"Kelley Eskridge - Alien Jane" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eskridge Kelly)

pictures move through me while the light was cool and the room was quiet with the sound of our breath
like slow waves on a beach. The pictures turned into words, and I told myself to jane.

"When I was little I wanted to wear jeans and climb up the big oak tree onto the garage roof and play
pirates for the rest of my life. I could see everything from there. I thought I was queen of the world.

"Down the road from us was a big field where the grass grew as high as my waist, all green and reedy so
it whispered when the wind went over it. I would run through it with rny anns flung out wide, as fast as I
could, so the wind would pick me up and fly rne away. But I would always lose my breath too soon and
fall down, into the green and the smell of warm wet dirt with just a strip of sly showing overhead, and I
would have this whole world that was just for me, just mine."

I breathed gently and thought about *y green place, and Jane was there; I could feel her in the grass
wanting to run.

"When I was twelve, they took it away. They decided it was time for me to start being a girl like my
sisters and my mother, and they took awa)/ my overalls and made me put on shoes that hurt my feet. I
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tried to climb anyway, and my dress got caught around my waist and under my arms so I couldn't move,
and I knew I could never run in those shoes. I looked around and saw all the women I knew never
running, never mo,rittg, weak and tired and bound up, and I couldn't believe my parents would do that to
ffiтВм, that they would tie me up Iike a box of groceries ready to be delivered. I said I wouldn't do it; I was
standing in the dining room in these clothes that felt like ropes around ffiтВм, and I said I won't, I won't....
My father took me by the arm and locked me in the hall closet with the winter coats. It was dark, and I
couldn't move in those clothes, and the shoes were too narrow for my feet, they hurt.... I think it was
those shoes did something funny to my mind. I think they were *hy I hung my Christmas doll up by one
foot over my father's favorite chair in the living room and set fire to itтАФto the doll, I mean. I lit the match
and put it right up against the hair and the whole thing melted and dripped onto the place in the chair that
was rubbed shiny from my father. The house smelled for weeks.

"Then I was always in trouble. Always fighting. I burned more things, I tried to run away. I hurt my little
sister bad one time with a rake. Everything just got worse. It's better now that I'm not with them
anymore."

Jane said nothing.

"Maybe it's better you're here now."

Jane breathed.

"f stole things, f got caught. My parents gave me up to the court. My mother cried, said she couldn't do
anything with me. She's Catholic, she'll carry it forever. I spit at the judge. That's what got me away from
my folks, spitting at the judge. He didn't care about the broken windows and the badmouthing and the
knife that time, he just didn't like me spitting at him. Spoiled his day."

Muyb" Jane smiled, maybe not.

"But it all just hurt too much after a while. When you fall down out there in the world it isn't green and
soft, it hurts.... I met Suze in that place for girls where they sent me ... but it was too late and I felt so bad