Time Bites by Doris Lessing

Author:Doris Lessing [Lessing, Doris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-03-01T16:00:00+00:00

…and I force myself to keep in mind that I was born of her, that I lay in her arms as a baby, nursed of her breast and was at one time her chief interest, I listen for a cry in my heart for her and there isn’t any. I look at her and feel toward her only coldness. This I am sure is unnatural and I feel sure I am to blame. Don’t think that I bear her any ill will for wrongs, fancied or real–I don’t. I want so hard to love her–or even like her and I can’t.

Maimie had decided to leave her husband. Mr Welsh opposed this. But she made attempts to live on her own, earning a pittance addressing envelopes by the thousand, or other unskilled work. It is interesting that this unqualified woman who always found it so hard to get work knew Russian, German, Yiddish, French. The excuse was always her appearance, her patched eye. She could never be used ‘out front’ where she could be seen, or as a saleswoman. Again and again she was refused because of her appearance. And people took advantage of her. She wondered to Fanny if perhaps she was not like that little dog who has had its rump kicked so often that it backs towards its oppressor to save both of them trouble.

Now a good thing happened, but it had to be seen as ‘a temptation’. There was a childhood sweetheart, Ira. He had married badly, as she had. There was a baby, and he set up his mother and sisters on a farm with this child and undertook to support them all. Then he searched for Maimie, for he loved her, and thought her a wonder, which of course she was. During this period, when she had left her husband and was being tempted back into ‘the life’, Ira wanted her to live with him in New York. Her own attitude was:

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