Project 2 (“Girl” POV)

I had spent the morning in my room taking a little longer to wake up. I knew I had chores to do, but I was going to wait just a little while longer to get them done as I felt drained this morning. I went downstairs and saw my mother leaving for the store to go get some groceries. She looked over to me and said “you missed breakfast.” I said I was sorry and that I wanted a little extra sleep. She gave me a glare and then said ”remember to get your chores done. I want a clean house when I get home.” I told her I understood and then she walked out the door to go to the store. I decided to help a little by finishing up cleaning the dishes from breakfast and then I decided to lay down after that for just a little bit. I had more chores to do, but my mother wasn’t getting back from the store for a while. I was sitting in bed staring at the ceiling thinking about how my mom didn’t seem happy with me. I couldn’t figure out the reason why she was mad because it was only an extra hour of sleep. I thought I might get up soon when I heard the door open. I went downstairs to see my mother looking very distressed with a bag of groceries in her hand. She looked at me then and the floor and then set down the groceries. She just stared at me and started explaining that the floor was dirty. “I’m sorry mother I didn’t clean the floor,” I explained. I told her I’d do it right away but she just told me to sit down. She just looked at me and started to explain that there was a young woman at the store who seemed very similar to me. She said that the young woman she saw was running around the store being very rude to other people. She explained how this girl had no manners for the workers or anyone around her. She looked me dead in the eye and said “you must never be a slut like her.” She said that I needed to learn manners and discipline. My mother then started to tell me all about what a woman should be and how a woman should act. A lot of this stuff seemed useful but I already knew some of it. I felt like she was talking down to me because she was in a bad mood, but she was talking calmly and it still seemed that she was talking out of the best intentions for my future self. I didn’t think I was a bad child and I never thought of myself as a slut. I thought I got everything done in reason and I never acted out in public. I prided myself on being so well mannered in church and when taking trips with my mom. Still, yet my mother was so adamant about my manners and my job as a woman. I knew she was talking out of kindness because she was teaching me the essentials of what I needed to know in my long life and I’m glad to know that she cares to teach me this. After her talk with me, I asked “can I go with you to the store tomorrow and you can teach me how to pick the best bread?” My mother looked at me and said “yes, I can teach you, but first you must mop these floors.” I understood, and with a little more effort than this morning, I went to work.

I choose to write about the girl from “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid. I choose to write about her story leading up to the discussion with her mother and during the one-sided conversation because I wanted to tell about her thought process when her mother was speaking to her and why she ended up talking to the girl in the first place. I wanted to say how the girl felt about it. I choose to reference the part of the short story about the bread at the end of the original. I choose to do this because I wanted to explain that the girl isn’t upset about the mother talking to her and she wants to go help pick bread with her mom because she respects her. I choose to write about before the timeline of the original and I found it int5eresting to write a POV that we didn’t have previously. That was a hard part because the conversation itself was a short part of the story, but my goal was to tell wythe mother was talking to the girl and I was able to be creative with it while staying within the boundaries of what I think is possible to happen to a girl like the one in the story.