Vigil
Marie narrates, “I turned back to the vigil I was keeping on the stone steps. Vigil for my father, who had not yet come up from the subway.” The vigil is illustrative of Marie’s yearning to perceive her father. She is attentive to guarantee that as soon as his father appears on the subway, she will get a glimpse of him. His advent is the pinnacle of Marie’s vigil.
Crib
Marie recalls, “In those days I still slept in the crib that had been my brother’s in a corner of the small room I shared with him. A peeling lamb painted on the headboard, blurred line of grass and meadow flowers at the foot. Low light. Prayers. MY parents’ dry lips to my forehead and some single, barely whispered word at the end of the day that told me I was cherished above all things by these indistinct and warm-breathed shadows, leaning over me at the end of the day.” The crib is representative of all of Marie’s bedtime remembrances as a child. All the things that she observed and overheard before going to rest are personified in the crib; hence, she would not delete all the crib memoirs from her mind.
