Hangsaman Read Online Free PDF Page B

he died she was too old.” Mrs. Waite took the thin slices of meat and began to arrange them in the baking dish. “I remember Sundays at home,” she went on.
    â€œYou want me to hardboil eggs?” Natalie asked softly.
    Mrs. Waite thought, looking around at the kitchen as though the casserole or the lettuce had an opinion she was waiting for. Finally she said, “I guess we’d better, Natalie. Can’t ever tell how many will come.” She smiled as she went on, “Sundays at home, we never knew how many were coming. Sometimes we’d go to my grandmother’s, or to one of my sisters’. All my sisters married before I did, Natalie, there’s something for you.
They
could have told me. Or else they’d come to our house. We never knew. They were like a flock of birds—one would take off for someplace, and then the rest would follow. All big men, small women. My uncles—when I remember them I see them sitting on Sunday afternoons, sometimes in one house, sometimes in another. Take my uncle Charles; I usually remember him sitting in the red chair in our dining room—we had to bring chairs in, they’d be so many at table—or else in the old brown mohair chair he kept by the fireplace in his own house. Aunt—what was her name, Natalie? Who married Charles?”
    â€œHelen,” Natalie said.
    â€œHelen,” Mrs. Waite said. “Well, she used to hate that chair, except I always used to think then that she only made such a fuss because she knew wives always hated their husbands’ old dear things and she was afraid no one would respect her if she let him keep the chair without a fuss. Except I don’t think she ever paid much attention to doing it seriously.” She slid her knife through the piece of cooking butter on the plate, and began to slice an onion. “Fancy African masks,” she said. “Cheap dirty silver jewelry. Old blues records you wouldn’t want to know the words of if you
could
hear them. Anyway, I always remember that uncle sitting in that chair. I guess all young girls—more water there, Natalie—get to hate where they’re living because they think a husband will be better. What happens is that a husband’s the same, usually. When I met your father he had a lot of books that he said he read, and he gave me a Mexican silver bracelet instead of an engagement ring, and I looked around at my uncles sitting in their old goddam—your father taught me to say goddam, too, and a lot of words else I could tell you if I wanted, although I
do
believe I’ve outgrown
that
part of it—chairs and I thought being married was everything I wanted. Only of course it’s the same, only now it’s strangers for Sunday dinner, and your father will be sick all tomorrow if he smokes anything stronger than cigarettes. Let’s have a potato salad. I told Ethel to boil extra potatoes yesterday.”
    Natalie had discovered that by a slight pressure on a back tooth she could make a small regular stirring pain that operated as a rhythmic counterpoint to her mother’s voice; she would not for the world have told her mother that she had a cavity in her tooth, but it was a pleasant change in her body since the day before, and she enjoyed it.
    â€œIce cream,” Mrs. Waite said. “We always
used
to have ice cream.”
    â€œTell me,” the detective said insistently, leaning forward, “tell me how it was done; you may rely on my not using the information against you.”
    â€œI don’t know,” Natalie answered silently. “I don’t remember.”
    â€œI can promise you,” the detective said with great dignity, “that I am a reasonable person to confide in. I can be trusted absolutely.”
    â€œI don’t remember,” Natalie told him.
    â€œOf
course
you remember,” the detective said impatiently. “No one can live through such things and