Freaky Green Eyes by Joyce Carol Oates Read Free Book Online

diverse neighborhood. I had lots of friends there and hated to move. (And I hated the new house. I cried and sulked for days.) Mom kept saying, “It’s an adventure! It’s like a spaceship.” We were lucky Dad allowed Mom to furnish the lower-floor rooms herself.
    Last year Mom converted a room in the guest wing into a small studio. She was taking classes in pottery, weaving, and painting. Her studio wasn’t large and didn’t have a spectacular view of the lake, but it had a skylight, and Samantha and I had fun helping Mom paint the walls a warm pale yellow so there was the feeling in Mom’s studio that the sun was shining, or almost, on even our gloomiest winter days.
    In the Pacific Northwest rain forest, which iswhere we live, it can rain for weeks at a time. No sun. And if the sun appears, it can disappear within seconds.
    Dad had allowed Mom to convert the room into a studio, but he’d never liked the idea. The more time Mom spent at home, in that studio, the less time she had for the kinds of socializing he thought a wife of his should be doing, like lunching with the well-to-do women who ran such organizations as the Friends of the Seattle Opera and United Charities. He complained that, far away at the other end of the house where their bedroom was, he could smell paint fumes. They gave him a sinus headache, damn it! When Mom showed him the first weavings and clay pots she’d made, which Samantha and I thought were very beautiful, Dad just smiled and shook his head like an indulgent father. “This is what you’ve been doing, Krista? They’re fine. Great.” That was all he said. Mom was hurt but tried not to show it.
    Soon she stopped showing Dad her new work,even when she was able to place it in a local gallery and began selling it. And Dad never asked about it, or visited Mom’s cozy studio.
    Lots of things I’d always told my mom I’d never have told my dad. But lately I wasn’t telling Mom things, either. Since Freaky entered my heart, last July on Puget Sound. I wondered if Freaky would have come to me if it hadn’t been for Cameron; if I hadn’t almost made a terrible mistake and become desperate. You should see your eyes! Freaky green eyes! You’re crazy! But I wasn’t crazy, I knew that. I was stronger, I was empowered. I liked myself better than I ever had before, since I was a small child. Weird thoughts came to me, like You belong in this world, just like everyone else. Except you’re Freaky Green Eyes, so you know it .
    Since starting my period, I’d been kind of disgusted with myself, or ashamed of myself, I don’t know. But since Freaky, I didn’t feel that way. I remembered how I’d escaped from Cameron, how I’d joggedback home in the rain, so happy. I stood in front of my bedroom mirror naked, as I’d never done before, liking my hard little breasts with the dimple-nipples, and the pale-flamy swath of silky hairs at my crotch, and my lean muscled swimmer’s legs, even my long, narrow, toadstool-white feet. I didn’t stare or ogle, I just looked at myself like you’d look at a flower, or a tree, or an animal, anything natural, unclothed. Especially, though, I did admire my carroty-red hair, which I was letting grow long, frizzy and static with electricity, past my shoulders. Most of the time I fastened it into a ponytail to keep it out of my face. (Mom gave me a silver clasp for the ponytail, inlaid with turquoise stones.) Like my eyes, it was Freaky’s special sign. But I felt good about it, not secretive.
    Was I sad that I no longer told my mother the things that mattered most to me? Twyla said it was the same with her. “Suddenly, one day, I heard myself lying to my mother. Not for any special reason—just I didn’t want her to know my heart.”
    I said to Twyla, “I don’t think I’d ever wantanybody to know my heart. Who could you trust?”
    We