn’t try to

conceal it.

The first thing they knew, I marched in where they were all playing Old Maid and pulled

the electric oscillating fan out by the plug, and everything got real hot. Next I snatched the pillow

I’d done the needlepoint on right off the davenport from behind Papa-Daddy. He went “Ugh!” I

beat Stella-Rondo up the stairs and finally found my charm bracelet in her bureau drawer under a

picture of Nelson Eddy.

“So that’s the way the land lies,” says Uncle Rondo. There he was, piecing on the ham.

“Well, Sister, I’ll be glad to donate my army cot if you got any place to set it up, providing you’ll

leave right this minute and let me get some peace.” Uncle Rondo was in France.

“Thank you kindly for the cot and ‘peace’ is hardly the word I would select if I had to resort

to firecrackers at 6:30 A.M. in a young girl’s bedroom,” I says back to him. “And as to where I

intend to go, you seem to forget my position as postmistress of China Grove, Mississippi,” I says.

“I’ve always got the P.O.”

Well, that made them all sit up and take notice.

I went out front and started digging up some four-o’clocks to plant around the P.O.

“Ah-ah-ah!” says Mama, raising the window. “Those happen to be my four-o’clocks.

Everything planted in that star is mine. I’ve never known you to make anything grow in your

life.”

“Very well,” I says. “But I take the fern. Even you, Mama, can’t stand there and deny that

I’m the one watered that fern. And I happen to know where I can send in a box top and get a

packet of one thousand mixed seeds, no two the same kind, free.”

“Oh, where?” Mama wants to know.

But I says, “Too late. You ‘tend to your house, and I’ll ‘tend to mine. You hear things like

that all the time if you know how to listen to the radio. Perfectly marvelous offers. Get anything

you want free.”

So I hope to tell you I marched in and got that radio, and they could of all bit a nail in two,

especially Stella-Rondo, that it used to belong to, and she well knew she couldn’t get it back, I’d

sue for it like a shot. And I very politely took the sewing-machine motor I helped pay the most on

to give Mama for Christmas back in 1929, and a good big calendar, with the first-aid remedies on

7

it. The thermometer and the Hawaiian ukulele certainly were rightfully mine, and I stood on the

step-ladder and got all my watermelon-rind preserves and every fruit and vegetable I’d put up,

every jar. Then I began to pull the tacks out of the bluebird wall vases on the archway to the

dining room.

“Who told you you could have those, Miss Priss?” says Mama, fanning as hard as she

could.

“I bought ’em and I’ll keep track of ’em,” I says. “I’ll tack ’em up one on each side the post-

office window, and you can see ’em when you come to ask me for your mail, if you’re so dead to

see ’em.”

“Not I! I’ll never darken the door to that post office again if I live to be a hundred,” Mama

says. “Ungrateful child! After all the money we spent on you at the Normal.”

“Me either,” says Stella-Rondo. “You can just let my mail lie there and rot, for all I care.

I’ll never come and relieve you of a single, solitary piece.”

“I should worry,” I says. “And who you think’s going to sit down and write you all those

big fat letters and postcards, by the way? Mr. Whitaker? Just because he was the only man ever

dropped down in China Grove and you got him—unfairly—is he going to sit down and write you

a lengthy correspondence after you come home giving no rhyme nor reason whatsoever for your

separation and no explanation for the presence of that child? I may not have your brilliant mind,

but I fail to see it.”

So Mama says, “Sister, I’ve told you a thousand times that Stella-Rondo simply got

homesick, and this child is far too big to be hers,” and she says, “Now, why don’t you just sit

down and play Casino?”

Then Shirley-T. sticks out her tongue at me in this perfectly horrible way. She has no more

manners than the man in the moon. I told her she was going to cross her eyes like that some day

and they’d stick.

“It’s too late to stop me now,” I says. “You should have tried that yesterday. I’m going to

the P.O. and the only way you can possibly see me is to visit me there.”

So Papa-Daddy says, “You’ll never catch me setting foot in that post office, even if I should

take a notion into my head to write a letter some place.” He says, “I won’t have you reachin’ out

of that little old window with a pair of shears and cuttin’ off any beard of mine. I’m too smart for

you!”

“We all are,” says Stella-Rondo.

But I said, “If you’re so smart, where’s Mr. Whitaker?”

So then Uncle Rondo says, “I’ll thank you from now on to stop reading all the orders I get

on postcards and telling everybody in China Grove what you think is the matter with them,” but I

says, “I draw my own conclusions and will continue in the future to draw them.” I says, “If

people want to write their inmost secrets on penny postcards, there’s nothing in the wide world

you can do about it, Uncle Rondo.”

“And if you think we’ll ever write another postcard you’re sadly mistaken,” says Mama.

“Cutting off your nose to spite your face then,” I says. “But if you’re all determined to have

no more to do with the U.S. mail, think of this: What will Stella-Rondo do now, if she wants to

tell Mr. Whitaker to come after her?”

“Wah!” says Stella-Rondo. I knew she’d cry. She had a conniption fit right there in the

kitchen.

8

“It will be interesting to see how long she holds out,” I says. “And now—I am leaving.”

“Good-bye,” says Uncle Rondo.

“Oh, I declare,” says Mama, “to think that a family of mine should quarrel on the Fourth of

July, or the day after, over Stella-Rondo leaving old Mr. Whitaker and having the sweetest little

adopted child! It looks like we’d all be glad!”

“Wah!” says Stella-Rondo, and has a fresh conniption fit.

“He left her—you mark my words,” I says. “That’s Mr. Whitaker. I know Mr. Whitaker.

After all, I knew him first. I said from the beginning he’d up and leave her. I foretold every single

thing that’s happened.”

“Where did he go?” asks Mama.

“Probably to the North Pole, if he knows what’s good for him,” I says.

But Stella-Rondo just bawled and wouldn’t say another word. She flew to her room and

slammed the door.

“Now look what you’ve gone and done, Sister,” says Mama. “You go apologize.”

“I haven’t got time, I’m leaving,” I says.

“Well, what are you waiting around for?” asks Uncle Rondo.

So I just picked up the kitchen clock and marched off, without saying “Kiss my foot” or

anything, and never did tell Stella-Rondo good- bye.

There was a nigger girl going along on a little wagon right in front.

“Nigger girl,” I says, “come help me haul these things down the hill, I’m going to live in the

post office.”

Took her nine trips in her express wagon. Uncle Rondo came out on the porch and threw

her a nickel.

And that’s the last I’ve laid eyes on any of my family or my family laid eyes on me for five

solid days and nights. Stella-Rondo may be telling the most horrible tales in the world about Mr.

Whitaker, but I haven’t heard them. As I tell everybody, I draw my own conclusions.

But oh, I like it here. It’s ideal, as I’ve been saying. You see, I’ve got everything cater-

cornered, the way I like it. Hear the radio? All the war news. Radio, sewing machine, book ends,

ironing board and that great big piano lamp—peace, that’s what I like. Butter-bean vines planted

all along the front where the strings are.

Of course, there’s not much mail. My family are naturally the main people in China Grove,

and if they prefer to vanish from the face of the earth, for all the mail they get or the mail they

write, why, I’m not going to open my mouth. Some of the folks here in town are taking up for me

and some turned against me. I know which is which. There are always people who will quit

buying stamps just to get on the right side of Papa-Daddy.

But here I am, and here I’ll stay. I want the world to know I’m happy.

And if Stella-Rondo should come to me this minute, on bended knees, and attempt to

explain the incidents of her life with Mr. Whitaker, I’d simply put my fingers in both my ears and

refuse to listen.

(1941)