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Why I Live at the P.O.

by Eudora Welty

I WAS GETTING Forth FINE with Mama, Papa-Daddy and Uncle Rondo until my sister Stella-Rondo just separated from her husband and came back domicile once again. Mr. Whitaker! Of course I went with Mr. Whitaker outset, when he kickoff appeared here in China Grove, taking "Pose Yourself" photos, and Stella-Rondo broke us up. Told him I was one-sided. Bigger on ane side than the other, which is a deliberate, calculated falsehood: I'k 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 globe she wanted and then she'd throw it away. Papa-Daddy gave her this gorgeous Add-a-Pearl necklace when she was 8 years old and she threw it away playing baseball game when she was 9, with only ii 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 dwelling house from one of those towns up in Illinois and to our consummate surprise brought this child of two.
Mama said she like to made her drop dead for a 2nd. "Here you had this marvelous blonde child and never so much equally wrote your mother a word about it," says Mama. "I'm thoroughly ashamed of you." Only of course she wasn't.
Stella-Rondo just calmly takes off this hat, I wish yous could meet information technology. She says, "Why, Mama, Shirley-T.'due south adopted, I tin show it."
"How?" says Mama, but all I says was, "H'm!" There I was over the hot stove, trying to stretch ii chickens over five people and a completely unexpected child into the bargain, without one moment'southward notice.
"What do you lot mean 'H'one thousand!'?" 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 cutting off his beard, which of course he'd never practise in the world. Papa-Daddy'southward Mama'southward papa and sulks.
Stella-Rondo got furious! She said, "Sis, I don't demand to tell yous you got a lot of nerve and e'er did take and I'll cheers to make no hereafter reference to my adopted child whatsoever."
"Very well," I said. "Very well, very well. Of course I noticed at one time she looks like Mr. Whitaker's side likewise. That pout. She looks like a cantankerous 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 abroad 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. "Papa-Daddy!" I was taken completely past surprise. Papa-Daddy is nigh a million years one-time and's got this long-long bristles. "Papa-Daddy, Sister says she fails to empathize why yous don't cut off your beard."
So Papa-Daddy 50-a-y-s down his knife and fork! He'southward real rich. Mama says he is, he says he isn't. So he says, "Have I heard correctly? You lot don't sympathize why I don't cutting off my bristles?"
"Why," I says, "Papa-Daddy, of grade I understand, I did not say any such of a thing, the idea!"
He says, "Hussy!"
I says, "Papa-Daddy, you know I wouldn't any more want you to cut off your bristles than the homo in the moon. It was the farthest thing from my listen! Stella-Rondo sat there and fabricated 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 chore I got you through my influence with the regime. 'Bird's nest' is that what you call it?"
Not that it isn't the next to smallest P.O. in the unabridged state of Mississippi.
I says, "Oh, Papa-Daddy," I says, "I didn't say whatsoever 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. in the state of Mississippi, and I do not enjoy being referred to equally a hussy by my own grandpa."
But Stella-Rondo says, "Aye, y'all did say it too. Anybody in the world could of heard you, that had ears."
"Stop right at that place," says Mama, looking at me.
So I pulled my napkin straight back through the napkin ring and left the table.
As soon as I was out of the room Mama says, "Phone call her back, or she'll starve to expiry," only Papa-Daddy says, "This is the beard I started growing on the Coast when I was fifteen years old.'' He would of gone on till nightfall if Shirley-T. hadn't lost the Milky Style she ate in Cairo.
Then Papa-Daddy says, "I am going out and lie in the hammock, and you can all sit hither and remember my words: I'll never cut off my beard equally long as I live, even one inch, and I don't appreciate information technology in you at all." Passed correct by me in the hall and went directly out and got in the hammock.
It would be a holiday. It wasn't five minutes before Uncle Rondo of a sudden appeared in the hall in one of Stella-Rondo's flesh-colored kimonos, all cut on the bias, similar something Mr. Whitaker probably thought was gorgeous.
"Uncle Rondo!" I says. "I didn't know who that was! Where are y'all going?"
"Sister," he says, "get out of my fashion, I'm poisoned."
"If y'all're poisoned stay away from Papa-Daddy," I says. "Keep out of the hammock. Papa-Daddy will certainly beat you on the head if you come within forty miles of him. He thinks I deliberately said he ought to cut off his beard after he got me the P.O., and I've told him and told him and told him, and he acts like he only don't hear me. Papa-Daddy must of gone stone deafened.'
"He picked a fine day to exercise information technology then," says Uncle Rondo, and before yous could say "Jack Robinson" flew out in the yard.
What he'd really done, he'd drunk some other bottle of that prescription. He does it every single Fourth of July as sure as shooting, and it's horribly expensive. Then he falls over in the hammock and snores. And so he insisted on zigzagging right on out to the hammock, looking like a half-wit.
Papa-Daddy woke up with this horrible yell and right there without moving an inch he tried to turn Uncle Rondo against me. I heard every word he said. Oh, he told Uncle Rondo I didn't learn to read till I was viii years erstwhile and he didn't see how in the globe I ever got the mail service put up at the P.O., much less read it all, and he said if Uncle Rondo could only fathom the lengths he had gone to to get me that job! And he said on the other paw he thought Stella-Rondo had a brilliant mind and deserved credit for getting out of town. All the fourth dimension he was just lying at that place swinging as pretty as you please and looping out his beard, and poor Uncle Rondo was pleading  with him to slow down the hammock, information technology was making him as dizzy as a witch to watch information technology. Just that's what Papa-Daddy likes about a hammock. So Uncle Rondo was too dizzy to get turned against me for the time being. He's Mama's but brother and is a good instance of a 1-track mind. Ask anybody. A certified chemist.
Just and so I heard Stella-Rondo raising the upstairs window. While she was married she got this peculiar idea that it's libation with the windows shut and locked. So she has to raise the window earlier she tin can brand a soul hear her outdoors.
And so she raises the window and says, "Oh!" You lot would have thought she was mortally wounded.
Uncle Rondo and Papa-Daddy didn't even look up, but kept right on with what they were doing. I had to laugh.
I flew upwardly the stairs and threw the door open! I says, "What in the wide world's the thing, Stella-Rondo? Yous mortally wounded?"
"No," she says, "I am non mortally wounded but I wish y'all would do me the favor of looking out that window there and telling me what you lot see."
Then I shade my eyes and look out the window.
"I see the front yard," I says.
"Don't you see whatever man beings?'' she says.
"I run across Uncle Rondo trying to run Papa-Daddy out of the hammock," I says. "Aught more. Naturally, it'due south so suffocating-hot in the house, with all the windows shut and locked, everybody who cares to stay in their correct mind will have to go out and get in the hammock before the Fourth of July is over."
"Don't y'all notice anything unlike about Uncle Rondo?" asks Stella-Rondo.
"Why, no, except he's got on some terrible-looking flesh-colored contraption I wouldn't be plant dead in, is all I tin see," I says.
"Never mind, you won't exist constitute expressionless in it, because it happens to exist part of my trousseau, and Mr. Whitaker took several dozen photographs of me in information technology," says Stella-Rondo. "What on earth could Uncle Rondo mean  by wearing office of my trousseau out in the wide open daylight without maxim so much every bit 'Buss my foot,' knowing  I only got home this morning after my separation and hung my negligee up on the bathroom door, just as nervous every bit I could be?"
"I'm sure I don't know, and what do y'all expect me to do about it?" I says. "Bound out the window?"
"No, I expect nothing of the kind. I merely declare that Uncle Rondo looks like a fool in it, that's all," she says. "It makes me sick to my tummy."
"Well, he looks equally good as he can," I says. "Every bit good equally everyone in reason could." I stood up for Uncle Rondo, please retrieve. And I said to Stella-Rondo, "I remember I would do well non to criticize then freely if I were you and came habitation with a two-year-quondam child I had never said a word almost, and no caption any well-nigh my separation."
"I asked you the instant I entered this business firm not to refer 1 more than time to my adopted child, and you gave me your word of honor you would not," was all Stella-Rondo would say, and started pulling out every one of her eyebrows with some cheap Kress tweezers.
So I simply slammed the door backside me and went down and fabricated some green-tomato pickle. Somebody had to do it. Of course Mama had turned both the Negroes loose; she always said no earthly power could concur i anyhow on the Fourth of July, then she wouldn't fifty-fifty try. Information technology turned out that Jaypan fell in the lake and came within a very narrow limit of drowning.
And so Mama trots in. Lifts up the lid and says, "H'm! Not very good for your Uncle Rondo in his precarious condition, I must say. Or poor trivial adopted Shirley-T. Shame on yous!"
That made me tired. I says, "Well, Stella-Rondo had better give thanks her lucky stars information technology was her instead of me came trotting in with that very peculiar-looking child. Now if it had been me that trotted in from Illinois and brought a peculiar-looking child of 2, I shudder to remember of the reception I'd of got, much less controlled the diet of an entire family unit."
"Only yous must recollect, Sister, that you were never married to Mr. Whitaker in the start place and didn't go upwardly to Illinois to live," says Mama, shaking a spoon in my face. "If you had I would of been just every bit overjoyed to encounter y'all and your trivial adopted daughter every bit I was to encounter Stella-Rondo, when you lot wound upwardly with your separation and came on dorsum home."
''You would not," I says.
"Don't contradict me, I would," says Mama.
Merely I said she couldn't convince me though she talked till she was blue in the face. Then I said, "Besides, y'all know as well as I do that that child is not adopted."
"She well-nigh certainly is adopted," says Mama, stiff as a poker.
I says, "Why, Mama, Stella-Rondo had her only as certain as anything in this world, and just too stuck up to admit it."
"Why, Sis," said Mama. "Here I idea we were going to have a pleasant Fourth of July, and you kickoff right out not assertive a word your own babe sister tells you!"
"Merely like Cousin Annie Flo. Went to her grave denying the facts of life," I remind Mama.
"I told you if y'all ever mentioned Annie Flo's proper name I'd slap your face," says Mama, and slaps my confront.
"All right, you look and see," I says.
"I," says Mama, "I  prefer to accept my children'due south word for anything when it'south humanly possible." You ought to see Mama, she weighs 2 hundred pounds and has existent tiny feet.
Just then something perfectly horrible occurred to me.
"Mama," I says, "tin that child talk?" I just had to whisper! "Mama, I wonder if that kid can be you lot know in whatever way? Do you realize," I says, "that she hasn't spoken one single, lonely word to a human being upward to this minute? This is the way she looks," I says, and I looked like this.
Well, Mama and I just stood there and stared at each other. It was horrible!
"I recall well that Joe Whitaker frequently drank like a fish," says Mama. "I believed to my soul he drank chemicals."  And without some other discussion she marches to the foot of the stairs and calls Stella-Rondo.
"Stella-Rondo? O-o-o-o-o! Stella-Rondo!"
"What?" says Stella-Rondo from upstairs. Not fifty-fifty the grace to become up off the bed.
"Tin that kid of yours talk?" asks Mama.
Stella-Rondo says, "Tin can she what?"
"Talk! Talk!" says Mama. "Burdyburdyburdyburdy!"
So Stella-Rondo yells dorsum, "Who says she can't talk?"
"Sister says and so," says Mama.
"Y'all didn't have to tell me, I know whose word of honour don't mean a matter in this house," says Stella-Rondo.
And in a minute the loudest Yankee voice I ever heard in my life yells out, "OE'thou Pop-OE the Sailor-r-r-r Ma-a-an!" and and so somebody jumps upwards and down in the upstairs hall. In another second the house would of fallen down.
"Not only talks, she can tap-dance!" calls Stella-Rondo. "Which is more than than some people I won't name can practice."
"Why, the little precious darling thing!" Mama says, so surprised. "Only as smart as she can be!" Starts talking babe talk correct there. So she turns on me. "Sis, y'all ought to be thoroughly ashamed! Run upstairs this instant and apologize to Stella-Rondo and Shirley-T."
"Apologize for what?" I says. "I merely wondered if the child was normal, that'south all. Now that she's proved she is, why, I have nothing farther to say."
But Mama merely turned on her heel and flew out, furious. She ran right upstairs and hugged the baby. She believed it was adopted. Stella-Rondo hadn't done a affair but turn her confronting me from upstairs while I stood there helpless over the hot stove. So that made Mama, Papa-Daddy and the baby all on Stella-Rondo's side.
Next, Uncle Rondo.
I must say that Uncle Rondo has been marvelous to me at various times in the past and I was completely unprepared to be fabricated to bound out of my skin, the way information technology turned out. Once Stella-Rondo did something perfectly horrible to him broke a chain alphabetic character from Flanders Field and he took the radio back he had given her and gave it to me. Stella-Rondo was furious! For half-dozen months nosotros all had to phone call her Stella instead of Stella-Rondo, or she wouldn't answer. I always thought Uncle Rondo had all the brains of the entire family. Another time he sent me to Mammoth Cavern, with all expenses paid.
But this would exist the twenty-four hour period he was drinking that prescription, the 4th of July.
And then at supper Stella-Rondo speaks upward and says she thinks Uncle Rondo ought to try to eat a little something. So finally Uncle Rondo said he would try a little cold biscuits and ketchup, but that was all. So she  brought information technology to him.
"Do you think it wise to disport with ketchup in Stella-Rondo'southward flesh-colored kimono?'' I says. Trying to be considerate! If Stella-Rondo couldn't watch out for her trousseau, somebody had to.
"Any objections?" asks Uncle Rondo, just about to cascade out all the ketchup.
"Don't mind what she says, Uncle Rondo," says Stella-Rondo. "Sis has been devoting this solid afternoon to sneering out my bedroom window at the way yous wait."
"What'southward that?" says Unde Rondo. Uncle Rondo has got the near terrible temper in the globe. Anything is liable to make him tear the business firm down if it comes at the wrong fourth dimension.
And then Stella-Rondo says, "Sister says, 'Uncle Rondo certainly does look like a fool in that pink kimono!' "
Exercise you recollect who it was really said that?
Unde Rondo spills out all the ketchup and jumps out of his chair and tears off the kimono and throws it down on the muddied floor and puts his foot on it. It had to be sent all the way to Jackson to the cleaners and re-pleated.
"So that'south your opinion of your Uncle Rondo, is it?" he says. "I await like a fool, exercise I? Well, that's the final straw. A whole mean solar day in this business firm with nothing to do, and so to hear you come up out with a remark like that behind my back!''
"I didn't say any such of a thing, Uncle Rondo," I says, "and I'chiliad not saying who did, either. Why, I call up you look all correct. Simply endeavor to take care of yourself and not talk and eat at the same time," I says. "I think you improve go prevarication downwardly."
"Prevarication down my human foot," says Uncle Rondo. I ought to of known by that he was fixing to do something perfectly horrible.
Then he didn't do anything that night in the precarious state he was in just played Casino with Mama and Stella-Rondo and Shirley-T. and gave Shirley-T. a nickel with a head on both sides. It amused her nearly to death, and she called him "Papa." But at 6:thirty A.Thousand. the next forenoon, he threw a whole five-cent package of some unsold one-inch firecrackers from the store equally hard equally he could into my sleeping accommodation and they every one went off. Not one bad one in the string. Anybody else, at that place'd be 1 that wouldn't go off.
Well, I'm simply terribly susceptible to noise of any kind, the doctor has always told me I was the nigh sensitive person he had ever seen in his whole life, and I was simply prostrated. I couldn't swallow! People tell me they heard it equally far as the cemetery, and quondam Aunt Jep Patterson, that had been property her own so good, thought information technology was Judgment Day and she was going to meet her whole family. It'due south usually then placidity here.
And I'll tell y'all information technology didn't take me any longer than a infinitesimal to make up my listen what to do. In that location I was with the whole entire house on Stella-Rondo's side and turned confronting me. If I take anything at all I accept pride.
So I merely decided I'd get straight down to the P.O. At that place'south plenty of room at that place in the back, I says to myself.
Well! I made no bones about letting the family grab on to what I was upwards to. I didn't try to conceal it.
The commencement thing they knew, I marched in where they were all playing Old Maid and pulled the electrical oscillating fan out past the plug, and everything got real hot. Adjacent I snatched the pillow I'd done the needlepoint on right off the davenport from behind Papa-Daddy. He went ''Ugh!" I beat Stella-Rondo up the stairs and finally found my charm bracelet in her bureau drawer under a picture of Nelson Eddy.
"So that's the way the state lies," says Uncle Rondo. There he was, piecing on the ham. "Well, Sister, I'll be glad to donate my army cot if you got any place to set information technology up, providing you'll leave right this minute and let me get some peace." Uncle Rondo was in France.
"Cheers kindly for the cot and 'peace' is inappreciably the word I would select if I had to resort to firecrackers at half-dozen:thirty A.Grand. in a young girl's bedroom," I says back to him. "And every bit to where I intend to go, you seem to forget my position equally postmistress of China Grove, Mississippi," I says. "I've e'er got the P.O."
Well, that made them all sit up and take discover.
I went out front and started digging upwards some 4-o'clocks to found around the P.O.
"Ah-ah-ah!" says Mama, raising the window. "Those happen to be my iv-o'clocks. Everything planted in that star is mine. I've never known you to brand anything abound in your life."
"Very well," I says. "Simply I take the fern. Even you lot, Mama, can't stand there and deny that I'grand the one watered that fern. And I happen to know where I can send in a box top and get a parcel of one m mixed seeds, no 2 the aforementioned kind, costless."
"Oh, where?" Mama wants to know.
Simply I says, "Too belatedly. You lot 'tend to your house, and I'll 'tend to mine. Yous hear things like that all the time if y'all know how to listen to the radio. Perfectly marvelous offers. Get anything you lot want free."
So I hope to tell you I marched in and got that radio, and they could of all scrap a blast in two, peculiarly Stella-Rondo, that it used to belong to, and she well knew she couldn't get it dorsum, I'd sue for it similar a shot. And I very politely took the sewing-machine motor I helped pay the most on to requite Mama for Christmas dorsum in 1929, and a good big calendar, with the outset-assist remedies on information technology. The thermometer and the Hawaiian ukulele certainly were rightfully mine, and I stood on the step-ladder and got all my watermelon-rind preserves and every fruit and vegetable I'd put up, every jar. Then I began to pull the tacks out of the bluebird wall vases on the entrance to the dining room.
"Who told yous you could accept those, Miss Priss?" says Mama, fanning as hard every bit she could.
"I bought 'em and I'll keep rails of 'em," I says. "I'll tack 'em up one on each side the mail-office window, and you tin can see 'em when you come to inquire me for your mail, if you're so dead to meet 'em."
"Not I! I'll never darken the door to that mail service office again if I live to be a hundred," Mama says. "Ungrateful child! After all the money we spent on you at the Normal."
"Me either," says Stella-Rondo. "You can just let my mail service lie there and rot,  for all I care. I'll never come and relieve you lot of a single, solitary piece."
"I should worry," I says. "And who yous think'due south going to sit downwardly and write you all those big fat letters and postcards, by the way? Mr. Whitaker? Just considering he was the only man ever dropped down in China Grove and you lot got him unfairly is he going to sit downwards and write you a lengthy correspondence after you come abode giving no rhyme nor reason any for your separation and no explanation for the presence of that child? I may not have your brilliant listen, merely I fail to come across it."
So Mama says, "Sis, I've told you lot a g times that Stella-Rondo simply got homesick, and this child is far likewise big to be hers," and she says, "Now, why don't you lot all just sit down and play Casino?"
Then Shirley-T. sticks out her tongue at me in this perfectly horrible way. She has no more manners than the man in the moon. I told her she was going to cross her eyes like that some day and they'd stick.
"Information technology's besides late to cease me now," I says. "You lot should take tried that yesterday. I'm going to the P.O. and the only way yous can maybe see me is to visit me there."
So Papa-Daddy says, "You'll never catch me setting foot in that post office, even if I should take a notion into my head to write a letter of the alphabet some identify." He says, "I won't have you lot reachin' out of that little old window with a pair of shears and cuttin' off any beard of mine. I'm as well smart for you lot!"
"We all are," says Stella-Rondo.
But I said, "If you lot're so smart, where'due south Mr. Whitaker?"
And then so Uncle Rondo says, "I'll thank you from now on to stop reading all the orders I get on postcards and telling everybody in China Grove what yous call up is the matter with them," simply I says, "I draw my own conclusions and will continue in the futurity to draw them." I says, "If people want to write their inmost secrets on penny postcards, there's nothing in the wide world y'all can do well-nigh it, Uncle Rondo."
"And if you think we'll ever write  some other postcard you're sadly mistaken," says Mama.
"Cutting off your nose to spite your face then," I says. "But if you're all adamant to have no more to do with the U.S. mail, call up of this: What will Stella-Rondo exercise now, if she wants to tell Mr. Whitaker to come after her?"
"Wah!" says Stella-Rondo. I knew she'd cry. She had a conniption fit right there in the kitchen.
"It will be interesting to see how long she holds out," I says. "And
at present I am leaving."
"Practiced-cheerio," says Uncle Rondo.
"Oh, I declare," says Mama, "to retrieve that a family of mine should quarrel on the Fourth of July, or the day after, over Stella-Rondo leaving onetime Mr. Whitaker and having the sweetest little adopted child! It looks like nosotros'd all be glad!"
"Wah!" says Stella-Rondo, and has a fresh conniption fit.
"He  left her you mark my words," I says. "That's Mr. Whitaker. I know Mr. Whitaker. After all, I knew him first. I said from the commencement he'd upward and leave her. I foretold every single matter that's happened."
"Where did he go?" asks Mama.
"Probably to the N Pole, if he knows what'south good for him," I says.
But Stella-Rondo simply bawled and wouldn't say some other word. She flew to her room and slammed the door.
"At present wait what you've gone and done, Sis," says Mama. "You go apologize."
"I oasis't got time, I'one thousand leaving," I says.
"Well, what are you waiting around for?" asks Uncle Rondo.
So I just picked upward the kitchen clock and marched off, without saying "Kiss my foot" or anything, and never did tell Stella-Rondo good-bye.
At that place was a daughter going along on a petty wagon correct in front.
"Girl," I says, "come help me haul these things downwards the loma, I'grand going to live in the mail function."
Took her nine trips in her limited railroad vehicle. Uncle Rondo came out on the porch and threw her a nickel.
And that's the last I've laid eyes on whatsoever of my family or my family laid eyes on me for v solid days and nights. Stella-Rondo may exist telling the about horrible tales in the world well-nigh Mr. Whitaker, simply I haven't heard them. As I tell everybody, I draw my own conclusions.
Simply oh, I like it hither. Information technology's ideal, as I've been saying. Yous meet, I've got everything cater-cornered, the way I like it. Hear the radio? All the war news. Radio, sewing motorcar, book ends, ironing board and that great big piano lamp peace, that'south what I like. Butter-bean vines planted all along the front where the strings are.
Of course, at that place'south not much mail. My family unit are naturally the main people in China Grove, and if they adopt to vanish from the face up of the earth, for all the postal service they get or the mail they write, why, I'm not going to open my oral cavity. Some of the folks hither in town are taking up for me and some turned confronting me. I know which is which. There are e'er people who volition quit ownership stamps simply to get on the right side of Papa-Daddy.
Just here I am, and here I'll stay. I want the world to know I'm happy.
And if Stella-Rondo should come to me this infinitesimal, on bended knees, and effort  to explain the incidents of her life with Mr. Whitaker, I'd simply put my fingers in both my ears and refuse to listen.

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