Gender Readings. Top Ten. Ренц Т.Г - 51 стр.

know how I feel about this, Jane. I don’t want you alone in the house
with him.”
       “He’s my piano teacher,” I was suddenly in tears, so I ran out of
the kitchen and up to my room. She followed me up, and sat on the
edge of my bed while I sat al the desk, secretly crying on to the
blotter.
       “I only want what’s best for you,” she said.
       “If you want what’s best for me, why don’t you want me to
have piano lessons?”
       “I do want you to have piano lessons, but you’re growing up
and it doesn’t look right for you to be in a house alone with a widowed
man.”
       “I think you’re crazy.”
       “I don’t think you understand what I’m trying to say. You’rå not a
little girl any more, Jane. There are privileges of childhood, and privi-
leges of adulthood, and you’re in the middle. It’s difficult, I know.”
       “You don’t know. You’re just trying to stop me from taking
piano lessons.”
       She stood up. “I’m trying to protect you,” she said. “What if Mr
Parker touched you? What would you do then?” She made the word
“touch” sound sinister.
       “You’re just being mean,” I said, and by this time I was cróing
openly. It would have fixed things to throw my arms around her, but
that meant losing, and this was war.
       “We’ll discuss it some other time,” she said, close to tears
herself.
       I worked on the Invention until my hands shook. When I came
home, if the house was empty, I practised in a panic, and finally, it
was almost right. On Wednesday, I went to Mr Parker’s and stood at
the doorway, expecting something drastic and changed, but it was all
the same. There were cookies and lemonade in the solarium. Mildred
took à nàð on my coat. My fifteen-minute warm-up was terrible; I
made mistakes in the simplest parts, in things I knew by heart. Then
Mr Parker played the lesson of the week and I tried to memorize his
phrasing exactly. Before my turn came, Mr Parker put the metro-
nome on the floor and we watched Mildred trying to catch the arm.
       I played it, and I knew it was right — I was playing music, not
struggling with a lesson.


                                 – 51 –