Native Son - Richard Wright [9]
“That sonofabitch could cut your throat.”
“He’s over a foot long.”
“How in hell do they get so big?”
“Eating garbage and anything else they can get.”
“Look, Bigger, there’s a three-inch rip in your pantleg.”
“Yeah; he was after me, all right.”
“Please, Bigger, take ’im out,” Vera begged.
“Aw, don’t be so scary,” Buddy said.
The woman on the bed continued to sob. Bigger took a piece of newspaper and gingerly lifted the rat by its tail and held it out at arm’s length.
“Bigger, take ’im out,” Vera begged again.
Bigger laughed and approached the bed with the dangling rat, swinging it to and fro like a pendulum, enjoying his sister’s fear.
“Bigger!” Vera gasped convulsively; she screamed and swayed and closed her eyes and fell headlong across her mother and rolled limply from the bed to the floor.
“Bigger, for God’s sake!” the mother sobbed, rising and bending over Vera. “Don’t do that! Throw that rat out!”
He laid the rat down and started to dress.
“Bigger, help me lift Vera to the bed,” the mother said.
He paused and turned round.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, feigning ignorance.
“Do what I asked you, will you, boy?”
He went to the bed and helped his mother lift Vera. Vera’s eyes were closed. He turned away and finished dressing. He wrapped the rat in a newspaper and went out of the door and down the stairs and put it into a garbage can at the corner of an alley. When he returned to the room his mother was still bent over Vera, placing a wet towel upon her head. She straightened and faced him, her cheeks and eyes wet with tears and her lips tight with anger.
“Boy, sometimes I wonder what makes you act like you do.”
“What I do now?” he demanded belligerently.
“Sometimes you act the biggest fool I ever saw.”
“What you talking about?”
“You scared your sister with that rat and she fainted! Ain’t you got no sense at all?”
“Aw, I didn’t know she was that scary.”
“Buddy!” the mother called.
“Yessum.”
“Take a newspaper and spread it over that spot.”
“Yessum.”
Buddy opened out a newspaper and covered the smear of blood on the floor where the rat had been crushed. Bigger went to the window and stood looking out abstractedly into the street. His mother glared at his back.
“Bigger, sometimes I wonder why I birthed you,” she said bitterly.
Bigger looked at her and turned away.
“Maybe you oughtn’t’ve. Maybe you ought to left me where I was.”
“You shut your sassy mouth!”
“Aw, for Chrissakes!” Bigger said, lighting a cigarette.
“Buddy, pick up them skillets and put ’em in the sink,” the mother said.
“Yessum.”
Bigger walked across the floor and sat on the bed. His mother’s eyes followed him.
“We wouldn’t have to live in this garbage dump if you had any manhood in you,” she said.
“Aw, don’t start that again.”
“How you feel, Vera?” the mother asked.
Vera raised her head and looked about the room as though expecting to see another rat.
“Oh, Mama!”
“You poor thing!”
“I couldn’t help it. Bigger scared me.”
“Did you hurt yourself?”
“I bumped my head.”
“Here; take it easy. You’ll be all right.”
“How come Bigger acts that way?” Vera asked, crying again.
“He’s just crazy,” the mother said. “Just plain dumb black crazy.”
“I’ll be late for my sewing class at the Y.W.C.A.,” Vera said.
“Here; stretch out on the bed. You’ll feel better in a little while,” the mother said.
She left Vera on the bed and turned a pair of cold eyes upon Bigger.
“Suppose you wake up some morning and find your sister dead? What would you think then?” she asked. “Suppose those rats cut our veins at night when we sleep? Naw! Nothing like that ever bothers you! All you care about is your own pleasure! Even when the relief offers you a job you won’t take it till they threaten to cut off your food and starve you! Bigger, honest, you the most no-countest man I ever seen in all my life!”
“You done told me that a thousand times,” he said, not looking round.
“Well, I’m telling you agin! And mark my word, some of these days you going to set down and cry. Some of these days you going to wish you had made something out of yourself, instead of just a tramp. But it