Blanche Flashcards
Well Stella…
Your going to reproach me, I know that your bound to reproach me - but before you do take into consideration that you left!
I stayed..
at Belle Reve and tried to hold it together! I stayed and struggled! You came to New Orleans and looked out for yourself. I’m not meaning this in any reproachful way, but all the burden descended on my shoulders.
You are the one that
abandoned Belle Reve, not I! I stayed and fought for it, bled for it, almost died for it! ….
I, I, I
took the blows in my face and my body! All of those deaths! The long parade to the graveyard! Father, mother! Margaret, that dreadful way! So big with it, it couldn’t be put in a coffin! But had to be burned like rubbish!
You just
came home in time for the funerals, Stella. And funerals are pretty compared to deaths. Funerals are quiet, but deaths–not always. Sometimes their breathing is hoarse, and sometimes it rattles, and sometimes they even cry out to you, “Don’t let me go!” Even the old, sometimes, say, “Don’t let me go.” As if you were able to stop them!
But funerals are quiet
with pretty flowers. And, oh, what gorgeous boxes they pack them away in! Unless you were there at the bed when they cried out, “Hold me!” you’d never suspect there was the struggle for breath and bleeding.
You didn’t dream
but I saw! Saw! Saw! And now you sit there telling me with your eyes that I let the place go! How in hell do you think all that sickness and dying was paid for? Death is expensive, Miss Stella!
And old Cousin
Jessie’s right after Margaret’s, hers! Why, the Grim Reaper had put up his tent on our doorstep! Stella. Belle Reve was his headquarters! Honey–that’s how it slipped through my fingers!
Which of them left us a fortune?
Which of them left a cent of insurance even? Only poor Jessie– one hundred to pay for her coffin. That was all, Stella! And I with my pitiful salary at the school. Yes, accuse me! Sit there and stare at me, thinking I let the place go! I let the place go? Where were you! In bed with your–Polack
