Family

The narrator’s family members, specifically her parents, are key elements of her formative years, and she reflects upon her parents’ specific perspectives as integral to her childhood experiences. This dynamic creates both negative and positive social effects, as examined by the narrator in her recollections. For example, the narrator remembers with regret the way in which her mother interfered with her friendship with Diane. Diane’s mother had been a prostitute and had died of a venereal disease. Thus, the narrator’s mother apparently viewed Diane and her family members as morally corrupt by proxy. This attitude seemed to influence the narrator’s outlook in later years, when she learned that Diane had eventually moved to Toronto to work in a restaurant in Toronto, “where she wore an outfit with sequins on it. I was old enough at that point, and mean enough, to assume...