The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [17]
‘It’s my room just as much as it is either one of yours. I have as good a right hi here as you do.’ Mick strutted from one corner to the other until she had covered all the floor space. ‘But then I don’t care anything about picking any fight. All I want are my own rights.’
Mick brushed back her shaggy bangs with the palm of her hand. She had done this so often that there was a little row of cowlicks above her forehead. She quivered her nose and made faces at herself in the mirror. Then she began walking around the room again.
Hazel and Etta were O.K. as far as sisters went. But Etta was like she was full of worms. All she thought about was movie stars and getting in the movies. Once she had written to Jeanette MacDonald and had got a typewritten letter back saying that if ever she came out to Hollywood she could come by and swim in her swimming pool. And ever since that swimming pool had been preying on Etta’s mind. All she thought about was going to Hollywood when she could scrape up the bus fare and getting a job as a secretary and being buddies with Jeanette MacDonald and getting in the movies herself.
She primped all the day long. And that was the bad part. Etta wasn’t naturally pretty like Hazel. The main thing was she didn’t have any chin. She would pull at her jaw and go through a lot of chin exercises she had read in ft movie book. She was always looking at her side profile in the mirror and trying to keep her mouth set in a certain way. But it didn’t do any good.
Sometimes Etta would hold her face with her hands and cry hi the night about it.
Hazel was plain lazy. She was good-looking but thick in the head. She was eighteen years old, and next to Bill she was the oldest of all the kids in the family. Maybe that was the trouble.
She got the first and biggest share of everything--the first whack at the new clothes and the biggest part of any special treat. Hazel never had to grab for anything and she was soft.
‘Are you just going to tramp around the room all day? It makes me sick to see you hi those silly boy’s clothes. Somebody ought to clamp down on you, Mick Kelly, and make you behave,’ Etta said.
‘Shut up,’ said Mick. ‘I wear shorts because I don’t want to wear your old hand-me-downs. I don’t want to be like either of you and I don’t want to look like either of you. And I won’t. That’s why I wear shorts. I’d rather be a boy any day, and I wish I could move in with Bill.’
Mick scrambled under the bed and brought out a large hatbox.
As she carried it to the door both of them called after her, ‘Good riddance!’ Bill had the nicest room of anybody in the family. Like a den--and he had it all to himself--except for Bubber. Bill had pictures cut out from magazines tacked on the walls, mostly faces of beautiful ladies, and in another corner were some pictures Mick had painted last year herself at the free art class.
There was only a bed and a desk in the room. Bill was sitting hunched over the desk, reading Popular Mechanics. She went up behind him and put her arms around his shoulders. ‘Hey, you old son-of-a-gun.’
He did not begin tussling with her like he used to do. .Hey,’ he said, and shook his shoulders a little.
‘Will it bother you if I stay in here a little while?’
‘Sure--I don’t mind if you want to stay.’
Mick knelt on the floor and untied the string on the big hatbox. Her hands hovered over the edge of the lid, but for some reason she could not make up her mind to open it ‘I been thinking about what I’ve done on this already,’ she said.
‘And it may work and it may not.’
Bill went on reading. She still knelt over the box, but did not open it. Her eyes wandered over to Bill as he sat with his back to her. One of his big feet kept stepping on the other as he read. His shoes were scuffed. Once their Dad had said that all Bill’s dinners went to his feet and his breakfast to one ear and his supper to the other ear, that was a sort of mean thing to say and Bill had been sour over it for a month, but it was funny.