The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid Page B

woman for love.
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    I lived in this household, occupying a room that was attached to the kitchen; the kitchen was not a part of the house itself. I was enjoying the absence of the constant threat posed to me by my father’s wife, even as I could feel the burden of my life: the short past, the unknown future. I could write letters to my father, letters that contained simple truths: the days seemed shorter in Roseau than the days in Mahaut, the nights seemed hotter in Roseau than the nights in Mahaut. Madame LaBatte is so very kind to me, she saves as a special treat for me a part of the fish that I love. The part of the fish that I love is the head, something my father would not have known, something I had no reason to believe he wished to know. I sent him these letters without fear. I never received a direct reply; he sent word to me in the letters he wrote to Monsieur LaBatte; he always hoped I was getting along in a good way and he wished me well.
    My deep friendship, for it was that, a friendship—perhaps the only one I have ever had—with Madame LaBatte continued to grow. She was always alone. This was true even when she was with others, she was so alone. She thought that she made me sit with her as she sat on the verandah and sewed or just looked out with a blankness at the scene in front of her, but I wanted to sit with her. I was enjoying this new experience, the experience of a silence full of expectation and desire; she wanted something from me, I could tell that, and I longed for the moment to come, the moment that I would know just what it was she wanted. It never crossed my mind that I would refuse her. One day, without any preparation, she gave me a beautiful dress that she no longer wore; it still fit her, but she no longer wore it. As I was trying on the dress I could hear her thoughts: she was thinking of her youth, the person she used to be when she first wore the dress she had just given me, the things she had wanted, the things she had not received, the shallowness of her whole life. All this filled the air in the room we were in, the room in which was the bed she slept in with her husband. My own thoughts answered hers: You were foolish; you should not have let this happen to you. It is your own fault. I was without mercy, my condemnations filled my head with a slow roar until I thought I would faint, and then this thought came upon me slowly, saving me from doing so: She wants to make a gift of me to her husband; she wants to give me to him, she hopes I do not mind. I was standing in this room before her, my clothes coming off, my clothes going on, naked, clothed, but the vulnerability I felt was not of the body, it was of the spirit, the soul. To communicate so intimately with someone, to be spoken to silently by someone and yet understand more clearly than if she had shouted at the top of her voice, was something I did not experience with anyone ever again in my life. I took the dress from her. I did not wear it, I would never wear it; I only took it and kept it for a while.
    The inevitable is no less a shock just because it is inevitable. I was sitting, late one day, in a small shaded area behind the house, where some flowers were planted, though this place could not be called a garden, for not much care was applied to it. The sun had not yet set completely; it was just at that moment when the creatures of the day are quiet but the creatures of the night have not quite found their voice. It was that time of day when all you have lost is heaviest in your mind: your mother, if you have lost her; your home, if you have lost it; the voices of people who might have loved you or who you only wish had loved you; the places in which something good, something you cannot forget, happened to you. Such feelings of longing and loss are heaviest just in that light. Day is almost over, night has almost begun. I did not wear undergarments anymore, I found them uncomfortable, and as