Notes From Childhood by Norah Lange

Author:Norah Lange
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography;non-fiction;memoir;Argentina;women;modernist;Mendoza;1910;1900s;Buenos Aires;Norah Lange;childhood;family;domestic;literary;eroticism;performance;people in the room;Borges;Neruda;Lorca
Publisher: And Other Stories Publishing
Published: 2021-03-23T14:09:03+00:00

When I saw her all dressed up in her tiny coffin, she looked more than ever like one of those big baby dolls lying in a box.

I couldn’t cry like the others, or approach and look at her closely. I was afraid of smiling. I understood in that moment that crying was the only way to show my pain. But my eyes were dry. I would have given anything for a tear to roll down my cheek, for the others to see it. Afraid I was going to smile, I went to my room. The light from the chandeliers drew a long stripe on the hall floor.

When they closed the small casket, we heard a groan. I thought it might have been the last she’d exhaled the night before, that only now was echoing through the room. But it was Mother.

Then I saw the grim carriage, so distant from all that she was, which only made the anguish of letting her go alone, with her four sweet years, inside her little white casket, more immense. I thought it would have been gentler and more tender to bury her in the garden beside a big tree, or that at least a woman should go with her, to lower her into the ground with more tenderness.

When the carriage turned at the corner of Calle Tronador, I finally felt my throat harden, until I choked on my tears.

That was how I saw my first death. Her death. Her tiny death.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.