Readingnote 4 (8-10)

       Desiree started her journey.  She saw a lot of people, peasant, vendor, women, men, and city people, the riches.  She was being challenged, discouraged and was starving; She begun to doubt and question the gods after seeing those gods argue with each other, and then she regain the religious hope because she got food.  She was also practicing patience along the way, because the road seems long and endless.  She went to a town, went to a forest.  She met another peasant girl who lost her parents, and then she met the city.  She was scared by the light of the city, but she did not stop walking.  When the reality is revealed before the idealism, there is another broken American dream.

       How vain, how selfish, how proud and petty were these gods to whom the gentle peasants humbled themselves.  How they scorned one another.  And their ridiculous schemes.  Agwe--- tall, beautiful, his lofty head of the richest blue-green seaweed decorated in gold--- strutted back and forth as he had in the houngfor, his wicked eyes a blazing blue.  Ah, the arrogance with which he threw back his head.  But for whom did this selfish god care?  Asaka sat sulking, looking drab and ragged in a brown dress.  Erzulie, forever lovely, paraded herself so vainly.  And all the while the gods preeened, Papa Ge sat in the background with a smug smile on his mouth, his bloodied teeth clutching a cigar, and looked beyond Agwe and Erzulie and Asaka.

       The two women turned to look at each other through the darkness.  Then they pushed their heads out over their wooden crates.  They looked first at Desiree's thick, uncombed hair and her ragged dress, then stretched out their necks to peer down at the peasant girl's feet.  They laughed.  Their laughter traveled down the road from vendor to vendor, so that at one moment laughter followed her, then soon laughter preceded her.  Vendors left their crates to stand on the road to await her coming.  "To the dreamer all things are possible," one vendor said.  "Ti fille, go back to sleep, oui."

       What if she lost her looks?  She put both hands to her face.  Only did she think of the gods.  She had been so critical of them.  So how to call on them for help?  Discouraged, but now knowing how long the road was,  Desiree abandoned all thought of sleep.  She walked through that day and well into the night.  Then her strength failed.  Finding a tree with wide-spread-slept the clock around through the following night.

       As she watched the resplendent women dancing in the arms of men, the peasant firl sensed a stirring within.  Fear spread through her, up from the soles of her feet, through her body, her face, her head--- an unnamed fear, never before felt.  She started to run.  But this unnamed anxiety blinded her, and she tripped and fell facedown.  Not on ground--- on concrete, which did not yield to her weight.  It bruised her face, the palms of her hands, her knees.  more than the cars with htheir blinding lights, more than the music and the houses, this strange hardness caused her deeper unease.  She who had traveled night and day with courage and confidence now suddenly succumbed to despair at the strangeness aroung her.