Caim’s Reviews > The Tiny Things Are Heavier > Status Update

“He's always regarded her as whole and had never needed her to earn it, and she wonders where this desire Bryan speaks of originates, this desire of hers to hinge herself to someone.”

“You and your family have done enough. Her chest swells with panic.
Judith knows something. It is not possible that this incident will die the quiet death of passing time, with no ruffles, no challenge, the truth—perfectly imperceptible.

“It is okay, Mummy," Sommy says, and she thinks, for the first time, that their wounds are identical, her mother's even more blistering…And all of this, the dresses and canopies and chairs with blue ribbons..is an attempt to convince herself that their realities have changed, that he is still with them. Alive. Breathing. Sane. She thinks now that she ought to be kinder to her, more understanding.”

“To be an outsider is to have the tools to participate only in the realm of the spoken, and to flounder in the realm of the unspoken. She, Sommy, would know this more than anyone.”

“It occurs to her that she was once Judith, but she isn’t any longer. Her family was poor for so long, but they aren’t now. They climbed quietly out of poverty, and into a tenuous but thriving middle class. Still, she’s not able to drop the anxiety of not having, perhaps because she’s aware of the fragility of their status. One misfortune, and they could sink back into where they came.”

“Judith is eating jollof rice slowly but with a frequency that speaks of suppressed passion. Sommy recognizes this kind of slow eating. She’d had enough free meals in university from strange men while grappling with hunger-mangled dignity to recognize the same now in Judith.“

“She thinks that perhaps family is about what is not said.”

“Rarely does the person who does the wounding heal the wound.”

There's nothing in his face she recognizes now, and yet it is his realest face, all its corners sharp, pronounced, unconstrained by the control he's quick to apply in moments of turbulence between them. For the first time, he's told her the whole truth. "I know you now," she wants to say. "I can see you clearly."

Well, damn!

“You would die for your brother. And if we are together long enough, you would die for me, too…Because, alone, you don't think anything of yourself. You have no dreams, no ambitions…Always nonchalant about every fucking thing that is connected to your self-improvement…You are a spectator. The stage scares you. The stage has always scared you…You are right. My love for you is mired in pity."