Page 181 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

THE OUTSIDERS

The temperature dropped after midnight, and the wind picked up. Daisy
snuggled under her quilt; to keep the cold air away, she wrapped her tiny body

tightly in her bedding, her head hidden in the center of the quilt. Someone was
pouring water in the kitchen—back and forth, back and forth from one container
to another. The sound gave her goose bumps.
Ah, the wind! Like kids crying to come in, it kept pushing the door, causing it
to creak and groan. How cold was it outside? Thick ice must be forming.
Yesterday when she worked her way out of the backyard, she saw ice in the
gutter. Ordinarily, the sewage looked terrible, and it stank, but when it formed
ice it turned beautiful—like an icy black beauty. As Daisy was thinking of these
things, the cold sharpened, and it was as if her heart were stuffed with a ball of
ice.
The person in the kitchen shouted, “Daisy! Daisy!” Who was it?
He kept shouting, and Daisy kept answering. But the quilt smothered her
voice. At last, Daisy jumped up. Groping in the dark, she dressed and put on a
pair of boots. She intended to light an oil lamp, but the matches on the bed stand
were wet, maybe because of the snowflakes that had drifted in. Daisy heard Dad
and Mama sleeping soundly. When it snowed, they always slept well. Who was

in the kitchen? No one. It was just the ice that had formed in the sink. It blinked
at her in a sinister way. She looked outside: it was bright out there. The sky was
an inspiring off-white; the wind had stopped.
She went through the kitchen and out the back door. The snow was deep,
more than halfway up her boots. Each step required great effort. Not daring to go
far, she stood in the backyard. Just then, bird calls came from the sky. There
were five birds—the same off-white color as the sky, but a little darker. The sky
was strangely light. They kept circling over her head, now higher, now lower. It
was as though something had attracted them, and also as though they couldn’t
find a place to alight. Their sorrowful sound was something Daisy had never
heard.
It was so cold that the branches on the willow trees had turned into popsicles

and were resentfully flashing their fluorescence. Daisy was curious: Would she
be frozen if she stayed in the backyard a long time? She withdrew cautiously to
the doorstep. A bird dropped to the earth right in front of her. Daisy bent to pick
it up, but it soared away. She tried again, and this time she got hold of it. But