Ruth’s Childhood Drawing
Ruth recalls, “I took a piece of paper from a kitchen drawer and a packet of crayons I’d brought from home and silently started to sketch. I made a house as big as this one. I put a family inside: me, Mama, Rachel. I tried to draw snow, but I couldn’t. The flakes I’d made with the white crayon were invisible on the paper. The only way to see them was to tilt the paper sideways toward the chandelier light, so I could make out the shimmer where the crayon had been.” Ruth’s drawing copies her unconscious aspiration of transcending poverty; the gigantic house is emblematic of the affluence which Ruth yearns for. Besides, her efforts to draw vivid snow illustrate her unconscious is commemoration of the trouble that she has traversing snow alongside her mother and sister throughout her childhood.
Mina’s Scream
Ruth explicates, “But before Mama could answer, there was a scream so piercing and so ragged that it stabbed me in the chest. I knew it did the same to Mama, because she nearly dropped the pot of water she was carrying to the sink. “Stay here,” she said, her voice already trailing behind her as she ran upstairs.” Mina’s scream epitomizes her abrupt labor pains which had not been foreseen. The deafening nature of the shriek surmises that Ms. Mina is under thrilling throbbing that she cannot suppress.
Jessie’s Labour
Ruth holds emotional dialogues with their Jessie and witnesses her torment which is attributed to motherhood. Ruth expounds, “Last night, in the dragon hours of Jessie’s labor, when she was teary and exhausted and snapping at her husband, I’d suggested that he go to the cafeteria to get a cup of coffee. As soon as he left, the air in the room was easier to breathe, and she fell back against those awful plastic pillows we have in the birthing pavilion. “What if this baby changes everything?” she sobbed. She confessed that she never went anywhere without her “game face” on, that her husband had never even seen her without mascara; and now here he was watching her body contort itself inside out, and how would he ever look at her the same way again?”
Jessie’s is an archetypal sample of postpartum depression for she is frightened that motherhood my turn out to be harsh. Essentially, Jessie is petrified by the indefinite qualms of motherhood. The alterations which Jessie witnesses in her body occasion her depression. As a result of the depression, Jessie concentrates her thoughts on apprehension instead of bonding with her baby.
