nothing but moods, moods.
Then one evening when I got back from the convent where I
worked part-time my clothes were in a bundle on the step, my name in big print on a label on top. At first I thought it was a joke, but when I examined it I saw that every stitch I owned was in there, my pleated skirt, my good shoes, laddered stockings, my brush and comb, my prayer book, everything. They were telling me to go. It was the month of May and there was a magnolia tree in bloom in the garden. The blinds inside the house were drawn, all the blinds, the way they are when someone has died. I reckoned they had conferred with other lodgers and had done it as a team. It did something to me. I stood there and called up, thinking that one of them would come down and, seeing I had no one to turn to, would take pity on me and let me back. No one came.
In the waxen flower of the magnolia that was wide as a saucer, a tawny bee fed itself on the saffron threads and I thought, I’ll never forget this moment, the hum of the bee, the saffron threads of the flower, the drawn blinds, nature’s assiduousness and human cruelty.
* * *
Dear Dilly,
Black and Tans and their elite brothers in terror called here two nights back, they burst in with blackened faces, seven or eight of them and I had to make a dive for my life. Your father had his hands and feet bound while they searched. Having failed to find your brother I had to act as candle bearer, going around the house while they rooted in drawers and presses, everything skiving out and then one said to the gang leader, a big tall fellow with a military cast, said, “C’mon, Reg, there’s nothing here,” and the leader struck him and used the most terrible language because of his name being said. They do not want their names known for fear of reprisal, but it is creatures like us that the reprisals are vented on, hay and crops burned, animals slaughtered, taking revenge on families that they suspect have housed the volunteers. Shops and business prem-
ises have been set fire to. Even a doctor that rendered medical aid to a wounded volunteer had his automobile burned and he is frightened for his life. A man beyond Tulla that was a known sympathizer was taken out of his house along with his wife and children, then the house set fire to and the man thrown back into it, his wife and children looking on and the gang shouting, “Let him fry, let him fry.” They were drunk as they so often are.
Write to me, in God’s name, write to me.
Bridget
Coney Island
the sun was a bowl of fire above us. There was no escaping it. It poured onto the sea, the ranges of color blue and blue-green and turquoise that stretched all the way to home and back again, the same waves but in different colors, different tumblings, home that I wanted to forget and both could and couldn’t.
Jugglers, sword swallowers, men in turbans and togas, young boys in every kind of uniform, tugging at our sleeves: “Step right up, ladies, step right up, ladies, everybody wins.”
There was Mary Kate and Kitty and Noreen and me. Kitty was the fashion plate in a pale buttercup muslin dress with leg-of-mutton sleeves, her eyes the color of snuff, needly and inquisitive. She was Mary Kate’s friend. And Noreen, with flat feet, in her flat shoes and long black streelish skirt, stopping to gape at the sights, the domes and palaces painted the white of wedding cake, the roller coaster, the cannon coaster, the bamboo slide, the barrel of love, saying the same thing over and over again: “Aaragh, shure, isn’t it all marvelous.”
The smells of frying oil and sugared doughnuts made us ravenous, but Kitty was in charge of the money that we’d pooled. People were dancing cheek to cheek in broad daylight, different bands clashing, German and Cuban and Mexican, an oriental woman dancing by herself, an array of silver coins clunking on her chest, her arms bangled and with the writhe of a serpent, men around her,
Then one evening when I got back from the convent where I
worked part-time my clothes were in a bundle on the step, my name in big print on a label on top. At first I thought it was a joke, but when I examined it I saw that every stitch I owned was in there, my pleated skirt, my good shoes, laddered stockings, my brush and comb, my prayer book, everything. They were telling me to go. It was the month of May and there was a magnolia tree in bloom in the garden. The blinds inside the house were drawn, all the blinds, the way they are when someone has died. I reckoned they had conferred with other lodgers and had done it as a team. It did something to me. I stood there and called up, thinking that one of them would come down and, seeing I had no one to turn to, would take pity on me and let me back. No one came.
In the waxen flower of the magnolia that was wide as a saucer, a tawny bee fed itself on the saffron threads and I thought, I’ll never forget this moment, the hum of the bee, the saffron threads of the flower, the drawn blinds, nature’s assiduousness and human cruelty.
* * *
Dear Dilly,
Black and Tans and their elite brothers in terror called here two nights back, they burst in with blackened faces, seven or eight of them and I had to make a dive for my life. Your father had his hands and feet bound while they searched. Having failed to find your brother I had to act as candle bearer, going around the house while they rooted in drawers and presses, everything skiving out and then one said to the gang leader, a big tall fellow with a military cast, said, “C’mon, Reg, there’s nothing here,” and the leader struck him and used the most terrible language because of his name being said. They do not want their names known for fear of reprisal, but it is creatures like us that the reprisals are vented on, hay and crops burned, animals slaughtered, taking revenge on families that they suspect have housed the volunteers. Shops and business prem-
ises have been set fire to. Even a doctor that rendered medical aid to a wounded volunteer had his automobile burned and he is frightened for his life. A man beyond Tulla that was a known sympathizer was taken out of his house along with his wife and children, then the house set fire to and the man thrown back into it, his wife and children looking on and the gang shouting, “Let him fry, let him fry.” They were drunk as they so often are.
Write to me, in God’s name, write to me.
Bridget
Coney Island
the sun was a bowl of fire above us. There was no escaping it. It poured onto the sea, the ranges of color blue and blue-green and turquoise that stretched all the way to home and back again, the same waves but in different colors, different tumblings, home that I wanted to forget and both could and couldn’t.
Jugglers, sword swallowers, men in turbans and togas, young boys in every kind of uniform, tugging at our sleeves: “Step right up, ladies, step right up, ladies, everybody wins.”
There was Mary Kate and Kitty and Noreen and me. Kitty was the fashion plate in a pale buttercup muslin dress with leg-of-mutton sleeves, her eyes the color of snuff, needly and inquisitive. She was Mary Kate’s friend. And Noreen, with flat feet, in her flat shoes and long black streelish skirt, stopping to gape at the sights, the domes and palaces painted the white of wedding cake, the roller coaster, the cannon coaster, the bamboo slide, the barrel of love, saying the same thing over and over again: “Aaragh, shure, isn’t it all marvelous.”
The smells of frying oil and sugared doughnuts made us ravenous, but Kitty was in charge of the money that we’d pooled. People were dancing cheek to cheek in broad daylight, different bands clashing, German and Cuban and Mexican, an oriental woman dancing by herself, an array of silver coins clunking on her chest, her arms bangled and with the writhe of a serpent, men around her,
Similar Books
