"Zenna Henderson - Something Bright" - читать интересную книгу автора (Henderson Zenna)

eVersion 1.0 - click for scan notes

SOMETHING BRIGHT
Zenna Henderson
Do you remember the Depression? The black shadow across time? That hurting place in the
consciousness of the world? Maybe not. Maybe it's like asking do you remember the Dark Ages. Except
what would I know about the price of eggs in the Dark Ages? I knew plenty about prices in the
Depression.
If you had a quarterтАФfirst find your quarterтАФand five hungry kids, you could supper them on two
cans of soup and a loaf of day-old bread, or two quarts of milk and a loaf of day-old bread. It was filling
andтАФin an after-thoughty kind of wayтАФnourishing. But if you were one of the hungry five, you eventually
began to feel erosion set in, and your teeth ached for substance.
But to go back to eggs. Those were a precious commodity. You savored them slowly or gulped them
eagerlyтАФunmistakably as eggsтАФboiled or fried. That's one reason why I remember Mrs. Klevity. She
had eggs for breakfast! And every day! That's one reason why I remember Mrs. Klevity.
I didn't know about the eggs the time she came over to see Mom, who had just got home from a
twelve-hour day, cleaning up after other people at thirty cents an hour. Mrs. Klevity lived in the same
court as we did. Courtesy called it a court because we were all dependent on the same shower house
and two toilets that occupied the shack square in the middle of the court.
All of us except the Big House, of course. It had a bathroom of its own and even a radio blaring
Nobody's Business and Should I Reveal and had ceiling lights that didn't dangle nakedly at the end of a
cord. But then it really wasn't a part of the court. Only its back door shared our area, and even that was
different. It had two back doors in the same frameтАФa screen one and a wooden one!
Our own two-room place had a distinction too. It had an upstairs. One room the size of our two. The
Man Upstairs lived up there. He was mostly only the sound of footsteps overhead and an occasional
cookie for Danna.
Anyway, Mrs. Klevity came over before Mom had time to put her shopping bag of work clothes
down or even to unpleat the folds of fatigue that dragged her face down ten years or more of time to
come. I didn't much like Mrs. Klevity. She made me uncomfortable. She was so solid and slow-moving
and so nearly blind that she peered frighteningly wherever she went. She stood in the doorway as though
she had been stacked there like bricks and a dress drawn hastily down over the stack and a face
sketched on beneath a fuzz of hair. Us kids all gathered around to watch, except Danna who snuffled
wearily into my neck. Day nursery or not, it was a long, hard day for a four-year-old.
"I wondered if one of your girls could sleep at my house this week." Her voice was as slow as her
steps.
"At your house?" Mom massaged her hand where the shopping-bag handles had crisscrossed it.
"Come in. Sit down." We had two chairs and a bench and two apple boxes. The boxes scratched bare
legs, but surely they couldn't scratch a stack of bricks.
"No, thanks." Maybe she couldn't bend! "My husband will be away several days and I don't like to
be in the house alone at night."
"Of course," said Mom. "You must feel awfully alone."
The only aloneness she knew, what with five kids and two rooms, was the taut secretness of her
inward thoughts as she mopped and swept and ironed in other houses. "Sure, one of the girls would be
glad to keep you company." There was a darting squirm and LaNell was safely hidden behind the
swaying of our clothes in the diagonally curtained corner of the other room, and Kathy knelt swiftly just
beyond the dresser, out of sight.
"Anna is eleven." I had no place to hide, burdened as I was with Danna. "She's old enough. What
time do you want her to come over?"
"Oh, bedtime will do." Mrs. Klevity peered out the door at the darkening sky. "Nine o'clock. Only it
gets dark before thenтАФ" Bricks can look anxious, I guess.