The store was a place of odorous chiaroscuro. Smells fairly nudged one another and often knocked one another down. There was the fetidness of stale codfish, the acrid pungency of freshly ground coffee, the penetrating foulness of rancid butter, and the sickening tropical odour of decaying bananas. It wasn’t worth looking at either ... rows of tins whose faded labels betrayed the probable age of the victuals within; jars of moribund prunes and molasses-coloured horehound drops, counters piled with coarse denim garments leaking threads, bolts of grotesquely sprigged calico. Even the dusty jumble of decorated china on the top shelf didn’t look destined for anything but cooling pork fat. And, if all this wasn’t enough, they have to live over it. Four of them lived up there in the huddled stuffiness of a half-dozen rooms ... horrible, uneasy rooms tenanted by lumpy pieces of golden-oak furniture whose sharp corners and glittering hostile surfaces constantly threatened one with eviction. But there was one member of the family before whom the whole domineering conglomeration was powerless. That was Minnie Gessler, Matilda’s fat, unimaginative mother. Every rocker dreaded her relentless dimensions. There was but one place where she looked properly engulfed and that was under the steepled bulk of the red-brick church around the corner. She waddled there regularly. Matilda often puzzled over her mother’s voluptuous devotion to something that couldn’t be poked or eaten or wasn’t her son Fred. Matilda sighed resentfully when she thought of her brother. The dispatch with which he made his dreams come true was nothing short of indecent. He rarely came near the store except to eat and sleep over it. He made quick, successful love to the dimpled daughters of the Crittenden gentry and bragged about it afterward in Lemke’s Pool Room. He never kissed the mother who adored him, but he wheedled a Ford car out of her and went tearing up and down the long yellow road between Crittenden and a half-dozen towns, seeking other lips to conquer and getting them. Now Matilda dutifully kissed her mother every night but it had got her nothing. Minnie Gessler hadn’t even allowed her daughter to have a French name in peace. It was ’Tilda she grumbled at and not Mathilde.