Women's Weekend 1984; Talk by Paule Marshall

pleasure to be here and smack dab in the middle of missouri have a little trouble getting here today that we made that if we made it a what i thought i'd do tonight would be to focus on my last novel praise song for the widow which was published last year in hardcover and which is going to come out later this month in paperback which means that you can afford to buy so i thought i just kind of read from that and i talk about a little bit and to take some questions from the novel so what i'll have to do is to kind of stop and talk as i read to subdivide bridges so that it would kind of make sense to you until the fall of nineteen eighty two i had been sort of wrestling on paper for a good six or seven years

of a certain middle aged middle class widow by the name of avery johnson she was turning me as the saying goes every which way but loose she wouldn't do right she would come right no matter how many days and weeks and months and years i put in of the typewriter it was one of these no holds barred struggles with a widow and then late in nineteen eighty two i somehow manage to get the upper hand i caught him in a hammerlock then i put a full nelson on that and i taught her after all of that struggle to my satisfaction between the covers of a book and i decided to call praise song praise

song is a media should explain a praise song is it's a long west african cohen review usually in praise of an elder as avery johnson is an elder i decided to call the book praise song for the widow because by that time i haven't given at for all the changes you put me through and had even come to like her how to describe the widow well she's it's very proper very dignified marian anderson type black woman who wouldn't be caught dead without her gloves usually white her three strands of pearls and her sunday go to meeting hacked she's a classic type of a small black middle class you see her outside church every

sunday he's she's our mothers are ants are grandmothers she's the older women that we will someday be and i write about are you very seldom see her in the literature and so i decided that will maybe i will tell her story so by avi by avery johnson is this kind of person she's what they used to refer to in my day as a c t t r a credit to the race i remember as a little girl because i was kind of break ins going to these little ways kids i was always being patted on the back the ice suspect is sometimes it wanted to pat me on the head because that we use to mean good luck anyway because he had in the back and called a credit took a risk or that's what really is

considered after many years as trouble and so on and she has made it and she's got this barn wall to wall carpet at house in north white plains westchester county new york which is some of the most expensive real estate in the country omni they're all of the insurance policies and the bank books and the bodies and the like which a letter by her late has been to ron johnson there the children grown into college one of her daughters one of her three daughters is about to interning at harry hospital there's a visa very secure job as a supervisor in the motor vehicle bureau and for her vacation center husband's death there's a cruise she takes to the caribbean each year with her two friends and her six pieces of matching luggage

and then on one of these girls is my conservative proper at johnson does something absolutely radical and revolutionary she jumps ship attacks six bags and the next morning she walks out on her two friends and the cruze which is the force even half over now what has cause this piece of reckless behavior on her part it has to do with a dream that at johnson had just a few days after the cruise got underway now dreams are very important phenomenon in afro american life and our dreams

are usually not the freudian types that you read about in psychology all about sex in and resolved at all conflicts and so one afro american dreams usually have to do with practical things like money and my mother was all the same to me would you go and get me the dream book please so that i can look up the number at which cost barnes to the dream i had last night on the what to play when they run a company and afro american dreams also have to do with messages from that of a life messages about impending birth and death they also have to do with truth truth concerning ourselves and our allies

that are too painful for us to deal with in a conscious the court as part of our life well at johnson has one of these real real american dream and that it seems to be trying to tell her something about yourself and about her life that there's something terribly wrong with it in the dream she's a little girl again growing up in harlem and she's been sent to spend the summer down hole with a great aunt in a place called tatum an island one of the sea islands just off the coast of georgia or south carolina that was a pretty standard practice arm years ago on a summer vacation some of the kids being allowed to summon up and down the streets he was sent down home to spend time with your family in the south because always i remember that i would have a

sense of deprivation because all my friends on the block they would go home and go down home for the summer and i would be left here on the streets of brooklyn because my folks came from the west indies and the city could afford to send me down for the summer anyway so it was sent down to spend part of the summer with her great aunt coup lee and tatum and the all woman had a habit of taking her on a walk over to a place called evo landing they say this walk two three times a week and they're the old woman would tell her the story handed down over the generations about this group of people slaves from west africa after whom this place this landing was named and in her dream at johnson

relations the walk and the story of the evils in her sleep at least twice a week and the late afternoon as the juniper trees around peyton began sending out their long cool shadows the great actually would take the field down for the nail on the door and silently place it over her head tight in braids with the same i'm harried ceremony she would then draw around with a tool belts she and the other women her age and tatum always put on when going out one belt at the waist of a plane ankle length how stresses and the other belt this one ward and the belief it gave them extra strength it's got low around the hips or the balfour saw an oregon holster out of sight behind the old woman at will follow suit during her nonexistent hips of a second belt an imaginary one and placing with the same studied ceremony a smaller

version of the field hat which israel on her head to protect her legs from this from the scrub grass and forms along the way she was made to wear a thick wall stockings despite the heat and high top school shoes for last winter which her mother always sent along for her to finish out the summer rain the satiety they would set out a great aunt connie forging ahead and a pair of old broke it means return her feet behave like seventeen points and moving so rapidly despite her age eighty to keep up all that had to play a silent game of take a giant step whispering under her breath at johnson you may take two giant steps may i guess you name it took the two of them the old woman never settling her case an hour or more steady walking out under the sun before they finally reached the river and along narrow spit

of land shaped like a finger pointing east which marked the point of award is in and around peyton met up with the open sea of the maps of the county it was known as ebola lending to people and tatum it was simply the landing it was here that the broughton a great aunt would begin they'd taken him out of the boat's right here where we stand and nobody remembers how many of them it was that there was a good few court mr graham who was a little girl no bigger than you when it happened the small boat was brought up a hit and the ship they had just come from was out of the deep water great big old ship with sails and the medals evils was brought i'm sure they disturb the grandes say in taking a look around a good moment not say a word just deadening the place really good just taken the time and study and on it and they seen things that day you and me don't have the policy was the old po boy africans was people the grand

said could see in more ways than one the kindly tell you that things happen only for that was born and things to come long after they stay well i've seen everything that was to happen around here that day the slavery time and the warmer brando was talked about emancipation everything after that right on up to the hard times today those people didn't miss a thing even seen you and me standing there talking about him and where they got to size up the play's real good and seeing what was to come to turn the grandstand and looked at the white folks have brought him here took the time and giving the same ballpark look at the truth i don't know how those folks that i know i would award and look at me that way and whether that you study them when they knew just from looking at how those forces going to do utility bills get paid to do it uno story because you

they just turn the grandes say she always ignored at they just turned and walked right on back down to the edge of the river here every last man woman and child and i wasn't taking the time no more they had seen what they had seen and those people suspected and it didn't bother getting back into the small boats boats take much time they just can't walk and ryan out over the river now you would've thought that i got very far seeing it was seen as it was water that was walk in on besides i had all that i am not an iron out the ankles and the race and has now been acceptable carla not aren't to sink an army and chains open up the eyes were changed it is not those eagles none neither i the way my brand toilet they just kept on walking that the water was solid ground levels of the fox standing back here with her mouth open and they'd taken off down the river on foot step in and whether that the militia was

they didn't so much as given a look just walked on past it didn't want nothing to do with battleship their feats was gonna take them were ever that was going that day and it was sent in by james on the grandstand when they realized there was enough in between dan and hall but some water and that wasn't given no trouble they got so tickled started to sing it you could hear him claire across tatum court and to her that sounded like it was having such a good time much randy claimed she does pick yourself up and took off after them in her mind a body she always used to save might be a tatum or her mind her mind was long gone with evolves the great and always paused here giving the impression she was done a moment later there would come a final colder spoken both amazed reverential last those evil is jazzed up and walked on away not two minutes to have to get in here but i didn't drown and

to me she'd been ten that old and had been hearing the story for for some astray before she thought pass slowly standing on the consecrated ground her height almost matching eye shadow which the late son had drawn out over the water her great aunt had turned and the guarded her in silence for the longest time it was a take a va is to get the law on the face under the feel the disappointment and anger they are as she could've reached up and snatched a question like a fly out of the air and swallowed it she would've done so and all that but it's not going to take them and the old woman with david she was the catch herself lynching whenever she remembered the dangerously quiet voice that it issued finally from under the wide hat brim it's a jesus drowning and walk another water that sunday school but your

mom always ends with you no ma'am i didn't think so you got any more questions she had shaken her head no well this is this is the brain that atf she remembers this trip that she used to take with her aunt down to this landing i mean years and that he hasn't fought for years this this this ship this incident from her childhood that them that had gone she fought for the punches this time but there it is suddenly in the stream and she can shake it it begins to spoil the trip for her in fact it fell afoul as the crews that she decides that she wants to leave she gets wants to get off the ship at the next port of call and take a plane back home backhoe to the safety and sanity and stability of her house in north white plains

but she can't get a plane and when she reaches the island the island which happens to be cremated but when david this it reaches the island she gets off she can't get a plane ride away of course i have something to do with that she can get this plane right when he's sees that they're related and that night alone on the balcony of her luxury hotel room she finds herself thinking about her life really thinking about it very seriously about some of the choices she and her husband made and her thoughts take or all the way back to the time before they had achieved the american success story back to the time those

early baby as a struggle early in their marriage when it seemed as if they were going to make it when they were going to go down to the defeat that surrounded then in this when they were living in brooklyn ah it was a period in the early forties and both of them are working and yet they still weren't making enough money to meet the bales they had two children and then at the trial that she's pregnant again at tried everything when she realized what had happened the scalding hot bath the bottles of castor oil strong cups the final route tea she had learned about from her mother she bought the unmarked packages small brown pills or the drug store and swallow them all

one time she'd used one day until it seemed a retired insides had been flushed down the bath tub drain and as elaine they are exhausted with no side of the hoped for blood she actually considered going back on the promise she'd make herself of the death of a friend grace grace would found somebody somewhere and it had it done and her death from a hemorrhage afterwards had made at promise itself never that another day coming home early from work she raised up and down the five flights these days between their apartment on the top floor of a walk up and the vestibule until she collapsed and the third floor landing and had to crawl back upstairs all of it to no avail jays face gave last ten days face when she

told him the news mayer and what she felt the same despair and hopelessness and as the months led by and she started to show his eyes began to show it helplessly away from her stomach even she avoided the side of it in the mirror by six months she was so large he was forced to give up her job again right then jay started putting him all hours of the small department store downtown brooklyn where he worked in the shipping room as an assistant to the irish and in charge more activist or had close joanne still not be home a backlog of orders that kept in a truckload of merchandise for the riders to closing time and he'd stay to check it out there were doing inventory the boys had asked him to work late again they had been a large shipment of the peer for the next morning there's no reason to doubt him get work overtime before yet as his

late and it's grown to be a regular thing and his look when he was home became more invasive as she was reduced to spending evenings after the children were asleep wondering about the cramped apartment staring at the shabby linoleum in the kitchen where her clothes in the closet which could no longer fit into something shattered in her mind and another reason for his lateness began to shake take shape in her thoughts with the same small an ever double accumulation of detail as a child in her womb she began seeing than the white sales girls at the store it would be years before they start hiring covered with a fat stomach sanaa and swollen breasts and they hear swept into a pompadour or hung over one side of the face and of veronica lake they were behind every character in the stores downtown girls in flatbush in bensonhurst and very rich in brooklyn

the first time she accused him of and jay stayed at her in disbelief and then burst out laughing i've got enough women for the moment thank you he said there's you first of all and you easily a dozen women in one then the two ladies inside he made toward the bedroom reassess their five year old an animal that was not yet two were sleeping and also it's probably another young lady on her way his wave also took in her swollen middle although his eyes didn't follow it today that's enough women to one poor colored man at least he said with a wink for the time being that was the first time and last time he joked about it oh the evenings when incensed by her late by his likeness she boarded up the game he tried reasoning with her

would be so foolish as to risk losing the job over some girl down at the store or worse risk fining himself down at the bottom of the east river tied to a ton of concrete when her father older brother found out what that might be thought that was to america and they were more waste into colored man from a tree the science of all the worries he had the furthest thing from his mind was something was the fall of some of the woman or where he argued at other times well where he argued at other times did she think he was getting the money to fill the bales now that they were missing her salary as he was putting in the extra pounds we have to start bringing home display on the law an open didn't she realize you needed all the overtime he could get if they were to keep afloat i mean be reasonable avi it's rough on me too part of her understood the logic of face better

understanding did nothing to contain her rage she continued over the weeks to accuse him helpless to stop herself as her ballooning stomach of the un coming winter and the treacherous climb down to stay has kept her confined all day with the children to the fifth floor walkup finally an exasperated jaycees trying to reason with her and to answering your elders of a stubborn silence and his average gains until one fateful tuesday night during her eighth month when she met him in a fury at the door after having waited for him for hours she bet it was nice and warm readjust come from shouting at him as he slipped into the living room their little hideaway that was a sometime we had to keep the oven on all basal is not a freeze to death know the love nest that he all the time why didn't he just dating why bother coming home at all

but she hated it why couldn't he have found a job in manhattan she was somebody who was used to the city the big city everybody she knew was there she couldn't even get to see or talk to her mother she should never have moved with him to this a godforsaken place should never have let him stick up on some freezing top floor having a baby every time she looked around should never have married in normally he would have turned from the by then and got to sit in a chair his head bowed until she was done but is if the knife in her voice had finally smashed open the tough skin that had kept his own anger in check over the months he suddenly hurled the newspaper you're brought home to the floor and began shouting or so ok say you get out to take the job at that steel that are down there and see how you feel working for some red faced

irishman who sits on a scan all day while the little colored boy runs around and does all the work is anger was such his nostrils was stiff and wide and the muscles on his joint where as hard as bone under his dark skin he was fed up with her complaints and criticisms and suspicions she didn't appreciate that someone was trying their best it was an attitude more than anything else was making them so miserable a year of college and she thought she was somebody up the madonna from seventh avenue in harlem isn't left arrive they should've turned and ran the other way police are coming finally lydia voices stranded on a peak from which it seemed they would never find the way down and inflamed and trembling avi stepped within inches of j one hand was raised to strike him with the other she had grabbed say this would come running from the bedroom and was holding her fiercely to her side

and those are huge belly thrust forward defiantly she screamed in his face god damn you know i'll take my babies and bill it took some time and the scientists that fell for jae to find his voice again and when he did it was scarcely portable do you know who you sound like he whispered show appalled who you even look like there was no need for him to elaborate they knew the woman he was referring to nearly every saturday morning between midnight and dawn they would see the woman come charging out but one of the rundown candidates on the corner with a gaping front door and an overflow garbage can help friend how stress flung over a nightgown in the summer a radical caught on in the winter

she would head for broadway and a string of beer gardens in bars under the trestle of the elevated train thing searching for the man iron man by the time she found him the rot gut whiskey at a false bottom glass would've already eaten into its friday's pay and his buddies we had said repeatedly at the bard would've dropped their share of the two the same for the fly young thing perched on the stool next to him with her power and stole born here and pace diamond rings she too would've had her share it spending your money and some are flying down the five stories from their bedroom she and jay would hear the woman her voice violating the night silence as she heard of the man back down hole c street he was a solidly built man almost perhaps a few years chase sr occasionally by the light of street lamps his shoulders with flicker under

the whiplash of her voice sometimes when her abuse became too much he would start around menacingly in his tracks don't mess with me this morning but you never left off telling him about himself is no pacifist ways his selfishness is neglected of his own she sent her grievances echoing up and down the deserted street and strumming along the power line of the trolley car telegraphing than from one end of brooklyn to the ever what kind of man is you anyway spending all your money god dammit did not carry on the city this morning he swung around a heart farm raised but the one in heaven it dissipated his movie lean easily out of its way moments later she gave him a contemptuous shot forward setting him on course again but also dismissing his threat because is it would be a different tune she knew what she had at home in bed with her back turned to him like the great wall of china

ed founding a whole lot different than they were to one act like that for that's about all turned to me in everything i was only having a little taste of the fellows us all and then work slowly taken charlie sheen he's back to relax itself a little kind of be good you know what it's like out they got a whole you're not going to believe this baby i don't even know the actor some idea around the pa come on sugar how my supposed to sleep with your sweet but line appeared next to me many distressed a handgun if you know you're my weakness at the law in the garbage strewn dome above the geneva mail boxes and the gaping front door it's

aphrodisiac smell of cat piss other settler landing until at johnson sitting on a balcony of a luxury hotel room remembers how it seemed as it that night is if she and jay had turned into that doomed couple down on the street she says the j was about to abandon her and the children they've been a kind of force pulling him away from her and sees an animal that the baby crying in the bedroom but his taste and they're straining to go to free them another force equally as strong held him in place and even seemed to be trying to nudge him to one thing his anguished face his eyes reflect the struggle he was like an embattled slimmer caught between two powerful currents moving in opposite directions

for more minutes it was impossible to tell which one would claim him until they could be heard the famed scraping every shoe on the floor and one foot to actually now be seen moving back moving away one foot and then the other and he would have taken the first irreversible step toward the door before the step could be completed though he stopped short of the kind of violence the other current asserted its hold on him jay drew himself up and sing every muscle in his body to the point where it was clearly painful and he was trembling and having steeled both his body and his will he stepped forward jay stepped forward and the sound of his tears as he held her and says strangeness of it into small rooms for homebuilders cry in the bedroom to a startled whole jay steps

forward these days just as many black men stay with all the although you would never think that given the kind of unhappy statistics about a black family that he states he takes a second job and that he gets a fair one he brings home all that hate and bloats an open as proof this time that is actually working he begins a home study course an accounting he goes to college at night twelve long years he's like a man running a punishing marathon until one day he's finally able to open his own small accounting firm and they can afford to move from brooklyn and as she's reviewing how life athie recalls the mixed feeling she had some strange reason just weeks before they're about to

make a big move from brooklyn to north white plains it was an act of betrayal but you couldn't help yourself the closing for the house in north white plains had taken place the actual mood was only weeks away when she found herself thinking not of the new life ahead but of the early years on hall's history of the small rituals and pleasures that had lasted through the birth of six and in the face of the two and three jobs that cain held for years after all crowded exhausting day such thoughts into the trail she felt like a secret who would everyone in the house was sleeping sneak down to the liquor cabinet with the memories of that early period where wind she couldn't resist the thoughts usually we laid her in bed at night during the half hour so when she would live am waiting for

her overtax body to be lax enough sleep sometimes the most frivolous things from those early years came to mind one night she called herself reliving the ridiculous dances jay used to staging just for the two of them in the living room when they couldn't get out on a saturday night what's a pleasure this evening the civilians he would call if i had made a name with a beautiful boy robin collins is or a dance halls in harlem oh i don't know she would say entering the fantasy within one you gone over to the audubon for a change i have as a dancing tonight i'm gonna tide of those other places and afterwards if a hungry people go back across town the chicken and waffles at the keebler elves your wish is my command yes he would have the records stacked high at the turntable spindle of a freeway man in the room turned low end he would also hurt

his arm and with his other hand clearing away for them through the imaginary proud of the make believe ballroom he would lead her out to the center of the floor one by one the record the drone flying home taking a train started at the savoy cotton tale she was the better dancer and sometimes partly through a number he would spin her off to dance by yourself and standing aside watch the footwork and the twisting and snaking of her body with an amazed smile once teasing her he said i hope your mama sang it was billions but when the white folk came up with a theory about all these parties haven't read them famous to have you in my chair and you can now django bojangles about snakes make it those fanciful nights out of the town always ended with avery parishes act allocates this they played over and over again jay's arms tied around her waist hair is circling his neck their bodies fused

it with snow dragon to the sound of a three parishes centuries piano you know something old lady you still feel like new say whispering it was in her ear and there had been a small rituals that innate sunday a special day back and getting up early jay used to slip his clothes on over his pajamas and leaving her and date he would walk over to broadway to buy the papers and the coffee ring there was treated themselves too for sunday breakfast and a hard road for six when she came along and was teaching that was the day when the photographs in the living room remained silent but like spirits are sending black voices rose all morning from the second hand radio next to it the southern is the fisk jubilee choir brings over jordan the five blind boys of atlanta georgia whenever the five blind boys

and dry bones david joined their complex harmonizing forcing his modest baritone down to a base kneebone connected to the leg bone label connected to the ankle bone them bones them bones dry bones he sang in a deep field holler of a voice all hail the word of law norberg says not clear and laid out when he resigned fragments are posted learned as a boy says his eyes that all the takeover her small face he'd been taught the poet's the black poets and the small segregated school in kansas which he had attended as a boy a school that not didn't teach color children anything about the race about themselves he used to say i made the euphrates when dogs were young you to claim standing in his pajamas in the middle of the living room was at sits in her math sat listening and even coffee cake of the armchair i built my heart by the congo and a lonely to sleep

i looked upon the nile and raise the pyramids about that and israelis had indicated their great white haired rancher i know reveres ancient dusty rivers my soul has grown be like the rivers then abruptly he would switch know about davis papa nice huge burst out and coming all the scoops this up in his arms idiot happy etcetera disney who was poppy's darling and who was that these chat kissing her another of his favorites what about the creation of the world is driving up and down the living room jane actor the part of god things changed he clapped his hands and the fund is rolled into one is above the earth came down the cooling waters came down and got say it's going at it at the end no more that's all for today at an enthralled states who have forgotten to breathe during the entire recycle would take a

deed and wondering breath best of all the tv spending bills times when it was just the two of them she and jay off to themselves in the narrow hallway bedroom their bodies in a sweet tango on the bed lying awake nights lying awake nights before the move to north white plains her thoughts secretly would drink heady wine of that memory a pleasure had always been greatest remember those times when jay talk to her and the touching and play at the beginning jay talked telling her his mouth against her ear which she referred to touch with his hand on her skin what he thought of her skin how the talks move feel of it they got all up the site in the first time they met and he had taken her arm to lead her to the dance floor

dellinger also what he thought of her breasts as it slips and hands move slowly over days jaber talkies talk until under its spell under its poetry at would feel the fake runaway beating of her heart just to be just the beat of my poor heart in the dark green and the record they both love that so at johnson's middle aged woman remembers how all that passion and spontaneity how will that intimacy i was lost and as they began this kind of patrols the streets she recalls how jay over the years was transformed into a kind of work or even enjoy this man whom she called her mind jerome johnson whose face toward the end seemed taken over by the face of so called pale in the stranger

and along the balcony and that time and she holds a wait for her husband for both of them for jay and forgery johnson she agrees also about like the two of them once had but haven't firmly grounded in their culture the culture that they had rejected and i will end by just reading that scene of mourning the lights and the surrounding balcony caught the scene of the tears against her blackness the tropical night resonated with the sound of her grief for the first time since jerome johnson's death she was mourning him and i just and so much of his life his life that massive giving of himself which had gone on for over forty hughes is like there this trouble had been so unrelenting when you can discover the whole the

way he would say striking the back of one dark hand with the other hard punishing little blows that took his anger out on himself it's like but it ended with what seemed the pale face of the stranger laughing behind his coffin and davey johnson the mortgage a sobbing wildly and that his death had taken place long before drum johnson's they did nothing though to mark his passing know well dressed corpse know satin lined coffin no remains jj had simply ceased to be over the years here quietly vanish without making his leaving no and and leaving it taken within the little private rituals and pleasures the playfulness and which of those early years the host of feelings and passions they had no and the music which had been their nourishment do it to an outsider these things would come off a little bit would appear ridiculous childish column seemed although you'd be two grown people

holding up or ten bands in their living room and spending a sunday mornings listening to gospel singing reciting fragments of old homes were getting coffee cake such things would not a little to the world they have nonetheless been of the utmost importance he viewed now realized they only through the fog of her grief she understood this for those things have expressed than had been much had been as much a part of them as j's broad nose and the rich seal brown color of his skin so much a part of her as a high riding and to behind which they used to called gallego when they made love moreover something else more rights had reached back beyond their lives to join than to the long line of people would need to have been possible and this link these connections heard in the music and in the

praise songs of a sunday happy the euphrates and aunts were young had protected then and put them in position a kind of how all this had passed through their lives without their hardly noticing that in no time they're exhausted at the end of the day to integrate reading for the blind they had allowed all of that wealth protection and power to slip out of the living room down the five flights of stays out of the house out of their lines rich had vanished in the wasteland of holes the trouble with these negroes out here durham johnson was always saying that your ladies negroes around here would ever begin to make any progress he would speak of his own as if they were race apart at used the winds hearing him but had she been any better hadn't she lived through the sixties as if what's in selma and tanks in the streets of detroit did not pertain to her that was the time that mary and her youngest had telephoned her collect for the poor people's

march on washington and she'd almost refuse to accept because she had been so annoyed why because the great hungry roar of the crowd in the background that seemed to be reaching out to drop her into its angry vortex to make up part of its petition what's she doing out there anyway to ron johnson wanted to know when at how the fall when she ever have to go without three square meals a day so much olivier as she had taken to calling him due to ron johnson and the privacy of her thoughts no longer able to think of him as j and she also begun without realizing it preferred herself as davey johnson remain at you all to someone who no longer existed a woman whose face she sometimes fail to recognize that suddenly with a private against out of the darkness at johnson lunged out a beloved faced came up and she struck the wall of year just in front of her

over and over in a rage of tears she is sort of the dark empty we're trying to get at that pale derisive face she saw a projected fear her own face with tear streaked and distorted and she could be heard uttering a murderous ground likes out repeatedly she sent her fist smashing out the pocketbook on her lap failed its content spilling out as the caps provoking the violence of her blows soon brought a sliding off to cheer and down to the floor on her knee it's and still she continued to pound away the faces she alone could see they even furious to grounding repeating her angry litany too much too much too much and from that point on in the novel guided by the dream of the evils who put the distance of the atlantic between themselves at some of the destructive forces in american

life at johnson sets out to change our lives to rediscover their cultural richness but she had disowned the well in advance stages her own personal revolution and she wins it thank you it's been