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Show Moon - 29 "Somebody check the door. I feel a draft." My mother sat wrapped in her afghan. I did not feel I could ask what a "draft" was, exactly. I looked around, saw nothing, felt nothing at all. From Anne's point of view this is a tale of tired gratitude and compulsory love. If you don't feel the love, you act it until you believe it's true. You can't afford to listen to your feelings and must silence a daughter who is, in truth part of who you are and talks of the feelings you have hidden away. The daughter talks of being afraid of your husband, afraid of Ruth, afraid of Esther, and you can't listen, for this is a voice you have silenced. Stay in the young mother's point of view, and see why she dragged her daughter along on train after train to wherever he was, or left her with Alice or Esther and Ruth because James wanted time alone with her. Anne did all this against the day when he would finally be called overseas. Even if she did what he wanted for the rest of her life, she could never make it up to him, a hero who had married her when she was carrying another man's child. That's what it comes down to from the daughter's point of view: being another man's child-though I didn't know this yet-a child once removed. And once removed, you are like a picture someone takes down from the wall and stores in the attic. You don't get to complain. You're lucky to be kept at all. And so you go for the things that let you feel good about your life: a strong, low-hanging tree, a patch of flowers, and sunlight in the attic lifting the dust into flecks of gold and lighting the blood inside your hands. |