Go Set a Watchman (To Kill a Mockingbird #2)(37)

Jean Louise took to the Old Sarum newcomers immediately. After holding the class’s undivided attention by deliberately introducing Gaston B. Means into a discussion on the natural resources of South Africa, and proving her accuracy with a rubberband gun during recess, she enjoyed the confidence of the Old Sarum crowd.

With rough gentleness the big boys taught her to shoot craps and chew tobacco without losing it. The big girls giggled behind their hands most of the time and whispered among themselves a great deal, but Jean Louise considered them useful when choosing sides for a volleyball match. All in all, it was turning out to be a wonderful year.

Wonderful, until she went home for dinner one day. She did not return to school that afternoon, but spent the afternoon on her bed crying with rage and trying to understand the terrible information she had received from Calpurnia.

The next day she returned to school walking with extreme dignity, not prideful, but encumbered by accoutrements hitherto unfamiliar to her. She was positive everybody knew what was the matter with her, that she was being looked at, but she was puzzled that she had never heard it spoken of before in all her years. Maybe nobody knows anything about it, she thought. If that was so, she had news, all right.

At recess, when George Hill asked her to be It for Hot-Grease-in-the-Kitchen, she shook her head.

“I can’t do anything any more,” she said, and she sat on the steps and watched the boys tumble in the dust. “I can’t even walk.”

When she could bear it no longer, she joined the knot of girls under the live oak in a corner of the schoolyard.

Ada Belle Stevens laughed and made room for her on the long cement bench. “Why ain’tcha playin’?” she asked.

“Don’t wanta,” said Jean Louise.

Ada Belle’s eyes narrowed and her white brows twitched. “I bet I know what’s the matter with you.”

“What?”

“You’ve got the Curse.”

“The what?”

“The Curse. Curse o’ Eve. If Eve hadn’t et the apple we wouldn’t have it. You feel bad?”

“No,” said Jean Louise, silently cursing Eve. “How’d you know it?”

“You walk like you was ridin’ a bay mare,” said Ada Belle. “You’ll get used to it. I’ve had it for years.”

“I’ll never get used to it.”

It was difficult. When her activities were limited Jean Louise confined herself to gambling for small sums behind a coal pile in the rear of the school building. The inherent dangerousness of the enterprise appealed to her far more than the game itself; she was not good enough at arithmetic to care whether she won or lost, there was no real joy in trying to beat the law of averages, but she derived some pleasure from deceiving Miss Blunt. Her companions were the lazier of the Old Sarum boys, the laziest of whom was one Albert Coningham, a slow thinker to whom Jean Louise had rendered invaluable service during six-weeks’ tests.

One day, as the taking-in bell rang, Albert, beating coal dust from his breeches, said, “Wait a minute, Jean Louise.”

She waited. When they were alone, Albert said, “I want you to know I made a C-minus this time in geography.”

“That’s real good, Albert,” she said.

“I just wanted to thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Albert.”

Albert blushed to his hairline, caught her to him, and kissed her. She felt his wet, warm tongue on her lips, and she drew back. She had never been kissed like that before. Albert let her go and shuffled toward the school building. Jean Louise followed, bemused and faintly annoyed.

She only suffered a kinsman to kiss her on the cheek and then she secretly wiped it off; Atticus kissed her vaguely wherever he happened to land; Jem kissed her not at all. She thought Albert had somehow miscalculated, and she soon forgot.

As the year passed, often as not recess would find her with the girls under the tree, sitting in the middle of the crowd, resigned to her fate, but watching the boys play their seasonal games in the schoolyard. One morning, arriving late to the scene, she found the girls giggling more surreptitiously than usual and she demanded to know the reason.

“It’s Francine Owen,” one said.

“Francine Owen? She’s been absent a couple of days,” said Jean Louise.

“Know why?” said Ada Belle.

“Nope.”

“It’s her sister. The welfare’s got ’em both.”