Lucy

by Jamaica Kincaid

That is how I came to think that heavy and hard was the beginning of living, real living; and though I might not end up with a mark on my cheek, I had no doubt that I would end up with a mark somewhere.

How do you get to be the sort of victor who can claim to be the vanquished also?

I thought, In the history of civilization, they mention everything; even the water glass shattered on the floor—something is said about that—but there is not one word on the misery to be found at a dining-room table.

When I was at home, in my parents’ house, I used to make a list of all the things that I was quite sure would not follow me if only I could cross the vast ocean that lay before me; I used to think that just a change in venue would banish forever from my life the things I most despised. But that was not to be so. As each day unfolded before me, I could see the sameness in everything; I could see the present take a shape—the shape of my past.

I thought of the summer I had just spent. I had come to see the sameness in things that appeared to be different. I had experienced moments of great happiness and a desire to imagine my own future, and at the same time I had had a great disillusionment. But was this not what life should be—some ups and downs instead of a constant dangerous undertow, capable of pulling you under for good?

the uniform made of cloth or the one made of circumstances.

When I said, “But I like him,” an enormous silence fell between us, the kind of silence that is dangerous between friends, for in it they weigh their past together, and they try to see a future together; they hate their present. It is never happy.

And so it was that hands I would come to know very well—Paul’s hands, moving about in the fish tank—reminded me of some other hands lost forever in a warm sea.

I was not the sort of person who counted blessings; I was the sort of person for whom there could never be enough blessings. Besides, there was something else.

I would return to the apartment after running an errand with the children in tow, and I could smell the disagreement in the air. Something serious had been said. Perhaps it was “I no longer love you.” Lewis would have said that, and it was true; he no longer loved Mariah. He would have said it in a kind way, because it is so easy to be kind when you are in his position, the winning-hand position.

I was lying there in a state of no state, almost as if under ether, thinking nothing, feeling nothing. It is a bad way to be—your spirit feels the void and will summon something to come in, usually something bad.

If only we had been ruled by the French: they were prettier, much happier in appearance, so much more the kind of people I would have enjoyed being around.

Smile.

Your past is the person you no longer are, the situations you are no longer in.

Still, it made me remember what my mother had said to me many times: for my whole life I should make sure the roof over my head was my own; such a thing was important, especially if you were a woman.