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Show •65 "One day she left to go teach her class and didn't come home for a week. Then she showed up at the door with her boyfriend; he'd been paroled and they were going away together." I was only six and a half years old but I remember that day very well. I remember that nobody shouted; no one made a scene. "We're leaving," Linda said. "The kids are staying with you." "What about your clothes?" Adam said. He had sent us upstairs but we listened through the vent-pipe. "What do you want me to do with them?" Linda laughed. I was in a daze and thought I might die. I lay down on the floor and watched the crazy angles in the ceiling. "He'll buy me new ones," I heard her say. "Give those to the Salvation Army." Her voice was full of a mean sort of happiness. "You've been telling me what to wear for years - now I'm going to dress like a woman and to hell with you, you son of a bitch." "There's no need to be rough." The Hawaiian had a deep confident voice that made the vent-pipe quiver. "It isn't a thing for hard feelings, Mr. Skinner. You know how women are. She picked me, that's all. I'll take good care of her." "Women are exactly like men," Adam said. Leaning on the windowsill with the bright sun coolly beaming down, I remembered my father's voice. There was no bitterness in it-he was defending women's right to be fully equal. |
