HER MOTHER was back from a trip. Sophie saw her roll up the shutters and stand in the window, but her mother couldn’t see her. She was in the garden, watching from behind the bushes. Later when she saw her mother coming down the stairs dressed to go out, she told her the German teacher wanted her to have a certain book. Her mother listened, laughing, her lids fluttering, her face very painted behind a veil full of velvet dots and a dress that was a coat with a fur stole in one piece. She asked her mother in a funny way, Sophie knew.
“You’re a funny little girl,” her mother said to her, as Sophie expected she would. She didn’t know how to be any other way with her mother.
She watched for her mother and when she saw her come out the front door, pretended she was playing and didn’t see her. She ran up and down the path, jumping and tossing her head with such abandon she couldn’t possibly see her mother or hear her calling her. But of course she was watching carefully and planning; just before her mother reached the seventh almond tree Sophie streaked across the path, startling her and blocking her way. She was such a funny little girl, if her mother wanted it that way. Sophie didn’t care as long as it was all right with her mother. And it seemed that way from her little laugh and winks of complicity.
The day before her German lesson she went to see if her mother was in the house. It was afternoon; her father was working, the door to her mother’s bedroom was closed. But she heard her moving about. She knocked. “Come in,” she heard her mother’s voice. She went in. Her mother lay on the blue divan in black satin pants and a Japanese kimono; she put aside the book she was reading, and stared at Sophie as if she didn’t believe her eyes. Was she expecting someone else?
Her amazement spread in a smile, she was seized by giggles before she could speak. “To what great event do I owe the honor of my only daughter’s visit?”
Her tone was not sarcastic and the expression of her face was so strange Sophie forgot about her book. Besides, her mother gave her no time as she continued wagging her finger and laughing mysteriously. “I think I know! I think I know! And if you’ll let me fix your hair, I’ll tell you.” Her fingers were undoing the braids the maid had braided at some aunt’s command, loosening and fluffing the strands while she murmured about little secrets between mother and daughter. Sophie took off her hand angrily. Her mother smiled knowingly. “Do you know why you don’t love me?” she began in an artificial tone of reflective serenity and looking witty, as if to announce something new that would amuse, edify, and reconcile them both. “I’ll tell you, it’s very simple.”
To say something to stop her mother from continuing, Sophie said, “Because you’re always away.” Now she was angry at herself. She heard that from others. She had no right to say it to her mother. She was glad when her mother was away.
“Little liar. I was home all this week; did you come and say hello to me? Have you ever said a nice word to me? You come only if you want something.
That look...you should see the look in your eye...” Her laugh was taunting now and increasingly enraged as she carried on while Sophie stood still, her eyes nailed on the ground.
“...an unnatural child, from the day you were born. Already as a baby you pushed me away. All children are selfish, but it’s unnatural for a child not to love its mother...” She watched her mother as she paced, declaiming, reproaching, threatening; observed the faultless lacquered nails, the reddish face with bleached fuzz, the dry, blond curls. Her arm rose from the wide sleeve of the kimono and vanished. Now as the arm extended horizontally pointing at her, the blue parrot on the sleeve appeared long enough that she saw it whole, saw the different shades of blue, some green, a touch of orange—suddenly it split and vanished into wrinkles, her mother made a sudden gesture, taking a step toward her, her arms turning like those of a circus performer doing fancy figures with a whip. The spectacle was totally absorbing: her dramatic gestures, the changing line of her mouth, the pattern of her kimono showing different colors as the folds shifted, her slippered feet stamping—at moments all these details would converge in the overpowering sensation of her beauty, majesty, ugliness. One moment, beautiful—all of her had had the beauty of her porcelain hands; at another, all of her repulsive like a wounded animal. Sophie felt herself dissolving in the violence of these sensations. Of herself only a schematic outline remained and a painful awareness of the child in the room as someone else, an undefined mass, an empty outline. Parts of the child kept appearing, dissolving, reappearing—sudden, fragmented, irritating like false images: the feet shifting weight, the hot damp skin of a face with a bone, brains, jelly eyes and darkness behind the skin; no person in the darkness, shrugging shoulders. She took a step back, saw her ugly brown laced shoes. The phantom of a child rose up, angrily protesting a storm of accusations which were not true. A child trapped in a losing battle, her self-defense provoking a more horrible judgment: annihilating. A child before whom its mother was speechless, worse than bad, unnatural, scandalous, so outrageous it was unspeakable. “...any other parents would have beaten you to a pulp,” she was groaning out the words; “...it’s only because you have a father...a father who is the sweetest, kindest, most generous...he is too good, he lets you get away with...if it wasn’t for your father...” Sophie heard the words coming in
