Part Two Chapter 13

To Kill a Mockingbird



"Put my bag in the front bedroom, Calpurnia," was the first thing

Aunt Alexandra said. "Jean Louise, stop scratching your head," was the

second thing she said.

Calpurnia picked up Aunty's heavy suitcase and opened the door.

I'll take it, said Jem, and took it. I heard the suitcase hit the

bedroom floor with a thump. The sound had a dull permanence about it.

"Have you come for a visit, Aunty?" I asked. Aunt Alexandra's visits

from the Landing were rare, and she traveled in state. She owned a

bright green square Buick and a black chauffeur, both kept in an

unhealthy state of tidiness, but today they were nowhere to be seen.
"Didn't your father tell you?" she asked.

Jem and I shook our heads.



"Probably he forgot. He's not in yet, is he?"

"Nome, he doesn't usually get back till late afternoon," said Jem.

"Well, your father and I decided it was time I came to stay with you

for a while."

"For a while" in Maycomb meant anything from three days to thirty

years. Jem and I exchanged glances.

"Jem's growing up now and you are too," she said to me. "We

decided that it would be best for you to have some feminine influence.

It won't be many years, Jean Louise, before you become interested in

clothes and boys-"


I could have made several answers to this: Cal's a girl, it would be

many years before I would be interested in boys, I would never be

interested in clothes... but I kept quiet.

"What about Uncle Jimmy?" asked Jem. "Is he comin', too?"

"Oh no, he's staying at the Landing. He'll keep the place going."

The moment I said, "Won't you miss him?" I realized that this was

not a tactful question. Uncle Jimmy present or Uncle Jimmy absent made

not much difference, he never said anything. Aunt Alexandra ignored my

question.

I could think of nothing else to say to her. In fact I could never

think of anything to say to her, and I sat thinking of past painful

conversations between us: How are you, Jean Louise? Fine, thank you
ma'am, how are you? Very well, thank you, what have you been doing

with yourself? Nothin'. Don't you do anything? Nome. Certainly you

have friends? Yessum. Well what do you all do? Nothin'.



It was plain that Aunty thought me dull in the extreme, because I

once heard her tell Atticus that I was sluggish.

There was a story behind all this, but I had no desire to extract it

from her then. Today was Sunday, and Aunt Alexandra was positively

irritable on the Lord's Day. I guess it was her Sunday corset. She was

not fat, but solid, and she chose protective garments that drew up her

bosom to giddy heights, pinched in her waist, flared out her rear, and

managed to suggest that Aunt Alexandra's was once an hour-glass

figure. From any angle, it was formidable.

The remainder of the afternoon went by in the gentle gloom that

descends when relatives appear, but was dispelled when we heard a

car turn in the driveway. It was Atticus, home from Montgomery. Jem,

forgetting his dignity, ran with me to meet him. Jem seized his

briefcase and bag, I jumped into his arms, felt his vague dry kiss and

said, "'d you bring me a book? 'd you know Aunty's here?"

Atticus answered both questions in the affirmative. "How'd you

like for her to come live with us?"

I said I would like it very much, which was a lie, but one must

lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can't do

anything about them.



"We felt it was time you children needed- well, it's like this,

Scout," Atticus said. "Your aunt's doing me a favor as well as you

all. I can't stay here all day with you, and the summer's going to

be a hot one."

"Yes sir," I said, not understanding a word he said. I had an

idea, however, that Aunt Alexandra's appearance on the scene was not

so much Atticus's doing as hers. Aunty had a way of declaring What

Is Best For The Family, and I suppose her coming to live with us was

in that category.

Maycomb welcomed her. Miss Maudie Atkinson baked a Lane cake so

loaded with shinny it made me tight; Miss Stephanie Crawford had

long visits with Aunt Alexandra, consisting mostly of Miss Stephanie

shaking her head and saying, "Uh, uh, uh." Miss Rachel next door had

Aunty over for coffee in the afternoons, and Mr. Nathan Radley went so

far as to come up in the front yard and say he was glad to see her.

When she settled in with us and life resumed its daily pace, Aunt

Alexandra seemed as if she had always lived with us. Her Missionary

Society refreshments added to her reputation as a hostess (she did not

permit Calpurnia to make the delicacies required to sustain the

Society through long reports on Rice Christians); she joined and

became Secretary of the Maycomb Amanuensis Club. To all parties

present and participating in the life of the county, Aunt Alexandra

was one of the last of her kind: she had river-boat, boarding-school

manners; let any moral come along and she would uphold it; she was

born in the objective case; she was an incurable gossip. When Aunt

Alexandra went to school, self-doubt could not be found in any

textbook, so she knew not its meaning. She was never bored, and

given the slightest chance she would exercise her royal prerogative:

she would arrange, advise, caution, and warn.

She never let a chance escape her to point out the shortcomings of

other tribal groups to the greater glory of our own, a habit that

amused Jem rather than annoyed him: "Aunty better watch how she talks-

scratch most folks in Maycomb and they're kin to us."



Aunt Alexandra, in underlining the moral of young Sam Merriweather's

suicide, said it was caused by a morbid streak in the family. Let a

sixteen-year-old girl giggle in the choir and Aunty would say, "It

just goes to show you, all the Penfield women are flighty."

Everybody in Maycomb, it seemed, had a Streak: a Drinking Streak, a

Gambling Streak, a Mean Streak, a Funny Streak.

Once, when Aunty assured us that Miss Stephanie Crawford's

tendency to mind other people's business was hereditary, Atticus said,

"Sister, when you stop to think about it, our generation's practically

the first in the Finch family not to marry its cousins. Would you

say the Finches have an Incestuous Streak?

Aunty said no, that's where we got our small hands and feet.

I never understood her preoccupation with heredity. Somewhere, I had

received the impression that Fine Folks were people who did the best

they could with the sense they had, but Aunt Alexandra was of the

opinion, obliquely expressed, that the longer a family had been

squatting on one patch of land the finer it was.

"That makes the Ewells fine folks, then," said Jem. The tribe of

which Burris Ewell and his brethren consisted had lived on the same

plot of earth behind the Maycomb dump, and had thrived on county

welfare money for three generations.



Aunt Alexandra's theory had something behind it, though. Maycomb was

an ancient town. It was twenty miles east of Finch's Landing,

awkwardly inland for such an old town. But Maycomb would have been

closer to the river had it not been for the nimble-wittedness of one

Sinkfield, who in the dawn of history operated an inn where two

pig-trails met, the only tavern in the territory. Sinkfield, no

patriot, served and supplied ammunition to Indians and settlers alike,

neither knowing or caring whether he was a part of the Alabama

Territory or the Creek Nation so long as business was good. Business

was excellent when Governor William Wyatt Bibb, with a view to

promoting the newly created county's domestic tranquility,

dispatched a team of surveyors to locate its exact center and there

establish its seat of government. The surveyors, Sinkfield's guests,

told their host that he was in the territorial confines of Maycomb

County, and showed him the probable spot where the county seat would

be built. Had not Sinkfield made a bold stroke to preserve his

holdings, Maycomb would have sat in the middle of Winston Swamp, a

place totally devoid of interest. Instead, Maycomb grew and sprawled

out from its hub, Sinkfield's Tavern, because Sinkfield reduced his

guests to myopic drunkenness one evening, induced them to bring

forward their maps and charts, lop off a little here, add a bit there,

and adjust the center of the county to meet his requirements. He

sent them packing next day armed with their charts and five quarts

of shinny in their saddlebags- two apiece and one for the Governor.

Because its primary reason for existence was government, Maycomb was

spared the grubbiness that distinguished most Alabama towns its

size. In the beginning its buildings were solid, its courthouse proud,

its streets graciously wide. Maycomb's proportion of professional

people ran high: one went there to have his teeth pulled, his wagon

fixed, his heart listened to, his money deposited, his soul saved, his

mules vetted. But the ultimate wisdom of Sinkfield's maneuver is

open to question. He placed the young town too far away from the

only kind of public transportation in those days- river-boat- and it

took a man from the north end of the county two days to travel to

Maycomb for store-bought goods. As a result the town remained the same

size for a hundred years, an island in a patchwork sea of cottonfields

and timberland.

Although Maycomb was ignored during the War Between the States,

Reconstruction rule and economic ruin forced the town to grow. It grew

inward. New people so rarely settled there, the same families

married the same families until the members of the community looked

faintly alike. Occasionally someone would return from Montgomery or

Mobile with an outsider, but the result caused only a ripple in the

quiet stream of family resemblance. Things were more or less the

same during my early years.

There was indeed a caste system in Maycomb, but to my mind it worked

this way: the older citizens, the present generation of people who had

lived side by side for years and years, were utterly predictable to

one another: they took for granted attitudes, character shadings, even

gestures, as having been repeated in each generation and refined by

time. Thus the dicta No Crawford Minds His Own Business, Every Third

Merriweather Is Morbid, The Truth Is Not in the Delafields, All the

Bufords Walk Like That, were simply guides to daily living: never take

a check from a Delafield without a discreet call to the bank; Miss

Maudie Atkinson's shoulder stoops because she was a Buford; if Mrs.

Grace Merriweather sips gin out of Lydia E. Pinkham bottles it's

nothing unusual- her mother did the same.

Aunt Alexandra fitted into the world of Maycomb like a hand into a

glove, but never into the world of Jem and me. I so often wondered how

she could be Atticus's and Uncle Jack's sister that I revived

half-remembered tales of changelings and mandrake roots that Jem had

spun long ago.



These were abstract speculations for the first month of her stay, as

she had little to say to Jem or me, and we saw her only at mealtimes

and at night before we went to bed. It was summer and we were

outdoors. Of course some afternoons when I would run inside for a

drink of water, I would find the livingroom overrun with Maycomb

ladies, sipping, whispering, fanning, and I would be called: "Jean

Louise, come speak to these ladies."

When I appeared in the doorway, Aunty would look as if she regretted

her request; I was usually mud-splashed or covered with sand.

"Speak to your Cousin Lily," she said one afternoon, when she had

trapped me in the hall.

"Who?" I said.

"Your Cousin Lily Brooke," said Aunt Alexandra.



"She our cousin? I didn't know that."

Aunt Alexandra managed to smile in a way that conveyed a gentle

apology to Cousin Lily and firm disapproval to me. When Cousin Lily

Brooke left I knew I was in for it.

It was a sad thing that my father had neglected to tell me about the

Finch Family, or to install any pride into his children. She

summoned Jem, who sat warily on the sofa beside me. She left the

room and returned with a purple-covered book on which Meditations

of Joshua S. St. Clair¯ was stamped in gold.

"Your cousin wrote this," said Aunt Alexandra. "He was a beautiful

character."

Jem examined the small volume. "Is this the Cousin Joshua who was

locked up for so long?"



Aunt Alexandra said, "How did you know that?"

"Why, Atticus said he went round the bend at the University. Said he

tried to shoot the president. Said Cousin Joshua said he wasn't

anything but a sewer-inspector and tried to shoot him with an old

flintlock pistol, only it just blew up in his hand. Atticus said it

cost the family five hundred dollars to get him out of that one-"

Aunt Alexandra was standing stiff as a stork. "That's all," she

said. "We'll see about this."

Before bedtime I was in Jem's room trying to borrow a book, when

Atticus knocked and entered. He sat on the side of Jem's bed, looked

at us soberly, then he grinned.

"Er- h'rm," he said. He was beginning to preface some things he said

with a throaty noise, and I thought he must at last be getting old,

but he looked the same. "I don't exactly know how to say this," he

began.



"Well, just say it," said Jem. "Have we done something?"

Our father was actually fidgeting. "No, I just want to explain to

you that- your Aunt Alexandra asked me... son, you know you're a

Finch, don't you?"

"That's what I've been told." Jem looked out of the corners of his

eyes. His voice rose uncontrollably, "Atticus, what's the matter?"

Atticus crossed his knees and folded his arms. "I'm trying to tell

you the facts of life."

Jem's disgust deepened. "I know all that stuff," he said.



Atticus suddenly grew serious. In his lawyer's voice, without a

shade of inflection, he said: "Your aunt has asked me to try and

impress upon you and Jean Louise that you are not from run-of-the-mill

people, that you are the product of several generations' gentle

breeding-" Atticus paused, watching me locate an elusive redbug on

my leg.

"Gentle breeding," he continued, when I had found and scratched

it, "and that you should try to live up to your name-" Atticus

persevered in spite of us: "She asked me to tell you you must try to

behave like the little lady and gentleman that you are. She wants to

talk to you about the family and what it's meant to Maycomb County

through the years, so you'll have some idea of who you are, so you

might be moved to behave accordingly," he concluded at a gallop.

Stunned, Jem and I looked at each other, then at Atticus, whose

collar seemed to worry him. We did not speak to him.

Presently I picked up a comb from Jem's dresser and ran its teeth

along the edge.

"Stop that noise," Atticus said.



His curtness stung me. The comb was midway in its journey, and I

banged it down. For no reason I felt myself beginning to cry, but I

could not stop. This was not my father. My father never thought

these thoughts. My father never spoke so. Aunt Alexandra had put him

up to this, somehow. Through my tears I saw Jem standing in a

similar pool of isolation, his head cocked to one side.

There was nowhere to go, but I turned to go and met Atticus's vest

front. I buried my head in it and listened to the small internal

noises that went on behind the light blue cloth: his watch ticking,

the faint crackle of his starched shirt, the soft sound of his

breathing.

"Your stomach's growling," I said.

"I know it," he said.

"You better take some soda."



"I will," he said.

"Atticus, is all this behavin' an' stuff gonna make things

different? I mean are you-?"

I felt his hand on the back of my head. "Don't you worry about

anything," he said. "It's not time to worry."

When I heard that, I knew he had come back to us. The blood in my

legs began to flow again, and I raised my head. "You really want us to

do all that? I can't remember everything Finches are supposed to

do...."

"I don't want you to remember it. Forget it."



He went to the door and out of the room, shutting the door behind

him. He nearly slammed it, but caught himself at the last minute and

closed it softly. As Jem and I stared, the door opened again and

Atticus peered around. His eyebrows were raised, his glasses had

slipped. "Get more like Cousin Joshua every day, don't I? Do you think

I'll end up costing the family five hundred dollars?"

I know now what he was trying to do, but Atticus was only a man.

It takes a woman to do that kind of work.