She lived, a lonely woman, lonely with her pride, trying to make folks believe different, hiding the fact that they just suffered her, because she was not cold in the coffin before they were carting her forty miles away to bury her, flouting the will of God to do it. Refusing to let her lie in the same earth with those Bundrens.
“But she wanted to go,” Mr. Tull said. “It was her own wish to lie among her own people.”
“Then why didn’t she go alive?” I said. “Not one of them would have stopped her, with even that little one almost old enough now to be selfish and stone-hearted like the rest of them.”
“It was her own wish,” Mr. Tull said. “I heard Anse say it was.”
“And you would believe Anse, of course,” I said. “A man like you would. Don’t tell me.”
“I’d believe him about something he couldn’t expect to make anything off of me by not telling,” Mr. Tull said.
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “A woman’s place is with her husband and children, alive or dead. Would you expect me to want to go back to Alabama and leave you and the girls when my time comes, that I left of my own will to cast my lot with yours for better and worse, until death and after?”
“Well, folks are different,” he said.
I should hope so. I have tried to live right in the sight of God and man, for the honour and comfort of my Christian husband and the love and respect of my Christian children. So that when I lay me down in the consciousness of my duty and reward I will be surrounded by loving faces, carrying the farewell kiss of each of my loved ones into my reward. Not like Addie Bundren dying alone, hiding her pride and her broken