“You’re no better. You’re no damn better. You just try to kill their souls instead of their bodies. You just try to tell ’em, ‘Look, be good. Behave yourselves. If you’re good and mind us, you can get a lot out of life, but if you don’t mind us, we will give you nothing and take away what we’ve already given you.’
“I know it’s got to be slow, Atticus, I know that full well. But I know it’s got to be. I wonder what would happen if the South had a ‘Be Kind to the Niggers Week’? If just for one week the South would show them some simple, impartial courtesy. I wonder what would happen. Do you think it’d give ’em airs or the beginnings of self-respect? Have you ever been snubbed, Atticus? Do you know how it feels? No, don’t tell me they’re children and don’t feel it: I was a child and felt it, so grown children must feel, too. A real good snub, Atticus, makes you feel like you’re too nasty to associate with people. How they’re as good as they are now is a mystery to me, after a hundred years of systematic denial that they’re human. I wonder what kind of miracle we could work with a week’s decency.
“There was no point in saying any of this because I know you won’t give an inch and you never will. You’ve cheated me in a way that’s inexpressible, but don’t let it worry you, because the joke is entirely on me. You’re the only person I think I’ve ever fully trusted and now I’m done for.”
“I’ve killed you, Scout. I had to.”
“Don’t you give me any more double-talk! You’re a nice, sweet, old gentleman, and I’ll never believe a word you say to me again. I despise you and everything you stand for.”
“Well, I love you.”
“Don’t you dare say that to me! Love me, huh! Atticus, I’m getting out of this place fast, I don’t know where I’m going but I’m going. I never want to see another Finch or hear of one as long as I live!”
“As you please.”
“You double-dealing, ring-tailed old son of a bitch! You just sit there and say ‘As you please’ when you’ve knocked me down and stomped on me and spat on me, you just sit there and say ‘As you please’ when everything I ever loved in this world’s—you just sit there and say ‘As you please’—you love me! You son of a bitch!”
“That’ll do, Jean Louise.”
That’ll do, his general call to order in the days when she believed. So he kills me and gives it a twist … how can he taunt me so? How can he treat me so? God in heaven, take me away from here … God in heaven, take me away….
PART VII
18
SHE NEVER KNEW how she got the car started, how she held it in the road, how she got home without a serious accident.
I love you. As you please. Had he not said that, perhaps she would have survived. If he had fought her fairly, she could have flung his words back at him, but she could not catch mercury and hold it in her hands.
She went to her room and threw her suitcase onto the bed. I was born right where this suitcase is. Why didn’t you throttle me then? Why did you let me live this long?
“Jean Louise, what are you doing?”
“Packing, Aunty.”
Alexandra came to the side of the bed. “You have ten more days with us. Is something wrong?”
“Aunty, leave me alone for Christ’s sake!”
Alexandra bridled. “I’ll thank you not to use that Yankee expression in this house! What’s wrong?”
Jean Louise went to the closet, snatched her dresses from their hangers, returned to the bed, and crammed them into her suitcase.
“That’s no way to pack,” said Alexandra.
“It’s my way.”
She scooped up her shoes from beside the bed and threw them in after her dresses.
“What is it, Jean Louise?”
“Aunty, you may issue a communiqué to the effect that I am going so far away from Maycomb County it’ll take me a hundred years to get back! I never want to see it or anybody in it again, and that goes for every one of you, the undertaker, the probate judge, and the chairman of the board of the Methodist Church!”
“You’ve had a fight with Atticus, haven’t you?”
“I have.”
Alexandra sat on the bed and clasped her hands. “Jean Louise, I don’t know what it was about, and the way you look it must have been bad, but I do know this. No Finch runs.”
She turned to her aunt: “Jesus Christ, don’t you go telling me what a Finch does and what a Finch doesn’t do! I’m up to here with what Finches do, and I can’t take it one second longer! You’ve been ramming that down my throat ever since I was born—your father this, the Finches that! My father’s something unspeakable and Uncle Jack’s like Alice in Wonderland! And you, you are a pompous, narrow-minded old—”
Jean Louise stopped, fascinated by the tears running down Alexandra’s cheeks. She had never seen Alexandra cry; Alexandra looked like other people when she cried.
“Aunty, please forgive me. Please say it—I hit you below the belt.”
Alexandra’s fingers pulled tufts of tatting from the bedspread. “That’s all right. Don’t you worry about it.”
Jean Louise kissed her aunt’s cheek. “I haven’t been on the track today. I guess when you’re hurt your first instinct’s to hurt back. I’m not much of a lady, Aunty, but you are.”