A Southern Exposure by Alice Adams

Author:Alice Adams [Adams, Alice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary
ISBN: 9780517179475
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1995-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

20

“Esther will love her house the way you all have it fixed up,” Dolly Bigelow reassures Cynthia.

Cynthia, very distressed, has just confided the fact that Esther is coming over for a visit. “Not to inspect, of course, but it feels like an inspection, you know?”

“It’ll cheer her up,” Dolly insists. “She can’t help but love all this color.” Rather ambiguously she adds, “Of course, Esther never did have what you might call taste.”

“Oh come on, Dolly, the house wasn’t all that bad.”

Cynthia and Dolly have progressed in friendly intimacy sufficiently for Cynthia to feel that small corrections, little disagreements are all right. However, she has noticed that they are never quite all right with Dolly. And she thinks, for the thousandth time, that “Southern” is a language that she cannot possibly ever learn.

“I never said a thing that it was bad.” Dolly draws herself up, though she still smiles. “It never was real pretty. Not homey.”

“But maybe that was the way she wanted it, and she won’t like what I’ve done.” Carefully, Cynthia does not say, “we’ve done,” nor does she dare to mention Odessa.

Esther is briefly in town for a visit to Jimmy, and to her friends, and she has, according to Jimmy, expressed a desire to see their house, ostensibly just to pick up a few things that she left locked up in a downstairs closet. Cynthia of course has said that that was fine with her, perfectly fine—but as she has confided to Harry on the phone, she is scared. “It’s like an inspection at boarding school,” she told him, for no reason whispering into the phone. “Have a big stiff drink before she comes” is Harry’s advice. “Come on, she’s a very nice woman,” he reminds her.

“How’s Odessa doing?” Cynthia now dares to ask Dolly, knowing that this is a dangerous topic these days.

“Oh, uppity as ever. You know what Clifton Lee says is just sure to happen? All the Nigras in town will start working over to the defense plant, and then none of us will have any help at all, and they’ll all just get drunk with their money and have their Saturday night razor cuttings and beating up.”

“I can’t imagine Odessa—” Cynthia begins.

“Oh, can’t you now. Well, you just don’t know that woman the way I do. She’s got a temper—who-eee. And proud? That woman thinks she’s the queen of the jungle, in her mind. You know the truth is, it’s a good thing things didn’t work out with that Lord & Taylor of yours. I’ve got enough with Miz Odessa as it is.”

You sound as though you were talking about a daughter, is what Cynthia thinks, among other things, but manages not to say. One of the lessons she has painfully learned in this Southern year has been do not interfere in or comment on their relationships with Negroes. And try to get used to the way they pronounce that word, their “Nigra.” They are trying to say Negro; she is sure (almost) that that is what they mean to say.

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