The Changeling by Joy Williams

Author:Joy Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Tin House Books

CHAPTER TEN

Pearl had never found Sam’s grandmother to be very lovable, but of course she saw her differently than Sam. The old woman did not like Pearl and Pearl couldn’t blame her for that, and they had never spoken to one another in seven years and Pearl was actually relieved about that, but Pearl did wish that she was not quite so eccentric in her appearance.

Sometimes Pearl, in viewing the two of them together through the open door, wanted to rush through and take the child out of there, away from her speech, away from her face, which seemed terrible to Pearl. But she didn’t feel she had the right. The fact of it was that the old woman was raising Sam and Pearl was not. The old woman took better care of Sam than Pearl did and always had. She had taught him how to tell a story and how to listen to one. She told him wonderful things. What advice could Pearl give if she ever had him to herself? When one is drunk and trying to eat at the same time it is helpful to make the attempt before a mirror? It was hopeless. There were tall roses in the garden that Pearl suspected of disliking her. Once she was positive that a curtain blowing in the window had been sent to murder her. It was too depressing, her flickering world. What could she say to the child? What hope could she give him? Sometimes she would wake in the night to see fifty birds, dead, but rigid in the attitudes of life, scattered on the blanket of her bed. With a groan, they would rise and be gone. She sweated. She shook. Her eyes filmed with things galloping, burrowing, flying, nesting there. And love seemed to be a kingdom from which she had been banished. The appearances of things were like scabs upon her soul, a crust which kept her soul from light. How could she tell Sam this? He was her fear.

He was her fear because of his love for the old woman. The way she appeared to Pearl was terrible. The way she appeared to Sam was not. How could they discuss it? To Pearl, she was a presence so primal, belonging to a world so little realized, that it seemed preferable to ignore her. The others did. They had, as far as she could tell, forgotten she existed. They believed in Emma more. Sam took care of his grandmother’s needs and she demanded nothing of the others. She lived half like an animal in her room, but then again, half not, rather a dignified and rapacious matriarch with a face shaped by age and conviction into the edge of an opposing weapon. Sometimes she would smile at Pearl from inside that face, and Pearl would smile helplessly back with the sickening feeling that she was collaborating with God.

Not the God of her mother’s faulty and romantic vision, but the true one. A God of barbaric and unholy appearance, with a mind uncomplimentary to human consciousness.

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