Lives of Girls and Women Read Online Free PDF

know. They can work on a province-wide basis. Nation-wide, if necessary. They’ll find her.”
    â€œHold on a minute,” said my father. “What makes you think the police would be ready to do that? They only track down criminals that way.”
    â€œWell what is a woman who beats a child if she isn’t a criminal?” “You have to have a case. You have to have witnesses. If you’re going to come out in the open like that you have to have proof.”
    â€œBenny is the witness. He’d tell them. He’d testify against her.” She turned to Uncle Benny who started his hiccoughs again and said witlessly, “What’s that mean I have to do?”

    â€œEnough talk about it for now,” my father said. “We’ll wait and see.” My mother stood up, offended and mystified. She had to say one thing more, so she said what everybody knew.
    â€œI don’t know what the hesitation is about. It’s crystal-clear to me.”
    But what was crystal-clear to my mother was obviously hazy and terrifying to Uncle Benny. Whether he was afraid of the police, or just afraid of the public and official air of such a scheme, the words surrounding it, the alien places it would take him into, was impossible to tell. Whatever it was, he crumpled, and would not talk about Madeleine and Diane any more.
    What was to be done? My mother brooded over the idea of taking action herself but my father told her, “You’re in trouble from the start when you interfere with other people’s families.”
    â€œJust the same I know I’m right.”
    â€œYou may be right but that doesn’t mean there’s a thing you can do about it.”
    At this time of year the foxes were having their pups. If an airplane from the Air Force Training School on the lake came over too low, if a stranger appeared near the pens, if anything too startling or disruptive occurred, they might decide to kill them. Nobody knew whether they did this out of blind irritation, or out of roused and terrified maternal feeling—could they be wanting to take their pups, who still had not opened their eyes, out of the dangerous situation they might sense they had brought them into, in these pens? They were not like domestic animals. They had lived only a very few generations in captivity.
    To further persuade my mother, my father said that Madeleine might have gone to the States, where nobody could ever find her. Many bad, and crazy, as well as restless and ambitious people went there eventually.
    But Madeleine had not. Later in the spring came a letter. She had the nerve to write, said Uncle Benny and brought the letter and showed it. Without salutation she said: I left my yellow sweater and a green umbrella and dianes blanket at your place send them to me here. 1249 Ridlet St., Toronto, Ont .
    Uncle Benny had already made up his mind that he was going down there. He asked to borrow the car. He had never been to Toronto. On the kitchen table, my father spread the road-map, showing how to get there, though he said he wondered if it was a good idea. Uncle Benny said he planned to get Diane and bring her back. Both my mother and father pointed out that this was illegal, and advised against it. But Uncle Benny, so terrified of taking legal and official action, was not in the least worried about undertaking what might turn out to be kidnapping. He told stories now of what Madeleine had done. She had held Diane’s legs to the bars of the crib with leather straps. She had walloped her with a shingle. She had done worse than that, maybe, when he wasn’t there. Marks of the poker, he thought, had been on the child’s back. Telling all this, he was overcome with his apologetic half-laughter; he would have to shake his head and swallow it down.

    He was gone two days. My father turned on the ten o’clock news, saying, “Well we’ll have to see if old Benny’s got picked up!” On