"Suzette Haden Elgin - Only A Housewife" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elgin Suzette Haden)

SUZETTE HADEN ELGIN

ONLY A HOUSEWIFE

The last straw for Joro Belledarien -- the event that pushed him over the edge
from weary apathy to frustrated rage and gave him the courage to defy everyone
and everything he knew -- was his little sister's puberty ceremony. So long as
Elizabeth, like Joro, had lived at home in his mother's house, he had been
able
to endure his situation. It hadn't been pleasant, but it had been bearable;
Joro
had been able to keep his awareness of it well buried most of the time.

Because there was someone younger than himself in the house, who had to take
orders from their parents just as he did. Someone he outranked. Someone he
could
take out his anger and frustration on whenever his aging father decided it was
time to taunt Joro yet again about his bachelor status. Someone he could
subject
to taunting and belittling and teasing. Especially teasing. Joro took
tremendous
pleasure in teasing women, whose reactions to the process were endlessly
fascinating; it did them no harm, and it made him feel better about the unjust
world he had to deal with daily. He had even begun keeping a detailed journal
of
the phenomenon, classifying and cross-classifying it into a taxonomy of verbal
helplessness, and it was his intention to publish the results in one of the
better scholarly journals when he was satisfied that it was complete.

As long as it was like that, Joro had gotten by. He had in fact grown so
accustomed to the old man's nagging and sarcasm that he hadn't really realized
the true barbarousness of his situation.

Until the morning he was suddenly brought right up against a pair of
intolerable
facts. The fact that Elizabeth was actually going to leave, that very day, the
moment the celebration was over and the guests had gone away. And the fact
that
once she was gone, he would be the only "child" in the house. He, Joro
Belledarien, a man of thirty years! The only unmarried man of his age in the
whole Kallibar district!

It shocked him, as it no doubt shocked both his parents. Who could have
imagined
such a thing? Elizabeth was only thirteen years old. She was still at an age
when her house ought to have been no more than a slightly sensitive swelling
folded like a rosebud against the flawless skin of her left hip. Joro had
taken
it for granted that he could count on Elizabeth as a buffer for another three
years at least, and probably for longer than that.