Read The Bell Jar for Free Online Page A

like a hula fringe.
                    I recognized the short, squat,
mustached woman in the black uniform as the night maid who ironed day dresses
and party frocks in a crowded cubicle on our floor. I couldn’t understand how
she came to know Doreen or why she should want to help Doreen wake me up
instead of leading her quietly back to her own room.
                    Seeing Doreen supported in my
arms and silent except for a few wet hiccups, the woman strode away down the
hall to her cubicle with its ancient Singer sewing machine and white ironing
board. I wanted to run after her and tell her I had nothing to do with Doreen,
because she looked stern and hardworking and moral as an old-style European
immigrant and reminded me of my Austrian grandmother.
                    “Lemme lie down, lemme lie
down,” Doreen was muttering. “Lemme lie down, lemme lie down.”
                    I felt if I carried Doreen
across the threshold into my room and helped her onto my bed I would never get
rid of her again.
                    Her body was warm and soft as a
pile of pillows against my arm where she leaned her weight, and her feet, in
their high, spiked heels, dragged foolishly. She was much too heavy for me to
budge down the long hall.
                    I decided the only thing to do
was to dump her on the carpet and shut and lock my door and go back to bed.
When Doreen woke up she wouldn’t remember what had happened and would think she
must have passed out in front of my door while I slept, and she would get up of
her own accord and go sensibly back to her room.
                    I started to lower Doreen gently
onto the green hall carpet, but she gave a low moan and pitched forward out of
my arms. A jet of brown vomit flew from her mouth and spread in a large puddle
at my feet.
                    Suddenly Doreen grew even
heavier. Her head drooped forward into the puddle, the wisps of her blonde hair
dabbling in it like tree roots in a bog, and I realized she was asleep. I drew
back. I felt half-asleep myself.
                    I made a decision about Doreen
that night. I decided I would watch her and listen to what she said, but deep
down I would have nothing at all to do with her. Deep down, I would be loyal to
Betsy and her innocent friends. It was Betsy I resembled at heart.
                    Quietly, I stepped back into my
room and shut the door. On second thought, I didn’t lock it. I couldn’t quite
bring myself to do that.
                    When I woke up in the dull,
sunless heat the next morning, I dressed and splashed my face with cold water
and put on some lipstick and opened the door slowly. I think I still expected
to see Doreen’s body lying there in the pool of vomit like an ugly, concrete
testimony to my own dirty nature.
                    There was nobody in the hall.
The carpet stretched from one end of the hall to the other, clean and eternally
verdant except for a faint, irregular dark stain before my door as if somebody
had by accident spilled a glass of water there, but dabbed it dry again.

3
     
    Arrayed
on the Ladies’ Day banquet table
were yellow-green avo cado pear halves stuffed with crabmeat and mayonnaise,
and platters of rare roast beef and cold chicken, and every so often a
cut-glass bowl heaped with black caviar. I hadn’t had time to eat any breakfast
at the hotel cafeteria that morning, except for a cup of overstewed coffee so
bitter it made my nose curl, and I was starving.
                    Before I came to New York I’d
never eaten out in a proper restaurant. I don’t count Howard Johnson’s, where I
only had french fries and cheeseburgers and vanilla frappes with people like
Buddy Willard. I’m not sure why it is, but I love food more than just about