PARTISAN REVIEW
431
1969
Sunday. A sunny day. She
is
fatter,
her cheeks fatter. A book on her lap.
"What are you reading, Ma?" I
ask,
feeling happy. "It's just from the
li–
brary ... a silly book...." she says,
embarrassed. Now she
is
easily em–
barrassed by herself. She sits clumsily,
her cheeks flushed.
1967
Hospitals. Six months out, eight
months in. Fat, baggy stomach. Shrunk–
en stomach. She stuffs herself with food,
then she
staIVes
herself.... She screams
at the nurses and at me, she sits
in
silence, in sorrow. A plump, fresh face.
A haggard face. The months come and
go, the pendulum swings back and forth,
she
is
"making a new beginning," and
now she
is
breaking out into a freezing
sweat. . . . The years are all mixed up.
My head spins with the years and
months, mixed up, the real hallway and
the hallway in my dream, the real blood
and the blood in my dream. . . .
1969
The novel she
is
reading
is
Glory
of
Dawn.
Her hands are plump and look
healthy. I want suddenly to bump my
head against hers, gently, trying to un–
derstand something, to remember some–
thing. There are secrets
in
her she must
tell me someday. I want to ask her
