"Nina Kiriki Hoffman - The World Within" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Nina Kiriki)

NINA KIRIKI HOFFMAN

THE WORLD WITHIN

Music is often called the universal language, but the same might be said of
sculpture, or painting, or flower arranging ... in fact, many forms of artistic
expression represent inner truth nonverbally. Does that include spirits?

Aria sat in the straight-backed chair and trapped her hands between her knees,
waiting for the poltergeist. It didn't always come; lots of times when she
wished it would show up it did nothing; but today her favorite seventh-grade
teacher, Mrs. Bridge, was having tea with Aria and her mother in their little
third-floor apartment, and always, always, when Aria least wanted it to come,
the poltergeist came.

"Sugar?" Mother asked Mrs. Bridge, who smiled and nodded. Mrs. Bridge was
wearing a warm red dress, and Mother wore her violet company dress, faded from
washing to almost gray. A hearthfire and smoke, Aria thought. The herbal tea
smelled good; below its warmth lingered the faded scent of lavender.

Mother plopped two sugar cubes into Mrs. Bridge's tea cup and glanced at Aria,
saw the trapped hands. "Don't!" she said.

Mrs. Bridge, a comfortably large woman, mid-spectrum middle-aged, with short
curly brown hair and big red-framed glasses, glanced at Aria, eyebrows up.

Mother handed Aria the tea cup she had been fixing for Mrs. Bridge. "Drink this.
Do something. Don't just sit there, Ari."'

Aria loosed her hands and took the tea cup, gulped tea even though it was
scalding.

"Excuse me?" said Mrs. Bridge.

"I'm sorry," said Mother. "She was about to have one of her fits."

"Her fits," said Mrs. Bridge. "Ah."

Had she ever had a fit in one of Mrs. Bridge's classes? Aria wondered. She
couldn't remember one. What did Mrs. Bridge know?

Mother poured another cup of tea and dropped sugar into it. "Cream?" she asked
Mrs. Bridge.

Why did Mother always invite her teachers to the apartment? It hadn't bothered
Aria when she was younger, before the poltergeist came. Or, it hadn't bothered
her much. She didn't really want teachers seeing how she lived.
Some of the teachers had felt sorry for her, she was sure, when they looked
around this little room that was her and her mother's whole world: the murphy
bed folded into the wall, its underside decorated with a woven hanging; the