The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [40]
Reenie believed that people decided when it was their time to die; similarly, they had a voice in whether or not they would be born. Once I’d reached the talking-back age, I used to say, I never asked to be born, as if that were a clinching argument; and Reenie would retort, Of course you did. Just like everyone else. Once alive you were on the hook for it, as far as Reenie was concerned.
After Laura’s birth my mother was more tired than usual. She lost altitude; she lost resilience. Her will faltered; her days took on a quality of trudging. She had to rest more, said the doctor. She was not a well woman, said Reenie to Mrs. Hillcoate, who came in to help with the laundry. It was as if my former mother had been stolen away by the elves, and this other mother – this older and greyer and saggier and more discouraged one – had been left behind in her place. I was only four then, and was frightened by the change in her, and wanted to be held and reassured; but my mother no longer had the energy for this. (Why do I say no longer? Her comportment as a mother had always been instructive rather than cherishing. At heart she remained a schoolteacher.)
I soon found that if I could keep quiet, without clamouring for attention, and above all if I could be helpful – especially with the baby, with Laura, watching beside her and rocking her cradle so she would sleep, not a thing she did easily or for long – I would be permitted to remain in the same room with my mother. If not, I would be sent away. So that was the accommodation I made: silence, helpfulness.
I should have screamed. I should have thrown tantrums. It’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease, as Reenie used to say.
(There I sat on Mother’s night table, in a silver frame, in a dark dress with a white lace collar, visible hand clutching the baby’s crocheted white blanket in an awkward, ferocious grip, eyes accusing the camera or whoever was wielding it. Laura herself is almost out of sight, in this picture. Nothing can be seen of her but the top of her downy head, and one tiny hand, fingers curled around my thumb. Was I angry because I’d been told to hold the baby, or was I in fact defending it? Shielding it – reluctant to let it go?)
Laura was an uneasy baby, though more anxious than fractious. She was an uneasy small child as well. Closet doors worried her, and bureau drawers. It was as if she were always listening, to something in the distance or under the floor – something that was coming closer soundlessly, like a train made of wind. She had unaccountable crises – a dead crow would start her weeping, a cat smashed by a car, a dark cloud in a clear sky. On the other hand, she had an uncanny resistance to physical pain: if she burnt her mouth or cut herself, as a rule she didn’t cry. It was ill will, the ill will of the universe, that distressed her.
She was particularly alarmed by the maimed veterans on the street corners – the loungers, the pencil-sellers, the panhandlers, too shattered to work at anything. One glaring red-faced man with no legs who pushed himself around on a flat cart would always set her off. Perhaps it was the fury in his eyes.
As most small children do, Laura believed words meant what they said, but she carried it to extremes. You couldn’t say Get lost or Go jump in the lake and expect no consequences. What did you say to Laura? Don’t you ever learn? Reenie would scold. But even Reenie herself didn’t learn altogether. She once told Laura to bite her tongue because that would keep the questions from coming out, and after that Laura couldn’t chew for days.
Now I am coming to my mother’s death. It would be trite to say that this event changed everything, but it would also be true, and so I will write it down:
This event changed everything.
It happened on a Tuesday. A bread day. All of our bread – enough in a batch for the