When tragedy strikes, child and mother move to America.
"You could pretend certain things weren't happening even when you had seen or felt them.
Instead she will continue to keep quiet, not disturb, and be good. That she would keep secrets instead of trusting that her mother would help. Would do anything to keep her mother from looking at her with disapproval. I can see how this would cause a child to fear disappointing her mother.
The anxiety that all this would create in a child. Her father who prefers to hide in his study with his glass of arrack. Her father tells her that her mother is "delicate" and that she needs to be treated carefully. She knows during these times that she must be quiet, must not make any noise, and let her mother rest. Will her mother make her breakfast or stay locked in her room for days at a time. Will she sing and dance with her laughing and playing? Then all of a sudden push her away because the child's feet aren't in perfect rhythm. Her mother, who has moods that swing back and forth, leaving the child to wonder what her mother will do next. It's not long though that we begin to see the cracks in this "perfect childhood". Spends time at school getting an education and spends time playing games like hide and seek with her friends and cousins. She plays in the beautiful country, eating guava fresh that she's pulled right off of the tree. She has the love of her mother and father. On the surface her childhood looks idyllic. We still don't know her name but she's often referred to as Baby Madame. The narrator was born and lived in the hill country of Sri Lanka. She says how many mothers can sit back and judge her because she has committed an act so horrendous that other mothers are relieved because they have not failed in the way she has. "Motherhood is, if anything, the assumption of perfection". This book made me think about motherhood in ways I'd never have expected. That she will tell us her story but in her time, her words from the beginning, when she was the child and not yet the mother. However, she tells us that we only think we know her story and why she did what she did. She confesses to us how she has done the unthinkable, that she is the worst thing possible. The book begins with an unnamed woman sitting in her jail cell. I don't know if I just started paying more attention to book covers or if they have just gotten so much better but I've seen some fantastic covers recently.
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