Housekeeping

Marilynne Robinson

My name is Ruth. I grew up with my younger sister, Lucille, under the care of my grandmother, Mrs Sylvia Foster, and when she died, of her sisters-in-law, Misses Lily and Nona Foster, and when they fled, of her daughter, Mrs Sylvie Fisher. Through all these generations of elders we lived in one house, my grandmother's house, built for her by her husband, Edmund Foster, an employee of the railroad, who escaped this world years before I entered it.

Lucille wants to be Housekeeping and so do most of the people in town, but everyone has such trouble with it. If you organize a stack of empty tin cans, keeping them clean and storing them up for housekeeping, is that housekeeping? If you decide windows are better without the glass and leave them be when they are broken, is that housekeeping? Is wearing the same style of dress that all the other girls are wearing housekeeping? Is wandering around aimlessly good housekeeping? Is doing your homework?

Sylvie lives a life that does not seem to follow any convention or have much of a purpose. What do you do with Sylvie? She was married but it didn't work out and when they ask her how Mr Fisher is, she doesn't recognize the name. She goes for walks without destinations and is generally absent-minded.

If you've ever seen a person pause, with a small frown or maybe not even that much expression, maybe just slight concern that could be puzzlement on their features, and seen from their posture that they were letting something pass by or happen because they couldn't quite understand it and weren't sure what was going on, that they were keeping their hands off because they had not quite figured out what it was they were seeing, if you've ever seen this expression, you will know how the characters in Housekeeping feel. It's the look of not recognizing something.