Read Online Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Alice Munro
Tags: Contemporary
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Heaven. Yes. But I know your aunts, they’ll expect dark clothes, conventional to the last hair!”
She was not surprised to hear that I did not want to go.
“Nobody does,” she said frankly. “Nobody ever does. You have to, though. You have to learn to face things sometime.”
I did not like the way she said this. Her briskness and zeal seemed false and vulgar. I did not trust her. Always when people tell you you will have to face this sometime, when they hurry you matter-of-factly towards whatever pain or obscenity or unwelcome revelation is laid out for you, there is this edge of betrayal, this cold, masked, imperfectly hidden jubilation in their voices, something greedy for your hurt. Yes, in parents too; in parents particularly.
“What is Death?” continued my mother with ominous cheerfulness. “What is being dead?”
“Well, first off, what is a person? A large percent water. Just plain water. Nothing in a person is that remarkable. Carbon. The simplest elements. What is it they say? Ninety-eight cents worth? That’s all. It’s the way its put together that’s remarkable. The way it’s put together, we have the heart and the lungs. We have the liver. Pancreas. Stomach. Brain. All these things, what are they? Combinations of elements! Combine them—combine the combinations—and you’ve got a person! We call it Uncle Craig, or your father, or me. But its just these combinations, these parts put together and running in a certain particular way, for the time being. Then what happens is that one of the parts gives out, breaks down. In Uncle Craig’s case, the heart. So we say, Uncle Craig is dead. The person is dead. But that’s just our way of looking at it. That’s just our human way. If we weren’t thinking all the time in terms of persons, if we were thinking of Nature, all Nature going on and on, parts of it dying—well not dying, changing, changing is the word I want, changing into something else, all those elements that made the person changing and going back into Nature again and reappearing over and over in birds and animals and flowers—Uncle Craig doesn’t have to be Uncle Craig! Uncle Craig is flowers!”
“I’ll get carsick,” I said. “I’ll vomit.”
“No you won’t.” My mother, in her slip, rubbed cologne on her bare arms. She pulled her navy blue crepe dress over her head. “Come and do me up. What a dress to wear in this heat. I can smell the Cleaners on it. Heat brings out that smell. Let me tell you about an article I was reading just a couple of weeks ago. It ties in perfectly with what I’m saying now.”
She went into her room and brought back her hat, which she put on in front of my little bureau mirror, hastily scraping the front hair underneath and leaving some back tails out. It was a pillbox hat of a hideous colour popular during the war—Air Force Blue.
“People are made up of parts,” she resumed. “Well when a person dies—as we say—only one part, or a couple of parts, may actually be worn out. Some of the other parts could run thirty, forty years more. Uncle Craig, for instance—he might have had perfectly good kidneys that a young person with sick kidneys could use. And this article was saying—someday these parts will be used! That’s the way it will be. Come on downstairs.”
I followed her down to the kitchen. She started putting her rouge on, at the dark mirror over the kitchen sink. For some reason she kept her make-up there, on a sticky tin shelf above the sink, all mixed up with bottles of dark old pills, and razor blades and tooth powder and Vaseline, no tops on anything.
“Transplant them! For instance eyes. They are already able to transplant eyes, not whole eyes but the cornea, I think it is. That’s only the beginning. Someday they’ll be able to transplant hearts and lungs and all the organs that the body needs. Even brains—I wonder, could they transplant brains? So all these parts won’t die at all, they’ll go on
She was not surprised to hear that I did not want to go.
“Nobody does,” she said frankly. “Nobody ever does. You have to, though. You have to learn to face things sometime.”
I did not like the way she said this. Her briskness and zeal seemed false and vulgar. I did not trust her. Always when people tell you you will have to face this sometime, when they hurry you matter-of-factly towards whatever pain or obscenity or unwelcome revelation is laid out for you, there is this edge of betrayal, this cold, masked, imperfectly hidden jubilation in their voices, something greedy for your hurt. Yes, in parents too; in parents particularly.
“What is Death?” continued my mother with ominous cheerfulness. “What is being dead?”
“Well, first off, what is a person? A large percent water. Just plain water. Nothing in a person is that remarkable. Carbon. The simplest elements. What is it they say? Ninety-eight cents worth? That’s all. It’s the way its put together that’s remarkable. The way it’s put together, we have the heart and the lungs. We have the liver. Pancreas. Stomach. Brain. All these things, what are they? Combinations of elements! Combine them—combine the combinations—and you’ve got a person! We call it Uncle Craig, or your father, or me. But its just these combinations, these parts put together and running in a certain particular way, for the time being. Then what happens is that one of the parts gives out, breaks down. In Uncle Craig’s case, the heart. So we say, Uncle Craig is dead. The person is dead. But that’s just our way of looking at it. That’s just our human way. If we weren’t thinking all the time in terms of persons, if we were thinking of Nature, all Nature going on and on, parts of it dying—well not dying, changing, changing is the word I want, changing into something else, all those elements that made the person changing and going back into Nature again and reappearing over and over in birds and animals and flowers—Uncle Craig doesn’t have to be Uncle Craig! Uncle Craig is flowers!”
“I’ll get carsick,” I said. “I’ll vomit.”
“No you won’t.” My mother, in her slip, rubbed cologne on her bare arms. She pulled her navy blue crepe dress over her head. “Come and do me up. What a dress to wear in this heat. I can smell the Cleaners on it. Heat brings out that smell. Let me tell you about an article I was reading just a couple of weeks ago. It ties in perfectly with what I’m saying now.”
She went into her room and brought back her hat, which she put on in front of my little bureau mirror, hastily scraping the front hair underneath and leaving some back tails out. It was a pillbox hat of a hideous colour popular during the war—Air Force Blue.
“People are made up of parts,” she resumed. “Well when a person dies—as we say—only one part, or a couple of parts, may actually be worn out. Some of the other parts could run thirty, forty years more. Uncle Craig, for instance—he might have had perfectly good kidneys that a young person with sick kidneys could use. And this article was saying—someday these parts will be used! That’s the way it will be. Come on downstairs.”
I followed her down to the kitchen. She started putting her rouge on, at the dark mirror over the kitchen sink. For some reason she kept her make-up there, on a sticky tin shelf above the sink, all mixed up with bottles of dark old pills, and razor blades and tooth powder and Vaseline, no tops on anything.
“Transplant them! For instance eyes. They are already able to transplant eyes, not whole eyes but the cornea, I think it is. That’s only the beginning. Someday they’ll be able to transplant hearts and lungs and all the organs that the body needs. Even brains—I wonder, could they transplant brains? So all these parts won’t die at all, they’ll go on
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