PARTISAN REVIEW
The muscles in her face begin to
clench.
"No, you want me to leave you alone,
you want me to disappear," I tell her,
whispering. I lean toward her. We are
so close, my mother and I, that I can
feel the gentle pores of my skin breath–
ing as if in memory of her breathing,
twenty-five years ago, inside her body,
the seeping of her blood into me and
out again, the two of us one body, the
same matter. She knows
this.
I can hear
her thinking it, but she
will
not admit it.
"You want me to disappear! You
want me to leave you. . . . When you
tried to kill me that time, when you
did all those crazy things for years, did
you
think
I would forget them? How
can I forget them?"
A television set in a comer. Applause.
Squeals.
"You're dirty and hateful," I whisper.
Suddenly I remember all that blood.
Blood on the floor, on the white tub,
splashed onto the wall- the pig ! "You
sit there proud of working in the laun–
dry, doing other people's filthy laundry,
and you wouldn't do mine - you hid
down in the filthy cellar crying down
there! Didn't you? Didn't you? How can
I forget that?"
My mother begins to cry. She covers
her face with her hands.
The nurse comes over. "Is something
wrong?" she asks me. I must look
frightened, she feels sorry for me, she
looks from my mother to me and back
again. I take my mother's hands away
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