Lilith Read Online Free Page B

undisguised by perfume or cosmetics, moist and earthlike, which I could not escape. I knew that she leaned forward purposely to expose, beneath the fallen front of her dress, her heavy naked breasts, and I lowered my eyes quickly, shifting my hands among the groceries. I found the order slip and gave it to her, relinquishing it hastily to avoid the touch of her hands.
    “Here it is, ma’am.”
    “Oh, yes. Thank you. Now, let me see.”
    She studied the slip of paper for a moment, frowning and shaking her head. “I just can’t make out a thing without my glasses. I wonder if you’d read it off to me. I know you won’t have any trouble reading it, with those lovely big brown eyes.”
    I murmured with embarrassment. She turned her back against me, her body touching mine, and held the slip for me to read across her shoulder. I stood cringing from the contact of her body, staring at her hands in a kind of grief. They were still firm and strong enough to be womanly, but they were aging hands, the skin dry and freckled with pale-brown patches of pigment, the fingers slightly swollen, puffed about her rings, the veins corded and blue—my grandmother’s hands, as I had watched them sewing so many times. When she lifted one suddenly to clasp my chin in it I felt strengthless with shame, but out of some obscure, fierce sense of charity or dignity, I did not flinch. I smiled at her, my face flaming, while she squeezed my cheek and jaw lightly and said in a voice of dreadful, sweetened fondness, “My, they certainly do have handsome young grocery men these days. I can just see I’m going to have to let Dora off every Saturday morning.”
    I could not move or speak. She held my chin for a moment, smiling at me with heavy, suddenly undisguised concupiscence, while I stared beyond her, my eyes moving in idle, random desperation about the room. I do not know what I should have done—perhaps I should have yielded to her—if I had not chanced to see in that moment the dress which she had dropped into a chair. I realized suddenly that she had just exchanged it, as I was entering the house, for the one she was now wearing—and on the pale-blue silk, exposed as she had dropped it carelessly, I could see a dark-edged, scarlet stain of menstrual blood.
    There was a convulsion of disgust in my throat, and I turned quickly, mumbling some absurd apology, and left the house, lurching against the door frame in my haste and barely controlling an hysterical desire to run as I went down the back steps and along the stone walk to the street. I do not know how I managed to conceal my feelings from Charlie—perhaps his cheerful simplicity made him oblivious to them—but he said nothing. I sat beside him, burning-faced and tremulous, in the truck while we drove through the suddenly oppressive sunlight and parked directly opposite the Lodge. I was, for once, far too distracted to glance in its direction, even to think of it. My hands were still trembling as I opened the rear door of the van to remove the box of groceries, and in my agitation I dropped the carton. A box of eggs fell open and smashed upon the pavement. I stood, staring down at them bleakly: bright-yellow, shining, naked yolks, some of them broken and oozing in livid rivulets, embedded in a pool of glittering colorless slime.
    There came, from across the street, a sprinkle of cool, delightful laughter. I lifted my head and looked across the pavement and the low barberry hedge which bordered it, to the asylum lawn. A girl in a white dress stood watching me in the broken shadow of a willow. Her long yellow hair, very pale and radiant, like sunlight through honey, lay softly on her shoulders, stirring a little in a breath of air which swung the willow trailers gracefully in front of her. She held them apart with her hand, looking through at me. I shall say her face was slender and white, with great violet eyes and a bright, tender mouth, cleft with a hint of cruelty, but merry in that