Summary

“Mothers,” is a story following another unnamed female first-person narrator in Machado’s collection. This story resides deep within the realm of psychological realism, which is to say deep within the mind. The piece follows the mental trail of a young woman who has unexpectedly been given a child from an older romantic partner named Bad. Often times you don’t speak about parenting as being given a child, but in this case, the narrator was not pregnant and instead Bad, another woman, did show up at the narrator’s door with the baby later known as Mara and placed her in the care of the narrator. The story begins in media res, as the readers don’t know the circumstances around the narrator’s and Bad’s interactions until a few pages into the story when the first flashback occurs.

The story works...