and held it for her while she finished with her hair and made up her face. She studied her reflection appraisingly. Her hair looked nice, coming down in a long golden sweep across the tops of the blue bows riding so jauntily on her shoulders, and her eyes showed very little aftereffect of the crying.
“You look so wonderful,”-Jessie said. It made her feel good to be doing something for Joy and it helped to take her mind off the awful thing Sewell had done.
“Do you really think so, honey?” Joy asked. She tilted her head back a little and narrowed her eyes. What am I afraid of? she thought. I can see I haven’t changed any. But the minute I put the mirror away I start getting scared again. Look at the moon-eyed way the kid watches me. She thinks I look wonderful and says so, but somehow it’s not the same as a man saying it. Why does it always have to be a man? But they’d still turn and look at me. I know they would. I get scared too easy, that’s all, just because I’m broke and down on my luck. And just because that stupid, cold-blooded gorilla laughed at me, and that dumb, stuck-up Mitch pretends he don’t even see me. You’d think there wasn’t any other men. What about Harve? And that photographer? Oh, I could show that Mitch, all right. But, for God’s sake, why do I care? What do I want him following me around for? I wouldn’t have him on a bet. God, you’d think he was Gable, the way I stew about it. The lousy share-cropper, what do I want him looking at me for? If I was one of those women that just has to have one in bed with her all the time it’d be different and I could understand it maybe, but I’m not like that. I don’t care anything about that, one way or the other. They muss you up so, especially the wild ones like that damn Sewell.
I know what’s the matter with that Mitch. He’s just afraid of me, that’s all. Trying to pretend like I’m an old bag that nobody’d want, and he’s just afraid of me. I could twist him around my finger any time I wanted to. And I’ll do it, too.
“My, but you look pretty,” Jessie was saying. “Don’t you feel better now?”
Joy smiled. “Honey, I feel like a new woman.”
Ten
Cass had left the supper table. Jessie sat down with a plate of peas and some corn bread and went through the motions of eating, paying less and less attention to the food until at last she stopped altogether without even knowing it. It was dark outside now but still very hot in the kitchen. A gray moth fluttered its death dance about the lamp chimney, making a rustling sound with its wings, and down in the bottom they could hear the whippoorwills beginning to call. Mitch looked up from his plate to see Joy watching him.
“How are you getting along with the plowing, Mitch?” she asked.
“Oh. All right,” he said, surprised. It was the first time she had ever asked about the crop, or indicated she even knew they had one. She had on a dress with some kind of big bowknots on the shoulders that came up under the golden waterfall of her hair and made her look like a movie actress or a girl on the cover of a magazine.
“Do you think you’ll get caught up with it?” she asked. She leaned her elbows on the oilcloth and put her chin on her hands and watched him with flattering attention.
“If it don’t rain no more, maybe,” he said. She was very beautiful to look at whether he liked her or not, and he felt the anger in him now that she could disturb him.
“Isn’t he going to help you any more?” Jessie asked.
“I don’t know,” Mitch said. He would never ask help of a man who needed asking.
“Has he really got rheumatism, or is it just the radio that cripples him up?” Joy asked.
“I don’t know,” he answered shortly.
He did know, or was reasonably sure he did, but felt it was a family matter and none of her business. Cass was nothing any more but the wreckage of a man, but he did not want to talk about it to an outsider.
“Well, it’s not