"Emily Gaskin - The Green Corn Dance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gaskin Emily)

"How long before you started blaming me." He leans back in his chair, wearing
that cruel sneer I see only when he wants to turn his hurting back on me. "I
thought we had a few years yet, a mortgage maybe, before this came between
us."


I cannot believe my ears. "Blaming you? For what?"


"For everything. For the reservation. For smallpox. For coming across the ocean
and evicting you from some godforsaken swamp. I'm not my ancestors, Betty!"


"Where is this coming from? Steve?"


"You resent me." He is standing, thrusting his chair against the table. "God, I've
done a lot of things, said a lot of things, but Betty Dove, you have always been
able to believe me when I said it didn't matter. That your red Indian face didn't
matter to me at all. I've never resented you. I never did. But now--"


He lets the sentence dangle, and I cannot find my breath. My lungs fight against
my chest as I go to Steve. I try to hold his face in my hands, but he shrugs me
off.


"Leave me alone," he says. He storms out of the room, and I hear the door
slam and the car engine start up.


The cabbage is growing cold on the stove. I dump it in the trash without draining
it. My breath returns, and I sit at the table, nibbling on cracker corners until dark.
I wake to find Steve in bed beside me. His hand lies on my stomach. My skin is
warm under his touch.


I do not smell alcohol. That is good. But I do not ask him where he has been.


He notices that I am awake, and he quickly withdraws his hand. He turns away.
His shoulders tremble.


I sit by him on the edge of the bed. He sobs audibly, and I hush him. I never saw
Mother do this with Father, and she never spoke about it. But I think, sitting
there in the soft, blue light, there must have been times.


His sobs slowly subside. We wait together in silence. Then he starts to tell me a