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Short Story
6

A&P

by john
updike

In walks these three
girls in nothing but bathing suits. I'm in the
third check-out slot, with my back to the door,
so I don't see them until they're over by the
bread. The one that caught my eye first was the
one in the plaid green two-piece. She was a
chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet broad
soft-looking can with those two crescents of
white just under it, where the sun never seems
to hit, at the top of the backs of her legs. I
stood there with my hand on a box of HiHo
crackers trying to remember if I rang it up or
not. I ring it up again and the customer starts
giving me hell. She's one of these
cash-register-watchers, a witch about fifty with
rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows, and I
knowit made her day to trip me up. She'd been
watching cash registers forty years and probably
never seen a mistake before.
By the time I got her
feathers smoothed and her goodies into a bag --
she gives me alittle snort in passing, if she'd
been born at the right time they would have
burned her over in Salem -- by the time I get
her on her way the girls had circled around the
bread and were coming back, without a pushcart,
back my way along the counters, in the aisle
between the check-outs and the Special bins.
They didn't even have shoes on. There was this
chunky one, with the two-piece -- it was bright
green and the seams on the bra were still sharp
and her belly was still pretty pale so I guessed
she just got it (the suit) -- there was this
one, with one of those chubby berry-faces, the
lips all bunched together under her nose, this
one, and a tall one, with black hair that hadn't
quite frizzed right, and one of these sunburns
right across under the eyes, and a chin that was
too long -- you know, the kind of girl other
girls think is very "striking" and "attractive"
but never quite makes it, as they very well
know, which is why they like her so much -- and
then the third one, that wasn't quite so tall.
She was the queen. She kind of led them, the
other two peeking around and making their
shoulders round. She didn't look around, not
this queen, she just walked straight on slowly,
on these long white prima donna legs. She came
down a little hard on her heels, as if she
didn't walk in her bare feet that much, putting
down her heels and then letting the weight move
along to her toes as if she was testing the
floor with every step, putting a little
deliberate extra action into it. You never know
for sure how girls' minds work (do you really
think it's a mind in there or just a little buzz
like a bee in a glassjar?) but you got the idea
she had talked the other two into coming in here
with her, and now she was showing them how to do
it, walk slow and hold yourself straight.
She had on a kind of
dirty-pink - - beige maybe, I don't know --
bathing suit with a little nubble all over it
and, what got me, the straps were down. They
were off her shoulders looped loose around the
cool tops of her arms, and I guess as a result
the suit had slipped a little on her, so all
around the top of the cloth there was this
shining rim. If it hadn't been there you
wouldn't have known there could have been
anything whiter than those shoulders. With the
straps pushed off, there was nothing between the
top of the suit and the top of her head except
just her, this clean bare plane of the top of
her chest down from the shoulder bones like a
dented sheet of metal tilted in the light. I
mean, it was more than pretty.
She had sort of oaky hair
that the sun and salt had bleached, done up in a
bun that was unravelling, and a kind of prim
face. Walking into the A & P with your
straps down, I suppose it's the only kind of
face you can have. She held her head so
high her neck, coming up out o fthose white
shoulders, looked kind of stretched, but I
didn't mind. The longer her neck was, the more
of her there was.

She must have felt in the
corner of her eye me and over my shoulder
Stokesie in the second slot watching, but she
didn't tip. Not this queen. She kept her eyes
moving across the racks, and stopped, and turned
so slow it made my stomach rub the inside of my
apron, and buzzed to the other two, who kind of
huddled against her for relief, and they all
three of them went up the
cat-and-dog-food-breakfast-cereal-macaroni-ri
ce-raisins-seasonings-spreads-spaghetti-soft
drinks- rackers-and- cookies aisle. From the
third slot I look straight up this aisle to the
meat counter, and I watched them all the way.

The
fat one with the tan sort of fumbled with the
cookies, but on second thought she put the
packages back. The sheep pushing their carts
down the aisle -- the girls were walking against
the usual traffic (not that we have one-way
signs or anything) -- were pretty hilarious. You
could see them, when Queenie's white shoulders
dawned on them, kind of jerk, or hop, or hiccup,
but their eyes snapped back to their own baskets
and on they pushed. I bet you could set off
dynamite in an A & P and the people would by
and large keep reaching and checking oatmeal off
their lists and muttering "Let me see, there was
a third thing, began with A, asparagus, no, ah,
yes, applesauce!" or whatever it is they do
mutter. But there was no doubt, this jiggled
them. A few house-slaves in pin curlers even
looked around after pushing their carts past to
make sure what they had seen was correct.

You know, it's one thing
to have a girl in a bathing suit down on the
beach, where what with the glare nobody can look
at each other much anyway, and another thing in
the cool of the A & P, under the fluorescent
lights, against all those stacked packages, with
her feet paddling along naked over our
checkerboard green-and-cream rubber-tile floor.

"Oh Daddy," Stokesie said
beside me. "I feel so faint."
"Darling," I said. "Hold
me tight." Stokesie's married, with two babies
chalked up on his fuselage already, but as far
as I can tell that's the only difference. He's
twenty-two, and I was nineteen this April.
"Is it done?" he asks,
the responsible married man finding his voice. I
forgot to say he thinks he's going to be manager
some sunny day, maybe in 1990 when it's called
the Great Alexandrov and Petrooshki Tea Company
or something. What he meant was, our
town is five miles from a beach, with a big
summer colony out on the Point, but we're right
in the middle of town, and the women generally
put on a shirt or shorts or something before
they get out of the car into the street. And
anyway these are usually women with six children
and varicose veins mapping their legs and
nobody, including them, could care less. As I
say, we're right in the middle of town, and if
you stand at our front doors you can see two
banks and the Congregational church and the
newspaper store and three real-estate offices
and about twenty-seven old free-loaders tearing
up Central Street because the sewer broke again.
It's not as if we're on the Cape; we're north of
Boston and there's people in this town haven't
seen the ocean for twenty years.
The girls had reached the
meat counter and were asking McMahon something.
He pointed, they pointed, and they shuffled out
of sight behind a pyramid of Diet Delight
peaches. All that was left for us to see was old
McMahon patting his mouth and looking after them
sizing up their joints. Poor kids, I began to
feel sorry for them, they couldn't help it.
Now here comes the sad
part of the story, at:least my family says it's
sad but I don't think it's sad myself. The
store's pretty empty, it being Thursday
afternoon, so there was nothing much to do
except lean on the register and wait for the
girls to show up again. The whole store was like
a pinball machine and I didn't know which tunnel
they'd come out of. After a while they come
around out of the far aisle, around the light
bulbs, records at discount of the Caribbean Six
or Tony Martin Sings or some such gunk you
wonder they waste the wax on, sixpacks of candy
bars, and plastic toys done up in cellophane
that faIl apart when a kid looks at them anyway.
Around they come, Queenie still leading the way,
and holding a little gray jar in her hand. Slots
Three through Seven are unmanned and I could see
her wondering between Stokes and me, but
Stokesie with his usual luck draws an old party
in baggy gray pants who stumbles up with four
giant cans of pineapple juice (what do these
bums do with all that pineapple juice'
I've often asked myself) so the girls come to
me. Queenie puts down the jar and I take it into
my fingers icy cold. Kingfish Fancy Herring
Snacks in Pure Sour Cream: 49¢. Now her hands
are empty, not a ring or a bracelet, bare as God
made them, and I wonder where the money's coming
from. Still with that prim look she lifts a
folded dollar bill out of the hollow at the
center of her nubbled pink top.

The
jar went heavy in my hand. Really, I thought
that was so cute. Then everybody's luck
begins to run out. Lengel comes in from haggling
with a truck full of cabbages on the lot and is
about to scuttle into that door marked MANAGER
behind which he hides all day when the girls
touch his eye. Lengel's pretty dreary, teaches
Sunday school and the rest, but he doesn't miss
that much. He comes over and says, "Girls, this
isn't the beach." Queenie blushes, though
maybe it's just a brush of sunburn I was
noticing for the first time, now that she was so
close. "My mother asked me to pick up a jar of
herring snacks." Her voice kind of startled me,
the way voices do when you see the people first,
coming out so flat and dumb yet kind of tony,
too, the way it ticked over "pick up" and
"snacks." All of a sudden I slid right down her
voice into her living room. Her father and the
other men were standing around in ice-cream
coats and bow ties and the women were in sandals
picking up herring snacks on toothpicks off a
big plate and they were all holding drinks the
color of water with olives and sprigs of mint in
them. When my parents have somebody over they
get lemonade and if it's a real racy affair
Schlitz in tall glasses with "They'll Do It
Every Time" cartoons stencilled on.

"That's all right,"
Lengel said. "But this isn't the beach." His
repeating this struck me as funny, as if it
hadjust occurred to him, and he had been
thinking all these years the A & P was a
great big dune and he was the head lifeguard. He
didn't like my smiling -- -as I say he doesn't
miss much -- but he concentrates on giving the
girls that sad Sunday- school-superintendent
stare. Queenie's blush is no
sunburn now, and the plump one in plaid, that I
liked better from the back -- a really sweet can
-- pipes up, "We weren't doing any shopping. We
just came in for the one thing."
"That makes no
difference," Lengel tells her, and I could see
from the way his eyes went that he hadn't
noticed she was wearing a two-piece before. "We
want you decently dressed when you come in
here."

"We are decent," Queenie
says suddenly, her lower lip pushing, getting
sore now that she remembers her place, a place
from which the crowd that runs the A & P
must look pretty crummy. Fancy Herring Snacks
flashed in her very blue eyes.
"Girls, I don't want to
argue with you. After this come in here with
your shoulders covered. It's our policy." He
turns his back. That's policy for you. Policy is
what the kingpins want. What the others want is
juvenile delinquency. All this while, the
customers had been showing up with their carts
but, you know, sheep, seeing a scene, they had
all bunched up on Stokesie, who shook open a
paper bag as gently as peeling a peach, not
wanting to miss a word. I could feel in the
silence everybody getting nervous, most of all
Lengel, who asks me, "Sammy, have you rung up
this purchase?" I thought and said "No"
but it wasn't about that I was thinking. I go
through the punches, 4, 9, GROC, TOT -- it's
more complicated than you think, and after you
do it often enough, it begins to make a lttle
song, that you hear words to, in my case "Hello
(bing) there, you (gung) hap-py
pee-pul (splat)"-the splat being the
drawer flying out. I uncrease the bill, tenderly
as you may imagine, it just having come from
between the two smoothest scoops of vanilla I
had ever known were there, and pass a half and a
penny into her narrow pink palm, and nestle the
herrings in a bag and twist its neck and hand it
over, all the time thinking.

The girls, and who'd
blame them, are in a hurry to get out, so I say
"I quit" to Lengel quick enough for them to
hear, hoping they'll stop and watch me, their
unsuspected hero. They keep right on going, into
the electric eye; the door flies open and they
flicker across the lot to their car, Queenie and
Plaid and Big Tall Goony-Goony (not that as raw
material she was so bad), leaving me with Lengel
and a kink in his eyebrow.

"Did you say something,
Sammy?"

"I said I quit."

"I thought you did."

"You didn't have to
embarrass them."

"It was they who were
embarrassing us."

I started to
say something that came out "Fiddle-de-doo."
It's a saying of my grand- mother's, and I know
she would have been pleased.

"I don't think you know
what you're saying," Lengel said.

"I know you don't," I
said. "But I do." I pull the bow at the back of
my apron and start shrugging it off my
shoulders. A couple customers that had been
heading for my slot begin to knock against each
other, like scared pigs in a chute.

Lengel sighs and begins
to look very patient and old and gray. He's been
a friend of my parents for years. "Sammy, you
don't want to do this to your Mom and Dad," he
tells me. It's true, I don't. But it seems to me
that once you begin a gesture it's fatal not to
go through with it. I fold the apron, "Sammy"
stitched in red on the pocket, and put it on the
counter, and drop the bow tie on top of it. The
bow tie is theirs, if you've ever wondered.
"You'll feel this for the rest of your life,"
Lengel says, and I know that's true, too, but
remembering how he made that pretty girl blush
makes me so scrunchy inside I punch the No Sale
tab and the machine whirs "pee-pul" and the
drawer splats out. One advantage to this scene
taking place in summer, I can follow this up
with a clean exit, there's no fumbling around
getting your coat and galoshes, I just saunter
into the electric eye in my white shirt that my
mother ironed the night before, and the door
heaves itself open, and outside the sunshine is
skating around on the asphalt.

I look around for my
girls, but they're gone, of course. There wasn't
anybody but some young married screaming with
her children about some candy they didn't get by
the door of a powder-blue Falcon station wagon.
Looking back in the big windows, over the bags
of peat moss and aluminum lawn furniture stacked
on the pavement, I could see Lengel in my place
in the slot, checking the sheep through. His
face was dark gray and his back stiff, as if
he'djust had an injection of iron, and my
stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the
world was going to be to me hereafter.

THE
SECRET LIFE OF WALTER
MITTY

by James
Thurber

"WE'RE
going through!" The Commander's voice was like
thin ice breaking. He wore his full-dress
uniform, with the heavily braided white cap
pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye. "We
can't make it, sir. It's spoiling for a
hurricane, if you ask me." "I'm not asking you,
Lieutenant Berg," said the Commander. "Throw on
the power lights! Rev her up to 8500! We're
going through!" The pounding of the cylinders
increased:
ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The
Commander stared at the ice forming on the pilot
window. He walked over and twisted a row of
complicated dials. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!"
he shouted. "Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!"
repeated Lieutenant Berg. "Full strength in No.
3 turret!" shouted the Commander. "Full strength
in No. 3 turret!" The crew, bending to their
various tasks in the huge, hurtling
eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each
other and grinned. "The Old Man'll get us
through," they said to one another. "The Old Man
ain't afraid of hell!" . . .

"Not so
fast! You're driving too fast!" said Mrs. Mitty.
"What are you driving so fast for?"

"Hmm?" said Walter Mitty. He looked at
his wife, in the seat beside him, with shocked
astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar,
like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a
crowd. "You were up to fifty-five," she said.
"You know I don't like to go more than forty.
You were up to fifty-five." Walter Mitty drove
on toward Waterbury in silence, the roaring of
the SN202 through the worst storm in twenty
years of Navy flying fading in the remote,
intimate airways of his mind. "You're tensed up
again," said Mrs. Mitty. "It's one of your days.
I wish you'd let Dr. Renshaw look you over."

Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of
the building where his wife went to have her
hair done. "Remember to get those overshoes
while I'm having my hair done," she said. "I
don't need overshoes," said Mitty. She put her
mirror back into her bag. "We've been all
through that," she said, getting out of the car.
"You're not a young man any longer." He raced
the engine a little. "Why don't you wear your
gloves? Have you lost your gloves?" Walter Mitty
reached in a pocket and brought out the gloves.
He put them on, but after she had turned and
gone into the building and he had driven on to a
red light, he took them off again. "Pick it up,
brother!" snapped a cop as the light changed,
and Mitty hastily pulled on his gloves and
lurched ahead. He drove around the streets
aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the
hospital on his way to the parking lot.

. . . "It's the millionaire
banker, Wellington McMillan," said the pretty
nurse. "Yes?" said Walter Mitty, removing his
gloves slowly. "Who has the case?" "Dr. Renshaw
and Dr. Benbow, but there are two specialists
here, Dr. Remington from New York and Dr.
Pritchard-Mitford from London. He flew over." A
door opened down a long, cool corridor and Dr.
Renshaw came out. He looked distraught and
haggard. "Hello, Mitty," he said. `'We're having
the devil's own time with McMillan, the
millionaire banker and close personal friend of
Roosevelt. Obstreosis of the ductal tract.
Tertiary. Wish you'd take a look at him." "Glad
to," said Mitty.

In the operating room
there were whispered introductions: "Dr.
Remington, Dr. Mitty. Dr. Pritchard-Mitford, Dr.
Mitty." "I've read your book on
streptothricosis," said Pritchard-Mitford,
shaking hands. "A brilliant performance, sir."
"Thank you," said Walter Mitty. "Didn't know you
were in the States, Mitty," grumbled Remington.
"Coals to Newcastle, bringing Mitford and me up
here for a tertiary." "You are very kind," said
Mitty. A huge, complicated machine, connected to
the operating table, with many tubes and wires,
began at this moment to go
pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. "The new anesthetizer
is giving away!" shouted an intern. "There is no
one in the East who knows how to fix it!"
"Quiet, man!" said Mitty, in a low, cool voice.
He sprang to the machine, which was now going
pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep . He began
fingering delicately a row of glistening dials.
"Give me a fountain pen!" he snapped. Someone
handed him a fountain pen. He pulled a faulty
piston out of the machine and inserted the pen
in its place. "That will hold for ten minutes,"
he said. "Get on with the operation. A nurse
hurried over and whispered to Renshaw, and Mitty
saw the man turn pale. "Coreopsis has set in,"
said Renshaw nervously. "If you would take over,
Mitty?" Mitty looked at him and at the craven
figure of Benbow, who drank, and at the grave,
uncertain faces of the two great specialists.
"If you wish," he said. They slipped a white
gown on him, he adjusted a mask and drew on thin
gloves; nurses handed him shining . . .

"Back it up, Mac!! Look out for that
Buick!" Walter Mitty jammed on the brakes.
"Wrong lane, Mac," said the parking-lot
attendant, looking at Mitty closely. "Gee. Yeh,"
muttered Mitty. He began cautiously to back out
of the lane marked "Exit Only." "Leave her sit
there," said the attendant. "I'll put her away."
Mitty got out of the car. "Hey, better leave the
key." "Oh," said Mitty, handing the man the
ignition key. The attendant vaulted into the
car, backed it up with insolent skill, and put
it where it belonged.

They're so damn
cocky, thought Walter Mitty, walking along Main
Street; they think they know everything. Once he
had tried to take his chains off, outside New
Milford, and he had got them wound around the
axles. A man had had to come out in a wrecking
car and unwind them, a young, grinning
garageman. Since then Mrs. Mitty always made him
drive to a garage to have the chains taken off.
The next time, he thought, I'll wear my right
arm in a sling; they won't grin at me then. I'll
have my right arm in a sling and they'll see I
couldn't possibly take the chains off myself. He
kicked at the slush on the sidewalk.
"Overshoes," he said to himself, and he began
looking for a shoe store.

When he came out into the
street again, with the overshoes in a box under
his arm, Walter Mitty began to wonder what the
other thing was his wife had told him to get.
She had told him, twice before they set out from
their house for Waterbury. In a way he hated
these weekly trips to town--he was always
getting something wrong. Kleenex, he thought,
Squibb's, razor blades? No. Tooth paste,
toothbrush, bicarbonate, Carborundum, initiative
and referendum? He gave it up. But she would
remember it. "Where's the what's-its- name?" she
would ask. "Don't tell me you forgot the
what's-its-name." A newsboy went by shouting
something about the Waterbury trial.

. .
. "Perhaps this will refresh your memory." The
District Attorney suddenly thrust a heavy
automatic at the quiet figure on the witness
stand. "Have you ever seen this before?'' Walter
Mitty took the gun and examined it expertly.
"This is my Webley-Vickers 50.80," ho said
calmly. An excited buzz ran around the
courtroom. The Judge rapped for order. "You are
a crack shot with any sort of firearms, I
believe?" said the District Attorney,
insinuatingly. "Objection!" shouted Mitty's
attorney. "We have shown that the defendant
could not have fired the shot. We have shown
that he wore his right arm in a sling on the
night of the fourteenth of July." Walter Mitty
raised his hand briefly and the bickering
attorneys were stilled. "With any known make of
gun," he said evenly, "I could have killed
Gregory Fitzhurst at three hundred feet with my
left hand." Pandemonium broke loose in the
courtroom. A woman's scream rose above the
bedlam and suddenly a lovely, dark-haired girl
was in Walter Mitty's arms. The District
Attorney struck at her savagely. Without rising
from his chair, Mitty let the man have it on the
point of the chin. "You miserable cur!" . . .

"Puppy biscuit," said Walter Mitty. He
stopped walking and the buildings of Waterbury
rose up out of the misty courtroom and
surrounded him again. A woman who was passing
laughed. "He said 'Puppy biscuit,'" she said to
her companion. "That man said 'Puppy biscuit' to
himself." Walter Mitty hurried on. He went into
an A. & P., not the first one he came to but
a smaller one farther up the street. "I want
some biscuit for small, young dogs," he said to
the clerk. "Any special brand, sir?" The
greatest pistol shot in the world thought a
moment. "It says 'Puppies Bark for It' on the
box," said Walter Mitty.

His wife would
be through at the hairdresser's in fifteen
minutes' Mitty saw in looking at his watch,
unless they had trouble drying it; sometimes
they had trouble drying it. She didn't like to
get to the hotel first, she would want him to be
there waiting for her as usual. He found a big
leather chair in the lobby, facing a window, and
he put the overshoes and the puppy biscuit on
the floor beside it. He picked up an old copy of
Liberty and sank down into the chair. "Can
Germany Conquer the World Through the Air?"
Walter Mitty looked at the pictures of bombing
planes and of ruined streets.

. . . "The
cannonading has got the wind up in young
Raleigh, sir," said the sergeant. Captain Mitty
looked up at him through tousled hair. "Get him
to bed," he said wearily, "with the others. I'll
fly alone." "But you can't, sir," said the
sergeant anxiously. "It takes two men to handle
that bomber and the Archies are pounding hell
out of the air. Von Richtman's circus is between
here and Saulier." "Somebody's got to get that
ammunition dump," said Mitty. "I'm going over.
Spot of brandy?" He poured a drink for the
sergeant and one for himself. War thundered and
whined around the dugout and battered at the
door. There was a rending of wood and splinters
flew through the room. "A bit of a near thing,"
said Captain Mitty carelessly. 'The box barrage
is closing in," said the sergeant. "We only live
once, Sergeant," said Mitty, with his faint,
fleeting smile. "Or do we?" He poured another
brandy and tossed it off. "I never see a man
could hold his brandy like you, sir," said the
sergeant. "Begging your pardon, sir." Captain
Mitty stood up and strapped on his huge
Webley-Vickers automatic. "It's forty kilometers
through hell, sir," said the sergeant. Mitty
finished one last brandy. "After all," he said
softly, "what isn't?" The pounding of the cannon
increased; there was the rat-tat-tatting of
machine guns, and from somewhere came the
menacing pocketa-pocketa-pocketa of the new
flame-throwers. Walter Mitty walked to the door
of the dugout humming "Aupres de Ma Blonde." He
turned and waved to the sergeant. "Cheerio!" he
said. . . .

Something struck his
shoulder. "I've been looking all over this hotel
for you," said Mrs. Mitty. "Why do you have to
hide in this old chair? How did you expect me to
find you?" "Things close in," said Walter Mitty
vaguely. "What?" Mrs. Mitty said. "Did you get
the what's-its-name? The puppy biscuit? What's
in that box?" "Overshoes," said Mitty. "Couldn't
you have put them on in the store?" 'I was
thinking," said Walter Mitty. "Does it ever
occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?" She
looked at him. "I'm going to take your
temperature when I get you home," she said.

They went out through the revolving
doors that made a faintly derisive whistling
sound when you pushed them. It was two blocks to
the parking lot. At the drugstore on the corner
she said, "Wait here for me. I forgot something.
I won't be a minute." She was more than a
minute. Walter Mitty lighted a cigarette. It
began to rain, rain with sleet in it. He stood
up against the wall of the drugstore, smoking. .
. . He put his shoulders back and his heels
together. "To hell with the handkerchief," said
Waker Mitty scornfully. He took one last drag on
his cigarette and snapped it away. Then, with
that faint, fleeting smile playing about his
lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and
motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty
the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.

Read
an essay ? The Paranoia Of Walter
Mitty

OUR
DONKEY DESIRES NOT YOURS

BY TAYSEER NAZMI (IN
ARABIC)

"The
Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin

The Enormous
Radio

John
Cheever

HILLS
LIKE WHITE
ELEPHANTS

by Ernest
Hemingway

The Lottery By  Shirley
Jackson

A
GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND
by
Flannery
O'Connor

ARABY
by James Joyce

Use

by Alice Walker

I
will wait for her in the yard that Maggie and I
made so clean and wavy yesterday afternoon. A
yard like this is more comfortable than most
people know. It is not just a yard. It is like
an extended living room. When the hard clay is
swept clean as a floor and the fine sand around
the edges lined with tiny, irregular grooves,
anyone can come and sit and look up into the elm
tree and wait for the breezes that never come
inside the house.

Maggie will be nervous until after her
sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in
corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars
down her arms and legs, eying her sister with a
mixture of envy and awe. She thinks her sister
has held life always in the palm of one hand,
that "no" is a word the world never learned to
say to her.

You've no doubt seen those TV shows where
the child who has "made it" is confronted, as a
surprise, by her own mother and father,
tottering in weakly from backstage. (A pleasant
surprise, of course: What would they do if
parent and child came on the show only to curse
out and insult each other?) On TV mother and
child embrace and smile into each other's faces.
Sometimes the mother and father weep, the child
wraps them in her arms and leans across the
table to tell how she would not have made it
without their help. I have seen these
programs.

Sometimes I dream a dream in which Dee
and I are suddenly brought together on a TV
program of this sort. Out of a dark and
soft.seated limousine I am ushered into a bright
room filled with many people. There I meet a
smiling, gray, sporty man like Johnny Carson who
shakes my hand and tells me what a fine girl I
have. Then we are on the stage and Dee is
embracing me with tears in her eyes. She pins on
my dress a large orchid, even though she has
told me once that she thinks orchids are tacky
flowers.

In real life I am a large, big.boned
woman with rough, man.working hands. In the
winter I wear flannel nightgowns to bed and
overalls dur.ing the day. I can kill and clean a
hog as mercilessly as a man. My fat keeps me hot
in zero weather. I can work outside all day,
breaking ice to get water for washing; I can eat
pork liver cooked over the open fire minutes
after it comes steaming from the hog. One winter
I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain
between the eyes with a sledge hammer and had
the meat hung up to chill before nightfall. But
of course all this does not show on television.
I am the way my daughter would want me to be: a
hundred pounds lighter, my skin like an uncooked
barley pancake. My hair glistens in the hot
bright lights. Johnny Carson has much to do to
keep up with my quick and witty tongue.

But that is a mistake. I know even before
I wake up. Who ever knew a Johnson with a quick
tongue? Who can even imagine me looking a
strange white man in the eye? It seems to me I
have talked to them always with one foot raised
in flight, with my head fumed in whichever way
is farthest from them. Dee, though. She would
always look anyone in the eye. Hesitation was no
part of her nature.

"How
do I look, Mama?" Maggie says, showing just
enough of her thin body enveloped in pink skirt
and red blouse for me to know she's there,
almost hidden by the door.

"Come out into the yard," I say.

Have you ever seen a lame animal,
perhaps a dog run over by some careless person
rich enough to own a car, sidle up to someone
who is ignorant enough to be kind to him? That
is the way my Maggie walks. She has been like
this, chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in
shuffle, ever since the fire that burned the
other house to the ground.

Dee is lighter than Maggie, with
nicer hair and a fuller figure. She's a woman
now, though sometimes I forget. How long ago was
it that the other house burned? Ten, twelve
years? Sometimes I can still hear the flames and
feel Maggie's arms sticking to me, her hair
smoking and her dress falling off her in little
black papery flakes. Her eyes seemed stretched
open, blazed open by the flames reflected in
them. And Dee. I see her standing off under the
sweet gum tree she used to dig gum out of; a
look of concentration on her face as she watched
the last dingy gray board of the house fall in
toward the red.hot brick chimney. Why don't you
do a dance around the ashes? I'd wanted to ask
her. She had hated the house that much.

I used to think she hated Maggie,
too. But that was before we raised money, the
church and me, to send her to Augusta to school.
She used to read to us without pity; forcing
words, lies, other folks' habits, whole lives
upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant
underneath her voice. She washed us in a river
of make.believe, burned us with a lot of knowl
edge we didn't necessarily need to know. Pressed
us to her with the serf' ous way she read, to
shove us away at just the moment, like dimwits,
we seemed about to understand.

Dee wanted nice things. A yellow
organdy dress to wear to her grad.uation from
high school; black pumps to match a green suit
she'd made from an old suit somebody gave me.
She was determined to stare down any disaster in
her efforts. Her eyelids would not flicker for
minutes at a time. Often I fought off the
temptation to shake her. At sixteen she had a
style of her own: and knew what style was.

I never had an education myself.
After second grade the school was closed down.
Don't ask my why: in 1927 colored asked fewer
questions than they do now. Sometimes Maggie
reads to me. She stumbles along good.naturedly
but can't see well. She knows she is not bright.
Like good looks and money, quickness passes her
by. She will marry John Thomas (who has mossy
teeth in an earnest face) and then I'll be free
to sit here and I guess just sing church songs
to myself. Although I never was a good singer.
Never could carry a tune. I was always better at
a man's job. I used to love to milk till I was
hooked in the side in '49. Cows are soothing and
slow and don't bother you, unless you try to
milk them the wrong way.

I have deliberately turned my back on
the house. It is three rooms, just like the one
that burned, except the roof is tin; they don't
make shingle roofs any more. There are no real
windows, just some holes cut in the sides, like
the portholes in a ship, but not round and not
square, with rawhide holding the shutters up on
the outside. This house is in a pasture, too,
like the other one. No doubt when Dee sees it
she will want to tear it down. She wrote me once
that no matter where we "choose" to live, she
will manage to come see us. But she will never
bring her friends. Maggie and I thought about
this and Maggie asked me, "Mama, when did Dee
ever have any friends?"

She had a few. Furtive boys in pink
shirts hanging about on washday after school.
Nervous girls who never laughed. Impressed with
her they worshiped the well.turned phrase, the
cute shape, the scalding humor that erupted like
bubbles in Iye. She read to them.

When she was courting Jimmy T she didn't
have much time to pay to us, but turned all her
faultfinding power on him. He flew to marry a
cheap city girl from a family of ignorant flashy
people. She hardly had time to recompose
herself.

When she comes I will meet—but there they
are!

Maggie attempts to make a dash for the
house, in her shuffling way, but I stay her with
my hand. "Come back here, " I say. And she stops
and tries to dig a well in the sand with her
toe.

It is hard to see them clearly through
the strong sun. But even the first glimpse of
leg out of the car tells me it is Dee. Her feet
were always neat.looking, as if God himself had
shaped them with a certain style. From the other
side of the car comes a short, stocky man. Hair
is all over his head a foot long and hanging
from his chin like a kinky mule tail. I hear
Maggie suck in her breath. "Uhnnnh, " is what it
sounds like. Like when you see the wriggling end
of a snake just in front of your foot on the
road. "Uhnnnh."

Dee next. A dress down to the ground, in
this hot weather. A dress so loud it hurts my
eyes. There are yellows and oranges enough to
throw back the light of the sun. I feel my whole
face warming from the heat waves it throws out.
Earrings gold, too, and hanging down to her
shoul.ders. Bracelets dangling and making noises
when she moves her arm up to shake the folds of
the dress out of her armpits. The dress is loose
and flows, and as she walks closer, I like it. I
hear Maggie go "Uhnnnh" again. It is her
sister's hair. It stands straight up like the
wool on a sheep. It is black as night and around
the edges are two long pigtails that rope about
like small lizards disappearing behind her
ears.

"Wa.su.zo.Tean.o!" she says, coming on in
that gliding way the dress makes her move. The
short stocky fellow with the hair to his navel
is all grinning and he follows up with
"Asalamalakim, my mother and sister!" He moves
to hug Maggie but she falls back, right up
against the back of my chair. I feel her
trembling there and when I look up I see the
perspiration falling off her chin.

"Don't get up," says Dee. Since I am
stout it takes something of a push. You can see
me trying to move a second or two before I make
it. She turns, showing white heels through her
sandals, and goes back to the car. Out she peeks
next with a Polaroid. She stoops down quickly
and lines up picture after picture of me sitting
there in front of the house with Maggie cowering
behind me. She never takes a shot without mak'
ing sure the house is included. When a cow comes
nibbling around the edge of the yard she snaps
it and me and Maggie and the house. Then she
puts the Polaroid in the back seat of the car,
and comes up and kisses me on the
forehead.

Meanwhile Asalamalakim is going through
motions with Maggie's hand. Maggie's hand is as
limp as a fish, and probably as cold, despite
the sweat, and she keeps trying to pull it back.
It looks like Asalamalakim wants to shake hands
but wants to do it fancy. Or maybe he don't know
how people shake hands. Anyhow, he soon gives up
on Maggie.

"Well," I say. "Dee."

"No, Mama," she says. "Not 'Dee,' Wangero
Leewanika Kemanjo!"

"What happened to 'Dee'?" I wanted to
know.

"She's dead," Wangero said. "I couldn't
bear it any longer, being named after the people
who oppress me."

"You know as well as me you was named
after your aunt Dicie," I said. Dicie is my
sister. She named Dee. We called her "Big Dee"
after Dee was born.

"But who was she named after?" asked
Wangero.

"I guess after Grandma Dee," I
said.

"And who was she named after?" asked
Wangero.

"Her mother," I said, and saw Wangero was
getting tired. "That's about as far back as I
can trace it," I said. Though, in fact, I
probably could have carried it back beyond the
Civil War through the branches.

"Well," said Asalamalakim, "there you
are."

"Uhnnnh," I heard Maggie say.

"There I was not," I said, "before
'Dicie' cropped up in our family, so why should
I try to trace it that far back?"

He just stood there grinning, looking
down on me like somebody inspecting a Model A
car. Every once in a while he and Wangero sent
eye signals over my head.

"How do you pronounce this name?" I
asked.

"You don't have to call me by it if you
don't want to," said Wangero.

"Why shouldn't 1?" I asked. "If that's
what you want us to call you, we'll call
you."

"I know it might sound awkward at first,"
said Wangero.

"I'll get used to it," I said. "Ream it
out again."

Well, soon we got the name out of the
way. Asalamalakim had a name twice as long and
three times as hard. After I tripped over it two
or three times he told me to just call him
Hakim.a.barber. I wanted to ask him was he a
barber, but I didn't really think he was, so I
didn't ask.

"You must belong to those beef.cattle
peoples down the road," I said. They said
"Asalamalakim" when they met you, too, but they
didn't shake hands. Always too busy: feeding the
cattle, fixing the fences, putting up salt.lick
shelters, throwing down hay. When the white
folks poisoned some of the herd the men stayed
up all night with rifles in their hands. I
walked a mile and a half just to see the
sight.

Hakim.a.barber said, "I accept some of
their doctrines, but farming and raising cattle
is not my style." (They didn't tell me, and I
didn't ask, whether Wangero (Dee) had really
gone and married him.)

We sat down to eat and right away he said
he didn't eat collards and pork was unclean.
Wangero, though, went on through the chitlins
and com bread, the greens and everything else.
She talked a blue streak over the sweet
potatoes. Everything delighted her. Even the
fact that we still used the benches her daddy
made for the table when we couldn't effort to
buy chairs.

"Oh, Mama!" she cried. Then turned to
Hakim.a.barber. "I never knew how lovely these
benches are. You can feel the rump prints," she
said, running her hands underneath her and along
the bench. Then she gave a sigh and her hand
closed over Grandma Dee's butter dish. "That's
it!" she said. "I knew there was something I
wanted to ask you if I could have." She jumped
up from the table and went over in the corner
where the churn stood, the milk in it crabber by
now. She looked at the churn and looked at
it.

"This churn top is what I need," she
said. "Didn't Uncle Buddy whittle it out of a
tree you all used to have?"

"Yes," I said.

"Un huh," she said happily. "And I want
the dasher, too."

"Uncle Buddy whittle that, too?" asked
the barber.

Dee (Wangero) looked up at me.

"Aunt Dee's first husband whittled the
dash," said Maggie so low you almost couldn't
hear her. "His name was Henry, but they called
him Stash."

"Maggie's brain is like an elephant's,"
Wangero said, laughing. "I can use the chute top
as a centerpiece for the alcove table," she
said, sliding a plate over the chute, "and I'll
think of something artistic to do with the
dasher."

When she finished wrapping the dasher the
handle stuck out. I took it for a moment in my
hands. You didn't even have to look close to see
where hands pushing the dasher up and down to
make butter had left a kind of sink in the wood.
In fact, there were a lot of small sinks; you
could see where thumbs and fingers had sunk into
the wood. It was beautiful light yellow wood,
from a tree that grew in the yard where Big Dee
and Stash had lived.

After dinner Dee (Wangero) went to the
trunk at the foot of my bed and started rifling
through it. Maggie hung back in the kitchen over
the dishpan. Out came Wangero with two quilts.
They had been pieced by Grandma Dee and then Big
Dee and me had hung them on the quilt ftames on
the ftont porch and quilted them. One was in the
Lone Stat pattetn. The other was Walk Around the
Mountain. In both of them were scraps of dresses
Grandma Dee had wotn fifty and more years ago.
Bits and pieces of Grandpa Jattell's Paisley
shirts. And one teeny faded blue piece, about
the size of a penny matchbox, that was from
Great Grandpa Ezra's unifotm that he wore in the
Civil War.

"Mama," Wangro said sweet as a bird. "Can
I have these old quilts?"

I
heard something fall in the kitchen, and a
minute later the kitchen door slammed.

"Why don't you take one or two of the
others?" I asked. "These old things was just
done by me and Big Dee from some tops your
grandma pieced before she died."

"No," said Wangero. "I don't want those.
They are stitched around the borders by
machine."

"That'll make them last better," I
said.

"That's not the point," said Wangero.
"These are all pieces of dresses Grandma used to
wear. She did all this stitching by hand. Imag'
ine!" She held the quilts securely in her atms,
stroking them.

"Some of the pieces, like those lavender
ones, come ftom old clothes her mother handed
down to her," I said, moving up to touch the
quilts. Dee (Wangero) moved back just enough so
that I couldn't reach the quilts. They already
belonged to her.

"Imagine!" she breathed again, clutching
them closely to her bosom.

"The ttuth is," I said, "I promised to
give them quilts to Maggie, for when she matties
John Thomas."

She gasped like a bee had stung
her.

"Maggie can't appreciate these quilts!"
she said. "She'd probably be backward enough to
put them to everyday use."

"I reckon she would," I said. "God knows
I been saving 'em for long enough with nobody
using 'em. I hope she will!" I didn't want to
bring up how I had offered Dee (Wangero) a quilt
when she went away to college. Then she had told
they were old~fashioned, out of style.

"But they're priceless!" she was saying
now, furiously; for she has a temper. "Maggie
would put them on the bed and in five years
they'd be in rags. Less than that!"

"She can always make some more," I said.
"Maggie knows how to quilt."

Dee (Wangero) looked at me with hatred.
"You just will not under.stand. The point is
these quilts, these quilts!"

"Well," I said, stumped. "What would you
do with them7"

"Hang them," she said. As if that was the
only thing you could do with quilts.

Maggie by now was standing in the door. I
could almost hear the sound her feet made as
they scraped over each other.

"She can have them, Mama," she said, like
somebody used to never winning anything, or
having anything reserved for her. "I can 'member
Grandma Dee without the quilts."

I
looked at her hard. She had filled her bottom
lip with checkerberry snuff and gave her face a
kind of dopey, hangdog look. It was Grandma Dee
and Big Dee who taught her how to quilt herself.
She stood there with her scarred hands hidden in
the folds of her skirt. She looked at her sister
with something like fear but she wasn't mad at
her. This was Maggie's portion. This was the way
she knew God to work.

When I looked at her like that something
hit me in the top of my head and ran down to the
soles of my feet. Just like when I'm in church
and the spirit of God touches me and I get happy
and shout. I did some.thing I never done before:
hugged Maggie to me, then dragged her on into
the room, snatched the quilts out of Miss
Wangero's hands and dumped them into Maggie's
lap. Maggie just sat there on my bed with her
mouth open.

"Take one or two of the others," I said
to Dee.

But she turned without a word and went
out to Hakim~a~barber.

"You just don't understand," she said, as
Maggie and I came out to the car.

"What don't I understand?" I wanted to
know.

"Your heritage," she said, And then she
turned to Maggie, kissed her, and said, "You
ought to try to make something of yourself, too,
Maggie. It's really a new day for us. But from
the way you and Mama still live you'd never know
it."

She put on some sunglasses that hid
everything above the tip of her nose and
chin.

Maggie smiled; maybe at the sunglasses.
But a real smile, not scared. After we watched
the car dust settle I asked Maggie to bring me a
dip of snuff. And then the two of us sat there
just enjoying, until it was time to go in the
house and go to bed.

The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
(1899)

It
is very seldom that mere ordinary people like
John and myself secure ancestral halls for the
summer.
A
colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would
say a haunted house, and reach the height of
romantic felicity--but that would be asking too
much of
fate!
Still
I will proudly declare that there is something
queer about
it.
Else,
why should it be let so cheaply? And why have
stood so long
untenanted?
John
laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in
marriage.
John
is practical in the extreme. He has no patience
with faith, an intense horror of superstition,
and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not
to be felt and seen and put down in
figures.
John
is a physician, and perhaps--(I would not
say it to a living soul, of course, but this is
dead paper and a great relief to my
mind)--perhaps that is one reason I do
not get well
faster.
You
see he does not believe I am
sick!
And
what can one
do?
If
a physician of high standing, and one's own
husband, assures friends and relatives that
there is really nothing the matter with one but
temporary nervous depression--a slight
hysterical tendency-- what is one to
do?
My
brother is also a physician, and also of high
standing, and he says the same
thing.
So
I take phosphates or phosphites--whichever it
is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and
exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to "work"
until I am well
again.
Personally,
I disagree with their
ideas.
Personally,
I believe that congenial work, with excitement
and change, would do me
good.
But
what is one to
do?
I
did write for a while in spite of them; but it
does exhaust me a good deal--having to be so sly
about it, or else meet with heavy
opposition.
I
sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had
less opposition and more society and
stimulus--but John says the very worst thing I
can do is to think about my condition, and I
confess it always makes me feel
bad.
So
I will let it alone and talk about the
house.
The
most beautiful place! It is quite alone standing
well back from the road, quite three miles from
the village. It makes me think of English places
that you read about, for there are hedges and
walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate
little houses for the gardeners and
people.
There
is a delicious garden! I never saw such a
garden--large and shady, full of box-bordered
paths, and lined with long grape-covered arbors
with seats under
them.
There
were greenhouses, too, but they are all broken
now.
There
was some legal trouble, I believe, something
about the heirs and coheirs; anyhow, the place
has been empty for
years.
That
spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I don't
care--there is something strange about the
house--I can feel it.

I even said so to John one
moonlight evening but he said what I felt was a
draught, and shut the
window.
I
get unreasonably angry with John sometimes I'm
sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it
is due to this nervous
condition.
But
John says if I feel so, I shall neglect proper
self-control; so I take pains to control
myself-- before him, at least, and that makes me
very
tired.
I
don't like our room a bit. I wanted one
downstairs that opened on the piazza and had
roses all over the window, and such pretty
old-fashioned chintz hangings! but John would
not hear of
it.
He
said there was only one window and not room for
two beds, and no near room for him if he took
another.
He
is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me
stir without special
direction.
I
have a schedule prescription for each hour in
the day; he takes all care from me, and so I
feel basely ungrateful not to value it
more.
He
said we came here solely on my account, that I
was to have perfect rest and all the air I could
get. "Your exercise depends on your strength, my
dear," said he, "and your food somewhat on your
appetite; but air you can absorb all the time. '
So we took the nursery at the top of the
house.
It
is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly,
with windows that look all ways, and air and
sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then
playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the
windows are barred for little children, and
there are rings and things in the
walls.
The
paint and paper look as if a boys' school had
used it. It is stripped off--the paper in great
patches all around the head of my bed, about as
far as I can reach, and in a great place on the
other side of the room low down. I never saw a
worse paper in my
life.
One
of those sprawling flamboyant patterns
committing every artistic
sin.
It
is dull enough to confuse the eye in following,
pronounced enough to constantly irritate and
provoke study, and when you follow the lame
uncertain curves for a little distance they
suddenly commit suicide--plunge off at
outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard
of
contradictions.
The
color is repellent, almost revolting; a
smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by
the slow-turning
sunlight.
It
is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a
sickly sulphur tint in
others.
No
wonder the children hated it! I should hate it
myself if I had to live in this room
long.
There
comes John, and I must put this away,--he hates
to have me write a word.

----------

We
have been here two weeks, and I haven't felt
like writing before, since that first
day.
I
am sitting by the window now, up in this
atrocious nursery, and there is nothing to
hinder my writing as much as I please, save lack
of
strength.
John
is away all day, and even some nights when his
cases are
serious.
I
am glad my case is not
serious!
But
these nervous troubles are dreadfully
depressing.
John
does not know how much I really suffer. He knows
there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies
him.
Of
course it is only nervousness. It does weigh on
me so not to do my duty in any way!

I
meant to be such a help to John, such a real
rest and comfort, and here I am a comparative
burden
already!
Nobody
would believe what an effort it is to do what
little I am able,--to dress and entertain, and
order
things.
It
is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such
a dear
baby!
And
yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so
nervous.
I
suppose John never was nervous in his life. He
laughs at me so about this
wall-paper!
At
first he meant to repaper the room, but
afterwards he said that I was letting it get the
better of me, and that nothing was worse for a
nervous patient than to give way to such
fancies.
He
said that after the wall-paper was changed it
would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred
windows, and then that gate at the head of the
stairs, and so
on.
"You
know the place is doing you good," he said, "and
really, dear, I don't care to renovate the house
just for a three months'
rental."
"Then
do let us go downstairs," I said, "there are
such pretty rooms
there."
Then
he took me in his arms and called me a blessed
little goose, and said he would go down to the
cellar, if I wished, and have it whitewashed
into the
bargain.
But
he is right enough about the beds and windows
and
things.
It
is an airy and comfortable room as any one need
wish, and, of course, I would not be so silly as
to make him uncomfortable just for a
whim.
I'm
really getting quite fond of the big room, all
but that horrid
paper.
Out
of one window I can see the garden, those
mysterious deepshaded arbors, the riotous
old-fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly
trees.
Out
of another I get a lovely view of the bay and a
little private wharf belonging to the estate.
There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down
there from the house. I always fancy I see
people walking in these numerous paths and
arbors, but John has cautioned me not to give
way to fancy in the least. He says that with my
imaginative power and habit of story-making, a
nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to
all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought
to use my will and good sense to check the
tendency. So I
try.
I
think sometimes that if I were only well enough
to write a little it would relieve the press of
ideas and rest
me.
But
I find I get pretty tired when I
try.
It
is so discouraging not to have any advice and
companionship about my work. When I get really
well, John says we will ask Cousin Henry and
Julia down for a long visit; but he says he
would as soon put fireworks in my pillow-case as
to let me have those stimulating people about
now.
I
wish I could get well
faster.
But
I must not think about that. This paper looks to
me as if it knew what a vicious influence it
had!
There
is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like
a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you
upside
down.
I
get positively angry with the impertinence of it
and the everlastingness. Up and down and
sideways they crawl, and those absurd,
unblinking eyes are everywhere There is one
place where two breaths didn't match, and the
eyes go all up and down the line, one a little
higher than the
other.
I
never saw so much expression in an inanimate
thing before, and we all know how much
expression they have! I used to lie awake as a
child and get more entertainment and terror out
of blank walls and plain furniture than most
children could find in a
toy-store.
I
remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our
big, old bureau used to have, and there was one
chair that always seemed like a strong
friend.

I used to feel that if any of
the other things looked too fierce I could
always hop into that chair and be
safe.
The
furniture in this room is no worse than
inharmonious, however, for we had to bring it
all from downstairs. I suppose when this was
used as a playroom they had to take the nursery
things out, and no wonder! I never saw such
ravages as the children have made
here.
The
wall-paper, as I said before, is torn off in
spots, and it sticketh closer than a
brother--they must have had perseverance as well
as
hatred.
Then
the floor is scratched and gouged and
splintered, the plaster itself is dug out here
and there, and this great heavy bed which is all
we found in the room, looks as if it had been
through the
wars.
But
I don't mind it a bit--only the
paper.
There
comes John's sister. Such a dear girl as she is,
and so careful of me! I must not let her find me
writing.
She
is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and
hopes for no better profession. I verily believe
she thinks it is the writing which made me
sick!
But
I can write when she is out, and see her a long
way off from these
windows.
There
is one that commands the road, a lovely shaded
winding road, and one that just looks off over
the country. A lovely country, too, full of
great elms and velvet
meadows.
This
wall-paper has a kind of sub-pattern in a,
different shade, a particularly irritating one,
for you can only see it in certain lights, and
not clearly
then.
But
in the places where it isn't faded and where the
sun is just so--I can see a strange, provoking,
formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk
about behind that silly and conspicuous front
design.
There's
sister on the stairs!

----------

Well,
the Fourth of July is over! The people are all
gone and I am tired out. John thought it might
do me good to see a little company, so we just
had mother and Nellie and the children down for
a
week.
Of
course I didn't do a thing. Jennie sees to
everything
now.
But
it tired me all the
same.
John
says if I don't pick up faster he shall send me
to Weir Mitchell in the
fall.
But
I don't want to go there at all. I had a friend
who was in his hands once, and she says he is
just like John and my brother, only more
so!
Besides,
it is such an undertaking to go so
far.
I
don't feel as if it was worth while to turn my
hand over for anything, and I'm getting
dreadfully fretful and
querulous.
I
cry at nothing, and cry most of the
time.
Of
course I don't when John is here, or anybody
else, but when I am
alone.
And
I am alone a good deal just now. John is kept in
town very often by serious cases, and Jennie is
good and lets me alone when I want her
to.
So
I walk a little in the garden or down that
lovely lane, sit on the porch under the roses,
and lie down up here a good deal.

I'm
getting really fond of the room in spite of the
wall-paper. Perhaps because of the
wall-paper.
It
dwells in my mind
so!
I
lie here on this great immovable bed--it is
nailed down, I believe--and follow that pattern
about by the hour. It is as good as gymnastics,
I assure you. I start, we'll say, at the bottom,
down in the corner over there where it has not
been touched, and I determine for the thousandth
time that I will follow that pointless
pattern to some sort of a
conclusion.
I
know a little of the principle of design, and I
know this thing was not arranged on any laws of
radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or
symmetry, or anything else that I ever heard
of.
It
is repeated, of course, by the breadths, but not
otherwise.
Looked
at in one way each breadth stands alone, the
bloated curves and flourishes--a kind of
"debased Romanesque" with delirium
tremens--go waddling up and down in isolated
columns of
fatuity.
But,
on the other hand, they connect diagonally, and
the sprawling outlines run off in great slanting
waves of optic horror, like a lot of wallowing
seaweeds in full
chase.
The
whole thing goes horizontally, too, at least it
seems so, and I exhaust myself in trying to
distinguish the order of its going in that
direction.
They
have used a horizontal breadth for a frieze, and
that adds wonderfully to the
confusion.
There
is one end of the room where it is almost
intact, and there, when the crosslights fade and
the low sun shines directly upon it, I can
almost fancy radiation after all,--the
interminable grotesques seem to form around a
common centre and rush off in headlong plunges
of equal
distraction.
It
makes me tired to follow it. I will take a nap I
guess.

----------

I
don't know why I should write
this.
I
don't want
to.
I
don't feel able. And I know John would think it
absurd. But I must say what I feel and think in
some way--it is such a
relief!
But
the effort is getting to be greater than the
relief.
Half
the time now I am awfully lazy, and lie down
ever so
much.
John
says I mustn't lose my strength, and has me take
cod liver oil and lots of tonics and things, to
say nothing of ale and wine and rare
meat.
Dear
John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have
me sick. I tried to have a real earnest
reasonable talk with him the other day, and tell
him how I wish he would let me go and make a
visit to Cousin Henry and
Julia.
But
he said I wasn't able to go, nor able to stand
it after I got there; and I did not make out a
very good case for myself, for I was crying
before I had finished
.
It
is getting to be a great effort for me to think
straight. Just this nervous weakness I
suppose.
And
dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just
carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and
sat by me and read to me till it tired my
head.
He
said I was his darling and his comfort and all
he had, and that I must take care of myself for
his sake, and keep
well.
He
says no one but myself can help me out of it,
that I must use my will and self-control and not
let any silly fancies run away with
me.
There's
one comfort, the baby is well and happy, and
does not have to occupy this nursery with the
horrid wall-paper.

If we had not used it, that
blessed child would have! What a fortunate
escape! Why, I wouldn't have a child of mine, an
impressionable little thing, live in such a room
for
worlds.
I
never thought of it before, but it is lucky that
John kept me here after all, I can stand it so
much easier than a baby, you
see.
Of
course I never mention it to them any more--I am
too wise,--but I keep watch of it all the
same.
There
are things in that paper that nobody knows but
me, or ever
will.
Behind
that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer
every
day.
It
is always the same shape, only very
numerous.
And
it is like a woman stooping down and creeping
about behind that pattern. I don't like it a
bit. I wonder--I begin to think--I wish John
would take me away from here!

----------

It
is so hard to talk with John about my case,
because he is so wise, and because he loves me
so.
But
I tried it last
night.
It
was moonlight. The moon shines in all around
just as the sun
does.
I
hate to see it sometimes, it creeps so slowly,
and always comes in by one window or
another.
John
was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept
still and watched the moonlight on that
undulating wall-paper till I felt
creepy.
The
faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern,
just as if she wanted to get
out.
I
got up softly and went to feel and see if the
paper did move, and when I came back John
was
awake.
"What
is it, little girl?" he said. "Don't go walking
about like that--you'll get
cold."
I
thought it was a good time to talk, so I told
him that I really was not gaining here, and that
I wished he would take me
away.
"Why
darling!" said he, "our lease will be up in
three weeks, and I can't see how to leave
before.
"The
repairs are not done at home, and I cannot
possibly leave town just now. Of course if you
were in any danger, I could and would, but you
really are better, dear, whether you can see it
or not. I am a doctor, dear, and I know. You are
gaining flesh and color, your appetite is
better, I feel really much easier about
you."
"I
don't weigh a bit more," said 1, "nor as much;
and my appetite may be better in the evening
when you are here, but it is worse in the
morning when you are
away!"
"Bless
her little heart!" said he with a big hug, "she
shall be as sick as she pleases! But now let's
improve the shining hours by going to sleep, and
talk about it in the
morning!"
"And
you won't go away?" I asked
gloomily.
"Why,
how can 1, dear? It is only three weeks more and
then we will take a nice little trip of a few
days while Jennie is getting the house ready.
Really dear you are
better!"
"Better
in body perhaps--" I began, and stopped short,
for he sat up straight and looked at me with
such a stern, reproachful look that I could not
say another
word.
"My
darling," said he, "I beg of you, for my sake
and for our child's sake, as well as for your
own, that you will never for one instant let
that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so
dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like
yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you
not trust me as a physician when I tell you
so?"
So
of course I said no more on that score, and we
went to sleep before long. He thought I was
asleep first, but I wasn't, and lay there for
hours trying to decide whether that front
pattern and the back pattern really did move
together or separately.

----------

On
a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a
lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a
constant irritant to a normal
mind.
The
color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough,
and infuriating enough, but the pattern is
torturing.
You
think you have mastered it, but just as you get
well underway in following, it turns a back
somersault and there you are. It slaps you in
the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon
you. It is like a bad
dream.
The
outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding
one of a fungus. If you can imagine a toadstool
in joints, an interminable string of toadstools,
budding and sprouting in endless
convolutions--why, that is something like
it.
That
is,
sometimes!
There
is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a
thing nobody seems to notice but myself, and
that is that it changes as the light
changes.
When
the sun shoots in through the east window--I
always watch for that first long, straight
ray--it changes so quickly that I never can
quite believe
it.
That
is why I watch it
always.
By
moonlight--the moon shines in all night when
there is a moon--I wouldn't know it was the same
paper.
At
night in any kind of light, in twilight,
candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by
moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern
I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as
can
be.
I
didn't realize for a long time what the thing
was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern,
but now I am quite sure it is a
woman.
By
daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is
the pattern that keeps her so still. It is so
puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the
hour.
I
lie down ever so much now. John says it is good
for me, and to sleep all I
can.
Indeed
he started the habit by making me lie down for
an hour after each
meal.
It
is a very bad habit I am convinced, for you see
I don't
sleep.
And
that cultivates deceit, for I don't tell them
I'm awake--O
no!
The
fact is I am getting a little afraid of
John.
He
seems very queer sometimes, and even Jennie has
an inexplicable
look.
It
strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific
hypothesis,--that perhaps it is the
paper!
I
have watched John when he did not know I was
looking, and come into the room suddenly on the
most innocent excuses, and I've caught him
several times looking at the paper! And
Jennie too. I caught Jennie with her hand on it
once.
She
didn't know I was in the room, and when I asked
her in a quiet, a very quiet voice, with the
most restrained manner possible, what she was
doing with the paper--she turned around as if
she had been caught stealing, and looked quite
angry-- asked me why I should frighten her
so!
Then
she said that the paper stained everything it
touched, that she had found yellow smooches on
all my clothes and John's, and she wished we
would be more
careful!
Did
not that sound innocent? But I know she was
studying that pattern, and I am determined that
nobody shall find it out but myself!

----------

Life
is very much more exciting now than it used to
be. You see I have something more to expect, to
look forward to, to watch. I really do eat
better, and am more quiet than I
was.

John is so pleased to see me improve
! He laughed a little the other day, and said I
seemed to be flourishing in spite of my
wall-paper.
I
turned it off with a laugh. I had no intention
of telling him it was because of the
wall-paper--he would make fun of me. He might
even want to take me
away.
I
don't want to leave now until I have found it
out. There is a week more, and I think that will
be enough.

----------

I'm
feeling ever so much better! I don't sleep much
at night, for it is so interesting to watch
developments; but I sleep a good deal in the
daytime.
In
the daytime it is tiresome and
perplexing.
There
are always new shoots on the fungus, and new
shades of yellow all over it. I cannot keep
count of them, though I have tried
conscientiously.
It
is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It
makes me think of all the yellow things I ever
saw--not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old
foul, bad yellow
things.
But
there is something else about that paper-- the
smell! I noticed it the moment we came into the
room, but with so much air and sun it was not
bad. Now we have had a week of fog and rain, and
whether the windows are open or not, the smell
is
here.
It
creeps all over the
house.
I
find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in
the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait
for me on the
stairs.
It
gets into my
hair.
Even
when I go to ride, if I turn my head suddenly
and surprise it--there is that
smell!
Such
a peculiar odor, too! I have spent hours in
trying to analyze it, to find what it smelled
like.
It
is not bad--at first, and very gentle, but quite
the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever
met.
In
this damp weather it is awful, I wake up in the
night and find it hanging over
me.
It
used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously
of burning the house--to reach the
smell.
But
now I am used to it. The only thing I can think
of that it is like is the color of the
paper! A yellow
smell.
There
is a very funny mark on this wall, low down,
near the mopboard. A streak that runs round the
room. It goes behind every piece of furniture,
except the bed, a long, straight, even
smooch, as if it had been rubbed over and
over.
I
wonder how it was done and who did it, and what
they did it for. Round and round and
round--round and round and round--it makes me
dizzy!

----------

I
really have discovered something at
last.
Through
watching so much at night, when it changes so, I
have finally found
out.
The
front pattern does move--and no wonder! The
woman behind shakes
it!
Sometimes
I think there are a great many women behind, and
sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast,
and her crawling shakes it all
over.
Then
in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in
the very shady spots she just takes hold of the
bars and shakes them
hard.
And
she is all the time trying to climb through. But
nobody could climb through that pattern--it
strangles so; I think that is why it has so many
heads.
They
get through, and then the pattern strangles them
off and turns them upside down, and makes their
eyes
white!
If
those heads were covered or taken off it would
not be half so bad.

----------

I
think that woman gets out in the
daytime!
And
I'll tell you why--privately--I've seen
her!
I
can see her out of every one of my
windows!
It
is the same woman, I know, for she is always
creeping, and most women do not creep by
daylight.
I
see her on that long road under the trees,
creeping along, and when a carriage comes she
hides under the blackberry
vines.
I
don't blame her a bit. It must be very
humiliating to be caught creeping by
daylight!
I
always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I
can't do it at night, for I know John would
suspect something at
once.
And
John is so queer now, that I don't want to
irritate him. I wish he would take another room!
Besides, I don't want anybody to get that woman
out at night but
myself.
I
often wonder if I could see her out of all the
windows at
once.
But,
turn as fast as I can, I can only see out of one
at one
time.
And
though I always see her, she may be able to
creep faster than I can
turn!
I
have watched her sometimes away off in the open
country, creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a
high wind.

----------

If
only that top pattern could be gotten off from
the under one! I mean to try it, little by
little.
I
have found out another funny thing, but I shan't
tell it this time! It does not do to trust
people too
much.
There
are only two more days to get this paper off,
and I believe John is beginning to notice. I
don't like the look in his
eyes.
And
I heard him ask Jennie a lot of professional
questions about me. She had a very good report
to
give.
She
said I slept a good deal in the
daytime.
John
knows I don't sleep very well at night, for all
I'm so
quiet!
He
asked me all sorts of questions, too, and
pretended to be very loving and
kind.
As
if I couldn't see through
him!
Still,
I don't wonder he acts so, sleeping under this
paper for three
months.
It
only interests me, but I feel sure John and
Jennie are secretly affected by it.

----------

Hurrah!
This is the last day, but it is enough. John to
stay in town over night, and won't be out until
this
evening.
Jennie
wanted to sleep with me--the sly thing! but I
told her I should undoubtedly rest better for a
night all
alone.
That
was clever, for really I wasn't alone a bit! As
soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing
began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up
and ran to help
her.
I
pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled,
and before morning we had peeled off yards of
that
paper.
A
strip about as high as my head and half around
the
room.
And
then when the sun came and that awful pattern
began to laugh at me, I declared I would finish
it
to-day!
We
go away to-morrow, and they are moving all my
furniture down again to leave things as they
were
before.
Jennie
looked at the wall in amazement, but I told her
merrily that I did it out of pure spite at the
vicious
thing.
She
laughed and said she wouldn't mind doing it
herself, but I must not get
tired.
How
she betrayed herself that
time!
But
I am here, and no person touches this paper but
me,--not alive
!
She
tried to get me out of the room--it was too
patent! But I said it was so quiet and empty and
clean now that I believed I would lie down again
and sleep all I could; and not to wake me even
for dinner--I would call when I
woke.
So
now she is gone, and the servants are gone, and
the things are gone, and there is nothing left
but that great bedstead nailed down, with the
canvas mattress we found on
it.
We
shall sleep downstairs to-night, and take the
boat home
to-morrow.
I
quite enjoy the room, now it is bare
again.
How
those children did tear about
here!
This
bedstead is fairly
gnawed!
But
I must get to
work.
I
have locked the door and thrown the key down
into the front
path.
I
don't want to go out, and I don't want to have
anybody come in, till John
comes.
I
want to astonish
him.
I've
got a rope up here that even Jennie did not
find. If that woman does get out, and tries to
get away, I can tie
her!
But
I forgot I could not reach far without anything
to stand
on!
This
bed will not
move!
I
tried to lift and push it until I was lame, and
then I got so angry I bit off a little piece at
one corner--but it hurt my
teeth.
Then
I peeled off all the paper I could reach
standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and
the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled
heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus
growths just shriek with
derision!
I
am getting angry enough to do something
desperate. To jump out of the window would be
admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong
even to
try.
Besides
I wouldn't do it. Of course not. I know well
enough that a step like that is improper and
might be
misconstrued.
I
don't like to look out of the windows
even-- there are so many of those creeping
women, and they creep so
fast.
I
wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper
as I
did?
But
I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden
rope--you don't get me out in the road there
!
I
suppose I shall have to get back behind the
pattern when it comes night, and that is
hard!
It
is so pleasant to be out in this great room and
creep around as I
please!
I
don't want to go outside. I won't, even if
Jennie asks me
to.
For
outside you have to creep on the ground, and
everything is green instead of
yellow.
But
here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my
shoulder just fits in that long smooch around
the wall, so I cannot lose my
way.
Why
there's John at the
door!
It
is no use, young man, you can't open
it!
How
he does call and
pound!
Now
he's crying for an
axe.
It
would be a shame to break down that beautiful
door!
"John
dear!" said I in the gentlest voice, "the key is
down by the front steps, under a plantain
leaf!"
That
silenced him for a few
moments.
Then
he said--very quietly indeed, "Open the door, my
darling!"
"I
can't," said I. "The key is down by the front
door under a plantain
leaf!"
And
then I said it again, several times, very gently
and slowly, and said it so often that he had to
go and see, and he got it of course, and came
in. He stopped short by the
door.
"What
is the matter?" he cried. "For God's sake, what
are you
doing!"
I
kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at
him over my
shoulder.
"I've
got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and
Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so
you can't put me
back!"
Now
why should that man have fainted? But he did,
and right across my path by the wall, so that I
had to creep over him every time!

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