The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro Read Free Book Online Page A

them.
    “Too old for the cradle, too young for the bed!”
    Rose had no idea what that meant, but she was full of admiration for the way Cora turned on her hips, for the taunting, cruel, yet lazy and unperturbed sound of her voice, her glossy look. When she was by herself she would act that out, the whole scene, the boys calling, Rose being Cora. She would turn just as Cora did, on her imaginary tormentors, she would deal out just such provocative scorn.
    Too old for the cradle, too young for the bed!
    Rose walked around the yard behind the store, imagining the fleshy satin rippling over her own hips, her own hair rolled and dipping, her lips red. She wanted to grow up to be exactly like Cora. She did not want to wait to grow up. She wanted to be Cora, now.
    Cora wore high heels to school. She was not light-footed. When she walked around the schoolroom in her rich dresses you could feel the room tremble, you could hear the windows rattle. You could smell her, too. Her talcum and cosmetics, her warm dark skin and hair.
    T he three of them sat at the top of the fire escape, in the first warm weather. They were putting on nail polish. It smelled like bananas, with a queer chemical edge. Rose had meant to go up the fire escape into the school, as she usually did, avoiding the everyday threat of themain entrance, but when she saw those girls she turned back, she did not dare expect them to shift over.
    Cora called down.
    “You can come up if you want to. Come on up!”
    She was teasing her, encouraging her, as she would a puppy.
    “How would you like to get your nails done?”
    “Then they’ll all want to,” said the girl named Bernice, who as it turned out owned the nail polish.
    “We won’t do them,” said Cora. “We’ll just do her. What’s your name? Rose? We’ll just do Rose. Come on up, honey.”
    She made Rose hold out her hand. Rose saw with alarm how mottled it was, how grubby. And it was cold and trembly. A small, disgusting object. Rose would not have been surprised to see Cora drop it.
    “Spread your fingers out. There. Relax. Lookit your hand shake! I’m not going to bite you. Am I? Hold steady like a good girl. You don’t want me to go all crooked, do you?”
    She dipped the brush in the bottle. The color was deep red, like raspberries. Rose loved the smell. Cora’s own fingers were large, pink, steady, warm.
    “Isn’t that pretty? Won’t your nails look pretty?”
    She was doing it in the difficult, now-forgotten style of that time, leaving the half-moon and the whites of the nails bare.
    “It’s rosy to match your name. That’s a pretty name, Rose. I like it. I like it better than Cora. I hate Cora. Your fingers are freezing for such a warm day. Aren’t they freezing, compared to mine?”
    She was flirting, indulging herself, as girls that age will do. They will try out charm on anything, on dogs or cats or their own faces in the mirror. Rose was too much overcome to enjoy herself, at the moment. She was weak and dazzled, terrified by such high favor.
    From that day on, Rose was obsessed. She spent her time trying to walk and look like Cora, repeating every word she had ever heard her say. Trying to be her. There was a charm for Rose about every gesture Cora made, about the way she stuck a pencil into her thick, coarse hair, the way she groaned sometimes in school, with imperial boredom. The way she licked her finger and carefully smoothed her eyebrows. Rose licked her own finger and smoothed her own eyebrows,longing for them to be dark, instead of sunbleached and nearly invisible.
    Imitation was not enough. Rose went further. She imagined that she would be sick and Cora would somehow be called to look after her. Nighttime cuddles, strokings, rockings. She made up stories of danger and rescue, accidents and gratitude. Sometimes she rescued Cora, sometimes Cora rescued Rose. Then all was warmth, indulgence, revelations.
    That’s a pretty name.
    Come on up, honey.
    The opening, the increase,