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

But Elizabeth was precocious. She had always been precocious, physically. And
she had betrayed him without the least sign of compassion or even decent
remorse
for the misery she was condemning him to. Her breasts had begun to swell; her
house had begun to swell. Joro supposed there was probably crisp short hair
beginning to curl over her armpits and her crotch . . . it made him a little
sick to think about that. He refused to think about that.
Elizabeth Marana Belledarien. His little sister, who no more than three months
ago had wept bitterly as Joro held one of her favorite dolls high above her
head
out of her reach and pulled its luxuriant hair, one hair at a time, out of its
silly head. And now, almost without warning, certainly without logic or even
common sense, this pathetic girlchild was to be transformed into a woman,
fully
adult by law and by custom! She was to have property of her own. To be
installed
in the midst of a handsome plot of land. To be called upon by neighbors, all
eager to make her acquaintance in her new role. She was to be mistress of all
she surveyed, responsible to no one. She was to be free to do exactly as she
liked until she made her choice of husband from among the other young men like
himself, who would be courting her in their frantic need to get away from
their
parents. While Joro stayed behind, living under his mother's roof like a
little
boy, saying "Yes Mother," and "I'm very sorry, Mother," and "Father, I deeply
regret displeasing you yet again."

It was not bearable. He could not stand it. He didn't require his father's
constant reminders to bring home to him how degrading it was.

Little Elizabeth . . . . Joro had been almost fond of her, before, but he
hated
her now, from the depths of his heart. They had given her her woman-name for
the
ceremony; Elizabeth of the Twin Towers, she was to be called. For the house
that
had begun to enfold her, its cord still no thicker than a supple young vine
sprouting from her hip, was apparently going to be something spectacular.

On the day of the puberty ceremony, Elizabeth had sat serene and proud (Why
not?
Who wouldn't have been serene and proud, with her luck?) accepting the gifts
of
their assembled relatives and friends. While Joro fumed and seethed and wished
she would drop dead on the spot, preferably of something agonizingly painful
that would turn her into an entirely repulsive corpse. Her house, about which
so
much fuss was being made, was barely large enough to provide her with minimum
shelter. No one else, no matter how passionately he might have wanted to