# Read the first page of Just Kids by Patti Smith Read the opening of Just Kids by Patti Smith free, no signup. Patti Smith remembers youth, art, and her defining friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/just-kids-patti-smith - Genre: Art memoir - Year: 2006 - ISBN: 9781408810835 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9781408810835&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9781408810835 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9781408810835 ## The opening @@CHAP@@ Foreword I WAS ASLEEP WHEN HE DIED. I HAD CALLED THE HOSPITAL to say one more good night, but he had gone under, beneath layers of morphine. I held the receiver and listened to his labored breathing through the phone, knowing I would never hear him again. Later I quietly straightened my things, my notebook and fountain pen. The cobalt inkwell that had been his. My Persian cup, my purple heart, a tray of baby teeth. I slowly ascended the stairs, counting them, fourteen of them, one after another. I drew the blanket over the baby in her crib, kissed my son as he slept, then lay down beside my husband and said my prayers. He is still alive, I remember whispering. Then I slept. I awoke early, and as I descended the stairs I knew that he was dead. All was still save the sound of the television that had been left on in the night. An arts channel was on. An opera was playing. I was drawn to the screen as Tosca declared, with power and sorrow, her passion for the painter Cavaradossi. It was a cold March morning and I put on my sweater. I raised the blinds and brightness entered the study. I smoothed the heavy linen draping my chair and chose a book of paintings by Odilon Redon, opening it to the image of the head of a woman floating in a small sea. Les yeux clos. A universe not yet scored contained beneath the pale lids. The phone rang and I rose to answer. It was Robert’s youngest brother, Edward. He told me that he had given Robert one last kiss for me, as he had promised. I stood motionless, frozen; then slowly, as in a dream, returned to my chair. At that moment, Tosca began the great aria “Vissi d’arte.” I have lived for love, I have lived for Art. I closed my eyes and folded my hands. Providence determined how I would say goodbye. @@CHAP@@ Monday’s Children WHEN I WAS VERY YOUNG, MY MOTHER TOOK ME FOR walks in Humboldt Park, along the edge of the Prairie River. I have vague memories, like impressions on glass plates, of an old boathouse, a circular band shell, an arched stone bridge. The narrows of the river emptied into a wide lagoon and I saw upon its surface a singular miracle. A long curving neck rose from a dress of white plumage. Swan, my mother said, sensing my excitement. It pattered the bright water, flapping its great wings, and lifted into the sky. The word alone hardly attested to its magnificence nor conveyed the emotion it produced. The sight of it generated an urge I had no words for, a desire to speak of the swan, to say something of its whiteness, the explosive nature of its movement, and the slow beating of its wings. The swan became one with the sky. I struggled to find words to describe my own sense of it. Swan, I repeated, not entirely satisfied, and I felt a twinge, a curious yearning, imperceptible to passersby, my mother, the trees, or the clouds. * I was born on a Monday, in the North Side of Chicago during the Great Blizzard of 1946. I came along a day too soon, as babies born on New Year’s Eve left the hospital with a new refrigerator. Despite my mother’s effort to hold me in, she went into heavy labor as the taxi crawled along Lake Michigan through a vortex of snow and wind. By my father’s account, I arrived a long skinny thing with bronchial pneumonia, and he kept me alive by holding me over a steaming washtub. My sister Linda followed during yet another blizzard in 1948. By necessity I was obliged to measure up quickly. My mother took in ironing as I sat on the stoop of our rooming house waiting for the iceman and the last of the horse-drawn wagons. He gave me slivers of ice wrapped in brown paper. I would slip one in my pocket for my baby sister, but when I later reached for it, I discovered it was gone. ## Books with a similar feel - [American Prometheus by Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin](https://uncovered.ink/read/american-prometheus-kai-bird-and-martin-j-sherwin.md) - [Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel](https://uncovered.ink/read/prozac-nation-elizabeth-wurtzel.md) - [Names for the Sea by Sarah Moss](https://uncovered.ink/read/names-for-the-sea-sarah-moss.md) - [What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo](https://uncovered.ink/read/what-my-bones-know-stephanie-foo.md) - [Nobody's Girl by Virginia Roberts Giuffre](https://uncovered.ink/read/nobodys-girl-virginia-roberts-giuffre.md) - [Know My Name by Chanel Miller](https://uncovered.ink/read/know-my-name-chanel-miller.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). A short sample shown for reading and discovery. Rights holders can request removal at https://uncovered.ink/takedown.