Read Online The Sleeping Night by Barbara Samuel - Free Book Online Page A

and Mrs. Pierson had extended her friendship to Angel as well, providing odd extras in Angel’s life—books and magazines no one else read, stories of Europe before the wars, a sense of elegance that would otherwise have been missing.
    On this deep spring afternoon, Angel knocked on the door and was admitted by a slim, dark woman. “Hello, Miss Angel,” she said. “Hear your roof got right tore up in that storm.”
    “Well, it was going long before the storm, but that was the nail in the coffin.” She stepped inside and blotted her forehead with a handkerchief. “I just saw Isaiah High and he offered to fix it, praise God.”
    “That so?” Angel caught a flicker of surprise in her face before the ubiquitous smile returned. “Go on in the parlor. Mrs. Pierson was hoping you’d come.”
    Angel made her way through the polished hall and into a sunny, airy room. Lace curtains hung at long windows, and ferns in big pots thrived in corners and nooks throughout the room.
    Mrs. Pierson, slim and tidy in a tailored dark blue dress, rose at the sound of Angel’s feet at the door. With her was a painfully thin young woman whose white-blond hair was cropped short, curling slightly around her ears. Angel caught a quick impression of enormous dark eyes before Mrs. Pierson’s hands caught hers.
    “Angel!” she exclaimed and kissed her cheek. “I am so pleased you could come. My rheumatism has been snapping at me with all this wet weather, and I have worried about you. Come, sit.”
    With her customary ease, she led Angel to the couch. “This is my niece, Gudren—you remember I talked about her? Showed you the photographs of my sister’s daughter? Here she is!”
    Angel couldn’t hide her shock. This was the fat little girl, the rosy cheeked, black-eyed niece from Holland? “I remember well,” she said, quietly meeting her eyes. “I’m Angel.”
    A smile broke the pale face. “Yes. My aunt and Isaiah have spoken well of you.” Her English was heavily accented but very clear. “I am happy to meet you.”
    “Likewise,” Angel said. Yes, those were the snapping black eyes of the little girl, housed in a face whittled clean of any excess flesh. Her cheekbones arched over deep hollows and skin stretched tight over the bridge of her nose. “I just saw Isaiah a little while ago. He said he came back with you.”
    “A kind man,” Gudren said with an inclination of her head. “I was not well and he waited for me to be well enough to travel. It was—”
    Angel waited for the rest, but Gudren simply shook her head.
    Mrs. Pierson spoke instead. “My niece was disturbed by our railway system.” She took a minute sip from her china cup.
    “Ah.” There wasn’t much to say about that: Yes, we should change that. Yes, it’s an ugly rule, Yes, there are other things, too .  . .
    In truth, though, Texas without segregation struck her as unlikely as a civilization on the moon. No matter how often her daddy had talked about it changing, she didn’t see that it ever would. “I reckon that was a shock,” she said finally, thinking of the Europe Isaiah had illuminated in his letters.
    “A shock,” Gudren agreed. “Coffee?”
    “Please.”
    Gudren leaned forward to pour. On the tender white flesh of her inner arm, Angel saw a series of blue numbers tattooed. She lowered her eyes, as embarrassed as if she’d seen the accidental exposure of a naked breast.
    After a moment, she raised her chin, fully aware that her cheeks must be the color of cherries. Gudren had folded her hands in her lap, and looked at Angel with a steady and somehow patient gaze.
    With a gesture Angel knew she would not forget, Gudren held out her arm and brushed graceful fingers over the tattoo. “It must not be hidden.”
    “No,” Angel whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
    “I am alive.” She poured tea. “Here I sit, with my aunt, and her guest.” She handed Angel the cup and saucer, and smiled. One day, she would be beautiful again. “Here