Not waiting to hear all of Nookie’s speech, Dink ran into the next room, laughing heartily. Soongy continued to slide her iron back and forth over the petticoat on the board, unperturbed. Looking at Nookie, she said casually:
“Nookie, you sho know how to come up on people easy. W’at make you ain’ call, so somebody kin know you comin’?”
“W’at good callin’ goin’ do?” Nookie asked her. “You an’ Dink up in hyuh together, singin’ so boist’ous? Wid yo’ min’ workin’ so heavy on dat i’nin-boad; I reckon you ain’ took time to notice Dink walkin’ ’roun hyuh in ’is naked skin, till I had to call yo’ ’tenshun to it. Is you?”
With calm politeness, Soongy said:
“Nookie, you ain’ got to gimme no egvice cuncernin’ Dink. I know de boy was naked. An’ he know he gotta stay naked, too. ’Till I git good an’ ready to give ’im ’is clo’se, from whah I done hid ’um.”
Nookie looked puzzled.
“W’at you mean?” she inquired. “Da’s de way you punishes Dink to make ’im stay in-do’s?”
“Da’s de onles way I know how to keep Dink from goin’ yonder in de swamp, play’n munks dem shoe-pick ditches,” Soongy went on to explain. “Times an’ times, I done tol’ Dink I don’ never eat no nasty shoe-pick. But he so hard-head. He steal off evvy chance he git; an’ go yonder in de swamp, wid Mahaley chillun an’ some dem yuther hongry li’l A-rabs from down de street. Comin’ back hyuh at night, wid a sack full o’ dirty ole shoe-pick feesh; expec’in me to cook ’um.... Like he ain’ never bin use to nothin’ ’tall good to eat.”
Nookie looked at her with a feeling of mingled disappointment and disgust. Was Soongy trying to put on airs with her, and make believe she didn’t eat tchoupique? A fish she was raised on; like all the other poor colored folks living close to the swamp. A fish so fat and greasy, and so plentiful in all the muddy bayous and ditches, that everybody called it “Gawd’s feesh.” Something Gawd provided for His nigger people, to keep them in food when everything else failed. A fish that all the swamp niggers caught in the long summer time, and cut up and salted and dried in the sun; and hung up in their kitchens to last through the winter, when they couldn’t afford to buy fresh meat. And you didn’t have to catch them with a line, like you did other fish, either. All the children had to do when they went to the tchoupique pond: take a flour barrel, and knock out the two heads. Then, just “plump” it down in the water hard. And you never missed having ’most a barrel half-full, ready to scoop up with your hands, and throw out on the bank.
Thinking of the unctuous court-bouillon and tchoupique stew she knew how to make, Nookie asked: