Linking Texts: Relationships The Odyssey

“My Mother Combs My Hair” by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni The room is full of the scent of crushed hibiscus, my mother’s breath. Our positions are of childhood, I kneeling on the floor, she crosslegged on the chair behind. She works the comb through permed strands rough as dry seaweed. I can read regret in her fingers untangling snarls, rubbing red jabakusum oil into the brittle ends. When she was my age, her hair reached her knees, fell in a thick black rush beyond the edges of old photographs. In one, my father has daringly covered her hand with his and made her smile. At their marriage, she told me, because of her hair he did not ask for a dowry. This afternoon I wait for the old comments, how you’ve ruined your hair, this plait’s like a lizard’s tail, or if you don’t take better care of it, you’ll never get married. but the braiding is done, each strand in its neat place, shining, The comb put away. I turn to her, to the gray snaking in at the temples the cracks growing at the edges of her eyes since father left. We hold the silence tight between us like a live wire, like a strip of gold torn from a wedding brocade. 20 35 5 What kind of relationship does this mother and daughter have? Can you relate to it? 25 40 10 45 15 30

“Only Daughter” by Sandra Cisneros I think… I remember… I wonder… It’s like…