Part II, Chapters 7–8: "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" by Katherine Anne Porter

You’re a marvel, but you must be careful or you’re going to be good and sorry.”

I’ll call for you when I want you…Where were you forty years ago when I pulled through milk-leg and double pneumonia?

She was always being tactful and kind.

Dutiful and good: “So good and dutiful,” said Granny, “that I’d like to spank her.”

It was good to have everything clean and folded away, with the hair brushes and tonic bottles sitting straight on the white, embroidered linen: the day started without fuss and the pantry shelves laid out with rows of jelly glasses and brown jugs and white stone-china jars with blue whirligigs and words painted on them: coffee, tea, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, allspice: and the bronze clock with the lion on top nicely dusted off.

While she was rummaging around she found death in her mind and it felt clammy and unfamiliar.

While she was rummaging around she found death in her mind and it felt clammy and unfamiliar.

She believed she’d just plague Cornelia a little.

Little hasty glances and tiny gestures tossed around here and over her head saying, “Don’t cross her, let her have her way, she’s eighty years old,” and she sitting there as if she lived in a thin glass cage.

She asked herself intently, but she could not remember.

Wounded vanity, Ellen, said a sharp voice in the top of her mind.

Her eyelids wavered and let in streamers of blue-gray light like tissue paper over her eyes.

They disputed your every word.

Then Hapsy melted from within and turned flimsy as gray gauze and the baby was a gauzy shadow

Something not given back… Her breath crowded down under her ribs and grew into a monstrous frightening shape with cutting edges; it bored up into her head, and the agony was unbelievable: Yes, John, get the Doctor now, no more talk, the time has come.

Something not given back… Her breath crowded down under her ribs and grew into a monstrous frightening shape with cutting edges; it bored up into her head, and the agony was unbelievable: Yes, John, get the Doctor now, no more talk, the time has come.

He always had a funny story of some sort, usually about an Irishman who made his little mistakes and confessed them, and the point lay in some absurd thing he would blurt out in the confessional showing his struggles between native piety and original sin.

He always had a funny story of some sort, usually about an Irishman who made his little mistakes and confessed them, and the point lay in some absurd thing he would blurt out in the confessional showing his struggles between native piety and original sin.

So there was nothing, nothing to worry about anymore, except sometimes in the night one of the children screamed in a nightmare, and they both hustled out and hunting for the matches and calling, “There, wait a minute, here we are!”

But the man insisted the copy was perfect, it was very rich and handsome.

No sort of light at all, just frippery.

She felt like singing too, but she put her hand in the bosom of her dress and pulled out a rosary, and Father Connolly murmured Latin in a very solemn voice and tickled her feet.

I wanted to give Cornelia the amethyst set--Cornelia, you’re to have the amethyst set, but Hapsy’s to wear it when she wants, and, Doctor Harry, do shut up.

I meant to finish the alter cloth and send six bottles of wine to Sister Borgia for her dyspepsia.

The blue light from Cornelia’s lampshade drew into a tiny point in the center of her brain, it flickered and winked like an eye, quietly it fluttered and dwindled.