Prostitutes -- Fiction; United States -- Fiction; Women -- Fiction
The mother saw her clothed. She stands in a blue gingham frock, almost
hidden away by a blue and white checked apron. But the black stockings
were there and the tight sleeves and the loved white neck. A dark braid
fell across her shoulder, tied with a stiff blue bow.--Her hair is not
dark! Mine ... mine is black. Smile at me. _Where is her face?_
Fanny was troubled: she saw her child again. She wore an apple green
mulle dress very clear and clean as it hung straight from her shoulders.
The loved white neck! pulsant with breath of her child. She curtsies.
There was a flounce at the hem: and at the end of the puffed sleeves was
a ruffle. Edith’s bare arms! She wore white stockings, little canvas
pumps.--She is thin!--_And her hair? and her face?_
Fanny shut her eyes and her hands waved with pain before them. She knew
these dresses were her own! She saw her child in her own girlish
frocks.... And her hair? It was golden ... but it would get dark.--As
dark as mine?
--Does she have my frocks and my hair? Through Fanny’s mind passed
dresses she had worn: for romping and for dancing, for lessons and for
parties.--I have forgotten not a single one. Are Edith’s really the
same?
She was moved. She moved against her emotion.--I do not see her! _Your_
dresses--not her _face_! Has she the same frocks? Fanny knew this could
not be.... She knew there still lived within her that which needed to
play with the sweet fancy that it was.
“But no,” she murmured. “In no way be like me! Edith ... to save you
from that ... come, look at your Mother!”
With her daughter’s eyes, Fanny beheld herself.--I am not hateful. She
was a little woman, breaking and bewildered with flood of a world within
her heart. She was a little woman tortured in the uses of a Hand that
would not leave her alone.
--But I don’t see an end.... _There is no end._ I do not see a
growth.... _There is no growing._ ... Let me rest here quiet. I am still
weak. Too weak to assemble my thoughts. What if the room is Clara’s ...
Clara’s lover’s (is there at least love here?) What do these things
mean, beside the truth that I am quiet?
The sun sent a sudden shaft under the cornice of the opposite house. It
lay in a cold glare, gradually milding, on her.
So Fanny gave up thinking.--Why am I so hungry, having done nothing?
Lucy cleared the table ... folded it.
“O it was good, child!”
“Thank you, Mis’ Fanny.”
“No, Lucy: leave the table. Bring me the cards.”
“Yes, Mis’ Fanny.”
Fanny played _Canfield_. And even this was beyond her. She was amazed to
find that she had placed a red Jack under a red Queen: over there was a
black Three under a Five! “I am skipping chances and making horrible
mistakes.”
She shook her head. “How dull I am!” She was helpless against
it.--Stupider than Lucy. Duller than the stupidest person in the world.
She smiled. She knew that the reason was that she was filling with a
Light.
--When I was pregnant with Edith, sometimes I was like this.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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