sudden it snapped and the long part rolled to the floor. “See now, you busted it,” Rufus said.
“Leave me alone!” She tried to draw with the stub of the crayon but it was too short, and the paper got in the way. She looked along the window sill and selected a brown crayon.
“What you goana do with that brown one?” Rufus said. “You already got all that orange all over everything, what you goana do with that brown one?” Catherine took the brown crayon and made a brutal tangle of dark lines all over the orange lines. “Now all you did is just spoil it,” Rufus said. “You don’t know how to draw!”
“Quit it!” Catherine yelled, and all of a sudden she was crying. He heard his Aunt Hannah’s sharp voice from the kitchen: “Rufus?”
He was furious with Catherine. “Crybaby,” he whispered with cold hatred: “Tattletale!”
And there was Aunt Hannah at the door, just as mad as a hornet. “Now, what’s the matter? What have you done to her!” She walked straight at him.
It wasn’t fair. How did she know he was doing anything? With a feeling of real righteousness he talked back: “I didn’t do one single thing to her. She was just messing everything up on her picture and I tried to help her like you told me to and all of a sudden she started to cry.”
“What did he do, Catherine?”
“He wouldn’t let me alone.”
“Why good night, I never even touched you and you’re a liar if you say I did!”
All of a sudden he felt himself gripped by the shoulders and shaken and he turned his rattling head from his sister to look into his Aunt Hannah’s freezing glare.
“Now you just listen to me,” she said. “Are you listening?” she sputtered. “Are you listening?” she said still more intensely.
