Bad Boy by Jim Thompson Read Free Book Online Page B

are you?”
    “I’m these children’s mother,” said Mom. “I’m the wife of the man who hired you to look after them. I’m the wife of the man who’s been paying you good money to turn my home into a pigsty. I’m the wife of the man who—I’m the— I could murder you! ” yelled Mom.
    And she damned near did.
    Shrieking objurgations at Mrs. Cole just to look at us kids, just to look at this house, she gave the housekeeper a kind of bearing down shake which brought her heavily to her knees. She boxed her ears, then, until her topknot came undone. And then Mom began kicking her. Mrs. Cole fell to her face and tried to crawl away, and Mom followed, kicking, giving her a crack upon the ears when the opportunity presented. Finally, her strength exhausted, she stumbled and sat down upon her.
    Very wisely Mrs. Cole lay still, and Mom was sitting on her, weeping hysterically, when Pop and the doctor arrived. Pop had been out of his office when Mom left the hospital. He had hurried home as soon as he was notified of her unauthorized departure.
    Mom was put to bed. The doctor examined Mrs. Cole. He had had a few words with Mom and he was an observant man. So, in Pop’s presence, he told Mrs. Cole that he was slighting his duty in not reporting her to the police. Her rheumatism and other ailments were myths, he said. She had better start getting more exercise and lay off whatever she was drinking.
    Mrs. Cole departed, swiftly and meekly. But her memory lingered on. It was months before Pop could acquire the nerve to interfere in household matters, and he was pretty diffident about it then.

9
    O ne Saturday morning, a few weeks after the Cole affair, Mom, Maxine and I were eating breakfast when a polite knock sounded on our back door. Maxine and I hollered “come in” and Mom shushed us and went to answer the door.
    We heard a soft voice inquire, “Begging your pardon, but do you have any work I can do?” And Mom’s reply, “Well, I don’t know. We can’t really afford to hire anyone, right now.” Then, following a heavy silence, she said, “But don’t you want to come in out of the cold?”
    A woman with a little boy of about four came in. Negroes. The woman was about twenty-five, and her eyes looked almost as large as her pinched, starved face. She wore only a shawl around the shoulders of her patched but spotless gingham dress, although the weather was below zero. The boy, a wizened but cheerful-looking little fellow, was little more warmly garbed.
    Mom told them to sit down, and went over to the stove and got busy. That was one thing about Mom. She never wasted words when action would do the trick. She cooked them an enormous breakfast and cleared out, shooing us ahead of her. Digging back in the closets, she produced an armful of her and my discarded garments, old and outworn but still serviceable.
    “Now, you just put these on before you leave,” she said, when she took them into the kitchen. “You’ll catch your death of cold running around the way you are!”
    “Yes’m,” the woman said. “Now what work do you want me to do?”
    “That’s all right,” said Mom.
    “No, ma’am. It won’t be all right unless I do some work.”
    “Oh, well,” said Mom. “You can wash the dishes if you want to.”
    Viola—that was the woman’s name—washed the dishes. Afterwards, a little mopping-up was indicated so she mopped the floor. In so doing she got water across the threshold of the next room, so naturally that had to be mopped, too—and before it could be mopped it had to be swept, and while one was sweeping one room it was foolish to ignore another. After sweeping, the furniture had to be dusted, and…
    Viola went to work for us.
    Some relative of hers gladly took her son to board for a fraction of her wages, and Viola moved into our house. And while she was an angel, if there ever was one, she was a source of deep confusion—at least to Mom and me.
    Mom had always had to be somewhat penurious