More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
I’m twenty years old, married and widowed once already,
For a long time, I was convinced they followed my mother when I could not.
To call her Mother would be to deny the Pawnee girl with the heavy hair and the crooked smile.
One day I woke to a toad in my throat that mimicked my father every time I opened my mouth.
“Her name is Mrs. Caldwell,
It is not love if it doesn’t hurt.”
“The pain. It’s worth it. The more you love, the more it hurts. But it’s worth it. It’s the only thing that is.”
Memorizing.
Mr. Caldwell doesn’t like anyone he doesn’t understand, which to my way of thinking includes women, Indians, children, Mormons, Catholics, Irishmen, Mexicans, Scandinavians, and anyone who is different from him, which—again—includes most people.
It was Daniel who persuaded us all and Daniel who would never see it. Three months after we were married and a few days shy of my nineteenth birthday, he took sick and was gone in a week. When he died,
didn’t want to be a widow and a mother.
I’m convinced everyone is a little vile, if they are honest about it. Vile and scared and human.
But I like looking at him. He has a face I’m going to draw.
except most everyone is white. Everyone but John Lowry,
or a horse. Hating men won’t make you a man. Hating your womb or your breasts or your own weakness won’t make those things go away. You’ll still be a woman.
We spend our lives complicating what we would do better to accept. Because in acceptance, we put our energies into transcendence.”
what transcendence means.” “That’s where your mind goes when your hands are drawing,” Ma explains. “It’s a world, a place, beyond this one. It’s what could be.”
“Put your energy into rising above the things you can’t change, Naomi. Keep your mind right. And everything will work out for the best.” “Even if there’s a lot of pain along the way?” “Especially if there’s pain along the way,”
“I like him too, Ma. That’s why I’m mad.”
“I never get sick,” I say, parroting Naomi May, and stiffen when Abbott laughs. “You already are. Lovesick. I can see it all over your face.”
Harsh words are not easily forgotten, and I need her to hear me.
“You are terrified of me, John Lowry.”
“Like Jesus, son of Mary, walking on water.”
“Don’t be afraid of me.”
“My mother called me Pítku ásu’.”
and my brother becomes a surviving spouse, just like me.
We may all die if Ma dies.
one of a kind, every time. Created by a mother and a father that don’t belong together,
I’d take a mule over a man any day . . . but Naomi May is another proposition altogether.
Standing alone has made it a target, and eventually, all the attention will destroy it.
“Mr. Lowry washes my clothes as well,”
“Son of Mary, walking on the water,”
You ride the young one, so you catch her.”
“Ícas,” John says, and his eyes meet mine.
“But all I want is to be beside you.”
“but I have my pride. And I am not going to beg.”
There is guilt in choosing one of my feet over the other.
“The hardest thing about life is knowing what matters and what doesn’t,” Winifred muses. “If nothing matters, then there’s no point. If everything matters, there’s no purpose. The trick is to find firm ground between the two ways of being.”
“But none of those things matter at all if you have no one to feed, to shelter, or to keep warm. If you have no one to survive for, why eat? Why sleep? Why care at all? So I guess it’s not what matters . . . but who matters.”
“That’s what marriage is. It’s shelter. It’s sustenance. It’s warmth. It’s finding rest in each other. It’s telling someone, You matter most. That’s what Naomi wants from you. And that’s what she wants to give you.”
“You’d best be going after her now.”
Naomi seems to know exactly who she is, and she gives no indication that she is anything but content with herself.
and her hands rise to my face, holding me to her, and I am forgiven.
Why would I want to stare at my own reflection in my children if I could look at John instead?
“I only got one daughter, but God gave me the very best one He had.”
“Tell her I will feed him, John Lowry,” Hanabi says to me. “I have more milk than my daughter can drink.”
spot. It has completely obscured her name.
“They keep coming. It won’t do any good.”
as two tumbleweeds in a tropical paradise.
yellow dress,
