See Now Then by Jamaica Kincaid

Author:Jamaica Kincaid [Kincaid, Jamaica]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780374180560
Amazon: 0374180563
Goodreads: 13538652
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2012-09-04T07:00:00+00:00

5

Mrs. Sweet ended all these thoughts, for the door to the room that was just off the kitchen opened with a mighty force, and Mrs. Sweet knew immediately that it was her son the young Heracles.

The young Heracles would always be so, then, now, and then to come, as would his sister the beautiful Persephone be so, then, now, and then to come. Their mother Mrs. Sweet had deemed it to be that way. But now, just this now, the young Heracles flung open the door to the room just off the kitchen, the room in which Mrs. Sweet kept her true self and had never revealed it to anybody, not Mr. Sweet, not the beautiful Persephone, not the young Heracles, and she had no idea that they knew of her secret communing with her true self and that they viewed this with feelings of various kinds: sympathy from Heracles, simple hatred from Persephone, homicidal rage from Mr. Sweet. But now, just this now, the young Heracles said to his mother, “Mom, Mom, what are you doing? I’ve been looking for you all over the place. You weren’t in the garden, you weren’t in the kitchen, you weren’t in bed reading a book no one but you would care about. Where were you? Can Tad, Ted, Tim, Tom, and Tut come over? We wanna play a game but Dad says I better ask you because we’re gonna make a lot of noise and he’s trying to finish writing his concerto for two pianos for the Troy Orchestra and we’re probably gonna make a lot of noise because we don’t know how to be quiet, I don’t know how to be quiet, I keep telling Dad, I don’t know how to be quiet, I don’t know how to stay still, I don’t know what to do, Mom, Mom are you listening to me, are you listening to me? Help me, Mom, say something, tell me what’s going on.” Oh how his mother loved him and she thought of the time when he was in her stomach and would not stay still, how all night he jumped up and down in her womb and then would stretch himself to his full height, almost twenty-four inches diagonally, and she could see the imprint of his heel and the imprint of his fist through her skin, as if her skin were a piece of old, worn-out fabric, and then she wanted to say something to him that would make him place himself into that posture of the unborn child in the uterus that decorates the walls of obstetricians’ waiting rooms, and that unborn child who fits perfectly in the illustrated pelvic area and develops into a baby without the host knowing of it, and host and child are one but they acknowledge nothing of their unspeakable intimacy, and that intimacy is a lost island that has not yet been found. But so did Heracles enter into Mrs. Sweet’s very being, distorting the skin of

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