A Yellow Raft in Blue Water

Michael Dorris

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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.


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