East of Eden

Lee would sit smiling a little, and his quick fragile hands flew about their work as though they had independent lives. Abra wasn’t aware that she spoke exclusively of herself. And sometimes while she talked Lee’s mind wandered out and came back and went out again like a ranging dog, and Lee would nod at intervals and make a quiet humming sound.

He liked Abra and he felt strength and goodness in her, and warmth too. Her features had the bold muscular strength which could result finally either in ugliness or in great beauty. Lee, musing through her talk, thought of the round smooth faces of the Cantonese, his own breed. Even thin they were moon-faced. Lee should have liked that kind best since beauty must be somewhat like ourselves, but he didn’t. When he thought of Chinese beauty the iron predatory faces of the Manchus came to his mind, arrogant and unyielding faces of a people who had authority by unquestioned inheritance.

She said, “Maybe it was there all along. I don’t know. He never talked much about his father. It was after Mr. Trask had the—you know—the lettuce. Aron was angry then.”

“Why?” Lee asked.

“People were laughing at him.”

Lee’s whole mind popped back. “Laughing at Aron? Why at him? He didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Well, that’s the way he felt. Do you want to know what I think?”

“Of course,” said Lee.

“I figured this out and I’m not quite finished figuring. I thought he always felt—well, kind of crippled—maybe unfinished, because he didn’t have a mother.”

Lee’s eyes opened wide and then drooped again. He nodded. “I see. Do you figure Cal is that way too?”

“No.”

“Then why Aron?”

“Well, I haven’t got that yet. Maybe some people need things more than others, or hate things more. My father hates turnips. He always did. Never came from anything. Turnips make him mad, real mad. Well, one time my mother was—well, huffy, and she made a casserole of mashed turnips with lots of pepper and cheese on top and got it all brown on top. My father ate half a dish of it before he asked what it was. My mother said turnips, and he threw the dish on the floor and got up and went out. I don’t think he ever forgave her.”

Lee chuckled. “He can forgive her because she said turnips. But, Abra, suppose he’d asked and she had said something else and he liked it and had another dish. And then afterward he found out. Why, he might have murdered her.”

“I guess so. Well, anyway, I figure Aron needed a mother more than Cal did. And I think he always blamed his father.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I think.”

“You do get around, don’t you?”

“Shouldn’t I?”

“Of course you should.”

“Shall I make some fudge?”

“Not today. We still have some.”

“What can I do?”

“You can pound flour into the top round. Will you eat with us?”

“No. I’m going to a birthday party, thank you. Do you think he’ll be a minister?”

“How do I know?” said Lee. “Maybe it’s just an idea.”

“I hope he doesn’t,” said Abra, and she clapped her mouth shut in astonishment at having said it.

Lee got up and pulled out the pastry board and laid out the red meat and a flour sifter beside it. “Use the back side of the knife,” he said.

“I know.” She hoped he hadn’t heard her.

But Lee asked, “Why don’t you want him to be a minister?”

“I shouldn’t say it.”

“You should say anything you want to. You don’t have to explain.” He went back to his chair, and Abra sifted flour over the steak and pounded the meat with a big knife. Tap-tap—”I shouldn’t talk like this”—tap-tap.

Lee turned his head away to let her take her own pace.

“He goes all one way,” she said over the pounding. “If it’s church it’s got to be high church. He was talking about how priests shouldn’t be married.”

“That’s not the way his last letter sounded,” Lee observed.

“I know. That was before.” Her knife stopped its pounding. Her face was young perplexed pain. “Lee, I’m not good enough for him.”

“Now, what do you mean by that?”

“I’m not being funny. He doesn’t think about me. He’s made someone up, and it’s like he put my skin on her. I’m not like that—not like the made-up one.”

“What’s she like?”

“Pure!” said Abra. “Just absolutely pure. Nothing but pure—never a bad thing. I’m not like that.”

“Nobody is,” said Lee.

“He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t even want to know me. He wants that—white—ghost.”

Lee rubbed a piece of cracker. “Don’t you like him? You’re pretty young, but I don’t think that makes any difference.”

“ ’Course I like him. I’m going to be his wife. But I want him to like me too. And how can he, if he doesn’t know anything about me? I used to think he knew me. Now I’m not sure he ever did.”

“Maybe he’s going through a hard time that isn’t permanent. You’re a smart girl—very smart. Is it pretty hard trying to live up to the one—in your skin?”

“I’m always afraid he’ll see something in me that isn’t in the one he made up. I’ll get mad or I’ll smell bad—or something else. He’ll find out.”

“Maybe not,” said Lee. “But it must be hard living the Lily Maid, the Goddess-Virgin, and the other all at once. Humans just do smell bad sometimes.”

She moved toward the table. “Lee, I wish—”

“Don’t spill flour on my floor,” he said. “What do you wish?”

“It’s from my figuring out. I think Aron, when he didn’t have a mother—why, he made her everything good he could think of.”

“That might be. And then you think he dumped it all on you.” She stared at him and her fingers wandered delicately up and down the blade of the knife. “And you wish you could find some way to dump it all back.”

“Yes.”

“Suppose he wouldn’t like you then?”

“I’d rather take a chance on that,” she said. “I’d rather be myself.”