Facing the Wind Facing the Wind by Julie Salamon
Author:Julie Salamon [Salamon, Julie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780375507014
Google: tCp9nZfrfMMC
Amazon: 0375507019
Published: 2001-06-12T13:58:05+00:00
Colleen knew she must have worn her shame on her face, because men felt free to touch her, as if they knew about her. It had begun when she was five or six, when a boy of twelve or thirteen (not a strangerâfar from it) taught her secret things to do to him, and he reciprocated. For years, they put their hands and mouths in forbidden places and she didnât know it was wrong. Her father wasnât an affectionate man, so she welcomed the physical intimacy, and then felt confused and ashamed, because the boy made it clear that what they were doing was illicitâand then she felt too helpless and afraid to stop. She would never reveal his name.
When she was ten her breasts appeared, and suddenly it seemed as though her secret was out. One of the neighbors had already been putting his hands on her, and then she became afraid to go into stores, because too often sheâd find a suggestive touch or something far more explicit lurking there to unnerve her.
She cut off her hair and covered her body with baggy clothes and occupied herself with tales of suffering and redemption. Though she loved reading tragic love stories like Romeo and Juliet and anything by Dickens, her favorite author was Stephen R. Donaldson, a writer of science-fiction melodrama with theological underpinnings. She was especially captivated by the protagonist of the multivolume parables The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.
The character Thomas Covenant is a successful author whose life turns calamitous when he is infected with leprosy. His wife leaves him, he loses a couple of fingers, and a car hits him. Then the story starts. Covenant is transported to a new land, where he is hailed as a hero, the reincarnation of a legendary character called Berek Halfhand. As Halfhand, Covenant conducts himself with superhuman bravado through a series of exhausting adventures against many enemies, including Lord Foul, aka Soulcrusher, reluctantly proving his worth with Sisyphean endurance. Even so, after hundreds of pages throughout numerous volumes, he finds only a modicum of peace, but that, apparently, is enough.
Like her literary antihero, Colleen felt compelled to repeatedly demonstrate her righteousness, making do with the good deeds within the grasp of a working-class Irish-Catholic girl in Queens, since she never found herself magically transported anywhere. She volunteered her services compulsively. She cleaned and shopped for elderly people, visited nursing homes, helped the sick at a local hospital, and worked in an ambulance unit.
None of this chronic worthiness eased her adolescent suffering, however, and she wouldnât talk to her parents about her sin, even if she could have. They rarely talked about anything except what they should watch on television. Their house had once been full of life. Colleen was the youngest of five children, chaos enough, and her parents were perennial hosts to their vast Irish families. Then one day Colleen found them sitting in the living room at the bar, the centerpiece for the weekly Friday-night parties. âDad lost his job,â they told her.
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