Читать книгу The Question Authority - Rachel Cline - Страница 14

We were on the stoop with a bunch of the girls and I said one of them should come on upstairs; she looked like she needed to lie down. I think it was Amelia. Chicken pox was going around. I said it out loud, like it was normal, because to me it was, but Bob grabbed me by the arm and took me inside right then and roared at me in a voice I’d not ever heard before: What was I thinking? How could I be so naïve? I know now that I was threatening his whole world, his master plan, but at the time I was blindsided. “She needs to lie down,” I told him. “There’s clean sheets,” I said, thinking he was upset because I was going to let her see our slovenly ways.

A year later, we had girls upstairs all the time. Girls getting their periods for the first time—I put them to bed with some whiskey and a hot water bottle like I was taught. Girls who were sleepy, or who needed a shower, and, eventually, girls who were going to get their picture taken, to “model.” There were so many reasons to go upstairs, after a while, it’s a wonder we ever sat in the kitchen. But we did that, too. One girl would be upstairs with Bob and I’d be downstairs with the others doing macramé or tie-dye, or baking cookies. They loved me because I never said much, and I told them they were beautiful, too.

I didn’t even know what “ironic” meant then. Or maybe I did and I just let Bob tell me I didn’t. I preferred to let him tell me what was what, because then it couldn’t be all my fault. But in my heart I knew that it was: I’d given him the idea the day we met—before we mounted Babe the Blue Ox and rode off yonder. I myself was only fifteen years old when we sat behind Wilson’s Café and I told him how I grew up. And on that day, he listened so well.