Read The Light of Evening for Free Online Page B

came forth unto you. Behold thy time was the time of love and I spread my skirt
    over thee and covered thy nakedness.
    All around there were tears and pleadings, people sent back to wait, others dispatched into nearby rooms, and one lady in a scraggy fur coat down on her knees, holding her husband’s ankles, clinging to him, “Aoran, Aoran,” his tag a different color from hers, signifying that he was being sent back, forever. The whole hall was looking at her and though she spoke in a foreign tongue, it was clear that she would not be parted from him. He tried reasoning with her but to no avail, then all of a sudden she spat onto her fingers, wiped them on his eyelids, and then ran her damp fingers across her own, to contract the eye disease that she guessed he had. The guards were on her like dogs. She whirled and struck out, they grappling but unable to hold her and her husband looking at her with a coldness, such a coldness, as if he did not love her, had never loved her, as that was the only way to make her go on.
    The inspector, scrutinizing my passbook where my mother had made me copy out household hints, called a second inspector over and I thought it meant refusal. They read it together and then told me to read it aloud and I realized that I was being made a laughingstock, a greenhorn with her household tips.
    Rules for Management of Family Wash:
    Rub line with a cloth to ensure cleanliness.
    Economize on space and pegs.
    Hang all garments the wrong side out.
    Place all garments with their openings to the wind.
    Put pegs in thickest part of garment folding.
    Hang tablecloths bag shaped.
    Hang flannels in shade.
    Hang stockings within one inch of toe, wrong side out.
    When my papers were stamped, I smarted at seeing the words domestic servant, but I had passed and I was trooping out into a world that seemed both strange and carnival-like, people bustling around, youngsters tugging and grabbing at my luggage, hawkers with baskets of fruits, apples and peaches, a blush on their soft skins as if they had been randomly rouged.

    The Great Hall

    what had those white-tiled walls and black pillars not witnessed?
    People so overjoyed at being united that they wept with relief, others with despair in their eyes, fearing the worst, and Mary Angela in a blue knitted suit, like a mermaid, molded into it, walking up and down, gauging her chances. Before long she caught the attentions of a man who had hurried in, a well-dressed man with a mustache. They hadn’t even exchanged a word, only gestures, and yet she knew, knew by the black armband on his sleeve, by his gaze, that he was a husband in mourning. All she did was put one hand under her breasts like she was weighing them and he came across to her, and soon after they went upstairs to an office, where it seemed he got her papers sanctioned to leave with him. She told us that she was going to be a wet nurse to his little son. We hadn’t seen her since the evening of the drowning, but we’d heard that she had made herself very popular in the upper quarters and milked Captain DeVere’s goats, morning and night.
    My cousin had not come.
    A sign above Madam Aisha’s beauty parlor offered to curl women’s hair and paint their faces for a reasonable sum. Many availed of it before having their photographs taken at the kissing station. Couples gazing into each other’s eyes. A lady kept begging of me, “Do something for me, my most beloved sister,” except that I couldn’t. My cousin had not come. Boats came on
    the hour, people left, and the brown puddly water kept plashing on the shore, endlessly, and it was as if I were imprisoned there forever.
    If my cousin did not come I would be put in one of the brick buildings with flags flying from the turrets, put there and be kept until my parents had sent the money for my passage home. Even Sheila had gone. “Call up some Sunday if you’re passing,” she said as she left with three friends. She lived on 22nd Street, wherever