PARTISAN REVIEW
and even despising the dark blue dress she wore with a frill of chaste
white organdy at the neck.
"What's the matter, sister?" she asked.
"Don't call me
sister,"
I said, "it makes me feel like a fool. And
if you want to know what's wrong, I don't like that dress you're
wearing. It isn't good for you."
"How funny. I'm always getting compliments on it. But, I don't
care one way or another."
The face on the porch belonged to a young man I had not
seen for years, but whom I had once thought myself in love with.
Had he always looked so sinister, so bloated with ignorance and
lethargy? I tried to remember a younger, healthier face with some
brightness or pathos that had appealed to me, some gaiety and
promise; anything except that large, iron, insentient image on the
porch. But I remembered nothing comforting, not even one cool,
happy afternoon in which he was different from the dark, hateful
person living out some kind of life a few steps away from me. It
was not love I had felt, not
really
love, I assured myself, but simply
one of those incomprehensible youthful errors.
"Mama," I said, "forgive me. The funny thing is that I honestly
like tl1at dress
better
than any you have."
"Make up your mind," she said with good humor. I said good
night, but on the steps I turned around and saw my father looking
at me, his blue eyes dark and strange with an infinite sadness.
He
knows, he knows,
I decided. Men can sense these things. Let me
die now.
I went to bed and in the darkness and stillness I felt the mere
existence of the man I had seen to be sickeningly important to me.
I was appalled by the undeniable fact that I had once been his
slave, had awakened each morning with no thoughts except how
I might please him.
As
two numb beasts we had found each other
and created a romance. It was somehow better to believe that in
him I had simply recognized an equal than to answer the shocking
question as to why, if I was in any way his superior, I had been so
violently attached to him.
It all came back to me: I had not only been in love with him,
but he had required courage, daring, and cunning on my part. It
had not been easy and I cannot excuse myself by saying we were
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