{"id":7134,"date":"2007-10-16T08:10:31","date_gmt":"2007-10-16T12:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=7134"},"modified":"2015-05-11T11:18:02","modified_gmt":"2015-05-11T15:18:02","slug":"the-books-because-they-wanted-to-because-they-wanted-to-mary-gaitskill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=7134","title":{"rendered":"The Books: \u201cBecause They Wanted to\u201d \u2013 \u2018Because They Wanted to\u2019 (Mary Gaitskill)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction<\/p>\n

\"BecauseTheyWantedTo.jpg\"Because They Wanted to: Stories<\/a>\"\"<\/i> – – by Mary Gaitskill. The following excerpt is from the title story ‘Because They Wanted to’. Elise is a runaway and a prostitute. She’s probably about 17 years old. She drifts about from situation to situation, living in big drug houses for a while, crashing on the couch – “turning tricks” in the park to get by. The story is told with alternating flashbacks – there is a present-day narrative, where Elise sees a sign on a bulletin board saying “Babysitter needed”. She goes to see about the job. It’s a young single mom – who has 3 small children (they live in the ghetto) – and the mom has to go to a job interview and needs someone to watch her kids. The only problem is she doesn’t have any money to pay Elise. But she WILL. If she gets this job!! And she’s not sure WHEN she will be back … because she may have to start her job right away … but that would be even better, because then they would have to pay her … and then she could pay Elise. The whole thing is very sketchy but Elise says sure, she’d watch the kids. So she does. And throughout the entire day – as she is confusedly trying to occupy the kids and feed them and diaper them (she has no experience with children, practically being one herself) – we get flashbacks to her past, and who she is, where she has come from. It’s a meandering story – there are no “jump-cuts” – it’s like the past and the present bleed together. We get both tales going on simultaneously. And Gaitskill, yet again, just NAILS the certain aimlessness of a certain class of people. The people you see hanging out on the streets with nowhere to go. Maybe they are mentally ill. Maybe they are drug addicts. Maybe they just can’t deal with real life. Who knows. But TIME is different to such people. They have nowhere to go, no appointments, nowhere to be … Elise, trapped in this apartment with these 3 kids, having no idea when the mother will return … sinks into this endless march of time …. Like: it’s only 2:30 now?? How on EARTH will I make it through the rest of the day with these kids? Disorienting. And you want to smack the mother who would just up and leave like that … but again, Gaitskill is writing from the ground-level of people who would do such things. People who would think nothing of leaving their 3 kids with a runaway prostitute who needs a job. People who would think nothing of NOT paying said babysitter … and not telling the babysitter, “Okay I’ll be home by 6 pm.” Time is open-ended in this story. It’s kind of upsetting. You want everyone to get Outlook calendars and manage their lives better. Despite Elise’s chaotic life, you really like her. And I really feel like she is doing her ultimate BEST with the kids. She has no idea how to cook, change diapers … she is also so self-involved that “playing” with little kids seems beyond her at first. But then she gets into it … because there is nothing more insistent than a bored child looking at you like: Entertain me, please.<\/p>\n

I have hope for Elise. She is living the life that Gaitskill once lived. And Gaitskill turned out okay. But in the meantime – she meanders through a timeless world, enduring cruelty and neglect, trying not to mind.<\/p>\n


\nEXCERPT FROM Because They Wanted to: Stories<\/a>\"\"<\/i> – – by Mary Gaitskill – ‘Because They Wanted to’<\/b><\/p>\n

After dinner, she heated the formula and fed Penny. The baby was sleepy and docile. She was very wet again, but she wasn’t complaining, so Elise didn’t change her. She had agreed to stay only until six anyway. Robin could change her when she got home. Penny release the nipple of her bottle with a guttural chirp; a sparkling thread of spit spanned nipple and lip, then broke and fell down Penny’s chin. Elise patted it dry with a Kleenex. She put her hand on the baby’s stomach and rocked her.<\/p>\n

She thought Robin must sleep in this bed with Penny, curled round her protectively as you would sleep with a kitten. Eric and Andy must sleep with them too. The bed was big, but stil they would have to sleep close. She wondered if they wore pajamas. That would be uncomfortable in the heat, but it might be even more uncomfortable to touch sticky naked limbs. She pictured them all lying together, the children asleep and Robin awake and blinking in an oscillating band of street light. She wondered if Robin had a light, lacy gown to wear, or a nylon shortie.<\/p>\n

Fleetingly, she thought of her mother in the short cotton gown she called “nighties”. She wore them with a white rayon peignoir that she had bought when she was eighteen. Elise remembered her mother’s short, thick calves, the little hood of fat covering each round knee. Her mother’s legs were middle-aged and ugly, but there was something childish and sweet about them.<\/p>\n

Every summer Elise went to stay with her mother. She lived with a man who had custody of two sons from a previous marriage because their mother spent so much time in mental hospitals. Elise liked the man and the sons okay. Robbie had turned into a strange, fat kid who read philosophy books that were beyond his age range, but she liked him too. She spent her summer days sleeping late, making blender drinks, and staying out late with her friends. She would come in after midnight and find her mother sitting in the warm dark, watching a late-night talk show in her peignoir and a nightie. Her mother would turn her head to greet Elise. It was too dark to see her expression, but Elise saw in her profile a mix of love and sadness, of gratitude to see her daughter arrive home safely and forlorn bewilderment at the way everything had turned out. The expression repelled Elise and then drew her in. She would go into the kitchen and make them both hot chocolate. They would sit at opposite ends of the couch, drinking cocoa and commenting about the people on the talk show. They showed off for each other, trying to be smart. Elise’s repulsion would slowly dissolve into deep comfort, becoming part of and affecting the texture of the comfort.<\/p>\n

When the talk show was over, her mother got up and turned on the light and came to kiss Elise good night. Her peignoir would open slightly as she bent into the kiss, showing her neck and sun-reddened upper chest. The diaphonous yoke of her gown was embroidered with small, plain flowers bearing four round petals apiece. Elise imagined how much her mother must’ve liked the peignoir when she bought it. She imagined her putting it on for the first time, her shy vanity at the way it looked with her skin and chestnut hair. Her mother had been beautiful, and her beauty still whispered in her eyes and skin. When she wore the peignoir, her whispered beauty aligned itself with the coarse redness of her middle age and made it better than beautiful.<\/p>\n