For what is she, to me? What is anyone now? I had thought my mothers, the nurses, might send to save me; six months go by—another six, another—and they send nothing. I am assured they have forgotten me. Think of you?

I take her often to the graves, and make certain to sigh, to the full strength of my lungs, over my mothers stone. In time—so cunning

am I!—I find out the name of her dead daughter; then, the kitchen cat giving birth to a litter of kittens, I take one for a pet, and name it for her.

I think she is sorry not to whip me. She still bruises my arms with pinches. My obedience enrages her more than ever my passions did; and seeing that, I grow meeker, with a hard, artful meekness that, receiving the edge of her sorrow, keeps it sharp. That provokes her to the pinches—they are profitl[...]

Who shall tend my grave? I shall be all but forgotten.

Her husband is dead. Her son is a sailor. She has taken all her little daughters curling black hair to make ornaments with. She brushes my own hair as if the locks are thorns and might cut her; I wish they were.

She is buried in the loneliest spot of all that lonely park—hers a solitary grey stone among so many white. I am taken to see it, and made to keep the tomb neat.

Be grateful that you may, says Mrs Stiles, watching me trim the springing cemetery grass, her arms folded across her bosom. Who shall tend[...]

I am served it in a crystal glass engraved with an M. The ring of silver that holds my napkin is marked a tarnished black with the same initial. They are to keep me mindful, not of my name, but of that of my mother; which was Marianne.