Anna
Interview with the Narrator from the Story “The Crow”
What is an event or thought or discovery that even for moment took your breath away?
The Girl: It was my birthday. It was still early in the morning. Mother had headed further into the village while I was still in bed, for eggs and all those mysterious ingredients she used to make her cooking so good. She might have stopped me. I think she was scared seeing me that high up. She did tell me to get down immediately and was there to catch me at the bottom of the ladder. I hadn’t thought of that myself, back then. I just wanted to show her I was a big girl now. And, well, I never fell. She got used to my being on the roof eventually, until that incident with the pastor.
Tell me your earliest memory.
The Girl: There was a daisy. The most common sort, white petals and yellow at the centre. My fingers were shorter than the length of it when I picked it from the corner of the house, and I was so pleased I found such a pretty thing I tucked it into my hair. I wouldn’t part with it. Mother plucked it out and dried it in the sun for me. She said it would be happier in a box.
Now describe another memory from childhood. What do you see?
The Girl: The sun was slanting in through the church’s window slits. The light landed right on the page I had open. Mother had one arm around my shoulders. A different kind of warmth from the sun. She was not paying attention to me, her eyes were on the man in black at the front. The pew was worn smooth, but the hard wood still dug into my spine. The man was talking about miracles in God’s hands, but I was intrigued by the story I was reading. A leper can be made better! I did not know what a leper was. It simply sounded like a horrible pain. The making things better though, sure I could too. I wriggled under Mother’s arm and tried to sneak out, so I could find out how. She took me onto her lap. I leaned in and saved that for later.
What is one family story that has stayed with you so far?
The Girl: There was this once Mother took me to the bakehouse. Almost all the women were gathered there, mothers and their daughters and children too young to be left at home They had the biggest kitchen and the most space for the baking we were to do for the harvest. I was trying to knead my own small lump of dough when I collapsed. It must have been the heat and the people. I’ve been mostly let off from the place after that, though Mother still asks me to show my face sometimes.
When you stare at water, what do see or think or feel?
The Girl: It’s always going somewhere. It goes into the soil. Then I reckon they go into the leaves, then into the flower, into the seeds. I don’t know if they go onto the petals to become dew, but the dew also goes somewhere, since you can’t find them anymore after the morning passes. It can be anything. Cold or freezing or warm or boiling. Ice hard or slushy or fluid or barely there at all, just something wet when you pass your hand through the steam. It must see many things. It can go anywhere as anything. I wish it would show me or at least tell me.
