I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg

Author:Joanne Greenberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780312943592
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Sure doom was not as difficult to bear as the little Maybe had been. Deborah had expected the last deception for so long that its coming was almost a relief. Before she went to the doctor’s office, the Collect and gods and all of Yr massed together on its horizon. “I will not go easily,” she said to them, “not this time. I will not be brave and obliging. No more games. No more being a good sport. I will not play the Game, and go to this death as if I didn’t know what it was.”

When she saw Furii with her familiar smile of greeting, a current of doubt moved in and away. Maybe she doesn’t know, Deborah thought. But the thought was foolish and a dream. The last Change was death or worse; it had been said years ago, and last night, the first help she had asked for in English had been given easily, easily, and was only in scorn. She had surrendered her separateness, trusting, on the cold bed. They make a good score of it. Her ankles and feet still ached from their joke. Dark against the fireworks of the pain was that shadow: the always known Oncoming. By what other hand could the end be so sure and so complete, if not by this fire-touch woman who was now sitting before her?

“Well?” she said.

“Well?” Furii answered.

A sudden rage came. “I know that this has to be played in a certain way, and there is a game that the victim is not supposed to break through. But I know about the game and the end of the game. Why make me foolish as well as dead! All right! I am foolish. The deception and the last change is here, so throw it and be done!”

“Where are we now?” Furii said, shaking her head a little, very carefully unexcited. “You tell me about the Japanese soldier and about having been set apart and special. I try to make you secure that in giving such valuable secrets to our view you do not risk my faith in you for a moment. Then you come the next day and make our work part of the great deception and change.”

“They knew when I was ready,” Deborah said. “When I could ask for help, they knew that I trusted and they were ready with the stone to break the flowerpot.”

“Somehow the old hospital of the past and this present hospital have joined their natures in your mind. I will not open your trust and then betray you.”

“Haven’t you got any mercy?” Deborah shouted. “Everyone is so afraid of getting blood on the living room floor. …I can’t stand to see suffering,’ they say, …so die outside!’ It has started already and you still say trust and everything is fine!”

“When I look at you now in this bad shape I can hardly say …fine-fine.’ What happened between yesterday and now? If you say that the last Change has started, just tell me … tell both of us how.

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.