Madeline’s Reviews > Surfacing > Status Update

“I curled up, concentrating on excluding him: he was merely an object in the bed, like a sack or a large turnip.”

2/2 A lady was what you dressed up as on Halloween when you couldn't think of anything else and didn't want to be a ghost; or it was what u said at school when they asked u what u were going to be when u grew up, you said "A lady" or "A mother," either one was safe; and it wasn't a lie, I did want to be those things. On some of the pages were women's dresses clipped from mail-order catalogues, no bodies in them.”

1/2 “The next scrapbook was mine. I searched through it care-fully, looking for something I could recognize as myself, where I had come from or gone wrong; but there were no drawings at all, just illustrations cut from magazines and pasted in. They were ladies, all kinds: holding up cans of cleanser, knitting, smiling, modeling toeless high heels and nylons with dark seams and pillbox hats and veils.

“I wanted to get them off the island, to protect them from him, to protect him from them, save all of them from knowledge. They might start to explore, cut other trails; already they were beginning to be restless: fire and food, the only two necessities, were taken care of and there was nothing left to be done.”