And now she was a woman who had experienced life, tested it, and she stood, silent and attentive on the stairway of the Edgley house or by the stove in the kitchen and with an effort forced herself to quit thinking. On another street, in another house, a door banged. Her sense of hearing was extraordinarily acute, and it seemed to her she could hear every sound made by every man, woman, and child in town. The circle of thoughts began again and again she fought to think, to feel her way out of herself. On another street, in another house a woman was doing housework, just as she had been doing—making beds, washing dishes, cooking food. The woman had just passed from one room of her house to another and a door had shut with a bang. “Well,” May thought, “she is a human being, she feels things as I do, she thinks, eats food, sleeps, dreams, walks about her house.”
It didn’t matter who the woman was. Being or not being an Edgley made no difference. Any woman would do for the purposes of May’s thoughts. All people who lived, lived! Men walked about too, and had thoughts, young girls laughed. She had heard a girl in school, when no one was speaking to her—paying any attention to her—burst suddenly into loud laughter. What was she laughing about?
How cruelly the town had patronized May, setting her apart from the others, calling her smart. They had cared about her because of her smartness. She was smart. Her mind was quick, it reached out. And she was one of the Edgleys—“cattle,” the bearded man in the store had said.
And what of that—what was an Edgley—why were they cattle? An Edgley also slept, ate food, had dreams, walked about. Lillian had said that an Edgley man was like all other men, only less stuck on himself.
May’s mind fought to realize herself in the world of people, she wanted to be a part of all life, to function in life—did not want to be a special thing—smart—patted on the head—smiled at because she was smart.
What was smartness? She could work out problems in school quickly, swiftly, but as each problem was solved she forgot it. It meant nothing to her. A merchant in Egypt wanted to transport goods across the desert and had 370 pounds of tea and such another number of pounds of dried fruits and spices. There was a problem concerning the matter. Camels were to be loaded. How far away? The result of all her quick thinking was some number like twelve or eighteen, arrived at before the others. There was a little trick. It consisted in throwing everything else out of the mind and concentrating on the one thing—and that was smartness.
But what did it matter to her about the loading of camels? It might have meant something could she have seen into the mind, the soul of the man who owned all that merchandise and who was to carry it so far, if she could have understood him, if she could have understood anyone, if anyone could have understood her.
May stood in the kitchen of the Edgley house, quiet, attentive—for ten minutes, a half hour. Once a dish she held in her hand fell to the floor and broke, awakening her suddenly and to awaken was like coming back to the Edgley house after a long journey, during which she had traveled far, over mountains, rivers, seas—it was like coming back to a place she wanted to leave for good.
“And all the time,” she told herself, “life swept on, other people lived, laughed, achieved life.”
And then, through the lie she had told Maud Welliver, May stepped into a new world, a world of boundless release. Through the lie and the telling of it she found out that, if she could not live in the life about her, she could create a life. If she was walled in, shut off from participation in the life of the Ohio town—hated, feared by the town—she could come out of the town. The people would not really look at her, try to understand her and they would not let her look down into themselves.