Patrice “Pixie” Paranteau Quotes in The Night Watchman
Word went out that dough was in Patrice’s bucket. That she’d forgotten to cook it, bake it, fry it […] Saint Anne pushed a buttered bun across the table to Patrice. Someone handed an oatmeal cookie down the line. Doris gave her half a bacon sandwich.
Mr. Vold forbade speech. Still, they did speak. They hardly remembered what they said, later, but they talked to one another all day.
There were times when Patrice felt like she was stretched across a frame, like a skin tent. She tried to forget that she could be so easily blown away. Or how easily her father could wreck them all. This feeling of being the only barrier between her family and disaster wasn’t new, but they had come so far since she started work.
Valentine said, “You can have my days.”
“What do you mean?”
“My sick days. Mr. Vold told me that I could give my days to you. Under the circumstances.”
Gawiin ingikendizo siin. I am a stranger to myself […] This was again the sort of feeling and thinking that could only be described in Chippewa, where the strangeness was also humorous and the danger surrounding this entire situation was the sort that you might laugh at, even though you could also get hurt, and there were secrets involved, and desperation, for indeed she had nowhere, after her unthinkable short immediate future rolling in the water tank, nowhere to go but the dressing room down at the other end of the second-floor hall of Log Jam 26.
“A pimp is someone who owns the lady. Takes the money she got paid for having sex, see?”
“No. I don’t see,” said Patrice flatly. But she did see. Jack would have tampered with her slightly, just enough so that when somebody else came along she’d have that shame, then more shame, until she got lost in shame and wasn’t herself.
And Patrice thought another thing her mother said was definitely true—you never really knew a man until you told him you didn’t love him. That’s when his true ugliness, submerged to charm you, might surface.
Patrice “Pixie” Paranteau Quotes in The Night Watchman
Word went out that dough was in Patrice’s bucket. That she’d forgotten to cook it, bake it, fry it […] Saint Anne pushed a buttered bun across the table to Patrice. Someone handed an oatmeal cookie down the line. Doris gave her half a bacon sandwich.
Mr. Vold forbade speech. Still, they did speak. They hardly remembered what they said, later, but they talked to one another all day.
There were times when Patrice felt like she was stretched across a frame, like a skin tent. She tried to forget that she could be so easily blown away. Or how easily her father could wreck them all. This feeling of being the only barrier between her family and disaster wasn’t new, but they had come so far since she started work.
Valentine said, “You can have my days.”
“What do you mean?”
“My sick days. Mr. Vold told me that I could give my days to you. Under the circumstances.”
Gawiin ingikendizo siin. I am a stranger to myself […] This was again the sort of feeling and thinking that could only be described in Chippewa, where the strangeness was also humorous and the danger surrounding this entire situation was the sort that you might laugh at, even though you could also get hurt, and there were secrets involved, and desperation, for indeed she had nowhere, after her unthinkable short immediate future rolling in the water tank, nowhere to go but the dressing room down at the other end of the second-floor hall of Log Jam 26.
“A pimp is someone who owns the lady. Takes the money she got paid for having sex, see?”
“No. I don’t see,” said Patrice flatly. But she did see. Jack would have tampered with her slightly, just enough so that when somebody else came along she’d have that shame, then more shame, until she got lost in shame and wasn’t herself.
And Patrice thought another thing her mother said was definitely true—you never really knew a man until you told him you didn’t love him. That’s when his true ugliness, submerged to charm you, might surface.
