Six-Gun Snow White Read Online Free PDF Page B

scrubbed and my hands tingled where I had rubbed them raw scrubbing just that morning. Young Mrs. H looked up at a fine lady in a primrose dress and I heard her say something real quiet like the mirror was a muzzle.
    Why do I have to work on my knees? We have more maids than books in the library. Mrs. H held out her hands. Lye burns slicked them like shiny snail-tracks.
    The woman in the primrose dress answered: this is what it means to be a woman in the world. Work until you die and work again after. Your only choice is whether you scrub the vaults of hell or the halls of heaven. Anyone who tells you different is a huckster with his hand in your pocket.
    The brush in Mrs. H’s hand blinked out and with a quickness she was bent over in the hearth in a yellow apron, picking out hard little peas. Her face was full of ash like a Catholic in spring. The same fine lady wore a cornflower dress.
    Why do I have to comb the grate? We have charwomen and sculleries as plentiful as water . Mrs. H held out her hands. Ash turned them dead and grey.
    The woman in the cornflower dress answered: this is what it means to be a woman in the world. Obey until a man gives you permission to die and keep on obeying after. The tasks you’re handed make less sense than a rooster in a Sunday hat, but if God wanted us to have a say he’d have made us men .
    The hearth hissed away like steam and young Mrs. H stood in a forest blacker and older than any white pine I’d shot a squirrel out of. She was crying. Up until then I had never seen anyone cry but me, and suspected I was the only one who could do it. I was the only body weak enough. Everyone else had a strong thing inside them where I had tears, and that strong thing protected them against sadness. But young Mrs. H was crying and no mistaking. She unbuttoned her dress and pulled out her laces and stepped naked out of her skirt into the night. The same terrible eyeball of a moon that lived in the mirror shone down and turned her blue. I had never seen a naked woman before. I could not breathe right and my heart ricocheted all over the inside of me like a misfired bullet. Mrs. H looked like a person come to visit from another planet. Her breasts and her belly glowed aquamarine, her muscled legs moved like I imagined that striped, antlered unicorn in the painting moved, graceful as a star coming up in evening. That hair like a long, stiff drink covered her hind parts which made me sorry. I wanted to look at her forever.
    Mrs. H dropped to the ground and hit that forest with both fists. She cried and she screamed and she grabbed at the mud, smearing it all over her and scratching herself bloody. Get me out , she said into the earth. Get me out .
    Well, I guess in New England there’s things living under the world that answer when you holler at them like that. Two arms bigger than stovepipes came up out of the loam and the grime, and the arms were loam and grime and leaves and roots, and they wrapped around Mrs. H like the tenderest husband ever born. A stony hand stroked her hair I heard a quiet voice like it was a long way off, but so close it whispered right in my ear:
    This is what it means to be a woman in this world. Every step is a bargain with pain. Make your black deals in the black wood and decide what you’ll trade for power. For the opposite of weakness, which is not strength but hardness. I am a trap, but so is everything. Pick your price. I am a huckster with a hand in your pocket. I am freedom and I will eat your heart.
    The loamy arms gathered Mrs. H close in. A still pool opened up under her body like a bloodstain. The water shone clear and perfect as a mirror. For a second she floated on top of the pool, then it flowed around her, up over her skin and into her mouth, filling up all the empty places in her body and pulling her down into the starry slick of it. Under the surface, her face looked so happy. But that’s not what I mean. I mean her face was happiness. Like her perfume