mere unbeing

excerpts from housekeeping by marilynne robinson

"well, that's fine," sylvie said. "i'm glad to have a chance to talk to you. you're so quiet, it's hard to know what you think." sylvie had stood up, and we began to walk toward home.

"i suppose i don't know what i think." this confession embarrassed me. it was a source of both terror and comfort to me then that i often seemed invisible -- incompletely and minimally existent, in fact. it seemed to me that i made no impact on the world, and that in exchange i was privileged to watch it unawares. but my allusion to this feeling of ghostliness sounded peculiar, and sweat started all over my body, convicting me on the spot of gross corporeality.

"well, maybe that will change," sylvie said. we walked a while without speaking. "maybe it won't." i dropped a step behind and watched her face. she always spoke to me in the voice of an adult dispensing wisdom. i wanted to ask her if she knew what she thought, and if so, what the experience of that sort of knowledge was like, and if not, whether she, too, felt ghostly, as i imagined she must. i waited for sylvie to say, "you're like me." i thought she might say, "you're like your mother." i feared and suspected that sylvie and i were of a kind, and waited for her to claim me, but she would not.

*          *           *

the quilt was warm and soft around me arms and shoulders and my ears. i fell asleep where i sat, with the cup of brimstone tea in my lap, held carefully in both hands so as not to spill. sleep made one sensation of the heat in my palms and the sugar on my tongue. i slept precariously upright, aware of my bare feet, hearing the wood in the stove crackle. more words passed between sylvie and lucille, but i could not make them out. it seemed to me that whatever lucille said, sylvie sang back to her, but that was dreaming.

so this is all death is, i thought. sylvie and lucille do not notice, or perhaps they do not object. sylvie, in fact, brought the coffeepot and warmed the cup in my hands, and arranged the quilt, which had slid from my shoulder a little. i was surprised and touched by her solicitude. she knows, i thought, and i felt like laughing. sylvie is sitting beside the stove, flipping through old magazines, waiting for my mother. i began listening for the sound of the door opening, but after a very long time my head fell sharply to one side and i could not lift it up again. then i realized that my mouth was open. all this time the room was filling with strangers, and there was no way for me to tell sylvie that the tea had tipped out of my hands and wet my lap. i knew that my decay, now obvious and accelerating, should somehow be concealed for decency's sake, but sylvie would not look up from her magazine. i began to hope for oblivion, and then i rolled out of my chair.

sylvie looked up from her magazine. "did you have a good sleep?" she asked.

"all right," i said. i picked up the cup and brushed at the dampness of my pant legs.

"sleep is best when you're really tired," she said. "you don't just sleep. you die."

*         *            *

of my conception i know only what you know of yours. it occurred in darkness and i was unconsenting. i (and that slenderest word is too gross for the rare thing i was then) walked forever through reachless oblivion, in the mood of one smelling night-blooming flowers, and suddenly -- my ravishers left their traces in me, male and female, and over the months i rounded, grew heavy, until the scandal could no longer be concealed and oblivion expelled me. but this i have in common with all my kind. by some bleak alchemy what had been mere unbeing becomes death when life is mingled with it. so they seal the door against our returning.

then there is the matter of my mother's abandonment of me. again, this is the common experience. they walk ahead of us, and walk too fast, and forget us, they are so lost in thoughts of their own, and soon or late they disappear. the only mystery is that we expect it to be otherwise.