Adele: Mommy, who’s Flannery O’Connor?

Mommy: Someone I’ve always wanted to be like.

Adele: I like you.

Mommy: I’m your mommy. You don’t have a choice, especially while you’re nursing. Of course you like me. You won’t like me when you’re a teenager and I tell you you’re pretty. You’ll probably say, You’re my mother. Of course you think I’m pretty. You can’t take me to the fucking prom. That’s how I was.

Adele: I wouldn’t be so mean.

Mommy: Oh, I don’t know. Mean isn’t always a bad thing. Take O’Connor. She wasn’t mean, from what I gather. But she was biting. She bit people with her words. She said what she thought with figures of speech and euphemisms and self-deprecation. You had to figure her out, she was so smart. You had to catch up to her. She left the rest of us behind because she was so… I think… comfortable with herself and her work and her life. She’s this example, to me, of confidence.

Adele: I like to feed myself. I know how, too.

Mommy: Yes, honey. You’re confident, too, I think. I hope you’re more like her than like me. Damn. I’m reading this biography of her right now by Brad Gooch (Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor), and I’m in constant awe of her tenacity, her steady and tempered and wise irreverence.

Adele: Irreverence.

Mommy: So often, we’re irreverent without being intelligent or informed. She wasn’t like that. I admire her. And I’m convinced she possessed those characteristics because her family supported her and adored her and nurtured her intelligence. Hers was also a family of means, so she attended excellent, marvelous schools all her life.

Adele: I think she was just plain smart. That’s all.

Mommy: You’re a baby, Petunia, so it makes sense to me that you’d speak like a Republican. It’s okay. I understand.

Adele: What’s a Republican?

Mommy: Someone who thinks that gender, class, race, means, and the like don’t have much to do with who we become. Like John Roberts, say, or Clarence Thomas. If you can’t reach your bootstraps to pull yourself up, they say, then fuck you. We’ll let you fall.

Adele: I bet Flannery was a Republican.

Mommy: You know, she might have been. I don’t really know. I haven’t finished the book yet. She sure was Catholic, and we know what that’s likely to mean. I think she was a writer, mostly. I think she spent her time and energy on that, on making it beautiful, on making it speak to people, on making it reflect emotion and experience. Before I even knew what writing meant, I read “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” and that was it. I was wrenched, puddle of feeling, of understanding, of empathy. Her abilities were astonishing. I read her biography, and I’m wrenched again. Not with the same kinds of feelings–with loss. I wish I could have had the support from my family that she did. I wish all of us could have. I wish every child could have schools like hers. It’s just not fair.

Adele: I’ll be saying that soon.

Mommy: Yes, you will. And you’ll be right.