Alias Grace Read Online Free Page B

been mistaken when they first put me in.
    People dressed in a certain kind of clothing are never wrong. Also they never fart. What Mary Whitney used to say was, If there’s farting in a room where they are, you may be sure you done it yourself. And even if you never did, you better not say so or it’s all Damn your insolence, and a boot in the backside and out on the street with you.
    She often had a crude way of speaking. She said
You done
and not
You did
. No one had taught her otherwise. I used to speak that way as well, but I have learnt better manners in prison.
    I sit down on the straw mattress. It makes a sound like shushing. Like water on the shore. I shift from side to side, to listen to it. I could close my eyes and think I’m by the sea, on a dry day without much wind. Outside the window far away there’s someone chopping wood, the axe coming down, the unseen flash and then the dull sound, but how do I know it’s even wood?
    It’s chilly in this room. I have no shawl, I hug my arms around myself because who else is there to do it? When I was younger Iused to think that if I could hug myself tight enough I could make myself smaller, because there was never enough room for me, at home or anywhere, but if I was smaller then I would fit in.
    My hair is coming out from under my cap. Red hair of an ogre. A wild beast, the newspaper said. A monster. When they come with my dinner I will put the slop bucket over my head and hide behind the door, and that will give them a fright. If they want a monster so badly they ought to be provided with one.
    I never do such things, however. I only consider them. If I did them, they would be sure I had gone mad again.
Gone mad
is what they say, and sometimes
Run mad
, as if mad is a direction, like west; as if mad is a different house you could step into, or a separate country entirely. But when you go mad you don’t go any other place, you stay where you are. And somebody else comes in.
    I don’t want to be left by myself in this room. The walls are too empty, there are no pictures on them nor curtains on the little high-up window, nothing to look at and so you look at the wall, and after you do that for a time, there are pictures on it after all, and red flowers growing.
    I think I sleep.
    It’s morning now, but which one? The second or the third. There’s fresh light outside the window, that’s what woke me. I struggle upright, pinch myself and blink my eyes, and get up stiff-limbed from the rustling mattress. Then I sing a song, just to hear a voice and keep myself company:
    Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty,
Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee,
Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty,
God in three persons, Blessed Trinity.
    They can hardly object if it’s a hymn. A hymn to the morning. I have always been fond of sunrise.
    Then I drink the last of the water; then I walk around the room; then I lift my petticoats and piss in the bucket. A few more hours and it will reek in here like a cesspool.
    Sleeping in your clothes makes you tired. The clothes are crumpled, and also your body underneath them. I feel as if I’ve been rolled into a bundle and thrown on the floor.
    I wish I had a clean apron.
    Nobody comes. I’m being left to reflect on my sins and misdemeanours, and one does that best in solitude, or such is our expert and considered opinion, Grace, after long experience with these matters. In solitary confinement, and sometimes in the dark. There are prisons where they keep you in there for years, without a glimpse of a tree or horse or human face. Some say it refines the complexion.
    I’ve been shut up alone before. Incorrigible, said Dr. Bannerling, a devious dissembler. Remain quiet, I am here to examine your cerebral configuration, and first I shall measure your heartbeat and respiration, but I knew what he was up to. Take your hand off my tit, you filthy bastard, Mary Whitney would have said, but all I could say was Oh no, oh no, and no way to