The Weedkiller's Daughter by Harriette Simpson Arnow

Author:Harriette Simpson Arnow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781609173340
Publisher: Michigan State University Press

10

THURSDAY LATIN FINISHED, SHE MADE FOR THE DOOR. THE THIRD full week of school almost gone; that was something; the week of her “illness” when she could not bike, almost gone; that was something, too. Yet, this meant four days come twilight since Ter had gone; no word from him; and no mention, that she could find, in either the Detroit or suburban papers, of the return of the money.

Where was Ter—Chicago or Canada? sick or well? He could let her know. Ter was only part of “this gritty time” when the wind blew sand between your teeth; worse this year than ever; more things to bug you: the psychologist from whom she had heard nothing more; the visit Friday after school to Dr. Laughton; this dread of him was a new and miserable feeling, but then she had never before lied to him. Would he learn from blood tests or simply by looking at her that she had never been sick?

That upcoming dinner with the Weatherfords could be much worse than she had first imagined. Only lately she had learned Lady Macbeth had attended the football prom with Pryor. Would that sweet, innocent thing wonder aloud before the elder Schnitzers where their daughter had been on the night of the first football prom? She'd better get an answer ready; and should she tell Robert? Their tales—in case he had to tell one—better coincide. Thoughts of Robert reminded her of another future misery—the boat ride.

She gave an impatient head shake. She wouldn't think of that—without remembering Angus would be there. This was one of her grittier days when all good things and people seemed left behind and only bad lay ahead. Home in her attic, she'd feel better listening to Pete Seeger and—. A body bigger than her own bumped her from behind as a binder jabbed one shoulder.

In spite of leaving Latin in a rush, she was being smothered in the school-is-out tide of E-Building she had hoped to avoid. “Think of something nice,” she told herself. “Imagine these bumping bodies are spruce trees and you are walking through your grandmother's woods.” Her body wouldn't join hands with her head: her feet kept remembering, and hunting the softness of moss in the twilight under the old, wide-limbed spruces. Ferns brushed your knees as you picked your way between the gray trunks with their gray, dead lower limbs decorated with garlands and knots of pale green crinkled moss; but over your head were the green, living branches, so thick you couldn't see the sky. Now and then you stooped to pick up a cone that seemed to want picking up, or measure your height against a fern. Now, you leaped the brook, deep in the black earth and silent in summer.

Her legs, surrounded by legs all trying to move, refused to leap. Instead, careful not send her feet treading on heels, they worked their way to the court entrance.

There, she was almost alone. She made of the gray-cement-floored-and-walled court her grandmother's lawn she crossed on the rounds-of-wood path to the kitchen porch.

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