Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [12]
Half-way up they closed in on me and started talking. The girl said, ‘Look the crazy girl, you crazy like your mother. Your aunt frightened to have you in the house. She send you for the nuns to lock up. Your mother walk about with no shoes and stockings on her feet, she sans culottes. She try to kill her husband and she try to kill you too that day you go to see her. She have eyes like zombie and you have eyes like zombie too. Why you won’t look at me.’ The boy only said, ‘One day I catch you alone, you wait, one day I catch you alone.’ When I got to the top of the hill they were jostling me, I could smell the girl’s hair.
A long empty street stretched away to the convent, the convent wall and a wooden gate. I would have to ring before I could get in. The girl said, ‘You don’t want to look at me, eh, I make you look at me.’ She pushed me and the books I was carrying fell to the ground.
I stoop to pick them up and saw that a tall boy that was walking along the other side of the street had stopped and looked toward us. Then he crossed over, running. He had long legs, his feet hardly touch the ground. As soon as they saw him, they turned and walked away. He looked after them, puzzled. I would have died sooner than run when they were there, but as soon as they had gone, I ran. I left one of my books on the ground and the tall boy came after me.
‘You dropped this,’ he said, and smiled. I knew who he was, his name was Sandi, Alexander Cosway’s son. Once I would have said ‘my cousin Sandi’ but Mr Mason’s lectures had made me shy about my coloured relatives. I muttered, ‘Thank you.’
‘I’ll talk to that boy,’ he said. ‘He won’t bother you again.’
In the distance I could see my enemy’s red hair as he pelted along, but he hadn’t a chance. Sandi caught him up before he reached the corner. The girl had disappeared. I didn’t wait to see what happened but I pulled and pulled at the bell.
At last the door opened. The nun was a coloured woman and she seemed displeased. ‘You must not ring the bell like that,’ she said. ‘I come as quick as I can.’ Then I heard the door shut behind me.
I collapsed ad began to cry. She asked me if I was sick, but I could not answer. She took my hand, still clicking her tongue and muttering in an ill-tempered was, and led me across the yard, past the shadow of the big tree, not into the front door but into a big, cool, stone-flagged room. There were pots and pans hanging on the wall and a stone fireplace. There was another nun at the back of the room and when the bell rang again, the first one went to answer it. The second nun, also a coloured woman, brought a basin and water but as fast as she sponged my face, so fast did I cry. When she saw my hand she asked if I had fallen and hurt myself. I shook my head and she sponged the stain away gently. ‘What is the matter, what are you crying about? What has happened to you?’ And still I could not answer. She brought me a glass of milk, I tried to drink it, but I choked. ‘Oh la la,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders and went out.
When she came in again, a third nun was with her who said in a calm voice, ‘You have cried quite enough now, you must stop. Have you got a handkerchief?’
I remembered that I had dropped it. The new nun wiped my eyes with a large handkerchief, gave it to me and asked my name.
‘Antoinette,’ I said.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I know. You are Antoinette Cosway, that is to say Antoinette Mason. Has someone frightened you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Now look at me,’ she said. ‘You will not be frightened of me.’
I looked at her. She had large brown eyes, very soft, and was dressed in white, not with a starched apron like the others had. The band round her face was of linen and above the white linen a black veil of some thin material, which fell on folds down her back. He cheeks were red, she had a laughing face and two deep dimples. Her hands were small but they looked clumsy and swollen, not like the rest of her. It was only afterwards