Brown Girl, Brownstones by Paule Marshall

Author:Paule Marshall
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780486118604
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2012-10-21T16:00:00+00:00

During those next weeks he read only those newspapers and nothing beyond their pages seemed important. Each was entitled The New Light. Each had a large picture of a kindly, round-faced man on the front page, and bold headlines read: “I AM THE FATHER UNIVERSAL,” “I AM THE TRUE AND LIVING JEHOVAH,” “NEW BIRTH AND REDEMPTION IN GOD . . .”

After the disruptive impact of the trumpet Selina welcomed the stillness as he read The New Light. But it was no longer the intimate silence that bound them together. He never paused to talk to her, and when she spoke he started and sometimes stared at her without recognition. He spoke only to himself, murmuring the same puzzling phrases over and over again, “Peace, it’s truly wonderful,” “Thank you, Father,” “Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful . . .”

His life became simple and cloistered. He spent the day in the sun parlor and also slept there. At mealtimes Selina came for him and he silently followed her downstairs and ate with The New Light propped against his plate. He no longer went out on Saturday nights, but early on Sunday afternoons he dressed with Selina’s help and went out, returning after midnight. One Sunday he brought home a framed photograph of the kindly man in The New Light.

“Who’s he?” she asked, although she knew by now.

“It’s Father,” he said quietly.

“Whose?”

“Father Peace. God Incarnate!” he cried.

She almost laughed. How could a benign little man in a business suit be God? He was not even like the mother’s God—that quiet presence who always listened to her, or Maritze’s supplicant Lady with her mantle of dust. He was ordinary. She knew that he breathed and smelled like a man. What had her father to do with him? Fear suddenly dropped like a weight inside her and she went and sat down on the floor across from the cot. While she huddled there the sun veered to the west, shattering the bare room with the spring’s soft sunset colors. As dusk edged its way in the room Deighton turned on the lamp and continued reading, and Selina waited still, hating the numb peace in his face . . .

During those weeks they all waited. Ina suddenly joined St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church and began her preparations for confirmation. Now, at meals, while Deighton read The New Light she read the “Articles of Religion.” The mother worked overtime at the plant and came home each night, charging with her head like some wary animal, her eyes inflamed with fatigue. Yet no matter how late she came in, the light in the sun parlor was on, and it slanted across her bed and the empty pillow beside her, across her face as Deighton read The New Light far into the night.

Upstairs Suggie paced the enameled-blue room, raging as she repeatedly lost the factory jobs, while next door in the dusty rooms, Miss Mary wheezed her memories and hacked away at Maritze with her fretting. And even they seemed to be waiting for Deighton’s recovery.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.