MY CHILDHOOD matters.
Her eyebrows looked
311
exactly as
they had
if
been cut out of pieces and stuck on. Her large, protruding teeth noiselessly chewed whatever she put in her
mouth with a funny curve of her arm, and her little finger stuck out; while the bones about her ears moved like little
round
balls,
went up and down
and the green hairs on her warts
as if they
were creeping along her
yellow, wrinkled, disgustingly clean skin.
She was always so very clean like her son, and it was unpleasant to go near them. The first day she put her dead hand against my lips, it smelled strongly of yellow Kazan soap and incense, and I turned and ran off. She said to her son very often
away
:
"That boy
is
greatly in need of discipline; do you
understand that, Jenia*?" Inclining his head obediently, he
would frown and
Every one frowned in the presence of the green woman. I hated the old woman, and her son too, with an intense hatred, and many blows did that feeling cost me. remain
silent.
One day at dinner she said, rolling her eyes horribly: "Oh Aleshenka, why do you eat in such a hurry, and take such big I
pieces'?
took the piece out of
again,
and handed
"Take
it
only
it
Give
my
it
up,
mouth, put
my it
dear!"
on the fork
to her.
it is
hot."
Mother took me away from
the table, and I
was