Summary

“The Mother” - Nnu Ego staggers out of her living quarters, brushing into the line-drying laundry of her white masters, before starting to run. She feels pain in her breasts, heavy with the milk that she had been using to nourish her son, born “four weeks before” (8). As she runs, past the homes of other servants and through the nearby market, narration describes her feeling a different kind of pain: “…unlike the milk, this pain could not come out, though it urged her on, and she was running, running away from it” (8). She collides with a blind beggar, who curses her out even as she helps him find his begging bowl again. After a while, she slows to a walk, contemplating her destination, “the deep water that ran below Carter Bridge” where it would “be all over” and where she can meet her...