Cora's Cakes and Addie's Window — As I Lay Dying

Cora will not stop talking about the cakes. She saved the eggs one at a time so the flour and the sugar would cost nothing. She baked yesterday, more careful than she had ever baked, and the cakes turned out real well. This morning a town lady changed her mind. Kate says rich town ladies can change their minds and poor folks cannot. Cora answers with the Lord, who can see into the heart. It is not like the cakes cost her anything, she says. She can eat the mistake.

Nobody in that talk has asked Addie Bundren anything. Then they are in the room, and Cora's voice does not change. The quilt is drawn up to Addie's chin. Under it she makes no more of a hump than a rail would. She is propped so she can see out the window, and they hear Cash every time he takes up the adze. If they were deaf they could almost watch her face and hear him. Cora looks at those guttering eyes and decides salvation is not upon her. Then she says the cakes turned out real nice, but not like Addie's. First thing they know, she says, Addie will be up and baking again.

The girl who fans her swaps hands without stopping. Kate whispers to ask if Addie is sleeping. The girl says she is just watching Cash yonder. The saw sounds like snoring. Darl comes through the hall and does not look in. Cora named the cakes, the Lord, and Addie's soul. She never named the box outside the window. What happens when the brother who would not look into this room has to say, out back, where Jewel has gone?