When I try to recall my mother’s voice as a child, it is lifted in a grave euphorious lament of our economic situation; I hear her chansons and plainsongs of her ineradicable belief that we lived out our days in the most hideous poverty. I could not tell you then if we were poor or not. I am not sure if my mother was miserly or frugal. But I do know that I would rather have asked to suckle her right breast than ask her for ten dollars. The subject of money caused a new woman to be born in her soul; it also diminished her in her children’s eyes. It was not because she didn’t have it; it was
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