Ida a Novel Read Free

the rain and when it began to rain he ran away from Ida and then he ran back to her because after all he could not run away from the rain because the rain followed him. And so he ran back again to Ida.
    And then Ida left there and went to live in a city. She lived with her old grandfather. He was so old and weak you wondered how he could walk any farther but he always could. Ida paid no attention to her grandfather.
    While she was in the city funny things happened to her.
    It was the month of August. August is a month when if it is hot weather it is really very hot.
    Some funny things happened then. Ida was out, she was always out or in, both being exciting.
    She was out it was towards evening it was time when public parks were closed and Ida was looking in through the railing, and she saw right across the corner that some one else was looking and looking at her. It was a policeman. He was bending down and looking at her. She was not worrying but she did wonder why he was getting down to look at her across the corner. And then she saw next to her a very old woman, well was it or was it not a woman, she had so much clothing on and so many things hanging from her and she was carrying so many things she might have been anything.
    Ida went away it was time for her to be at home.
    Finally August was over and then it was September.
    Sometimes in a public park she saw an old woman making over an old brown dress that is pieces of it to make herself another dress. She had it all on all she owned in the way of clothes and she was very busy. Ida never spoke to her.
    Ida was getting to be older. Sometimes she thought about a husband but she knew that a husband meant marriage and marriage meant changes and changes meant names and after all she had so many changes but she did have just that one name Ida and she liked it to stay with her. And then another funny thing happened to her.
    It was winter and Ida never wondered because thunder rumbled in winter, that lightning struck and thunder rumbled in winter. It just did.
    Ida paid no attention to that but she did one day see a man carrying an advertisement on his back, a sandwich man, that was all right but what was funny was that he stopped and he was talking as if he knew him to a big well dressed rich man.
    Ida very quickly went off home.
    Then she went to live with another great-aunt outside of the city and there she decided and she told her dog Love about it, she decided that she would be a twin.
    She had not yet decided to be a twin when another funny thing happened to her.
    She was walking with her dog Love, they were walking and suddenly he left her to bark at something, that something was a man stretched out by the side of the road, not sleeping, because his legs were kicking, not dead, because he was rolling, not happy, because he just was not, and he was dressed in soldier’s clothing. Love the dog went up to him, not to sniff, not to bark, he just went up to him and when Ida came near she saw he was not a white man, he was an Arab, and of course the dog Love did not bark at him. How could he when an Arab smells of herbs and fields and not of anything human. Ida was not frightened, he got up the Arab and he began to make motions of drinking. Ida might have been frightened if it had been toward evening, which it was, and she had been all alone, which she was, but she motioned back that she had nothing, and the Arab got up, and stood, and then suddenly, he went away. Ida instead of going on the way she was going went back the way she had come.
    She heard about religion but she never really did happen to have any. One day, it was summer, she was in another place and she saw a lot of people under the trees and she went too. They were there and some one was moving around among them, they were all sitting and kneeling, not all of them but most of them and in the middle there was one slowly walking and her arms were slowly moving and everybody was following and some when their arms were