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"Aw, look around dere, Jody. Dat bill ain't apt tuh be gone off nowheres. If it ain't hangin' on de nail, it's on yo' desk. You bound tuh find it if you look."
"Wid you heah, Ah oughtn't tuh hafta do all dat lookin' and searchin'. Ah done
told you time and time agin tuh stick all dem papers on dat nail! All you got tuh do is
mind me. How come you can't do lak Ah tell yuh?"
"You sho loves to tell me whut to do, but Ah can't tell you nothin' Ah see!"
"Dat's 'cause you need tellin'," he rejoined hotly. "It would be pitiful if Ah
didn't. Somebody got to think for women and chillun and chickens and cows. I god,
they sho don't think none theirselves."
"Ah knows uh few things, and womenfolks thinks sometimes too!"
"Aw naw they don't. They just think they's thinkin'. When Ah see one thing
Ah understands ten. You see ten things and don't understand one."
Times and scenes like that put Janie to thinking about the inside state of her
marriage. Time came when she fought back with her tongue as best she could, but it
didn't do her any good. It just made Joe do more. He wanted her submission and
he'd keep on fighting until he felt he had it.
So gradually, she pressed her teeth together and learned to hush. The spirit
of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor. It was there to
shake hands whenever company came to visit, but it never went back inside the
bedroom again. So she put something in there to represent the spirit like a Virgin
Mary image in a church. The bed was no longer a daisy-field for her and Joe to play
in. It was a place where she went and laid down when she was sleepy and tired.
She wasn't petal-open anymore with him. She was twenty-four and seven
years married when she knew. She found that out one day when he slapped her face
in the kitchen. It happened over one of those dinners that chasten all women
sometimes. They plan and they fix and they do, and then some kitchen dwelling
fiend slips a scorchy, soggy, tasteless mess into their pots and pans. Janie was a good
cook, and Joe had looked forward to his dinner as a refuge from other things. So
when the bread didn't rise, and the fish wasn't quite done at the bone, and the rice
was scorched, he slapped Janie until she had a ringing sound in her ears and told her
about her brains before he stalked on back to the store.
Janie stood where he left her for unmeasured time and thought. She stood
there until something fell off the shelf inside her. Then she went inside there to see
what it was. It was her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered. But looking at it
she saw that it never was the flesh and blood figure of her dreams. Just something
she had grabbed up to drape her dreams over. In a way she turned her back upon
the image where it lay and looked further. She had no more blossomy openings
dusting pollen over her man, neither any glistening young fruit where the petals
used to be. She found that she had a host of thoughts she had never expressed to
him, and numerous emotions she had never let Jody know about. Things packed up
and put away in parts of her heart where he could never find them. She was saving
up feelings for some man she had never seen. She had an inside and an outside now
and suddenly she knew how not to mix them.
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