We Have Always Lived in the Castle

by Shirley Jackson

Once when I was going past, the Harris boys’ mother came out onto the porch, perhaps to see what they were all yelling so about. She stood there for a minute watching and listening and I stopped and looked at her, looking into her flat dull eyes and knowing I must not speak to her and knowing I would. “Can’t you make them stop?” I asked her that day, wondering if there was anything in this woman I could speak to, if she had ever run joyfully over grass, or had watched flowers, or known delight or love. “Can’t you make them stop?” “Kids,” she said, not changing her voice or her look or her air of dull enjoyment, “don’t call the lady names.” “Yes, ma,” one of the boys said soberly. “Don’t go near no fence. Don’t call no lady names.” And I walked on, while they shrieked and shouted and the woman stood on the porch and laughed. Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea? Oh, no, said Merricat, you’ll poison me. Their tongues will burn, I thought, as though they had eaten fire. Their throats will burn when the words come out, and in their bellies they will feel a torment hotter than a thousand fires.