Part Two

Chapter 12

Jem was twelve. He was difficult to live with, inconsistent, moody. His appetite was appalling, and he told me so many times to stop pestering him I consulted Atticus: “Reckon he’s got a tapeworm?” Atticus said no, Jem was growing. I must be patient with
him and disturb him as little as possible.

This change in Jem had come about in a matter of weeks. Mrs. Dubose was not cold
in her grave—Jem had seemed grateful enough for my company when he went to read
to her. Overnight, it seemed, Jem had acquired an alien set of values and was trying to
impose them on me: several times he went so far as to tell me what to do. After one
altercation when Jem hollered, “It’s time you started bein‘ a girl and acting right!” I burst
into tears and fled to Calpurnia.
“Don’t you fret too much over Mister Jem—” she began.
“Mister Jem?”
“Yeah, he’s just about Mister Jem now.”
“He ain’t that old,” I said. “All he needs is somebody to beat him up, and I ain’t big
enough.”
“Baby,” said Calpurnia, “I just can’t help it if Mister Jem’s growin‘ up. He’s gonna want
to be off to himself a lot now, doin’ whatever boys do, so you just come right on in the
kitchen when you feel lonesome. We’ll find lots of things to do in here.”
The beginning of that summer boded well: Jem could do as he pleased; Calpurnia
would do until Dill came. She seemed glad to see me when I appeared in the kitchen,
and by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl.
But summer came and Dill was not there. I received a letter and a snapshot from him.
The letter said he had a new father whose picture was enclosed, and he would have to
stay in Meridian because they planned to build a fishing boat. His father was a lawyer
like Atticus, only much younger. Dill’s new father had a pleasant face, which made me
glad Dill had captured him, but I was crushed. Dill concluded by saying he would love
me forever and not to worry, he would come get me and marry me as soon as he got
enough money together, so please write.
The fact that I had a permanent fiancé was little compensation for his absence: I had
never thought about it, but summer was Dill by the fishpool smoking string, Dill’s eyes
alive with complicated plans to make Boo Radley emerge; summer was the swiftness
with which Dill would reach up and kiss me when Jem was not looking, the longings we
sometimes felt each other feel. With him, life was routine; without him, life was
unbearable. I stayed miserable for two days. “To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 62
As if that were not enough, the state legislature was called into emergency session
and Atticus left us for two weeks. The Governor was eager to scrape a few barnacles off
the ship of state; there were sit-down strikes in Birmingham; bread lines in the cities
grew longer, people in the country grew poorer. But these were events remote from the
world of Jem and me.
We were surprised one morning to see a cartoon in the Montgomery Advertiser above
the caption, “Maycomb’s Finch.” It showed Atticus barefooted and in short pants,
chained to a desk: he was diligently writing on a slate while some frivolous-looking girls
yelled, “Yoo-hoo!” at him.
“That’s a compliment,” explained Jem. “He spends his time doin‘ things that wouldn’t
get done if nobody did ’em.”
“Huh?”
In addition to Jem’s newly developed characteristics, he had acquired a maddening air
of wisdom.
“Oh, Scout, it’s like reorganizing the tax systems of the counties and things. That kind
of thing’s pretty dry to most men.”
“How do you know?”
“Oh, go on and leave me alone. I’m readin‘ the paper.”
Jem got his wish. I departed for the kitchen.
While she was shelling peas, Calpurnia suddenly said, “What am I gonna do about
you all’s church this Sunday?”
“Nothing, I reckon. Atticus left us collection.”
Calpurnia’s eyes narrowed and I could tell what was going through her mind. “Cal,” I
said, “you know we’ll behave. We haven’t done anything in church in years.”
Calpurnia evidently remembered a rainy Sunday when we were both fatherless and
teacherless. Left to its own devices, the class tied Eunice Ann Simpson to a chair and
placed her in the furnace room. We forgot her, trooped upstairs to church, and were
listening quietly to the sermon when a dreadful banging issued from the radiator pipes,
persisting until someone investigated and brought forth Eunice Ann saying she didn’t
want to play Shadrach any more—Jem Finch said she wouldn’t get burnt if she had
enough faith, but it was hot down there.
“Besides, Cal, this isn’t the first time Atticus has left us,” I protested.
“Yeah, but he makes certain your teacher’s gonna be there. I didn’t hear him say this
time—reckon he forgot it.” Calpurnia scratched her head. Suddenly she smiled. “How’d
you and Mister Jem like to come to church with me tomorrow?”
“Really?”
“How ‘bout it?” grinned Calpurnia.
If Calpurnia had ever bathed me roughly before, it was nothing compared to her
supervision of that Saturday night’s routine. She made me soap all over twice, drew
fresh water in the tub for each rinse; she stuck my head in the basin and washed it with
Octagon soap and castile. She had trusted Jem for years, but that night she invaded his
privacy and provoked an outburst: “Can’t anybody take a bath in this house without the
whole family lookin‘?”
Next morning she began earlier than usual, to “go over our clothes.” When Calpurnia
stayed overnight with us she slept on a folding cot in the kitchen; that morning it was
covered with our Sunday habiliments. She had put so much starch in my dress it came
up like a tent when I sat down. She made me wear a petticoat and she wrapped a pink
sash tightly around my waist. She went over my patent-leather shoes with a cold biscuit
until she saw her face in them.
“It’s like we were goin‘ to Mardi Gras,” said Jem. “What’s all this for, Cal?”
“I don’t want anybody sayin‘ I don’t look after my children,” she muttered. “Mister Jem,
you absolutely can’t wear that tie with that suit. It’s green.”
“‘Smatter with that?”
“Suit’s blue. Can’t you tell?”
“Hee hee,” I howled, “Jem’s color blind.” “To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 63
His face flushed angrily, but Calpurnia said, “Now you all quit that. You’re gonna go to
First Purchase with smiles on your faces.”
First Purchase African M.E. Church was in the Quarters outside the southern town
limits, across the old sawmill tracks. It was an ancient paint-peeled frame building, the
only church in Maycomb with a steeple and bell, called First Purchase because it was
paid for from the first earnings of freed slaves. Negroes worshiped in it on Sundays and
white men gambled in it on weekdays.
The churchyard was brick-hard clay, as was the cemetery beside it. If someone died
during a dry spell, the body was covered with chunks of ice until rain softened the earth.
A few graves in the cemetery were marked with crumbling tombstones; newer ones
were outlined with brightly colored glass and broken Coca-Cola bottles. Lightning rods
guarding some graves denoted dead who rested uneasily; stumps of burned-out
candles stood at the heads of infant graves. It was a happy cemetery.
The warm bittersweet smell of clean Negro welcomed us as we entered the
churchyard—Hearts of Love hairdressing mingled with asafoetida, snuff, Hoyt’s
Cologne, Brown’s Mule, peppermint, and lilac talcum.
When they saw Jem and me with Calpurnia, the men stepped back and took off their
hats; the women crossed their arms at their waists, weekday gestures of respectful
attention. They parted and made a small pathway to the church door for us. Calpurnia
walked between Jem and me, responding to the greetings of her brightly clad neighbors.
“What you up to, Miss Cal?” said a voice behind us.
Calpurnia’s hands went to our shoulders and we stopped and looked around: standing
in the path behind us was a tall Negro woman. Her weight was on one leg; she rested
her left elbow in the curve of her hip, pointing at us with upturned palm. She was bulletheaded
with strange almond-shaped eyes, straight nose, and an Indian-bow mouth. She
seemed seven feet high.
I felt Calpurnia’s hand dig into my shoulder. “What you want, Lula?” she asked, in
tones I had never heard her use. She spoke quietly, contemptuously.
“I wants to know why you bringin‘ white chillun to nigger church.”
“They’s my comp’ny,” said Calpurnia. Again I thought her voice strange: she was
talking like the rest of them.
“Yeah, an‘ I reckon you’s comp’ny at the Finch house durin’ the week.”
A murmur ran through the crowd. “Don’t you fret,” Calpurnia whispered to me, but the
roses on her hat trembled indignantly.
When Lula came up the pathway toward us Calpurnia said, “Stop right there, nigger.”
Lula stopped, but she said, “You ain’t got no business bringin‘ white chillun here—they
got their church, we got our’n. It is our church, ain’t it, Miss Cal?”
Calpurnia said, “It’s the same God, ain’t it?”
Jem said, “Let’s go home, Cal, they don’t want us here—”
I agreed: they did not want us here. I sensed, rather than saw, that we were being
advanced upon. They seemed to be drawing closer to us, but when I looked up at
Calpurnia there was amusement in her eyes. When I looked down the pathway again,
Lula was gone. In her place was a solid mass of colored people.
One of them stepped from the crowd. It was Zeebo, the garbage collector. “Mister
Jem,” he said, “we’re mighty glad to have you all here. Don’t pay no ‘tention to Lula,
she’s contentious because Reverend Sykes threatened to church her. She’s a
troublemaker from way back, got fancy ideas an’ haughty ways—we’re mighty glad to
have you all.”
With that, Calpurnia led us to the church door where we were greeted by Reverend
Sykes, who led us to the front pew.
First Purchase was unceiled and unpainted within. Along its walls unlighted kerosene
lamps hung on brass brackets; pine benches served as pews. Behind the rough oak
pulpit a faded pink silk banner proclaimed God Is Love, the church’s only decoration
except a rotogravure print of Hunt’s The Light of the World. There was no sign of piano,
organ, hymn-books, church programs—the familiar ecclesiastical impedimenta we saw “To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 64
every Sunday. It was dim inside, with a damp coolness slowly dispelled by the gathering
congregation. At each seat was a cheap cardboard fan bearing a garish Garden of
Gethsemane, courtesy Tyndal’s Hardware Co. (You-Name-It-We-Sell-It).
Calpurnia motioned Jem and me to the end of the row and placed herself between us.
She fished in her purse, drew out her handkerchief, and untied the hard wad of change
in its corner. She gave a dime to me and a dime to Jem. “We’ve got ours,” he
whispered. “You keep it,” Calpurnia said, “you’re my company.” Jem’s face showed brief
indecision on the ethics of withholding his own dime, but his innate courtesy won and he
shifted his dime to his pocket. I did likewise with no qualms.
“Cal,” I whispered, “where are the hymn-books?”
“We don’t have any,” she said.
“Well how—?”
“Sh-h,” she said. Reverend Sykes was standing behind the pulpit staring the
congregation to silence. He was a short, stocky man in a black suit, black tie, white shirt,
and a gold watch-chain that glinted in the light from the frosted windows.
He said, “Brethren and sisters, we are particularly glad to have company with us this
morning. Mister and Miss Finch. You all know their father. Before I begin I will read
some announcements.”
Reverend Sykes shuffled some papers, chose one and held it at arm’s length. “The
Missionary Society meets in the home of Sister Annette Reeves next Tuesday. Bring
your sewing.”
He read from another paper. “You all know of Brother Tom Robinson’s trouble. He has
been a faithful member of First Purchase since he was a boy. The collection taken up
today and for the next three Sundays will go to Helen—his wife, to help her out at
home.”
I punched Jem. “That’s the Tom Atticus’s de—”
“Sh-h!”
I turned to Calpurnia but was hushed before I opened my mouth. Subdued, I fixed my
attention upon Reverend Sykes, who seemed to be waiting for me to settle down. “Will
the music superintendent lead us in the first hymn,” he said.
Zeebo rose from his pew and walked down the center aisle, stopping in front of us and
facing the congregation. He was carrying a battered hymn-book. He opened it and said,
“We’ll sing number two seventy-three.”
This was too much for me. “How’re we gonna sing it if there ain’t any hymn-books?”
Calpurnia smiled. “Hush baby,” she whispered, “you’ll see in a minute.”
Zeebo cleared his throat and read in a voice like the rumble of distant artillery:
“There’s a land beyond the river.”
Miraculously on pitch, a hundred voices sang out Zeebo’s words. The last syllable,
held to a husky hum, was followed by Zeebo saying, “That we call the sweet forever.”
Music again swelled around us; the last note lingered and Zeebo met it with the next
line: “And we only reach that shore by faith’s decree.”
The congregation hesitated, Zeebo repeated the line carefully, and it was sung. At the
chorus Zeebo closed the book, a signal for the congregation to proceed without his help.
On the dying notes of “Jubilee,” Zeebo said, “In that far-off sweet forever, just beyond
the shining river.”
Line for line, voices followed in simple harmony until the hymn ended in a melancholy
murmur.
I looked at Jem, who was looking at Zeebo from the corners of his eyes. I didn’t
believe it either, but we had both heard it.
Reverend Sykes then called on the Lord to bless the sick and the suffering, a
procedure no different from our church practice, except Reverend Sykes directed the
Deity’s attention to several specific cases.
His sermon was a forthright denunciation of sin, an austere declaration of the motto on
the wall behind him: he warned his flock against the evils of heady brews, gambling, and
strange women. Bootleggers caused enough trouble in the Quarters, but women were “To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 65
worse. Again, as I had often met it in my own church, I was confronted with the Impurity
of Women doctrine that seemed to preoccupy all clergymen.
Jem and I had heard the same sermon Sunday after Sunday, with only one exception.
Reverend Sykes used his pulpit more freely to express his views on individual lapses
from grace: Jim Hardy had been absent from church for five Sundays and he wasn’t
sick; Constance Jackson had better watch her ways—she was in grave danger for
quarreling with her neighbors; she had erected the only spite fence in the history of the
Quarters.
Reverend Sykes closed his sermon. He stood beside a table in front of the pulpit and
requested the morning offering, a proceeding that was strange to Jem and me. One by
one, the congregation came forward and dropped nickels and dimes into a black
enameled coffee can. Jem and I followed suit, and received a soft, “Thank you, thank
you,” as our dimes clinked.
To our amazement, Reverend Sykes emptied the can onto the table and raked the
coins into his hand. He straightened up and said, “This is not enough, we must have ten
dollars.”
The congregation stirred. “You all know what it’s for—Helen can’t leave those children
to work while Tom’s in jail. If everybody gives one more dime, we’ll have it—” Reverend
Sykes waved his hand and called to someone in the back of the church. “Alec, shut the
doors. Nobody leaves here till we have ten dollars.”
Calpurnia scratched in her handbag and brought forth a battered leather coin purse.
“Naw Cal,” Jem whispered, when she handed him a shiny quarter, “we can put ours in.
Gimme your dime, Scout.”
The church was becoming stuffy, and it occurred to me that Reverend Sykes intended
to sweat the amount due out of his flock. Fans crackled, feet shuffled, tobacco-chewers
were in agony.
Reverend Sykes startled me by saying sternly, “Carlow Richardson, I haven’t seen
you up this aisle yet.”
A thin man in khaki pants came up the aisle and deposited a coin. The congregation
murmured approval.
Reverend Sykes then said, “I want all of you with no children to make a sacrifice and
give one more dime apiece. Then we’ll have it.”
Slowly, painfully, the ten dollars was collected. The door was opened, and the gust of
warm air revived us. Zeebo lined On Jordan’s Stormy Banks, and church was over.
I wanted to stay and explore, but Calpurnia propelled me up the aisle ahead of her. At
the church door, while she paused to talk with Zeebo and his family, Jem and I chatted
with Reverend Sykes. I was bursting with questions, but decided I would wait and let
Calpurnia answer them.
“We were ‘specially glad to have you all here,” said Reverend Sykes. “This church has
no better friend than your daddy.”
My curiosity burst: “Why were you all takin‘ up collection for Tom Robinson’s wife?”
“Didn’t you hear why?” asked Reverend Sykes. “Helen’s got three little’uns and she
can’t go out to work—”
“Why can’t she take ‘em with her, Reverend?” I asked. It was customary for field
Negroes with tiny children to deposit them in whatever shade there was while their
parents worked—usually the babies sat in the shade between two rows of cotton. Those
unable to sit were strapped papoose-style on their mothers’ backs, or resided in extra
cotton bags.
Reverend Sykes hesitated. “To tell you the truth, Miss Jean Louise, Helen’s finding it
hard to get work these days… when it’s picking time, I think Mr. Link Deas’ll take her.”
“Why not, Reverend?”
Before he could answer, I felt Calpurnia’s hand on my shoulder. At its pressure I said,
“We thank you for lettin‘ us come.” Jem echoed me, and we made our way homeward.
“Cal, I know Tom Robinson’s in jail an‘ he’s done somethin’ awful, but why won’t folks
hire Helen?” I asked. “To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 66
Calpurnia, in her navy voile dress and tub of a hat, walked between Jem and me. “It’s
because of what folks say Tom’s done,” she said. “Folks aren’t anxious to—to have
anything to do with any of his family.”
“Just what did he do, Cal?”
Calpurnia sighed. “Old Mr. Bob Ewell accused him of rapin‘ his girl an’ had him
arrested an‘ put in jail—”
“Mr. Ewell?” My memory stirred. “Does he have anything to do with those Ewells that
come every first day of school an‘ then go home? Why, Atticus said they were absolute
trash—I never heard Atticus talk about folks the way he talked about the Ewells. He
said-”
“Yeah, those are the ones.”
“Well, if everybody in Maycomb knows what kind of folks the Ewells are they’d be glad
to hire Helen… what’s rape, Cal?”
“It’s somethin‘ you’ll have to ask Mr. Finch about,” she said. “He can explain it better
than I can. You all hungry? The Reverend took a long time unwindin’ this morning, he’s
not usually so tedious.”
“He’s just like our preacher,” said Jem, “but why do you all sing hymns that way?”
“Linin‘?” she asked.
“Is that what it is?”
“Yeah, it’s called linin‘. They’ve done it that way as long as I can remember.”
Jem said it looked like they could save the collection money for a year and get some
hymn-books.
Calpurnia laughed. “Wouldn’t do any good,” she said. “They can’t read.”
“Can’t read?” I asked. “All those folks?”
“That’s right,” Calpurnia nodded. “Can’t but about four folks in First Purchase read…
I’m one of ‘em.”
“Where’d you go to school, Cal?” asked Jem.
“Nowhere. Let’s see now, who taught me my letters? It was Miss Maudie Atkinson’s
aunt, old Miss Buford—”
“Are you that old?”
“I’m older than Mr. Finch, even.” Calpurnia grinned. “Not sure how much, though. We
started rememberin‘ one time, trying to figure out how old I was—I can remember back
just a few years more’n he can, so I’m not much older, when you take off the fact that
men can’t remember as well as women.”
“What’s your birthday, Cal?”
“I just have it on Christmas, it’s easier to remember that way—I don’t have a real
birthday.”
“But Cal,” Jem protested, “you don’t look even near as old as Atticus.”
“Colored folks don’t show their ages so fast,” she said.
“Maybe because they can’t read. Cal, did you teach Zeebo?”
“Yeah, Mister Jem. There wasn’t a school even when he was a boy. I made him learn,
though.”
Zeebo was Calpurnia’s eldest son. If I had ever thought about it, I would have known
that Calpurnia was of mature years—Zeebo had half-grown children—but then I had
never thought about it.
“Did you teach him out of a primer, like us?” I asked.
“No, I made him get a page of the Bible every day, and there was a book Miss Buford
taught me out of—bet you don’t know where I got it,” she said.
We didn’t know.
Calpurnia said, “Your Granddaddy Finch gave it to me.”
“Were you from the Landing?” Jem asked. “You never told us that.”
“I certainly am, Mister Jem. Grew up down there between the Buford Place and the
Landin‘. I’ve spent all my days workin’ for the Finches or the Bufords, an‘ I moved to
Maycomb when your daddy and your mamma married.”
“What was the book, Cal?” I asked. “To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 67
“Blackstone’s Commentaries.”
Jem was thunderstruck. “You mean you taught Zeebo outa that?”
“Why yes sir, Mister Jem.” Calpurnia timidly put her fingers to her mouth. “They were
the only books I had. Your grandaddy said Mr. Blackstone wrote fine English—”
“That’s why you don’t talk like the rest of ‘em,” said Jem.
“The rest of who?”
“Rest of the colored folks. Cal, but you talked like they did in church…”
That Calpurnia led a modest double life never dawned on me. The idea that she had a
separate existence outside our household was a novel one, to say nothing of her having
command of two languages. “Cal,” I asked, “why do you talk nigger-talk to the—to your
folks when you know it’s not right?”
“Well, in the first place I’m black—”
“That doesn’t mean you hafta talk that way when you know better,” said Jem.
Calpurnia tilted her hat and scratched her head, then pressed her hat down carefully
over her ears. “It’s right hard to say,” she said. “Suppose you and Scout talked coloredfolks’
talk at home it’d be out of place, wouldn’t it? Now what if I talked white-folks’ talk at
church, and with my neighbors? They’d think I was puttin‘ on airs to beat Moses.”
“But Cal, you know better,” I said.
“It’s not necessary to tell all you know. It’s not ladylike—in the second place, folks
don’t like to have somebody around knowin‘ more than they do. It aggravates ’em.
You’re not gonna change any of them by talkin‘ right, they’ve got to want to learn
themselves, and when they don’t want to learn there’s nothing you can do but keep your
mouth shut or talk their language.”
“Cal, can I come to see you sometimes?”
She looked down at me. “See me, honey? You see me every day.”
“Out to your house,” I said. “Sometimes after work? Atticus can get me.”
“Any time you want to,” she said. “We’d be glad to have you.”
We were on the sidewalk by the Radley Place.
“Look on the porch yonder,” Jem said.
I looked over to the Radley Place, expecting to see its phantom occupant sunning
himself in the swing. The swing was empty.
“I mean our porch,” said Jem.
I looked down the street. Enarmored, upright, uncompromising, Aunt Alexandra was
sitting in a rocking chair exactly as if she had sat there every day of her life.
Chapter 13
“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—” “To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 68
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 “To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 69
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 nimblewittedness
of one Sinkfield, who in the dawn of history operated an inn where two pigtrails
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 storebought
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 “To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 70
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 “To Kill a Mockingbird” By Nelle Harper Lee 71
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.