Read Online I Never Promised You A Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg - Free Book Online
Authors: Joanne Greenberg
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courage,Deborah thought. I might have belted her one, for all she knew. And Deborah suddenly knew what was good about D ward: no more lying gentility or need to live according to the incomprehensible rules of Earth. When the blindness came, or the hard knots of pain from the nonexistent tumor, or the Pit, no one would say, “What will people think!” “Be ladylike,” or “Don’t make a fuss!”
In the bed next to hers was the secret first wife of Edward VIII, abdicated King of England, who had been spirited to this place (it was a House of Prostitution) by the Ex-King VIII’s enemies. When the nurse locked Deborah’s possessions in the small built-in cupboard, the woman—who was sitting on her bed discussing her strategy with the invisible form of the Prime Minister—rose and came to Deborah, her face full of pity. “You’re so young to be in this evil house, my dear. Why, you must still be a virgin. I’ve been raped every night since I came.” She went back to her discussion.
“Where will I meet you alone here?” Deborah cried to Lactamaeon and his others.
There are always ways,
Yr echoed.
We will not crowd or overcrowd the guests of this unsecret unwife of the abdicated King of England!
Yr rang with laughter, but the Pit was very close.
“Escorted?” the doctor asked Deborah, looking quizzically at the attendant standing beside her.
“She’s upstairs now, on D ward,” the attendant answered evenly, and then posted herself outside the normal-looking, booby-trapped, civilized office.
“Well, what happened?” The doctor saw the lostness and the fear and its mask of truculence on Deborah’s face. Deborah sat down, hunching over the vulnerable abdomen and the lower area, where waited the easily awakened tumor.
“It was something I had to do, that’s all. I scratched my arm a little—that’s all.”
The doctor looked at her intently, waiting for a sign of how honestly she might be ready to search. “Show me,” she said. “Show me the arm.”
Deborah undid the sleeve, burning with shame.
“Wow!” the doctor said in her funny, accented colloquial English. “That’s going to make a hell of a scar!”
“All my dancing partners will wince when they see it.”
“It is not impossible that you will dance someday, and that you will live in the world again. You know, don’t you, that you are in big trouble? It’s time to tell me fully what brought you to doing that business there.”
She was not frightened, Deborah saw, or horrified, or ridiculing, or making any of the hundred wrong expressions that people had always shown in the face of her trouble. She was only completely serious. Deborah began to tell her about Yr.
At one time—strange to think of it now—the gods of Yr had been companions—secret, princely sharers of her loneliness. In camp, where she had been hated; in school, where strangeness set her apart more and more as the years went on, Yr had grown wider and wider for her as the solitude deepened. Its gods were laughing, golden personages whom she would wander away to meet, like guardian spirits. But something changed, and Yr was transformed from a source of beauty and guardianship to one of fear and pain. Slowly Deborah was forced to assuage and placate, to spin from the queen-ship of a bright and comforting Yr to prison in its darker places. She was royalty among gods on the days of the high calendar, debased and wretched on the low. Now she was also forced to endure the dizzying changes between worlds, to bear the world’s hatred voiced in the chanting curses of the Collect, to be subject and slave to the Censor, who had been given the task of keeping the world of Yr from blowing its secret seeds to ground on Earth, where they would spring up wide open to flowering lunacy for all the world to see and recoil from in horror. The Censor had assumed the role of tyrant over both worlds. Once her guardian, the Censor had turned against her. In her mind, the proof of Yr’s
In the bed next to hers was the secret first wife of Edward VIII, abdicated King of England, who had been spirited to this place (it was a House of Prostitution) by the Ex-King VIII’s enemies. When the nurse locked Deborah’s possessions in the small built-in cupboard, the woman—who was sitting on her bed discussing her strategy with the invisible form of the Prime Minister—rose and came to Deborah, her face full of pity. “You’re so young to be in this evil house, my dear. Why, you must still be a virgin. I’ve been raped every night since I came.” She went back to her discussion.
“Where will I meet you alone here?” Deborah cried to Lactamaeon and his others.
There are always ways,
Yr echoed.
We will not crowd or overcrowd the guests of this unsecret unwife of the abdicated King of England!
Yr rang with laughter, but the Pit was very close.
“Escorted?” the doctor asked Deborah, looking quizzically at the attendant standing beside her.
“She’s upstairs now, on D ward,” the attendant answered evenly, and then posted herself outside the normal-looking, booby-trapped, civilized office.
“Well, what happened?” The doctor saw the lostness and the fear and its mask of truculence on Deborah’s face. Deborah sat down, hunching over the vulnerable abdomen and the lower area, where waited the easily awakened tumor.
“It was something I had to do, that’s all. I scratched my arm a little—that’s all.”
The doctor looked at her intently, waiting for a sign of how honestly she might be ready to search. “Show me,” she said. “Show me the arm.”
Deborah undid the sleeve, burning with shame.
“Wow!” the doctor said in her funny, accented colloquial English. “That’s going to make a hell of a scar!”
“All my dancing partners will wince when they see it.”
“It is not impossible that you will dance someday, and that you will live in the world again. You know, don’t you, that you are in big trouble? It’s time to tell me fully what brought you to doing that business there.”
She was not frightened, Deborah saw, or horrified, or ridiculing, or making any of the hundred wrong expressions that people had always shown in the face of her trouble. She was only completely serious. Deborah began to tell her about Yr.
At one time—strange to think of it now—the gods of Yr had been companions—secret, princely sharers of her loneliness. In camp, where she had been hated; in school, where strangeness set her apart more and more as the years went on, Yr had grown wider and wider for her as the solitude deepened. Its gods were laughing, golden personages whom she would wander away to meet, like guardian spirits. But something changed, and Yr was transformed from a source of beauty and guardianship to one of fear and pain. Slowly Deborah was forced to assuage and placate, to spin from the queen-ship of a bright and comforting Yr to prison in its darker places. She was royalty among gods on the days of the high calendar, debased and wretched on the low. Now she was also forced to endure the dizzying changes between worlds, to bear the world’s hatred voiced in the chanting curses of the Collect, to be subject and slave to the Censor, who had been given the task of keeping the world of Yr from blowing its secret seeds to ground on Earth, where they would spring up wide open to flowering lunacy for all the world to see and recoil from in horror. The Censor had assumed the role of tyrant over both worlds. Once her guardian, the Censor had turned against her. In her mind, the proof of Yr’s
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