Read Online After the Fire by Jane Rule - Free Book Online Page A

against that young woman?”
    They were sitting in Henrietta’s living room and had been watching first Karen and then two young women they didn’t know make their way across Henrietta’s boulder-and log-strewn beach.
    “I don’t have anything against her,” Milly replied. “I simply say, ‘birds of a feather flock together,’ and, unless I’m very much mistaken, those two women are queer or gay or whatever the term is these days. Have you ever seen Karen with a man?”
    “She’s with young men all the time.”
    “Of course, but trying to be one of them, making a fool of herself at fire practice, working for the ferries.”
    “She’s not the first woman to work on the ferries,” Henrietta protested.
    “Have you ever taken a good look at the others?”
    This was not the sort of conversation Henrietta liked to be involved in. More and more often recently she found herself regretting the time she spent with Milly, but then she thought, poor soul, having to go through the change on her own and now facing an operation. It was no time to think about drawing back.
    Henrietta remembered herself very well at that age, the long hours of irrational weeping. The grief had seemed to her real enough at the time, even when Hart could neither understand nor sympathize. He had always been patient. Of course he couldn’t feel the loss of those babies as she did. They had never been anything but her miscarriages to him. He could have understood if her grief had been for Peter, sixteen years old when a drunk crossed the line and killed him two weeks after he’d passed his driver’s test. She did grieve for Peter, of course, and would all her life, but he’d had a life of his own, however short, which those others had not. Her dying womb, hemorrhaging month after month, held all those past failures within it.
    “It’s a hard time,” Henrietta said to Milly, abruptly returning to their earlier conversation.
    “Did you have a hysterectomy?” Milly asked.
    “No.”
    “At least it was natural for you then.”
    “A natural disaster?” Henrietta mused.
    “Well, it’s the first thing that’s made my daughter sit up and take notice.”
    “Oh, and wouldn’t you rather they didn’t?” Henrietta asked. “Part of me dreads Hart Jr.’s visits. He always wants to do something, and there’s nothing to be done. I’d much rather he’d just be getting on with his own life and not worrying about me.”
    “I like being worried about,” Milly asserted.
    “I’m here after all,” Henrietta offered. “I can take you in and visit you and bring you home. Between us, Red and I can give you all the nursing you need.”
    “I know,” Milly said, “and I am grateful. But it doesn’t hurt Bonnie to think about someone else for a change, particularly her mother!”
    The coffee pot was empty, and Henrietta didn’t offer to make another. She was taking Miss James to the pub for lunch, and she wanted time to tidy up before she left. One of Milly’s real virtues was that she was quick to pick up such signals and good-humored about them.
    “I’ll be going along then, Hen,” she said. “You are a comfort, you know. Whenever there was anything wrong with me, Forbes was no earthly use. He called me ‘Dred’ when I was pregnant. He thought it was funny.”
    “I’ve never heard a good joke about a pregnant woman,” Henrietta said as she fetched Milly’s coat.
    “And that’s the pain you don’t forget,” Milly said.
    The unhealed wound in Milly was humiliation, and Henrietta knew no cure for it. She was afraid it was like arthritis, which simply got worse. Physical pain was easier to be resigned to, and one never had the illusion that sharing it around might lessen it. Milly did really hope that by humiliating other people she might get some real relief. She might be abandoned by her husband, neglected by her children, but at least she was white, at least she wasn’t a pervert.
    “Come in and have a sherry,” Miss James