As We Are Now by May Sarton

Author:May Sarton [Sarton, May]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497646315
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

I didn’t get a rest after all. Harriet, very affairée, came to tell me she could wash my hair. She is leaving in two days, it appears, off to Florida with her lover. A Mrs. Close, a farmer’s wife, will come to help out. Harriet was rough with me, pushed my head down too hard into the basin and at one point I thought I would suffocate. The true nature of a person is communicated as much, perhaps even more, by touch than by the look in his eyes. That is something I have learned here. I am not sure whether Harriet is so rough because she feels hatred toward me, or whether it is her natural way of being. Her hands have no gentleness in them. She pulled my hair when she was rinsing it, so hard I cried out once.

“You’re hurting!”

“Not grateful, are you? When I took my hour off to do this!” She was suddenly furious and left me to dry it myself with a much too small towel. I finally went out and sat in the sun, shaking with emotion. I felt I had suffered an assault on my person. When I came in Jack made a supreme effort to tell me—I find him so hard to decipher as he gurgles rather than speaks—that my “friend,” the Thornhill girl, had come again and been told to go away while Harriet was washing my hair. He shook his head several times as if to say, “not good, what they did.”

So my worst fears are being realized. The door that had opened a crack is being slammed shut. Only there is the faint hope that Mrs. Close, Harriet’s replacement, will fail to receive this ukase from on high. Rose, with her mother here, would never have dared let Lisa in. Patience, Caro!

Yet why indulge in hope? Quite possibly the time has passed for me to be helped by anyone from “outside”—even dear Eva, should they manage to get her here. I am beginning to feel beaten down in a new way, as if resilience were slowly leaking away through these petty miseries like salt in the coffee. What I am afraid of is that no one would believe me if I tried to tell what is happening. It sounds crazy to accuse someone of putting salt in one’s coffee! They are building up an image of me for the world at large that will brainwash anyone who tries to come close. That explains my feelings of turmoil and panic—that explains it and not my idea of past guilt that has to be expiated. I feel immense relief to have the clue. Yes, I am afraid of a torture far worse than petty harassments, the torture of not being believed. I am afraid of being driven mad.

What if Lisa is persuaded that it is bad for me and depresses me to have visitors at present? Then if she herself really wants to come—and how do I know?—she will refrain out of kindness.

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