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

"Like Steve is fine. I see."


I talk to my father on the phone. Before he says hello, he asks me if I am well, if
the baby is all right, and when I say I am fine, sounding nothing like a dying,
desperate woman, he chides me for wasting my money on a long-distance
phone call.


"It's Steve," I say. My father is silent. I cannot hear it, but I feel his
back-throated grunt in my chest. The grunt I used to hear when I complained
that my brother Joseph took my doll or took more than his share of the
oranges. The grunt I heard when I told him I'd been admitted to USF.


"He has dreams of ghosts. They cannot be good."


"Then he should go to his Medicine Man. Soon."


"He is, in a way. But Father, I do not think his Medicine Man understands the
danger. I know I cannot take him to our Medicine Man, but Father, is there
family medicine I could bring to him?"


My father answers quickly, "There is nothing for him."


"Nothing? Nothing at all?" My mouth dries up like cotton. I know I shouldn't, but I
press him. "At the last Corn Dance, what did you take from the medicine
bundle?"


"There is nothing for him. You waste your money, daughter. The phone costs
too much."


"But, Father. . ."
A pause on the other end. "Be well," he says, and I hear the phone click.


My fingers tighten around the receiver, so tight they are almost white.


The baby jumps in my womb. He kicks hard -- a good sign, but I do not feel like
rejoicing.


I glance at the clock, but the numbers blur in my eyes. I pass my hands across