Ten Little Indians by Sherman Alexie Read Free Book Online

to spell matriarchy.
    She hurried to the bookstore and walked inside. An elderly woman was crocheting behind the front desk.
    “Can I help you?” the yarn woman asked.
    “I’m just waiting for somebody,” Corliss said.
    “A young man, perhaps?”
    Why were young women always supposed to be waiting for young men? Corliss didn’t like young men all that much. Or old men, either. She was no virgin. She’d slept with three boys and heavily petted a dozen more, but she’d also gone to bed with one woman and French-kissed the holy-moly out of another, and hey, maybe that was the way to go. Maybe I’m not exactly a lesbian, Corliss thought, but I might be an inexact lesbian.
    “Is there a man waiting at home for you?” Corliss asked and immediately felt like a jerk.
    “Oh, no,” the yarn woman said and smiled. “My husband died twenty years ago. If he’s waiting for me, he’s all the way upstairs, you know?”
    “I’m sorry,” Corliss said and meant it.
    “It’s okay, dear, I shouldn’t have invaded your privacy. You go on ahead and look for what you came for.”
    On every mission, there is a time to be strong and a time to be humble.
    “Listen, my name is Corliss Joseph, and I’m sorry for being such a bitch. There’s no excuse for it. I’m really angry with the guy I’m supposed to be meeting here soon. He’s not my boyfriend, or even my friend, or anything like that. He’s a stranger, but I thought I knew him. And he disappointed me. I don’t even think I have a right to be angry with him. So I’m really confused about—Well, I’m confused about my whole life right now. So I’m sorry, I really am, and I’m usually a much kinder person than this, you know?”
    The yarn woman was eighty years old. She knew.
    “My name is Lillian, and thank you for being so honest. When your friend, or whatever he is, arrives, I’ll turn off my hearing aids so you’ll have privacy.”
    Who would ever think of such an eccentric act of kindness? An old woman who owned a bookstore!
    “Thank you,” Corliss said. “I’ll just look around until he gets here.”
    She walked through the bookstore that smelled of musty paper and moldy carpet. She scanned the shelves and read the names of authors printed on the spines of all the lovely, lovely books. She loved the smell of new books, sure, but she loved the smell of old books even more. She thought old books smelled like everybody who’d ever read them. Possibly that was a disgusting thought, and it certainly was a silly thought, but Corliss felt like old books were sentient beings that listened and remembered and passed judgment. Oh, God, I’m going to cry again, Corliss thought, I’m losing my mind in a used-book store. I am my mother’s daughter. And that made her laugh. Hey, she thought, I’m riding in the front car of the crazy-woman roller coaster.
    She knew she needed to calm down. And to calm down, she needed to perform her usual bookstore ceremony. She found the books by her favorite authors—Whitman, Shapiro, Jordan, Turcotte, Plath, Lourie, O’Hara, Hershon, Alvarez, Brook, Schreiber, Pawlak, Offutt, Duncan, Moore—and reshelved them with their front covers facing outward. The other books led with their spines, but Corliss’s favorites led with their chests, bellies, crotches, and faces. The casual reader wouldn’t be able to resist these books now. Choose me! Choose me! The browser would fall in love at first sight. Corliss, in love with poetry, opened Harlan Atwater’s book and read one more sonnet:
    Poverty
    When you’re poor and hungry
    And love your dog
    You share your food with him.
    There is no love like his.
    When you’re poor and hungry
    And your dog gets sick,
    You can’t afford to take him
    To the veterinarian,
    So you have to watch him get sicker
    And cough blood and cry all night.
    You can’t afford to put him gently to sleep
    So your uncle comes over for free
    And shoots your dog twice in the head
    And buries him in the town