City and town life -- Fiction; Diary fiction; Girls -- Fiction; Love stories, American
Just then father came in, hearing the last remark about "that nigger,"
and asked Mammy Lou what the trouble was between her and her new
husband. Mammy was breaking eggs into the big yellow bowl which she
was going to scramble for breakfast, and as she commenced telling us
about her marrying troubles she began to beat them very hard, which
seemed to ease her. It is a great help to people to think of their
enemies when they are beating things, for it makes them beat all the
harder and don't really hurt the enemies.
Mammy said when they got home from the wedding she started to change
her white dress and veil and put on her good cashmere dress to ride
on the train in. Just about that time Mr. Williams spoke up and said
he was sleepy and wanted to get a good night's rest so he was going to
bed, but he wanted mammy to have him a nice rare steak for his
breakfast. Mammy then asked him if he had been born a fool or just
turned that way since he had married so far above his station. He said
he would mighty soon find out who the _fool_ was in that family--and
she better have good beaten biscuits to go with the steak. When he
said this mammy gave him another sample of her strength like she did
in the church and told him to get out of there and change his clothes
to go to George Washington. Then he gave a big ha! ha! laugh in her
face, right before Dilsey and the neighbors and said why, didn't she
know that George Washington had been dead and buried behind the church
door for a hundred years? He kept on laughing and said the "ignorance
of country niggers is really amusable."
Mammy said she hated to do it with her veil on, being a new veil and
she hadn't used it but twice, but she couldn't wait to take it off,
him grinning like a picture-taking man at his funny joke. All his
teeth were showing, and, as mammy had always admired them for being so
big and white, she decided she would keep a handful to remember him
by; so she gave him one good lick in the mouth with her wedding
slipper, which was large and easy to come off. This broke a good half
of his front tooth, she said, besides drawing a lot of blood to
relieve her feelings. While he was busy wiping away the blood and
trying to open his eyes enough to see candle-light again, mammy sat
down by him, and, before he knew it, she had dragged him across her
lap and was paddling him like he was her own dear son instead of her
husband. Then she called Dilsey and told her she might feel safe about
marrying him now, if she still wanted him, for he had better sense
than to try to fool with any member of _that_ family again. Mammy Lou
said of course _she_ couldn't stay married to a man she could paddle.
She was too much of a lady. But Dilsey turned up her nose and said she
wouldn't have any second-hand nigger, much less a whipped one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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