TKAM post #4

Perspective: Scout


Chapter 11





These weekends approaching summer have been getting increasingly more boring. We are starting to walk down into town and explore the shops more often now. This route takes us past the dreaded Ms. Henry Lafayette Dubose's property. Nothing that we say or do can please her, I've once tried to give her my happiest and most innocent, "Hey Mrs. Dubose." and she told me not to "Hey Mrs. Dubose" her. She's always on our case for something. I've constantly asked Jem if we can walk around a different route to town, but he says that I have to grow up sometime. She lives in a house two doors up the street from ours, with a Negro servant in constant attendance. She is very old, and is either in her wheelchair or in bed, and is rumored to keep a CSA pistol hidden in her garments. With all the trash that she accuses Jem and I for, I'm surprised that she hasn't shot us yet. On evenings that she was out on her porch when we came out to meet Atticus, he'd say that she looked like a picture, then swing me onto his shoulders right in front of her. I don't understand why he compliments her after all the bad things that Jem and I have told him that she says about him and our family, but at the same time made me feel like he was one of bravest people on the planet for doing it. On the day after Jem's birthday, when he was loaded with money, we decided to go down to the market and get him a mini steam train and me a twirling baton. As we passed her house she began to harass us. "Where are you two going at this time of day!" she screamed at us, "Playing hookey I suppose!" and threatened to contact the school principal. "Aw, it's Saturday, Mrs. Dubose." Replied Jem, and she said that it didn't matter. She then went on to ask us if our father knew where we were, and Jem told her that we had been walking into town by ourselves ever since we were little. She told him not to lie, and that Ms. Maudie said that he had broken her scuppernog that morning, which Jem claimed was impossible, because he hadn't been near it since the previous summer. She yelled at him for contradicting her, and then proceeded to go off on me. "What are you doing in those overalls?" She bawled "You should be in a dress and camisole young lady! You'll go around waiting tables at the O.K. Cafe!" This terrified me, the O.K. Cafe was one of the most shady and back ally organization in all of Maycomb. I grabbed on to Jem's hand and he shook me off, and he told me to forget about it and hold my head high like a gentleman. She wasn't going to let us just walk away though, she yelled "Not only a Finch working in the O.K. Cafe, but one lawin for niggers!" Jem stopped mid stride and stiffened. She had hit a soft spot, and she could tell. "Yes indeed, what has the world come to when a Finch goes against his own raising? I'll tell you!" She proceeded to put her hand inside her mouth, and a trail of oozing silver saliva fallowed it out. "Your father is no better than the niggers and trash he works for!" Jem was ready to snap back at her, but I tugged on his sleeve and we walked away. As we went about our errands for the rest of the day Jem seemed unable to let go what Mrs. Dubose said about our dad. It appears that he received just as much problems from students at school as I did, and he had let it build up inside. He bought me my baton and he got his train. On the way home, I had dropped my baton so many times that it was already grimy with dirt. I don't know why it happened then, but Jem's long fuse finally blew in front of Mrs. Dubose's house. He grabbed my baton out from my hands, and went and whacked all the buds and leaves off of Mrs. Dubose's camellia then went and snapped my baton in two over his knee. I shrieked at his behavior, and he walked over to me and pulled my hair, and said that he would be glad to do it again and if I didn't shut up he would pull every hair out of my head. I kept screaming and he kicked me. I lost my balance and fell flat off my face on the pavement. He yanked me up roughly, but his eyes said that he was sorry. We didn't wait for Atticus to come home that night, and Cal somehow knew what we had done by some psychic voodoo magic. We waited what felt like forever until we heard the soles of Atticus's shoes come up the front porch. The screen door slammed open, and he yelled "Jem!" from the hat hanger in the entryway. He walked into the living room and held in his hand a half of my broken baton and one of the buds from the camellia bushes. "Jem, are you responsible for this?" he demanded. Jem didn't deny that he had done it, because if he had then he would be in even greater trouble. Atticus sent him over to Mrs. Dubose's to apologize. I asked Atticus if he was crazy, and if he knew that Jem was gonna die over there, and why he sent Jem after all he was trying to do was protect the family name. Jem returned home about 10 minutes later, to find me in Atticus's lap, and told us that she wanted him to read to her as his way of paying her back, and on Saturdays to tend to her camellia bushes. Jem was not excited about these tasks, but Atticus made him. I went with him to these daily, "readings". Mrs. Dubose looks like a ghast from afar, but looked truly horrifying up close. Her face looked like a dirty pillow case, her mouth glistened and was wet with spit. She was covered in liver spots on her face, an her pale eyes had black pinpoint pupils. Her hands were knobby, and the cuticles were grown up over her fingernails. Her bottom plate was not in, and her upper lip protruded; from time to time she would draw her nether lip to her upper plate and carry her chin with it, this made the wet move faster. I decided not to look any more than I had to. For the next month, I stayed with Jem at the readings, I personally wouldn't want to go in there alone, and I know that he wouldn't either. After a month had passed, Atticus and Mrs. Dubose decided that Jem would stay for a last week. He seemed very upset that Atticus had done it to him, but he muscled through the last week and we finally were free from reading to Mrs. Dubose. About a month passed where we had much more free time than before, due to us not having to read to Mrs. Dubose. One night, Atticus recieved a phone call, and left to Mrs. Dubose's house. He said that he would be back soon, but didn't return until well after bedtime. Under his arm was a candy box, and he told us the news, Mrs. Dubose had died. Inside the candy box was a gift for Jem, a fully blossomed flower off one of her camellia bush. Jem saw it as her last way of tormenting him, saying she had won, because the flowers had grown back, but Atticus said that it was her way of saying that everything was alright.