Read Online Madeleine Is Sleeping by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum
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slowly, blinking sleepily like children.
To her relief, to her anguish, they do not see her.
Invisible
THEY DO NOT SEE ME ! Claude rejoices, silently. For everything about him now is silent: his thoughts, his beating heart, his footfalls in the underbrush. He can tiptoe past all sorts of doors and nobody inside would know it. He seems to be mastering invisibility as well, for look: how close to the girls he crouches! So close that if he were to sneeze and not cover his mouth, they would each of them feel, on their necks and their cheeks, a satiny mist, like one coming off the sea. Claude is that close to them. He has crept there silently. His invisible body trembles in its joy and proximity.
It will be his at last, the secret. He alone will know what happens when the girls all disappear. For a moment, in the underbrush, he imagines how he will raise his hand, and stand, and issue a statement, or file a report. He imagines the magisterial weight of approval, the heaviness of men's palms clapping him on the shoulder. But then, easing a ticklish branch to one side, he pictures another possibility: that of nursing his secret, hiding it from sight, taking it out in the dark and stroking it, keeping it for the enjoyment of Claude alone.
But how to get that meaty one to moveâher hips now occupy the whole of his view. As she sways back and forth in her eagerness, he catches only slivers of what he wants to see, which is maybe more maddening than not being able to see at all, and certainly more exciting than being able to see everything at once. He glimpses a pair of tentative hands, reaching out; a scattering, on pale skin, of petals; the flash of a mirror in the sunlight; the pucker of a navel. Could that be right? Naked skin? A belly button?
Little Jug
THE MAYOR CLEARS his throat. He pushes aside his plate. He regards his youngest daughter, who is chewing her bread enthusiastically, and not giving him any encouragement at all.
I am an indulgent father, he begins. Which is a fine beginning; which is what he rehearsed. Firstly: his affectionate nature and dislike of tyranny; secondly: his public obligations; thirdly: the strange reports that have lately reached him, of sightings, and silences, and the odd, glittering look in his youngest daughter's eye, the bits of grass seen caught in her hair; and fourthly: he cannot remember fourthly.
Emma, he says.
And notices, as he often does, the stubbiness of her fingers. It would be quite impossible to pry those fingers from anything they might decide to grasp. One day, he expects, they will lengthen into cool, slender, white fingers, from which will issue all sorts of gentle touches and the pretty, even handwriting that he sees on invitations. As it stands, her lettering is heavy on the page, and executed with the same methodical relish with which she is now sawing off another piece of bread. But yes, her fingers will lengthen, and her complexion will not be so swarthy, and little curlicues will bloom upon the barren slopes of her alphabet.
Emma, he says again, and because her mouth is full, she reaches across the table and squeezes his hand. Yes, Papa, I am listening, is what her stubby fingers say. With warmth, and great insistence; and what a very pleasant feeling it is to be gripped by such fingers, and
to know that nothing could ever tear you from their hold. The mayor finds himself thinking that perhaps it would not be so terrible were his daughter to remain always like this: this small, this brown and sturdy, like a jug.
I am an indulgent father, he repeats, helplessly, and he can go no further.
Apprehended
THE MAYOR'S ELDEST DAUGHTER is more to the point. Circling around the table, dishes balanced dangerously in one hand, she sees a butter knife making its way towards the jar of preserves.
Aha! she cries, grabbing with her free hand her sister's brown wrist, the butter knife flashing wildly like a fish twisting in a beak.
Let go, Emma says. I'm still
To her relief, to her anguish, they do not see her.
Invisible
THEY DO NOT SEE ME ! Claude rejoices, silently. For everything about him now is silent: his thoughts, his beating heart, his footfalls in the underbrush. He can tiptoe past all sorts of doors and nobody inside would know it. He seems to be mastering invisibility as well, for look: how close to the girls he crouches! So close that if he were to sneeze and not cover his mouth, they would each of them feel, on their necks and their cheeks, a satiny mist, like one coming off the sea. Claude is that close to them. He has crept there silently. His invisible body trembles in its joy and proximity.
It will be his at last, the secret. He alone will know what happens when the girls all disappear. For a moment, in the underbrush, he imagines how he will raise his hand, and stand, and issue a statement, or file a report. He imagines the magisterial weight of approval, the heaviness of men's palms clapping him on the shoulder. But then, easing a ticklish branch to one side, he pictures another possibility: that of nursing his secret, hiding it from sight, taking it out in the dark and stroking it, keeping it for the enjoyment of Claude alone.
But how to get that meaty one to moveâher hips now occupy the whole of his view. As she sways back and forth in her eagerness, he catches only slivers of what he wants to see, which is maybe more maddening than not being able to see at all, and certainly more exciting than being able to see everything at once. He glimpses a pair of tentative hands, reaching out; a scattering, on pale skin, of petals; the flash of a mirror in the sunlight; the pucker of a navel. Could that be right? Naked skin? A belly button?
Little Jug
THE MAYOR CLEARS his throat. He pushes aside his plate. He regards his youngest daughter, who is chewing her bread enthusiastically, and not giving him any encouragement at all.
I am an indulgent father, he begins. Which is a fine beginning; which is what he rehearsed. Firstly: his affectionate nature and dislike of tyranny; secondly: his public obligations; thirdly: the strange reports that have lately reached him, of sightings, and silences, and the odd, glittering look in his youngest daughter's eye, the bits of grass seen caught in her hair; and fourthly: he cannot remember fourthly.
Emma, he says.
And notices, as he often does, the stubbiness of her fingers. It would be quite impossible to pry those fingers from anything they might decide to grasp. One day, he expects, they will lengthen into cool, slender, white fingers, from which will issue all sorts of gentle touches and the pretty, even handwriting that he sees on invitations. As it stands, her lettering is heavy on the page, and executed with the same methodical relish with which she is now sawing off another piece of bread. But yes, her fingers will lengthen, and her complexion will not be so swarthy, and little curlicues will bloom upon the barren slopes of her alphabet.
Emma, he says again, and because her mouth is full, she reaches across the table and squeezes his hand. Yes, Papa, I am listening, is what her stubby fingers say. With warmth, and great insistence; and what a very pleasant feeling it is to be gripped by such fingers, and
to know that nothing could ever tear you from their hold. The mayor finds himself thinking that perhaps it would not be so terrible were his daughter to remain always like this: this small, this brown and sturdy, like a jug.
I am an indulgent father, he repeats, helplessly, and he can go no further.
Apprehended
THE MAYOR'S ELDEST DAUGHTER is more to the point. Circling around the table, dishes balanced dangerously in one hand, she sees a butter knife making its way towards the jar of preserves.
Aha! she cries, grabbing with her free hand her sister's brown wrist, the butter knife flashing wildly like a fish twisting in a beak.
Let go, Emma says. I'm still
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