Varieties of Disturbance

Her Mother’s Mother

1.

There are times when she is gentle, but there are also times when she is not gentle, when she is fierce and unrelenting toward him or them all, and she knows it is the strange spirit of her mother in her then. For there were times when her mother was gentle, but there were also times when she was fierce and unrelenting toward her or them all, and she knows it was the spirit of her mother’s mother in her mother then. For her mother’s mother had been gentle sometimes, her mother said, and teased her or them all, but she had also been fierce and unrelenting, and accused her of lying, and perhaps them all.

2.

In the night, late at night, her mother’s mother used to weep and implore her husband, as her mother, still a girl, lay in bed listening. Her mother, when she was grown, did not weep and implore her husband in the night, or not where her daughter could hear her, as she lay in bed listening. Her mother later could not know, since she could not hear, whether her daughter, when she was grown, wept and implored her husband in the night, late at night, like her mother’s mother.