Every time I came in I imagined how my mother’s body had looked in the bed, back when she was still a woman and not a bird, all mortal and soft. Her breasts were lumpy from nursing us, nipples masticated by our baby teeth. Papa said it was only the curse that had made him stop loving her, but hearing Undine’s words echo I wondered if he thought that she’d been spoiled, too, by the mean banality of motherhood. No longer any good to him as a woman or a wife, better as a bird in its cage.
