I

I WAS getting along fine with Mama, Papa-Daddy, and Uncle Rondo till 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 liked 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 with a snood. 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 is 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.

So the first thing Stella-Rondo did at the table was turn Papa-Daddy against me.

‘Papa-Daddy,’ she says. (He was trying to cut up his meat.) ‘PapaDaddy!’ (I was taken completely by surprise. Papa-Daddy is about a million years old and’s got this long-long beard.) ‘Papa-Daddy, Sister says she fails to understand why you don’t cut off your beard.’

So Papa-Daddy lays down his knife and fork! He’s real rich. Mamma says he is; he says he isn’t. So he says, ‘So you don’t understand why I don’t cut off my beard.’

‘Why,’ I says, ‘Papa-Daddy, of course I understand. I did not say any such of a thing — the idea!’

He says, ‘Hussy!’

I says, ‘ Why, Papa-Daddy, you know I wouldn’t any more want you to cut off your beard than the man in the moon. It was the farthest thing from my mind! Stella-Rondo sat there and made that up while she was eating breast of chicken.’

But he says, ‘So the postmistress fails to understand why I don’t cut off my beard. Which job I got you through my influence with the government. Maybe you think it’s a bird’s nest. Is that it?’

Not that it isn’t the next-to-smallest P. O. in the entire state of Mississippi.

I says, ‘Oh, Papa-Daddy.’ I says, ‘I didn’t say any such of a thing. I never dreamed it was a bird’s nest. I have always been grateful, though this is the next-to-smallest P. O.