Chapter 19

• Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes.
• A thing is valued, she says, only if it is rare and hard to get.
• They said there was no sense in breeding. Aunt Lydia’s nostrils narrow: such wickedness. They were lazy women, she says. They were sluts
• “I’m dreaming that I am awake”
• “she’s running to meet me, in her small green nightgown with the sunflower on the front”
• “I begin to cry, because I know then that I’m not awake”
• Like craters on the moon. It's a barren landscape, yet perfect.
• In reduced circumstances the desire to live attaches itself to strange objects.
• I dress, not looking down
• “To look at the egg gives me intense pleasure. The sun goes and the egg fades.” [...] If I have an egg, what more can I want?
• and it's red. Joy to the world, rare enough these days.
• she's actually smiling
• “On this day we can do whatever we want. I revise that: within limits”
• “What will Ofwarren give birth to? A baby, as we all hope? Or something else, an Unbaby, with a pinhead or a snout like a dog’s, or two bodies, or a hole in its heart or no arms, or webbed hands and feet?”
• “They could tell once, with machines, but that is now outlawed.”
• “I can’t think of myself, my body, sometimes, without seeing the skeleton”
• “The greater the risk the greater the glory”
• “We didn’t know exactly what happened to the babies that didn’t get passed, that were declared Unbabies. But we knew they were put somewhere, quickly, away.”
• “A thing is valued, she says, only if it is rare and hard to get. We want you to be valued, girls.”
• “we make her salivate morally”
• formerly the whiny bitch Janine
• We are hers to define, we must suffer her adjectives
• Little whores, all of them, but still, you can't be choosy.
• Stares out the window. Breathes in and out. Caresses her swollen breasts. Thinks of nothing.