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Authors: Margaret Atwood
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and that I can be part of it without making any effort at all. I don’t have to keep up with anyone, run as fast, aim as well, make loud explosive noises, decode messages, die on cue. I don’t have to think about whether I’ve done these things well, as well as a boy. All I have to do is sit on the floor and cut frying pans out of the Eaton’s Catalogue with embroidery scissors, and say I’ve done it badly. Partly this is a relief.
Chapter 11
F or Christmas, Carol gives me some Friendship’s Garden bath salts and Grace gives me a coloring book of Virginia Mayo. I open their presents before anyone else’s.
I also get a photo album, to go with my camera. The pages and covers are black, tied together with something that looks like a big black shoelace; there’s a package of black triangles with glue on them to stick the photos in with. So far I have taken only one roll of film with my camera. I think about what each picture will look like as I press the button. I don’t want to waste any. When the pictures come back from being developed, the negatives come too. I hold them up to the light: everything that’s white in the real picture is black in the negative. Snow for instance is black, and people’s eyeballs and teeth. I stick my photos into the album with the black triangles. Some of the pictures are of my brother, making threatening gestures with snowballs. Some are of Carol, some of Grace. There’s only that one picture of me, standing in front of the motel door with 9 on it, long ago, a month ago. Already that child seems much younger, poorer, farther away, a shrunken, ignorant version of myself. Another thing I get for Christmas is a red plastic purse, oval in shape, with a gold-colored clasp and a handle at the top end. It’s soft and pliable inside the house, but hardens outside in the cold, so that things rattle in it. I keep my allowance in it, five cents a week.
By this time we have a living room floor, hardwood, waxed by my mother down on her knees, polished with a long-handled weighted brush that she pushes back and forth, making a sound like waves. The living room has been painted, the fixtures installed, the baseboards added on. There are even curtains; drapes, they’re called. The public, visible parts of the house have been finished first. Our bedrooms remain in a rawer state. The windows there do not yet have drapes. Lying in bed at night, I can look out of my window at the snow falling, illuminated by the light from my brother’s bedroom window beside mine.
It’s the darkest time of the year. Even in the daytime it seems dark; and at night, when the lights are on, this darkness pervades everything, like a fog. Outside there are only a few streetlights, and they’re far apart and not very bright. The lamps in people’s houses cast a yellowish light, not cold and greenish but a buttery dim yellow with a tinge of brown. The colors of things in houses have darkness mixed into them: maroon, mushroom beige, a muted green, a dusty rose. These colors look a little dirty, like the squares in a paint box when you forget to rinse the brush.
We have a maroon chesterfield which has come out of storage, with an oriental-style maroon and purple rug in front of it. We have a tri-light floor lamp. The air in the evening lamplight is coagulated, like a custard thickening; heavier sediments of light collect in the corners of the living room. The drapes are kept closed at night, folds and folds of cloth drawn against the winter, hoarding the dim heavy light, keeping it in.
In this light I spread the evening paper out on the polished hardwood floor and rest on my knees and elbows, reading the comics. In the comics there are people with round holes for eyes, others who can hypnotize you instantly, others with secret identities, others who can stretch their faces into any shape at all. Around me is the scent of newsprint and floor wax, the bureau drawer smell of my itchy stockings mingled with that of grimy
Chapter 11
F or Christmas, Carol gives me some Friendship’s Garden bath salts and Grace gives me a coloring book of Virginia Mayo. I open their presents before anyone else’s.
I also get a photo album, to go with my camera. The pages and covers are black, tied together with something that looks like a big black shoelace; there’s a package of black triangles with glue on them to stick the photos in with. So far I have taken only one roll of film with my camera. I think about what each picture will look like as I press the button. I don’t want to waste any. When the pictures come back from being developed, the negatives come too. I hold them up to the light: everything that’s white in the real picture is black in the negative. Snow for instance is black, and people’s eyeballs and teeth. I stick my photos into the album with the black triangles. Some of the pictures are of my brother, making threatening gestures with snowballs. Some are of Carol, some of Grace. There’s only that one picture of me, standing in front of the motel door with 9 on it, long ago, a month ago. Already that child seems much younger, poorer, farther away, a shrunken, ignorant version of myself. Another thing I get for Christmas is a red plastic purse, oval in shape, with a gold-colored clasp and a handle at the top end. It’s soft and pliable inside the house, but hardens outside in the cold, so that things rattle in it. I keep my allowance in it, five cents a week.
By this time we have a living room floor, hardwood, waxed by my mother down on her knees, polished with a long-handled weighted brush that she pushes back and forth, making a sound like waves. The living room has been painted, the fixtures installed, the baseboards added on. There are even curtains; drapes, they’re called. The public, visible parts of the house have been finished first. Our bedrooms remain in a rawer state. The windows there do not yet have drapes. Lying in bed at night, I can look out of my window at the snow falling, illuminated by the light from my brother’s bedroom window beside mine.
It’s the darkest time of the year. Even in the daytime it seems dark; and at night, when the lights are on, this darkness pervades everything, like a fog. Outside there are only a few streetlights, and they’re far apart and not very bright. The lamps in people’s houses cast a yellowish light, not cold and greenish but a buttery dim yellow with a tinge of brown. The colors of things in houses have darkness mixed into them: maroon, mushroom beige, a muted green, a dusty rose. These colors look a little dirty, like the squares in a paint box when you forget to rinse the brush.
We have a maroon chesterfield which has come out of storage, with an oriental-style maroon and purple rug in front of it. We have a tri-light floor lamp. The air in the evening lamplight is coagulated, like a custard thickening; heavier sediments of light collect in the corners of the living room. The drapes are kept closed at night, folds and folds of cloth drawn against the winter, hoarding the dim heavy light, keeping it in.
In this light I spread the evening paper out on the polished hardwood floor and rest on my knees and elbows, reading the comics. In the comics there are people with round holes for eyes, others who can hypnotize you instantly, others with secret identities, others who can stretch their faces into any shape at all. Around me is the scent of newsprint and floor wax, the bureau drawer smell of my itchy stockings mingled with that of grimy
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