"M. Rickert - Traitor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rickert Mary)

“You’re a good girl, Alika. Don’t turn the TV too loud. Maybe we’ll go
get ice cream.”

Alika’s mother goes into the room. Alika resumes spinning.

****

The room is red, the color of resistance. It is stifling hot with all the
shades pulled down. She’s considered an air-conditioner but it seems
selfish when the money could be better spent elsewhere. The resistance
isn’t about her being comfortable. She takes off her clothes and drops
them to the floor. She walks across the room and flips on the radio. It
cackles and whines as she flips through the noise. Damn station is always
moving. It’s never where it was the day before. Finally she finds it. Music
comes into the room and fills it up. She is filled with music and red. She
walks over to stare at the wall of the dead. She looks at each photograph
and says, “I remember.” They smile back at her in shades of black, white,
and gray. Sometimes she is tempted to hurry through this part or just say a
general “I remember” once to the entire wall. But she knows it isn’t her
thinking this. Resistance begins in the mind. I remember. She looks at each
face. She remembers. It is never easy.

When that’s finished she walks to the worktable. She sits down on the
towel, folded across the chair. She looks at the small flag pasted on the
wall there. The blue square filled with stars, the forbidden stripes of red and
white. She nods. I remember. Then she flicks on the light and bends over
her work.

Alika spins six more times until she is so dizzy, she spins to the chair
and plops down. When things fall back in order she looks at the closed
door behind which her mother works. Red, Alika thinks and then quickly
shakes her belled braids to try not to think it again. Alika’s mother doesn’t
know. Alika has been in the room. She’s seen everything.

Hours later, after Alika has eaten the meatloaf and mashed potatoes
and several peas; after the plate has been washed and dried and her milk
poured down the drain, while she sits in the dim heat watching her favorite
TV show, “This Is the Hour,” her mother comes out of the room, that
strange expression on her face, her skin glossy with sweat, and says, “Hey
honey, wanna go for ice cream?”

Alika looks at her and thinks, Traitor. She nods her head. Vigorously.
The bells ring but the word stays in her mind.

It’s a hot evening, so everybody is out. “Hi, Alika!” they say. “Hi,
Pauline.” Alika and her mother smile and wave, walking down the street.
When somebody whistles they both pretend they don’t hear and when they
pass J.J. who sits on his stoop braiding his own baby girl’s hair and he
says, “My, my, my,” they just ignore him too. Finally they get to the