Margaret Atwood - The Robber Bride

“Five, six, who’s counting?”

“Six what?” says Roz.

“Jews,” says Uncle George. “They burnt them in ovens, they piled them up in heaps. Little Rozzie-lind, you wouldn’t want to know. If they got their hands on you, back over there, they’d make you into a lampshade.”

He doesn’t explain to Roz that it would just be the skin. She has a picture of her entire body turned into a lampshade, with a lightbulb inside it and the light beaming out from her eyes and nostrils and ears and mouth. She must look terrified, because Uncle Joe says, “Don’t scare the kid. All of that, it’s over.

‘

“Why?” says Roz. “Why would they?” But neither of them answers.

“It’s not over till it’s over,” says Uncle George gloomily.

Roz has the feeling that someone has been lying to her. Not just about her father: about the war too, and about God. The starving orphans were bad enough but they weren’t the whole story. What else has been going on, with the ovens and the heaps and the lampshades, and why has God allowed it?

She doesn’t want to think about any of it any more because it’s too sad and confusing. Instead she takes to reading murder mysteries. She borrows them from Miss Hines and reads them at night, beside the streetlight coming through her attic window. She likes the furniture, and the outfits of the people in them, and the butlers and the maids. But mostly she likes the fact that there’s a reason for every death, and only one murderer at a time, and things get figured out at the end, and the murderer always gets caught.

Roz walks home from school in an expectant mood. There’s something going on; she isn’t sure what, but she knows there’s something. Something is about to happen.

Last week, her mother said at breakfast: Mrs. Morley has been fired. What did that mean? Lost her job, but Roz had a brief vision of Mrs. Morley in flames, like an early martyr. Not that she wanted Mrs. Morley to burn up. She liked her, and also her accoutrements—her face cream samples, her costume jewellery, and especially her shoes.

Ever since then Mrs. Morley has been dragging around the house in her quilted pink satin dressing gown. Her eyelids are puffy, her face bare of makeup; the jingling from her usual festoons of necklaces and bangles has fallen silent. She isn’t supposed to eat in her room but she’s doing it anyway, out of paper bags brought to her by Mr. Carruthers; there are sandwich crusts and apple cores in her wastepaper basket, but although Roz’s mother must be aware of this, she isn’t knocking on Mrs. Morley’s door to issue the commands she’s normally so fond of giving. Sometimes these paper bags contain small flat bottles that don’t turn up in the wastepaper basket. in the late afternoons, still in her dressing gown, she goes down to the kitchen for short, fraught talks with Roz’s mother. What is she going to do? she asks. Roz’s mother purses her lips, and says she doesn’t know.

These talks are about money: without her job, Mrs. Morley won’t be able to pay the rent. Roz feels sorry for her, but at the same time less friendly, because Mrs. Morley is whining and it makes Roz disdainful. If girls whine at school they get poked or slapped by the other children, or stood in a corner by the nuns.

“She should pull herself together,” Roz’s mother says to Roz’s father at the dinner table. Once Roz would have been the audience for such comments, but now she is just a little pitcher with big ears.

“Have a heart, Aggie,” says Roz’s father. No one else ever calls Roz’s mother Aggie to her face.

“Having a heart is all very well,” says Roz’s mother, “but it won’t put food on the table.”

But there is food on the table. Beef stew, mashed potatoes and gravy, and cooked cabbage. Roz is eating it.

On top of Mrs. Morley being fired, Miss Hines is down with a cold. “Just pray to God she doesn’t catch pneumonia,” says Roz’s mother. “Then we’ll have two useless women on our hands.”

Roz goes into Mrs. Morley’s room. Mrs. Morley is in bed, eating a sandwich; she shoves it under the covers, but smiles when she sees it’s only Roz. “Honey, you should always knock before entering a lady’s chamber,” she says.

“I have an idea,” says Roz. “You could sell your shoes.” The ones Roz means are the red satin ones with the sparkly dips. They must be very expensive.

Mrs. Morley’s smile wavers and falls. “Oh, honey,” she says. “If only I could.”

As she rounds the corner to her house Roz sees a strange sight. The front lawn is covered with snow like all the other lawns, but scattered over it there are a number of coloured objects. As she gets closer she sees what they are: Mrs. Morley’s dresses. Mrs. Morley’s stockings, Mrs. Morley’s handbags, Mrs. Morley’s brassieres and underpants. Mrs. Morley’s shoes. A lurid light plays round them.

Roz goes inside, into the kitchen. Her mother is sitting white-faced and bolt upright at the kitchen table; her eyes are still as stone. In front of her is an untouched cup of tea. MissHines is sitting in Roz’s chair, patting her mother’s hand with small fluttery pats. She has a spot in pink in either cheek. She looks nervous, but also elated.

“Your mother’s had a shock,” she says to Roz. “Would you like a glass of milk, dear?”

“What are Mrs. Morley’s things doing on the lawn?” says Roz.

“What could I do?” says Miss Hines, to nobody in particular. “I couldn’t help seeing them. They didn’t even shut the door all the way.”

“Where is she?” asks Roz. “Where’s Mrs. Morley?” Mrs. Morley must have gone away without paying the rent. “Flown the coop,” is how her mother would put it. Roomers have flown the coop in that way before, leaving possessions behind them, though never out on the lawn.

“She won’t be showing her face in this house again,” says her mother.

“Can I have her shoes?” says Roz. She’s sorry she won’t be seeing Mrs. Morley again, but there is no need for the shoes to go to waste.

“Don’t touch her filthy things,” says her mother. “Don’t lay a finger on them! They belong in the garbage, like her. That whore! If all that junk’s not gone by tomorrow I’ll burn it in the incinerator!”

Miss Hines looks shocked by such strong language. “I will pray for her,” she says.

“I won’t,” says Roz’s mother.

Roz connects none of this with her father until he appears, later, in time for dinner. The fact that he’s on time is remarkable: he isn’t usually. He is subdued, and respectful towards Roz’s mother, but he doesn’t hug her or give her a kiss. For the first time since his return he seems almost afraid of her.

“Here’s the rent,” he says. He dumps a little heap of money on the table.

“Don’t think you can buy me off,” says Roz’s mother. “You and that slut! It’s hush money. I’m not touching one dirty cent.”

“It’s not hers,” says Roz’s father. “I won it at poker.”

“How could you?” says Roz’s mother. “After all I gave up for you! Look at my hands!”

“She was crying,” says Roz’s father, as if this explains everything.

“Crying!” says Roz’s mother with scorn, as if she herself would never do such a degrading thing. “Crocodile tears! She’s a maneater.”

“I felt sorry for her,” says Roz’s father. “She threw herself at me. What could I do?”

Roz’s mother turns her back on him. She hunches over the stove and dishes out the stew, hitting the spoon loudly on the side of the pot, and goes through the entire dinner without speaking. At first Roz’s father hardly touches his dinner—Roz knows the feeling, it’s anxiety and guilt—but Roz’s mother shoots him a look of concentrated disgust and points at his plate, meaning that if he doesn’t eat what she’s spent her whote life cooking for him he’ll be in even worse trouble than he is. When her back is turned Roz’s father smiles a little smile at Roz, and winks at her. Then she knows that all of this—his misery, his hangdog air—is an act, or partly an act, and that he’s all right really.