Winfield turned red. He glared at Ruthie. “She pee’d in one,” he said viciously.
Ma was apprehensive. “Now what did you do? You show me.” She forced them to the door and inside. “Now what’d you do?”
Ruthie pointed. “It was a-hissin’ and a-swishin’. Stopped now.”
“Show me what you done,” Ma demanded.
Winfield went reluctantly to the toilet. “I didn’ push it hard,” he said. “I jus’ had aholt of this here, an’—” The swish of water came again. He leaped away.
Ma threw back her head and laughed, while Ruthie and Winfield regarded her resentfully. “Tha’s the way she works,” Ma said. “I seen them before. When you finish, you push that.”
The shame of their ignorance was too great for the children. They went out the door, and they walked down the street to stare at a large family eating breakfast.
Ma watched them out of the door. And then she looked about the room. She went to the shower closets and looked in. She walked to the wash basins and ran her finger over the white porcelain. She turned the water on a little and held her finger in the stream, and jerked her hand away when the water came hot. For a moment she regarded the basin, and then, setting the plug, she filled the bowl a little from the hot faucet, a little from the cold. And then she washed her hands in the warm water, and she washed her face. She was brushing water through her hair with her fingers when a step sounded on the concrete floor behind her. Ma swung around. An elderly man stood looking at her with an expression of righteous shock.
He said harshly, “How you come in here?”
Ma gulped, and she felt the water dripping from her chin, and soaking through her dress. “I didn’ know,” she said apologetically. “I thought this here was for folks to use.”