The Optimist's Daughter Read Online Free PDF

A great hulking man in a short coat like a red blanket, who was too gray-headed to be her child, spoke like her child and took a drink from a pint bottle of whiskey.
    “They still ain’t letting us in but one at a time. It’s your turn,” the old woman said. She went on to Fay. “You from Mississippi? We’re from Mississippi. Most of us claims Fox Hill.”
    “I’m not from Mississippi. I’m from Texas.” She let out a long cry.
    “Yours been operated on? Ours been operated on,” said one of the daughters to Fay. “He’s been in intensive care ever since they got through with him. His chances are a hundred to one against.”
    “Go on in yonder, scare-cat,” ordered the mother.
    “They went in my husband’s eye without consulting my feelings and next they try to run me out of this hospital!” cried Fay.
    “Mama, it’s Archie Lee’s turn, and I come after you. Go yourself,” said the daughter.
    “I reckon you’ll have to excuse me a minute,” the old woman said to Fay. She began brushing at her bosom where Fay had cried, shaking herself to get the crumbs off her skirt. “I declare, I’m getting to where I ain’t got much left to say to Dad myself.”
    “You know what his face looks like to me? A piece of paper,” said a wizened-looking daughter.
    “I ain’t going to tell him that,” said the old woman.
    “Tell him you ain’t got too much longer to stay,” suggested one of the sons.
    “Ask him if he knows who you are,” said the wizened-looking daughter.
    “Or you can just try keeping your mouth shut,” said Archie Lee.
    “He’s your dad, the same as mine,” warned the old woman. “I’m going in because you skipped your turn. Now wait for me! Don’t run off and leave me.”
    “He don’t know I’m living,” said Archie Lee, as the woman trudged through the doorway in Indian moccasins. He tilted up the bottle: Mr. Dalzell’s son, long lost.
    Fay sobbed the louder after the old woman went.
    “How you like Mississippi?” Mr. Dalzell’s family asked, almost in a chorus. “Don’t you think it’s friendly?” asked the wizened daughter.
    “I guess I’m used to Texas.”
    “Mississippi is the best state in the Union,” said Archie Lee and he put his feet up and stretched out full length on the couch.
    “I didn’t say I didn’t have kin here. I had a grandpa living close to Bigbee, Mississippi,” Fay said.
    “Now you’re talking!” the youngest girl said. “We know right where Bigbee is, could find it for you right now. Fox Hill is harder to find than Bigbee. But we don’t think it’s lonesome, because by the time you get all of us together, there’s nine of us, not counting the tadpoles. Ten, if Granddad gets over this. He’s got cancer.”
    “Cancer’s what my dad had. And Grandpa! Grandpa loved me better than all the rest. That sweet old man, he died in my arms,” Fay said, glaring at Laurel across the room. “They died, but not before they did every bit they could to help themselves, and tried all their might to get better, for our sakes. They said they knew, if they just tried hard enough—”
    “I always tell mine to have faith,” said the wizened daughter.
    And as if their vying and trouble-swapping were the order of the day, or the order of the night, in the waiting room, they were all as unaware of the passing of the minutes as the man on the couch, whose dangling hand now let the bottle drop and slide like an empty slipper across the floor into Laurel’s path. She walked on, giving them the wide berth of her desolation.
    “Wish they’d give Dad something to drink. Washhis mouth out,” said the old mother coming back—Laurel nearly met her in the door.
    “Remember Mamie’s boy?” Another family had come in, grouping themselves around the Coke machine. The man who was working it called out, “He shot hisself or somebody shot him, one. He begged for water. The hospital wouldn’t give him none. Honey, he died wanting water.”
    “I remember