NELL STOOD AT THE kitchen window packing the basket of eggs. She arranged eleven white eggs carefully, placing the cottonseed hulls between them and under them so that none would be broken. The last one to be put into the basket was large and brown and a little soiled. She dipped it into the pan of soap and warm water and wiped it dry with a fresh dish towel. Even then she was not pleased with the way it looked, because it was brown; all the other eggs in the basket were as white as September cotton bolls.
Behind her in the room, Myrtie was scouring the two frying pans with soapy water and a cloth dipped in sand. Nell laid down the brown egg and called Myrtie.
“Here’s another of those big brown eggs, Myrtie,” she said, pointing at the egg. “Do you have any idea where they come from? Have you seen any strange hens in the yard? There must be a visiting hen laying eggs in the chicken house.”
Myrtie laid down the frying pan and came over to the little table by the window. She picked up the large brown egg and looked at it. The egg no longer looked brown. Nell looked at the egg again, wondering why in Myrtie’s hands it had apparently changed color.
“Where do these brown eggs come from, Myrtie?” she asked. “There was one last week, and now today there’s this. It was in the basket Mr. Willis brought in from the chicken house, but he said he forgot to notice which nest he took it from.”
Myrtie turned the egg over in her hands, feeling the weight of it and measuring its enormous circumference with her fingers.
“Don’t ask me, Miss Nell,” Myrtie said, staring at the egg. “I’ve never seen a flock of Leghorns yet, though, that didn’t lay a few brown eggs, sometime or other. Looks like it just can’t be helped.”
“What do you mean, Myrtie? What on earth are you talking about? Of course Leghorns lay white eggs; this is a brown egg.”
“I’m not saying the Leghorns lay them, Miss Nell, and I’m not saying they don’t. Those old Buff Orpingtons and Plymouth Rocks and Domineckers lay funny-looking eggs, too, sometimes. I wouldn’t take on so much about finding one measly brown egg, though. I’ve never seen anybody yet, white or colored, who knew how such things happen. But I wouldn’t worry about it, Miss Nell. Brown eggs are just as good as white eggs, to my way of tasting.”
Nell turned her back on Myrtie and looked out the window until the girl had returned to the other side of the kitchen. Nell disliked to talk to Myrtie, because Myrtie pretended never to know the truth about anything. Even if she did know, she would invariably evade a straightforward answer. Myrtie would begin talking, and talk about everything under the sun from morning to night, but she would never answer a question that she could evade. Nell always forgave her, though; she knew Myrtie was not consciously evading the truth.
While the girl was scouring the pans, Nell picked up the egg again and looked at it closely. Mrs. Farrington had a flock of Dominique chickens, and she gathered in her chicken house eggs of all sizes, shapes, and colors. But that was to be expected, Mrs. Farrington had said, because she had two old roosters that were of no known name or breed. Nell had told Mrs. Farrington that some of her Dominiques were mixed-bred, and consequently they produced eggs of varying sizes, shapes, and colors; but Mrs. Farrington continued to lay all the blame on her two roosters, because, she said, they were a mixture of all breeds.
Once more Nell dipped the brown egg into the pan of water and wiped it with the fresh dish towel, but the egg remained as brown as it was at first. The egg was clean by then, but soap and water would not alter its size or change its color. It was a brown egg, and it would remain brown. Nell gave up, finally; she realized that she could never change it in any way. If she had had another egg to put into the basket in its place, she would have laid it aside and substituted a white one; but she only had a dozen, counting the brown one, and she wished to have enough to make an even exchange with Mrs. Farrington when she went over after some green garden peas.
Before she finally placed the egg in the basket with the others she glanced out the window to see where Willis was. He was sitting in the crib door shelling red seed corn into an old wooden lard pail.
“I’m going over to Mrs. Farrington’s now to exchange these eggs for some peas,” she told Myrtie. “Keep the fire going good, and put on a pan of water to boil. I’ll be back in a little while.”
She turned around and looked at Myrtie.
“Suppose you mash the potatoes today, for a change, Myrtie. Mr. Willis likes them that way.”
“Are you going to take that big egg, Miss Nell?” Myrtie asked, looking down at it in the basket with the eleven white Leghorns.
“Certainly,” she said. “Why?”
“Mrs. Farrington will be surprised to see it in with all those white ones, won’t she, Miss Nell?”
“Well, what if she does see it?” Nell asked impatiently.
“Nothing, Miss Nell,” Myrtie said. “But she might want to know where it came from. She knows we’ve got Leghorn hens, and she might think one of her Domineckers laid it.”
“I can’t help that,” Nell said, turning away. “And, besides, she should keep her Dominiques at home if she doesn’t want them to lay eggs in somebody else’s chicken house.”
“That’s right, Miss Nell,” Myrtie said. “She sure ought to do that. She ought to keep her Domineckers at home.”
Nell was annoyed by the girl’s comments. It was none of Myrtie’s business, anyway. Myrtie was getting to be impertinent, and she was forgetting that she was a hired servant in the house. Nell left the kitchen determined to treat Myrtie more coldly after that. She could not allow a colored cook to tell her what to do and what not to do.
Willis was sitting in the crib door shelling the red seed corn. He glanced up when Nell came down the back steps, and looked at her. He stopped shelling corn for a moment to wipe away the white flakes of husk that clung to his eyes.
“I’m going over to Mrs. Farrington’s now and exchange a basket of eggs for some green peas, Willis,” she said. “I’ll not be gone long.”
“Maybe she won’t swap with you today,” Willis said. He stopped and looked up at her through the thin cloud of flying husk that hovered around him. “How do you know she will want to take eggs for peas today, Nell?”
“Don’t be foolish, Willis,” she said, smiling at him; “why wouldn’t she take eggs in exchange today?”
“She might get to wondering where that big brown egg came from,” he said, laughing. “She might think it is an egg one of her hens laid.” Nell stopped, but she did not turn around. She waited, looking towards the house.
“You’re as bad as Myrtie, Willis.”
“In which way is that?”
The moment he spoke, she turned quickly and looked at him. He was bending over to pick up an ear of seed corn.
“I didn’t mean to say that, Willis. Please forget what I said. I didn’t mean anything like that.”
“Like what?”
“Nothing,” she said, relieved. “It wasn’t anything; I’ve even forgotten what it was I said. Good-by.”
“Good-by,” he said, looking after her, wondering.
Nell turned and walked quickly out of the yard and went around the corner of the house towards the road. The Farrington house was half a mile away, but by taking the path through the cotton field it was two or three hundred yards nearer. She crossed the road and entered the field, walking quickly along the path with the basket of eggs on her arm.
Halfway to the Farringtons’ Nell turned around and looked back to see if Willis was still sitting in the crib door shelling seed corn. She did not know why she stopped and looked back, but even though she could not see him there or anywhere else in the yard, she went on towards the Farringtons’ without thinking of Willis again.
Mrs. Farrington was sitting on the back porch peeling turnips when Nell turned the corner of the house and walked across the yard. There was a bucket of turnips beside Mrs. Farrington’s rocking chair, and long purple peelings were lying scattered on the porch floor around her, twisted into shapes like apple peelings when they were tossed over the shoulder. Nell ran up the steps and picked up the longest peeling she could find; she picked up the peeling even before she spoke to Mrs. Farrington.
“Sakes alive, Nell,” Mrs. Farrington said; “why are you throwing turnip peelings over your shoulder? Doesn’t that good-for-nothing husband of yours love you any more?”
Nell dropped the turnip peeling, and, picking it up again, tore it into short pieces and threw them into the bucket. She blushed and sat down in the chair beside Mrs. Farrington.
“Of course, he loves me,” Nell said. “I suppose I did that so many times when I was a little girl that I still have the habit.”
“You mean it’s because you haven’t grown up yet, Nell,” the woman said, chuckling to herself. “I used to be just like that myself; but, sakes alive, it doesn’t last, always, girl.”
Both of them laughed, and looked away, one from the other. Over across the cotton field a cloud of white dust hung close to the earth. Mr. Farrington and the colored men were planting cotton, and the earth was so dry it rose up in the air when it was disturbed by the mules’ hooves and the cotton planters. There was no wind to carry the dust away, and it hung over the men and mules, hiding them from sight.
Presently Mrs. Farrington dropped a peeled turnip into the pan and folded her hands in her lap. She looked at Nell, noting her neatly combed hair and her clean gingham frock and white hands. Mrs. Farrington turned away again after that and gazed once more at the cloud of dust where her husband was at work.
“Maybe you and Willis will always be like that,” she said. “Seems like you and Willis are still in love with each other. As long as he stays at home where he belongs and doesn’t run off at night, it’s a pretty sure sign he isn’t getting ready to chase after another woman. Sakes alive, men can’t always be depended upon to stay at home at night, though; they go riding off when you are least looking for them to.”
Nell sat up, startled by what Mrs. Farrington had said, terrified by the directness of her comments.
“Of course, Willis wouldn’t do a thing like that,” she said confidently. “I know he wouldn’t. Willis wouldn’t do a thing like that. That’s impossible, Mrs. Farrington.”
Mrs. Farrington glanced at Nell, and then once more she looked across the field where the planting was being done. The cloud of white dust followed the men and mules, covering them.
“Seems like men are always saying something about being compelled to go to Macon on business, and even up to Atlanta sometimes,” she said, ignoring Nell. “And then there are the times when they say they have to go to town at night. Seems like they are always going off to town at night.”
Several Dominique hens came from under the porch and stopped in the yard to scratch on the hard white sand. They scratched listlessly; they went through the motions of scratching as if they knew of nothing else to do. They bent their long necks and looked down at the chicken-scrawls they had made with their claws, and they walked away aimlessly, neither surprised nor angry at not having unearthed a worm to devour. One of them began singing in the heat, drooping her wings until the tips of them dragged on the sand. The other hens paid no attention to her, strolling away without interest in the doleful music.
“You have pretty chickens, Mrs. Farrington,” Nell said, watching the Dominiques stroll across the yard and sit down in the shaded dust holes as though they were nests.
“They’re nothing but Domineckers,” she said; “sakes alive, a body can’t call them much of a breed, but they do get around to laying an egg or two once in a while.”
Nell glanced down at the basket of eggs in her lap, covering the brown egg with her hand. She looked quickly at Mrs. Farrington to see if she had noticed what she had done.
“How are your Leghorns laying now, Nell?” she asked.
“Very well. Willis gathered sixteen eggs yesterday.”
“My Domineckers seem to be taking a spell of resting. I only gathered two eggs yesterday, and that’s not enough for a hungry man and a yard full of blacks. Sakes alive, we were saying only last night that we wished you would bring over some eggs in a day or two. And now here you are with them. Half an hour’s prayer couldn’t have done better.”
“I thought you might let me have some green peas for dinner,” Nell said, lifting the basket and setting it on the floor. “Willis likes green peas at this time of year, and ours haven’t begun to bear yet.”
“You’re as welcome to as many as you want,” Mrs. Farrington said. “Just walk into the kitchen, Nell, and look on the big table and you’ll find a bushel basket of them. Help yourself to all you think you and Willis will want. We’ve got more than we can use. Sakes alive, there’ll be another bushel ready for picking tomorrow morning, too.”
Nell went into the kitchen and placed the eleven Leghorn eggs and the big brown one in a pan. She filled the basket with green peas and came back to the porch, closing the screen noiselessly behind her.
“Sit down, Nell,” Mrs, Farrington said, “and tell me what’s been happening. Sakes alive, I sit here all day and never hear a word of what’s going on.”
“Why, I haven’t heard of anything new,” Nell said.
“What’s Willis doing now?”
“He’s getting ready to plant corn. He was shelling the seed when I left home. He should be ready to begin planting this afternoon. The planter broke down yesterday, and he had to send to Macon for a new spoke chain. It should be here in the mail today.”
“Myrtie is still there to help you with the house, isn’t she?”
“Yes, Myrtie is still there.”
The hens lying in the dust holes in the shade of the sycamore tree stood up and flapped their wings violently, beating the dust from their feathers. They stretched, one leg after the other, and flapped their wings a second time. One of them spread her legs, bending her knees as if she were getting ready to squat on the ground, and scratched the hard white sand five or six times in quick succession. The other hens stood and watched her while she stretched her long neck and looked down at the marks she had made; and then, wiping her beak on her leg as one whets a knife blade, she turned and waddled back across the yard and under the porch out of sight. The other hens followed her, singing in the heat.
“Couldn’t you find a black woman to help you with the house?” Mrs. Farrington asked.
“A black woman?” Nell said. “Why, Myrtie is colored.”
“She’s colored all right,” Mrs. Farrington said; “but, sakes alive, Nell, she isn’t black. Myrtie is yellow.”
“Well, that’s all right, isn’t it?” Nell asked. “Myrtie is yellow, and she is a fairly good cook. I don’t know where I could find a better one for the pay.”
“I reckon I’d heap rather have a black girl and a poor cook, than to have a yellow girl and the finest cook in the whole country.”
Nell glanced quickly at Mrs. Farrington, but her head was turned, and she did not look at Nell.
There was a long silence between them until finally Nell felt that she must know what Mrs. Farrington was talking about.
One of the Dominiques suddenly appeared on the bottom step. She came hopping up to the porch, a step at a time. When she reached the last one, Mrs. Farrington said, “Shoo!” The hen flew to the yard and went back under the porch. “You don’t mean —”
Mrs. Farrington began rocking slowly, backward and forward. She gazed steadily across the field where her husband was planting cotton with the colored men.
“You don’t mean Willis and —”
One of the roosters strutted across the yard, his eye first upon the hens under the porch and next upon the two women, and stopped midway in the yard to stand and fix his eye upon Mrs. Farrington and Nell. He stood jerking his head from side to side, his hanging scarlet comb blinding his left eye, while he listened to the squeaking of Mrs. Farrington’s chair. After a while he continued across the yard and went out of sight behind the smokehouse.
“Mrs. Farrington, Willis wouldn’t do anything like that!” Nell said indignantly.
“Like what?” Mrs. Farrington asked, “Sakes alive, Nell, I didn’t say he would do anything.”
“I know you didn’t say it, Mrs. Farrington, but I thought you said it. I couldn’t help thinking that you did say it.”
“Well, that’s different,” she replied, much relieved. “I wouldn’t want you to go telling Willis I did say it. Menfolks never understand what a woman means, anyway, and when they are told that a woman says something about them, they sometimes fly off the handle something awful.”
Nell got up and stood beside the chair. She wished she could run down the steps and along the path towards home without another second’s delay, but she knew she could not jump up and leave Mrs. Farrington like that, after what had been said. She would have to pretend that she was not in such a great hurry to get home.
‘You re not going so soon, are you, Nell? Why, sakes alive, it seems like you only got here two or three minutes ago, Nell.”
“I know,” she said, “but it’s getting late, and I’ve got to go home and get these peas ready for dinner. I’ll be back to see you soon.”
She walked carelessly down the steps. Mrs. Farrington got up and followed her across the hard yard. When they reached the beginning of the path that led across the field, Mrs. Farrington stopped. She never went any farther than that.
“I’m afraid I must hurry home now and hull the peas in time for dinner,” Nell said, backing down the path. “I’ll be back again in a few days, Mrs. Farrington. Thank you so much for the peas. Willis has wanted some for the past week or longer.”
“It’s as fair an exchange as I can offer for the Leghorn eggs,” she said, laughing. “Because if there’s anything I like better than those white Leghorn eggs, I don’t know what it is. I get so tired of eating my old Dominecker’s brown eggs I sometimes say I hope I may never see another one. Maybe I’ll be asking you for a setting of them some day soon.”
“Good-by,” Nell said, backing farther and farther away. She turned and walked several steps. “I’ll bring you another basket soon, Mrs. Farrington.”
It seemed as if she would never reach the house, even though it was only half a mile away. She could not run, because Mrs. Farrington was in the yard behind her watching, and she could not walk slowly, because she had to get home as soon as possible. She walked with her eyes on the path in front of her, forcing herself to keep from looking up at the house. She knew that if she did raise her eyes and look at it, she would never be able to keep herself from running. If she did that, Mrs. Farrington would see her.
It was not until she had at last reached the end of the path that she was able to look backward. Mrs. Farrington had left her yard, and Nell ran across the road and around to the back of the house.
Willis was nowhere within sight. She looked first at the crib where she had hoped she would find him, but he was not there, and the crib door was closed and locked. She looked down at the barn, but he was not there, either. When she glanced hastily over the fields, she was still unable to see him anywhere.
She stopped at the bottom step on the back porch. There was no sound within the house that she could hear, and not even the sound of Myrtie’s footsteps reached her ears. The place seemed to be entirely deserted, and yet she knew that could not be, because only half an hour before when she left to go to Mrs. Farrington’s to exchange eggs, Willis was sitting in the crib door shelling seed corn, and Myrtie was in the kitchen scouring the two frying pans.
Nell’s hands went out and searched for the railing that led up the porch steps. Her hands could not find it, and her eyes would not let her see it.
The thought of Mrs. Farrington came back to her again and again. Mrs. Farrington, sitting on her own back porch, talking. Mrs. Farrington, sitting in her rocking chair, looking. Mrs. Farrington, peeling purple-top turnips, talking about yellow girls.
Nell felt deathly sick. She felt as if she had been stricken with an illness that squeezed the core of her body. Deep down within herself, she was deathly ill. A pain that began by piercing her skull struck downward and downward until it became motionless in her stomach. It remained there, gnawing and biting, eating the organs of her body and drinking the flow of her blood. She sank limp and helpless upon the back porch steps. Although she did not know where she was, she could still see Mrs. Farrington. Mrs. Farrington, in her rocking chair, looking. Mrs. Farrington, peeling purple-top turnips, talking about yellow girls.
Nell did not know how much later it was when she opened her eyes. The day was the color of the red seed corn Willis had been shelling when she last saw him sitting in the crib door, and it swam in a sea so wide that she almost cried out in fear when she saw it. Slowly she remembered how she had come to be where she was. She got to her feet weakly, holding to the railing for support.
Stumbling up the steps and across the porch, she flung open the screen door and went into the kitchen. Myrtie was standing beside the table mashing the boiled Irish potatoes with a long fork that had seven tines. Myrtie looked up when Nell ran in, but she did not have an opportunity to speak. Nell ran headlong through the dining room and on into the front room. Myrtie looked surprised to see her running.
Nell paused a moment in the doorway, looking at Willis, at the room, at the daybed, at the floor, at the rugs, at the open door that led into their room. She stood looking at everything she could see. She looked at the pillows on the daybed, at the rugs on the floor, at the chairs against the wall, at the counterpane on their bed. Remembering, she looked at the carpet in their room. Willis sat in front of her reading the Macon Telegraph that had just come in the mail, and he was calmly smoking his pipe. She glanced once more at the daybed, at the pillows arranged upon it, and at the rug in front of it. Running, she went to their room and ran her hands over the counterpane of the bed. She picked up the pillows, feeling them, and laid them down again. She ran back into the other room where Willis was.
Willis looked up at her.
Nell ran and fell on her knees in front of him, forcing her body between his legs and locking her arms around him. She pressed her feverish face against his cool cheeks and closed her eyes tightly. She forced herself tightly to him, holding him with all her might.
“Did Mrs. Farrington exchange with you?” he asked. “I’ll bet a pretty that she had something to say about that big brown egg in a basketful of Leghorns.”
Nell felt her body shake convulsively, as if she were shivering with cold. She knew she had no control over herself now.
“Look here,” he said, throwing aside the Telegraph and lifting her head and looking into her eyes. “I know where that brown egg came from now. I remember all about it. There was one of Mrs. Farrington’s old Dominecker hens over here yesterday morning. I saw her scratching in the yard, and she acted like she didn’t give a cuss whether she clawed up a worm or not. She would scratch awhile and then walk off without even looking to see if she had turned up a worm.”
Nell felt herself shaking again, but she did not attempt to control herself. If she could only lie there close to Willis with her arms around him, she did not care how much she shivered. As long as she was there, she had Willis; when she got up and walked out of the room, she would never again be that certain.
(First published in Story)