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41 " I’d passed whatever test you were putting me through. We desperately wanted life to feel good; we both had hope that it could. "
― Ashley Audrain , The Push
42 " I didn’t want her to think I was the kind of woman a husband cheated on. And despite my ten years of resentment for the relationship you and Violet shared, I didn’t want her to believe you were the kind of man who would do that. "
43 " For the first time then, Cecilia realized she had a kind of power over Etta. She could make her angry. She could make her lose control. She could have gone upstairs and pretended to try again, but she wanted to see how far Etta would go if she ignored her. They were trading gunfire. "
44 " Your house glows at night like everything inside is on fire. "
45 " I started to understand, during those sleepless nights replaying the things I’d overheard, that we are all grown from something. That we carry on the seed, and I was a part of her garden. "
46 " We are all grown from something. We carry on the seed, and I was a part of her garden. "
47 " All the eggs a woman will ever carry form in her ovaries while she is a four-month-old fetus in the womb of her mother. This means our cellular life as an egg begins in the womb of our grandmother. "
48 " I’m glad you have Gemma in your life. I brought you to meet Mrs. Ellington so you could see that I understand. I want you to feel loved by someone you trust. Someone you can turn to. And that person doesn’t have to be me, if you don’t want it to be. "
49 " These are thoughts I never let leave my lips. These are thoughts most mothers don’t have. 14 "
50 " She had a remarkable ability to make me hate myself. "
51 " I didn’t want Mrs. Ellington to know how much it hurt to see my mother. Happy. Beautiful. Better without me. "
52 " These are thoughts I never let leave my lips. These are thoughts most mothers don’t have. "
53 " We had only one version of the truth. "
54 " The lie was necessary, like the scattering of other lies I’d told so that you didn’t suspect just how fucked up my family was. "
55 " The diaper bag slipped from the handle and her bottle fell out and rolled across the floor. I collected it and decided I would not wipe off the nipple. I felt a rush if power when I made clandestine decisions like this, decisions other mothers would not make because they weren’t supposed to, like leaving a wet diaper on too long or skipping her overdue bath again because I couldn’t be bothered. "
56 " A mother's heart breaks a million ways in her lifetime. "
57 " After school that same day, I came up from doing the laundry and found her standing on the edge of a chair at the kitchen counter, her little fingers dancing leisurely through the pickle juice. “What are you doing?” I had asked. “Fishing for whales,” she had said. I looked over her shoulder and watched her try to catch the last few warted pickles as they gracefully breached and dove in a jar of soggy dill weed, and you know what, they did look just like whales. She had a brilliant, beautiful mind and sometimes I longed to be inside it. Even though I feared what I might find. "
58 " It’s a replica of a Mary Cassatt. "
59 " All the eggs a woman will ever carry form in her ovaries while she is a four-month-old fetus in the womb of her mother. This means our cellular life as an egg begins in the womb of our grandmother. Each of us spent five months in our grandmother’s womb and she in turn formed within the womb of her grandmother. "
60 " None of what I’d prepared for felt possible. "