Who Do You Think You Are

that whatever Flo has said or done, whatever she herself has said or done, does not really matter at all. It is the struggle itself that counts, and that can’t be stopped, can never be stopped, short of where it has got to, now.
    Flo’s knees are dirty, in spite of the pad. The scrub rag is still hanging over Rose’s foot.
    Her father wipes his hands, listening to Flo. He takes his time. He is slow at getting into the spirit of things, tired in advance, maybe, on the verge of rejecting the role he has to play. He won’t look at Rose, but at any sound or stirring from Rose, he holds up his hand.
    “Well we don’t need the public in on this, that’s for sure,” Flo says, and she goes to lock the door of the store, putting in the store window the sign that says “Back Soon,” a sign Rose made for her with a great deal of fancy curving and shading of letters in black and red crayon. When she comes back she shuts the door to the store, then the door to the stairs, then the door to the woodshed.
    Her shoes have left marks on the clean wet part of the floor. “Oh, I don’t know,” she says now, in a voice worn down from its emotional peak. “I don’t know what to do about her.” She looks down and sees her dirty knees (following Rose’s eyes) and rubs at them viciously with her bare hands, smearing the dirt around.
    “She humiliates me,” she says, straightening up. There it is, the explanation. “She humiliates me,” she repeats with satisfaction. “She has no respect.”
    “I do not!”
    “Quiet, you!” says her father.
    “If I hadn’t called your father you’d still be sitting there with that grin on your face! What other way is there to manage you?”
    Rose detects in her father some objections to Flo’s rhetoric, some embarrassment and reluctance. She is wrong, and ought to know she is wrong, in thinking that she can count on this. The fact that she knows about it, and he knows she knows, will not make things any better. He is beginning to warm up. He gives her a look. This look is at first cold and challenging. It informs her of his judgment, of the hopelessness of her position. Then it clears, it begins to fill up with something else, the way a spring fills up when you clear the leaves away. It fills with hatred and pleasure. Rose sees that and knows it. Is that just a description of anger, should she see his eyes filling up with anger? No. Hatred is right. Pleasure is right. His face loosens and changes and grows younger, and he holds up his hand this time to silence Flo.
    “All right,” he says, meaning that’s enough, more than enough, this part is over, things can proceed. He starts to loosen his belt.
    Flo has stopped anyway. She has the same difficulty Rose does, a difficulty in believing that what you know must happen really will happen, that there comes a time when you can’t draw back.
    “Oh, I don’t know, don’t be too hard on her.” She is moving around nervously as if she has thoughts of opening some escape route. “Oh, you don’t have to use the belt on her. Do you have to use the belt?”
    He doesn’t answer. The belt is coming off, not hastily. It is being grasped at the necessary point. All right you . He is coming over to Rose. He pushes her off the table. His face, like his voice, is quite out of character. He is like a bad actor, who turns a part grotesque. As if he must savor and insist on just what is shameful and terrible about this. That is not to say he is pretending, that he is acting, and does not mean it. He is acting, and he means it. Rose knows that, she knows everything about him.
    She has since wondered about murders, and murderers. Does the thing have to be carried through, in the end, partly for the effect, to prove to the audience of one—who won’t be able to report, only register, the lesson—that such a thing can happen, that there is nothing that can’t happen, that the most dreadful antic is justified, feelings can be found to match it?
    She tries again looking at the kitchen floor, that clever and comforting geometrical arrangement, instead of looking at him or his belt. How can this go on in front of such daily witnesses—the linoleum, the calendar with the mill and creek and autumn trees, the old accommodating pots and pans?
    Hold out your hand!
    Those things aren’t going to help her, none of them can rescue her.
    They turn bland and useless, even unfriendly. Pots can show malice, the patterns of linoleum can leer up at you,