The Walls of Jericho by Rudolph Fisher

It happened the next morning that Linda ran out of sugar, discovering her predicament only a few minutes before Miss Cramp's breakfast was to be served. There were, of course, no grocery stores within three blocks of exclusive Court Avenue, and while ordinarily Miss Cramp would have waited without complaint till the errand was run, today the situation was awkward: Miss Cramp had company, a lady from Baltimore, Maryland; a friend, to be sure, but a friend whose breakfast must not be delayed by the delinquencies of a colored maid.

Linda, therefore, following professional tradition, resolved to borrow sufficient from her next-door neighbor to tide over the temporary lack, and was already on the kitchen-porch going to the Irish girl next door, when she saw a Negro woman beating rugs in the back yard of the second house. She had her own curiosity about that particular house, because she had overheard Miss Cramp and the present guest discussing it, and she decided that this was her chance at an opening that would satisfy that curiosity. She would borrow the sugar from the colored woman.

It was thus that she made the acquaintance of Fred Merrit's housekeeper, Mrs. Arabella Fuller.

"Drop in any time," invited Mrs. Fuller, who was a genial, lonesome soul, not too insistent on the social distinctions between housekeepers and maids, and who would apparently have had more to say had Linda been less obviously pressed for time.

"Thanks," smiled Linda. "This afternoon. My folks are going to a show."

And so that afternoon found her and Mrs. Fuller conversing in the Merrit kitchen with all the ease and confidence of a much more extended friendship.

Without conscious effort Mrs. Arabella Fuller would have arrested any cartoonist's attention. Her profile was a series of adjoining semicircles -- a large one for the bulbous forehead, then a succession of smaller, approximately equal ones, forming from above downward nose, upper lip, lower lip, first chin, and second chin. From above downward, moreover, this series slanted unanimously rearward, so that the forehead bulged and the chins receded, and the general attitude was that of one caught in the act of swallowing half a banana.

This profile only stated the motif on which Mrs. Fuller as a whole was composed. Every outline of every part was a perfect semicircle, and so on integration she naturally became a cluster of hemispheres. There were, to be sure, unanticipatedly sudden constrictions about her at points: between chins, for example, at wrists, at waist, and at ankles. But these repressions were futile, for on either side of each constriction the flesh triumphantly bulged. They simply heightened the lady's agglomerate bulbosity.

Out of the midst of this there escaped on occasion, an asthmatic wheeze. This confab was such an occasion, and it revealed at once that the asthma in no wise discouraged Mrs. Fuller's flow of language.

"Yes, indeed, chile. Any time you want anything like that jes' come right on over and get it -- we always has plenty ev'ything on hand. Thass one thing about Mr. Merrit -- he sho believes in eatin'. Reckon thass why he so thin. And it makes him mad as a wet hen to run out'n anything and thass why I always has plenty ev'ything on hand. So anytime you run out, jes' come on over and I'll trust you to keep 'count o' ev'ything you get. " She fanned her shining round brown face with a limp dishcloth and smiled as she paused for breath. The smile revealed a shining row of white teeth, each of them just half a circle.

"It's nice here," Linda observed, looking about.

" 'Deed it is. And Mr. Merrit's such a nice man to work fo'. 'Cose he have his big times and so on, and he like his toddy now'n then a little too good, and ev'y once in a while he gets tied up with some woman 'nother, but 'cose thass natural, him bein' a bachelor and havin' so much money. I jes' shets my eyes and says nothin', 'cause 'tain't none my business, and he ain' never said nothin' out the way to me, y' understand, so I jes' do my work and go on. You know how 'tis -- you mus' see and don' see. " There was another reluctant pause.

"Indeed so," agreed Linda, already somewhat apprehensive at the conflict in Mrs. Fuller's speech. It appeared that while Mrs. Fuller's labored respiration sought to shorten her sentences, her sentences had a will of their own and simply refused to be shortened. Linda already found herself drawing deep sympathetic, but wholly useless breaths.