Important Quotations Explained
1. This
scrap of paper in my hand makes me feel poor in a way like I just
heard of rich. Jealous. What kind of a person would throw it away?
2. [S]he
lights Kent after Kent and the room fills with smoke while she kills
the bottle. . . . Those nights I help her to bed.
In
school they had taught her all this crap about drinking and how
bad it was for you. . . . Sometimes I found myself sneaking around
my own apartment like some kid, hiding a bottle of V.O. in a shoebox
and dreaming up excuses to satisfy her.
3. Rayona
gave me something to be, made me like other women with children.
I was nobody's regular daughter, nobody's sister, usually nobody's
wife, but I was her mother full time.
4. I
saw my greatest hits, the K-Tel Christine Taylor album, offered
on a late show commercial: two or three bittersweet C&W cuts
of Lee, a rhythm-and-blues section starring Elgin, a war dance song
for Aunt Ida, and some rock and roll for my teenage adventures.
Rayona was all ballads.
5. When
I stuck a plaited palm behind [a religious calendar] at the end
of Lent I would realize the pages had not been turned and bring
it up to date. Then I'd forget again. In my house, Christ was always
being born or rising from the dead.
