Mama
Alison’s mother was a woman who, as her granny said “was married three times” and she worked forty years as a waitress. She wasn’t quite enthusiastic doing her job but she always said that someone has to do that, because “People need their lunch served with a smile and a quick hand. Don't need to know your business—if you're tired or sick or didn't get any sleep for worrying. Just smile and get them what they need”. She had three daughters, four grandchildren and dozen serious illnesses including three bouts of cancer. So, she has never been the iron lady, her both character and health were weak but she could masterfully hide up her real feelings behind the mask and act as it everything was ok although she was suffering inside: “She was an actress in the theater of true life, so good that no one suspected what was hidden behind the artfully applied makeup and carefully pinned hairnet”. Allison loved her mother because although she couldn’t tell stories, she was a great actress and she was a woman who “could charm time out of bill collectors, sympathy out of sheriffs, and love out of a man who had no heart to share”.
Uncles
“The tragedy of the men in my family was silence, a silence veiled by boasting and jokes. If you didn't look close you might miss the sharp glint of pain in their eyes, the restless angry way they gave themselves up to fate”. Allison’s uncles (twins) were good men, at least for her, and it didn’t matter that they were in jail and as she noticed, they went to jail like other boys went to high school and they took up girls like other people choose a craft. They seemed to be careless, strong, always smiling and acting like they are controlling the situation. But it was just an illusion they created, because in fact they were weak and life had beaten them and thrown like dirt. They were dangerous because they felt miserable and this feeling was unbearable for them, they were afraid of lost like other people, they cried and loved just as everyone else but they tried to look hard, and they were good at it: “Two or three things I know for sure and one of them is that no one is as hard as my uncles had to pretend to be”.
Aunts
Aunt Grace and aunt Moldy were women who knew the life, they were wise, in some aspect because they suffered much in their lives. “Solid, stolid, wide-hipped baby machines. We were all wide-hipped and predestined. Wide-faced meant stupid. Wide hands marked workhorses with dull hair and tired eyes, thumbing through magazines full of women so different from us they could have been another species.” – that is how Allison called all the women in her family. They worked hard, almost never rested and didn’t care about that too much, they thought they are not in power to change anything. Men never respected them and, maybe, never loved them and they got used to it, they used to be humiliated and miserable. Seeing all that, Allison decided that she won't be like them, she won't suffer and bear all that they did, she will be another type of person – a strong and independent woman.
Allison
Allison is a girl of unique power, and later a woman who overcame her fears through her body and her mind. Her life was not a fairy tale; being raped in the age of five by her stepfather she understood that life is mean and no one will never help her except herself. She was looking at her mother and aunts, women, who were abused by men and accepted it as their fate, and she didn’t want to be like them so she worked hard on herself, trying to get through all the difficulties in her life by herself. She trained her body, going for karate, and she fell in love with it, because it gave her the power he needed, not only physical, but the power of her mind. She became the master of her own thoughts and emotions and she liked that feeling. She was not afraid anymore because she knew that the worst things were left behind and the bright future is waiting for her.
