ELLEN TERHUNE
473
Mother and Father, who died without getting what they wanted
themselves when I was still an ugly little girl?"
"They must have been happier than you think,"'I said. "All
married people have those conversations, and then they go to bed
and forget it."-"There was something about Mother that chilled
people,"-she went on, disregarding my attempt to be helpful and
forcing me to follow her vision of the unrelieved hopelessness of
her parents' situation.-"She was sensitive on her musical side, but
I suppose what she presented to Father was a surface of solid
whalebone.-And I do the same thing!-1 know it. I chill people
and put them in the wrong. That's what I did with Sigismund. He
always said I made him feel guilty. But it's really because
I
always feel guilty. Mother made
me
feel guilty, too. I feel that
I oughtn't to make claims on people, that I oughtn't to expect them
to care about me. I behave as if I took this for granted, and then
I reproach them for neglecting me. I know myself very well!"
"You can't still think you're not goodlooking," I said. "It
isn't merely a question of that: Mother had a special and distress–
ing reason for not liking the way I looked. It seems Mother had a
terribly bad time when I was born on account of my head's being
so big, and I don't think she ever really recovered from it. I sup–
pose it was really what she died of. She used to talk about it some–
times in my presence. She may have thought I didn't understand,
but she must have wanted people to pity her for having produced
such a little monstrosity, and I think she also wanted me to feel
that she had suffered and sacrificed herself for me." She was casual
enough in tone; she was not herself laying it on; but, under the
compulsion of her serious eyes, I felt the pain of the situation
penetrate me and pin me to the spot. "I imagine, though, that she
didn't exaggerate," she relentlessly and steadily went on. "I'm
not sure I can't remember it myself. I've been subject all my life
to peculiar spells where I think that I can't move or do anything.–
!
get it when I'm nervously exhausted," she explained in reply to
my question, "and sometimes in my sleep. It's a perfectly horrible
feeling-it's a kind of overpowering inertia that seems all to be
located in my head-it's as if I were weighed down by a millstone,
as if my head were a great stone ball. I suppose, though, that it's
only an intensified form of a tendency I have all the time-I'm
really a very inert person. I think my difficulties in getting born
