The Stone Diaries: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by Carol Diggory Shields

Author:Carol Diggory Shields
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Literary, Fiction
ISBN: 9781101078983
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2008-09-30T06:00:00+00:00

Joan

Joan is so full of secrets that sometimes she thinks she’s going to burst. Her mother, putting her to bed at night, leans down and kisses her on each cheek and says, "My sweetie pie," and never dreams of all the secrets that lie packed in her little girl’s head.

Already, at the age of five, Joan understands that she is destined to live two lives, one existence that is visible to those around her and another that blooms secretly inside her head.

There are all kinds of facts she knows, facts that no one else can imagine.

The radio for one thing. She managed one day to squeeze into that narrow dusty place behind the Northern Electric console in the living room, a radio her father describes as pre-war, and glimpsed through the mesh backing the red humming lights of a hillside village. Naturally she has told nobody about this, except perhaps a whisper or two dropped to her mother.

She has discovered how she can fill up an empty moment should one occur. When there is nothing else to do she can always walk down to the corner where Torrington Crescent meets The Driveway and there in front of Mrs. Bregman’s big brown house she can roll down the grassy banked hill that runs across the front lawn. No one has said not to do this, no one seems to have thought of it. As it happens, she hardly ever goes down to the corner to roll down the hill, but she likes to keep the possibility in reserve. Or she can skip along the sidewalk in front of her own house. Learning to skip has brought control into her life. Whenever she feels at all sad she switches into this wholly happy gait, sliding, hopping, and sliding again; when doing this, it seems as though her head separates from her body, making her feel dizzy and emptied out of bad thoughts. Does anyone else in the world know this trick, she wonders. Probably not, though her mother sometimes waves at her from the window, waves and smiles.

There’s a Decal transfer—a black swan swimming through green reeds—stuck to the top of the clothes hamper in the bathroom. She remembers watching her mother apply this decoration, first soaking the Decal in a sinkful of water, then peeling the transparent backing neatly away, centering the swan in the very middle of the hinged lid, and wiping it smooth with a wet cloth. Joan had thought the moment beautiful. Nevertheless, whenever she finds herself alone in the bathroom she scrapes away at the swan with her thumbnail. So far she’s managed to loosen the edges all the way around, and she expects any minute to be accused, though at the same time she knows herself to be full of power, able to slip out from under any danger.

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