Short Story Masterpieces by American Women Writers by Clarence C. Strowbridge

Author:Clarence C. Strowbridge [Strowbridge, Clarence C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780486783383
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2014-04-15T04:00:00+00:00

WHY I LIVE AT THE P.O.

by Eudora Welty

Eudora Welty was born, spent most of her life, and died in Jackson, Mississippi. Her first short story was published in 1936, when she was in her late twenties. “Why I Live at the P.O.” was published in The Atlantic Monthly five years later; it’s one of the seventeen stories in her collection entitled A Curtain of Green and Other Stories (1941), which also includes an introduction by Katherine Anne Porter.

I WAS GETTING along fine with Mama, Papa-Daddy and Uncle Rondo until my sister Stella-Rondo just separated from her husband and came back home again. Mr. Whitaker! Of course I went with Mr. Whitaker first, when he first appeared here in China Grove, taking “Pose Yourself ” photos, and Stella-Rondo broke us up. Told him I was one-sided. Bigger on one side than the other, which is a deliberate, calculated falsehood: I’m the same. Stella-Rondo is exactly twelve months to the day younger than I am and for that reason she’s spoiled.

She’s always had anything in the world she wanted and then she’d throw it away. Papa-Daddy gave her this gorgeous Add-a-Pearl necklace when she was eight years old and she threw it away playing baseball when she was nine, with only two pearls.

So as soon as she got married and moved away from home the first thing she did was separate! From Mr. Whitaker! This photographer with the popeyes she said she trusted. Came home from one of those towns up in Illinois and to our complete surprise brought this child of two.

Mama said she like to made her drop dead for a second. “Here you had this marvelous blonde child and never so much as wrote your mother a word about it,” says Mama. “I’m thoroughly ashamed of you.” But of course she wasn’t.

Stella-Rondo just calmly takes off this hat, I wish you could see it. She says, “Why, Mama, Shirley-T.’s adopted, I can prove it.”

“How?” says Mama, but all I says was, “H’m!” There I was over the hot stove, trying to stretch two chickens over five people and a completely unexpected child into the bargain, without one moment’s notice.

“What do you mean—‘H’m!’?” says Stella-Rondo, and Mama says, “I heard that, Sister.”

I said that oh, I didn’t mean a thing, only that whoever Shirley-T. was, she was the spit-image of Papa-Daddy if he’d cut off his beard, which of course he’d never do in the world. Papa-Daddy’s Mama’s papa and sulks.

Stella-Rondo got furious! She said, “Sister, I don’t need to tell you you got a lot of nerve and always did have and I’ll thank you to make no future reference to my adopted child whatsoever.”

“Very well,” I said. “Very well, very well. Of course I noticed at once she looks like Mr. Whitaker’s side too. That frown. She looks like a cross between Mr. Whitaker and Papa-Daddy.”

“Well, all I can say is she isn’t.”

“She looks exactly like Shirley Temple to me,” says Mama, but Shirley-T. just ran away from her.

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