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.
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.”
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 bullet-headed 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 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 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.
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.
“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 colored-folks’ 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.
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