Atticus said the best medicine goes down the bitterest. Nobody was more bitter than Mayella Ewing. It had been almost 20 years since we last saw each other. Her family broke up after her Boo Radley killed her father. The younger kids went to orphanages. I heard Mayella went west—how far she got I did not know nor cared.
The letter looked as if it had been written by a chicken in the back of pickup truck: “Come to St. Vincent’s. Am dying. Got something to say. Mayella.” I threw the letter out. There was no reason to bother Atticus who still looked pained every time Tom Robinson was mentioned.
Two weeks later the phone rang. The receiver sounded like a storm wave breaking on crushed shells. I assumed the line was bad and was about to hang up when I heard the croak of a voice. “Jean Louise, it’s Mayella. Didja git my letter? Why haven’t you come by?”
I tried to make excuses. I was busy. I wasn’t sure who it was. Her father almost killed my brother.
The call was interrupted by the sound of a spoon slipping down a whirling garbage disposal. Atticus taught me the best time to be most patient was when I was disinclined. I held the receiver away from my ear waiting for her to finish. I blessed her out of courtesy.
“I’m dyin’ and the dyin’ don’t have no time for niceties. I need you to visit me at St. Vincent’s. I’m up in pulmonarily care. I got cancer bad. Docs say I need oxygen all day or I’ll be gone by night. Come.”
I was about to tell her that I would do my best, which meant I would not come, when she whispered— “Come or I’ll call Atticus.”
It was another time I wished Jem was alive. All the commotion of the night when Bob Ewell tried to kill Jem; all it did was to save him for an accident on a icy road, driving home for Christmas during his junior year at Alabama.
What I found in bed was asleep. The oxygen mask perched precariously on the Ewell high cheek bones, but the rest of her face was a sink hole. Every breath was accompanied by a hiss that was barely able to raise the blanket. She still had long, stringy hair—no longer brown, but yellow gray. One foot was peaking out as pale and scaly as a dried corn cob. I tried to trace the years since we last saw each other at the Macomb Courthouse. Clearly, her road was much longer than mine.
Mayella’s eyes opened and stared at the ceiling, trying to figure how she got there. Looking down, she examined me through the mask. With a blind hand she found a pair of glasses that had obviously been prescribed to her as an act of charity. Big plastic frames that perched as uncomfortably as she did on the courtroom chair.
“Yer here,” she wheezed. She sniffed the air. “Where’s yer brother?”
“He passed,” I said, not volunteering any more information than necessary.
If it surprised her, it didn’t show. Death was a fellow traveller for people like the Ewells. Not many of them made it as far as Mayella.
“I was gonna ask how, but it don’t matter. Dead is dead, right?” She coughed her way into a breath. “I’ll join him soon enough.” A pale tongue snaked out trying to moisten her lips. There was a wet crusty paper towel on her bed table, but Atticus had no words of wisdom to convince me to touch it.
“Why did you want to see me, Mayella?” I didn’t exactly tap my foot like Miss Caroline, but I might as well have.
Mayella curled her lip like a mad dog. “Can’t rush a dyin’ soul. I wanna talk to yer ‘cause I have somethin’ on my chest that ain’t cancer. I’ve been thinkin’ a lot about how things went down in Macomb with the trial and that nigger and all. I got truth to speak before I pass.”
After all these years, Mayella wanted to come clean. Did it matter? Did it make anything right for Tom Robinson and his family? I should have walked out, leaving her to die holding that bag of guilt. But Atticus said the sick had rights that the healthy just had to respect.
“I feel sorry for that nigger, Tom Robinson.” She sighed or maybe it was just her oxygen.
“He didn’t do anything, did he Mayella?”
She shook her head sadly. “No, he was just walking by whistlin’ like he always do. Like he had somethin’ to be happy ‘bout.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have invited him in to break up that chiffarobe.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What are you talking ‘bout Jean Louise? I never invited him in.”
“Yes, you did. Both Tom and you testified that you invited him to break up an old chiffarobe.”
“Poor Tom, he couldn’t never disagree with a white woman. Even if that woman is a girl accusin’ him of taking advantage of her. It jes wasn’t his nature.”
“I don’t understand. Who broke the chiffarobe?”
Through the haze of the mask, I saw a half-toothed smile. “I knew he never tol’ you.”
“Who told me what?”
Atticus. He was the one that bust the chiffarobe.”
“Why would Atticus break up the chiffarobe?”
“He didn’t want to break it, it just kinda got busted when we was foolin’ around. We fell on it. Hard.” Mayella couldn’t even laugh without coughing.
I grabbed the door knob to prevent me from falling. Atticus said if you choose to root around in another’s closet you shouldn’t expect to find anything pleasant.
“Atticus? You’re lying.”
“Lying? No, ma’am. Atticus used to walk past our house to see the Cunnin’hams. He was a genyuwine gentleman. Always raisin’ his hat to me all polite like. We ‘came friends. We jes talk by the fence. And the more we talk the more we talk. Atticus bein’ a man and me bein’ a girl the talks got serious. One day he show up and he hand me seven nickels and tol’ me to send the kids to git ice cream in town.”
“You said you saved up those nickels.”
“Jean Louise, where would I get one let alone seven nickels? It was hard bein' Atticus. People always lookin’ up to him and all, forgettin’ he were still a man. It been a spell since you mama passed and a man has urges, even Atticus. A girl has urges, too, especially for a gentleman. He walk in and soon my dress was on the floor and we fell on the chiffarobe. And it busted but good. That’s when I saw my pappy lookin’ in the window. He was whiter than white. ‘Git out,’ he yelled at Atticus. ‘You jus’ can’t take what you want. Not e’en you.’ Atticus were out of there like a bat outa hell. Half-dressed he was. ‘magine that, Atticus Finch half-dressed. He ran right passed Tom Robinson whose eyes were bigger’n saucers. My pappy gave it to me real good, callin’ me every name in the book.”
“I don’t understand. Why blame Tom Robinson?”
“Say what you want about my pappy. He had a code to never turn on ‘nother white man. He fingered Tom because he knew your father liked him. He jes loved watching Atticus being so smart in court knowin’ he were guilty and knowin’ no white jury was going to believe a nigger over a white woman’s word. He also knew Atticus couldn’t come clean, neither. Don’t look so glum, Jean Louise, ya cain’t always be a saint, even Atticus.”
The floor stopped spinning, but I could be sick at anytime. “Why did your father try to kill Jem?”
“He wasn’t aimin’ to kill Jem. He was aimin’ to kill you. Jem just got in the way. I guess the way he figgerd it, Atticus took his daughter; he was gonna take his. Besides the whole town was laughin’ at him. Everybody talk about how smart Atticus was. How he almos’ got Tom off. How he made my pappy look like he was just a nothin’. A nothin’? The man had a code. He got himself good and drunk and got himself killed.”
I twisted the door knob, about to walk out, but turned for one more question. “Why did you want to see me? After all these years?”
Mayella took off her glasses and put them on the table. She looked up, breathing heavy as if she just walked up the four flights of stairs with more to go. Her voice came from the bottom of a ever-deepening well. “There’s somethings a croaker sack of turnip greens won’t buy.”