Promise

She remembered putting the plate carefully down on the gravelly ground and then starting to step on it and stopping, remembered taking off her plain cotton panties and putting them into the pocket where the plate had been, and then carefully slipping the first finger of her left hand carefully against the cut in her at the place where Old Stupid God had joined her and all other girls and women imperfectly, but something about that place must be right, because she remembered the jolt, remembered wanting to press, remembered not pressing, remembered how delicious her vagina had been naked, without the cotton panties in the way of it and the world, and she had not pressed, not until her shoe pressed, her black patent leather shoe, not until her shoe pressed down on the plate, then she pressed on the cut with her finger the way she was pressing on the Blue Woman's forspecial china plate with her foot, she remembered the way the black patent leather shoe covered the delicate blue webbing on the edge of the plate, she remembered the press, yes, she remembered pressing in The Drawers, pressing with finger and foot, remembered the delicious promise of finger and cut, remembered that when the plate snapped with a bitter brittle snap a similar brittle pleasure had skewered upward from that cut into her guts like an arrow, she remembered the cry which had broken from her lips, an unpleasant cawing like the sound of a crow scared up from a cornpatch, she could remember staring dully at the fragments of the plate and then taking the plain white cotton panties slowly out of her dress pocket and putting them on again, step-ins, so she had heard them called in some time unhoused in memory and drifting loose like turves on a flood-tide, step-ins, good, because first you stepped out to do your business and then you stepped back in, first one shiny patent leather shoe and then the other, good, panties were good, she could remember drawing them up her legs so clearly, drawing them past her knees, a scab on the left one almost ready to fall off and leave clean pink new babyskin, yes, she could remember so clearly it might not have been a week ago or yesterday but only one single moment ago, she could remember how the waistband had reached the hem of her party dress, the clear contrast of white cotton against brown skin, like cream, yes, like that, cream from a pitcher caught suspended over coffee, the texture, the panties disappearing under the hem of the dress, except then the dress was burnt orange and the panties were not going up but down but they were still white but not cotton, they were nylon, cheap see-through nylon panties, cheap in more ways than one, and she remembered stepping out of them, she remembered how they glimmered on the floormat of the '46 Dodge DeSoto, yes, how white they were, how cheap they were, not anything dignified like underwear but cheap panties, the girl was cheap and it was good to be cheap, good to be on sale, to be on the block not even like a whore but like a good breedsow; she remembered no round china plate but the round white face of a boy, some surprised drunk fraternity boy, he was no china plate but his face was as round as the Blue Woman's china plate had been, and there was webbing on his cheeks, and this webbing looked as blue as the webbing on the Blue Woman's forspecial china plate had been, but that was only because the neon was red, the neon was garish, in the dark the neon from the roadhouse sign made the spreading blood from the places on his cheeks where she had clawed him look blue, and he had said Why did you why did you why did you do, and then he unrolled the window so he could get his face outside to puke and she remembered hearing Dodie Stevens on the jukebox, singing about tan shoes with pink shoelaces and a big Panama with a purple hatband, she remembered the sound of his puking was like gravel in a cement mixer, and his penis, which moments before had been a livid exclamation point rising from the tufted tangle of his pubic hair, was collapsing into a weak white question mark; she remembered the hoarse gravel sounds of his vomiting stopped and then started again and she thought Well I guess he ain't made enough to lay this foundation yet and laughing and pressing her finger (which now came equipped with a long shaped nail) against her vagina which was bare but no longer bare because it was overgrown with its own coarse briared tangle, and there had been the same brittle breaking snap inside her, and it was still as much pain as it was pleasure (but better, far better, than nothing at all)/ and then he was grabbing blindly for her and saying in a hurt breaking tone Oh you goddamned nigger cunt and she went on laughing just the same, dodging him easily and snatching up her panties and opening the door on her side of the car, feeling the last blind thud of his fingers on the back of her blouse as she ran into a May night that was redolent of early honeysuckle, red-pink neon light stuttering off the gravel of some postwar parking lot, stuffing her panties, her cheap slick nylon panties not into the pocket of her dress but into a purse jumbled with a teenager's cheerful conglomeration of cosmetics, she was running, the light was stuttering, and then she was twenty-three and it was not panties but a rayon scarf, and she was casually slipping it into her purse as she walked along a counter in the Nice Notions section of Macy's—a scarf which sold at that time for $1.99.

But what went on in his wretched heart between the pressure of the Eye, and the lust of the Ring that was so near, and his grovelling promise made half in the fear of cold iron, the hobbits did not guess.

Frustration of my plans to lighten the disaster will convince people that the future holds no promise to them.

Cauchon would make promises to her; in return she would promise to leave off the male dress.

In short, my dear aunt, I should be very sorry to be the means of making any of you unhappy; but since we see every day that where there is affection, young people are seldom withheld by immediate want of fortune, from entering into engagements with each other, how can I promise to be wiser than so many of my fellow creatures if I am tempted, or how am I even to know that it would be wisdom to resist?

Then, right in the same damn breath, she said, “Promise me you’ll let your hair grow.

“I know that she spent her childhood in exile, impoverished, living on dreams and schemes, running from one city to the next, always fearful, never safe, friendless but for a brother who was by all accounts half-mad … a brother who sold her maidenhood to the Dothraki for the promise of an army.

Brain-sick shepherd-prince, What promise hast thou faithful guarded since The day of sacrifice?

The thought immediately occurred to him that his promise to Prince Andréy was of no account, because before he gave it he had already promised Prince Anatole to come to his gathering; “besides,” thought he, “all such ‘words of honor’ are conventional things with no definite meaning, especially if one considers that by tomorrow one may be dead, or something so extraordinary may happen to one that honor and dishonor will be all the same!” Pierre often indulged in reflections of this sort, nullifying all his decisions and intentions.

If the workshop was the goodness of childhood, symbolized by the phantom smell of her father's pipe (he sometimes puffed smoke gently into her ear when she had an earache, always after extracting a promise that she wouldn't tell Carla, who would have had a fit), then the parlor was everything in childhood you wished you could forget.

Through the rusted bars, tastes, rather than glimpses, were caught of the jumbled neighbourhood; and nothing within range, nearer or lower than the summits of the two great towers of Notre-Dame, had any promise on it of healthy life or wholesome aspirations.

Love’s arms beckon With their naked delights, And Eden’s promise of ecstasies.

.He saw Ron’s silver terrier burst into the air, flicker feebly, and expire; he saw Hermione’s otter twist in midair and fade; and his own wand trembled in his hand, and he almost welcomed the oncoming oblivion, the promise of nothing, of no feeling. . .

“That is, I promise to try not to.” Clara gapes.

On Wednesday the three fugitives—they had passed the night in a field of unripe wheat—reached Chelmsford, and there a body of the inhabitants, calling itself the Committee of Public Supply, seized the pony as provisions, and would give nothing in exchange for it but the promise of a share in it the next day.

She has not told Lucy, and made me promise secrecy; her doctor told her that within a few months, at most, she must die, for her heart is weakening.

For such a prince cannot rely upon what he observes in quiet times, when citizens have need of the state, because then everyone agrees with him; they all promise, and when death is far distant they all wish to die for him; but in troubled times, when the state has need of its citizens, then he finds but few.

XV The beginning of these perplexing things was in the summer; and each time Ona would promise him with terror in her voice that it would not happen again—but in vain.

Call’d to the seat (the promise of the skies) Where Trojan kingdoms once again may rise, Endure the hardships of your present state; Live, and reserve yourselves for better fate.” These words he spoke, but spoke not from his heart; His outward smiles conceal’d his inward smart.

I promise not to fight.

‘Aha!’ means ‘We’ll tell you where Baby Roo is, if you promise to go away from the Forest and never come back.’ Now don’t talk while I think.” Pooh went into a corner and tried saying “Aha!” in that sort of voice.

But he hated and hooted us; wailing and teeth-gnashing did he promise us.

I promise nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty.

Go back and take the four sovereigns that you have left to your poor father, who is weeping and in despair because you have not returned to him.” “By tomorrow my papa will be a gentleman, for these four sovereigns will have become two thousand.” “Don’t trust to those who promise to make you rich in a day.

“And God said unto Abraham, Know of a surety, that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them, and they shall afflict them 400 years.” This promise, then, to Abraham and his seed forever to inherit the land of Canaan, had it been a fact instead of a fable, was to operate in the commencement of it, as a curse upon all the people and their children, and their children’s children for 400 years.

Many tens of thousands had died in the spring, among them a wise old king and two young princes full of promise.

You are the king’s servant, and must go wherever that service calls you.” “Oh, Villefort!” cried Renée, clasping her hands, and looking towards her lover with piteous earnestness, “be merciful on this the day of our betrothal.” The young man passed round to the side of the table where the fair pleader sat, and leaning over her chair said tenderly: “To give you pleasure, my sweet Renée, I promise to show all the lenity in my power; but if the charges brought against this Bonapartist hero prove correct, why, then, you really must give me leave to order his head to be cut off.” Renée shuddered at the word cut, for the growth in question had a head.

The moment he read it, he packed his knapsack, bade adieu to his fellow-pedestrians, and was off to keep his promise, with a heart full of joy and sorrow, hope and suspense.

Remember the first question; its meaning, in other words, was this: “Thou wouldst go into the world, and art going with empty hands, with some promise of freedom which men in their simplicity and their natural unruliness cannot even understand, which they fear and dread—for nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom.

“And so these three little sisters—they were learning to draw, you know—” “What did they draw?” said Alice, quite forgetting her promise.

“Promise me!” “I promise.” “Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead.—I shall feel it.” She dropped her head again on Marius’ knees, and her eyelids closed.

Wendy would have preferred a more permanent arrangement; and it seemed to her that spring would be long in coming; but this promise sent Peter away quite gay again.

Afterward, the snakes were impressed that the man had given up so much and kept his promise.

This tuber seemed like a faint promise of Nature to rear her own children and feed them simply here at some future period.

Promise you won’t tell anyone,’ she implored.

The earth does not argue, Is not pathetic, has no arrangements, Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise, Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures, Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out, Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out.

No one will fully understand--how it's not just a flower, not even just President Snow's flower, but a promise of revenge--because no one else sat in the study with him when he threatened me before the Victory Tour.

Now all was blasted; instead of that serenity of conscience which allowed me to look back upon the past with self-satisfaction, and from thence to gather promise of new hopes, I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures such as no language can describe.

Before he disappears into the hatch, he turns toward the wreckage of the Kowloon and holds the harpoon up over his head, a gesture of triumph and a promise all at once.

J. J. O’Molloy said not without regret: ―And yet he died without having entered the land of promise.

So I held up my right hand and I made her a promise ‘Mary,’ I said, ‘I don’t think this book is ever going to be finished.

The moon was not yet over Hermon, but the night was only half-dark in the promise of its dawn, with wild rags of tattered clouds driving across a livid sky.

Mother Superior did not herd them all into a great Common Room with a promise of important announcements unless something to shake the Bene Gesserit foundations was at hand.

I could not think that this earth contained a place for sufferings and terrors so unmanning; and you can do but one thing, Utterson, to lighten this destiny, and that is to respect my silence.” Utterson was amazed; the dark influence of Hyde had been withdrawn, the doctor had returned to his old tasks and amities; a week ago, the prospect had smiled with every promise of a cheerful and an honoured age; and now in a moment, friendship, and peace of mind, and the whole tenor of his life were wrecked.

His promise never to refuse a feast from a certain comrade, and the mischief that came by his promise, and the vengeance he took afterwards, are a principal theme of the poets.

But for the sake of the Honor of the Pack—a little matter that, by being without a leader, ye have forgotten—I promise that if ye let the man-cub go to his own place, I will not, when my time comes to die, bare one tooth against ye.

In order to rent a house he would promise repairs which the owner had not authorized.

She asked me for twenty-four hours—made me promise to do nothing till the end of that time.

I promise you, but for your company, I would have been abed an hour ago.

The Professor wants me to promise to go with him, sometime, on a camping trip in the Hawaiian Islands, while I tried to get him to go back with me to camp in the high Sierra.

Then what the hell are you doing?” “We’re making a promise,” said Mr. Croup through the static and the echo and the hiss.

We have Project Mayhem in Chicago like you would not believe.” Tyler says, “I can’t believe you broke your promise.

They are not required of a man, nor does man’s nature promise them, nor are they the means of man’s nature attaining its end.

Well-pleased Ulysses hears his queen deceive The suitor-train, and raise a thirst to give: False hopes she kindles, but those hopes betray, And promise, yet elude, the bridal day.

She had freckled cheeks and tight red curls upon her head, which gave promise of freckled breasts and red hair between her legs.

You gentlemen are still bound by your promise to stay; you must enforce it on yourselves—and on each other.

For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing.

When better men go safe and never pine With whisperings at the heart, soul-sickening gleams Of infinite desire, and joy that seems The promise of full power?

For Léon did not lose all hope; there was for him, as it were, a vague promise floating in the future, like a golden fruit suspended from some fantastic tree.

For, since I sought By prayer the offended Deity to appease, Kneeled and before him humbled all my heart, Methought I saw him placable and mild, Bending his ear; persuasion in me grew That I was heard with favour; peace returned Home to my breast, and to my memory His promise that thy seed shall bruise our Foe; Which, then not minded in dismay, yet now Assures me that the bitterness of death Is past, and we shall live.

He commended, however, the author’s way of ending his book with the promise of that interminable adventure, and many a time was he tempted to take up his pen and finish it properly as is there proposed, which no doubt he would have done, and made a successful piece of work of it too, had not greater and more absorbing thoughts prevented him.

There were no miracles; prayers went unanswered, and misfortune tramped with equal brutality on the virtuous and the corrupt; and the chaplain, who had conscience and character, would have yielded to reason and relinquished his belief in the God of his fathers—would truly have resigned both his calling and his commission and taken his chances as a private in the infantry or field artillery, or even, perhaps, as a corporal in the paratroopers—had it not been for such successive mystic phenomena as the naked man in the tree at that poor sergeant’s funeral weeks before and the cryptic, haunting, encouraging promise of the prophet Flume in the forest only that afternoon: ‘Tell them I’ll be back when winter comes.’

At present I am ready to promise that the instant that I can communicate with you without endangering my own combinations, I shall do so.” Gregson and Lestrade seemed to be far from satisfied by this assurance, or by the depreciating allusion to the detective police.

III The most excellent lords the plenipotentiaries promise and take upon themselves that their above-named masters shall ratify this treaty; and within the space of two months the ratifications shall be exchanged.