sisterhood

• We learned to whisper almost without sound. In the semidarkness we could stretch out our arms, when the aunts weren’t looking, and touch each others hands across space
• There’s a rug on the floor, oval, of braided rags. This is the kind of touch they like: folk art, archaic, made by women, in their spare time, from things that had no further use.
• A Sister, dipped in blood
• It’s the red dress she [Rita] disapproves of , and what it stands for. She thinks I may be catching , like a disease or any form of bad luck
• I heard rita say to cora that she wouldn’t debase herself like that
• Its not that bad. Its not what you’d call hard work
• The different types of mischief our bodies, like unruly children can get up to
• Fraternise means to act like a brother. Luke told me that. He said there was no corresponding word that meant to behave like a sister
• She wanted me to feel that I could not come into the house unless she said so. There is push and shive, these days over such toeholds.
• I wanted her to turn into an older sister, a motherly figure, someone who would understand and protect me
• Janine looks at me, then around the corners of her mouth there is the trace of a smirk. She glances down to where my own belly lies flat
• We put our hands over our hearts to show these stranger women that we feel with them in their loss.
• the only danger was from others. Some were believers and might report us
• She looked disgusting: weak, squirmy, blotchy, pink, like a newborn mouse. None of us wanted to look like that
• Luke’s wife, whom I’ve also never seen; only pictures and a voice on the phone
• Even at her age she feels the urge to wreathe herself in flowers…you can’t use them anymore, you’re withered. They’re the genital organs of plants.
• Leave it for the next woman the one who comes after me to find
• Envy radiates from them,I can smell it, faint wisps of acid, mingled with their perfume
• You wanted a women’s culture…Be thankful for small mercies
• I often amused myself this way, with small mean-minded bitter jokes about her
• Goddesses are possible now
• if Moira thought she could create Utopia by shutting herself up in a women-only enclave she was sadly mistaken
• I didn’t know many of the neighbours
• It’s more like a telegram, a verbal semaphore. Amputated speech
• we are cronies, this could be a kitchen table, it could be a date we are discussing, some girlish strategem of ploys and flirtation