Sublime

Ela batia no peito dizendo que criaria homens dignos, que vigiaria tudo muito de perto.

I know what my mother is feeling right now, at least a little bit. To be the person who is always alone, always rejected. I have never been anybody’s first choice. Not my mother’s, who loves Ji-hyun more than me; not my father’s, who chose another woman over me. Over all of us.

In the tale, even the mother colludes. She goes on the picnic, “goes along for the ride.” She doesn’t say a word of caution to any of her daughters. One might say the biological mother or the internal mother is asleep or naive herself, as is often the case in very young girls, or in unmothered women. Interestingly, in the tale,

there are thousands of clever men who would give anything for the chance to come in and take over from me, but I don’t want that sort of person. I don’t want a grown-up person at all. A grownup won’t listen to me; he won’t learn. He will try to do things his own way and not mine. So I have to have a child. I want a good sensible loving child, one

my beautiful youngest daughter. This girl is like a shining star, so attached am I to her, and she loves me in return with the innocence and naivety of a child. She would often say to me, ‘Oh father, how I wish you were so small that I could put you in my pocket and take you out each time I missed you.’ I felt agonised at the thought of being