"Blackwater - 06 - Rain" - читать интересную книгу автора (McDowell Michael)

I was talking about. So I showed her her old signature, and then I showed her the one she had just put on that check, and she said, 'I don't see any difference.' I didn't say anything else. But you look sometime, get her to write something out for youЧ the handwriting is Grandmama's, stroke for stroke."
"You loved your grandmama," remarked Queenie, though the spirit of Miriam's remarks had suggested otherwise.
"I did," said Miriam. '1 loved her very, very much. I've never loved anybody as much as I loved her. But thank God she's dead, and thank God she's never coming back. She ruled the roost back then. And right now I rule the roost. So it's just as well that she and I don't have to fight it out."
"If Mary-Love were alive," said Queenie, "she wouldn't be fighting with you. She'd still be fighting with Elinor. She'd leave you alone."
"Nope," said Miriam. "She'd think I was uppity, and she'd try to keep me down. Just like Sister is now. Sister thinks I'm uppity, running the mill the way I do. Never mind that I'm making money for all of us, I'm not paying enough attention to her. Not waiting on her hand and foot the way you do."
"I don't mind," said Queenie.
"I know you don't, but I would. And I'd never do it, either. Sister brought all this on herself, Queenie, you know she did. Sister fell down the stairs eleven years ago. She could have been up and around in a few weeks, but all these years later she is still making people wait on her, people that have better things to do with their lives. I love Sister. I was brought up to love Sister. I will love her until the minute she sinks down dead in those five feather mattresses and those seven damned pillows. But I'm never gone say, 'Sister, I'm sorry you're crippled,' or 'Sister, I'm sorry you're lonely up here.' And she knows better than to ask me."
Just then Lilah wandered over from the next door. 13
Miriam smiled and held out her hands to her eleven-year-old niece. Lilah came up the steps.
"Grandmama says dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes and come on over when you want."
Queenie, whose appetite had never faltered in all her gathering years, stood up immediately. "Coming?" she asked Miriam.
Lilah said quickly, "Miriam, will you take me upstairs and let me see your jewelry?"
"I'll show you some," said Miriam. "And I'll let you try on a few things, too." So Miriam and Lilah went into the house and Queenie walked across the sandy yard to Elinor's, hoping to find something to nibble in the kitchen before they all sat down.
"Who's that?" cried Sister, hearing the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs.
"It's me!" called Miriam. "And Lilah!"
"Lilah, come speak to me!"
Lilah ran down the hall, leaned into Sister's room, and impatiently cried, "Not yet! Miriam's gone let me try on some of her jewelry."
"You try it on and then you come down here and show it to me."
Lilah hurried back to Miriam's room. She feared she had missed what for her was the best part, the opening of the drawer, but she hadn't. Miriam just stood before the dresser, smiling. "I'll let you do it today," she said to Lilah.
Lilah dropped to her knees and reverently pulled out the bottom drawer of the old dresser. In it were stacked nine jewelry boxes, each one of a different size, each of a different age, each of a different texture. To Lilah, they were as dissimilar as any nine persons waiting in line at the bank. And each one was filled with treasure.
"Which one do you want to look in?" asked Miriam.
Lilah pointed to the middle box in the right-hand stack. "This one," she said.
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Miriam took a small key from her pocket, and went to a peculiar little chest in the corner of the room. It was as tall as she and as narrow, and had a mirror on the door. Lilah loved this upright chest, for she had never seen one that was anything like it. Inside were a dozen narrow shelves, and on those shelves Miriam kept things no one else was allowed to see. On the top shelf were nothing but keys, hundreds and hundreds of keys that opened God and Miriam only knew what locks. Without hesitation Miriam withdrew a ring of tiny keys from the back, and unerringly inserted one into the lock of the chest that Lilah had chosen. The case opened instantly.
Inside were earrings, jumbled together: bobs in emeralds and bobs in rubies and diamonds; pearl drops in gold settings; tiny golden studs delicately fashioned in the shape of stars, and ships, and horses; fancy antique drops, the like of which Lilah had never known existed, massive with filigreed metalwork and a variety of stones; chaste modern work of single black pearls. Pressing her hands into the box, she was stung with sharp clasps and pins and facetsЧ but she felt a thrill to such pain. It seemed impossible that each piece she picked up had its mate somewhere in the welter of gems, but Miriam assured her that it was so. "I don't buy single pieces," Miriam said, "and I never lose anything, so they're all there somewhere."
"Don't you want me to match them up for you?"
"Why bother?" asked Miriam. "We'd just put them right back in the box and they'd all get mixed together again. Besides, Queenie's probably about to starve to death. Pick out a pair and try them on."
Lilah's ears weren't pierced, so she had to find bobs. She found one of a square-cut massive red stone. "What is this?"
"Rhodolite. It's from South Africa. I bought those on Fifth Avenue in New York in 1953."
Miriam thrust her hand into the box, and in another second she was holding its mate. Lilah wasn't
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even certain that Miriam had looked. She seemed to have found it by its feel. Miriam clapped the bobs on her niece's ears. They were absurdly heavy, and dragged at the child's lobes.
"How do they look?" cried Lilah, peering into the mirror.
"Very silly," said Miriam. "Now go show SisterЧ and hurry! My stomach was growling all the way through the sermon this morning."
"I know," said Lilah, scampering out of the door. "I heard it."
Lilah ran down the hall again and entered Sister's room. She went up to Sister's bedside and turned her head this way and that for the jewels to be admired.
"They are precious," said Sister, "and so are you, darling."
"Thank you."
"Miriam never lets anybody but you try on her jewelry."
"She's got so much!" whispered Lilah.
"It's a wonder we can afford to eat in this house," said Sister severely, "with what Miriam spends on that junk."
"It's not junk!"
"It is when she doesn't wear it! That's probably the first time those things have ever been worn since she bought them."
"I have to take them off," said Lilah with a sigh.
"Lilah!" Miriam called from the hall. "We got to get going!"
Lilah started to turn away, but Sister's hand shot out from beneath the light coverlet and grabbed her arm.
"Your daddy's lonely," Sister said in a low voice.
"Ma'am?"
"Your daddy's lonely since your mama got drowned in the Perdido."
'Tes, ma'am..." agreed Lilah tentatively, also in a low voice.