Jacob Have I Loved Read Online Free

furious, but we children figured that the mainland schools were too embarrassed to be beaten out by islanders and so made up a rule to save their faces.
    Sometime before that Mr. Rice had persuaded my parents that Caroline should have voice lessons. At first they refused, not because of the time and effort it would take to get Caroline to the mainland every Saturday, but because there was no money. But Mr. Rice was determined. He took Caroline to the college in Salisbury and had her sing for the head of the music department. Not only did the man agree to take Caroline on as a private pupil, he waived the fee. Even then the two round-trip tickets on the ferry plus the taxi fare to Salisbury put anunbelievable strain on the weekly budget, but Caroline is the kind of person other people sacrifice for as a matter of course.
    I was proud of my sister, but that year, something began to rankle beneath the pride. Life begins to turn upside down at thirteen. I know that now. But at the time I thought the blame for my unhappiness must be fixed—on Caroline, on my grandmother, on my mother, even on myself. Soon I was able to blame the war.

3
    E ven I who read Time magazine from cover to cover every week was unprepared for Pearl Harbor. The machinations of European powers and the funny mustached German dictator were as remote to our island in the fall of 1941 as Silas Marner , which sapped our energies through eighth-grade English.
    There were hints, but at the time I didn’t make sense of them: Mr. Rice’s great concern for “peace on earth” as we began at Thanksgiving to prepare for our Christmas concert; overhearing a partial conversation between my parents in which my father pronounced himself “useless,” to which my mother replied, “Thank the Lord.”
    It was not a phrase my mother often used, but it was a true island expression. Rass had lived in thefear and mercy of the Lord since the early nineteenth century, when Joshua Thomas, “The Parson of the Islands,” won every man, woman, and child of us to Methodism. Old Joshua’s stamp remained upon us—Sunday school and Sunday service morning and evening, and on Wednesday night prayer meeting where the more fervent would stand to witness to the Lord’s mercies of the preceding week and all the sick and straying would be held up in prayer before the Throne of Grace.
    We kept the Sabbath. That meant no work, no radio, no fun on Sunday. But for some reason my parents were out on the Sunday afternoon that was December 7, my grandmother was snoring loudly from her bed, and Caroline was reading the deadly dull Sunday school paper—our only permitted reading on the Sabbath other than the Bible itself. So I, bored almost to madness, had wandered into the living room and turned on the radio, very low so that no one could hear, and pressed my ear against the speaker.
    â€œThe Japanese in a predawn surprise attack have destroyed the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. I repeat. The White House has confirmed that the Japanese…”
    I knew by the chill that went through my body that it meant war. All my magazine reading and overheard remarks fell at once into a grotesque but understandable pattern. I rushed up to our room where Caroline, still innocent and golden, lay stomach down on her bed reading.
    â€œCaroline!”
    She didn’t even look up. “Caroline!” I ripped the paper from under her hands. “The Japanese have invaded America!”
    â€œOh, Wheeze, for pity sake.” And hardly looking up, she grabbed for her paper. I was used to her ignoring me, but this time I would not allow it. I snatched her arm and dragged her off her bed and down the stairs to the radio. I turned the volume up full. The fact that the Japanese had attacked Hawaii rather than invaded the continental United States was a distinction that neither of us bothered to quibble over. She, like me, was totally caught by the tone of fear