"Oates, Joyce Carol - Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oates Joyce Carol)

Mrs. Garlock is babbling of something else now no longer "nigras."

She appears frightened of her own house... but that can't be possible, can it?

Persia helps the whimpering woman up the steps, through the rusty screen door, trying to comfort her but not knowing what to say.

Inside, it's the millennial present tense of poverty. A wash of debris to Persia's ankles, an assault of smells: greasy, syrupy, baby formula, baby vomit, baby excrement, the Garlock odor grimed into wood, wallpaper, the very foundations of the house. Persia is appalled.

Persia tries not to feel melting with pity. "Hello?

Anybody home? Your momma's back!" Her voice is weaker than she'd like.

The front room has been made into a bedroom of sorts. There's a sofa with bedclothes on it, a mattress on the floor, a filthy pillow no pillowcase. Towels, dirty undergarments, children's clothes, children's toys, a baby's playpen into which yet more household debris seems to have drifted... no, Persia squints and discovers an actual baby in there. Napping in all the mess, sprawled on its back like a drunken man. A baby of about nine months.

An eye-watering stink of urine and ammonia lifts from that airless corner of the room.

Persia calls, "Hello? Pleaseis anybody home?"

What Mrs. Garlock is frightened of now clinging to her as she is, Persia can't guess. Not a word of this hillbilly woman's makes sense.

Two towheaded children with the Garlock look in their faces poke their heads through a filmy curtain strung up between the rooms, stare mutely at Persia, back off. A husky boy of about twelve, barefoot, in filthy overalls, with a raw blemished skin and small gleaming-red Garlock eyes, appears... and stares rudely at Persia as if he has never before seen anyone or anything like her.

Then asks, suspiciously, "Whatcha doin' with Momma? Howcome you're here? This here's our house." His stare is long and hard and assessing, a grown man's. Persia says, quickly, "Your mother doesn't feel too well... she asked me to walk home with her. Someone should call a doctor, maybe." The boy snarls at Mrs. Garlock, "Momma, for shit sake whatcha doin'! Actin' like you're crazy or something'!"

Within seconds mother and son are fighting, and Mrs. Garlock, inches shorter than the boy and twenty pounds lighter, manages a windmill assault upon him, cuffing his head and shoulders, cursing like a man, until the boy gives her a violent shove and slams out the front door, and Mrs. Garlock is sitting on the floorboards sobbing angrily, weeping. "Devil, damn devil... don't know who they are...

devils."

Persia wants to leave the Garlock household quick as she can (she hears heavy footsteps upstairs) but something holds her. Her eyes dart quickly about as if she means to memorize details, nuggets of fact, to bring back to Duke for his amusement; if, this evening, he's in a mood to be amused. You won't believe this. Oh, it was.

squalid.

Gently she says, "Mrs. Garlock? Are you all right? Did he hurt you?

Maybe I should help you somewhere, get you calm. Would you like an aspirin?" She's staring down at the woman's head, at the thin frazzled colorless hair, hoping she won't see any signs of lice.

More than once since their move to Curry from the "nice" place on Java poor Iris came home from school infected; it's no laughing matter.

She notes too how extraordinarily thin Mrs. Garlock's legs are in the calf, a sickly dead-white, covered with coarse brown hairs.

Suddenly Mrs. Garlock opens her eyes wide and says meanly, "Don't look! Don't judge! You're too young! You're too pretty!

You can't know!"

Then she shuts her eyes tight. Hugs herself, begins to rock energetically from side to side, lips drawn back to expose truly ghastly teeth. Persia loses all patience. "Oh, you are crazy!"

Vesta Garlock is past hearing.

Persia goes over to check the baby in the playpen; her conscience wouldn't allow her not to. 'Poor sweet innocent thing in all this mess," she murmurs, leaning over the railing. But the baby sleeps on unperturbed, drooling, diaper reeking, face blank and bland and round as a saucer... not, thank God, sickly looking.