The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty

where did they stay in Memphis and Johnnie Ree said
she
didn't know: it said "A Home Away from Home." There was a fern a yard broad sitting on the buttress out front that looked like it could eat them up, and that was how she could tell the house from some others that said "A Home Away from Home" too.
    And they didn't care to board with the lady, but ate in cafeterias, because you could pick out what you wanted. They had store-bought watermelon in round slices, and store-bought cake that tasted of something queer, like paregoric. Johnnie Ree's voice got a little stronger on the subject of watermelon.
    I suppose her tales of Memphis would have gone on the rest of the afternoon (what a blessing that Bonnie Dee didn't
talk
but took after her father!) and everybody was sleepy after dinner anyway, except all of a sudden Uncle Daniel
noticed
her. Noticed Johnnie Ree. (She was on the premises at the funeral, but nothing looked the same then.) I heard his chair scrape. His eyes got real round, and I put my hand on his knee, like I do in church when he begins to sing too fast.
    "Why, Bonnie Dee kept something back from me," he says. "Look yonder, Edna Earle. I'm seeing a vision. Why didn't you poke me?"
    I says, "Oh, she's got on rags and tags of somebody else's clothes, but she looks like the last of pea-time to me." I still hold that Bonnie Dee was the only pretty one they had.
    But it was her clothes that Uncle Daniel was seeing.
    "Wait till the trial's over, Uncle Daniel," I whispers, and he subsides. He's forgotten the way he looked at me—he's good as gold again.
    So Johnnie Ree, who'd talked on and on, and on and on, says, "So we got back home. The end." Like a movie.
    "And you behaved like a lady the whole time?" asks DeYancey.
    "Yes sir. As far as I know."
    "And Bonnie Dee behaved?" cried DeYancey.
    "Oh, Bonnie Dee
sure
behaved. She stayed to home."
    "What's that?" says DeYancey, stock still. "Who's this sister you've been telling us about? Who did go on this fool's errand, anyway? We were given to understand by a witness now racing toward us to testify, that it was you and your sister Bonnie Dee that were up in Memphis on the loose."
    "Bonnie Dee's not the only sister in the world," says Johnnie Ree. "Stand up, Treva."
    And up pops a little bitty one. She held her gum still, and turned all the way around, and stood there, till Johnnie Ree says, "Sit down." She was well drilled. Treva had a pin pulling her front together, and guess what the pin was—a little peacock with a colored tail, all kinds of glass stones. I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't the substance of what she brought back from Memphis.
    DeYancey groans. "Mrs. Bonnie Dee Ponder never went herself at all?"
    "She was ready to hear what it's like the way we told it. But me and Treva was the ones went, and Bonnie Dee stayed home with Mama," says Johnnie Ree. "She give us two twenties and a five and a ten, and part of her old-lady clothes. So she could get a whole bed to herself and eat Mama's greens."
    "But never went?" DeYancey groaned—
everybody
groaned, but the Peacocks.
    "She said she was an old, married lady. And it was too late for her to go."
    "Why, Mr. Clanahan," says Judge Waite. "I believe you've been wasting our time."
    Johnnie Ree brings up her fingers and gives three little scrapes at DeYancey. When she came down, her whole family was just as proud of her as if she'd been valedictorian of the graduating class. The other side didn't want to ask her a thing. She'll remember that trial for the rest of her days.

But mercy. Uncle Daniel was stirring in his chair.
    "DeYancey," he says. "You've got a hold of me. Let-a-go."
    "Never mind," says DeYancey. "Never you mind."
    "I'm fixing to get up there myself." That's what Uncle Daniel said.
    "Take the stand? Uh-uh, Daniel. You know what I told you," says DeYancey. "What I told you and told you!"
    "Let-a-go your side, Edna Earle," says Uncle Daniel.
    "Dear heart," I says.
    "It's way past my turn