My Ántonia | Page 7

the complete dome of heaven, all there was of it. I did not
believe that my dead father and mother were watching me from up
there; they would still be looking for me at the sheep-fold down by the
creek, or along the white road that led to the mountain pastures. I had
left even their spirits behind me. The wagon jolted on, carrying me I
knew not whither. I don't think I was homesick. If we never arrived
anywhere, it did not matter. Between that earth and that sky I felt
erased, blotted out. I did not say my prayers that night: here, I felt, what
would be would be.

II
I DO NOT REMEMBER our arrival at my grandfather's farm
sometime before daybreak, after a drive of nearly twenty miles with
heavy work-horses. When I awoke, it was afternoon. I was lying in a
little room, scarcely larger than the bed that held me, and the
window-shade at my head was flapping softly in a warm wind. A tall
woman, with wrinkled brown skin and black hair, stood looking down
at me; I knew that she must be my grandmother. She had been crying, I
could see, but when I opened my eyes she smiled, peered at me
anxiously, and sat down on the foot of my bed.
`Had a good sleep, Jimmy?' she asked briskly. Then in a very different
tone she said, as if to herself, `My, how you do look like your father!' I
remembered that my father had been her little boy; she must often have
come to wake him like this when he overslept. `Here are your clean
clothes,' she went on, stroking my coverlid with her brown hand as she
talked. `But first you come down to the kitchen with me, and have a
nice warm bath behind the stove. Bring your things; there's nobody
about.'
`Down to the kitchen' struck me as curious; it was always `out in the
kitchen' at home. I picked up my shoes and stockings and followed her
through the living-room and down a flight of stairs into a basement.
This basement was divided into a dining-room at the right of the stairs
and a kitchen at the left. Both rooms were plastered and
whitewashed--the plaster laid directly upon the earth walls, as it used to
be in dugouts. The floor was of hard cement. Up under the wooden
ceiling there were little half-windows with white curtains, and pots of
geraniums and wandering Jew in the deep sills. As I entered the kitchen,
I sniffed a pleasant smell of gingerbread baking. The stove was very
large, with bright nickel trimmings, and behind it there was a long
wooden bench against the wall, and a tin washtub, into which
grandmother poured hot and cold water. When she brought the soap
and towels, I told her that I was used to taking my bath without help.
`Can you do your ears, Jimmy? Are you sure? Well, now, I call you a

right smart little boy.'
It was pleasant there in the kitchen. The sun shone into my bath-water
through the west half-window, and a big Maltese cat came up and
rubbed himself against the tub, watching me curiously. While I
scrubbed, my grandmother busied herself in the dining-room until I
called anxiously, `Grandmother, I'm afraid the cakes are burning!' Then
she came laughing, waving her apron before her as if she were shooing
chickens.
She was a spare, tall woman, a little stooped, and she was apt to carry
her head thrust forward in an attitude of attention, as if she were
looking at something, or listening to something, far away. As I grew
older, I came to believe that it was only because she was so often
thinking of things that were far away. She was quick-footed and
energetic in all her movements. Her voice was high and rather shrill,
and she often spoke with an anxious inflection, for she was exceedingly
desirous that everything should go with due order and decorum. Her
laugh, too, was high, and perhaps a little strident, but there was a lively
intelligence in it. She was then fifty-five years old, a strong woman, of
unusual endurance.
After I was dressed, I explored the long cellar next the kitchen. It was
dug out under the wing of the house, was plastered and cemented, with
a stairway and an outside door by which the men came and went.
Under one of the windows there was a place for them to wash when
they came in from work.
While my grandmother was busy about supper, I settled myself on the
wooden bench behind the stove and got acquainted with the cat-- he
caught not only rats and mice, but gophers, I was told. The patch of
yellow