Do you want to be a member of this clan? Send a request to the ClanLord now!
Membership subject to ClanLord approval.
Clan members can login to view private bulletins
Hey I was wondering could you not highlight the parts from the book in read as it makes it really hard to read.
This is the second part my clanmates enjoy.If your just joining go to the fist clan post please to enjoy the story.
That summer i was eleven years old,my mother fled with me (as she called it)to ransomville,new york.where we were like poor relations in the old Burkhardt house.
"be good while we're here,baby.try to be good"mother said."we're poor as church mice,and this is the church,"
there was the tacit understanding that people like us must try to be goo:it wouldn't be natural or easy.
the tall three-storied shingled house on trinity street high above the river,set back in a large,overgrown lot of aging trees,with its excess of narrow barlike windows emitting little light---the reverend's house it was known in ransomville.though the reverend,jared burkhardt,sr,,aunt esther's son,a cousin of my mother's mother, had been dead for years.like his father before him, he had been a prebyterian minister;his chuch,nearby on trinity street,had burnt downyears ago,and another, more modern church had been built for the prebyteriancongregation in a newer area of ransomville.reverend burkhardt had mariied young and his wife too was dead,unless she was simply gone'vanished and never spoken of,at least in the reverend's house.now there lived here only aunt esther and her grand son jared,jr.'a young man studying for the prebyterian ministry at a seminary in rochester:jared,jr.was home for the summer.
"at least," mother said,"thats the story aunt esther tells."
"what do you mean?"i asked."isn't it true?"
"sories are never 'true'."mother said."but they may 'almost by accident ,contain 'truth'.sometimes."
mother would not long be interested in her burkhardt relatives, but in these early days of our visit she was curious and inquisitive and suspcious and be mused.her cousin--twice-removed,jared ,sr, had been an important citizen of ransomville,she said,but he died young----thirty-nine.there was some mystery about his death,some purposeful loudiness;but asking about it,querying imperturbable old aunt esther for intance ,would be coaxing a stone to speak.also mother suspected that there was"bad blood" between her mother's family and the burkhardts,which would taint her ,too,and even me, though we had nothing to do with and of it;and though aunt easther had in fact invited use to stay with her."'bad blood"!--what does that mean/"i asked;revulsed by the thought,and mother said'"'bad feling,"basically,"and i said,"but why call it something so ugly -'bad blood'?ugh."my throat choked up as if the smell was with us in the room."one day,"mother said ominously,yet with satisfaction,"you'll know."
mother calvulated that jared',jr.was about twenty-five years pl.he was a remote cousin of mie.it had beem so many years since she'd last seen him,at the reverend's funeral,before my birth.(i did not like to think of before my birthand rarely asked questions pertaining to itt.)she wopuld not have recognized hom,she said"poor jared,jr.!"
"why 'poor'? i asked.
"to be 'jr.' is to be 'poor'.the female of the species is,at least,spared that ignominy."
mother warned me that,though jared was a relative of mine,that it did not mean he would care to spend anytine with me,nor even speak much to me (obviously,aunt esther had instructed her in this)not to take up his time,interfere with his studies;she gathered that he'd been spending the entire summer reading theological texts and laerning hebrew.he was a religious person and it must be darned hard to be religious ,mother said ,in a place like ransomville:a country town where everyone went to a church but no one much belived in god,in the sense of actually thinking about god more than about worldly,immediate things;loving and worshiping god--whatever it is that genuinly religious people give themselves up to,
"so,josie.keeep to yourself,as aunt esther would say.we're here ,but we're not family."
"don't they want us here?i thought they did.this house is so big."
"the size of the of the house has little to do with the feelings of its inhabitants.common sense should tell you that."
"is jared sick?is something wrong with him?"i'd seen something in mother's face just now.
mother said tartly,"'sick'?--what's 'sick'?who is 'well'?do you imagine,if you or i wre minutely examined,we would be one hundred percent 'well'?"
when mother spoke in this way,which was often,my anxiety grew sharper;more tactile;i could fell it flow like a low voltage electric current through me.for there was always the fear,which mother wielded asan un spoken threa,that she would suddenly,irrevocably,disclose too much.she would cease to be mother,she would slip away and i would be left alone no longer a child.for can you be a child,lacking a proximate adult to define you?
we we're in the up stairs room aunt easther had given to mother an attractive though sparsely furnished room with a door opening into and adjoining,smaller room--a former nursery/--that was mine.the windows of our rooms were ridged in dust and the panes looked tearstreaked;our view was of the overgrown,rock studded back lawn,the marsh at the bottom of the the hill and the river approximately a quarter mile away.there, the beautiful cassadaga,of which mother haad spoken of so dreamily.
as mother spoke to me of our burkhardt relatives,noe urgently,now indifferently,i had the idea that she was improvising,for her own benefit,a story of some kind;a way of organizing random facts and supposions;once she had her burkhardt story in place ,she would know how to proceed.often she looked in the eyeas if i were,not eleven years old,but another adult,a witness of a kind who might oneday testify on her behalf.for mother to look me in the eye in that way was exciting ,yetdisconcerting; for hadn't i seen her look others in the eye like that,including my father?--uttering words of apparent simplicity and directness that would turn out to be false;and the signal of the falsity, which the victimcould determine only in retrospect, was that look in Delia's eye.Yet my mother was always the kind of person you chose to believe over those luckless others who speak the truth,but a truth of lesser significance.
i loved her so.
"why are we here,mother,where people don't want us?'i asked clutching at mothers's arm."cant we go somewhere else?cant we go back home?"
deliberately mother disengaged my warm sticky fingers from her cool,delicately boned wrist.she was only half dressed,in one of her creamy-lacy slips,and her hair was unbrushed,untidy."the of ransomville and the reverend's house as house as home,baby.you wouldn't have any trouble with definitions,the."
"but arent we ever going back....there?to...."
deftly mother cut me off,before i could utter the forbidden words Dad,Daddy,Father. if one is going to make a break,mother said,the break must be absoulute,and no look ing back.
mother said, her gaze on me caculating,impatient,of the silver glint of light reflected in swift-moving water,"there is no'there',there is only 'here'just as there is no 'then' but only'now'.america is founded upon such principle,and,as americans,we must be too."
mother stretched luxurant as a bisg cat.she stood above me,beginning to brush her hair--thick,sun-bleached,wheat-colored hair--that fell to her sholders.she was delia s------- and she was thirty-one years old and she was a married woman who had abruptly left her husband for reasons only known to her;i knoew these facts,but i did know who mother was.and what would it mean to be thirty-one years old---an unthinkable age! still less did i know that it was a common at for a wife and mother to leave her husband,or if this was a uniqueness of delia's own.in the cities we'd lived i had come to have some knowledge of other children's mothers but in my pride i did not believe the such knowledge applie to Delia s-------.
i was saying to mother,i didnt know why exactly,the black snake,the black snake beautiful ,those eyes! in a small hurt voic,"mother i guess i'm...afraid,"and mother looked at me in exasperation,'don't be silly:'afraid'is only a word,"and i stamered,"...afraid of..."and mother said"'afraid' is only a word,a mere exhalation of air.don't utter it to youself and it won't be 'af-fraiid'".she was pursing her lips ironically,meaning to ridicule.and it was right for her to ridicule me when.in such state,i seemed scarcly my age but far younger,purposefully childish.but suddenly ibegan to cry,pounded my fist on her bed,the bed's aged springs creaked in protest and i pounded harder and kicked.mother had chide me many times in the past about surrendering to the mere ghost of sound that are words and now i shouted,'i hate you!what is tere that isn't a word!that isn't a sound!whatever it is...'af-raiid'thats what i am."
Really,Josie! to take yourself so seriously, at your age,"mother said cooll."Ann eleven-year-old scarcely exissts."
A red mist passed over my brain."I exists God darn! I'm here!"
To my horror then mother,smilimg her lovely smile
This is the second part my clanmates enjoy.If your just joining go to the fist clan post please to enjoy the story.
That summer i was eleven years old,my mother fled with me (as she called it)to ransomville,new york.where we were like poor relations in the old Burkhardt house.
"be good while we're here,baby.try to be good"mother said."we're poor as church mice,and this is the church,"
there was the tacit understanding that people like us must try to be goo:it wouldn't be natural or easy.
the tall three-storied shingled house on trinity street high above the river,set back in a large,overgrown lot of aging trees,with its excess of narrow barlike windows emitting little light---the reverend's house it was known in ransomville.though the reverend,jared burkhardt,sr,,aunt esther's son,a cousin of my mother's mother, had been dead for years.like his father before him, he had been a prebyterian minister;his chuch,nearby on trinity street,had burnt downyears ago,and another, more modern church had been built for the prebyteriancongregation in a newer area of ransomville.reverend burkhardt had mariied young and his wife too was dead,unless she was simply gone'vanished and never spoken of,at least in the reverend's house.now there lived here only aunt esther and her grand son jared,jr.'a young man studying for the prebyterian ministry at a seminary in rochester:jared,jr.was home for the summer.
"at least," mother said,"thats the story aunt esther tells."
"what do you mean?"i asked."isn't it true?"
"sories are never 'true'."mother said."but they may 'almost by accident ,contain 'truth'.sometimes."
mother would not long be interested in her burkhardt relatives, but in these early days of our visit she was curious and inquisitive and suspcious and be mused.her cousin--twice-removed,jared ,sr, had been an important citizen of ransomville,she said,but he died young----thirty-nine.there was some mystery about his death,some purposeful loudiness;but asking about it,querying imperturbable old aunt esther for intance ,would be coaxing a stone to speak.also mother suspected that there was"bad blood" between her mother's family and the burkhardts,which would taint her ,too,and even me, though we had nothing to do with and of it;and though aunt easther had in fact invited use to stay with her."'bad blood"!--what does that mean/"i asked;revulsed by the thought,and mother said'"'bad feling,"basically,"and i said,"but why call it something so ugly -'bad blood'?ugh."my throat choked up as if the smell was with us in the room."one day,"mother said ominously,yet with satisfaction,"you'll know."
mother calvulated that jared',jr.was about twenty-five years pl.he was a remote cousin of mie.it had beem so many years since she'd last seen him,at the reverend's funeral,before my birth.(i did not like to think of before my birthand rarely asked questions pertaining to itt.)she wopuld not have recognized hom,she said"poor jared,jr.!"
"why 'poor'? i asked.
"to be 'jr.' is to be 'poor'.the female of the species is,at least,spared that ignominy."
mother warned me that,though jared was a relative of mine,that it did not mean he would care to spend anytine with me,nor even speak much to me (obviously,aunt esther had instructed her in this)not to take up his time,interfere with his studies;she gathered that he'd been spending the entire summer reading theological texts and laerning hebrew.he was a religious person and it must be darned hard to be religious ,mother said ,in a place like ransomville:a country town where everyone went to a church but no one much belived in god,in the sense of actually thinking about god more than about worldly,immediate things;loving and worshiping god--whatever it is that genuinly religious people give themselves up to,
"so,josie.keeep to yourself,as aunt esther would say.we're here ,but we're not family."
"don't they want us here?i thought they did.this house is so big."
"the size of the of the house has little to do with the feelings of its inhabitants.common sense should tell you that."
"is jared sick?is something wrong with him?"i'd seen something in mother's face just now.
mother said tartly,"'sick'?--what's 'sick'?who is 'well'?do you imagine,if you or i wre minutely examined,we would be one hundred percent 'well'?"
when mother spoke in this way,which was often,my anxiety grew sharper;more tactile;i could fell it flow like a low voltage electric current through me.for there was always the fear,which mother wielded asan un spoken threa,that she would suddenly,irrevocably,disclose too much.she would cease to be mother,she would slip away and i would be left alone no longer a child.for can you be a child,lacking a proximate adult to define you?
we we're in the up stairs room aunt easther had given to mother an attractive though sparsely furnished room with a door opening into and adjoining,smaller room--a former nursery/--that was mine.the windows of our rooms were ridged in dust and the panes looked tearstreaked;our view was of the overgrown,rock studded back lawn,the marsh at the bottom of the the hill and the river approximately a quarter mile away.there, the beautiful cassadaga,of which mother haad spoken of so dreamily.
as mother spoke to me of our burkhardt relatives,noe urgently,now indifferently,i had the idea that she was improvising,for her own benefit,a story of some kind;a way of organizing random facts and supposions;once she had her burkhardt story in place ,she would know how to proceed.often she looked in the eyeas if i were,not eleven years old,but another adult,a witness of a kind who might oneday testify on her behalf.for mother to look me in the eye in that way was exciting ,yetdisconcerting; for hadn't i seen her look others in the eye like that,including my father?--uttering words of apparent simplicity and directness that would turn out to be false;and the signal of the falsity, which the victimcould determine only in retrospect, was that look in Delia's eye.Yet my mother was always the kind of person you chose to believe over those luckless others who speak the truth,but a truth of lesser significance.
i loved her so.
"why are we here,mother,where people don't want us?'i asked clutching at mothers's arm."cant we go somewhere else?cant we go back home?"
deliberately mother disengaged my warm sticky fingers from her cool,delicately boned wrist.she was only half dressed,in one of her creamy-lacy slips,and her hair was unbrushed,untidy."the of ransomville and the reverend's house as house as home,baby.you wouldn't have any trouble with definitions,the."
"but arent we ever going back....there?to...."
deftly mother cut me off,before i could utter the forbidden words Dad,Daddy,Father. if one is going to make a break,mother said,the break must be absoulute,and no look ing back.
mother said, her gaze on me caculating,impatient,of the silver glint of light reflected in swift-moving water,"there is no'there',there is only 'here'just as there is no 'then' but only'now'.america is founded upon such principle,and,as americans,we must be too."
mother stretched luxurant as a bisg cat.she stood above me,beginning to brush her hair--thick,sun-bleached,wheat-colored hair--that fell to her sholders.she was delia s------- and she was thirty-one years old and she was a married woman who had abruptly left her husband for reasons only known to her;i knoew these facts,but i did know who mother was.and what would it mean to be thirty-one years old---an unthinkable age! still less did i know that it was a common at for a wife and mother to leave her husband,or if this was a uniqueness of delia's own.in the cities we'd lived i had come to have some knowledge of other children's mothers but in my pride i did not believe the such knowledge applie to Delia s-------.
i was saying to mother,i didnt know why exactly,the black snake,the black snake beautiful ,those eyes! in a small hurt voic,"mother i guess i'm...afraid,"and mother looked at me in exasperation,'don't be silly:'afraid'is only a word,"and i stamered,"...afraid of..."and mother said"'afraid' is only a word,a mere exhalation of air.don't utter it to youself and it won't be 'af-fraiid'".she was pursing her lips ironically,meaning to ridicule.and it was right for her to ridicule me when.in such state,i seemed scarcly my age but far younger,purposefully childish.but suddenly ibegan to cry,pounded my fist on her bed,the bed's aged springs creaked in protest and i pounded harder and kicked.mother had chide me many times in the past about surrendering to the mere ghost of sound that are words and now i shouted,'i hate you!what is tere that isn't a word!that isn't a sound!whatever it is...'af-raiid'thats what i am."
Really,Josie! to take yourself so seriously, at your age,"mother said cooll."Ann eleven-year-old scarcely exissts."
A red mist passed over my brain."I exists God darn! I'm here!"
To my horror then mother,smilimg her lovely smile
im sorry i will not be able to post the next part of the story because i wiil be a way.
Hi Im a goth girl from England,how is everyone?
SATANGOTHGIRL
10:32 PM, 2008.01.18