Ladies In The Parlor Read Free

Leora walked slowly home and lay upon her bed without undressing. Unable to sleep, she stared upward in the dark until dawn. Restless, she rose and sat on the porch until the factory whistles blew at seven.
    A clatter arose in the house. The family was getting up.
    Her father would soon be home. She had avoided him before. Now she sat quite still. Seeing him coming, she went into the house and took a pair of sharp scissors from the sewing machine drawer and returned to her chair on the porch.
    When Blair entered the yard, rattling his tin dinner bucket, he looked in surprise at Leora and half sneered, “You here?”
    “Yes, I’m here; I couldn’t sleep from your beating.”
    He started toward her and stopped suddenly, seeing the scissors in her hand.
    “If you ever lay a dirty hand on me again,” she cried, “I’ll stab you—and if I don’t while you’re doin’ it, I’ll stab you while you sleep. You ain’t goin’ to run me away like you did my brother.”
    The startled father asked, “Ain’t he back yet?”
    “No, and I don’t think he’s coming back this time.”
    “He’s like you,” said the father, “he belongs in the reform school.”
    “Nobody thinks so but you. You’re so mean you hate your shadow. He’s a good boy; you just pounded him till he’s like a beaten-up dog, and damn you, you’ll suffer for it. Now I want to tell you, I’m not running away and I’m not going to the reform school, and if you send me, I’ll run away and sneak in the house and stab you. I want you to let me alone. You may be stronger’n me, but that’s no sign you can scare me.”
    The mother came to the porch.
    “You hear this, Ma?” asked the father.
    The flat-breasted woman stood erect. “Yes, I heard it and all I’m sayin’ is—she’s right. God never gave no man the right to beat Leora’s nice body till it’s black and blue’. You drove my boy away—for he ain’t in his bed.”
    The mother trembled and sobbed with new-found courage.
    The other children gathered about and stared at Leora.
    “Take Ma inside,” she said, “And you, Sally, go get us some breakfast.”
    The father stared after the mother as the children helped her, still sobbing, inside the house.
    “This is a purty thing to come home to.” He stepped toward the porch.
    “It’s what you deserve,” the girl said.
    “If you don’t put up them scissors, I’ll call the police.”
    The girl sneered, “You beat us up, and if we fight back, you call the cops.” She stepped forward. “Go ahead and call them. I’ll tell them what you did to Buddy, and show them what you did to me. We take your beatings because we’re proud, but I’m not proud no more—and I want you to let us alone—every one of us.”
    The words stunned the father.
    “All right,” he said.
    The girl stepped on the burnt lawn. The father went into the house.
    Breakfast was eaten in silence. The meal finished, Sally rose and asked, half to herself, “I wonder where Buddy is.”
    The children looked at Leora, then at the father. The mother left the table, sobbing. Leora and Sally went to comfort her.
    Mrs. Blair had leaned on Leora more than on her other children. Leora, in turn, had mingled contempt and kindness for her. For years she had heard of her mother’s girlhood and of her marriage.
    “He was a handsome man then,” her mother used to say. “No better looking man ever made love to a woman nowheres.”
    Leora, allowing her mother to dream, would make no comment.
    She had suffered long with Blair, a failure at everything. After their marriage they had gone on their wedding trip in a prairie schooner to a homestead which Blair bad taken in the West.
    She wore a calico dress of white, sprigged with pink roses. A large sunbonnet was drawn over her hair. It was then the shade of her beautiful daughter’s.
    For over three weeks they were on the way. The roads were drifted cattle trails. They did not talk much. When she became tired of gazing at the