Lives of Girls and Women, Page 28

  Then he did the only special thing he ever did for me. With those things in his hands, he rose on his toes like a dancer, like a plump ballerina. This action, accompanied by his delicate smile, appeared to be a joke not shared with me so much as displayed for me, and it seemed also to have a concise meaning, a stylized meaning—to be a letter, or a whole word, in an alphabet I did not know.

  People’s wishes, and their other offerings, were what I took then naturally, a bit distractedly, as if they were never anything more than my due.

  “Yes,” I said, instead of thank you.