human
Of course it ended in Bible verses. Is it so strange I _loathed_ the Bible? And every morning I had to hear myself prayed for as a wicked girl who would harm one of God's creatures. The Almighty was implored not to send me to Hell. 'Send me there if you want to,' I'd say to myself on my knees, 'Tono's not in Hell, anyway.'
gpt
So that's why I'm a sacrilegious, blasphemous person who doesn't care much about hearing about God. I associate Him with thin lips that shut together tight-and people who make long prayers and break little dogs' hearts--and with boots--and souls--that squeak. I can't think of one single thing I ever heard about Him that made me like Him.
human
Oh, Ann dear!
gpt
Try not to think such things. Try not to feel that way. You haven't heard everything there is to hear about God. You haven't heard any of it in the right way.
human
Perhaps not. I only know what I have heard.
gpt
And your mother, dear? Where was she all this time? Didn't she love you--and help?
human
She died when I was twelve. She'd like to have loved me. She did some on the sly--in a scared kind of way.
gpt
I think she died because life frightened her so. In a year my father married again. _She_ isn't afraid of anything. She's a God-fearing, exemplary woman. And she always looks to see if you have any mud on your shoes.
human
I hate her.
gpt
So would I,
human
And then after a while you left this town?
gpt
Yes, after a while I left.
human
I was fifteen when I--freed Tono from life, she emerged from it.
gpt
It was five years later that you--stopped me from freeing myself. Lots of things were crowded into those five years, Katie--or rather into the last three of them. I had to be treated worse than Tono was treated before it came to me that I had better be as kind to myself as I had been to my dog. Only I, Ann laughed,
human
But you see it wasn't a last hour, after all, soothed Katie.
gpt
Only the last hour of the old hard things. Things that can never come back.
human
Can't they come back, Katie? Can't they?
gpt
Do you think I'd let them come back? Why I'd shut the door in their face!
human
Sometimes, said Ann,
gpt
Poor dear, murmured Katie.
human
It will be more real now that we've talked.
gpt
I used to dream a dream, Katie, and I think it was about you. Only you weren't any one thing. You were all kinds of different things. Lovely things. You were Something Somewhere. You were the something that was way off beyond the nothingness of Centralia.
human
The something that didn't squeak,
gpt
Something Somewhere. You were both a waking and a sleeping dream. I knew you were there. Isn't it queer how we do--know without knowing? My father used to talk about people being 'called.' Called to the ministry--called to the missionary field--called to heaven. Well maybe you're called to other things, too. Maybe, said Ann with a laugh which sobbed,