THE EDUCATION OF A QUEEN
673
them in to hear my troubles. Instead, I got up and quietly opened
my door to listen. I heard my father say,
"You're up to your old tricks-you want to limit my freedom."
"We must all learn to live within limits," said my mother.
"Man
is
born free. Woman enslaves
him!"
He began pacing
up and down the kitchen.
"Nonsense!" snapped my mother. Then she murmured some–
thing I couldn't catch.
"Look," he said, "if you want another child, I'll give you
one. We can't really afford it but times are bound to get better.
I'll
give you a great, big, walloping belly, and then ..."
"And then," said my mother in a voice suddenly as lean as
bone, "you'll go chasing after the first pig in skirts you see. No,
thank
you. I've served my term. No more having my husband
fall all over me
simply
because the mindless slut he slept with
couldn't satisfy
him."
I could have thought another woman had spoken, the words
were so strange. She stopped and I could hear her panting sharply
\\~th
anger. But when she spoke again it was in a very different
voice. " I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said those things. Only once in a
while I allow myself to feel bitter-I lose control ..."
"You've made it quite clear what you think already," my
father said with a sound of stiff and terrible pride.
"No," my mother said. "No.-That's only part of it."
I closed the door and slipped back into bed. I was trembling
with disgust but I was puzzled, too. What did she mean,
only
part
of
it?
Then, quite simply, the way children do, I decided to forget
the whole discussion. Mother was Mother. My father was "dif–
fICult" (Mother's word) but he was "terrific," "awfully smart,"
and "loads of fun," too, and though I wasn't then capable of
loving
him,
I certainly worshiped him, and the notion of any
other father would have been heresy.
The next morning I went in to breakfast fully determined
to make my confession to Joshua, but the sight of his red, red
mouth-too red no matter what the weather-made me think of
that breath of air, and I turned mute
in
adolescent alarm and
jealousy. The more he tried to wheedle out of me what the matter
was, the more I shunned him.
